CHAPTER II

DOMESTIC REFORM

The animating spring of all improvement in individuals and in societies is not the knowledge of the actual but the conception of the possible.—H. MARTINEAU.

How shall the new era be inaugurated? By ceasing to strive for self and family; by thinking of both only as instruments of the common weal.—PROF. A. W. BICKERTON.

The model family home of the British middle class half a century ago comprised a father and mother of sound constitution and domestic habits with a group of children of both sexes—a group large enough to supply companionship to one another, and a family income sufficient for comfortable maintenance and recreation, occasional travel and the free exercise of hospitality. If homes of this type were widely and firmly established throughout the land they might be competent to breed, nurture and send forth into the world a good average material of human life for repairing waste and building up the British nation. But in the present epoch such homes are exceedingly rare, and the trend of social forces and modern ideas alike make for their becoming still rarer.

To speak only of the more obvious factors of change, State action in reference to the education of the young lifts children of the masses at almost an infantile age out of the effective control of family life, and in our centres of national industry economic forces bring about a hasty pairing and breeding, with an abrupt scattering of the brood that resembles the nesting of birds rather than the home-making of rational beings; while so immature are the heads of these evanescent family homes that the break-up is by no means an unmitigated evil.

Among the classes, forces of a higher, more penetrative order are working similarly. Prudence is acting towards the restraint of population in a manner that narrows the basis of family groups and shortens the natural term of their existence; and under a new impulse of right reason and high resolve the educated section of the female sex is deliberately forsaking the domestic hearth to share the world’s labour with man. These concurrent movements in society are destroying family life on the old lines, and by the homes of the present, individual needs are met only temporarily and provisionally.

One conspicuous result is an ever-increasing discomfort to the aged. They are stranded in homes become empty, or wander abroad seeking touch with their kind. Distinctly are they shunted off the rails of busy life before a lowered vitality prompts to inertia. The British “Philistine” lacks sentiment. Old age makes no special appeal to him, and he is content to bestow on relatives no longer young a brief moment of his precious time, a fragment of his tenderness. At an earlier stage of our social evolution the mature in years were centres of a rich, full, domestic life, and pivots on which turned the wider social life encircling it. At the present stage of that evolution the young and the comparatively young focus and absorb the whole sunshine of life, while the guardians of their infancy pass into declining years enveloped in gloom.

This premature effacement entails on society a double loss—first, the loss interiorly of that individual happiness which intensifies and raises the tide of life; second, the loss of activities guided by and based upon _mellow experience_.

Society is too materialistic to recognize that human beings physically on the down-grade may be psychically on the up-grade, and pre-eminently fitted to inspire and promote progress. But in thinking of latent possibilities realizable in a better environment we are bound not to judge by average humanity, but by the superior types of the preceding generation. The old age of W. E. Gladstone, Harriet Martineau, Mary Somerville, and others was neither gloomy nor unproductive. The last-mentioned at the age of eighty-one turned her attention to writing a book on microscopic science. “I seemed,” she says, “to resume the perseverance and energy of my youth. I began it with courage, though I did not think I could live to finish it.” She did, however, finish it, and lived to the age of ninety-two, maintaining at all times her habits of study and a full social intercourse with many friends. (From _Personal Recollections_, by her Daughter.)

It is not intellectual powers only that are running to waste. Under the double pressure of competition in trade and competition in the labour market, good manual workers are found ineffective and dismissed at an earlier age than formerly.

An immense mass of our industrial population is forced by circumstance into the workhouse when still comparatively active, and life there is but a gloomy vacant existence—a complete suppression of the best faculties of body and mind.

Comparing the past with the present in respect of the old age of workers, we are told by Professor Thorold Rodgers that village homes were centres of multifarious occupations, in which naturally the aged, if able, would take part. And in towns, although streets were narrow, at the rear of the houses there were gardens where old and young together spent the long summer evenings. “Not long ago,” says the American Social Science Committee Report of 1878, “the farm found constant employment for the men of the family—the women had abundant employment in the home, there was carding, spinning, weaving.” “And the neverending labour of our grandmothers must not be forgotten, who with nimble needle knit our stockings and mittens. The knitting-needle was in as constant play as their tongues, whose music only ceased under the power of sleep.... Now no more does the knitting-needle keep time to the music of their tongues, for the knitting-machine in the hands of one little girl will do more work than fifty grandmothers. Labour-saving machinery has broken up and destroyed our whole system of household and family manufacture, when all took part in the labour and shared in the product to the comfort of all.”

The system that has superseded that of “household and family manufacture” has been adverse to the aged from the first, and neglect of old age has become a wrong-doing that eats like a canker into our social life.

As Professor Bickerton well remarks: “Unhappiness is the disease of social life, and misery is an indication that there is something wrong with our social system. Just as it is unreasonable to expect bodily health under insanitary conditions, so we cannot look for social concord and joy unless mankind be placed in circumstances that suit his social nature. Man has been considered too exclusively as a producing machine with subsidiary mental capacity, whereas he is essentially a moral being with deep emotions and universal sympathies. The cure for the uncleanliness of society is not difficult. The plans for the edifice of human life are obtainable. What are the plans? Those laws of nature which are concerned in the development of mankind. What is the cure? Such understanding of the principles of evolution and such consonant action as shall restore to the race an environment befitting its humanity.” (_The Romance of the Earth._)

Nevertheless, we cannot return to a system of household and family manufacture. To relinquish mechanical aids to production would be contrary to, not consonant with, evolution. A civilized race outgrows its primitive conditions of life and industry—new wine must be put into new bottles.

The immediate step of advance as regards manual labour is this—in our centres of local administration there should be organized municipal employment with shortened hours for elderly people, the wage to be supplemented by pensions ample enough to secure for these workers an honourable social standing instead of a pauper’s dole. But a closer adaptation to humanity’s needs may be quickly achieved by the classes where poverty plays a less part in the social phenomena. Of present conditions Mr. Escott, in his _England, its People, Polity and Pursuits_, thus speaks: “The nation is only an aggregate of households. Modern society is possessed by a nomadic spirit which is the sure destroyer of home ties. The English aristocracy flit from mansion to mansion during the country-house season; they know no peace during the London season. Existence for the wealthy is one unending whirl of excitement, admitting small opportunity for the cultivation of the domestic affections. The claims of society have continually acquired precedence of the duties of home.”

In the middle class, however, wedged in between the rich and the poor, the greatest factor of change is the servant difficulty, and this difficulty we must glance at in its causal relations.

Civilized communities divide broadly into two parts—productive units whose labour supplies what is needful for existence, and unproductive units whose existence depends on the labour of others. The latter have been correctly termed “parasites.” M. Jean Massart explains in his scientific scrutiny of social phenomena,[11] that during the period of our industrial development a force of integration has gradually strengthened the main body of the social organism, giving it power to resist in some degree the burden of parasitism. Consequently arbitrary authority and slavish subserviency have abated, and two movements affecting family life in the middle class are discernible—first, there is an increasing revolt from domestic service as a form of labour directly opposed to the spirit of independence that is growing in workers and to the force of integration which by ranging them shoulder to shoulder is preparing them for a new form of industrial life; second, sons of the aristocracy and daughters of the middle class are joining the ranks of producers with some sense of the dignity of labour and the degradation of a purely parasitic existence. Social parasitism is not organic. It is an extraneous condition induced in a society developing its civilization. No man is necessarily a parasite; he acquires the character in the course of his life history, and happily the young are refusing to acquire it.

Footnote 11:

_Parasitism, Organic and Social_, p. 121.

Observe, then, it is not in one or two sections of our community life, but in all sections that diverse causes are producing one uniform result—the break-up of the family home; and behind all the more superficial causes there is working a profound factor of change in the centripetal or constructive and the centrifugal or destructive forces of nature. Whilst the latter destroys old forms, the former prepares for the new form—prepares, not only by an integration of workers, but by a fresh inspiration of love and desire for work. Hence women and men endowed with reason, knowledge and practical skill may bring the life of their own immediate circle into express and positive line with this constructive, profoundly evolutional, movement.

Domestic reform implies the relinquishment of that whole system of household labour that requires the combination of a subject with a parasitic class. Co-operation among equals takes the place of masterful authority and slavish subjection, and heavy labour will be relieved by scientific appliance. Labour-saving contrivances in family homes hardly exist. There has been little spur to invention on these lines. But, as in industrial fields, a saving of money, material and labour by the use of machinery has followed the introduction of organized co-operation, so, doubtlessly, a similar process will follow the gradual adoption of organized co-operation within the home. This is not the solution of the servant problem merely. It has a far wider significance. Many educated women who are now seeking useful work and economic independence outside of home-life will find these within the domestic circle, and further will find that it is possible to combine such necessary conditions of dignified life with fulfilment of duty alike to the aged and to the young.

Pioneers who aim at social solidarity must in practice recognize labour as the indispensable basis of social life and social institutions. All methods of wage-payment dependent on industrial competition will be repudiated for a system that acknowledges every form of useful work as entitling the worker to financial independence; and in the emotional sphere, with its possibilities of inner union and solidarity, who can measure the impetus towards the desired goal that will be given by the setting of the solitary in families and the re-gathering of the old into the bosom of a rich, full, domestic life.

Let us suppose that from fifteen to twenty groups—they may be families or groups of friends—combine and pass out from their numerous separate houses into one large commodious dwelling built for them or bought and adapted to their purpose. The bedrooms are furnished on the continental plan with accommodation for writing, reading, solitary study, or rest by day, and all the latest improvements in lighting, heating and ventilating, etc. By the rules of the house—except for cleaning—no one enters these rooms uninvited by the inmate, who has there at all times, if wished, perfect privacy and the most thorough personal comfort. Two eating apartments are placed contiguous to the kitchens, and by taking advantage of every invention to facilitate cooking and serving, the lady-cooks and attendants may place prepared food on the table and sit down to partake of it with their friends. One wing of the house is set apart for nurseries and nursery training, another for school teaching, inclusive of indoor kindergarten; a music-room well-deafened enables the musical to practise many instruments without jarring the nerves of others; a playroom for the young and a recreation-room set apart for whist and chess, etc., a billiard room, and if desired, a smoking room; a large drawing-room where social enjoyment is carefully promoted every evening, a library or silent room where no interruption to reading is permitted, these, and a few small boudoirs for intercourse with special friends form the chief outer requirements of the ideal collectivist home.

All the details of household management may safely be left to pioneers of the new woman movement; it belongs only to scientific meliorism to point out the general features and structure of the reformed domestic system and to show its vitally important position in relation to any rational scheme of wide-reaching social reform.

Humanity as a whole has to climb upward in the scale of being and to leave behind it the individual or family selfishness allied with animal passions that are purely anti-social; it has further to develop that self-respect that allied with heart-fellowship brings in its train all the social virtues that distinguish the man from the brute. Germs of that self-respecting life are with us even now, but the soil in which they will spring up to vigorous growth must be created, i.e. brought together by man himself. The fitting of character to a new domestic system should not be difficult in the case of children under wise training, for it is as easy to acquire good habits in childhood as bad habits, and the wholesome atmosphere of a well-regulated superior home will powerfully and painlessly aid in shaping the young. But for the grown-up to alter personal habits, and adapt thought and feeling to a new order of every-day life, the task is not easy. It may press heavily on the ordinary adult at the initial stage of the movement. Happily that task may be rendered easier by mutual criticism kindly and gravely exercised. The method was practised for upwards of thirty years in the Oneida Creek Community with a marked success. Criticism, says one of the members, is a boon to those who seek to live a higher life and only a bugbear to those who lack ambition to improve. It was to the community a bond of love and an appeal to all that is noblest, most refined and elevated in human nature; it helped a man out of his selfishness in the easiest, most kindly way possible. Whereas in ordinary life the interference of the busybody, the tongue of the tale-bearer, the shaft of ridicule, the venom of malice, are unavoidable—in the Community such criticizing was almost unknown. It was bad form for anybody to speak complainingly of anyone else, because criticism was the prerogative of the Community, and was instituted to supersede all evil-speaking or back-biting. Nor was it an occasion for direct fault-finding merely. Those criticizing were always glad to dilate on the good qualities of their subject, and to express their love and appreciation of what they saw to commend. (Abel Easton, Member of the Oneida Community.)

Another member, Allan Estlake, thus speaks: “Criticism was a barrier to the approach of unworthy people from without, and equally a bar to the development of evil influences within.” The practice was not original. Mr. Noyes found it established in a select society of missionaries he had joined previous to his forming the Oneida Community.

One of the weekly exercises of this society, he tells us, was a frank criticism of each other’s character for the purpose of improvement. The mode of proceeding was this: At each meeting the member whose turn it was, according to alphabetic order, to submit to criticism, held his peace while the others one by one told him his faults. This exercise sometimes crucified self-complacency, but it was contrary to the rules of society for any one to complain. I found much benefit in submitting to this ordeal both while I was at Andover and afterward.[12] If a number of young men adopted criticism as a means of improvement it should not be more difficult to pioneers of the new domestic life, young and old, provided they have the same desire to improve. It might be irksome to the young, until they had learned to profit by it, as all discipline is at first, but when “our young people,” says Mr. Estlake, “had formed habits in harmony with their means of improvement they learned to love the means by which they had progressed and to rejoice in the results of sufferings that were incident only to their inexperience.”[13]

Footnote 12:

_The Oneida Community_, Allan Estlake, p. 65.

Footnote 13:

_The Oneida Community_, Allan Estlake, p. 66.

Personal habits in the new domestic life will be judged in their relation to the general interests of the household, and regulations made to safeguard these interests. Cleanliness, orderliness, punctuality are essential to home comfort, but conventional etiquette destroys the geniality of domestic freedom. While simple rules of a positive kind are strictly observed, the negative rule of non-interference with personal habits that are unhurtful to others will be the most stringent of all, and for this reason—happiness is the great object to attain, and a supreme condition of happiness is the free interaction of social units without intrusive interference.

Committees will be necessary—for organizing labour on a method that will ensure variety to workers and frequent leisure—for consultation on the best means to adopt in training children individually—for management of the finances—for recreative arrangements—and for purposes of general direction and control.

Authority will of course devolve on these committees chosen by members of the household from among themselves. Every relic of primitive despotism must be banished from the home: it is a self-acting republic. Since children reared in the home will be one day responsible citizens of a republican state, it were well to enlist them early in the work of committees. They will learn thereby to subordinate personal desire to the will of the majority, and to co-operate in action for the common weal. The amusements and conduct of children are well within range of their own understanding, and although supervision by adults is necessary, great freedom should be allowed them in the management of their conduct clubs and amusement committees.

The relinquishment of personal property is not desirable at the present stage of social evolution; for individuals—and there may be some—who, however willing, are unable to adapt themselves to the new system, should possess the power to return to the old system without let or hindrance.

Nevertheless, be it sooner or later, the ideal collectivist home of the future will realize, though at first imperfectly, the beautiful conception held by Isaac Taylor of the ideal family home of the past. Here is the picture: “Home is a garden, high-walled towards the blighting northeast of selfish care. In the home we possess a main means of raising the happiest feelings to a high pitch and keeping them there. No disparagement, no privation is to be endured by some for the aggrandizement or ease of others. Along with great inequalities of dignity, power and merit, there is yet a perfect and unconscious equality in regard to comforts, enjoyments and personal consideration. There is no room for grudges or individual solicitude. Whatever may be the measure of good for the whole the sum is distributed without a thought of distinction between one and another. Refined and generous emotions may thus have room to expand, and may become the fixed habits of the mind. Within the circle of home each is known to all, and all respect the same principles of justice and love. There is therefore no need for that caution, reserve or suspicion that in the open world are safeguards against the guile, lawlessness and ferocity of a few.”[14] There, too, may be wholly discarded that reticence with which, as with a cloak, the modern, civilized man, says Lucas Mallet, strives to hide the noblest and purest of his thought.

Footnote 14:

_Home Education_, Isaac Taylor, pp. 33 and 34.

The new system fully worked out will make homes permanent instead of transitory. It will check the premature sending of girls out into the world and the tendency of young life generally to drift. It will develop industrial activities and give effective household labour. It will lessen the sordid cares of humanity and increase its social joys. It will create an environment calculated to restrain tempestuous youth and cause every selfish passion to subside in the presence of mutual love. It will perfect education by co-ordinating the life of the young and securing that the entire juvenile orbit is governed by forces of fixed congruity. It will provide every comfort for old age and garner its dearly-bought experience. It will promote healthy propagation causing the birth of the fit; it will facilitate marriage of the affections and make early marriage possible. It will tend infancy in a wholly superior manner, and by scientific breeding, rearing, training, produce future citizens of the State of a higher intellectual, moral and spiritual type.

_PART VII_ RELIGION AND THE RELIGIOUS LIFE

PRIMAL ELEMENTS IN HUMANITY’S EVOLUTION

SECTION 1

Is this material universe self-sufficient and self-contained, or is not the “other conception,” the true one, viz. “that of a universe lying open to all manner of spiritual influences, permeated through and through with a divine spirit, guided and watched by living minds acting through the medium of law indeed, but with intelligence and love behind the law; a universe by no means self-sufficient or self-contained, but with feelers at every pore groping into another supersensuous order of existence where reigns laws hitherto unimagined by science, but laws as real and as mighty as those by which the material universe is governed?”—SIR OLIVER LODGE, “The Outstanding Controversy between Science and Faith,” _Hibbert Journal_ for October, 1902.

To the man of Western civilization, whose environment in youth was a domestic atmosphere of Sabbath-day Christian orthodoxy and week-day religious indifference along with a social atmosphere of commercial individualism and the steady pursuit of sense pleasures, it is no easy task to form a correct judgment regarding the true position of religion and its relative worth in evolution.

A study of the subject reveals that not only the more and less civilized races of mankind have each some specialized form of religion, but the non-civilized savage tribes of the earth are similarly endowed. Their worship may be degraded to the last degree, but it holds them in its grasp, and in studying these facts we are compelled to believe that humanity is so constituted that its deepest needs are only to be expressed through and by religion.

The various religions of the world must have been essential to evolution, since evolution, as applied to man, signifies the ample, thorough development of every integral part of human nature in each individual. But while recognizing religion as a necessary expression of human nature and a supreme characteristic of man, we have also to realize that its forms are as various as the distinctive differences amongst men, and that changes from time to time inevitably occur for good or evil in every religion. None are stationary, none are perfect. And the spiritual verities which lie at the base of all are constantly overlaid by superstitions, while the external forms harden and grow inoperative for good.

Now, on the theory that religion is in effect necessary to evolution, and further, that it represents fundamentally an emanation from the plane of spirit, i.e. from a region transcending our phenomenal existence, what would nineteenth century intelligence _a priori_ expect of the various divergent religious systems? That amid variations, some striking similarities would exist to indicate the identity of their original source. It would expect also to find some statement of facts in nature not otherwise known to man, some recognition of the stupendous movement of evolution—the elucidation of which in its physical aspect is the grand achievement of modern science—and some hint of the laws governing that movement. Further, it would expect to find guidance to right conduct and some indications of the paramount purpose and end of universal life.

Hitherto, as it happens, the investigating spirit of modern science has concerned itself little with theological matters; and the recognized exponents of our own racial theology are incompetent judges here. Their training has made of them religious specialists so interpenetrated by sectarian dogma that they are incapable of assuming the mental attitude of a genuine criticism claiming no superiority for Christianity over other great religions, save such value of position as lies in its later birth and development. Outside the churches, however, comparative theology is not neglected, and it is freely admitted now by many earnest students of the subject that all the great religions of the world possess spiritual, ethical and philosophical ideas in common.

Hinduism deals with startling facts of the invisible world. In the Vedas[15] it teaches that consciousness is the foundation or groundwork of all nature, that matter and force are instinct with conscious life. Behind these is the great unmanifested Deity—the “Unknowable” of our own Spencerian philosophy—the Illimitable, Eternal, Absolute, Unconditioned Source of the Universe, incognizable and inconceivable to the finite faculties of man. With manifestation there appears the threefold aspect of Deity—the supreme Logos of the Universe—a Unity in Trinity and a Trinity in Unity, the reflection of which as Consciousness, Substance, Force, runs throughout nature, and is also shown in the Christian and other creeds and the Pauline description of man’s triune constitution—body, soul and spirit. The doctrine of evolution is taught in Hinduism on far wider lines than the modern intellectual conception lays down. The latter, dealing with outward appearance, bases itself on physical phenomena. The former transcends phenomenal existence and human experience. It embraces the superlatively great, the infinitely small and complex, and presents a cosmogony evolutional throughout, while it points to a spiritual development for the individual so extensive and sublime that the Western mind, unused to metaphysical thought, is unable to grasp and clothe it in words. In this philosophy there is no stultifying of human endeavour by the view of the soul’s opportunities as confined to three score years and ten. That span of life makes but a single page in the soul’s vast evolutional history, for at the centre of Hinduism lies a rock-bed of belief in re-incarnation—that process of nature which accomplishes the gradual growth and spiritual elevation of humanity by means of the individual soul’s successive returns to physical life, with intervening periods of spiritual rest or latency. The threefold nature of man gives him touch with three levels of existence, and Hindu religion represents him bound to a wheel unceasingly turning in three worlds, viz. a world of waking consciousness or the physical body, and of two other worlds to which he passes successively at and after death, and in which he works out his latest earthly experience and assimilates all its fruit, then returns through the gateway of birth to begin a fresh course of discipline and learning.

Footnote 15:

It is from the study of the Vedas that the educated Hindu seeks to derive his creed. I refer my reader to Mr. J. E. Slater’s _Higher Hinduism in relation to Christianity_.

Turning from the transcendental to the scientific and practical sides of Hinduism, we find an external worship and broad polity calculated to regulate human conduct in every relation of life, religious, national, social, family and personal—the entire system founded on the law of causation on all planes of being. By our own scientists, that law is recognized on the physical plane as the invariable sequence of cause and effect. Hinduism regards it as working also on higher planes, and terms it the law of action or Karma—the moral retribution which brings out inexorably in one life the results following from causes arising in previous lives. Responsibility therefore rests with every self-conscious, reflective being, and divine justice is shown reconcilable with the free-will of man through the union of Karma and re-incarnation. “God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.”

The religion of the Parsis, i.e. the modern form of Zoroastrianism, has equally with Hinduism a metaphysical philosophy, and an outward worship, while mingled with all there is an astronomical teaching based on the same conception of nature as is found in Hinduism, viz. that it is the manifestation, in infinitely varied forms, of the one universal consciousness or mind. The constitution of humanity is two-fold. Spirit and matter are two distinct and different principles, both are in man; and he is capable of siding definitely with either. The ethic of Zoroastrian faith is based on the belief that he will throw himself on the side of the pure, that he will battle for it and maintain it. To be at all times actively on the side of purity is a clear personal duty. The devout Zoroastrian must keep the earth pure and till it religiously. He must perform the functions of agriculture as a service to the gods, for the earth is the pure creature of Ahura Mazdao—the Supreme Spirit to be guarded from all pollution. And passing from the outer to the inner life of the individual, the constantly-repeated maxim is this: I withdraw from all sins by pure thoughts, pure deeds, pure words.

In Taoism, a religion of China of earlier date than Hinduism or Zoroastrianism, there exists a fragment of ancient scripture called the Classic of Purity, wherein man is regarded as a trinity, viz. spirit, mind, body. To quote from Mr. Legge’s translation: “Now the spirit of man loves purity, but his mind disturbs it. The mind of man loves stillness, but his desires draw it away. If he could always send his desires away, his mind would of itself become still. Let his mind be made clean, and his spirit will of itself become pure.” (Here we have the idea, expressed in all religions, of the conflict between the higher and lower nature in man and the necessity for spirit to dominate mind and body. Refer to St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, vii. 15, 21, 22 and 23.)

Again, Buddhism has absorbed the attention of modern Oriental scholars through the fascination of the Buddha’s purity and elevation of thought. There are two divisions of this faith, viz., the Mahayana, that of the Northern Church, found in Tibet, Nepaul, China, Corea, and Japan, and the Hinayana, that of the Southern Church, found in Ceylon, Burmah, Siam, etc. The Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) is closely allied to Hinduism in its teachings regarding the spiritual world, the continuing ego of individual man, the life after death, the rites and ceremonies of worship, and the mystic side of personal religion. In the Hinayana (Lesser Vehicle) of the Southern Church, much of this mystic teaching has been dropped, nevertheless it retains a wonderful system of ethics, with appeals made to human reason, and a constant attempt to justify and render intelligible the foundations on which the morals are built. Buddhism is clearly the daughter of the more ancient Hinduism. Its scriptures are the echo of the Hindu scriptures, and the general teachings, while thrown into a less metaphysical form, are penetrated with the Hindu spirit. Causation is in both an unbroken law. In the Dhammapada, for instance, it is written: “If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage. He who has done what is evil cannot free himself of it, he may have done it long ago or afar off, he may have done it in solitude, but he cannot cast it off.”

Buddha taught that evil is overcome only by its opposite, i.e. good: “Let every man overcome anger by love, let him overcome the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth,” etc., etc. And here the religion is closely in touch with Christian ethics: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you,” etc. “Love is the fulfilling of the Law.” With regard to man’s destiny, Buddha’s teachings build on his hearers’ acceptance of the Hindu doctrine of re-incarnation.

(In the Pali Canon occur these words: “The Bhikshee [the disciple] sees, with eye divine, beings dropping away and reappearing, he knows them reaping according to their several karma, degraded and ennobled, beautiful and ugly, well-placed and ill-placed.” From this and many other passages of the Pali Canon “it is clear and evident and beyond a shadow of doubt,” says J. C. Chatterji, “that the Buddha taught the identity of the re-incarnating ego, though he did not give it that name. He called it Consciousness or Vignana.”—_Theosophical Review_, Jan., 1898, p. 415.) Without that his system falls to the ground. The path of salvation he points to implies a persistent course of personal effort, and he who would tread that path must open his mind to discriminate between things that are transitory and those that are real and permanent. To the former belong all the pleasures of sense, every earthly desire and ambition, and every selfish thought.

Deep within man’s nature, however, there lies hid a germ or seed of the permanent. This will persist throughout all the ages amid the fleeting phantasmagoria of many lives, and this he must cherish, nourish, develop. He must resist and renounce the corrupting influences of the flesh. He must master his passions, steady his mind, and control, enlighten and elevate his thoughts. Further, he must purify his emotions and actions, pervading the world with a “heart of love, far-reaching, grown great and beyond measure.” (The Tevijja Sutta.) Finally, the individual consciousness will expand, until, able to function in subtler vehicles than those of physical matter, the man passes out of the chrysalis state of formal existence to emerge upon higher levels of life and reach at length the Buddhist Nirvana—that supreme crown of immortality and acme of conscious bliss.

This pilgrimage of the soul through many births and deaths, with its steadfast struggles and gradual liberation from all earthly debasing entanglements, forms a striking contrast to certain teachings of the modern Christian Churches. Dogma there presents to us an undeveloped helpless soul, as playing—within a circumscribed area of earth’s surface—its one little game of experimental life. The fate of the soul for all eternity hangs in the balance, all its chances for weal or woe depending on a single throw of the dice. And what are the terms of the game? Conditions of life so adverse, in millions of cases, that defeat is a foregone conclusion. No wonder civilized men with a seedling of justice in the soul, reject the whole scheme of nature allied with this dogma, and frankly disavow religious faith.

But the question arises, how does it happen that Christianity, with an ethic fundamentally the same as that of every other great religion of the world, diverges so completely here? Is it conceivable that Christianity, while of Divine origin, has become in process of time dwarfed and deformed to the extent even of losing some _essential_ features? It holds, as sectarian pulpits represent it, no doctrine of re-incarnation, and appears to have no clear basis of metaphysical or philosophic thought. Moreover, it has elements impossible to reconcile with the mental and emotional developments of a scientific and intellectual age. The anthropomorphic conception of Deity, the almost literal interpretation of the Jewish allegory of creation, the personalization of the metaphysical and mystic Trinity; the approval of the barbarous sacrifices and vengeful Deity of the Old Testament; the anti-evolutional doctrine of the vicarious Atonement in the New Testament; the crude ideas concerning the soul, heaven and hell; and the absence of any evolutional theory applied to human destiny—all these, and above all the ignorance and pride that claim for this particular form of religion a unique position in the world’s history, and assume that it alone and no other religion is the revelation of God to man, show an ample justification for the fact that the most intelligent men and women of Western civilization stand outside the Christian Churches to-day, or are in them from motives that have nothing to do with devout religious feeling.

If, however, we turn to the history of the Church and search its ancient records, or if unable ourselves to grapple with the problem, we place confidence in the evidence of students who have done so, we find that an entirely new light is thrown on Christianity and its real position. In the writings of the Christian Fathers, there is a constant reference made to grades of members and teaching within the early Church. First, the general members, and from those the pure in life went into a second grade. The latter formed the “few chosen” from the many called. But beyond these were the “chosen of the chosen,” who, “with perfect knowledge lived in perfection of righteousness according to the law.” Clement of Alexandria, one of the greatest of the Fathers of the Church, wrote: “It is not to be wished that all things should be exposed indiscriminately to all and sundry, or the benefits of wisdom communicated to those who have not, even in a dream, been purified in soul ... nor are the mysteries of the word to be expounded to the profane.” Origen tells us that Jesus conversed with His disciples in private, and especially in their most secret retreats, concerning the Gospel of God; but the words He uttered have not been preserved. And when Celsus assailed Christianity as a secret system, Origen replied such a notion was absurd, “but that there should be certain doctrines not made known to the multitude and which are revealed after the exoteric doctrines have been taught, is not a peculiarity of Christianity alone, but also of philosophic systems, in which certain truths are exoteric and others esoteric.” Elsewhere he explains that Scripture is threefold in meaning, that it is the “flesh” for simple men, the “soul” for the more instructed, the “spirit” for the “perfect,” and in corroboration he quotes from Scripture the words of St. Paul, “We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom,” and “we speak wisdom amongst them that are perfect.”

We have here, then, more than a trace of some deeper teaching than appears on the surface of Christianity, some mine of hidden truth too sacred and profound for open display to the undiscerning multitude. Is it not evident that Christianity contains at its centre, known only to the few, the same transcendental and spiritual conceptions, the same supra-physical and mystical philosophy as the ancient religions contain? But if this be so, how came the most precious truths of religion to be apparently lost?

They were lost through the uncomprehending ignorance of the early followers of the Master, Christ, and the sectarian bigotry of ecclesiastics who cut themselves apart from the holders of the inner teaching and, becoming a majority, overcame the learned few, stamping as heretics the last remnants known as Christian Gnostics, Manicheans, Pelasgians, and Arians, all of whom, counted schismatics, were eventually crushed out through cruel persecution by the victorious orthodox Latin and Greek Churches. Nevertheless, some fragments of the hidden wisdom of the early teaching have survived in the uncomprehended symbols of the creeds and ceremonies of the Churches. (I refer my reader to Mr. C. W. Leadbeater’s work, _The Christian Creed_.)

That re-incarnation and Karma formed part of the original teaching is, I think, abundantly evident. In Gnosticism and Manicheism they were apparent. The Christian Fathers speak plainly of these doctrines, and Origen refers to Pythagoras, Plato and Empedocles as holding them. Moreover, Jesus Christ is made to utter a clear statement concerning John the Baptist, that implies the doctrine of re-incarnation, and his answer to the question about a blind man, “who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” shows the acceptance in the early Church of both doctrines. The whole incident reveals that the subject of re-incarnation was familiar to the followers of Christ, and Josephus expressly states that the Pharisees held the doctrine of re-birth. There is then little doubt that in the _early_ Church the belief was widely spread, but later at a General Council—a Council held after darkness had begun its reign—it was formally condemned and stamped as a heresy.

Bearing in mind the view that all the great religions come from the same spiritual source, it is significant to find the following in the writings of a rigid Roman Catholic historian, viz. A. F. Ozanam: “Having burst over the borders of the country to which it had once been confined, Buddhism at the year 61 B.C. made a new appearance on the scene, and invaded all Northern Asia.... This great movement could not but influence the West. It effected its entrance (into Christendom) through the Gnostic sects. The Gnosis was the designation of a higher science or initiation reserved for a handful of chosen spirits.” Again, speaking of the Manicheans, he says: “It is difficult to decide whether Manes drew his system originally from these Buddhist sources or found the teaching which he handed down to his disciples held by former Gnostic sects, themselves impregnated with the Oriental doctrine.” (Ozanam’s _History of Civilization in the Fifth Century_, vol. i. pp. 247 and 254.) It is easy to see that this Oriental doctrine was none other than the hidden wisdom of Jesus and Paul as well as of Buddha.

The special doctrine of re-incarnation is said to be absent in the fragments of the Avesta and in the Zend commentaries, and absent also in the latter Pahlavi doctrines. It is not held by the modern Parsis. “On the other hand,” says G. R. S. Mead, B.A., M.R.A.S., “Greek writers emphatically assert that the doctrine of re-incarnation was one of the main tenets of the Magian tradition.” The same author elsewhere remarks: “Since Bardaisan, like all the great Gnostics, believed in re-incarnation, such a conception as the resurrection of the physical body was nothing but a gross superstition of the ignorant.” (The _Theosophical Review_ for March, 1898, p. 17.)

To judge Christianity fairly, it was necessary to know something of its origin, its antecedents and the early phases of its life. We had to follow the history of its early sects and observe the changes effected in the Church by forces playing upon it from without. The Church gradually rose into a position of social influence and authority, from which it again declined, and it was during the latter condition that in its struggles to maintain power and supremacy amid adverse forces it dropped out the mystic beliefs difficult of apprehension by Western minds; it ceased to order and classify its adherents, and it ultimately adapted its doctrines to the materialistic spirit of the dawning era of modern science.[16] Nevertheless, the Church retained its pure _ethical_ teaching. It has held up to view the noble unselfish life of its founder Jesus of Nazareth. No one could deny that during the period even of its degradation, this religion has proved to millions of human beings a source of vital comfort and joy, and to some extent of spiritual light.

Footnote 16:

Tertullian complains: “They have all access alike; they hear alike, they pray alike, even heathens if any such happen to come among them.”

The tendency of Protestantism was to assert the claims of all men—the weak and childish as well as the thoughtful and intellectually strong—to a clear understanding of the Church’s whole teaching. In pursuance of a policy to meet this demand, the Church gave forth a simplified presentation of God and Nature that contradicts the plainest facts of science, and creates within minds of deeper, more expanded faculty, a conscientious revolt from the Christian faith to an attitude of honest scepticism. Outside the Church, however, other forces of evolution have prevailed to carry man forward, and to-day there exists an earnest and devout spirit of inquiry, and a strong dissatisfaction with the purely materialistic theory of Nature.

Conspicuous among the forces of change are, first, the study of physical phenomena on scientific methods, a study which, by convincing the Western mind of a profound mystery behind all phenomena, gives fresh impulse to speculative thought, and rouses effort to reach and apprehend the law of evolution. Second, the study of psychic phenomena revealing modes of consciousness hitherto ignored, and impelling science to penetrate the hidden recesses of our psychic activities and investigate some of the heights and depths of man’s inner constitution. Third, the historical studies that throw new light on the marvellous civilizations of the past and those religions that are more ancient than Christianity.

Whatever the ultimate outcome of these studies may prove, it is clear that the perspective of early faiths—their range and reach—was vaster than that of current Christianity, and this perception is creeping into our popular literature and laying hold of public thought. For instance, a recent writer remarks: “The modern scientific revelation of stellar evolution and dissolution seems a prodigious confirmation of Buddhist theories of cosmical law.” And again, “With the acceptance of the doctrine of evolution old forms of thought crumbled, new ideas arose to take the place of worn-out dogmas, and we have a general intellectual movement in directions strangely parallel with Oriental philosophy.” (Lafcadio Hearn’s _Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life_.)

This movement necessarily will advance only by carrying with it, i.e. convincing step by step, the reason of man, and seeing that Oriental philosophy has the doctrines of re-incarnation and Karma at its foundation, these must be tested and the fact ascertained whether or not they are consistent with the laws of phenomenal existence already discovered and believed in by the Occidental mind. “To-day,” says Lafcadio Hearn, “for the student of scientific psychology, the idea of pre-existence passes out of the realm of theory into the realm of fact,” and he quotes in corroboration of this statement Professor Huxley’s opinion of the theory—“None but very hasty thinkers will reject it on the ground of inherent absurdity. Like the doctrine of evolution itself, that of transmigration has its roots in the world of reality, and it may claim such support as the great argument from analogy is capable of supplying.” (_Evolution and Ethics_, p. 61, Ed. 1894.)

At this epoch of the world’s history, the humanity that exists is of an infinitely varied character. At one end of the scale, we have in savages the simplest forms of racial types, at the other the most complex forms, and between these every conceivable variant. The distinctions go deeper as we ascend the scale, and there are no two beings alike in their powers of abstract thinking, the nature of their intellectual, emotional and moral qualities, and the groupings of these qualities—in a word, their individualities. Now one thing demanded by the developed intellects of this age is a generalization that will cover and explain these perplexing differences. The law of heredity does this to a very limited extent only. So far as the physical structure is concerned it explains much; but when we come to the mental and moral developments, its insufficiency is apparent. Genius and idiocy may be found springing up from the same parent stock and under identical conditions of training in childhood. Variety of character will appear in children of the same family from almost the moment of birth. One infant comes into the world handicapped by a sullen temper and vicious disposition, another with the most lovable traits. It is inconceivable that these incongruous effects flow from congruous causes on the physical plane. And were we able to logically accept these physical causes as adequate, no civilized being could morally respect the ordering of a universe wherein innocent souls newly created enter life handicapped by vicious propensities. Either the Power behind all phenomena is a malevolent Power, or the universe is a chaos—the inconsequent outcome of random chance.

These painful alternatives cease their troubling, however, and all perplexities gradually disappear as the mind of man grows into a clear apprehension of evolution in its full significance. The basic law of evolution is that all existence proceeds in cycles, each having its objective and subjective arc. In other words, there is a constant flow of motion and consciousness from without within and from within without. On the lowlier levels of life, this law is observed and science based upon it. In the vegetable kingdom, the leaves, stalk and flower of a specific plant perish as completely as though they had never existed; but the subjective entity remains, and in due course it reappears, clothed in a different vestment of cells, the same in all the details of its intricate form.

In the insect kingdom, all the wonderful changes that transform a crawling slimy caterpillar into a glorious vision of beauty and grace takes place in silence and darkness—from within without. Here the law of evolution takes a wider range than in the vegetable kingdom. Form, function, habit, all are changed, yet we know by actual observation that the soaring butterfly and crawling caterpillar are intrinsically one and the same. Moreover, the whole process of change is accomplished in the pupa stage independently of that food supply which—to the scientific conception—seems indispensable in the generation and continuation of vital force. (I must here refer my reader to the full discussion of this subject in chapters v. and vi. of Dr. Jerome A. Anderson’s _Re-incarnation—A Study of the Human Soul_.)

Now in our habit of regarding humanity in its higher aspect as the acme or crown of terrestrial life, we are apt to forget the potent connexions that link it with life in general. But re-incarnation, if we would judge it philosophically, must not be wrenched from its place in the order of nature and studied as an isolated fragment.

“All evolution consists,” says Mrs. Besant, “of an evolving life passing from form to form as it evolves, and storing up the experience gained through the forms; the re-incarnation of the human soul is not the introduction of a new principle into evolution, but the adaptation of the universal principle to meet conditions rendered necessary by the individualization of the continually evolving life.” (_The Ancient Wisdom_, p. 234.) The doctrine of human evolution summed up in the term re-incarnation cannot be proved in the same sense as a new discovery in physics can be proved—that goes without saying. But we may claim that it can be so nearly proved by reasoning that no intelligent being who correctly apprehends the idea and applies it with patience to the experience of existence, whether in or out of the body, can fail to believe it as fully, for example, as the modern scientific world believes in the electro-magnetic theory of light. That theory is no longer argued about. It is the only theory that will explain all the facts. And of re-incarnation in a higher domain we may equally affirm it is the only theory that explains the facts and is consonant with all the known laws of nature. It is luminous with a truly scientific aspect. It satisfactorily accounts for the inherent differences in character that heredity leaves unexplained, and it renews our faith in love and wisdom as underlying the phenomena of earthly existence, notwithstanding present appearances.

But add to this the fact that every great religion of the world, except modern Christianity, holds it more or less completely, whilst Christianity also originally held it; and if a spiritual and ethical theory of the universe be tenable, then cultured minds rejecting re-incarnation must either have failed to study the subject in its antecedents and bearings, or they must be by constitution profoundly unphilosophical. (I refer my reader here to chap. iii. of Mr. A. P. Sinnett’s _Growth of the Soul_.)

After all, it is a comparatively few men and women who seek intellectual clearness of vision, and are restless of soul till they grasp a theory of the universe and an interpretation of life that alike may satisfy head and heart—the mass of mankind is unthinking. And as we contemplate the stupendous task of evolution in developing each individual soul out of the embryonic condition of the savage to a conscious control and exercise of all the divine potencies of a perfected spiritual man, we feel no surprise that the major part of humanity stands yet in its childhood. Unequal development is the natural corollary of general evolution. The heart of modern man, however, is for the most part in advance of his head, and it is here, viz. on the emotional side of human nature, that religion—no matter what the specific form may have been—has ministered to man’s needs and proved an all-important factor of evolution.

Revelation, as Lessing (who believed in re-incarnation) declares, has been the education of the human race. “It did not,” he says, “give anything that human reason left to itself would not arrive at, but it gave the most important of these things earlier”—that is, before the reasoning faculties were fully developed in man. (Lessing’s Treatise: _The Education of the Human Race_, translated by the Rev. F. W. Robertson.)

The founders of every religion—the great and wise ones of the earth—have guided the race in its slow and gradual ascent from infancy to manhood, and even through the degeneration to which every religion has been subjected from human ignorance and selfishness.

SECTION 2

We have now to turn from racial religions to personal religion, and as the springs of individual conduct lie earlier in the heart than in the head, spiritual developments begin there. It is in accordance with natural order that the right conduct and simple devotion of millions of human beings, intellectually blind, should yet aid the steady advance of evolution towards its highest goal.

The pilgrim soul pressing forward through a long series of births and deaths has a chequered career of conquest and defeat, until, experience guiding effort and overcoming waywardness, the animal stage of existence has been distanced and left behind. But each of these pilgrim souls pursues a path specifically its own, that is, differing from that of every other pilgrim soul. The paths pursued are divided by Eastern thought into three distinct classes. First, that of action; second, that of devotion; third, that of wisdom. In the first class are to be found men and women of infinitely varied powers taking part in all the activities of the world, and striving with keenness to attain certain desired results. Commencing, it may be, with low, selfish, narrow motives of action, these gradually alter and improve, till motive and action alike have become pure, unselfish and directed to the widest beneficence. Such types of humanity tread the first path, that of action, and in it are harvesting precious experience. They are developing interiorly the powers that make for righteousness.

To the second class belong all the world’s sincere religionists, those beings whose regard—whether of fear or love—goes out to an ideal person. The person, observe, may be of low or of high grade in accordance with the subjective development of the individual worshipper. As the object of devotion becomes purified, love casts out fear, and advance on this path proceeds. Men and women adoring their conception of Krishna, or Buddha, of Ahura Mazdao, or of Jesus Christ, are treading the path of devotion, and may rise to the highest emotions of altruism, the most selfless service of the Supreme, thus harmonizing ever more and more the human will and the Divine will.

Pilgrims of the third and smallest class are men and women whose constant desire and endeavour is to search out the truth of things. In the earlier grades of this path will be found scientific investigators of physical phenomena; more advanced on the path are materialist philosophers and all individuals directing their efforts to an examination of man in the regions of emotion and mind. Above these again are the men and women whose search is into the innermost nature of things, and who, in the intensity of that search, lose more and more their feeling of self, and merge themselves in Divine knowledge.

To summarise the three paths: The first is a progress through human activities from motives of self to motives of highest altruism. The second is a progress through religious emotions, from fear of an invisible demon, to the most selfless love of an ideal person and unswerving devotion to true ideals. The third is a progress from the simplest efforts to discover truth to the acquisition of Divine wisdom by means of the immensely increased faculties of the perfected man.

These three paths, like different ways up a mountain, meet at the top, where pilgrims attain to the qualities of all, and not only of the one path mainly traversed by each. All attain in the end to the fullest development of human power and faculty, and to complete liberation from the chain of births and deaths. That personal goodness and religious zeal are the measure of spiritual development is only the Church’s view, and it ignores a large part of human efforts and activities. Without personal goodness certainly no spiritual life is possible, but beyond the acme of personal goodness to lofty heights of knowledge, of wisdom, of transcendent love and benevolence, rises the pilgrim human soul under Divine tuition.

We have now to inquire wherein the pilgrims resemble one another? The feature common to all is the inner attitude of self-surrender. It may spring from impulse or a half-unconscious sense of duty. Or, it may result from the reasoning faculty, from reason controlling and directing conduct with a full consciousness of responsibility. Again, it may be allied with all the sacred aspirations and inspirations that follow upon a long course of development, but whatever the cause and degree, this attitude of mind makes it possible for the spiritual forces working in and through humanity as a whole to manifest there, expanding the heart and mind, and creating a further soul-evolution.

There is a law in nature which has been well called the pulse of our planetary system, a law of giving out. It involves no absolute and ultimate sacrifice; and it is the only law by which progress and exaltation in nature can be actually achieved. Now this law is a central part of the teaching of every great religion. The Logos, we are told, in bringing into existence an infinitude of centres of consciousness, made the voluntary sacrifice of limiting His own boundless life. This thought is expressed in the Christian Scriptures thus: “The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” This first great outbreathing of the life of the Logos is the earliest presentation of the law of sacrifice—that law which prescribes that at every stage of evolution life and energy shall be given out for the benefit of some consciousness on a lower grade than the giver. This great principle of evolution is manifest in the unselfish benevolence of all good men and women; even when they are working as yet in blind obedience to the scarcely articulate impulses of their awakening spiritual natures. (I refer my reader to p. 452 of Mr. A. P. Sinnett’s _The Growth of the Soul_.)

To our minds pain seems necessarily connected with sacrifice, but pain proceeds wholly from discord within the sacrificer, i.e. from antagonism between the higher part of his nature which is willing to give, and the lower part whose satisfaction lies in grasping and keeping. The process required in each case is a turning from the selfish, individualistic attitude to that of a social, altruistic giving—a giving joyfully for love’s sake. The transition naturally involves some pain, for the conscious will has to gradually master the animal part of the nature, and subordinate it to the higher self.

Man is, in the order of evolution, primarily subject to animal desires. His consciousness moves on the sensuous plane of existence, and he clings to the physical elements in nature. By-and-bye he learns to relinquish an immediate material good for a future good equally material—it may be a greater worldly prosperity for himself or his family. This sacrifice is not essentially noble, but it prepares the way for a harder lesson, and one that calls out a deeper faculty within him. Here again the process is one of exchange, but not of one form of sensuous good for another. It is the exchange of material possessions or sense pleasures for something of an entirely different order in nature—a reward not visible, nay, possibly far off beyond the tomb.

When humanity was in its childhood, religion inculcated and pressed upon it this form of sacrifice; and as we ponder the martyr lives that stud the pages of history we recognize the fact that thousands of human beings practised the precept, and learned to endure, as seeing the invisible, to stand morally upright without earthly prop, to value spiritual companionship and joy in an inner life of purity and peace when outward conditions were adverse and dark.

A later, far higher phase of the law of sacrifice, is that wherein no reward is thought of, or desired. Reaching manhood, humanity grapples with the duties and accepts all the grave responsibilities of an advanced evolutional stage. Duty becomes the motor of action, self-mastery and love of one’s fellows the very keynotes of man’s music. The animal part of his nature becomes subordinate to the higher self. The third great lesson of sacrifice works within, the lesson, viz. to do right simply because it is right, to give because giving is owed by each to all, and not because giving will in any shape be pleasing to or rewarded by God.

During the various stages of progress, the pain aspect of sacrifice is clearly seen. Nevertheless, a soul’s passionate grip upon things physical and sensuous relaxes, and a day arrives when to give spontaneously, freely, lavishly, is purest joy. Then is man’s life merging into Divine life, and sacrifice is no more pain. Vital dissonances cease to rend man’s heart, for his inner consciousness has soared above the selfish separateness of phenomenal existence into realms of nature where unity and love are the all-prevailing principles of life. We know these principles in action through the beautiful, selfless earthly pilgrimage of Him we call the Saviour of Mankind, whose whole career was an At-one-ment with the Divine.

The “Vicarious Atonement” doctrine of Western faiths to-day is both an ecclesiastical device for increasing priestly power and a misapprehension of the law we have been considering—the law of sacrifice, by which the worlds are made, by which the worlds are living now, and by which alone the union of man with God is brought about. That noble doctrine of antiquity was changed by Mediæval Christianity into a picture of the Godhead—Father and Son, in opposition to one another—a picture that “shocks all reverence, and outrages reason by bringing all manner of legal quibbles into the relationship between the Spirit of God and man.” (_Four Ancient Religions_, Annie Besant, p. 166.) Again, a race whose reasoning faculties are developed must needs repudiate the Church’s dogma of “Imputed Righteousness”—a righteousness not inwrought or attained to, but applied externally—a covering to what is corrupt and base, yet deemed sufficient to secure a perfunctory pardon of sin, a non-merited Divine favour.

The real At-one-ment with the Divine, whereof Jesus the Christ is our Archetype, admits of no substitutions, no subterfuges, makes no fictitious claims. It signifies an actual transformation or process of change, the inner consciousness passing from the lower to function on higher levels of being.

It is easy, however, to apprehend how the necessity of thinking of all supra-physical things, i.e. the finer phenomena of existence, by means of analogies and figures of speech that are purely physical, led to much of error in the earlier stages of human development; and there is a sense in which the “robe of righteousness” is a not inapt analogy or figure. When speaking of the pilgrimage of the soul, the picture presented is that of a concrete toiler, ascending slowly, breathing heavily, sighing and evidencing effort to all our outer senses, yet we know that the soul’s best efforts are mostly hidden from sight and hearing and touch. But no confusion arises. The mental conception to which the figure points is that of efforts as great though directed to evils that are chiefly mental, emotional, moral, not physical. Similarly, the “robe of righteousness” figure must not be overstrained. Man’s soul is clothed upon by, or clothes itself in (it matters not which, we say) robes or garments of flesh, and of finer physical elements than flesh, elements intangible to his five senses. The flesh garment or body is constantly changing, and so are the bodies of desire and of thought. The changes occur through the action and interplay of diverse subtle forces. Fresh elemental matter is borne in from without to replace the atoms of structures tending to decompose, while a process of selection, determination and assimilation proceeds through the action of forces within.

But the same laws of growth apply to realms of nature less open to observation, and a careful selection and choice of material is as potent and necessary in building the bodies of desire and thought as in building the body of solid flesh. And what are the available materials here? In the hidden life of our own thought and feeling we are conscious of an unceasing flow of transient states, or we may express it, currents of emotional and mental vibrations reaching us from we know not whence, waves breaking upon us from without. If we deliberately choose the elevated moods, the purest, swiftest vibrations, and seek habitually to retain these and make them our own, sweetness and light must inevitably characterize the habitation we are slowly building for our inner consciousness. In other words, the vehicles of our feeling and thought will become as “robes of righteousness.”

Desires, passions, emotions form what has been called the astral body;[17] aspiration and thought or the action of reason, imagination and the artistic faculties, create a still subtler, or mind-body, while the blend of the two is what we are accustomed to observe as ruling character. And when the physical is cast off at death, man’s consciousness passes into his subtle bodies and into regions of bliss whither we may not follow, but of which St. Paul gives us a glimpse when he says “we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, Eternal in the Heavens.”

Footnote 17:

A real body of subtle matter interpenetrating the flesh body and visible to some clairvoyants.

Now, to minds permeated by cruder ideas of man’s body and soul the above will seem mystical and unreal. Nevertheless, there are many minds, scientifically trained to a close observation of the manifold phenomena of life with all the finer forces and elements in nature, that are ready to accept a truer conception of the complex constitution of man. To all such, the proof of the actual existence of these transcendental vehicles of consciousness lies in hypnotic and other psychic phenomena, and in the evidence of experience. For, given a certain amount of intimate intercourse, and the man within the man shows himself to the eye of his friend through expression, attitude, gesture. But what the mental eye sees behind the veil of flesh must exist in some form. Hence the eye discerns not the consciousness, but its phenomenal garment or vehicle, and the texture organized is coarse, brutal, degraded or animal, sensuous, selfish, or of a finer and purer nature, divinely human, indicating the grade and quality of the animating principle or soul within.

SUMMARY

Passing back once more from personal religion, or the rise and purification of the inner nature of the individual man, to the great subject of religion in general, we must again have recourse to physical analogies or figures of speech. A mighty stream or current of spiritual vibrations has flowed from the beginning behind the circumstances of history; and each branch of the human family has caught up, retained, and manifested a portion thereof. But the manifestations have at all times been governed by the receptive capacity of the particular race and its inherent distinctions. Every formulated religion is of dual complexion: first, the initial motive, which is spiritual; second, the expression, which is due to ideas, and these are furnished by the mind. The creeds, dogmas, rituals, are outgrowths of the age, civilization and locality.

Christianity has ostensibly been the religion of Western Europe during a long period of development in all the material appliances of a civilized life when mental and physical forces, engaged in accumulating wealth, have dominated this development and tended to depress and destroy the higher impulses and aspirations of man. Christianity, already weakened by errors that had crept in, was unable to withstand the corrupting influences of a money-making age. It adapted itself to the sternly practical business-like son of the West, and dropped out much of the imaginative and reflective side of its teaching. But the “old order changeth,” and, as has been shown in previous chapters, one great department of civilized life, viz. the prevailing system of industry, is hastening to its dissolution. That system has been tried in the furnace of a longsuffering, patient experience, and found to create national wealth in abundance, while utterly failing to subserve general well-being, and bring about a just arrangement of social conditions.

Through all the channels of the nation’s best thinking there has sounded low, but clear as a clarion note, a call to social reform, and now, in the depths of industrial confusion, amid dumb despair and loud-voiced public discontent, the still small voice of conscience speaks audibly, and a stirring of dry bones over the whole field of action, betokens the awakening to a new era of existence. Spiritual vibrations have loosened the foundations of our materialized, selfish life, and pierced through the crust of callous indifference to the heart of the nation. A new tenderness lurks there. It prompts to the entire overthrow of our hideous industrial warfare and the substitution of a well-ordered system based, reared and maintained through the action of wide-reaching love. But love was the distinguishing feature of early Christianity, and the genius of its teaching. Through the figure of family life, with its tender ties, unselfish actions and unity of interests and feeling, did Christianity strive to allure to the broader, higher, deeper love that embraces all mankind and manifests throughout all human relations.

Pioneers of the social revolution may abjure the churches, creeds and rituals, and boast themselves agnostic, but none the less are they aiding the reembodiment, on this material plane, of the true religious spirit, or the birth of a religion fitted for the nation’s age and civilization.[18]

Footnote 18:

Mr. Lester F. Ward (in his new work published in 1903) formulates a distinction between human and animal societies by saying that the environment transforms the animal while man transforms the environment. This transformation constitutes what he calls “achievement,” and is the characteristic feature in human progress. The products of “achievement” are not material things. They are methods, ways, principles, devices, arts, systems, institutions.

The Church, it is true, gives no formal countenance to the industrial revolution, but that does not disprove my contention that it is the _distinctive religious movement of this age_, and that it is in line and harmony with the religious movements of former ages. These may seem to have been less secular than this, but they always embraced a reformation of social and individual life. The actual distinction arises from the Church’s own deficiencies, and from the greater elaboration of modern society, causing an almost undue prominence to be given to the outward changes necessary at the beginning of a modern reformation. The Church must inevitably conform itself to the industrial revolution. It must reform itself from within; and this is clearly perceived by many of its members.

Whilst I write a conference of the Young Men’s Christian Association is taking place. A question discussed was: “What is the cause of young men’s drifting away from the Church?” One speaker remarked that to his mind the cause was the want of fixity of opinion on the great fundamentals of their common Christianity. Young men found that ministers were not agreed upon what they preached, and until the Church made up its mind as to what was really the truth, there could be no remedy for this drifting. Another speaker said he knew young men who hated the Church, and said it was not consistent. They pointed to the slum dwellings in their great cities, and asked what the Church was doing to remedy the state of affairs there disclosed. In fact, they said: “Salvation is hardly worth the taking, it’s so mixed up with money-making. If the Church was to reach young men, it must take up a more consistent attitude with regard to all social questions.” (From the _Scotsman_.)

But religion is not of the Church alone, religion appertains to the _totality_ of life; and the right ordering of all the conditions of the nation’s material existence is the first step in the attainment of a national religious life. For, observe, the broad current of spiritual vibrations encompassing the race can have no free course and ingress to thrill the nerves and quicken the pulse of the nation so long as there endures a fierce, brutal struggle for the means of potential life—a struggle that hardens the heart and coarsens the fibre of rich and poor alike. The movement we call Economic Socialism is a veritable recurrence of the cry of the Prophet Esaias: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.”[19]

Footnote 19:

What profits it to the human Prometheus that he has stolen the fire of heaven to be his servant, and that the spirits of the earth and of the air obey him, if the vulture of pauperism is eternally to tear his very vitals and keep him on the brink of destruction?—HUXLEY.

The Church militant must adjust itself without and within to the social industrial revolution, to a wider development than hitherto in man’s reasoning powers, and to a profound impulse in man—an impulse born of experience—that is carrying him towards the vast region of philosophic mysticism which lies behind the common Christian creeds and doctrines. The poet caught the shadow of coming events when he wrote—

So all intolerable wrong shall fade, No brother shall a brother’s rights invade, But all shall champion all: Then shall men bear with an unconquered will And iron heart the inevitable ill; O’er pain, wrong, passion, death, victorious still And calm, though suns should fall.

Oh priests who mourn that reverence is dead, Man quits a fading faith, and asks instead A worship great and true. I know that there was once a church where men Caught glimpses of the gods believed in then: I dream that there shall be such church again— O dream, come true, come true. —W. M. W. CALL.

SYNOPSIS

The world has a purpose.... That purpose aims not at man as an end, but works through him to greater issues.—H. G. WELLS.

Man has already furthered evolution very considerably, half unconsciously and for his own personal advantage, but he has not yet risen to the conviction that it is his religious duty to do so deliberately and systematically.—FRANCIS GALTON.

More than a century has elapsed since Pope’s line was written: “The proper study of mankind is man,” yet it is only of recent years that physiology has entered upon the proper method of that study. Discoveries made in the last century have thrown fresh light on individual human nature. The marvellous potency of thought has been demonstrated, and the momentous fact of diverse states of basic consciousness made apparent—the fact, namely, that the mind of individual man is not functionally limited to his physical consciousness.

Again, that every human being should have freedom to be happy was realized by many at an earlier epoch; but what the essential nature might be of a happiness that could satisfy the conflicting desires of humanity differentiated in all its units—seemed an insoluble problem. Psychology, however, indicates the solution of that problem, for it shows that individual happiness is intimately bound up with, and dependent upon, _general happiness_. The “subliminal or unconscious mind,” otherwise termed the super-physical consciousness that is common to all mankind knows no settled peace and comfort while the areas of physically conscious life are scenes of perpetual conflict. Man to be truly happy must be so collectively and not merely individually or sectionally.

Now the scheme of social reform I advocate points the way to a unification of thought that working itself out through the diverse channels of visible life will eject the causes of evil, bring order where chaos has reigned, and slowly but surely establish the foundations of universal peace. As Richard Harte has well said: “Human beings at present are like a number of little magnets thrown promiscuously into a heap, with their poles pointing in every direction, and wasting their strength in opposing each other. These little magnets have to point in the same direction that they may become bound together into one great magnet, all powerful to attract good, all powerful to repel evil.”

The new system of action bases its thought on the complexity of human nature. It recognizes that the component cells of the physical body are lives which must suffer if the laws of their well-being are not subserved, and the suffering translates itself into pain or into sub-conscious distressful melancholy. It perceives that the social instincts of man hitherto thrust back and crushed are: “the various needs of universal attraction all tending towards unity, striving to meet and mingle in final harmony” (Zola). And further it apprehends that a lofty aspiration—a divine impulse—hovers on the threshold of consciousness waiting to enter as brutal passions and vicious propensities are conquered and dispossessed.

The evils that infest and corrupt our social life and that man must deliberately uproot and eliminate before general happiness becomes possible are—poverty, i.e. a life-long struggle to obtain food, shelter, clothing; the birth of individuals weak and unfit; disease, premature death; enforced celibacy; late marriage; drunkenness; disorganization of family life; prostitution; war; and industrial competition; social injustice and inequality; individual tyranny; crime; barbarous treatment of criminals; disrespect of natural function and consequent injury to health; conventional folly; social repression of innocent enjoyment; religious bigotry; the feebleness of religious guidance and confusion of religious thought.

Partial views of society as well as of individual human nature have hitherto prevailed and given birth to specifics of all kinds for the cure of the diseases of society, and these in the growing tenderness of humanity, have been eagerly adopted and applied, to prove disappointing in the main. The new system deals with society as a whole and throughout all its parts. It requires a full comprehension of each and all the groups or classes of social phenomena and their inter-relations.

Viewing society as a whole, we realize that there are no remedial specifics in the case, that general happiness will be obtained only by a process of evolution, and that the process is one of continual readjustment of multitudinous relations, or unceasing adaptation of individual human life to a social environment, and of social environment to individual human life. The evolution of social environment proceeds towards the highest ethical state which implies a system of society based upon justice and equality. But the realization of this state requires a perfected humanity, hence the path of progress is also in the gradual improvement of individuals—the creation of a superior race whose spontaneous impulses will construct and support a perfected social system.

Unconscious evolution has carried us forward from savagery through many transitions to a state of civilization which, though grossly imperfect, contains within it a new element of advance. Here and there throughout society the power of love and reason combined has become strong, and aided by a scientific knowledge of man and the conditions of his life, it is capable of design, and of intensifying the action of evolutionary forces and immensely increasing their momentum. Reason, however, must invent an effective policy of meliorism which so unites the practical methods of reform as that each will add strength to all, and the result prove a powerful factor of change in the society on which it is brought to bear.

The strife of competition throughout the whole sphere of industrial life gives free play to selfishness and the passion of militancy, and permeates society with the warlike spirit.

Advance in morals is the sure step to a better and happier future; but man’s moral nature is largely conditioned by heredity, training and environment, while these, at present, are all unfavourable to a high moral state. A progressive system of general reform therefore has to embrace and combine rational breeding, rational training and a rational order of life in which sympathy and co-operation will take the place of individual competition, and general happiness—not wealth—be the clear aim of man.

The conscious element in evolution is as yet too weak to alter society much or rapidly, but in all civilized countries—Germany, France, Belgium, etc., as well as Great Britain,—changes towards the collective control of land and capital and the reorganization of industry on collectivist principles, have begun, and it is of supreme importance that other changes, equally necessary, should be initiated to advance _pari-passu_ with those.

A central source of corruption is to be found in the disintegration of the ancient family group—the unfitness of an archaic domestic system to achieve the ends of rational training and the acquiring of habits of rational breeding. At the same time there is a growth in social feeling and a spread of public opinion in favour of industrial socialism with some legislative and local action to carry it out, that together, present conditions propitious to change in domestic living and sexual custom. Consequently a reconstruction of domestic life on modern principles among educated people fitted to adapt life to moral ends is pre-eminently a feature of the new order.

At present excessive labour on the part of the proletariat, and enforced idleness on the part of many men and women within the classes, are fatal to progress. Vital forces are exhausted on the one hand, repressed on the other, while the sub-conscious feeling that craves unity and solidarity is outraged and restrained. To restore _work_ to its legitimate place in human life is a primary aim of the new domestic system. That system must be built up on the principle that work for the benefit of all is the duty and privilege of each, and without a due share of social labour no normal man or woman in health can attain to inward peace.

As regards religion, man’s abstract thought must purge itself from materialized ideals, his concrete thought from selfish aims, for he is essentially a religious being and psychical studies affirm that within him there lie latent faculties that relate him to worlds unseen—worlds as yet unrealizable in human consciousness.

In the visible world religious forces must be directed to the great work of social reform. To unselfishly promote the welfare of generations unborn is a profoundly religious course of action. The purest, noblest feelings of man may be enlisted in the cause of progress through union—for social reconstruction, scientific education, gentle training of the young, associated domestic life, facilitation of happy marriage—and for the comfort of all mankind, whether good or bad, clever or dull, fortunate or unfortunate.

Co-operation in work to the banishment of idleness and its accompanying misery _ennui_ is the primary object of the new domestic system, but other ends to attain are—economy, by means of joint labour and joint expense to the relief of monetary anxieties and domestic worries; stability of social position, i.e. no member needing to fear that his home will break up independently of his wishes; social intercourse and enjoyment relieved of conventional etiquette or tyranny; freedom for friendship between the sexes and such conditions of family union as will promote mental capacity and altruistic sentiment in each individual; early marriage without disregard of social responsibility and based upon mutual knowledge of character, habits and tastes; a fitting refuge for old age, rendering impossible the premature destruction of valuable social forces which age alone can supply, and securing the material, intellectual and emotional surroundings necessary for comfort up to the last moment of life.

In the lower social strata where any reconstruction of family life is not yet possible, what is immediately required is a gradual rise of wages with steady improvement in all the conditions of industrial labour. Society also must relinquish such patronage of the poor as fosters their too rapid increase, undermines their self-dependence and tends generally to deterioration of race. Parental responsibility must be strongly inculcated and strictly upheld. Public teaching should be given in all natural laws affecting society, especially the laws of health, increase, and heredity; and, under conditions respectful to human dignity, Malthusian doctrine should be taught, and a knowledge of neo-Malthusian method very carefully imparted.

In the higher social strata within the newly constructed modern homes sexual conduct and parentage with its far-reaching results for good or evil must be controlled or guided into the path of racial regeneration. The scientific study of man’s nature gives sexual passion an honourable position relatively to human life. It rests on the conscience of each adult generation as an imperative social duty to influence the young generation in such wise as that this great passion shall subserve physical and social health and cease to create degradation.

A due activity in growing organs strengthens organic function; therefore, with early marriages and freedom to young love, checked only by scientific knowledge of the laws of health, propagation at the age of maturity is bound to put forth vitality of good quality. In conscious evolution sexual functions are no longer regarded as essentially allied with propagation. They are regarded, however, as properly subject in youth to parental and social control; and that control acts as a perpetual restraint upon licentious, dissolute tendencies and a shield to the young love that seeks personal happiness consistent with domestic purity.

No less potent is the action of control in another direction. Physiology of sex and the laws of inheritance are carefully studied by guardians of domestic peace who, rejecting the ordinary and vulgar conception accept the teaching of science, and science points to philoprogenitiveness, or love of offspring, as the proper motor force in reproduction. Were this force the antecedent cause of parentage throughout the nation, disease and premature death would be undermined and gradually subside. “Indiscriminate survival” gives way before that “rational selection and birth of the fit” which is a fundamental condition of social well-being—the master-spring to a rapid evolution of general happiness.

The transition, however, from our present state of confused sentiment, illogical thought, and disastrous action in the field of _eugenics_ or stirpiculture, to clearness of purpose and consistency of life, must necessarily be a work of extreme delicacy and patient endeavour. Its achievement requires the nuclei of collectivist homes. Its nurture must take place in the bosom of a superior domestic life. The process, in short, implies an alteration in humanity itself, to be brought about by such preparatory alteration in outward conditions as will set up and bring into play the constant interaction of new social forces.

Individualism in domestic life vitiates the movement towards socialism outside domestic life, for it gives us misshapen units unfit for a better social system—a system that seeks to banish tyranny, despotism, pride, self-will and every anti-social emotion in order to establish the perfect justice and equality that are essential to the highest ethical state. It is a necessity of socialism to lay hold of the family and fashion it anew so that it may produce a superior material of human life, i.e. individual men and women whose enjoyments lie chiefly in sympathy and whose spontaneous impulses are towards an essentially social life.

And further, not only is our present domestic system wholly incapable of dealing with sex relations so as to adapt them to stirpiculture, not only is it so feeble as to be absolutely impotent in the regulation of the conduct of masculine youth outside its boundaries, but it is destitute also of elements required in the organizing of a progressive educational system.

Home education has almost disappeared in the disintegration of family life, while in society the strong forces of aggregation which under diverse conditions of industry and convention group mankind in sections have moulded schools to massive proportions. The youth of the nation is in a great measure cut off from the home influences which are calculated to teach mankind “humanities, not in the academic but in the real sense.” It is congregated in universities and large schools for superior culture and day schools for culture of a less exalted order. In the former, young men and maidens are separated. Domesticity—the quality in human nature on which depends the consolidation of society, is disregarded, whilst to the development of mutual interests, affinity of tastes, harmony of habits and unanimity of social aims between the sexes no attention is paid during the plastic period of life when individual character is in process of determination. In day schools boys and girls are often associated, but under such conditions of mechanical routine, cramming, conflicting and alternating authorities, irregular and erratic forces of moral control, as to make these schools provocative of evil, fostering every anti-social instinct of man.

Co-ordination in the life of the young is the demand of the new system of general reform. The nursery, school and playground must be harmonized, and the entire juvenile orbit, within and without the home, governed by intellectual and moral forces of fixed congruity. The object and aim of true education is the fullest development of an individual’s best powers of thought, feeling, action, by means of their happy exercise at every stage of growth from childhood to maturity. Now book-learning or culture in schools accomplishes very little, but a direct study of nature is an incomparable aid to this end. Each object and process in nature from that of the infinitely great to the infinitely small—if fittingly dealt with by teachers—is instinct with charm for the young of an intelligent race. It excites imagination, awakens thought, kindles enthusiasm, stimulates every latent mental faculty, while the endless variation of beauty in nature—under training to close observation—makes aesthetic appeal to the sense perceptions, and in calling forth wonder, admiration, delight adds richness immeasurably to the quality of human life. Nevertheless the springs and checks of a true education lie deep in a world of feeling. For their exercise home-life is indispensable. Family love is the primary motor force in the education of the feelings, and without the presence of a wide domestic circle habitually fostering the sympathetic and repressing the selfish emotions no high water-mark of civilization will be reached.

There is in man a group of emotions of comparatively recent origin requiring scientific treatment of the utmost delicacy and precision. On the further development of that group depends in a very special manner the rapid evolution of an ethical social system. The group is threefold—egoistic, altruistic, moral. It comprises a sense of personal rights, a sympathetic jealousy for the rights of others, an intellectual and moral sentiment of justice, or equivalence of liberty and social comfort for all mankind. The first element is already very perceptible throughout society. The second is more rare; it must be strengthened or assiduously created in the nursery, schoolroom and domestic circle by a system of training whose characteristic is extreme gentleness. The tender shoots of sympathetic jealousy are incapable of growth in an environment of harsh sound or brutal force. Hence the authority that begets antagonism has no place in the perfected education of the future.

As the young emerge from childhood the responsibilities of life become aids in education, and immensely develop the above emotions. Discipline of conduct within their own order appertains to the young; whilst society, within and without the domestic circle, demands the thorough regulation of young life. Conduct clubs and combinations for a variety of social ends, both sexes taking part, arise among the young; and these promote in the highest degree the healthy growth of such virtuous emotion and habits in the individual as are indispensable to ethical socialism. The method adopted is a just and intelligent criticism to which the youthful mind has previously been trained.

Since pride of birth, pride of wealth and habits of domination and luxury are all unfavourable to the growth of a moral sentiment of social justice, it is not in the upper ranks of society we need look for the public spirit that will devise methods of gradually equalizing the labour of life and its rewards and undermining present class distinctions. As little likely is the sentiment of social justice to spring spontaneously in a fortunate capitalist class where pride of acquisition strongly opposes the principle that reward should not be proportioned to personal capacity—that mental labour has no title to inordinate distinction, but that other useful exertion ethically requires fullness of reward. Reconstruction is necessarily a growth from below. From the proletariat comes the impulse towards industrial reconstruction, and it is in the middle class—and the less wealthy section of that class—that the beings exist who by segregation may form collectivist homes capable of by-and-bye aggregating into the solid foundation of a pure and elevated republican society.

Education in these homes where mixture of ages, from the white-haired centenarian to the infant in arms, creates all manner of tender ties, where gentleness and love are the main stimuli in training, where authority is exercised consistently and reasonably, and replaced at maturity by reason and self-control—must eventuate in the production of a superior moral and intellectual type.

The order of social evolution, computed roughly, is as follows: In the first stage, social equality exists; it is an epoch of savagery. In the second stage, differentiation issuing in class distinctions takes place; the birth of social inequality and injustice arising naturally through exercise of superior brute force and cunning. Civilization has here its genesis; and coercion, tyranny, robbery, injustice, avarice, love of power, inequality, are stimuli of civilization and prime elements in the formation of strong nations. Individuals who are inferior, then whole classes socially weak, are compelled by forces, individual and social, to minister to the wants of the strong and superior. Civilization nurtured by inequality and injustice develops in the superior classes of society and slowly spreads downwards. In the third stage, reaction occurs, prompted by civilization itself! Justice and liberty develop in the lower or inferior social classes and spread very slowly upwards without destroying a civilization, become inherent in the superior type of man. The fourth stage is one of readjustment in which civilization becomes general and there is a gradual return to social equality. Ultimately society will have no class distinctions of the present order, no idlers or parasites, no poor and no coercive government. Voluntary co-operation or concerted action for social ends is a self-regulating, self-controlling force which, when fully developed in the new domestic and industrial systems is able to dominate society throughout its length and breadth.

The path of social reform I advocate has now, in its main features, been placed before my readers.

Outside the general policy that will cause the direct action of the system to become a great factor of social change, however, there are sundry courses of less direct action, it is bound to pursue. These bear relation to, first, pauperism and patronage of the poor; second, the proletariat; third, the criminal classes; fourth, the position of woman; fifth, the young; sixth, conventionalism; seventh, political action.

In the first relation the specific policy is to carefully discriminate between benevolence that is beneficial and benevolence that is mischievous in its results on social well-being. Whilst exercising the former, it gives no support to charities that hurt the independence of the poor, or relieve them of parental responsibility. In reproduction it discountenances and opposes the social force of _indiscriminate selection_ which results in survival of the unfit. It seeks to initiate and press forward the counteracting social force of _intelligent selection_, which brings about the birth of the fit.

In the second relation, the specific policy strenuously supports combinations of workers for the raising of wages, mutual help and democratic political aims preparatory to general socialism.

In the third relation, the specific policy strives to enlighten public opinion upon the nature of crime and the philosophic principles of its treatment. It elaborates a new method in which vindictiveness, the essence of punishment, has no existence; but gentleness towards all evil-doers issues in, first, the effectual protection of society; second, the reform of corrigible criminals; third, the gradual extinction of crime. It urges upon government a cautious deliberate adoption of this method.

In the fourth relation, the action of the policy is to promote the enfranchisement of women, and at every point aid the movement of advance to the position of social equality of sex.

In the fifth and sixth relations, it inculcates by admonition and example, and especially among the young, a return to simplicity of manners, habits and dress. It repudiates conventional etiquette, and opposes the tyranny of fashion. It promotes the association of the sexes in youth under condition of adult control, whether the union be that of marriage, of friendship or of simple intercourse and companionship. It discountenances and takes no part in the excitements of an artificial, frivolous society, but it creates and fosters the vigorating excitements of useful labour, alternating with unconstrained and “tranquil delights.”

In the seventh relation, the specific policy agitates for alteration of the marriage laws, the laws of inheritance of property and the land laws. Equality of sex is required as the basis of the marriage law, accompanied by the condition of easy divorce in order to facilitate the dissolution of false ties in favour of the true. The laws affecting children require adaptation to the ethics of social justice and sex equality. Laxity must give way to strictness in respect of parentage; and child-birth be recognized as an event bearing directly upon the interests of the general public. Hence modification here entails the recognition of illegitimate children and the counteracting of the vicious tendency to shirk parental duty and social responsibility. The land and property laws must be adjusted to a levelling process—the action of paring down large estates and diminishing the massive proportions of private property so slowly as to create no individual suffering or social confusion, such legislative measures being directed, however, to land nationalization and nationalization of capital as their final aim.

In conclusion, let me add, I claim to have shown that “science in the economic field gives certain facts from which a line of social evolution may be foreshadowed,” and that religion and science give, in wider fields, facts and principles that point to lines of illimitable progression for man. “Whether these lines will be followed depends not upon immutable laws beyond our control, but upon the _human will_.” The general policy I advocate is distinctly reliable so long as it rests on scientific methods and knowledge, but no question is finally exhausted. In the sphere of rational reform free-thought must ever be considered and respected.

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still and onward, Who would keep abreast of truth.

INDEX

A

Abyssinians, The, 134

Acquisitiveness, 213

Adler, Hermann, 218

Adolescence, 257–266, 335, 341

Adulteration, 45

Aesthetic sentiment, 197–200, 203, 211, 215

Aged, The, 269–272, 331, 338

Allen, Dr. Nathan, 120

Amiel, 10

Anderson, Dr. J. A., 306

Anxiety, 117

Arabs, The, 134

Arians, 299

Arifura, The, 205

Aristotle, 235

Arkwright, 26

Arnold, Matthew, 150, 249

Asceticism, 15, 98, 105, 110, 113, 146, 156

Associated Homes, 276–283

Association, Young Men’s Christian, 322

Astral body, 317

Atonement doctrine, 315

B

Balfour, A. J., 231

Bardaisan, 301

Bebel, August, 112, 119, 149

Besant, Annie, 306, 315

Bickerton, A. W., 268, 272

Birth-rate, 80–93, 109, 265

Bishop, Mrs., 264

Blackley, Canon, 91

Bon, Dr. Le, 197, 211

Bosanquet, Mrs. B., 65

Bread-baking, 72

Buddhism, 293–295, 300, 303

Bushmen, The, 132

C

Capital, 25, 41, 55, 329

Capitalists, 26, 41, 208, 338

Carlyle, Thomas, 5, 163

Carpenter, Edward, 16, 19, 142–144, 148

Carr, G. Shoobridge, 85, 92

Celibacy, 90, 95, 111, 126–129, 138, 172

Celsus, 298

Chatterji, J. C., 1, 295

Chesterfield, Lord, 199

Children, 3, 233, 238–253, 281

Children, Training of, 176–179, 188–194, 197, 237–253, 264, 281, 282, 331, 335–338

Church, The, 321–323

Civilization, 38–40, 44, 204, 206, 216, 233, 248, 250, 297, 319, 328, 339

Clairvoyance, 9

Clarke, William, 23, 46

Clement of Alexandria, 298

Cochrane, Baillie, 180

Combe, George, 170

Communism, 59

Consciousness, 290–295, 303, 313–318, 325

Co-operation, 51, 331, 339

Craig, E. T., 178

Criticism, Personal, 278

Crime, 121, 163–182, 340

Criminals, 67, 82, 121, 122, 164–182, 340

Crockett, S. R., 174

Culture, 7, 13, 95

D

Dairy produce, 70

Dalton, 205

Darwin, Charles, 80, 83, 91, 93, 96, 125

Death-rate, 89–93, 110

Degeneration of race, 83, 91, 115, 123, 159, 332

Dhimal, The, 205

Disease, 91, 99, 115–120, 124, 150, 170, 215

Divorce, 135, 136, 341

Domestic reform, 244, 265, 268–283, 330, 334, 338

Du Cane, Sir E., 164

Duncan, Mathews, 126

E

Easton, Abel, 279

Economics, 21–75

Education, 115, 166, 174, 177–179, 182, 234–253, 331, 335–338

Education, State, 66–69, 244, 269

Ellis, Havelock, 103–105, 142

Eliot, George, 5, 6, 12, 115, 222

Emerson, R. W., 139

Emigration, 93

Empedocles, 299

Environment, 204, 239, 250, 253, 321, 328

Escott, T. H. S., 273

Estlake, Allan, 279, 280

Eugenics, 114–130, 196, 283, 330, 333, 334, 340

F

Fabian Essays, 25

Factories, 25, 27–30, 55, 209

Fashion, 200, 245, 331, 341

Finck, Henry, 264, 265

Fitz-Stephen, Judge, 164, 167

Food, 23, 34, 39, 79, 84, 92

Freedom, 16

Free-will, 292

G

Galton, Francis, 94, 126–129, 172, 325

Gaskell, G. A., 109, 157

Geddes, Patrick, 94, 157

George, Henry, 32, 43

_Ginx’s Baby_, 155

Gnostics, The, 299–301

Goodness, 4, 18, 105, 206

Government, 211

Greg, W. Rathbone, 99, 100

H

Happiness, 1–19, 98, 146, 188, 218, 232, 266, 270, 272, 325–329

Hardy, Thomas, 258, 263

Harmony, New, 30

Harrison, Clifford, 253

Harrison, Frederic, 45

Harte, Richard, 131, 326

Health, 116, 129, 196, 333

Hearn, Lafcadio, 303, 304

Henry, Arthur, 239

Heredity, 108, 114, 120–124,158, 169, 237, 304, 305, 307, 329

Hill, Frederick, 168, 169, 171

Hinduism, 289, 291, 292

Hinton, James, 103

Hobson, John A., 21, 33, 46, 51, 74, 232

Hooker, Sir W., 205

Horticulture, 195

Hos, The, 205

Hottentots, The, 134

Howells, W. D., 213

Huxley, T. H., 9, 12, 79, 92, 96, 214, 241, 249, 258, 304, 323

I

Ibsen, H., 104

Individual Rights, 185–200, 233, 250, 339

Industry, Organized, 48, 51–75, 210

Industrial Revolution, 23–50

Industries, Routine, 72

Interest, 54, 57

J

Jakuns, The, 205

Jamieson, Mrs., 223

Jealousy, 137, 138, 203, 218–228, 239

Jews, The, 134

Joli, Henri, 122

Josephus, 300

Justice, 188–196, 230, 233, 250, 282, 291, 296, 305, 328, 338

K

Kandyans, The, 132

Karma, 291, 294, 299, 303

L

Labourers, 25, 31, 34, 36, 40–43, 72

“Laissez-faire,” 81, 82, 98, 166

Lange, 125

Landlords, 24, 33–44, 54, 209

Land Problem, 33–44, 329, 342

Laveleye, Emil de, 11

Law of Causation, 291

Leadbeater, C. W., 299

Lecky, W. E. H., 111, 138, 202

Legge, 293

Legislation, 61–65, 339

Lepchas, The, 205

Lessing, 308

Letourneau, Charles, 33

Levy, J. H., 200

Lewes, G. H., 102

Liszt, Von, 122

Lodge, Sir Oliver, 9, 287

Lofft, Capel, 248

Logos, The, 290, 312

Luxury, 7

M

Machinery, 26, 55, 240, 272, 275

Maeterlinck, M., 103

Mahan, Captain, 230

Mallet, Lucas, 282

Malthus, 79, 83, 93, 96, 127

Manicheans, 299, 300

Marriage, 126–128, 131–148, 219, 283, 331, 341

Marriage-rate, 86–90, 126

Martineau, Harriet, 110, 268, 270

Massart, Jean, 274

Massingham, H. W., 262, 265

Mathews, Justice, 164, 165

Maudsley, Dr. Henry, 117, 123, 237

Mead, G. R. S., 301

Meredith, George, 196

Militancy, 206–210, 222, 229, 231, 329

Mill, John Stuart, 30, 41

Milton, John, 140

Mischler, Dr., 122

Morrison, W. D., 121, 123

Municipalism, 66, 72, 273

Mysticism, 298–303, 318, 323

N

Nairs, The, 132, 137

Natural Selection, 81, 83, 130, 159

Nirvana, 295

Nordau, Max, 185

Noyes, J. H., 279

O

Obermair, 180

Ogle, Dr. Wm., 86, 88

Oneida Community, 108, 278–280

Origen, 298, 299

Owen, Robert, 28–32

Owen, R. Dale, 26–29

Ozanam, A. F., 300

P

Paget, Sir James, 119

Parasitism, 274

Parentage, 149–160, 237, 269, 333, 341

Parsis, The, 292, 301

Paths of the Soul, 309–311

Patriotism, 228–233

Patronage, 7, 242, 332, 340

Pauperism, 42, 90, 271

Peace, 210, 230, 326

Pelasgians, 299

Pharisees, 300

Philanthropy, 58, 82, 160

Plato, 299

Pleasure, 2, 14

Podhalians, The, 197, 211

Political Economy, 53, 54, 82

Population, 56, 83–96, 109, 128, 265, 269

Positivism, 9–12

Poverty, 24–32, 41, 81, 90, 95, 108, 116, 150, 158, 169, 213, 240

Priesthood, 38

Profits, 24, 37, 54–56

Property, Private, 24, 39, 55, 210–217, 242, 342

Prostitution, 111, 112, 135, 136, 142, 145

Protestantism, 302

Psychic phenomena, 303, 318, 326

Punishment, 163–168, 176–178, 246

Puritanism, 110

Pythagoras, 299

R

Rapacity, 207–210

Reade, Chas., 260

Reclus, Elisee, 133

Redskins, The, 134

Re-incarnation, 291, 294, 296, 299, 301–308

Religion, 10, 285–323, 330

Rent, 54–57

Responsibility, 291

Richardson, Dr. W. B., 114, 118

Rights, Individual, 185–194

Ritchie, David G., 183

Robertson, John M., 17, 124, 126, 231

Robertson, F. W., 309

Robe of Righteousness, 316

Rogers, Thorold, 271

Rowntree, 31

Ruskin, John, 8, 12, 175

S

Sacrifice, 312–315

Santals, The, 205

Schooling, J. Holt, 109

Science, 9

“Scientific Meliorism”—Preface, 101, 114

Servant problem, 274–277

Sexual instinct, 95, 97–113, 144, 332, 333

Shakespeare, 221

Shareholders, 24, 55

Sinnett, A. P., 308, 313

Slater, J. E., 289

Slavery, 36, 219

Sloan, J. McGavin, 217

Smith, Goldwin, 32

Socialism, 30, 52–60, 82, 199, 259, 265, 320, 323, 329, 330, 340

Social justice, 44, 52, 59, 185–200, 334

Somerville, Mary, 270

Spencer, Herbert, 14, 84, 93, 95, 96, 99, 125, 132, 136, 140–1, 152, 158, 175, 181, 185, 206, 211, 290

Stephenson, R. L., 193

Stirpiculture, 114–130, 196, 283, 330–334, 340

Swan, Howard, 243

Sympathetic Selection, 83, 125, 159, 283, 333

Sympathy, 82, 102, 125, 188, 191, 194, 199, 205, 224, 264, 266, 313, 322, 329, 334

Syphilis, 119

T

Taoism, 292

Taylor, Isaac, 281, 282

Telepathy, 9

Tennyson, Alfred, 161, 213, 257, 267

Tertullian, 302

Thompson, D’Arcy W., 246

Thompson, A. M., 218

Thomson, J. B., 169

Thoreau, 104

Tibetans, The, 132

Tolstoi, Leo, 138

Trinity, The, 290, 297

Trollope, Anthony, 257, 262

Trusts, 47, 70

Tyranny, 207, 210, 334

U

Unitary Homes, 276–283

Unknowable, The, 290

V

Vedas, The, 289

Vedas, The, 132

Venereal disease, 119

W

Wade, 26

Wages, 24, 26, 42, 45, 56, 68, 70

Ward, Lester F., 49, 108, 321

Watt, James, 26

Wealth, 7, 41, 44, 57, 81, 123, 208, 212–216, 242, 273, 274, 319, 337

Webb, Sidney, 41, 45, 56

Wells, D. A., 122

Wells, H. G., 325

Whitman, Walt, 105

Wines, Howard, 122

Woman, 219–227, 248, 259, 265, 269, 340

Wordsworth, William, 198

Worship, 288, 293

Z

Zola, Emile, 97, 114, 327

Zoroastrianism, 292, 301

Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.