On Compromise Part 4

If a man drew his wife by lot, or by any other method over which neither he nor she has any control, as in the case of parents, perhaps he might with some plausibleness contend that he owed her certain limited deferences and reserves, just as we admit that he may owe them to his parents. But this is not the case. Marriage, in this country at least, is the result of mutual choice. If men and women do as a matter of fact usually make this choice hastily and on wofully imperfect information of one another's characters, that is no warrant for a resort to unlawful expedients to remedy the blunder. If a woman cares ardently enough about religion to feel keen distress at the idea of dissent from it on the part of those closely connected with her, she surely may be expected to take reasonable pains to ascertain beforehand the religious att.i.tude of one with whom she is about to unite herself for life. On the other hand, if a man sets any value on his own opinions, if they are in any real sense a part of himself, he must be guilty of something like deliberate and systematic duplicity during the acquaintance preceding marriage, if his dissent has remained unsuspected. Certainly if men go through society before marriage under false colours, and feign beliefs which they do not hold, they have only themselves to thank for the degradation of having to keep up the imposture afterwards. Suppose a protestant were to pa.s.s himself off for a catholic because he happened to meet a catholic lady whom he desired to marry. Everybody would agree in calling such a man by a very harsh name. It is hard to see why a freethinker, who by reticence and conformity pa.s.ses himself off for a believer, should be more leniently judged. The differences between a catholic and a protestant are a.s.suredly not any greater than those between a believer and an unbeliever. We all admit the baseness of dissimulation in the former case. Why is it any less base in the latter?

Marriages, however, are often made in haste, or heedlessly, or early in life, before either man or woman has come to feel very deeply about religion either one way or another. The woman does not know how much she will need religion, nor what comfort it may bring to her. The man does not know all the objections to it which may disclose themselves to his understanding as the years ripen. There is always at work that most unfortunate maxim, tacitly held and acted upon in ninety-nine marriages out of a hundred, that money is of importance, and social position is of importance, and good connections are of importance, and health and manners and comely looks, and that the only thing which is of no importance whatever is opinion and intellectual quality and temper. Now granting that both man and woman are indifferent at the time of their union, is that any reason why upon either of them acquiring serious convictions, the other should be expected, out of mere complaisance, to make a false and hypocritical pretence of sharing them? To see how flimsy is this plea of fearing to give pain to the religious sensitiveness of women, we have only to imagine one or two cases which go beyond the common experience, yet which ought not to strain the plea, if it be valid.

Thus, if my wife turns catholic, am I to pretend to turn catholic too, to save her the horrible distress of thinking that I am doomed to eternal perdition? Or if she chooses to embrace the doctrine of direct illumination from heaven, and to hear voices bidding her to go or come, to do or abstain from doing, am I too to shape my conduct after these fancied monitions? Or if it comes into her mind to serve tables, and to listen in all faith to the miracles of spiritualism, am I, lest I should pain her, to feign a surrender of all my notions of evidence, to pretend a transformation of all my ideas of worthiness in life and beyond life, and to go to seances with the same regularity and seriousness with which you go to church? Of course in each of these cases everybody who does not happen to share the given peculiarity of belief, will agree that however severely a husband's dissent might pain the wife, whatever distress and discomfort it might inflict upon her, yet he would be bound to let her suffer, rather than sacrifice his veracity and self-respect. Why then is it any less discreditable to practise an insincere conformity in more ordinary circ.u.mstances? If the principle of such conformity is good for anything at all, it ought to cover these less usual cases as completely as the others which are more usual. Indeed there would be more to be said on behalf of conformity for politeness' sake, where the woman had gone through some great process of change, for then one might suppose that her heart was deeply set on the matter. Even then the plea would be worthless, but it is more indisputably worthless still where the sentiment which we are bidden to respect at the cost of our own freedom of speech is nothing more laudable than a fear of moving out of the common groove of religious opinion, or an intolerant and unreasoned bigotry, or mere stupidity and silliness of the vulgarest type.[23]

Ah, it is said, you forget that women cannot live without religion. The present writer is equally of this opinion that women cannot be happy without a religion, nor men either. That is not the question. It does not follow because a woman cannot be happy without a religion, that therefore she cannot be happy unless her husband is of the same religion. Still less, that she would be made happy by his insincerely pretending to be of the same religion. And least of all is it true, if both these propositions were credible, that even then for the sake of her happiness he is bound not merely to live a life of imposture, but in so doing to augment the general forces of imposture in the world, and to make the chances of truth, light, and human improvement more and more unfavourable. Women are at present far less likely than men to possess a sound intelligence and a habit of correct judgment. They will remain so, while they have less ready access than men to the best kinds of literary and scientific training, and--what is far more important--while social arrangements exclude them from all those kinds of public activity, which are such powerful agents both in fitting men to judge soundly, and in forming in them the sense of responsibility for their judgments being sound.

It may be contended that this alleged stronger religiosity of women, however coa.r.s.e and poor in its formulae, is yet of constant value as a protest in favour of the maintenance of the religious element in human character and life, and that this is a far more important thing for us all than the greater or less truth of the dogmas with which such religiosity happens to be a.s.sociated. In reply to this, without tediously labouring the argument, I venture to make the following observations. In the first place, it is an untenable idea that religiosity or devoutness of spirit is valuable in itself, without reference to the goodness or badness of the dogmatic forms and the practices in which it clothes itself. A fakir would hardly be an estimable figure in our society, merely because his way of living happens to be a manifestation of the religious spirit. If the religious spirit leads to a worthy and beautiful life, if it shows itself in cheerfulness, in pity, in charity and tolerance, in forgiveness, in a sense of the largeness and the mystery of things, in a lifting up of the soul in grat.i.tude and awe to some supreme power and sovereign force, then whatever drawback there may be in the way of superst.i.tious dogma, still such a spirit is on the whole a good thing. If not, not. It would be better without the superst.i.tion: even with the superst.i.tion it is good. But if the religious spirit is only a fine name for narrowness of understanding, for stubborn intolerance, for mere social formality, for a dread of losing that poor respectability which means thinking and doing exactly as the people around us think and do, then the religious spirit is not a good thing, but a thoroughly bad and hateful thing. To that we owe no management of any kind. Any one who suppresses his real opinions, and feigns others, out of deference to such a spirit as this in his household, ought to say plainly both to himself and to us that he cares more for his own ease and undisturbed comfort than he cares for truth and uprightness. For it is that, and not any tenderness for holy things, which is the real ground of his hypocrisy.

Now with reference to the religious spirit in its n.o.bler form, it is difficult to believe that any one genuinely animated by it would be soothed by the knowledge that her dearest companion is going through life with a mask on, quietly playing a part, uttering untrue professions, doing his best to cheat her and the rest of the world by a monstrous spiritual make-believe. One would suppose that instead of having her religious feeling gratified by conformity on these terms, nothing could wound it so bitterly nor outrage it so unpardonably. To know that her sensibility is destroying the entireness of the man's nature, its loyalty alike to herself and to truth, its freedom and singleness and courage--surely this can hardly be less distressing to a fine spirit than the suspicion that his heresies may bring him to the pit, or than the void of going through life without even the semblance of religious sympathy between them. If it be urged that the woman would never discover the piety of the man to be a counterfeit, we reply that unless her own piety were of the merely formal kind, she would be sure to make the discovery. The congregation in the old story were untouched by the disguised devil's eloquence on behalf of religion: it lacked unction. The verbal conformity of the unbeliever lacks unction, and its hollowness is speedily revealed to the quick apprehension of true faith.[24]

Let us not be supposed to be arguing in favour of incessant battle of high dialectic in the household. Nothing could be more destructive of the gracious composure and mental harmony, of which household life ought to be, but perhaps seldom is, the great organ and instrument. Still less are we pleading for the freethinker's right at every hour of day or night to mock, sneer, and gibe at the sincere beliefs and conscientiously performed rites of those, whether men or women, whether strangers or kinsfolk, from whose religion he disagrees. 'It is not ancient impressions only,' said Pascal, 'which are capable of abusing us. The charm of novelty has the same power.' The prate of new-born scepticism may be as tiresome and as odious as the cant of gray orthodoxy. Religious discussion is not to be foisted upon us at every turn either by defenders or a.s.sailants. All we plead for is that when the opportunity meets the freethinker full in front, he is called upon to speak as freely as he thinks. Not more than this. A plain man has no trouble in acquiring this tact of reasonableness. We may all write what we please, because it is in the discretion of the rest of the world whether they will hearken or not. But in the family this is not so. If a man systematically intrudes disrespectful and unwelcome criticism upon a woman who retains the ancient belief, he is only showing that freethinker may be no more than bigot differently writ. It ought to be essential to no one's self-respect that he cannot consent to live with people who do not think as he thinks. We may be sure that there is something shallow and convulsive about the beliefs of a man who cannot allow his house-mates to possess their own beliefs in peace.

On the other hand, it is essential to the self-respect of every one with the least love of truth that he should be free to express his opinions on every occasion, where silence would be taken for an a.s.sent which he does not really give. Still more unquestionably, he should be free from any obligation to forswear himself either directly, as by false professions, or by implication, as when he attend services, public or private, which are to him the symbol of superst.i.tion and mere spiritual phantasmagoria. The vindication of this simple right of living one's life honestly can hardly demand any heroic virtue. A little of the straightforwardness which men are accustomed to call manly, is the only quality that is needed; a little of that frank courage and determination in spiritual things, which men are usually so ready to practise towards their wives in temporal things. It must be a keen delight to a cynic to see a man who owns that he cannot bear to pain his wife by not going to church and saying prayers, yet insisting on having his own way, fearlessly thwarting her wishes, and contradicting her opinions, in every other detail, small and great, of the domestic economy.

The truth of the matter is that the painful element in companions.h.i.+p is not difference of opinion, but discord of temperament. The important thing is not that two people should be inspired by the same convictions, but rather that each of them should hold his and her own convictions in a high and worthy spirit. Harmony of aim, not ident.i.ty of conclusion, is the secret of the sympathetic life; to stand on the same moral plane, and that, if possible, a high one; to find satisfaction in different explanations of the purpose and significance of life and the universe, and yet the same satisfaction. It is certainly not less possible to disbelieve religiously than to believe religiously. This accord of mind, this emulation in freedom and loftiness of soul, this kindred sense of the awful depth of the enigma which the one believes to be answered, and the other suspects to be for ever unanswerable--here, and not in a degrading and hypocritical conformity, is the true gratification of those spiritual sensibilities which are alleged to be so much higher in women than in men. Where such an accord exists, there may still be solicitude left in the mind of either at the superst.i.tion or the incredulity of the other, but it will be solicitude of that magnanimous sort which is in some shape or other the inevitable and not unfruitful portion of every better nature.

If there are women who petulantly or sourly insist on more than this kind of harmony, it is probable that their system of divinity is little better than a special manifestation of shrewishness. The man is as much bound to resist that, as he is bound to resist extravagance in spending money, or any other vice of character. If he does not resist it, if he suppresses his opinions, and practices a hypocritical conformity, it must be from weakness of will and principle. Against this we have nothing to say. A considerable proportion of people, men no less than women, are born invertebrate, and they must got on as they best can. But let us at least bargain that they shall not erect the maxims of their own feebleness into a rule for those who are braver and of stronger principle than themselves. And do not let the accidental exigencies of a personal mistake be made the foundation of a general doctrine. It is a poor saying, that the world is to become void of spiritual sincerity, because Xanthippe has a turn for respectable theology.

One or two words should perhaps be said in this place as to conformity to common religious belief in the education of children. Where the parents differ, the one being an unbeliever, the other a believer, it is almost impossible for anybody to lay down a general rule. The present writer certainly has no ambition to attempt the th.o.r.n.y task of compiling a manual for mixed marriages. It is perhaps enough to say that all would depend upon the nature of the beliefs which the religious person wished to inculcate. Considering that the woman has an absolutely equal moral right with the man to decide in what faith the child shall be brought up, and considering how important it is that the mother should take an active part in the development of the child's affections and impulses, the most resolute of deniers may perhaps think that the advantages of leaving the matter to her, outweigh the disadvantages of having a superst.i.tious bias given to the young mind. In these complex cases an honest and fair-minded man's own instincts are more likely to lead him right than any hard and fast rule. Two reserves in a.s.senting to the wife's control of early teaching will probably suggest themselves to everybody who is in earnest about religion. First, if the theology which the woman desires to instill contains any of those wicked and depraving doctrines which neither Catholicism nor Calvinism is without, in the hands of some professors, the husband is as much justified in pressing his legal rights over the child to the uttermost, as he would be if the proposed religion demanded physical mutilation. Secondly, he will not himself take part in baptismal or other ceremonies which are to him no better than mere mummeries, nor will he ever do anything to lead his children at any age to suppose that he believes what he does not believe. Such limitations as these are commanded by all considerations alike of morality and good sense.

To turn to the more normal case where either the man has had the wise forethought not to yoke himself unequally with a person of ardent belief which he does not share, or where both parents dissent from the popular creed. Here, whatever difficulties may attend its application, the principle is surely as clear as the sun at noonday. There can be no good plea for the deliberate and formal inculcation upon the young of a number of propositions which you believe to be false. To do this is to sow tares not in your enemy's field, but in the very ground which is most precious of all others to you and most full of hope for the future.

To allow it to be done merely that children may grow up in the stereotyped mould, is simply to perpetuate in new generations the present thick-sighted and dead-heavy state of our spirits. It is to do one's best to keep society for an indefinite time sapped by hollow and void professions, instead of being nourished by sincerity and whole-heartedness.[25]

Nor here, more than elsewhere in this chapter, are we trying to turn the family into a field of ceaseless polemic. No one who knows the stuff of which life is made, the pressure of material cares, the play of pa.s.sion, the busy energising of the affections, the anxieties of health, and all the other solicitudes, generous or ign.o.ble, which naturally absorb the days of the common mult.i.tude of men--is likely to think such an ideal either desirable or attainable. Least of all is it desirable to give character a strong set in this polemical direction in its most plastic days. The controversial and denying humour is a different thing from the habit of being careful to know what we mean by the words we use, and what evidence there is for the beliefs we hold. It is possible to foster the latter habit without creating the former. And it is possible to bring up the young in dissent from the common beliefs around them, or in indifference to them, without engendering any of that pride in eccentricity for its own sake, which is so little likeable a quality in either young or old. There is, however, little risk of an excess in this direction. The young tremble even more than the old at the penalties of nonconformity. There is more excuse for them in this. Such penalties in their case usually come closer and in more stringent forms.

Neither have they had time to find out, as their elders have or ought to have found out, what a very moderate degree of fort.i.tude enables us to bear up against social disapproval, when we know that it is nothing more than the common form of convention.

The great object is to keep the minds of the young as open as possible in the matter of religion; to breed in them a certain simplicity and freedom from self-consciousness, in finding themselves without the religious beliefs and customs of those around them; to make them regard differences in these respects as very natural and ordinary matters, susceptible of an easy explanation. It is of course inevitable, unless they are brought up in cloistered seclusion, that they should hear much of the various articles of belief which we are anxious that they should not share. They will ask you whether the story of the creation of the universe is true; whether such and such miracles really happened; whether this person or that actually lived, and actually did all that he is said to have done. Plainly the right course is to tell them, without any agitation or excess or vehemence or too much elaboration, the simple truth in such matters exactly as it appears to one's own mind. There is no reason why they should not know the best parts of the Bible as well as they know the Iliad or Herodotus. There are many reasons why they should know them better. But one most important condition of this is constantly overlooked by people, who like to satisfy their intellectual vanity by scepticism, and at the same time to make their comfort safe by external conformity. If the Bible is to be taught only because it is a n.o.ble and most majestic monument of literature, it should be taught as that and no more. That a man who regards it solely us supreme literature, should impress it upon the young as the supernaturally inspired word of G.o.d and the accurate record of objective occurrences, is a piece of the plainest and most shocking dishonesty. Let a youth be trained in simple and straightforward recognition of the truth that we can know, and can conjecture, nothing with any a.s.surance as to the ultimate mysteries of things. Let his imagination and his sense of awe be fed from those springs, which are none the less bounteous because they flow in natural rather than supernatural channels. Let him be taught the historic place and source of the religions which he is not bound to accept, unless the evidence for their authority by and by brings him to another mind. A boy or girl trained in this way has an infinitely better chance of growing up with the true spirit and leanings of religion implanted in the character, than if they had been educated in formulae which they could not understand, by people who do not believe them.

The most common ill.u.s.tration of a personal mistake being made the base of a general doctrine, is found in the case of those who, after committing themselves for life to the profession of a given creed, awake to the shocking discovery that the creed has ceased to be true for them.

The action of a popular modern story, Mrs. Gaskell's _North and South_, turns upon the case of a clergyman whoso faith is overthrown, and who in consequence abandons his calling, to his own serious material detriment and under circ.u.mstances of severe suffering to his family. I am afraid that current opinion, especially among the cultivated cla.s.s, would condemn such a sacrifice as a piece of misplaced scrupulosity. No man, it would be said, is called upon to proclaim his opinions, when to do so will cost him the means of subsistence. This will depend upon the value which he sets upon the opinions that be has to proclaim. If such a proposition is true, the world must efface its habit of admiration for the martyrs and heroes of the past, who embraced violent death rather than defile themselves by a lying confession. Or is present heroism ridiculous, and only past heroism admirable? However, n.o.body has a right to demand the heroic from all the world; and if to publish his dissent from the opinions which he nominally holds would reduce a man to beggary, human charity bids us say as little as may be. We may leave such men to their unfortunate destiny, hoping that they will make what good use of it may be possible. _Non ragioniam di lor_. These cases only show the essential and profound immorality of the priestly profession--in all its forms, and no matter in connection with what church or what dogma--which makes a man's living depend on his abstaining from using his mind, or concealing the conclusions to which use of his mind has brought him. The time will come when society will look back on the doctrine, that they who serve the altar should live by the altar, as a doctrine of barbarism and degradation.

But if one, by refusing to offer a pinch of incense to the elder G.o.ds, should thus strip himself of a marked opportunity of exerting an undoubtedly useful influence over public opinion, or over a certain section of society, is he not justified in compromising to the extent necessary to preserve this influence? Instead of answering this directly, we would make the following remarks. First, it can seldom be clear in times like our own that religious heterodoxy must involve the loss of influence in other than religious spheres. The apprehension that it will do so is due rather to timorousness and a desire to find a fair reason for the comforts of silence and reserve. If a teacher has anything to tell the world in science, philosophy, history, the world will not be deterred from listening to him by knowing that he does not walk in the paths of conventional theology. Second, what influence can a man exert, that should seem to him more useful than that of a protester against what he counts false opinions, in the most decisive and important of all regions of thought? Surely if any one is persuaded, whether rightly or wrongly, that his fellows are expending the best part of their imaginations and feelings on a dream and a delusion, and that by so doing moreover they are r.e.t.a.r.ding to an indefinite degree the wider spread of light and happiness, then nothing that he can tell them about chemistry or psychology or history can in his eyes be comparable in importance to the duty of telling them this. There is no advantage nor honest delight in influence, if it is only to be exerted in the sphere of secondary objects, and at the cost of the objects which ought to be foremost in the eyes of serious people. In truth the men who have done most for the world have taken very little heed of influence. They have sought light, and left their influence to fare as it might list.

Can we not imagine the mingled mystification and disdain with which a Spinosa or a Descartes, a Luther or a Pascal, would have listened to an exhortation in our persuasive modern manner on the niceties of the politic and the social obligation of pious fraud? It is not given to many to perform the achievements of such giants as these, but every one may help to keep the standard of intellectual honesty at a lofty pitch, and what better service can a man render than to furnish the world with an example of faithful dealing with his own conscience and with his fellows? This at least is the one talent that is placed in the hands of the obscurest of us all.[26]

And what is this smile of the world, to win which we are bidden to sacrifice our moral manhood; this frown of the world, whose terrors are more awful than the withering up of truth and the slow going out of light within the souls of us? Consider the triviality of life and conversation and purpose, in the bulk of those whose approval is held out for our prize and the mark of our high calling. Measure, if you can, the empire over them of prejudice unadulterated by a single element of rationality, and weigh, if you can, the huge burden of custom, unrelieved by a single leavening particle of fresh thought. Ponder the share which selfishness and love of ease have in the vitality and the maintenance of the opinions that we are forbidden to dispute. Then how pitiful a thing seems the approval or disapproval of these creatures of the conventions of the hour, as one figures the merciless vastness of the universe of matter sweeping us headlong through viewless s.p.a.ce; as one hears the wail of misery that is for ever ascending to the deaf G.o.ds; as one counts the little tale of the years that separate us from eternal silence. In the light of these things, a man should surely dare to live his small span of life with little heed of the common speech upon him or his life, only caring that his days may be full of reality, and his conversation of truth-speaking and wholeness.

Those who think conformity in the matters of which we have been speaking harmless and unimportant, must do so either from indifference or else from despair. It is difficult to convince any one who is possessed by either one or other of these two evil spirits. Men who have once accepted them, do not easily relinquish philosophies that relieve their professors from disagreeable obligations of courage and endeavour.

To the indifferent person one can say nothing. We can only acquiesce in that deep and terrible scripture, 'He that is filthy, let him be filthy still.' To those who despair of human improvement or the spread of light in the face of the huge ma.s.s of brute prejudice, we can only urge that the enormous weight and the firm hold of baseless prejudice and false commonplace are the very reasons which make it so important that those who are not of the night nor of the darkness should the more strenuously insist on living their own lives in the daylight. To those, finally, who do not despair, but think that the new faith will come so slowly that it is not worth while for the poor mortal of a day to make himself a martyr, we may suggest that the new faith when it comes will be of little worth, unless it has been shaped by generations of honest and fearless men, and unless it finds in those who are to receive it an honest and fearless temper. Our plea is not for a life of perverse disputings or busy proselytising, but only that we should learn to look at one another with a clear and steadfast eye, and march forward along the paths we choose with firm step and erect front. The first advance towards either the renovation of one faith or the growth of another, must be the abandonment of those habits of hypocritical conformity and compliance which have filled the air of the England of to-day with gross and obscuring mists.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 18: It may be said that Hume meant no more than this: that of two equally oppressed nations, the one which had been taught to a.s.sent to the doctrine of resistance would be more likely to practise 'the sacred duty of insurrection' than the other, from whom the doctrine had been concealed. Or, in other words, that the first would rise against oppression, when the oppression had reached a pitch which to the second would still seem bearable. The answer to Hume's proposition, interpreted in this way, would be that if the doctrine of resistance be presented to the populace in its true shape,--if it be 'truth,' as he admits,--then the application of it in practice should be as little likely to prove mischievous as that of any other truth. If the gist of the remark be that this is a truth which the populace is especially likely to apply wrongly, in consequence of its ignorance, pa.s.sion, and heedlessness, we may answer by appealing to history, which is rather a record of excessive patience in the various nations of the earth than of excessive petulance.]

[Footnote 19: There is another ground for the distinction between the conditions of holding and those of expressing opinion. This depends upon the psychological proposition that belief is independent of the will.

Though this or any other state of the understanding may be involuntary, the manifestation of such a state is not so, but is a voluntary act, and, 'being neutral in itself, may be commendable or reprehensible according to the circ.u.mstances in which it takes place.' (Bailey's _Essay on Formation of Opinion_, -- 7).]

[Footnote 20: The following words, ill.u.s.trating the continuity between the Christian and Jewish churches, are not without instruction to those who meditate on the possible continuity between the Christian church and that which is one day to grow into the place of it:--'Not only do forms and ordinances remain under the Gospel equally as before; but, what was in use before is not so much superseded by the Gospel ordinances as changed into them. What took place under the Law is a pattern, what was commanded is a rule, under the Gospel. The substance remains, the use, the meaning, the circ.u.mstances, the benefit is changed; grace is added, life is infused: "the body is of Christ;" but it is in great measure that same body which was in being before He came. The Gospel has not put aside, it has incorporated into itself the revelation which went before it. It avails itself of the Old Testament, as a great gift to Christian as well as to Jew. It does not dispense with it, but it dispenses it.

Persons sometimes urge that there is no code of duty in the New Testament, no ceremonial, no rules for Church polity. Certainly not; they are unnecessary; they are already given in the Old. Why should the Old Testament remain in the Christian church but to be used? _There_ we are to look for our forms, our rites, our polity; only ill.u.s.trated, tempered, spiritualised by the Gospel. The preempts remain, the observance of them is changed,'--Dr. J.H. Newman; _Sermon on Subjects of the Day_, p. 205.]

[Footnote 21: There is a set of most acute and searching criticisms on this matter in Mr. Leslie Stephen's _Essays on Free-Thinking and Plain-Speaking_ (Longmans, 1873). The last essay in the volume, _An Apology for Plain-Speaking_, is a decisive and remarkable exposition of the treacherous playing with words, which underlies even the most vigorous efforts to make the phrases and formula of the old creed hold the reality of new faith.]

[Footnote 22: Upon this sentence the following criticism has been made:--'Surely both of these so-called contradictions are deliberately affirmed by the vast majority of all thinkers upon the subject. What orthodox a.s.serter of the omnipresence of a "Creator with intelligible attributes" ever maintained that these attributes could be "grasped by men"?'--The orthodox a.s.serter, no doubt, _says_ that he does not maintain that the divine attributes can be grasped by men; but his habitual treatment of them as intelligible, and as the subjects of propositions made in languages that is designed to be intelligible, shows that his first reservation is merely nominal, as it is certainly inconsistent with his general position. Religious people who warn you most solemnly that man who is a worm and the son of a worm cannot possibly compa.s.s in his puny understanding the attributes of the Divine Being, will yet--as an eminent divine not in holy orders has truly said--tell you all about him, as if he were the man who lives in the next street.]

[Footnote 23: That able man, the late J.E. Cairnes, suggested the following objection to this paragraph. When two persons marry, there is a reasonable expectation, almost amounting to an understanding, that they will both of them adhere to their religion, just as both of them tacitly agree to follow the ways of the world in the host of minor social matters. If, therefore, either of them turns to some other creed, the person so turning has, so to speak, broken the contract. The utmost he or she can contend for is forbearance. If a woman embraces catholicism, she may seek tolerance, but she has no right to exact conformity. If the man becomes an unbeliever, he in like manner breaks the bargain, and may be justly asked not to flaunt his misdemeanour.

My answer to this would turn upon the absolute inexpediency of such silent bargains being a.s.sumed by public opinion. In the present state of opinion, where the whole air is alive with the spirit of change, n.o.body who takes his life or her life seriously, could allow an a.s.sumption which means reduction of one of the most important parts of character, the love of truth, to a nullity.]

[Footnote 24: The reader remembers how Wolmar, the atheistic husband of Julie in Rousseau's _New Helosa_, is distressed by the chagrin which his unbelief inflicts on the piety of his wife. 'He told me that he had been frequently tempted to make a feint of yielding to her arguments, and to pretend, for the sake of calming her sentiments that he did not really hold. But such baseness of soul is too far from him. Without for a moment imposing on Julie, such dissimulation would only have been a new torment to her. The good faith, the frankness, the union of heart, that console for so many troubles, would have been eclipsed between them. Was it by lessening his wife's esteem for him that he could rea.s.sure her? Instead of using any disguise, he tells her sincerely what he thinks, but he says it in so simple a tone, etc.--V. v. 126.]

[Footnote 25: The common reason alleged by freethinkers for having their children brought up in the orthodox ways is that, if they were not so brought up, they would be looked on as contaminating agents whom other parents would take care to keep away from the companions.h.i.+p of their children. This excuse may have had some force at another time. At the present day, when belief is so weak, we doubt whether the young would be excluded from the companions.h.i.+p of their equals in age, merely because they had not been trained in some of the conventional s.h.i.+bboleths. Even if it were so, there are certainly some ways of compensating for the disadvantages of exclusion from orthodox circles.

I have heard of a more interesting reason; namely, that the historic position of the young, relatively to the time in which they are placed, is in some sort falsified, unless they have gone through a training in the current beliefs of their age: unless they have undergone that, they miss, as it were, some of the normal antecedents. I do not think this plea will hold good. However desirable it may be that the young should know all sorts of erroneous beliefs and opinions as products of the past, it can hardly be in any degree desirable that they should take them for truths. If there were no other objection, there would be this, that the disturbance and waste of force involved in shaking off in their riper years the erroneous opinions which had been instilled into them in childhood, would more than counter-balance any advantages, whatever their precise nature may be, to be derived from having shared in their own proper persons the ungrounded notions of others.]

[Footnote 26: Miss Martineau has an excellent protest against 'the dereliction of principle shown in supposing that any "Cause" can be of so much importance as fidelity to truth, or can be important at all otherwise than in its relation to truth which wants vindicating. It reminds me of an incident which happened when I was in America, at the time of the severest trials of the Abolitionists. A pastor from the southern States lamented to a brother clergyman in the North the introduction of the Anti-slavery question, because the views of their sect were "getting on so well before!" "Getting on!" cried the northern minister. "What is the use of getting your vessel on when you have thrown both captain and cargo overboard?" Thus, what signifies the pursuit of any one reform, like those specified,--Anti-slavery and the Woman question,--when the freedom which is the very soul of the controversy, the very principle of the movement,--is mourned over in any other of its many manifestations? The only effectual advocates of such reforms as those are people who follow truth wherever it leads.'--_Autobiography_, ii. 442.]

CHAPTER V.

THE REALISATION OF OPINION.

A person who takes the trouble to form his own opinions and beliefs will feel that he owes no responsibility to the majority for his conclusions.

If he is a genuine lover of truth, if he is inspired by the divine pa.s.sion for seeing things as they are, and a divine abhorrence of holding ideas which do not conform to the facts, he will be wholly independent of the approval or a.s.sent of the persons around him. When he proceeds to apply his beliefs in the practical conduct of life, the position is different. There are now good reasons why his att.i.tude should be in some ways less inflexible. The society in which he is placed is a very ancient and composite growth. The people from whom he dissents have not come by their opinions, customs, and inst.i.tutions by a process of mere haphazard. These opinions and customs all had their origin in a certain real or supposed fitness. They have a certain depth of root in the lives of a proportion of the existing generation. Their fitness for satisfying human needs may have vanished, and their congruity with one another may have come to an end. That is only one side of the truth. The most zealous propagandism cannot penetrate to them. The quality of bearing to be transplanted from one kind of soil and climate to another is not very common, and it is far from being inexhaustible even where it exists.

In common language we speak of a generation as something possessed of a kind of exact unity, with all its parts and members one and h.o.m.ogeneous.

Yet very plainly it is not this. It is a whole, but a whole in a state of constant flux. Its factors and elements are eternally s.h.i.+fting. It is not one, but many generations. Each of the seven ages of man is neighbour to all the rest. The column of the veterans is already staggering over into the last abyss, while the column of the newest recruits is forming with all its nameless and uncounted hopes. To each its tradition, its tendency, its possibilities. Only a proportion of each in one society can have nerve enough to grasp the banner of a new truth, and endurance enough to bear it along rugged and untrodden ways.

And then, as we have said, one must remember the stuff of which life is made. One must consider what an overwhelming preponderance of the most tenacious energies and most concentrated interests of a society must be absorbed between material cares and the solicitude of the affections. It is obviously unreasonable to lose patience and quarrel with one's time, because it is tardy in throwing off its inst.i.tutions and beliefs, and slow to achieve the transformation which is the problem in front of it.

Men and women have to live. The task for most of them is arduous enough to make them well pleased with even such imperfect shelter as they find in the use and wont of daily existence. To insist on a whole community being made at once to submit to the reign of new practices and new ideas, which have just begun to commend themselves to the most advanced speculative intelligence of the time,--this, even if it were a possible process, would do much to make life impracticable and to hurry on social dissolution.

'It cannot be too emphatically a.s.serted,' as has been said by one of the most influential of modern thinkers, 'that this policy of compromise, alike in inst.i.tutions, in actions, and in beliefs, which especially characterises English life, is a policy essential to a society going through the transitions caused by continued growth and development. Ideas and inst.i.tutions proper to a past social state, but incongruous with the new social state that has grown out of it, surviving into this new social state they have made possible, and disappearing only as this new social state establishes its own ideas and inst.i.tutions, are necessarily, during their survival, in conflict with these new ideas and inst.i.tutions--necessarily furnish elements of contradiction in men's thoughts and deeds. And yet, as for the carrying on of social life, the old must continue so long as the new is not ready, this perpetual compromise is an indispensable accompaniment of a normal development.'[27]

Yet we must not press this argument, and the state of feeling that belongs to it, further than they may be fairly made to go. The danger in most natures lies on this side, for on this side our love of ease works, and our prejudices. The writer in the pa.s.sage we have just quoted is describing compromise as a natural state of things, the resultant of divergent forces. He is not professing to define its conditions or limits as a practical duty. Nor is there anything in his words, or in the doctrine of social evolution of which he is the most elaborate and systematic expounder, to favour that deliberate sacrifice of truth, either in search or in expression, against which our two previous chapters were meant to protest.[28] When Mr. Spencer talks of a new social state establis.h.i.+ng its own ideas, of course he means, and can only mean, that men and women establish their own ideas, and to do that, it is obvious that they must at one time or another have conceived them without any special friendliness of reference to the old ideas, which they were in the fulness of time to supersede. Still less, of course, can a new social state ever establish its ideas, unless the persons who hold them confess them openly, and give to them an honest and effective adherence.

Every discussion of the more fundamental principles of conduct must contain, expressly or by implication, some general theory of the nature and const.i.tution of the social union. Let us state in a few words that which seems to command the greatest amount both of direct and a.n.a.logical evidence in our time. It is perhaps all the more important to discuss our subject with immediate and express reference to this theory, because it has become in some minds a plea for a kind of philosophic indifference towards any policy of Thorough, as well as an excuse for systematic abstention from vigorous and downright courses of action.

A progressive society is now constantly and justly compared to a growing organism. Its vitality in this aspect consists of a series of changes in ideas and inst.i.tutions. These changes arise spontaneously from the operation of the whole body of social conditions, external and internal. The understanding and the affections and desires are always acting on the domestic, political, and economic ordering. They influence the religious sentiment. They touch relations with societies outside. In turn they are constantly being acted on by all these elements. In a society progressing in a normal and uninterrupted course, this play and interaction is the sign and essence of life. It is, as we are so often told, a long process of new adaptations and re-adaptations; of the modification of tradition and usage by truer ideas and improved inst.i.tutions. There may be, and there are, epochs of rest, when this modification in its active and demonstrative shape slackens or ceases to be visible. But even then the modifying forces are only latent. Further progress depends on the revival of their energy, before there has been time for the social structure to become ossified and inelastic. The history of civilisation is the history of the displacement of old conceptions by new ones more conformable to the facts. It is the record of the removal of old inst.i.tutions and ways of living, in favour of others of greater convenience and ampler capacity, at once multiplying and satisfying human requirements.

Now compromise, in view of the foregoing theory of social advance, may be of two kinds, and of these two kinds one is legitimate and the other not. It may stand for two distinct att.i.tudes of mind, one of them obstructive and the other not. It may mean the deliberate suppression or mutilation of an idea, in order to make it congruous with the traditional idea or the current prejudice on the given subject, whatever that may be. Or else it may mean a rational acquiescence in the fact that the bulk of your contemporaries are not yet prepared either to embrace the new idea, or to change their ways of living in conformity to it. In the one case, the compromiser rejects the highest truth, or dissembles his own acceptance of it. In the other, he holds it courageously for his ensign and device, but neither forces nor expects the whole world straightway to follow. The first prolongs the duration of the empire of prejudice, and r.e.t.a.r.ds the arrival of improvement. The second does his best to abbreviate the one, and to hasten and make definite the other, yet he does not insist on hurrying changes which, to be effective, would require the active support of numbers of persons not yet ripe for them. It is legitimate compromise to say:--'I do not expect you to execute this improvement, or to surrender that prejudice, in my time. But at any rate it shall not be my fault if the improvement remains unknown or rejected. There shall be one man at least who has surrendered the prejudice, and who does not hide that fact.' It is illegitimate compromise to say:--'I cannot persuade you to accept my truth; therefore I will pretend to accept your falsehood.'

That this distinction is as sound on the evolutional theory of society as on any other is quite evident. It would be odd if the theory which makes progress depend on modification forbade us to attempt to modify.

When it is said that the various successive changes in thought and inst.i.tution present and consummate themselves spontaneously, no one means by spontaneity that they come to pa.s.s independently of human effort and volition. On the contrary, this energy of the members of the society is one of the spontaneous elements. It is quite as indispensable as any other of them, if indeed it be not more so.

Progress depends upon tendencies and forces in a community. But of these tendencies and forces, the organs and representatives must plainly be found among the men and women of the community, and cannot possibly be found anywhere else. Progress is not automatic, in the sense that if we were all to be cast into a deep slumber for the s.p.a.ce of a generation, we should awake to find ourselves in a greatly improved social state.

The world only grows better, even in the moderate degree in which it does grow better, because people wish that it should, and take the right steps to make it better. Evolution is not a force, but a process; not a cause, but a law. It explains the source, and marks the immovable limitations, of social energy. But social energy itself can never be superseded either by evolution or by anything else.