Part 2

And the life thus belittled and carnalized will be a more cowardly life than men have been wont to lead while they had a Providence over them and a heaven waiting for them. Already, I fear, we may see some signs of this new poltroonery of reflective prudence, which holds that death is the greatest of all evils, and disease the next greatest; and teaches men to prefer a “whole skin” to honor and patriotism, and health to duty. Writing of this Hygeiolatry elsewhere, I have remarked that it has almost come to be accepted as a canon of morals that any practice which, in the opinion of experts, conduces to bodily health, or tends to the cure of disease, becomes _ipso facto_ lawful; and that there are signs apparent that this principle is bearing fruit, and that men and women are beginning to be systematically selfish and self-indulgent where their health is concerned, in modes not hitherto witnessed. In public life it is notorious that whenever a Bill comes before Parliament concerning itself with sanitary matters there is exhibited by many of the speakers, and by the journalists who discuss it, a readiness to trample on personal and parental rights in a way forming a new feature in English legislation, and well deserving of the rebuke it has received from Mr. Herbert Spencer. As to military courage, I fear it will also wane amongst us, as it seemed to have waned amongst the French atheistic soldiery at Metz and Sedan. Great as are the evils of war, those of a peace only maintained by the nations because it had become no longer possible to raise troops who would stand fire, would be immeasurably worse.

From the general results on the community, I now pass to consider those on the life of the individual which may be expected to follow the collapse of Religion.

Mr. Mallock in his “New Republic,” made the original and droll remark that even Vice would lose much of its savor were there no longer any morality against which it might sin. As Morality will probably not expire—though its vigor must be considerably reduced—by the demise of its Siamese twin, Religion, it would seem that Vice need not fear, even in such a contingency, the entire loss of the pleasures of disobedience. Nevertheless (to speak seriously), it is pretty certain that the temperature of all moral sentiments will fall so considerably when the sun of religion ceases to warm them that not a few will perish of cold. The “Faithless World” will pass through a moral Glacial Period, wherein much of our present fauna and flora will disappear. What, for example, can become, in that frigid epoch of godlessness, of _Aspiration_, the sacred passion, the _ambition sainte_ to become perfect and holy, which has stirred at one time or other in the breast of every son of God; the longing to attain the crowning heights of truth, goodness, and purity? This is surely not a sentiment which can live without faith in a Divine Perfection, existing somewhere in the universe, and an Immortal Life wherein the infinite progress may be carried on. Even the man whose opinions on the general unimportance of religion I am venturing to question in these pages, admits frankly enough that it is not the heroic or saintly character which will be cultivated after the extinction of faith. Among the changes which he anticipates, one will be that “the respectable man of the world, the _lukewarm, nominal Christian_, who believed as much of his creed as happened to suit him, and _led an easy life_, will turn out to have been right after all,” Precisely so. The _easy life_ will be the ideal life in the “Faithless World;” and the life of Aspiration, the life which is a prayer, will be lived no more. And the “lukewarm” men of the world, in their “easy lives,” will be all the easier and more lukewarm for leading them thenceforth unrebuked by any higher example.

Again, Repentance as well as aspiration will disappear under the snows of atheism. I have written before on this subject in this REVIEW,[3] and will now briefly say that Mr. Darwin’s almost ludicrously false definition of Repentance is an illustration of the inability of the modern scientific mind to comprehend spiritual phenomena; much less to be the subject of them. In his _Descent of Man_, this great thinker and most amiable man describes Repentance as a natural return, after the satisfaction of selfish passions, to “the instinct of sympathy and good will to his fellows which is still present and ever in some degree active” in a man’s mind.... “And then, a sense of dissatisfaction will inevitably be felt” (_Descent of Man_, p. 90). Thus even on the showing of the great philosopher of evolution himself, Repentance (or rather the “dissatisfaction” he confounds with that awful convulsion of the soul) is only to be looked for under the very exceptional circumstances of men in whom the “instinct of sympathy and good will to their fellows” is ever present, and moreover _reasserts itself after they have injured them_—in flat opposition to ordinary human experience as noted by Tacitus, _Humani generis proprium est odisse quem læseris_.

The results of the real spiritual phenomenon of Repentance (not Mr. Darwin’s child’s-play) are so profound and far-reaching that it cannot but happen that striking them out of human experience will leave life more shallow. No soul will survive with the deeper and riper character which comes out of that ordeal. As Hawthorne illustrated it in his exquisite parable of _Transformation_, men, till they become conscious of sin, are morally little more than animals. Out of hearts ploughed by contrition spring flowers fairer than ever grow on the hard ground of unbroken self-content. There bloom in them Sympathy and Charity for other erring mortals; and Patience under suffering which is acknowledged to be merited; and lastly, sweetest blossom of all! tender Gratitude for earthly and heavenly blessings felt to be free gifts of Divine love. Not a little, perhaps, of the prevalent disease of pessimism is owing to the fact that these flowers of charity, patience, and thankfulness are becoming more and more rare as cultivated men cease to feel what old theologians used to call “the exceeding sinfulness of sin;” or to pass through any vivid experiences of penitence and restoration. As a necessary consequence they never see the true proportions of good and evil, joy and grief, sin and retribution. They weigh jealously human Pain; they never place human Guilt in the opposite scale. There is little chance that any man will ever feel how sinful is sin, who has not seen it in the white light of the holiness of God.

The abrogation of Public Worship was mentioned above as one of the visible consequences of the general rejection of religion. To it must here be added a still direr and deeper loss, that of the use of Private Prayer—whether for spiritual or other good, either on behalf of ourselves or of others; all Confession, all Thanksgiving, in one word all effort at communion of the finite spirit with the Infinite. This is not the place in which this subject can be treated as it would require to be were the full consequences of such a cessation of the highest function of our nature to be defined. It may be enough now to say that the Positivists in their fantastic device of addresses to the _grand être_ of Humanity as a substitute for real prayer to the Living God, have themselves testified to the smaller—the subjective—part of the value of the practice. Alas for our poor human race if ever the day should arrive when to Him who now “heareth prayer,” flesh shall no longer come!

With Aspiration, Repentance, and Prayer renounced and forgotten, and the inner life made as “easy” as the outward, we may next inquire whether in the “Faithless World” the relations between man and man will either remain what they have been, improve or deteriorate? I have heard a secularist lecturer argue that the love of God has been a great hindrance to the love of man; and I believe it is the universal opinion of Agnostics and Comtists that the “enthusiasm of Humanity” will flourish and form the crowning glory of the future after religion is dead. It is obvious, indeed, that the social virtues are rapidly eclipsing in public opinion those which are personal and religious; and if Philanthropy is not to be enthroned in the “Faithless World,” there is no chance for Veracity, Piety, or Purity.

But, not to go over ground which I have traversed already in this REVIEW, it will be enough now to remark that Mr. Justice Stephen, with his usual perspicacity, has found out that there is here a “rift within the lute,” and frankly tells us that we must not expect to see Christian Charity after the departure of Christianity. He thinks that temperance, fortitude, benevolence, and justice will always be honored and rewarded, but—

“If a purely human morality takes the place of Christian morals, self-command and self-denial, force of character shown in postponing the present to the future (_qy._, selfish prudence?) will take the place of self-sacrifice as an object of admiration. Love, friendship, good-nature, kindness, carried to the height of sincere and devoted affection will always be the chief pleasures of life, whether Christianity is true or false; but Christian charity is not the same as any of these or of all of them put together, and I think, if Christian theology were exploded, Christian charity would not survive it.”

Even if the same sentiment of charity were kept alive in a “Faithless World,” I do not think its ministrations would be continued on the same lines as hitherto. The more kind-hearted an atheist may be (and many have the kindest of hearts) the less, I fancy, he could endure to go about as a comforter among the wretched and dying, bringing with him only such cold consolation as may be afforded by the doctrine of the “Survival of the Fittest.” Every one who has tried to lighten the sorrows of this sad world, or to reclaim the criminal and the vicious, knows how immense is the advantage of being able to speak of God’s love and pity, and of a life where the bereaved shall be reunited to their beloved ones. It would break, I should think, a compassionate atheist’s heart to go from one to another death-bed in cottage or workhouse or hospital, meet the yearning looks of the dying, and watch the anguish of wife or husband or mother, and be unable honestly to say: “This is not the end. There is Heaven in store.” But Mr. Justice Stephen speaks, I apprehend, of another reason than this why Christian charity must not be expected to survive Christianity. The truth is (though he does not say it) that the charity of Science is not merely _different_ from the charity of Religion; it is an _opposite_ thing altogether. Its softest word is _Væ Victis_. Christianity (and like it I should hope every possible form of future religion) says, “The strong ought to bear the burdens of the weak. Blessed are the merciful, the unselfish, the tender-hearted, the humble-minded.” Science says, “The supreme law of Nature is the Survival of the Fittest; and that law, applied to human morals, means the remorseless crushing down of the unfit. The strong and the gifted shall inherit the earth, and the weak and simple go to the wall. Blessed are the merciless, for they shall obtain useful knowledge. Blessed are the self-asserting, for theirs is the kingdom of this world, and there is no world after it.”

These Morals of Evolution are beginning gradually to make their way, and to be stated (of course in veiled and modest language) frequently by those priests of science, the physiologists. Should they ever obtain general acceptance, and Darwinian morality take the place of the Sermon on the Mount, the old _droit du plus fort_ of barbarous ages will be revived with more deliberate oppression, and the last state of our civilization will be worse than the first.

Behind all these changes of public and general concern, lies the deepest change of all for each man’s own heart. We are told that in a “Faithless World” we may interest ourselves in friendship, and politics, and commerce, and literature, science, and art, and that “a man who cannot occupy every waking moment of a long life with some or other of these things must be either very unfortunate in regard to his health, or circumstances, or else must be a poor creature.”

But it is not necessary to be either unfortunate oneself or a very “poor creature” to feel that the wrongs and agonies of this world of pain are absolutely intolerable unless we can be assured that they will be righted hereafter; that “there is a God who judgeth the earth,” and that all the oppressed and miserable of our race, aye, and even the tortured brutes, are beheld by Him. It is, I think, on the contrary, to be a “poor creature” to be able to satisfy the hunger of the soul after justice, the yearning of the heart for mercy, with such pursuits as money-getting, and scientific research, and the writing of clever books, and painting of pretty pictures. Not that which is “poorest” in us, but that which is richest and noblest, refuses to “occupy every moment of a long life” with our own ambitions and amusements, or to shut out deliberately from our minds the “Riddle of the painful Earth.” A curse would be on us in our “lordly pleasure-house” were we to do it.

Even if it be possible to enjoy our own good fortune regardless of the woes of others, is it not rather a pitiful wreck and remnant of merely selfish happiness which it is proposed to leave to us? “The world,” we are told, “is full of pleasant people and curious things,” and “most men find no difficulty in _turning their minds away_ from its transient character.” Even our enjoyment of “pleasant people and curious things” must be held, then, on the condition of reducing ourselves—philosophers that we are, or shall be—to the humble level of the hares and rabbits!—

“Regardless of their doom the little victims play.”

Surely the happiness of any creature, deserving to be called Rational, depends on the circumstance whether he can look on Good as “the final goal of ill,” or believe Ill to be the final goal of any good he has obtained or hopes for;—whether he walk on a firm, even if it be a thorny road, or tread on thin, albeit glittering ice, destined ere long to break beneath his feet? The faith that there is an ORDER tending everywhere to good, and that JUSTICE sooner or later will be done to all,—this, almost universal, faith to which the whole literature of the world bears testimony, seems to me no less indispensable for our selfish happiness than it is for any unselfish satisfaction in the aspect of human life at large. If it be finally baulked, and we are compelled to relinquish it for ever at the bidding of science, existence alike on our own account and that of others will become unendurable.

In all I have said hitherto, I have confined myself to discussing the probable results of the downfall of religion on men in general, and have not attempted to define what they would be to those who have been fervently religious; and who we must suppose (on the hypothesis of such a revolution) to be forcibly driven by scientific arguments out of their faith in God and the life to come. To such persons (and there are, alas! many already who think they have been so driven, and to whom the sad result is therefore the same) the loss must needs be like that of the darkening of the sun. Of all human sorrows the bitterest is to discover that we have misplaced our love; labored and suffered in vain; thrown away our heart’s devotion. All this, and much more, must it be to _lose God_. Among those who have endured it there are, of course, as we all know, many who have reconciled themselves to the loss, and some tell us they are the happier. Yet, I think to the very last hour of life there must remain in every heart which has once _loved_ God (not merely believed in or feared Him) an infinite regret if it can love Him no more; and the universe, were it crowded with a million friends, must seem empty when that Friend is gone.

As to human Love and Friendship, to which we are often bidden to turn as the best substitutes for religion, I feel persuaded that, above all other things they must deteriorate in a “Faithless World.” To apples of Sodom must all their sweetness turn, from the hour in which men recognize their transitory nature. The warmer and more tender and reverential the affection, the more intolerable must become the idea of eternal separation; and the more beautiful and admirable the character of our friend, the more maddening the belief that in a few years, or days, he will vanish into nothingness. Sooner than endure the agony of these thoughts, I feel sure that men will check themselves from entering into the purer and holier relations of the heart. Affection, predestined to be cast adrift, will throw out no more anchors, but will float on every wave of passion or caprice. The day in which it becomes impossible for men to vow that they will love _for ever_ will almost be the last in which they will love nobly and purely at all.

But if these things hold good as regard the prosperous and healthy, and those still in the noon of life, what is to be said of the prospects in the “Faithless World,” of the diseased, the poverty-stricken, the bereaved, the aged? There is no need to strain our eyes to look into the dark corners of the earth. We all know (though while we ourselves stand in the sunshine we do not often _feel_) what hundreds of thousands of our fellow-mortals are enduring at all times, in the way of bodily and mental anguish. When these overtake us, or when Old Age creeps on, and

“First our pleasures die, and then Our hopes, and then our fears,”

is it possible to suppose it will make “little difference” what we believe as to the existence of some loving Power in whose arms our feebleness may find support; or of another life wherein our winter may be turned once more to spring? If we live long enough, the day must come to each of us when we shall find our chief interest in our daily newspaper most often in the obituary columns, till, one after another nearly all the friends of our youth and prime have “gone over to the majority,” and we begin to live in a world peopled with spectres. Our talk with those who travel still beside us is continually referring to the dead, and our very jests end in a sigh for the sweet old laughter which we shall never hear again. If in these solemn years we yet have faith in God and Immortality, and as we recall one dear one after another,—father, mother, brother, friend,—we can say to ourselves, “They are all gone into the world of light; they are all safe and rejoicing in the smile of God;” then our grief is only mourning; it is not despair. Our sad hearts are cheered and softened, not turned to stone by the memories of the dead. Let us, however, on the other hand, be driven by our new guide, Science, to abandon this faith and the hope of eternal reunion, then, indeed, must our old age be utterly, utterly desolate. O! the mockery of saying that it would make “no great difference!”

We have been told that in the event of the fall of religion, “life would remain in most particulars and to most people much what it is at present.” It appears to me, on the contrary, that there is actually _nothing_ in life which would be left unchanged after such a catastrophe.

* * * * *

But I have only conjured up the nightmare of a “Faithless World.” GOD LIVES; and in His light we shall see light.—_Contemporary Review._

FOOD AND FEEDING.

When a man and a bear meet together casually in an American forest, it makes a great deal of difference, to the two parties concerned at least, whether the bear eats the man or the man eats the bear. We haven’t the slightest difficulty in deciding afterwards which of the two, in each particular case, has been the eater, and which the eaten. Here, we say, is the grizzly that ate the man; or, here is the man that smoked and dined off the hams of the grizzly. Basing our opinion upon such familiar and well-known instances, we are apt to take it for granted far too readily that between eating and being eaten, between the active and the passive voice of the verb _edo_, there exists necessarily a profound and impassable native antithesis. To swallow an oyster is, in our own personal histories, so very different a thing from being swallowed by a shark that we can hardly realise at first the underlying fundamental identity of eating with mere coalescence. And yet, at the very outset of the art of feeding, when the nascent animal first began to indulge in this very essential animal practice, one may fairly say that no practical difference as yet existed between the creature that ate and the creature that was eaten. After the man and the bear had finished their little meal, if one may be frankly metaphorical, it was impossible to decide whether the remaining being was the man or the bear, or which of the two had swallowed the other. The dinner having been purely mutual, the resulting animal represented both the litigants equally; just as, in cannibal New Zealand, the chief who ate up his brother chief was held naturally to inherit the goods and chattels of the vanquished and absorbed rival, whom he had thus literally and physically incorporated.

A jelly-speck, floating about at his ease in a drop of stagnant water under the field of a microscope, collides accidentally with another jelly-speck who happens to be travelling in the opposite direction across the same miniature ocean. What thereupon occurs? One jelly-speck rolls itself gradually into the other, so that, instead of two, there is now one: and the united body proceeds to float away quite unconcernedly, without waiting to trouble itself for a second with the profound metaphysical question, which half of it is the original personality, and which half the devoured and digested. In these minute and very simple animals there is absolutely no division of labor between part and part; every bit of the jelly-like mass is alike head and foot and mouth and stomach. The jelly-speck has no permanent limbs, but it keeps putting forth vague arms and legs every now and then from one side or the other; and with these temporary and ever-dissolving members it crawls along merrily through its tiny drop of stagnant water. If two of the legs or arms happen to knock up casually against one another, they coalesce at once, just like two drops of water on a window-pane, or two strings of treacle slowly spreading along the surface of a plate. When the jelly-speck meets any edible thing—a bit of dead plant, a wee creature like itself, a microscopic egg—it proceeds to fold its own substance slimily around it, making, as it were, a temporary mouth for the purpose of swallowing it, and a temporary stomach for the purpose of quietly digesting and assimilating it afterwards. Thus what at one moment is a foot may at the next moment become a mouth, and at the moment after that again a rudimentary stomach. The animal has no skin and no body, no outside and no inside, no distinction of parts or members, no individuality, no identity. Roll it up into one with another of its kind, and it couldn’t tell you itself a minute afterwards which of the two it had really been a minute before. The question of personal identity is here considerably mixed.