Chapter 5

On the 12th of February, 1804, in his eightieth year, he passed away, the victim of no special ailment or disease, but exhausted by the life of deep and strenuous thought upon the most profound and sacred problems which can agitate the mind of man. Simple and unostentatious to a degree during his life, the great master left instructions that he was to be buried quietly in the early morning. But for once his wish was disregarded, and amid the mourning of his Alma Mater, his townsfolk and the neighbourhood around, he was laid to rest in the choir of the University Church, which during life he would never enter. As with Kant so with Darwin, all men instinctively feel--even the most narrow of sectarians--that the lives of such men were--I will not say religious--but religion, and so they lay them at last within the shadow of their altars as the worthiest and best of the race. It shows us how deeply seated is the ethical emotion in man; it shows us that the religion of every man at his best moments is such as Immanuel Kant described and realised in his calm and beautiful life--a religion based on the sublime realities of the moral law.

And now, perhaps, we may say something of the thoughts of our philosopher, though at present it cannot be more than of a fragmentary character. If the ethical movement is to prove enduring, the name and teaching of Immanuel Kant must be frequently before us, and numberless opportunities afforded for an ampler account of his doctrine. For the moment my purpose was rather to put before my readers some idea of the man himself whose teaching is now exercising so deep an influence on the religious tendencies of the hour.

Every time you read of the vicar of a parish changing pulpits with his Nonconformist brother; every philanthropic meeting you hear of as addressed by clergymen of all denominations; every garden party given by a bishop or a dean to a Dissenters' Conference; every advance you gratefully note towards a wise and patient tolerance of theological dissensions, the sinking of sectional differences in the interests of a higher and purer life--ascribe it all to the beneficent influence of Immanuel Kant. Before his day all these fraternisings would have been impossible; the ancestors of these reconciled brethren were ready to scourge and burn each other, until Kant came and shamed them out of their narrowness and bigotry. Men talk no more of "mere morality," as though it paled into positive insignificance by the side of the dogmatical majesty of articles and creeds. Kant has taught them "a more excellent way," and in so far as they have learnt that one lesson, they and we are members of the one great Church--the Church of the ethically redeemed, the Church of men to come--the idealism, the enthusiasm, of the ages to be. Never let it be forgotten. We are not concerned to controvert or to destroy. The message of Kant to the Churches is that in all essentials we are at one with them, and the trend of thought is now setting visibly towards the substitution of an ethical for a doctrinal basis of religion. You are powerless to resist the times, we would urge. Whether the old names and formulae survive or not, "the irresistible maturing of the general mind" will make it impossible for men to acquiesce in any religious belief not grounded on the conviction that the sole test of a man's status is not what he believes, but what he does. This is Kant, this is Christ, and this is the message of the ethical Church.

But to return to the teaching of the philosopher of ethics, I must remind my readers again that I am unable to do more than sketch the outlines of the great ethical system which he gave to the world. More than that will not be needed for the moment. But before undertaking even a synoptical account of the transcendental ethic, I think it advisable to remark that Kant's title to philosophical immortality rests upon his constructive work as an ethicist, and not on his critical work as a speculative thinker. It is well known that the two philosophies of Kant are not _primâ facie_ harmonious, that he finds himself compelled to deny as a critic that of which he is most certain as a moralist. Thus the great facts of theism, immortality and the autonomy or freedom of the will, he professes himself unable to know save as revelations of the moral order. His mind, or pure reason, can know nothing of them; it is his will or practical reason which discerns them as plain deductions from the overwhelming fact of the moral law. This fact has led some critics to describe Kant as a sceptic. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We might almost quote of him what Browning wrote of Voltaire:--

Crowned by prose and verse, and wielding with wit's bauble learning's rod, He at least believes in soul and is very sure of God.

No one more so; yet as a thinker he professed himself unable to _demonstrate_ these high truths. In that sense Kant's famous _Critique of the Pure Reason_ may be described as the forerunner of the systematic agnosticism which is set forth in the _First Principles_ of Mr. Spencer. But there is this immense difference, that Kant was convinced of the reality of that which the mind of man could not demonstrate. The great facts were existent indeed, but he was powerless to reach them with the instruments at his command. In consequence, he laid it down as a principle that man must ever act as though it were actually demonstrated that we were free, our innermost being imperishable, and a supreme judge and dispenser of justice to administer the moral laws which are the guide of life. It would be out of place to state the arguments whereby Kant justified his belief in a controlling mind in the universe and in the spiritual nature of man, while avowing his inability to demonstrate those truths. It must suffice to state here that the truths which lie at the foundation of religion were a matter of profound conviction with the sage of Königsberg, all the deeper perhaps because he would not claim to subject them to an intellectual dissection or to be able to measure out heaven and earth in the exiguous terms of human thought.

But as soon as he leaves the plane of the pure or speculative reason and rises to the level of the practical reason or the will, then the full truth bursts upon his astonished gaze, clearer than the meridian light. He sees no more "half shade, half shine," but the truth pours itself "upon the new sense it now trusts with all its plenitude of power". It is the will, not the mind, which discloses the full revelation to Immanuel Kant, and makes him the deeply-reverent, religious man he ever was, the convinced theist, the believer in his power to control his acts by the independence of his will, and in the possibility, or rather the certainty, of his being one day morally perfect--not indeed within the limits of the life which now is, but in a future life of unlimited duration. That which to Wordsworth was an intimation was to Kant an intuition after the vision of the glory of the moral law had flooded his innermost soul.

And this we may, perhaps, briefly show before bringing the chapter to an end.

The fundamental principle of the Kantian system is the primacy of the will. The key to the mystery of man's being Kant finds, not in the marvellous faculty of intelligence, but in that power of self-movement, that capacity for self-originated energy which we call the will. Reason is "regulative," he said, but not "creative" and "constitutive," like the will. It is the latter faculty which makes us what we are, determines our life, fixes our character, and decides our destiny. As you act, so you are. This principle once conceded, the majestic system at once takes shape. What is it that governs the world of phenomena outside us? Physical laws, and supreme amongst these laws, that of equilibrium or gravitation. What is it that governs the reason? The laws of thought, those aboriginal rules, none of man's creation, but the essentially necessary guides which he was bound to discover and to follow if he is to think accurately, that is, if his thoughts are to be in conformity with fact. And what is it which governs the will of man? "Do you tell me," the master would urge, "that the inert masses of the spheres have each their own movements regulated for them, that nothing from a stone to a star is shaped or moved without the intervention of eternal laws; that the lispings of children no less than the meditations of a philosopher must conform to law, and that the will of man, whereby he makes himself to be what he is, shapes his character, influences his surroundings, and fixes his destiny--do you venture to say that that is lawless in a world where all is law? No," he proclaims in words which burn conviction into his soul: "it, too, has its laws, the highest, holiest thing in all this universe, the law of laws which confronts man wherever he goes, fills all his sublimest thoughts, subdues his soul to the most reverent worship, and is the holiest inspiration of his religion. It is the moral law, the supreme concern of the will of man, a revelation to man alone of his own unspeakable dignity, the norm or standard whereby he is to regulate his life--this it is which is the law of his will. As gravitation rules the stars, so the moral law, the sanction of the eternal distinction between right and wrong, controls the will, not compulsorily, not arbitrarily, as though it could by any possibility be otherwise, but freely. So sovereign is its power, so authentic are its claims, that if it had might as it has right, it would rule the world." It is, therefore, to use Kant's own language, a _categorical imperative_, that is, an unconditional command. "Thou canst, and therefore thou must." By the very manhood you possess you are bound wholly to surrender yourself in submission to what you know to be the right for the right's sake alone. You must make it your own law, and obey it as inflexibly as the stars keep their courses in the everlasting way.

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.

We may see now how Kant bases his whole system upon the indestructible fact of ethical law, the primeval intuition of the awakened spirit of man into the eternal distinction between good and evil. Standing on that foundation, he is able to descry the world of transcendental realities--"the land which is very far off"--which the pure and critical reason could never behold. But though the eyes of the mind were holden, the intuition of the will enables him to gaze direct into the unseen and discern freedom, soul, immortality and God as eternal facts. For whence this sublime law of life unless we conceive mind, not blind chance, as the arbiter of things? Whence this constraining power within me, exerting itself to the uttermost to win my allegiance to the right, unless I am free to obey or disobey? How is not the very conception of morality entirely obliterated in the false philosophy that would fain persuade man that because he is _in_ the world he must needs be _of_ it, and because the tides rise and fall with the phases of the moon, that his actions are fixed and controlled by influences utterly beyond his power? We have no room for the "man-machine" in the beautiful school of Immanuel Kant.

And, finally, the awful question of the future Kant solves in the light of the same sublime principle. "That law," he urges, "which is the essential law binding humanity must one day be fulfilled in every one of us. There is a moral as well as a physical evolution which you try in vain to confine to the limits of the life which now is. There is no argument known to science justifying such an attempt." Kant believes in the Eternities, because every man born of woman is destined to be at last in absolute conformity with that law of everlasting righteousness which is for us what the law of balance is to the infinite worlds. All life, that which now is and whatever is to be in the hereafter, is simply a never-ending progress towards an ideal whose dignity is infinite. Hence the command of Jesus, "Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is also perfect," would be endorsed by Kant as in strict harmony with the philosophy which does not teach that the physical act of dissolution called death fixes the moral state of man for ever, but that all life, whatsoever it may be and wheresoever it may be lived, is but an approach towards a goal of infinite value, the will of man absolutely conformed to justice, or the moral law.

As Kepler described the philosopher and the scientist as "thinking again the thoughts of God," even so does the Kantian ethic aspire to absolute conformity of will with that Will which is supreme and eternal, the moral order itself personified. This is immortality: this is everlasting life, even as the Christian disciple and philosopher describes it: "This world passeth away and the desire thereof, but he that doeth the Divine will endureth for ever". The phenomenal world is a pageant, a scene. Only "the good will" (Kant's constant expression) in absolute harmony with the Supreme Will is real and eternal.

[1] _Philosophical Classics_, p. 85.

V.

THE ETHICAL DOCTRINE OF COMPENSATION.

I suppose there is no teaching more frequently insisted upon in the Old and in the New Testament as the truth of a judgment, now, or in the future, upon the misdeeds or sins of men. Let criticism prune and cut as it will, while it exhibits the deplorably low standard of morality once prevalent among the Hebrew peoples, and therefore prevalent among their Gods, their Elohim, Adonai and Jahveh, one thing, at least, is undeniable--that that which is recognised as immoral is reprobated and forthwith visited with condign punishment. Doubtless, acts which to us are wholly reprehensible are discussed without attaching any stigma to them, and are even permitted, and sometimes suggested, by Jahveh himself, as in the story of Judith and Holofernes. Such ethical insensibility is wholly natural, viewing the state of development at which the Hebrew people had arrived, and should cause no wonderment in those who are familiar with the Deity of Christian Mediaevalism, and the methods and practices he was supposed to favour. But what should be carefully noted is, that nothing is adjudged immoral but is forthwith sternly reprobated and condemned to a fitting retribution. "The way of transgressors is hard" was a conviction with the race. In the same way, the ethical note rings out in the New Testament, that right and wrong are eternally dissevered, sheep ever separated from goats; that virtue must be rewarded and vice be condemned and punished.

Now, this teaching of the judgment to come, the bare announcement of which by Paul filled Felix, the Roman governor, with such dire consternation, is the subject of which we propose to set forth the philosophical and ethical explanation. In the Bible we have the mythical setting much as we have the mythical version of the agony of spirit undergone by Christ before he definitely committed himself to his prophetical work. It is for us to-day to disentangle the substantive truth from the maze of legend with which an imperfectly developed age has surrounded it and discover the true _raison d'être_ of that doctrine which "the Bible Christian" confesses under the aspect of the "Last Judgment".

Now, I take it that no educated man believes in the drama, or rather, the panorama, of the "last judgment"; the vision of Jesus sitting in the clouds, with every human being that ever was or shall be gathered before his throne to hear definite sentence pronounced upon them. The _mise-en-scène_ demands of course the presence of bodies, and I suppose it is needless to point out the dogma of the resurrection of the body, insisted upon by all the Christian Churches, is a blank impossibility. We may acquire other bodies in that unknown state, should we stand in need of such appurtenances--a fact which we may wholly disbelieve--but of one thing we may rest assured, that these identical bodies in which we die can by no possibility conceivable to us be brought back.

I once read a highly imaginative article in a religious magazine which attempted to solve the unsolvable by suggesting that after men's bodies had been buried in sufficient numbers, the whole soil of our planet would consist of nothing but the substance of the bodies of the dead, and that when that momentous epoch arrived, the Almighty would give the order for the sounding of the final trump, and the whole solid globe would be forthwith transmuted, or rather re-transmuted, into human bodies--in what condition it was not stated--for the countless myriads of "souls" ready to take possession of them. Probably, this pious romance was woven in the days before cremation, and as the next century will not be very old before we shall be compelled to resort to that method of disposal of the dead, at all events in our larger cities, it becomes increasingly difficult to comprehend how men of the future, to say nothing of the past, are going to be provided with their own bodies so as to put in an appearance at the great assize.

We may rightly wonder how men and women of the nineteenth century can still believe in the Churches and Chapels which teach such deplorable absurdities as the revelation of God, and how it happens that when religion appears upon the scene of their daily life, their common sense can so totally desert them. One need say nothing of the inadequacy of the judgment pronounced, the summary classification of the myriads of humanity as white sheep or black goats, or the character of the rewards and punishments allotted. The one redeeming point in the narrative is that whatever judgment is pronounced is decided, not on doctrinal grounds, about which no two of Christ's followers can be got to agree, but on ethical grounds, on character manifesting itself in public spirit and care for the unfortunate--the bruised reeds and smoking flax--of our communities. It would seem impossible to maintain after this final scene that creeds and faiths have any decisive influence on our status here or hereafter.

But though now seen to be no more than a variant upon the apocalyptic tradition and literature which represented that Jesus was to return speedily to earth and rule among his saints for a thousand years--a delusion which apparently possessed even the trained intellect of Paul, and subsequently led to the pseudo-Peter explaining that his fellow-Christians must not be in too great a hurry, because "a thousand years are as one day and one day as a thousand years in the sight of the Lord"--it has done an incalculable amount of harm in the past. It has shut men's eyes to the awful fact of retribution, administered here and now, and prevented their realising any punishment other than the savage, barbarous and wholly vindictive punishment of torturing eternally by fire. It shuts men's minds to the operation of moral laws, to the fact that judgment is executed instantaneously upon the commission of wrong. It has, and it does, to the serious detriment of moral development, lead man to put off until late in life, sometimes to the very hour of death itself, restorative work which should have been undertaken immediately on the recognition or conviction of misdeeds. The notion that he is not to be called up for judgment until he is rendered incapable by death of doing any further mischief, has been a moral obstacle in the path of man, and therefore of the race, wholly beyond the power of calculation. Foolish priests once thought that by the invention of the dogma of hell they could terrorise men into morality, and so they preached their Divinity, the magnified copy of a fiend, who would have cheerfully created humanity out of nothing and damned them everlastingly, had not he himself, in the shape of his son, who is one in being with him, decided to appear upon earth and atone to himself for the mischief, which presumably he could have very well foreseen, perpetrated by man.

And what has been the effect of such teaching on humanity? It is impossible to doubt that it has led to results deplorably, indescribably wicked. Whence, for instance, arose the horrors of the mediaeval inquisition, the insensate tortures inflicted upon men like Huss and Bruno solely for theological errors, if not from belief in this demon-deity whom the Church worshipped? If their practices were but a shadow of the horrors he was supposed to be everlastingly inflicting on mankind, who could raise a protest against them? Shall man be juster than his God? This perverse Christian morality is responsible for the worst cruelties which have tormented the human race since the days of ecclesiastical domination. If the Deity is inhuman, why should man be otherwise? Therefore, inhuman tortures will be inflicted on prisoners. The rack and thumb-screw will be used to extract secrets. Men will be immured alive within narrow walls and allowed to perish by inches. The Austrian prisons in the northern Italian provinces will be so constructed that the miserable victim can neither sit nor lie down nor see the light of day. Floggings and scourgings will be universal, _lettres de cachet_ an institution. Why not? Where the god has no sense of justice, why should man? Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of victims will perish at the stake and in the flames in atrocious agony because they are wizards or witches or have had dealings with imaginary devils. Why not? The god does worse than all this. He keeps his victims alive for the sole purpose of glutting his ire and satiating his insatiable vengeance. Nay, things are so ordered that the very happiness of the elect is enhanced, not only by the knowledge, but by the sight, of the appalling, unavailing anguish of the lost, and we have seen such a philosopher as Aquinas representing the Deity as conducting the "elect" in troops and droves to the heavenly shores and giving them "a glimpse of hell" by way of stimulating their enjoyment of the celestial beatitude. Why not? I ask again. My only wonderment is how we ever got rid of it. Picture the world under the universal dominion of this foul superstition. It reigns on the thrones of kings, in the cabinets of statesmen, it is preached in the pulpits, taught in the schools, it is the earliest lesson that trembles on the lips of innocent children. The most ingenious, subtly contrived, widespread and all-pervading influence is especially created to propagate it everywhere in the shape of the Christian Church--a Divine institution, possessed of the keys of life and death, of heaven and hell--the sole representative of the Deity on earth. How, we ask, in wondering gratitude, did the world ever escape the tyranny of such superstition? This fact alone--this deliverance--is enough to make one believe that there is a "Power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness," that the course of human events is never wholly retrograde.