Chapter 17

We have arrived at the point from which we can detect the source of ancient errors, and extract the gold from the dross. One thing, indeed, remains for the present impossible. The old creed, elaborated by many generations, and consecrated to our imaginations by a vast wealth of associations, is adapted in a thousand ways to the wants of its believers. The new creed--whatever may be its ultimate form--has not been thus formulated and hallowed to our minds. We, whose fetters are just broken, cannot tell what the world will look like to men brought up in the full blaze of day, and accustomed from infancy to the free use of their limbs. For centuries all ennobling passions have been industriously associated with the hope of personal immortality, and base passions with its rejection. We cannot fully realize the state of men brought up to look for a reward of heroic sacrifice in the consciousness of good work achieved in this world instead of in the hope of posthumous repayment. Nor again, have we, if we shall ever have, any system capable of replacing the old forms of worship by which the imagination was stimulated and disciplined. That such reflections should make many men pause before they reveal the open secret is intelligible enough. But what is the true moral to be derived from them? Surely that we should take courage and speak the truth. We should take courage, for even now the new faith offers to us a more cheering and elevating prospect than the old. When it shall have become familiar to men's minds, have worked itself into the substance of our convictions, and provided new channels for the utterance of our emotions, we may anticipate incomparably higher results. We are only laying the foundations of the temple, and know not what will be the glories of the completed edifice. Yet already the prospect is beginning to clear. The sophistries which entangle us are transparent. That faith is not the noblest which enables us to believe the greatest number of articles on the least evidence; nor is that doctrine really the most productive of happiness which encourages us to cherish the greatest number of groundless hopes. The system which is really most calculated to make men happy is that which forces them to live in a bracing atmosphere; which fits them to look facts in the face and to suppress vain repinings by strenuous action instead of luxurious dreaming.

And hence, too, the time is come for speaking plainly. If you would wait to speak the truth until you can replace the old decaying formula by a completely elaborated system, you must wait for ever; for the system can never be elaborated until its leading principles have been boldly enunciated. Reconstruct, it is said, before you destroy. But you must destroy in order to reconstruct. The old husk of dead faith is pushed off by the growth of living beliefs below. But how can they grow unless they find distinct utterance? and how can they be distinctly uttered without condemning the doctrines which they are to replace? The truth cannot be asserted without denouncing the falsehood. Pleasant as the process might be of announcing the truth and leaving the falsehood to decay of itself, it cannot be carried into practice. Men's minds must be called back from the present of phantoms and encouraged to follow the only path which tends to enduring results. We cannot afford to make the tacit concession that our opinions, though true, are depressing and debasing. No; they are encouraging and elevating. If the medicine is bitter to the taste, it is good for the digestion. Here and there, a bold avowal of the truth will disperse a pleasing dream, as here and there it will relieve us of an oppressing nightmare. But it is not by striking balances between these pains and pleasures that the total effect of the creed is to be measured; but by the permanent influence on the mind of seeing things in their true light and dispersing the old halo of erroneous imagination. To inculcate reticence at the present moment is simply to advise us to give one more chance to the development of some new form of superstition. If the faith of the future is to be a faith which can satisfy the most cultivated as well as the feeblest intellects, it must be founded on an unflinching respect for realities. If its partisans are to win a definitive victory, they must cease to show quarter to lies. The problem is stated plainly enough to leave no room for hesitation. We can distinguish the truth from falsehood, and see where confusion has been reproduced, and truth pressed into the service of falsehood. Nothing more is wanted but to go forward boldly, and reject once for all the weary compromises and elaborate adaptations which have become a mere vexation to all honest men. The goal is clearly in sight, though it may be distant; and we decline any longer to travel in disguise by circuitous paths, or to apologize for being in the right. Let us think freely and speak plainly, and we shall have the highest satisfaction that man can enjoy--the consciousness that we have done what little lies in ourselves to do for the maintenance of the truths on which the moral improvement and the happiness of our race depend.

FOOTNOTES

[1] It is objected that geology is a science: yet that geology cannot foretell the future changes of the earth's surface. Geology is not a century old, and its periods are measured by millions of years. Yet, if geology cannot foretell future facts, it enabled Sir Roderick Murchison to foretell the discovery of Australian gold.

[2] February, 1864.

[3] I am here applying to this particular purpose a line of thought which both myself and others have often applied to other purposes. See, above all, Sir Henry Maine's lecture on "Kinship as the Basis of Society" in the lectures on the "Early History of Institutions"; I would refer also to my own lecture on "The State" in "Comparative Politics."

[4] While the Swiss Confederation recognizes German, French, and Italian as all alike national languages, the independent Romance language, which is still used in some parts of the Canton of Graubünden, that which is known specially as _Romansch_, is not recognized. It is left in the same position in which Welsh and Gaelic are left in Great Britain, in which Basque, Breton, Provençal, Walloon, and Flemish are left within the borders of that French kingdom which has grown so as to take them all in.

[5] On Rouman history I have followed Roesler's _Romänische Studien_ and Jirecek's _Geschichte der Bulgaren_.

[6] It should be remembered that, as the year 1879 saw the beginning of the liberated Bulgarian state, the year 679 saw the beginning of the first Bulgarian kingdom south of the Danube.

[7] Published in the _North American Review_ for September, 1878. Republished by permission.

[8] This topic was much more largely handled by me in the Financial Statement which I delivered, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, on May 2, 1866. I recommend attention to the excellent article by Mr. Henderson, in the _Contemporary Review_ for October, 1878: and I agree with the author in being disposed to think that the protective laws of America effectually bar the full development of her competing power.--W. E. G., Nov. 6, 1878.

[9] See Hor., Od. I., 16.

[10] This subject has been more fully developed by me in an article on "England's Mission," contributed to _The Nineteenth Century_ for September of the present year.--W. E. G., December, 1878.

[11] This is a proposition of great importance in a disputed subject-matter; and consequently I have not announced it in a dogmatic manner, but as a portion of what we "seem to perceive" in the progress of the American Constitution. It expresses an opinion formed by me upon an examination of the original documents, and with some attention to the history, which I have always considered, and have often recommended to others, as one of the most fruitful studies of modern politics. This is not the proper occasion to develop its grounds: but I may say that I am not at all disposed to surrender it in deference to one or two rather contemptuous critics.--W. E. G., December, 1878.

[12] Gray's "Bard."

[13] _Quarterly Review_, April, 1878, Art. I.

[14] Hor. Od., I, xii, 18.

[15] Henriade, I.

[16] Vol. v, pp. 94, 95. Ed. London, 1877.

[17] Heber's "Palestine." The word "stately" was in later editions altered by the author to "noiseless."

[18] [In reply to the intended work of Mr. Adams on the Constitution of the United States, Mr. Livingstone, under the title of a Colonist of New Jersey, published an Examination of the British Constitution, and compared it unfavorably as it had been exhibited by Adams, and by Delolme, with the institutions of his own country. In this work, of which I have a French translation (London and Paris, 1789), there is not the smallest inkling of the action of our political mechanism, such as I have endeavored to describe it. On this subject I need hardly refer the reader to the valuable work of Mr. Bagehot, entitled "The English Constitution," or to the Constitutional History of Sir T. Erskine May.--W. E. G., December, 1878.]

[19] Ego cùm audio quenquam bono ingenio præditum, doctrinisque liberalibus eruditum, quamquam non ibi salus animæ constituta sit, tamen in _quæstione facillima_ sentire aliud quàm veritas postulat, quo magis miror, eò magis exardesco nosse hominem et cum eo colloqui; vel si id non possim, saltem litteris quæ longissimè volant [to the nineteenth century?] attingere mentem ejus atque ab eo vicissim attingi desidero. Sicut te esse audio talem virum, et ab Ecclesiâ Catholicâ, quæ sicut Sancto Spiritu pronunciata est, toto orbe diffunditur, discerptum doleo atque seclusum.--Ep. 87. _vid._ ep. 61.

[20] This is an exaggeration; I have reconsidered the whole subject in my essay on "Development of Doctrine," in 1845; and in my letter to Dr. Pusey in 1866.

[21] This passage proves, on the one hand, that such worship as St. John offered is wrong; on the other, that it does not unchurch, unless we can fancy St. John guilty of mortal sin.

[22] All these are merely points of discipline or conduct; but whether there is a visible Church, and whether it is visibly one, is a question which as it is answered affirmatively or negatively changes the essential idea and the entire structure of Christianity.

[23] Epp. 93, 144.

[24] As has been said above, this statement is too absolute; at least, Athanasius was reconciled to Meletius.