Evolution and Ethics, and Other Essays Part 18

2. After this responsible person had taken the trouble to write a pamphlet of sixty-four closely printed pages, some influence was brought to bear upon him, the effect of which was that he refused his consent to its publication. Mr. Trotter's excellent information will surely enable him to tell us what influence that was.

3. How does Mr. Trotter know that any pa.s.sage I have quoted is an interpolation? Does he possess that other copy of the "two" which alone, as he affirms, were printed?

[279] 4. If so, he will be able to say which of the pa.s.sages I have cited is genuine and which is not; and whether the tenor of the whole uninterpolated copy differs in any important respect from that of the copy I have quoted.

It will be interesting to hear what Mr. J. S. Trotter has to say upon these points. But the really important thing which he has done is that he has testified, of his own knowledge, that the anonymous author of "The New Papacy" is no mere irresponsible libeller, but a person of whom even an ardent Salvationist has to speak with respect.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant, T. H. Huxley.

[I may add that the unfortunate Mr. Trotter did me the further service of eliciting the letter from Mr. Hodges referred to on p. 277--which sufficiently establishes that gentleman's credit, and leads me to attach full weight to his evidence about the third barrel.]

January, 1891.

[280]

VII

The "Times," December 27th, 1890

SIR,--In making use of the only evidence of the actual working of Mr.

Booth's autocratic government accessible to me, I was fully aware of the slippery nature of the ground upon which I was treading. For, as I pointed out in my first letter, "no personal habit more surely degrades the conscience and the intellect than blind and unhesitating obedience to unlimited authority." Now we have it, on Mr. Booth's own showing that every officer of his has undertaken to "obey without questioning or gainsaying the orders from headquarters." And the possible relations of such orders to honour and veracity are demonstrated not only by the judicial deliverance on Mr. Booth's affidavit in the "Eagle" case, which I have already cited; not only by Mr. Bramwell Booth's admission before Mr. Justice Lopes that he had stated what was "not quite correct" because he had "promised Mr. Stead not to divulge" the facts of the case (the "Times," November 4th, 1885); but by the following pa.s.sage in Mr. Hodges's account of the reasons of his withdrawal from the Salvation Army:--

"The general and Chief did not and could [281] not deny doing these things; the only question was this, Was it right to practise this deception? These points of difference were fully discussed between myself and the Chief of the Staff on my withdrawal, especially the Leamington incident, which was the one that finally drove me to decision. I had come to the conclusion, from the first, that they had acted as they supposed with a single eye to the good of G.o.d's cause, and had persuaded myself that the things were, as against the devil, right to be done, that as in battle one party captured and turned the enemy's own guns upon them, so, as they were fighting against the devil, it would be fair to use against him his weapons. And I wrote to this effect to the "General" (p. 63)."

Now, I do not wish to say anything needlessly harsh, but I ask any prudent man these questions. Could I, under these circ.u.mstances, trust any uncorroborated statement emanating from headquarters, or made by the General's order? Had I any reason to doubt the truth of Mr.

Hodges's naive confession of the corrupting influence of Mr. Booth's system? And did it not behove me to pick my way carefully through the ma.s.s of statements before me, many of them due to people whose moral sense might, by possibility, have been as much blunted by the army discipline in the [282] use of the weapons of the devil as Mr. Hodges affirms that his was?

Therefore, in my third letter, I commenced my ill.u.s.trations of the practical working of Boothism with the evidence of Mr. Redstone, fortified and supplemented by that of a non-Salvationist, Dr.

Cunningham Geikie. That testimony has not been challenged, and, until it is, I shall a.s.sume that it cannot be. In my fourth letter, I cited a definite statement by Mr. Hodges in evidence of the Jesuitical principles of headquarters. What sort of answer is it to tell us that Mr. Hodges was dismissed the army? A child might expect that some such red herring would be drawn across the trail; and, in antic.i.p.ation of the stale trick, I added the strong prima facie evidence of the trustworthiness of my witness, in this particular, which is afforded by the "Eagle" case. It was not until I wrote my fourth letter to you, Sir--until the exploitation of the "captains" and the Jesuitry of headquarters could be proved up to the hilt--that I ventured to have recourse to "The New Papacy." So far as the pamphlet itself goes, this is an anonymous work; and, for sufficient reasons, I did not choose to go beyond what was to be found between its covers. To any one accustomed to deal with the facts of evolution, the Boothism of "The New Papacy" was merely the natural and necessary development of the Boothism of Mr. Redstone's case and of the [283] "Eagle" case.

Therefore, I felt fully justified in using it, at the same time carefully warning my readers that it must be taken with due caution.

Mr. Trotter's useful letter admits that such a book was written by a person with whom he had the "pleasure of an interview," and that a version of it (interpolated, according to his a.s.sertion) was published against the will of the author. Hence I am justified in believing that there is a foundation of truth in certain statements, some of which have long been in my possession, but which for lack of Mr. Trotter's valuable corroboration I have refrained from using. The time is come when I can set forth some of the heads of this information, with the request that Mr. Trotter, who knows all about the business, will be so good as to point out any error that there may be in them. I am bound to suppose that his sole object, like mine, is the elucidation of the truth, and to a.s.sume his willingness to help me therein to the best of his ability.

1. "The author of 'The New Papacy' is a Mr. Sumner, a person of perfect respectability, and greatly esteemed in Toronto, who held a high position in the Army. When he left, a large public meeting, presided over by a popular Methodist minister, pa.s.sed a vote of sympathy with him."

[284] Is this true or false?

2. "On Sat.u.r.day last, about noon, Mr. Sumner, the author of the book, and Mr. Fred Perry, the Salvation Army printer, accompanied by a lawyer, went down to Messrs. Imrie and Graham's establishment, and asked for all the ma.n.u.script, stereotype plates, &c., of the book. Mr.

Sumner explained that the book had been sold to the Army, and, on a cheque for the amount due being given, the printing material was delivered up."

Did these paragraphs appear in the "Toronto Telegram" of April 24th, 1889, or did they not? Are the statements they contain true or false?

3. "Public interest in the fate or probable outcome of that mysterious book called 'The New Papacy; or, Behind the Scenes in the Salvation Army,' continues unabated, though the line of proceedings by the publisher and his solicitor, Mr. Smoke, of Watson, Thorne, Smoke, and Masten, has not been altered since yesterday. The book, no doubt, will be issued in some form. So far as known, only one complete copy remains, and the whereabouts of this is a secret which will be profoundly kept. It is safe to say that if the Commissioner kept on guessing until the next anniversary, he would not strike the secluded [285] location of the one volume among five thousand which escaped, when he and his a.s.sistant, Mr. Fred Perry, believed they had cast every vestige of the forbidden work into the fiery furnace. On Tuesday last, when the discovery was made that a copy of 'The New Papacy' was in existence, Publisher Britnell, of Yonge Street, was at once the suspected holder, and in a short time his book-store was the resort of army agents sent to reconnoitre" ("Toronto News," April 28th, 1889).

Is this a forgery, or is it not? Is it in substance true or false?

When Mr. Trotter has answered these inquiries categorically, we may proceed to discuss the question of interpolations in Mr. Sumner's book.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant, T. H. Huxley.

[On the 26th of December a letter, signed J. T. Cunningham, late Fellow of University College, Oxford, called forth the following commentary.]

[286]

VIII

The "Times," December 29th, 1890--

Sir,--If Mr. Cunningham doubts the efficacy of the struggle for existence, as a factor in social conditions, he should find fault with Mr. Booth and not with me.

"I am labouring under no delusion as to the possibility of inaugurating the millennium by my social specific. In the struggle of life the weakest will go to the wall, and there are so many weak. The fittest in tooth and claw will survive. All that we can do is to soften the lot of the unfit, and make their suffering less horrible than it is at present" ("In Darkest England," p. 44).

That is what Mr. Cunningham would have found if he had read Mr. Booth's book with attention. And, if he will bestow equal pains on my second letter, he will discover that he has interpolated the word "wilfully"

in his statement of my "argument," which runs thus: "Shutting his eyes to the necessary consequences of the struggle for life, the existence of which he admits as fully as any Darwinian, Mr. Booth tells men whose evil case is one of those consequences that envy is a corner-stone of our compet.i.tive system." Mr. [287] Cunningham's physiological studies will have informed him that the process of "shutting the eyes," in the literal sense of the words, is not always wilful; and I propose to ill.u.s.trate, by the crucial instance his own letter furnishes, that the "shutting of the eyes" of the mind to the obvious consequences of accepted propositions may also be involuntary.

At least, I hope so.

1. "Sooner or later," says Mr. Cunningham, "the population problem will block the way once more." What does this mean, except that multiplication, excessive in relation to the contemporaneous means of support, will create a severe compet.i.tion for those means? And this seems to me to be a pretty accurate "reflection of the conceptions of Malthus" and the other poor benighted folks of a past generation at whom Mr. Cunningham sneers.

2. By way of leaving no doubt upon this subject, Mr. Cunningham further tells us, "The struggle for existence is always going on, of course; let us thank Darwin for making us realize it." It is pleasant to meet with a little grat.i.tude to Darwin among the epigoni who are squabbling over the heritage he conquered for them, but Mr.

Cunningham's personal expression of that feeling is hasty. For it is obvious that he has not "realized" the significance of Darwin's teaching--indeed, I fail to discover in Mr. Cunningham's letter any sign that he has even "realized" what [288] he would be at. If the "struggle for existence is always going on"; and if, as I suppose will be granted, industrial compet.i.tion is one phase of that struggle, I fail to see how my conclusion that it is sheer wickedness to tell ignorant men that "envy" is a corner-stone of compet.i.tion can be disputed.

Mr. Cunningham has followed the lead of that polished and instructed person, Mr. Ben Tillett, in rebuking me for (as the a.s.sociates say) attacking Mr. Booth's personal character. Of course, when I was writing, I did not doubt that this very handy, though not too clean, weapon would be used by one or other of Mr. Booth's supporters. And my action was finally decided by the following considerations: I happen to be a member of one of the largest life insurance societies. There is a vacancy in the directory at present, for which half a dozen gentlemen are candidates. Now, I said to myself, supposing that one of these gentlemen (whose pardon I humbly beg for starting the hypothesis), say Mr. A., in his administrative capacity and as a man of business, has been the subject of such observations as a Judge on the Bench bestowed upon Mr. Booth, is he a person for whom I can properly vote? And, if I find, when I go to the meeting of the policy-holders, that most of them know nothing of this and other evidences of what, by the mildest judgment, must be termed Mr. A.'s unfitness for administrative [289] responsibilities, am I to let them remain in their ignorance? I leave the answer and its application to men of sense and integrity.

The mention of Mr. Cunningham's ally reminds me that I have omitted to thank Mr. Tillett for his very useful and instructive letter; and I hasten to repair a neglect which I a.s.sure Mr. Tillett was more apparent than real. Mr. Tillett's letter is dated December 20th. On the 21st the following pregnant (however unconscious) commentary upon it appeared in "Reynolds's Newspaper":-

"I have always maintained that the Salvation Army is one of the mightiest Socialistic agencies in the country; and now Professor Huxley comes in to confirm that view. How could it be otherwise? The fantastic religious side of Salvationism will disappear in the course of time, and what will be left? A large number of men and women who have been organized, disciplined, and taught to look for something better than their present condition, and who have become public speakers and not afraid of ridicule. There you have the raw materials for a Socialist army."

Mr. Ben Tillett evidently knows Latin enough to construe proximus ardet.

I trust that the public will not allow themselves to be led away by the false issues which are [290] dangled before them. A man really may love his fellow-men; cherish any form of Christianity he pleases; and hold not only that Darwinism is "tottering to its fall," but, if he pleases, the equally sane belief that it never existed; and yet may feel it his duty to oppose, to the best of his capacity, despotic Socialism in all its forms, and, more particularly, in its Boothian disguise.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant, T.H. Huxley.

[Persons who have not had the advantage of a cla.s.sical education might fairly complain of my use of the word epigoni. To say truth, I had been reading Droysen's "Geschichte des h.e.l.lenismus," and the familiar historical t.i.tle slipped out unawares. In replying to me, however, the late "Fellow of University College," Oxford, declares he had to look the word out in a Lexicon. I commend the fact to the notice of the combatants over the desirability of retaining the present compulsory modic.u.m of Greek in our Universities.]

[291]

IX.

The "Times," December 30th, 1890

Sir,--I am much obliged to Messrs. Ranger, Burton, and Matthews for their prompt answer to my questions. I presume it applies to all money collected by the agency of the Salvation Army, though not specifically given for the purposes of the "Christian Mission" named in the deed of 1878; to all sums raised by mortgage upon houses and land so given; and, further, to funds subscribed for Mr. Booth's various projects, which have no apparent reference to the objects of the "Christian Mission" as defined in the deed. Otherwise, to use a phrase which has become cla.s.sical, "it does not a.s.sist us much." But I must leave these points to persons learned in the law.

And, indeed, with many thanks to you, Sir, for the amount of valuable s.p.a.ce which you have allowed me to occupy, I now propose to leave the whole subject. My sole purpose in embarking upon an enterprise which was extremely distasteful to me was to prevent the skilful "General,"

or rather "Generals," who devised the plan of campaign from sweeping all before them with a rush. I found the pa.s.s already held by such stout defenders as Mr. Loch and the Dean [292] of Wells, and, with your powerful help, we have given time for the reinforcements, sure to be sent by the abundant, though somewhat slowly acting, common sense of our countrymen, to come up.