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<div id="titlepg">
<h1>
A Grammar of<br />
Freethought.</h1>

<p class="center">BY<br />
<span class="lg">CHAPMAN COHEN.</span></p>

<p class="center">(<i>Issued by the Secular Society, Ltd.</i>)</p>

<p class="center smcap">London:<br />
THE PIONEER PRESS,<br />
61 Farringdon Street, E.C. 4.<br />
1921.</p>
</div>

<p class="center">
<i>The Publishers wish to express their obligation to Mr.<br />
H. Cutner for the very tasteful design which adorns the<br />
cover of this book.</i></p>

<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>

<table border="0" class="smcap" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="2" summary="Table of Contents">
<tr class="sm"><td align="left">CHAPTER</td><td></td><td align="right">PAGE</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">I.&mdash;</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">Outgrowing the Gods</a></td><td align="right">9</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">II.&mdash;</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">Life and Mind</a></td><td align="right">18</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">III.&mdash;</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">What is Freethought?</a></td><td align="right">37</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">IV.&mdash;</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">Rebellion and Reform</a></td><td align="right">51</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">V.&mdash;</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">The Struggle for the Child</a></td><td align="right">61</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">VI.&mdash;</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">The Nature of Religion</a></td><td align="right">72</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">VII.&mdash;</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">The Utility of Religion</a></td><td align="right">88</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">VIII.&mdash;</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">Freethought and God</a></td><td align="right">101</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">IX.&mdash;</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">Freethought and Death</a></td><td align="right">111</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">X.&mdash;</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">This World and the Next</a></td><td align="right">123</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">XI.&mdash;</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">Evolution</a></td><td align="right">134</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">XII.&mdash;</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">Darwinism and Design</a></td><td align="right">146</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">XIII.&mdash;</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">Ancient and Modern</a></td><td align="right">162</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">XIV.&mdash;</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">Morality Without God.&mdash;I.</a></td><td align="right">172</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">XV.&mdash;</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">Morality Without God.&mdash;II.</a></td><td align="right">182</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">XVI.&mdash;</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">Christianity and Morality</a></td><td align="right">193</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">XVII.&mdash;</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">Religion and Persecution</a></td><td align="right">204</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">XVIII.&mdash;</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">What is to Follow Religion?</a></td><td align="right">223</td></tr>
</table>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">{vii}</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE.</h2>

<p>It must be left for those who read the following pages to
decide how far this book lives up to its title. That it
leaves many aspects of life untouched is quite clear, but
there must be a limit to everything, even to the size and
scope of a book; moreover, the work does not aim at
being an encyclopædia, but only an outline of what may
fairly be regarded as the Freethought position. Freethought,
again, is too fluid a term to permit its teachings
being summarized in a set creed, but it does stand for a
certain definite attitude of mind in relation to those problems
of life with which thoughtful men and women
concern themselves. It is that mental attitude which I
aim at depicting.</p>

<p>To those who are not directly concerned with the attack
on supernaturalism it may also be a matter of regret that
so much of this work is concerned with a criticism of
religious beliefs. But that is an accident of the situation.
We have not yet reached that stage in affairs when we can
afford to let religion alone, and one may readily be excused
the suspicion that those who, without believing in it,
profess to do so, are more concerned with avoiding a
difficult, if not dangerous, subject, than they are with the
problem of developing sane and sound methods of thinking.
And while some who stand forward as leaders of
popular thought fail to do their part in the work of attacking
supernaturalistic beliefs, others are perforce compelled
to devote more time than they would otherwise to the
task. That, in brief, is my apology for concerning myself
so largely with religious topics, and leaving almost untouched
other fields where the Freethought attitude would
prove equally fruitful of results.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">{viii}</a></span>
After all, it is the mental attitude with which one
approaches a problem that really matters. The man or
woman who has not learned to set mere authority on one
side in dealing with any question will never be more than
a mere echo, and what the world needs, now as ever, is
not echoes but voices. Information, knowledge, is
essential to the helpful consideration of any subject; but
all the knowledge in the world will be of very little real
help if it is not under the control of a right method.
What is called scientific knowledge is, to-day, the
commonest of acquisitions, and what most people appear
to understand by that is the accumulation of a large
number of positive facts which do, indeed, form the raw
material of science. But the getting of mere facts is like
the getting of money. The value of its accumulation depends
upon the use made thereof. It is the power of
generalization, the perception and application of principles
that is all-important, and to this the grasp of a
right method of investigation, the existence of a right
mental attitude, is essential.</p>

<p>The world needs knowledge, but still more imperatively
it needs the right use of the knowledge that is at its
disposal. For this reason I have been mainly concerned
in these pages with indicating what I consider to be the
right mental attitude with which to approach certain
fundamental questions. For, in a world so distracted by
conflicting teachings as is ours, the value of a right method
is almost incalculable. Scepticism, said Buckle, is not the
result, but the condition of progress, and the same may be
said of Freethought. The condition of social development
is the realization that no institution and no teaching is
beyond criticism. Criticism, rejection and modification
are the means by which social progress is achieved. It is
by criticism of existing ideas and institutions, by the
rejection of what is incapable of improvement, and by the
modification of what permits of betterment, that we show
ourselves worthy of the better traditions of the past, and
profitable servants of the present and the future.</p>

<p class="ralign">C. C.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">{9}</a></span></p>

<p id="begin">A GRAMMAR OF FREETHOUGHT.</p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>
CHAPTER I.<br />
OUTGROWING THE GODS.</h2>

<p>One of the largest facts in the history of man is
religion. If it were otherwise the justification for writing
the following pages, and for attempting the proof
that, so far as man's history is concerned with religion,
it is little better than a colossal blunder, would not be
nearly so complete. Moreover, it is a generalization
upon which religionists of all classes love to dwell, or
even to parade as one of the strongest evidences in
their favour; and it is always pleasant to be able to
give your opponent all for which he asks&mdash;feeling,
meanwhile, that you lose nothing in the giving.
Universality of belief in religion really proves no more
than the universality of telling lies. "All men are
liars" is as true, or as false, as "All men are religious."
For some men are not liars, and some men are not
religious. All the generalization means is that some of
both are found in every age and in every country, and
that is true whether we are dealing with the liar or
with the religious person.</p>

<p>What is ignored is the consideration that while at
one stage of culture religious belief is the widest and
most embracing of all beliefs it subsequently weakens,
not quite in direct proportion to the advance of culture,
but yet in such a way that one can say there is an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">{10}</a></span>
actual relation between a preponderance of the one
and a weakening of the other. In very primitive
communities gods are born and flourish with all the
rank exuberance of a tropical vegetation. In less
primitive times their number diminishes, and their
sphere of influence becomes more and more sharply
defined. The gods are still credited with the ability to
do certain things, but there are other things which do
somehow get done without them. How that discovery
and that division are made need not detain us for the
moment, but the fact is patent. Advancing civilization
sees the process continued and quickened, nay, that is
civilization; for until nature is rid of her "haughty
lords" and man realizes that there are at least some
natural forces that come within the control of his intelligence,
civilization cannot really be said to have
commenced. Continued advance sees the gods so
diminished in power and so weakened in numbers that
their very impotency is apt to breed for them the kind
of pity that one feels for a millionaire who becomes a
pauper, or for an autocratic monarch reduced to the
level of a voteless citizen.</p>

<p>The truth is that all the gods, like their human
creators, have in their birth the promise of death.
The nature of their birth gives them life, but cannot
promise them immortality. However much man commences
by worshipping gods, he sooner or later turns
his back upon them. Like the biblical deity he may
look at his creation and declare it good, but he also resembles
this deity in presently feeling the impulse to
destroy what he has made. To the products of his
mind man can no more give immortality than he can
to the work of his hands. In many cases the work
of his hands actually outlives that of his mind, for we
have to-day the remains of structures that were built
in the honour of gods whose very names are forgotten.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">{11}</a></span>
And to bury his gods is, after all, the only real apology
that man can offer for having created them.</p>

<p>This outgrowing of religion is no new thing in
human history. Thoughtful observers have always
been struck by the mortality among the gods, although
their demise has usually been chronicled in terms of
exultation by rival worshippers. But here and there a
keener observer has brought to bear on the matter a
breadth of thought which robbed the phenomenon of
its local character and gave it a universal application.
Thus, in one of his wonderfully modern dialogues
Lucian depicts the Olympian deities discussing, much
in the spirit of a modern Church Congress, the prevalence
of unbelief among men. The gods are disturbed
at finding that men are reaching the stage of either not
believing, or not troubling about them. There is a
great deal of talk, and finally one of the minor deities
treats them to a little plain truth&mdash;which appears to be
as rare, and as unwelcome in heaven as on earth. He
says&mdash;I quote from Froude's translation:&mdash;</p>

<blockquote><p>What other conclusion could they arrive at when
they saw the confusion around them? Good men
neglected, perishing in penury and slavery, and profligate
wretches wealthy, honoured and powerful.
Sacrilegious temple robbers undiscovered and unpunished;
devotees and saints beaten and crucified.
With such phenomena before them, of course men have
doubted our existence.... We affect surprise that men
who are not fools decline to put their faith in us. We
ought rather to be pleased that there is a man left
to say his prayers. We are among ourselves with no
strangers present. Tell us, then, Zeus, have you ever
really taken pains to distinguish between good men
and bad? Theseus, not you, destroyed the robbers in
Attica. As far as Providence was concerned, Sciron
and Pity-O-Campus might have murdered and
plundered to the end of time. If Eurystheus had not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">{12}</a></span>
looked into matters, and sent Hercules upon his
labours little would you have troubled yourself with
the Hydras and Centaurs. Let us be candid. All
that we have really cared for has been a steady altar
service. Everything else has been left to chance. And
now men are opening their eyes. They perceive that
whether they pray or don't pray, go to church or
don't go to church, makes no difference to them. And
we are receiving our deserts.</p></blockquote>

<p>The case could hardly be put more effectively. It is
the appeal to experience with a vengeance, a form of
argument of which religionists in general are very fond.
Of course, the argument does not touch the question
of the mere existence of a god, but it does set forth
the revolt of awakened common sense against the worship
of a "moral governor of the universe." We can
say of our day, as Lucian said of his, that men are
opening their eyes, and as a consequence the gods are
receiving their deserts.</p>

<p>Generally speaking, it is not difficult to see the
various steps by which man outgrew the conception of
the government of the world by intelligent forces.
From what we know of primitive thought we may say
that at first the gods dominated all. From the fall of
a rain-drop to the movement of a planet all was the
work of gods. Merely to question their power was the
wildest of errors and the gravest of crimes. Bit by
bit this vast territory was reclaimed&mdash;a task at the side
of which the conquest of the fever-stricken tropics or
the frozen north is mere child's play. It is quite needless
to enter into an elaborate speculation as to the
exact steps by which this process of deanthropomorphization&mdash;to
use a word of the late John Fiske's&mdash;was
accomplished, but one can picture the main line
by what we see taking place at later stages of development.
And there is no exception to the rule that so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">{13}</a></span>
soon as any group of phenomena is brought within the
conception of law the notion of deity in connection
with those phenomena tends to die out. And the sum
of the process is seen in the work of the great law
givers of science, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton,
Laplace, Lyell, Dalton, Darwin, etc., who between
them have presented us with a universe in which the
conception of deity simply has no place. Apologies
apart, the idea of deity is foreign to the spirit and
method of modern science.</p>

<p>In the region of the purely physical sciences this
process may be regarded as complete. In morals and
sociology, purely on account of the greater complexity
of the subjects, mystical and semi-supernatural conceptions
still linger, but it is only a question of time
for these branches of knowledge to follow the same
course as the physical sciences. In morals we are able
to trace, more or less completely, the development of
the moral sense from its first beginnings in the animal
world to its highest developments in man. What is
called the "mystery of morality" simply has no
existence to anyone who is not a mystery-monger by
profession or inclination. And here, too, the gods
have been receiving their deserts. For it is now clear
that instead of being a help to morals there has been
no greater obstacle to a healthy morality than the play
of religious ideas. In the name of God vices have been
declared virtues and virtues branded as vices. Belief
in God has been an unending source of moral perversion,
and it lies upon the face of historical development
that an intelligent morality, one that is capable
of adapting itself to the changing circumstances of
human nature, has only become possible with the
breaking down of religious authority.</p>

<p>Exactly the same phenomenon faces us in connection
with social life. We have to go back but a little way<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">{14}</a></span>
in human history to come to a time when the existence
of a State without a religion would have seemed to
people impossible. Much as Christians have quarrelled
about other things, they have been in agreement on
this point. The historic fight between the established
Church and the Nonconformists has never really been
for the disestablishment of all religion, and the confining
of the State to the discharge of purely secular
functions, but mainly as to <em>which</em> religion the State
shall uphold. To-day, the central issue is whether
the State shall teach any religion, whether that does
not lie right outside its legitimate functions. And this
marks an enormous advance. It is a plain recognition
of the truth that the gods have nothing to contribute
of any value to the development of our social life. It
marks the beginning of the end, and registers the
truth that man must be his own saviour here as elsewhere.
As in Lucian's day we are beginning to
realize that whether we pray or don't pray, go to
church or don't go to church, believe in the gods or
don't believe in them, makes no real or substantial
difference to natural happenings. Now as then we see
good men punished and bad ones rewarded, and they
who are not fools and have the courage to look facts
in the face, decline to put their faith in a deity who is
incapable of doing all things right or too careless to
exert his power.</p>

<p>It is not that the fight is over, or that there is to-day
little need to fight the forces of superstition. If that
were so, there would be no need to write what is here
written. Much as has been done, there is much yet to
do. The revolt against specific beliefs only serves to
illustrate a fight that is of much greater importance.
For there is little real social gain if one merely exchanges
one superstition for another. And, unfortunately,
the gentleman who declared that he had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">{15}</a></span>
given up the errors of the Church of Rome in order to
embrace those of the Church of England represents a
fairly common type. It is the prevalence of a particular
type of mind in society that constitutes a
danger, and it is against this that our aim is ultimately
directed. Great as is the amount of organized superstition
that exists, the amount of unorganized superstition
is still greater, and probably more dangerous.
One of the revelations of the late war was the evidence
it presented of the tremendous amount of raw credulity,
of the low type of intelligence that was still current,
and the small amount of critical ability the mass of
people bring to bear upon life. The legends that
gained currency&mdash;the army of Russians crossing
England, the number of mutilated Belgian babies that
were seen, the story of the Germans boiling down their
dead to extract the fat, a story that for obscene
stupidity beats everything else, the Mons angels, the
craze for mascots&mdash;all bore witness to the prevalence
of a frame of mind that bodes ill for progress.</p>

<p>The truth is, as Sir James Frazer reminds us, that
modern society is honeycombed with superstitions that
are not in themselves a whit more intellectually respectable
than those which dominate the minds of
savages. "The smooth surface of cultured society is
sapped and mined by superstition." Now and again
these hidden mines explode noisily, but the superstition
is always there, to be exploited by those who
have the wit to use it. From this point of view Christianity
is no more than a symptom of a source of great
social weakness, a manifestation of a weakness that
may find expression in strange and unexpected but
always more or less dangerous ways. It is against
the prevalence of this type of mind that the Freethinker
is really fighting. Freethinkers realize&mdash;apparently
they are the only ones that do realize<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">{16}</a></span>&mdash;that
the creation of a better type of society is finally
dependent upon the existence of a sanely educated intelligence,
and that will never exist while there are
large bodies of people who can persuade themselves
that human welfare is in some way dependent upon, or
furthered by, practices and beliefs that are not a bit
more intellectually respectable than those of the cave
men. If Christianity, as a mere system of beliefs, were
destroyed, we should only have cleared the way for the
final fight. Thousands of generations of superstitious
beliefs and practices that have embodied themselves in
our laws, our customs, our language, and our institutions,
are not to be easily destroyed. It is comparatively
simple to destroy a particular manifestation of
this disastrous heritage, but the type of mind to which
it has given birth is not so easily removed.</p>

<p>The fight is not over, but it is being fought from a
new vantage ground, and with better weapons than
have ever before been employed. History, anthropology,
and psychology have combined to place in
the hands of the modern Freethinker more deadly
weapons than those of previous generations were able
to employ. Before these weapons the defences of the
faith crumble like wooden forts before modern artillery.
It is no longer a question of debating whether
religious beliefs are true. So long as we give a
straightforward and honest meaning to those beliefs
we know that they are not true. It is, to-day, mainly
a question of making plain the nature of the forces
which led men and women to regard them as being
true. We know that the history of religion is the
history of a delusion, and the task of the student is to
recover those conditions which gave to this delusion
an appearance of truth and reality. That is becoming
more and more evident to all serious and informed
students of the subject.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">{17}</a></span>
The challenge of Freethought to religion constitutes
one of the oldest struggles in human history. It must
have had its beginning in the first glimmer of doubt
concerning a tribal deity which crossed the mind of
some more than usually thoughtful savage. Under
various forms and in many ways it has gone on ever
since. It has had many variations of fortune, often
apparently completely crushed, only to rise again
stronger and more daring than ever. To-day, Freethought
is the accepted mental attitude of a growing
number of men and women whose intelligence admits
of no question. It has taken a recognized place in the
intellectual world, and its hold on the educated intelligence
is rapidly increasing. It may well be that
in one form or another the antagonism between
critical Freethought and accepted teaching, whether
secular or religious, will continue as one of the permanent
aspects of social conflict. But so far as supernaturalism
is concerned the final issue can be no longer
in doubt. It is not by one voice or by one movement
that supernaturalism is condemned. Its condemnation
is written in the best forms of art, science and literature.
And that is only another way of saying that it
is condemned by life. Freethought holds the future
in fee, and nothing but an entire reversal of the order
of civilization can force it to forego its claims.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">{18}</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>
CHAPTER II.<br />
LIFE AND MIND.</h2>

<p>The outstanding feature of what may be called the
natural history of associated life is the way in which
biologic processes are gradually dominated by psychologic
ones. Whatever be the nature of mind, a question
that in no way concerns us here, there is no
denying the importance of the phenomena that come
within that category. To speak of the first beginnings
of mind is, in this connection, idle language. In
science there are no real beginnings. Things do not
begin to be, they simply emerge, and their emergence
is as imperceptible as the displacement of night by
day, or the development of the chicken from the egg.
But whatever the nature of the beginning of mind, its
appearance in the evolutionary series marked an event
of profound and revolutionary importance. Life received
a new impetus, and the struggle for existence
a new significance, the importance of which is not,
even to-day, generally recognized. The old formulæ
might still be used, but they had given to them a new
significance. The race was still to the swift and the
battle to the strong, but swiftness and strength were
manifested in new ways and by new means. Cunning
and intelligence began to do what was formerly done
without their co-operation. A new force had appeared,
arising out of the older forces as chemistry develops
from physics and biology from both. And, as we
should expect from analogy, we find the new force
dominating the older ones, and even bending them to
its needs.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">{19}</a></span>
Associated life meets us very early in the story of
animal existence, and we may assume that it ranks as a
genuine "survival quality." It enables some animals
to survive the attacks of others that are individually
stronger, and it may even be, as has been suggested,
that associated life is the normal form, and that
solitary animals represent a variation from the normal,
or perhaps a case of degeneration. But one result of
associated life is that it paves the way for the emergence
of mind as an active force in social evolution.
In his suggestive and important work on <cite>Mutual Aid</cite>,
Kropotkin has well shown how in the animal world
the purely biologic form of the struggle for existence
is checked and transformed by the factors of mutual
aid, association and protection. His illustrations
cover a very wide field; they include a great variety of
animal forms, and he may fairly claim to have established
the proposition that "an instinct has been
slowly developed among animals and men in the course
of an extremely long evolution ... which has taught
animals and men alike the force they can borrow from
mutual aid and support, and the joys they can find in
social life."</p>

<p>But there is, on the whole, a very sharp limit set
to the development of mind in the animal world. One
cause of this is the absence of a true "social medium,"
to use the admirable phrase of that versatile thinker,
George Henry Lewes. In the case of man, speech and
writing enable him to give to his advances and discoveries
a cumulative force such as can never exist in
their absence. On that subject more will be said later.
At present we may note another very important consequence
of the development of mind in evolution. In
pre-human, or sub-human society, perfection in the
struggle for existence takes the form of the creation or
the perfecting of an organic tool. Teeth or claws be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">{20}</a></span>come
stronger or larger, a limb is modified, sight becomes
keener, or there is a new effect in coloration.
The changes here, it will be observed, are all of an
organic kind, they are a part of the animal and are
inseparable from it, and they are only transmissible
by biologic heredity. And the rate of development is,
of necessity, slow.</p>

<p>When we turn to man and note the way in which he
overcomes the difficulties of his environment, we find
them to be mainly of a different order. His instruments
are not personal, in the sense of being a part of
his organic structure. We may say they do not belong
to him so much as they do to the race; while they are
certainly transmitted from generation to generation
irrespective of individuals. Instead of achieving conquest
of his environment by developing an organic
structure, man creates an inorganic tool. In a sense
he subdues and moulds the environment to his needs,
rather than modifies his structure in order to cope with
the environment. Against extremes of temperature
he fashions clothing and builds habitations. He discovers
fire, probably the most important discovery
ever made by mankind. He adds to his strength in
defence and attack by inventing weapons. He guards
himself from starvation by planting seeds, and so
harnesses the productive forces of nature to his needs.
He tames animals and so secures living engines of
labour. Later, he compensates for his bodily weaknesses
by inventing instruments which aid sight, hearing,
etc. Inventions are multiplied, methods of
locomotion and transportation are discovered, and the
difficulties of space and time are steadily minimized.
The net result of all this is that as a mere biologic
phenomenon man's evolution is checked. The biologic
modifications that still go on are of comparatively
small importance, except, probably, in the case of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">{21}</a></span>
evolution against disease. The developments that
take place are mainly mental in form and are social
in their incidence.</p>

<p>Now if the substantial truth of what has been said be
admitted, and I do not see how it can be successfully
challenged, there arise one or two considerations of
supreme importance. The first of these is that social
history becomes more and more a history of social
psychology. In social life we are watching the play of
social mind expressed through the medium of the individual.
The story of civilization is the record of the
piling of idea on idea, and the transforming power of
the whole on the environment. For tools, from the
flint chip of primitive man, down to the finished instrument
of the modern mechanic, are all so many products
of human mentality. From the primitive dug-out to
the Atlantic liner, from the stone spear-head to the
modern rifle, in all the inventions of civilized life we
are observing the application of mind to the conquest
of time, space, and material conditions. Our art, our
inventions, our institutions, are all so many illustrations
of the power of mind in transforming the
environment. A history of civilization, as distinguished
from a mere record of biologic growth, is
necessarily a history of the growing power of mind. It
is the cumulative ideas of the past expressed in inventions
and institutions that form the driving power
behind the man of to-day. These ideas form the most
valuable part of man's heritage, make him what he is,
and contain the promise of all that he may become.</p>

<p>So long as we confine ourselves to biologic evolution,
the way in which qualities are transmitted is
plain. There is no need to go beyond the organism
itself. But this heritage of ideas, peculiarly human as
it is, requires a "carrier" of an equally unique kind.
It is at this point that the significance of what we have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">{22}</a></span>
called the "social medium" emerges. The full
significance of this was first seen by G. H. Lewes.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>
Writing so far back as 1879 he said:&mdash;</p>

<blockquote><p>The distinguishing character of human psychology
is that to the three great factors, organism, external
medium, and heredity; it adds a fourth, namely, the
relation to a social medium, with its product, the
general mind.... While the mental functions are products
of the individual organism, the product, mind,
is more than an individual product. Like its great
instrument language, it is at once individual and
social. Each man speaks in virtue of the functions of
vocal expression, but also in virtue of the social need
of communication. The words spoken are not his
creation, yet he, too, must appropriate them by what
may be called a creative process before he can understand
them. What his tribe speaks he repeats; but
he does not simply echo their words, he rethinks them.
In the same way he adopts their experiences when he
assimilates them to his own.... Further, the experiences
come and go; they correct, enlarge, and
destroy one another, leaving behind them a certain
residual store, which condensed in intuitions and
formulated in principles, direct and modify all future
experiences.... Men living in groups co-operate like
the organs in an organism. Their actions have a
common impulse to a common end. Their desires and
opinions bear the common stamp of an impersonal
direction. Much of their life is common to all. The
roads, market-places and temples are for each and all.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">{23}</a></span>
Customs arise and are formulated in laws, the
restraint of all.... Each generation is born in this
social medium, and has to adapt itself to the established
forms.... A nation, a tribe, a sect is the medium
of the individual mind, as a sea, a river, or a pond,
is the medium of a fish.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
</blockquote>

<p>Biologically, what man inherits is capacity for acquisition.
But what he shall acquire, the direction in which
his native capacity shall express itself, is a matter over
which biologic forces have no control. This is determined
by society and social life. Given quite equal
capacity in two individuals, the output will be very
different if one is brought up in a remote Spanish
village and the other in Paris or London. Whether
a man shouts long live King George or long live the
Kaiser is mainly a question of social surroundings, and
but very little one of difference in native capacity. The
child of parents living in the highest civilized society,
if taken away while very young and brought up amid
a people in a very primitive state of culture, would, on
reaching maturity, differ but little from the people<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">{24}</a></span>
around him. He would think the thoughts that were
common to the society in which he was living as he
would speak their language and wear their dress. Had
Shakespeare been born among savages he could never
have written <cite>Hamlet</cite>. For the work of the genius, as
for that of the average man, society must provide the
materials in the shape of language, ideas, institutions,
and the thousand and one other things that go to make
up the life of a group, and which may be seen reflected
in the life of the individual. Suppose, says
Dr. McDougall:&mdash;</p>

<blockquote><p>that throughout the period of half a century every
child born to English parents was at once exchanged
(by the power of a magician's wand) for an infant of
the French, or other, European nation. Soon after
the close of this period the English nation would be
composed of individuals of French extraction, and the
French of individuals of English extraction. It is, I
think, clear that, in spite of this complete exchange
of innate characters between the two nations, there
would be but little immediate change of national
characteristics. The French people would still speak
French, and the English would speak English, with
all the local diversities to which we are accustomed
and without perceptible change of pronunciation. The
religion of the French would still be predominantly
Roman Catholic, and the English people would still
present the same diversity of Protestant creeds. The
course of political institutions would have suffered no
profound change, the customs and habits of the two
peoples would exhibit only such changes as might be
attributed to the lapse of time, though an acute
observer might notice an appreciable approximation
of the two peoples towards one another in all these
respects. The inhabitant of France would still be a
Frenchman and the inhabitant of England an Englishman
to all outward seeming, save that the physical
appearance of the two peoples would be transposed.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">{25}</a></span>
And we may go even further and assert that the same
would hold good if a similar exchange of infants were
effected between the English and any other less
closely allied nation, say the Turks or the Japanese.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p></blockquote>

<p>The products of human capacity are the material of
which civilization is built; these products constitute
the inheritance which one generation receives from
another. Whether this inheritance be large or small,
simple or complex, it is the chief determinant which
shapes the personality of each individual. What each
has by biological heredity is a given structure, that is,
capacity. But the direction of that capacity, the command
it enables one to acquire over his environment,
is in turn determined by the society into which he
happens to be born.</p>

<p>It has already been said that the materials of civilization,
whether they be tools, or institutions, or inventions,
or discoveries, or religious or ethical teachings,
are facts that can be directly described as psychological.
An institution&mdash;the Church, the Crown, the
Magistracy&mdash;is not transmitted as a building or as so
many sheets of paper, but as an idea or as a set of
ideas. A piece of machinery is, in the same way, a
mental fact, and is a physical one in only a subordinate
sense. And if this be admitted, we reach the
further truth that the environment to which man has
to adapt himself is essentially, so far as it is a social
environment, psychological. Not alone are the outward
marks of social life&mdash;the houses in which man
lives, the machines he uses to do his bidding&mdash;products
of his mental activity, but the more important features
of his environment, to which he must adapt himself,
and which so largely shape his character and determine
his conduct, are of a wholly psychological character.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">{26}</a></span>
In any society that is at all distinct from the animal,
there exist a number of beliefs, ideas and institutions,
traditions, and, in a later stage, a literature which play
a very important part in determining the direction of
man's mind. With increasing civilization, and the
development of better means of intercourse, any single
society finds itself brought into touch and under the
influence of other social groups. The whole of these
influences constitute a force which, surrounding an
individual at birth, inevitably shapes character in this
or that direction. They dominate the physical aspect
of life, and represent the determining forces of social
growth. Eliminate the psychological forces of life
and you eliminate all that can be properly called
civilization. It is wholly the transforming power of
mind on the environment that creates civilization, and
it is only by a steady grasp of this fact that civilization
can be properly understood.</p>

<p>I have pointed out a distinction between biological
and social, or psychological, heredity. But there is
one instance in which the two agree. This is that
we can only understand a thing by its history. We
may catalogue the existing peculiarities of an animal
form with no other material than that of the organism
before us, but thoroughly to understand it we must
know its history. Similarly, existing institutions may
have their justification in the present, but the causes
of their existence lie buried in the past. A king may
to-day be honoured on account of his personal worth,
but the reason why there is a king to be honoured
carries us back to that state of culture in which the
primitive priest and magic worker inspires fear and
awe. When we ring bells to call people to church we
perpetuate the fact that our ancestors rang them to
drive away evil spirits. We wear black at a funeral
because our primitive ancestors wished to hide them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">{27}</a></span>selves
from the dead man's ghost. We strew flowers
on a grave because food and other things were once
buried with the dead so that their spirits might
accompany the dead to the next world. In short, with
all human customs we are forced, if we wish to know
the reason for their present existence, to seek it in the
ideas that have dominated the minds of previous
generations.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>

<p>No one who has studied, in even a cursory manner,
the development of our social institutions can avoid
recognition of the profound influence exerted by the
primitive conceptions of life, death, and of the character
of natural forces. Every one of our social institutions
was born in the shadow of superstition, and
superstition acts as a powerful force in determining
the form they assume. Sir Henry Maine has shown to
what a large extent the laws of inheritance are bound
up with ancestor worship.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> Spencer has done the same
service for nearly all our institutions,<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> and Mr. Elton
says that "the oldest customs of inheritance in
England and Germany were, in their beginnings, con<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">{28}</a></span>nected
with a domestic religion, and based upon a worship
of ancestral spirits of which the hearthplace was
essentially the altar."<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> The same truth meets us in
the study of almost any institution. In fact, it is not
long before one who <em>thinks</em> evolution, instead of
merely knowing its formulæ, begins to realize the
truth of the saying by a German sociologist that in
dealing with social institutions we are concerned with
the "mental creations of aggregates." They are dependent
upon the persistence of a set of ideas, and so
long as these ideas are unshaken they are substantially
indestructible. To remove them the ideas upon which
they rest must be shaken and robbed of their authority.
That is the reason why at all times the fight for reform
so largely resolves itself into a contest of ideas.
Motives of self-interest may enter into the defence of
an institution, and in some case may be responsible
for the attempt to plant an institution where it does
not already exist, but in the main institutions persist
because of their harmony with a frame of mind that is
favourable to their being.</p>

<p>A great deal of criticism has been directed against
the conclusion of Buckle that improvement in the state
of mankind has chiefly resulted from an improvement
in the intellectual outlook. And yet when stated with
the necessary qualifications the generalization is as
sound as it can well be. Certainly, the belief held in
some quarters, and stated with an air of scientific precision,
that the material environment is the active force
which is ever urging to new mental development will
not fit the facts; for, as we have seen, the environment
to which human nature must adapt itself is mainly
mental in character, that is, it is made up in an increasing
measure of the products of man's own mental<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">{29}</a></span>
activity. The theory of the sentimental religionist
that the evil in the world results from the wickedness
of man, or, as he is fond of putting it, from the hardness
of man's heart, is grotesque in its ineffectiveness.
Soft heads have far more to do with the evil in the
world than have hard hearts. Indeed, one of the standing
difficulties of the orthodox moralist is, not to explain
the deeds of evil men, which explain themselves,
but to account for the harm done by "good" men,
and often as a consequence of their goodness. The
moral monster is a rarity, and evil is rarely the outcome
of a clear perception of its nature and a deliberate
resolve to pursue it. Paradoxical as it may sound,
it demands a measure of moral strength to do wrong,
consciously and deliberately, which the average man
or woman does not possess. And the world has never
found it a matter of great difficulty to deal with its
"bad" characters; it is the "good" ones that
present it with a constant problem.</p>

<p>The point is worth stressing, and we may do it from
more than one point of view. We may take, first of
all, the familiar illustration of religious persecution,
as exemplified in the quarrels of Catholics and Protestants.
On the ground of moral distinction no line could
be drawn between the two parties. Each shuddered
at the persecution inflicted by the other, and each regarded
the teachings of the other with the same degree
of moral aversion. And it has often been noted that
the men who administered so infamous an institution
as the Inquisition were not, in even the majority of
cases, bad men.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> A few may have had interested<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">{30}</a></span>
motives, but it would have been impossible to have
maintained so brutal an institution in the absence of a
general conviction of its rightness. In private life
those who could deliver men, women, and even children
over to torture were not worse husbands or parents
than others. Such differences as existed cannot be
attributed to a lack of moral endeavour, or to a difference
of "moral temperament." It was a difference
of intellectual outlook, and given certain religious
convictions persecution became a religious necessity.
The moral output was poor because the intellectual
standpoint was a wrong one.</p>

<p>If we could once get over the delusion of thinking of
human nature as being fundamentally different five
hundred years ago from what it is to-day, we should
escape a great many fallacies that are prevalent. The
changes that have taken place in human nature during
the historic period are so slight as to be practically
negligible. The motives that animate men and women
to-day are the motives that animated men and women
a thousand or two thousand years ago. The change is
in the direction and form of their manifestation only,
and it is in the light of the human nature around us
that we must study and interpret the human nature
that has gone before us. From that point of view
we may safely conclude that bad institutions were kept<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">{31}</a></span>
in being in the past for the same reason that they are
kept alive to-day. The majority must be blind to their
badness; and in any case it is a general perception of
their badness which leads to their destruction.</p>

<p>The subject of crime illustrates the same point.
Against crime as such, society is as set as ever. But
our attitude toward the causation and cure of crime,
and, above all, to the treatment of the criminal, has
undergone a profound alteration. And the change
that has taken place here has been away from the
Christian conception which brutalized the world for so
long, towards the point of view taken up by the
ancient Greeks, that wrong doing is the outcome of
ignorance. Expressed in the modern manner we should
say that crime is the result of an undeveloped nature,
or of a pathological one, or of a reversion to an earlier
predatory type, or the result of any or all of these
factors in combination with defective social conditions.
But this is only another way of saying that we have
exchanged the old, brutal, and ineffective methods for
more humane and effective ones because we look at the
problem of crime from a different intellectual angle.
A more exact knowledge of the causation of crime has
led us to a more sensible and a more humane treatment
of the criminal. And this, not alone in his own behalf,
but in the interests of the society in which he lives.
We may put it broadly that improvement comes from
an enlightened way of looking at things. Common
observation shows that people will go on tolerating
forms of brutality, year after year, without the least
sense of their wrongness. Familiarity, and the absence
of any impetus to examine current practice from a new
point of view seem to account for this. In the seventeenth
century the same people who could watch,
without any apparent hostility, the torture of an old
woman on the fantastic charge of intercourse with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">{32}</a></span>
Satan, had their feelings outraged by hearing a
secular song on Sunday. Imprisonment for "blasphemy,"
once regarded as a duty, has now become
ridiculous to all reasonable people. At one and the
same time, a little more than a hundred years ago in
this country, the same people who could denounce
cock-fighting on account of its brutality, could watch
unmoved the murdering of little children in the
factories of Lancashire. Not so long ago men in this
country fought duels under a sense of moral compulsion,
and the practice was only abandoned when a
changed point of view made people realize the absurdity
of trying to settle the justice of a cause by determining
which of two people were the most proficient with
sword or pistol. We have a continuation of the same
absurdity in those larger duels fought by nations
where the old verbal absurdities still retain their full
force, and where we actually add another absurdity
by retaining a number of professional duellists who
must be ready to embark on a duel whether they have
any personal feeling in the matter or not. And it seems
fairly safe to say that when it is realized that the duel
between nations as a means of settling differences is
not a bit more intellectually respectable than was the
ancient duello we shall not be far removed from seeing
the end of one of the greatest dangers to which modern
society is exposed.</p>

<p>Examples might be multiplied indefinitely, but
enough has been said to show what small reason there
is for assuming that changes in institutions are brought
about by the operation of some occult moral sense. It
is the enlightenment of the moral sense by the growth
of new ideas, by the impact of new knowledge leading
to a revaluation of things that is mainly responsible for
the change. The question of whether a man should or
should not be burned for a difference in religious belief<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">{33}</a></span>
was never one that could be settled by weighing up the
moral qualities of the two parties in the dispute. All
the moral judgment that has ever existed, even if
combined in the person of a single individual could
never decide that issue. It was entirely a question of
acquiring a new point of view from which to examine
the subject. Until that was done the whole force of the
moral sense was on the side of the persecutor. To
put the matter paradoxically, the better the man the
worse persecutor he became. It was mental enlightenment
that was needed, not moral enthusiasm.</p>

<p>The question of progress thus becomes, in all directions,
one of the impact of new ideas, in an environment
suitable to their reception and growth. A society
shut in on itself is always comparatively unprogressive,
and but for the movement of classes within it
would be completely so. The more closely the history
of civilization is studied the more clearly does that
fact emerge. Civilization is a synthetic movement, and
there can be no synthesis in the absence of dissolution
and resolution.</p>

<p>A fight of old ideas against new ones, a contest of
clashing culture levels, a struggle to get old things
looked at from a new point of view, these are the
features that characterize all efforts after reform. It
was said by some of the eighteenth century philosophers
that society was held together by agreement in a bond.
That is not quite correct. The truth is that society is
held together, as is any phase of social life, by a bond
of agreement. The agreement is not of the conscious,
documentary order, but it is there, and it consists in
sharing a common life created and maintained by
having a common tradition, and a common stock of
ideas and ideals. It is this that makes a man a member
of one social group rather than of another&mdash;Chinese,
American, French, German, or Choctaw. There is no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">{34}</a></span>
discriminating feature in what is called the economic
needs of people. The economic needs of human beings&mdash;food,
clothing, and shelter, are of the same order the
world over. And certainly the fact of a Chinaman
sharing in the economic life of Britain, or an Englishman
sharing in the economic life of China, would not
entitle either to be called genuine members of the
group in which he happened to be living. Membership
only begins to be when those belonging to a group share
in a common mental outfit. Even within a society,
and in relation to certain social groups, one can see
illustrations of the same principle. A man is not really
a member of a society of artists, lawyers, or doctors
merely by payment of an annual subscription. He is
that only when he becomes a participant in the
mental life of the group.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> It is this common stock of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">{35}</a></span>
mental facts which lies at the root of all collective
ideas&mdash;an army, a Church, or a nation. And ever the
fight is by way of attack and defence of the psychologic
fact.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>

<p>To do the Churches and other vested interests justice,
they have never lost sight of this truth, and it would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">{36}</a></span>
have been better for the race had others been equally
alive to its importance. The Churches have never
ceased to fight for the control of those public organs
that make for the formation of opinion. Their
struggle to control the press, the platform, and the
school means just this. Whatever they may have
taught, self-interest forced upon them recognition of
the truth that it was what men thought about things
that mattered. They have always opposed the introduction
of new ideas, and have fought for the retention
of old ones. It was a necessity of their existence. It
was also an admission of the truth that in order for
reform to become a fact the power of traditional ideas
must be broken. Man is what he thinks, is far nearer
the truth than the once famous saying, "Man is what
he eats." As a member of a social group man is
dominated by his ideas of things, and any movement
of reform must take cognisance of that fact if it is to
cherish reasonable hopes of success.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">{37}</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.<br />
WHAT IS FREETHOUGHT?</h2>

<p>Freedom of thought and freedom of speech stand to
each other as the two halves of a pair of scissors. Without
freedom of speech freedom of thought is robbed of
the better part of its utility, even if its existence is not
threatened. The one reacts on the other. As thought
provides the material for speech, so, in turn, it
deteriorates when it is denied expression. Speech is,
in fact, one of the great factors in human progress. It
is that which enables one generation to hand on to
another the discoveries made, the inventions produced,
the thoughts achieved, and so gives a degree of fixity
to the progress attained. For progress, while expressed
through the individual, is achieved by the race.
Individually, the man of to-day is not strikingly
superior in form or capacity to the man of five or ten
thousand years ago. But he knows more, can achieve
more, and is in that sense stronger than was his
ancestors. He is the heir of the ages, not as a figure of
speech, but as the most sober of facts. He inherits
what previous generations have acquired; the schoolboy
of to-day starts with a capital of inherited knowledge
that would have been an outfit for a philosopher
a few thousand years ago.</p>

<p>It is this that makes speech of so great importance
to the fact of progress. Without speech, written or
verbal, it would be impossible to conserve the products
of human achievement. Each generation would have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">{38}</a></span>
to start where its predecessor commenced, and it would
finish at about the same point. It would be the fable
of Sisyphus illustrated in the passing of each generation
of human beings.</p>

<p>But speech implies communication. There is not
very much pleasure in speaking to oneself. Even the
man who apologised for the practice on the ground that
he liked to address a sensible assembly would soon grow
tired of so restricted an audience. The function of
speech is to transmit ideas, and it follows, therefore,
that every embargo on the free exchange of ideas,
every obstacle to complete freedom of speech, is a
direct threat to the well-being of civilisation. As
Milton could say that a good book "is the precious
life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured
up to a life beyond life," and that "he who destroys
a good book kills reason itself," so we may say that
he who strikes at freedom of thought and speech is
aiming a blow at the very heart of human betterment.</p>

<p>In theory, the truth of what has been said would be
readily admitted, but in practice it has met, and still
meets, with a vigorous opposition. Governments
have exhausted their powers to prevent freedom of
intercourse between peoples, and every Church and
chapel has used its best endeavours to the same end.
Even to-day, when all are ready to pay lip-homage to
freedom of thought, the obstacles in the way of a
genuine freedom are still very great. Under the best
possible conditions there will probably always be some
coercion of opinion, if only of that unconscious kind
which society as a whole exerts upon its individual
members. But to this we have to add the coercion that
is consciously exerted to secure the formation of particular
opinions, and which has the dual effect of inducing
dissimulation in some and impotency in others.
Quite ignorantly parents commence the work when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">{39}</a></span>
they force upon children their own views of religion
and inculcate an exaggerated respect for authority.
They create an initial bias that is in only too many
cases fatal to real independence of thought. Social
pressure continues what a mistaken early training has
commenced. When opinions are made the test of
"good form," and one's social standing partly determined
by the kind of opinions that one holds, there is
developed on the one side hypocrisy, and on the other,
because certain opinions are banned, thought in general
is unhealthily freed from the sobering influence of enlightened
criticism.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>

<p>To-day the legal prohibition of religious dissent is
practically ineffective, and is certainly far less demoralizing
than the pressure that is exerted socially
and unofficially. In all probability this has always
been the case. For legal persecution must be open.
Part of its purpose is publicity, and that in itself is apt
to rouse hostility. Against open, legal persecution a
man will make a stand, or if he gives way to the force
arrayed against him may do so with no feeling of
personal degradation. But the conformity that is
secured by a threat of social boycott, the freedom of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">{40}</a></span>
speech that is prevented by choking the avenues of
intellectual intercourse, is far more deadly in its consequences,
and far more demoralizing in its influence
on character. To give way, as thousands do, not to
the open application of force, which carries no greater
personal reflection than does the soldier's surrender to
superior numbers, but to the dread of financial loss, to
the fear of losing a social status, that one may inwardly
despise even while in the act of securing it, or from
fear of offending those whom we may feel are not
worthy of our respect, these are the things that cannot
be done without eating into one's sense of self-respect,
and inflicting upon one's character an irreparable
injury.</p>

<p>On this matter more will be said later. For the
present I am concerned with the sense in which we are
using the word "Freethought." Fortunately, little
time need be wasted in discussing the once popular
retort to the Freethinker that if the principle of determinism
be accepted "free" thought is impossible.
It is surprising that such an argument should ever have
secured a vogue, and is only now interesting as an
indication of the mentality of the defender of orthodox
religion. Certainly no one who properly understands
the meaning of the word would use such an
argument. At best it is taking a word from sociology,
a sphere in which the meaning is quite clear and intelligible,
and applying it in the region of physical
science where it has not, and is not intended to have,
any meaning at all. In physical science a thing is
what it does, and the business of science is to note the
doings of forces and masses, their actions and reactions,
and express them in terms of natural "law." From
the point of view of physical science a thing is neither
free nor unfree, and to discuss natural happenings in
terms of freedom or bondage is equal to discussing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">{41}</a></span>
smell in terms of sight or colour in terms of smell.
But applied in a legitimate way the word "free" is
not only justifiable, it is indispensible. The confusion
arises when we take a word from a department
in which its meaning is quite clear and apply it in a
region where it has no application whatever.</p>

<p>Applied to opinion "Free" has the same origin and
the same application as the expressions "a free man,"
or a "free State," or "a free people." Taking either
of these expressions it is plain that they could have
originated only in a state of affairs where some people
are "free," and some are living in a state of bondage
or restraint. There is no need to trace the history of
this since so much is implied in the word itself. A
free State is one in which those belonging to it determine
their own laws without being coerced by an outside
power. A free man is one who is permitted to act
as his own nature prompts. The word "free" implies
nothing as to the nature of moral or mental causation,
that is a question of a wholly different order. The free
man exists over against the one who is not free, the
free State over against one that is held in some degree
of subjection to another State. There is no other
meaning to the word, and that meaning is quite clear
and definite.</p>

<p>Now Freethought has a precisely similar significance.
It says nothing as to the nature of thought,
the origin of thought, or the laws of thought. With
none of these questions is it vitally concerned. It
simply asserts that there are conditions under which
thought is not "free," that is, where it is coerced to a
foregone conclusion, and that these conditions are
fatal to thought in its higher and more valuable
aspects. Freethought is that form of thinking that
proceeds along lines of its own determining, rather
than along lines that are laid down by authority. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">{42}</a></span>
actual practice it is immediately concerned with the
expression of opinion rather than with its formation,
since no authority can prevent the formation of
opinion in any mind that is at all independent in its
movements and forms opinions on the basis of observed
facts and adequate reasoning. But its chief and
primary significance lies in its repudiation of the right
of authority to say what form the expression of opinion
shall take. And it is also clear that such a term as
"Freethought" could only have come into general
use and prominence in a society in which the free
circulation of opinion was more or less impeded.</p>

<p>It thus becomes specially significant that, merely as
a matter of history, the first active manifestation
of Freethought should have occurred in connection
with a revolt against religious teaching and authority.
This was no accident, but was rather a case of necessity.
For, in the first place, there is no other subject
in which pure authority plays so large a part as it
does in religion. All churches and all priesthoods,
ancient and modern, fall back upon the principle of
pure authority as a final method of enforcing their
hold upon the people. That, it may be noted in passing,
is one of the chief reasons why in all ages governments
have found religion one of the most serviceable
agencies in maintaining their sway. Secondly, there
seems to have been from the very earliest times a
radically different frame of mind in the approach to
secular and religious matters. So far as one can see
there appears to be, even in primitive societies, no
very strong opposition to the free discussion of matters
that are of a purely secular nature. Questions of
ways and means concerning these are freely debated
among savage tribes, and in all discussion differences
of opinion must be taken for granted. It is when we
approach religious subjects that a difference is seen.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">{43}</a></span>
Here the main concern is to determine the will of the
gods, and all reasoning is thus out of place, if not a
positive danger. The only thing is to discover "God's
will," and when we have his, or his will given in
"sacred" books the embargo on free thinking is
complete. This feature continues to the end. We do
not even to-day discuss religious matters in the same
open spirit in which secular matters are debated.
There is a bated breath, a timidity of criticism in discussing
religious subjects that does not appear when
we are discussing secular topics. With the thoroughly
religious man it is solely a question of what God
wishes him to do. In religion this affords the only
latitude for discussion, and even that disappears largely
when the will of God is placed before the people in the
shape of "revealed" writings. Fortunately for the
world "inspired" writings have never been so clearly
penned as to leave no room for doubt as to what they
actually meant. Clarity of meaning has never been
one of the qualities of divine authorship.</p>

<p>In this connection it is significant that the first form
of democratic government of which we have any clear
record should have been in freethinking, sceptical
Greece. Equally notable is it that in both Rome and
Greece the measure of mental toleration was greater
than it has ever been in other countries before or since.
In Rome to the very end of the Pagan domination
there existed no legislation against opinions, as such.
The holders of certain opinions might find themselves
in uncomfortable positions now and then, but action
against them had to rest on some ground other than
that which was afterwards known as heresy. There
existed no law in the Roman Empire against freedom
of opinion, and those who are familiar with Mr. H.
C. Lea's classic, <cite>History of the Inquisition</cite>, will recall
his account of the various tactics adopted by the Chris<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">{44}</a></span>tian
Church to introduce measures that would accustom
the public mind to legislation which should
establish the principle of persecution for opinion.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">{45}</a></span>
the end the Church succeeded in effecting this, and its
success was registered in the almost unbelievable
degradation of the human intellect which was exhibited
in the Christian world for centuries. So
complete was this demoralization that more than a
thousand years later we find men announcing as a most
daring principle a demand for freedom of discussion
which in old Greece and Rome was never officially
questioned. Christianity not merely killed freedom
wherever it established itself, but it came very near
killing even the memory of it.</p>

<p>It was, therefore, inevitable that in the western
world Freethought should come into prominence in
relation to the Christian religion and its claims. In the
Christian Church there existed an organization which
not alone worked with the avowed intention of determining
what men should think, but finally proceeded
to what was, perhaps, the logical conclusion, to say
what they should not think. No greater tyranny than
the Christian Church has ever existed. And this
applies, not to the Roman Church alone, but to every
Church within the limit of its opportunities. In the
name and in the interests of religion the Christian
Church took some of the worst passions of men and
consecrated them. The killing of heretics became one
of the most solemn duties and it was urged upon
secular rulers as such. The greatest instrument of
oppression ever formed, the Inquisition, was fashioned
for no other purpose than to root out opinions that
were obnoxious to the Church. It would have been
bad enough had the attempts of the Church to control
opinion been limited to religion. But that was not
the case. It aimed at taking under its control all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">{46}</a></span>
sorts of teaching on all sorts of subjects. Nothing
would have surprised an inhabitant of ancient Rome
more, could he have revisited the earth some dozen
centuries after the establishment of Christianity, than
to have found men being punished for criticising doctrines
that were in his day openly laughed at. And
nothing could have given an ancient Athenian greater
cause for wonder than to have found men being imprisoned
and burned for teaching cosmical theories
that were being debated in the schools of Athens two
thousand years before. Well might they have wondered
what had happened to the world, and well might
they have come to the conclusion that it had been
overtaken by an attack of universal insanity. And
the explanation would not have been so very wide of
the truth.</p>

<p>In this matter of suppression of freedom of thinking
there was little to choose between the Churches.
Each aimed at controlling the thought of mankind,
each was equally intolerant of any variation from the
set line, and each employed the same weapon of
coercion so far as circumstances permitted. At most
the Protestant Churches substituted a dead book for a
living Church, and in the end it may be questioned,
when all allowance is made for the changed circumstances
in which Protestantism operated, whether the
rule of the new Church was not more disastrous than
the older one. It had certainly less excuse for its intolerance.
The Roman Catholic Church might urge
that it never claimed to stand for freedom of opinion,
and whatever its sins it was so far free from the
offence of hypocrisy. But the Protestant Churches
could set up no such plea; they professed to stand on
freedom of conscience. And they thus added the
quality of inconsistency and hypocrisy to an offence
that was already grave enough in itself.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">{47}</a></span>
But whatever opinion one may have on that point,
it is certain that in practice the Protestant leaders were
as opposed to freedom of thought as were the Roman
Catholics. And Protestant bigotry left a mark on
European history that deserves special recognition.
For the first time it made the profession of Christianity
a definite part of the law of the secular State.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a>
Hitherto there had been no law in any of the European
States which made a profession of Christianity necessary.
There had been plenty of persecutions of non-Christians,
and the consequences of a rejection of
Christianity, if one lived in a Christian State, were
serious enough. But when the secular State punished
the heretic it was a manifestation of good will towards
the Church and not the expression of a legal enactment.
It was the direct influence of the Church on
the State. Church and State were legally distinct
during the mediæval period, however closely they may
have been allied in practice. With the arrival of
Protestantism and the backing of the reformed religion
given by certain of the Princes, the machinery of intolerance,
so to speak, was taken over by the State and
became one of its functions. It became as much the
duty of the secular officials to extirpate heresy, to secure
uniformity of religious belief as it was to the interest
of the Church to see that it was destroyed. Up to that
time it was the aim of the Church to make the State
one of its departments. It had never legally succeeded
in doing this, but it was not for the Roman Church to
sink to the subordinate position of becoming a department
of the State. It was left for Protestantism to make
the Church a branch of the State and to give religious
bigotry the full sanction of secular law.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">{48}</a></span>
Neither with Catholic nor Protestant could there
be, therefore, any relaxation in the opposition
offered to independent thinking. That still remained
the cardinal offence to the religious mind. In the name
of religion Protestants opposed the physics of Newton
as bitterly as Catholics opposed the physics of Galileo.
The geology of Hutton and Lyell, the chemistry of
Boyle and Dalton, the biology of Von Baer, Lamarck
and Darwin, with almost any other branch of science
that one cares to select, tell the same tale. And when
the desire for reform took a social turn there was the
same influence to be fought. For while the Roman
Catholic laid the chief insistence on obedience to the
Church, the Protestant laid as strong insistence on
obedience to the State, and made disobedience to its
orders a matter of almost religious revolt. The whole
force of religion was thus used to induce contentment
with the existing order, instead of to the creation
of an intelligent discontent which would lead to continuous
improvement. In view of these circumstances
it is not surprising that the word "Freethought"
should have lost in actual use its more general significance
of a denial of the place of mere authority in
matters of opinion, and have acquired a more definite
and precise connotation. It could not, of course, lose
its general meaning, but it gained a special application
and became properly associated with a definitely anti-theological
attitude. The growth in this direction was
gradual but inevitable. When the term first came into
general use, about the end of the seventeenth century,
it was mainly used with reference to those deists who
were then attacking Christianity. In that sense it continued
to be used for some time. But as Deism lost
ground, thanks partly to the Christian attack, the clear
and logical issue between Theism and Atheism became
apparent, with the result that the definite anti-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">{49}</a></span>religious
character of "Freethought" became firmly
established. And to-day it is mere affectation or
timidity to pretend that the word has any other vital
significance. To say that a man is a Freethinker is to
give, to ninety-nine people out of a hundred, the impression
that he is anti-religious. And in this direction
the popular sense of the word discloses what has been
its important historic function. Historically, the chief
stronghold of mere authority has been religion. In
science and in sociology, as well as in connection with
supernaturalism proper, every movement in the direction
of the free exercise of the intellect has met with
the unceasing opposition of religion. That has always
been at once the symbol and the instrument of oppression.
To attack religion has been to attack the enemy
in his capital. All else has been matter of outpost
skirmishing.</p>

<p>I have apparently gone a long way round to get at
the meaning of the word "Freethought," but it was
necessary. For it is of very little use, in the case of
an important word that has stood and stands for the
name of a movement, to go to a dictionary, or to appeal
to etymology. The latter has often a mere antiquarian
interest, and the former merely registers current meanings,
it does not make them. The use of a word
must ultimately be determined by the ideas it conveys
to those who hear it. And from what has been said the
meaning of this particular word should be fairly clear.
While standing historically for a reasoned protest
against the imposition of opinion by authority, and,
negatively, against such artificial conditions as prevent
the free circulation of opinion, it to-day stands
actually for a definitely anti-religious mental attitude.
And this is what one would naturally expect. Protests,
after all, are protests against something in the
concrete, even though they may embody the affirma<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">{50}</a></span>tion
of an abstract principle. And nowadays the
principle of pure authority has so few defenders that it
would be sheer waste of time, unless the protest
embodied a definite attitude with regard to specific
questions. We may, then, put it that to us "Freethought"
stands for a reasoned and definite opposition
to all forms of supernaturalism, it claims the right
to subject all religious beliefs to the test of reason, and
further claims that when so tested they break down
hopelessly. It is from this point of view that these
pages are written, and the warranty for so defining it
should be apparent from what has been said in this and
the preceding chapter.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">{51}</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br />
REBELLION AND REFORM.</h2>

<p>Rebellion and reform are not exactly twins, but they
are very closely related. For while all rebellion is not
reform, yet in the widest sense of the word, there is no
reform without rebellion. To fight for reform is to
rebel against the existing order and is part of the
eternal and fundamentally healthful struggle of the
new against the old, and of the living present against
the dead past. The rebel is thus at once a public
danger and a benefactor. He threatens the existing
order, but it is in the name of a larger and better
social life. And because of this it is his usual lot
to be crucified when living and deified when dead. So
it has always been, so in its main features will it
always be. If contemporaries were to recognize the
reformer as such, they would destroy his essential function
by making it useless. Improvement would become
an automatic process that would perfect itself
without opposition. As it is, the function of the rebel
is to act as an explosive force, and no society of average
human beings likes explosions. They are noisy, and
they are dangerous. For the reformer to complain at
not being hailed as a deliverer is for him to mistake
his part and place in social evolution.</p>

<p>The rebel and the reformer is, again, always in
minority. That follows from what has already been
said. It follows, too, from what we know of development
in general. Darwinism rests on the supreme
importance of the minority. It is an odd variation
here and there that acts as the starting point for a new<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">{52}</a></span>
species&mdash;and it has against it the swamping influence
of the rest of its kind that treads the old biological
line. Nature's choicest variations are of necessity with
the few, and when that variation has established itself
and become normal another has to appear before a new
start can be made.</p>

<p>Whether we take biology or psychology the same
condition appears. A new idea occurs to an individual
and it is as strictly a variation from the
normal as anything that occurs in the animal world.
The idea may form the starting point of a new theory,
or perhaps of a new social order. But to establish itself,
to become the characteristic property of the group,
it must run the gamut of persecution and the risk of
suppression. And suppressed it often is&mdash;for a time.
It is an idle maxim which teaches that truth always
conquers, if by that is implied that it does so at once.
That is not the truth. Lies have been victorious over
and over again. The Roman Catholic Church, one of
the greatest lies in the history of the human race, stood
the conqueror for many centuries. The teaching of the
rotundity of the earth and its revolution round the sun
was suppressed for hundreds of years until it was revived
in the 16th century. In the long run truth does
emerge, but a lie may have a terribly lengthy innings.
For the lie is accepted by the many, while the truth is
seen only by the few. But it is the few to whom we
turn when we look over the names of those who have
made the world what is it. All the benefits to society
come from the few, and society crucifies them to show
its gratitude. One may put it that society lives on the
usual, but flourishes on account of the exception.</p>

<p>Now there is something extremely significant in the
Christian religion tracing all the disasters of mankind
to a primal act of disobedience. It is a fact which discloses
in a flash the chief social function of religion<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">{53}</a></span>
in general and of Christianity in particular. Man's
duty is summed up in the one word obedience, and the
function of the (religiously) good man is to obey the
commands of God, as that of the good citizen is to obey
the commands of government. The two commands
meet and supplement each other with the mutual
advantage which results from the adjustment of the
upper and lower jaws of a hyena. And it explains why
the powers that be have always favoured the claims
of religion. It enabled them to rally to their aid the
tremendous and stupefying aid of religion and to place
rebellion to their orders on the same level as rebellion
against God. In Christian theology Satan is the arch-rebel;
hell is full of rebellious angels and disobedient
men and women. Heaven is reserved for the timid,
the tame, the obedient, the sheep-like. When the
Christ of the Gospels divides the people into goats and
sheep, it is the former that go to hell, and the latter
to heaven. The Church has not a rebel in its calendar,
although it has not a few rogues and many fools. To
the Church rebellion is always a sin, save on those rare
occasions when revolt is ordered in the interests of
the Church itself. In Greek mythology Prometheus
steals fire from heaven for the benefit of man and
suffers in consequence. The myth symbolizes the fact.
Always the man has had to win knowledge and happiness
in the teeth of opposition from the gods. Always
the race has owed its progress to the daring of the
rebel or of the rebellious few.</p>

<p>Often the Freethinker is denounced because he is
destructive or dangerous. What other is he expected
to be? And would he be of much use if he were otherwise??
I would go further and say that he is the most
destructive of all agencies because he is so intimately
concerned with the handling of the most destructive
of weapons&mdash;ideas. We waste a good deal of time in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">{54}</a></span>
denouncing certain people as dangerous when they
are in reality comparatively harmless. A man throws
a bomb, or breaks into a house, or robs one of a purse,
and a judge solemnly denounces him as a most
"dangerous member of society." It is all wrong.
These are comparatively harmless individuals. One
man throws a bomb, kills a few people, damages some
property, and there the matter ends. Another man
comes along and drops instead of a bomb a few ideas,
and the whole country is in a state of eruption.
Charles Peace pursues a career of piety and crime, gets
himself comfortably and religiously hanged, and
society congratulates itself on having got rid of a
dangerous person, and then forgets all about it. Karl
Marx visits England, prowls round London studying
the life of rich and poor, and drops <cite>Das Kapital</cite> on us.
A quiet and outwardly inoffensive individual, one who
never gave the police a moment's anxiety, spends years
studying earthworms, and flowers, and horses and cats,
and all sorts of moving things and presents society with
<cite>The Origin of Species</cite>. Organized society found itself
able to easily guard itself against the attacks of men
such as Charles Peace, it may with impunity extend
its hospitality to the thrower of bombs, or robber of
houses, but by what means can it protect itself against
the "peaceful" Marx or the "harmless" Darwin?
No society can afford to ignore in its midst a score of
original or independent thinkers, or if society does
ignore them they will not for long ignore society.
The thinker is really destructive. He destroys because
he creates; he creates because he destroys. The one
is the obverse of the other.</p>

<p>I am not making idle play with the word
"destruction." It is literally true that in human
society the most destructive and the most coercive
forces at work are ideas. They strike at established<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">{55}</a></span>
institutions and demand either their modification or
their removal. That is why the emergence of a new
idea is always an event of social significance.
Whether it be a good idea or a bad one will not affect
the truth of this statement. For over four years our
political mediocrities and muddle headed militarists
were acting as though the real problem before them
was to establish the superiority of one armed group
of men over another group. That was really a simple
matter. The important issue which society had to
face was the ideas that the shock of the war must
give rise to. Thinkers saw this; but thinkers do not
get the public ear either as politicians or militarists.
And now events are driving home the lesson. The
ideas of Bolshevism and Sinn Feinism proved far more
"dangerous" than the German armies. The Allied
forces could handle the one, but they were powerless
before the other. It is not a question of whether these
particular ideas are good or bad, or whether we approve
or disapprove of them, but entirely one that, being
ideas, they represent a far more "destructive" power
than either bomb or gun. They are at once the forces
that act as the cement of society and those that may
hurl it into chaotic fragments.</p>

<p>Whether an idea will survive or not must, in the end,
be determined by circumstances, but in itself a new
idea may be taken as the mental analogue of the
variation which takes place in physical structures, and
which forms the raw material of natural selection.
And if that is so, it is evident that any attempt to
prevent the play of new ideas on old institutions is
striking at the very fact of progress. For if we are
to encourage variation we must permit it in all
directions, up as well as down, for evil as well as for
good. You cannot check variation in one direction
without checking it in all. You cannot prevent the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">{56}</a></span>
appearance of a new idea that you do not want without
threatening the appearance of a number of ideas
that you would eagerly welcome. It is, therefore,
always better to encourage the appearance of a bad
idea than it is to risk the suppression of a good one.
Besides, it is not always that force applied to the
suppression of ideas succeeds in its object. What it
often does is to cause the persecuted idea to assume a
more violent form, to ensure a more abrupt break with
the past than would otherwise occur, with the risk of
a period of reaction before orderly progress is resumed.
The only way to silence an idea is to answer it. You
cannot reply to a belief with bullets, or bayonet a
theory into silence. History contains many lessons,
but none that is plainer than this one, and none that
religious and secular tyrannies learn with greater
reluctance.</p>

<p>The Churches admit by their practice the truth of
what has been said. They have always understood that
the right way to keep society in a stationary position
is to prevent the introduction of new ideas. It is
thought against which they have warred, the thinker
against whom they have directed their deadliest
weapons. The Christian Church has been tolerant towards
the criminal, and has always been intolerant towards
the heretic and the Freethinker. For the latter
the naming <i>auto da fé</i>, for the former the moderate
penance and the "go, and sin no more." The
worst of its tortures were neither created for
nor applied to the thief and the assassin, but
were specially designed for the unbeliever. In
this the Church acted with a sure instinct. The
thief threatens no institution, not even that of
private property. "Thou shalt not steal" is as much
the law of a thieves' kitchen as it is of Mayfair.
But Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Lyell, Darwin,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">{57}</a></span>
these are the men who convey a threat in all they write,
who destroy and create with a splendour that smacks
of the power with which Christians have endowed
their mythical deity. No aggregation of criminals
has ever threatened the security of the Church, or
even disturbed its serenity. On the contrary, the
worse, morally, the time, the greater the influence of
Christianity. It flourishes on human weakness and
social vice as the bacilli of tuberculosis do in darkness
and dirt. It is when weakness gives place to
strength, and darkness to light that the Church finds
its power weakening. The Church could forgive
the men who instituted the black slave trade, she
could forgive those who were responsible for the
horrors of the English factory system, but she could
never forgive the writer of the <cite>Age of Reason</cite>. She has
always known how to distinguish her friends from her
foes.</p>

<p>Right or wrong, then, the heretic, the Freethinker,
represents a figure of considerable social significance.
His social value does not lie wholly in the fact of his
opinions being sound or his judgment impeccable.
Mere revolt or heresy can never carry that assurance
with it. The important thing about the rebel is that
he represents a spirit, a temper, in the absence of
which society would stagnate. It is bad when people
revolt without cause, but it is infinitely better that a
people should revolt without cause than that they
should have cause for rebellion without possessing
the courage of a kick. That man should have the
courage to revolt against the thing which he believes
to be wrong is of infinitely greater consequence than
that he should be right in condemning the thing
against which he revolts. Whether the rebel is right
or wrong time and consequence alone can tell, but
nothing can make good the evil of a community re<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">{58}</a></span>duced
to sheep-like acquiescence in whatever may be
imposed upon them. The "Their's not to reason
why" attitude, however admirable in an army, is intolerable
and dangerous in social life. Replying to
those who shrieked about the "horrors" of the
French Revolution, and who preached the virtue of
patriotic obedience to established authority, Carlyle,
with an eye on Ireland, sarcastically admitted that the
"horrors" were very bad indeed, but he added:&mdash;</p>

<blockquote><p>What if history somewhere on this planet were to
hear of a nation, the third soul of whom had not for
thirty weeks of each year as many third-rate potatoes
as would sustain him? History in that case, feels
bound to consider that starvation is starvation; that
starvation presupposes much; history ventures to
assert that the French Sansculotte of Nine-three, who
roused from a long death sleep, could rush at once
to the frontiers and die fighting for an immortal hope
and faith of deliverance for him and his, was but the
second miserablest of men.</p></blockquote>

<p>And that same history, looking back through the ages,
is bound to confess that it is to the great rebels, from
Satan onward, that the world mainly owes whatever
of greatness or happiness it has achieved.</p>

<p>One other quality of the rebel remains to be noted.
In his revolt against established authority, in his
determination to wreck cherished institutions for the
realization of an ideal, the rebel is not the representative
of an anti-social idea or of an anti-social force.
He is the true representative of the strongest of social
influences. The very revolt against the social institutions
that exist is in the name and for the realization
of a larger and a better social order that he hopes to
create. A man who is ready to sacrifice his life in the
pursuit of an ideal cannot, whatever else he may be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">{59}</a></span>
accused of, be reasonably accused of selfishness or of
a want of "social consciousness." He is a vital expression
of the centuries of social life which have gone
before and which have made us all what we are. Were
his social sense weaker he would risk less. Were he
selfish he would not trouble about the conversion of
his fellows. The spirit of revolt represents an important
factor in the process of social development, and
they who are most strenuous in their denunciation of
social control, are often, even though unconsciously,
the strongest evidence of its overpowering influence.</p>

<p>Fed as we are with the mental food prepared by our
Churches and governments, to whose interests it is
that the rebel and the Freethinker should be decried
and denounced, we are all too apt to overlook the
significance of the rebel. Yet he is invariably the one
who voices what the many are afraid or unable to
express. The masses suffer dumbly, and the persistence
of their suffering breeds a sense of its inevitability.
It is only when these dumb masses find a
voice that they threaten the established order, and for
this the man of ideas is essential. That is why all
vested interests, religious and social, hate him so
heartily. They recognize that of all the forces with
which they deal an idea is the greatest and the most
untamable. Once in being it is the most difficult to
suppress. It is more explosive than dynamite and
more shattering in its effects. Physical force may destroy
a monarch, but it is only the force of an idea that
can destroy a monarchy. You may destroy a church
with cannon, but cannon are powerless against Church
doctrines. An idea comes as near realizing the
quality of indestructibility as anything we know.
You may quiet anything in the world with greater
ease than you may reduce a strong thinker to silence,
or subdue anything with greater facility than you may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">{60}</a></span>
subdue the idea that is born of strenuous thought.
Fire may be extinguished and strife made to cease,
ambition may be killed and the lust for power grow
faint. The one thing that defies all and that finally
conquers is the truth which strong men see and for
which brave men fight.</p>

<p>It is thus left for the philosophy of Freethought,
comprehensive here as elsewhere, to find a place for
the rebel and to recognize the part he plays in the
evolution of the race. For rebellion roots itself
ultimately in the spirit of mental independence. And
that whether a particular act of revolt may be justifiable
or not. It is bred of the past, but it looks forward
hopefully and fearlessly to the future, and it sees in
the present the material out of which that better future
may be carved. That the mass of people find in the
rebel someone whom it is moved to suppress is in no
wise surprising. New things are not at first always
pleasant, even though they may be necessary. But
the temper of mind from which rebellion springs is
one that society can only suppress at its peril.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">{61}</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.<br />
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CHILD.</h2>

<p>If the truth of what has been said above be admitted,
it follows that civilization has two fundamental aspects.
On the one side there is the environment, made up&mdash;so
far as civilized humanity is concerned&mdash;of the ideas,
the beliefs, the customs, and the stored up knowledge
of preceding generations, and on the other side we
have an organism which in virtue of its education responds
to the environmental stimuli in a given manner.
Between the man of to-day and the man of an earlier
generation the vital distinction is not that the present
day one is, as an organism, better, that he has keener
sight, or stronger muscles, or a brain of greater
capacity, but that he has a truer perception of things,
and in virtue of his enlarged knowledge is able to
mould natural forces, including the impulses of his
own nature, in a more desirable manner. And he can
do this because, as I have already said, he inherits
what previous generations have acquired, and so reaps
the benefits of what they have done.</p>

<p>We may illustrate this in a very simple manner.
One of the most striking differences between the man
of to-day and the man of the past is the attitude of the
two in relation to natural phenomena. To the people
of not so many generations ago an eclipse was a very
serious thing, fraught with the promise of disaster to
mankind. The appearance of a comet was no less<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">{62}</a></span>
ominous. John Knox saw in comets an indication of
the wrath of heaven, and in all countries the Churches
fought with all their might against the growth of the
scientific view. Away back in antiquity we meet with
the same view. There is, for example, the classic case
of the Greek general Nikias, who, when about to
extricate his army from a dangerous position before
Syracuse, was told that an eclipse of the sun indicated
that the gods wished him to stay where he was for
three times nine days. Nikias obeyed the oracles with
the result that his army was captured. Now it is
certain that no general to-day would act in that
manner, and if he did it is equally certain that he
would be court-martialled. Equally clear is it that
comets and eclipses have ceased to infect the modern
mind with terror, and are now only objects of study to
the learned, and of curiosity to the unlearned. But
the difference here is entirely one of knowledge. Our
ancestors reacted to the appearance of a comet or an
eclipse in a particular manner because their knowledge
of these things was of a certain kind. It was not at
all a case of feeling, or of degree of feeling, or of
having a better brain, but simply a matter of reacting
to an environmental influence in terms of an understanding
of certain things. Had we the same conception
of these things that our ancestors had we
should react in the same manner. We act differently
because our understanding of things is different. We
may put it briefly that the kind of reaction which we
make to the things around us is mainly determined by
our knowledge concerning their nature.</p>

<p>There is one other fact that brings into prominence
the importance of the kind of reaction which we make
to environmental stimuli. Put briefly, we may say
that an important distinction between the animal and
man is that the animal passes its existence in a com<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">{63}</a></span>paratively
simple environment where the experiences
are few in kind and often repeated, whereas with man
the environment is very complex, the experiences are
varied in character, and may be only repeated after
long intervals. The consequence is that in order to
get through life an animal needs a few simple instincts
which automatically respond to frequently repeated
experiences, while on the other hand there must be
with man opportunity for the kind of response which
goes under the name of intelligent action. It is this
which gives us the reason, or the explanation, why of
all animals the human being is born the most helpless,
and why he remains helpless for a longer period than
does any other. The prolonged infancy is the opportunity
given to the human being to acquire the
benefits of education and so to reap the full advantage
of that social heritage which, as we have shown, raises
him so far above the level of past generations. Or we
may express the matter with the late Professor Fiske,
who was the first, I think, to dwell at length upon
this phenomenon, that the distinction between man
and the animal world is that in the one case we have
developed instincts with small capacity for education,
in the other few instincts with great capacity for
education.</p>

<p>It is often said that the Churches have failed to pay
attention to education, or have not taken it seriously.
That is quite wrong. It may, indeed, be said that they
have never failed to attend to education, and have
always taken it seriously&mdash;with disastrous results to
education and to social life. Ever since the birth of
the modern movement for education the Church has
fought hard to maintain its control of schools, and
there is every reason why this should be so. Survival
in the animal world may be secured in two ways. On
the one side we may have a continuance of a special<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">{64}</a></span>
sort of environment to which a given structure is
properly adapted; on the other there may be a modification
of the animal to meet the demands of a changing
environment.</p>

<p>Applying this principle to the question of the
Churches and education the moral is clear. The
human environment changes more than that of any
other animal. The mere amassing of experience and
its expression in the form of new institutions or in the
modification of already existing ones, is enough to
effect a change in the environment of successive generations.
The Christian Church, or for the matter of
that, any form of religion, has before it two possible
courses. Either it must maintain an environment that
is as little as possible unchanged, or it must modify its
body of teaching to meet the changed surroundings.
As a mere matter of fact both processes go on side
by side, but consciously the Churches have usually
followed the course of trying to maintain an unchanged
environment. This is the real significance of the
attempt of the more orthodox to boycott new, or
heretical literature, or lectures, or to produce a
"religious atmosphere" round the child. It is an
attempt to create an environment to which the child's
mind will respond in a manner that is favourable to the
claims and teachings of the Christian Church. The
Church dare not openly and plainly throw overboard
its body of doctrines to meet the needs of the modern
mind; and the only thing remaining is to keep the
modern mind as backward as possible in order that it
may rest content with a teaching that is reminiscent
of a past stage of civilization.</p>

<p>In this connection it is interesting to note that the
struggle for the child is essentially a modern phrase.
So long as the teaching of religion is in, at least, a
working harmony with current knowledge and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">{65}</a></span>
general body of the social forces the question of religious
instruction does not emerge. Life itself&mdash;social
life that is&mdash;to a very considerable extent enforces
religious teaching. At all events it does not
violently contradict it. But as, owing to the accumulation
of knowledge, views of the world and of man
develop that are not in harmony with accepted religious
teaching, the Churches are forced to attempt the
maintenance of an environment of a special religious
kind to which their teaching is adapted. Hence the
growing prominence of the division of secular and
sacred as things that have to do with religion and
things that have not. Hence, too, the importance to
the Churches of acquiring power over the child's mind
before it is brought completely under the influence of
an environment in which orthodox teachings can only
present themselves as a gross anachronism.</p>

<p>Thus, one may say with absolute confidence that if
in a modern environment a child was left free with regard
to modern influences there is nothing that would
lead to an acceptance of religion. Our ancestors grew
up familiar with the idea of the miraculous and the
supernatural generally because there was nothing in
the existing knowledge of the world that contradicted
it. But what part is there in the general education of
the child in modern society that would lead to that
end? So far as it is taught anything about the world
it learns to regard it in terms of causation and of
positive knowledge. It finds itself surrounded with
machinery, and inventions, and with a thousand and
one mechanical and other inventions which do not in
the very remotest degree suggest the supernatural. In
other words, the response of a modern child in a
modern environment is of a strictly non-religious kind.
Left alone it would no more become religious in the
sense of believing in the religious teachings of any of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">{66}</a></span>
the Churches than it would pass through life looking
for miracles or accepting fairy tales as sober statements
of historic fact. It would no more express itself in
terms of religion than it would describe an eclipse in
the language of our ancestors of five hundred years
ago.</p>

<p>In self defence the Churches are thus bound to make
a fight for the possession of the child. They cannot
wait, because that means allowing the child to grow to
maturity and then dealing with it when it is able to
examine religion with some regard to its historic
evolution, and with a due appreciation of the hopelessly
unscientific character of the conception of the supernatural.
They must, so far as they can, protect the
growing child from the influence of all those environmental
forces that make for the disintegration of
religious beliefs. The only way in which the Churches
can at all make sure of a supply of recruits is by impressing
them before they are old enough to resist.
As the Germany of the Kaiser is said to have militarized
the nation by commencing with the schools, so the
Churches hope to keep the nations religious by commencing
with the children. Apart from these considerations
there is no reason why religion could not
wait, as other subjects wait, till the child is old enough
to understand and appreciate it. But with the
Churches it is literally the child or nothing.</p>

<p>From the point of view of citizenship the retention
of religion in State schools is a manifest injustice.
If ever religious instruction could be justified in any
circumstances it is when the religion taught represents
at least the professed beliefs of the whole of the people.
But that is clearly not the case to-day. Only a section
of the people can be called, even formally, Christian.
Large numbers are quite opposed to Christianity, and
large numbers deliberately reject all religion. How,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">{67}</a></span>
then, can the State undertake the teaching of a religion
without at the same time rousing resentment in and
inflicting an injustice on a large number of its
members? It cannot be done, and the crowning
absurdity is that the State acknowledges the non-essential
character of religion by permitting all who
will to go without. In secular subjects it permits no
such option. It says that all children shall receive
certain tuition in certain subjects for a given period.
It makes instruction in these subjects compulsory on
the definite and intelligible ground that the education
given is necessary to the intelligent discharge of the
duties of citizenship. It does not do that in the case
of religion, and it dare not do that. No government
to-day would have the impudence to say that discharge
of the duties of citizenship is dependent upon
acceptance of the Athanasian Creed, or upon the belief
in the Bible, or in an after life. And not being
able to say this it is driven to the absurd position of, on
the one hand saying to the people, that religion shall
be taught in the State schools, and on the other, if one
doesn't care to have it he may leave it alone without
suffering the slightest disqualification.</p>

<p>Indeed, it is impossible for instruction in religion to
be genuinely called education at all. If I may be
allowed to repeat what I have said elsewhere on this
subject, one may well ask:&mdash;</p>

<blockquote><p>What is it that the genuine educationalist aims at?
The imparting of knowledge is, of course, essential.
But, in the main, education consists in a wholesome
training of mind and body, in forming habits of
cleanliness, truthfulness, honesty, kindness, the development
of a sense of duty and of justice. Can it
be said in truth that what is called religious instruction
does these things, or that instruction in them is
actually inseparable from religion? Does the creation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">{68}</a></span>
of a religious "atmosphere," the telling of stories of
God or Jesus or angels or devils&mdash;I omit hell&mdash;have
any influence in the direction of cultivating a sound
mind in a sound body? Will anyone contend that the
child has even a passing understanding of subjects
over which all adults are more or less mystified? To
confuse is not to instruct, to mystify is not to enlighten,
the repetition of meaningless phrases can
leave behind no healthy residuum in the mind. It is
the development of capacity along right lines that is
important, not the mere cramming of verbal formulæ.
Above all, it is the function of the true teacher to
make his pupil independent of him. The aim of the
priest is to keep one eternally dependent upon his
ministrations. The final and fatal criticism upon religious
instruction is that it is not education at all.</p>

<p>It may be argued that a policy of creating sentiments
in favour of certain things not wholly understood
by the child is followed in connection with
matters other than religion. We do not wait until a
child is old enough to appreciate the intellectual
justification of ethics to train it in morals. And in
many directions we seek to develop some tendencies
and to suppress others in accordance with an accepted
standard. All this may be admitted as quite true,
but it may be said in reply that these are things for
which an adequate reason <em>can</em> be given, and we are
sure of the child's approbation when it is old enough
to appreciate what has been done. But in the case of
religion the situation is altogether different. We are
here forcing upon the child as true, as of the same
admitted value as ordinary ethical teaching, certain
religious doctrines about which adults themselves
dispute with the greatest acrimony. And there is
clearly a wide and vital distinction between cultivating
in a child sentiments the validity of which may at
any time be demonstrated, or teachings upon the
truth of which practically all adults are agreed, and
impressing upon it teachings which all agree may be
false. We are exploiting the child in the interests of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">{69}</a></span>
a Church. Parents are allowing themselves to be made
the catspaws of priests; and it is not the least formidable
of the counts against the Church's influence
that it converts into active enemies of children those
who should stand as their chief protectors. It is
religion which makes it true that "a <em>child's</em> foes
shall be those of his own household."<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p></blockquote>

<p>Where the claim to force religion upon the child breaks
down on such grounds as those outlined above it is
quite certain that it cannot be made good upon any
other ground. Historically, it is also clear that we do
not find that conduct was better in those ages when the
Christian religion was held most unquestioningly, but
rather the reverse. The moralization of the world has,
as a matter of historic fact, kept pace with the
secularizing of life. This is true both as regards
theory and fact. The application of scientific methods
to ethical problems has taught us more of the nature of
morality in the short space of three or four generations
than Christian teaching did in a thousand years. And
it is not with an expansion of the power and influence
of religion that conduct has undergone an improvement,
but with the bringing of people together in terms
of secular relationships and reducing their religious
beliefs to the level of speculative ideas which men
may hold or reject as they think fit, so long as they do
not allow them to influence their relations to one
another.</p>

<p>On all grounds it is urgent that the child should be
rescued from the clutches of the priest. It is unfair
to the child to so take advantage of its trust, its
innocence, and its ignorance, and to force upon it as
true teachings that which we must all admit may be
false, and which, in a growing number of cases, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">{70}</a></span>
child when it grows up either rejects absolutely or considerably
modifies. It is unjust to the principle upon
which the modern State rests, because it is teaching
the speculative beliefs of a few with money raised from
the taxation of all. The whole tendency of life in the
modern State is in the direction of secularization&mdash;confining
the duties and activities of the State to those
actions which have their meaning and application to
this life. Every argument that is valid against the
State forcing religion upon the adult is valid also
against the State forcing religion upon the child. And,
on the other hand, it is really absurd to say that religion
must be forced upon the child, but we are outraging
the rights of the individual and perpetuating an
intolerable wrong if we force it upon the adult. Surely
the dawning and developing individuality of the child
has claims on the community that are not less urgent
than those of the adult.</p>

<p>Finally, the resolve to rescue the child from the
clutches of the priest is in the interest of civilization
itself. All human experience shows that a civilization
that is under the control of a priesthood is doomed.
From the days of ancient Egypt there is no exception
to this rule. And sooner or later a people, if they are
to progress, are compelled to attempt to limit the control
of the priest over life. The whole of the struggle
of the Reformation was fundamentally for the control
of the secular power&mdash;whether life should or should
not be under the control of the Church. In that contest,
over a large part of Europe, the Roman Church
lost. But the victory was only a very partial one. It
was never complete. The old priest was driven out,
but the new Presbyter remained, and he was but the
old tyrant in another form. Ever since then the fight
has gone on, and ever since, the Protestant minister,
equally with the Catholic priest, has striven for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">{71}</a></span>
control of education and so to dominate the mind of
the rising generation. The fight for the liberation of
the child is thus a fight for the control or the directing
of civilization. It is a question of whether we are
to permit the priest to hold the future to ransom by
permitting this control of the child, or whether we are
to leave religious beliefs, as we leave other beliefs of a
speculative character, to such a time as the child is old
enough to understand them. It is a fight for the future
of civilization.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">{72}</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br />
THE NATURE OF RELIGION.</h2>

<p>It is no mere paradox to say that religion is most interesting
to those who have ceased to believe in it.
The reason for this is not far to seek. Religious beliefs
play so large a part in the early history of society,
and are so influential in social history generally, that
it is impossible to leave religion alone without forfeiting
an adequate comprehension of a large part of
social evolution. Human development forms a continuous
record; our institutions, whatever be their
nature, have their roots in the far past, and often, even
when modified in form, retain their essential characteristics.
No student of social history can travel
far or dig deeply without finding himself in contact
with religion in some form. And the mass of mankind
are not yet so far removed from "primitive"
humanity as to give to the study of religion an exclusively
archæological interest.</p>

<p>Where so much is discord it is well, if it be possible,
to start with a basis of agreement. And on one point,
at least, there is substantial unity among critics.
There is a general agreement among students of
folk lore, comparative mythology, and anthropology,
that religious ideas rest ultimately upon an interpretation
of nature that is now generally discarded.
Differing as they do on details, there is consent
upon this point. It is the world of the savage that
originates the religion of the savage, and upon that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">{73}</a></span>
rests the religions of civilized man as surely as his
physical structure goes back to the animal world for
its beginning. And in giving birth to a religious explanation
of his world the savage was only pursuing
the normal path of human development. Mankind
progresses through trial and error; doubtful and
erroneous theories are framed before more reliable
ones are established, and while truth may crown our
endeavours it seldom meets us at the outset. Religious
beliefs thus form man's earliest interpretation of
nature. On this there is, as I have said, general agreement,
and it is as well not to permit ourselves to lose
sight of that in the discussion of the various theories
that are put forward as to the exact nature of the
stages of religious development.</p>

<p>In many directions the less accurate theories of
things are replaced gradually and smoothly by more
reliable explanations. But in religion this is not so.
For many reasons, with which we are not now
immediately concerned, religious beliefs are not outgrown
without considerable "growing pains." And
a long time after the point of view from which religious
beliefs sprang has been given up, the conclusions that
were based on that point of view are held to most
tenaciously. And yet if one accepts the scientific
story of the origins of religious ideas there seems no
justification whatever for this. Religion cannot transcend
its origin. Multiply nothing to infinity and the
result is still nothing. Illusion can beget nothing but
illusion, even though in its pursuit we may stumble
on reality. And no amount of ingenuity can extract
truth from falsehood.</p>

<p>One's surprise at the perpetuation of this particular
delusion is diminished by the reflection that the period
during which we have possessed anything like an exact
knowledge of the character and operations of natural<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">{74}</a></span>
forces is, after all, but an infinitesimal portion of the
time the race has been in existence. Three or four
centuries at most cover the period during which such
knowledge has been at our command, and small as this
is in relation to the thousands of generations wherein
superstition has reigned unchallenged, a knowledge of
the laws of mental life belongs only to the latter
portion. And even then the knowledge available has
been till recently the possession of a class, while to-day,
large masses of the population are under the domination
of the crudest of superstitions. The belief that
thirteen is an unlucky number, that a horse-shoe brings
luck, the extent to which palmistry and astrology
flourishes, the cases of witchcraft that crop up every
now and again, all bear testimony to the vast mass of
superstition that is still with us. The primitive mind
is still alive and active, disguised though it may be by
a veneer of civilization and a terribly superficial
education. And when one reflects upon all the facts
there is cause for astonishment that in the face of so
great a dead weight of custom and tradition against a
rational interpretation of the universe so much has
been done and in so short a time.</p>

<p>In discussing religion very much turns upon the
meaning of the word, and unfortunately "religion"
is to-day used in so many differing and conflicting
senses that without the most careful definition no one
is quite sure what is meant by it. The curious disinclination
of so many to avow themselves as being
without a religion must also be noted. To be without
a religion, or rather to be known as one who is without
a religion, would seem to mark one off as apart from
the rest of one's kind, and to infringe all the tribal
taboos at one sweep. And very few seem to have the
courage to stand alone. Mr. Augustine Birrell once
said, in introducing to the House of Commons an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">{75}</a></span>
Education Bill, that children would rather be wicked
than singular. That is quite true, and it is almost as
true of adults as it is of children. There is no great
objection to having a religion different from that of
other people, because the religions of the world are
already of so varied a character that there is always
companionship in difference. But to be without a religion
altogether is a degree of isolation that few can
stand. The consequence is that although vast numbers
have given up everything that is really religious they
still cling to the name. They have left the service,
but they show a curious attachment to the uniform.
Thus it happens that we have a religion of Socialism,
a religion of Ethics, etc., and I should not be surprised
to find one day a religion of Atheism&mdash;if that has not
already appeared.</p>

<p>But all this is a mistake, and a very serious mistake.
The Freethinker, or Socialist, who calls his theory of
life a religion is not causing the religionist to think
more highly of him, he is making his opponent think
more highly of his own opinions. Imitation becomes
in such a case not alone flattery, but confirmation. The
Goddite does not think more highly of Freethought because
it is labelled religion, he merely becomes the
more convinced of the supreme value of his own faith,
and still hopes for the Freethinker's return to the fold.
If Freethinkers are to command the respect of the
religious world they must show not only that they can
get along without religion, but that they can dispense
with the name also. If strength does not command
respect weakness will certainly fail to secure it. And
those of us who are genuinely anxious that the world
should be done with false ideas and mischievous
frames of mind ought to at least take care that our own
speech and thought are as free from ambiguity as is
possible.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">{76}</a></span>
There is another and deeper aspect of the matter.
As I have already said, language not alone expresses
thought, it also governs and directs it. Locke expressed
this truth when he said, "It is impossible that
men should ever truly seek, or certainly discover, the
disagreement of ideas themselves whilst their thoughts
flutter about, or stick only on sounds of doubtful and
uncertain significance." Quite a number of theological
and metaphysical conundrums would lose their
significance if it were only realized that the words used
are not alone of doubtful and uncertain significance,
but often of no possible significance whatever. They
are like counterfeit coins, which retain their value only
so long as they are not tested by a proper standard.
And the evil of these counterfeits is that they deceive
both those who tender and those who accept them.
For even though slovenliness of speech is not always
the product of slovenly thought, in the long run it
tends to induce it, and those who realize this need to
be specially on their guard against using language
which can only further confuse an already sufficiently
confused public opinion, and strengthen superstitions
that are already sufficiently strong without our clandestine
or unintended assistance.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>

<p>Unfortunately, it remains a favourite policy with
many writers to use and define the word religion, not
in accordance with a comprehensive survey of facts,
but in a way that will harmonize with existing pre-possessions.
To this class belongs Matthew Arnold's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">{77}</a></span>
famous definition of religion as "Morality touched
with emotion," Professor Seeley's statement that we
are entitled to call religion "any habitual and permanent
admiration," or the common description of
religion as consisting in devotion to an ideal. All
such definitions may be set on one side as historically
worthless, and as not harmonizing with the facts.
Arnold's definition is in the highest degree superficial,
since there exists no morality that is not touched with
emotion, and on the other hand there exist phases of
religion that have not any connection with morality,
however slight. Professor Leuba properly rules definitions
of this class out of order in the comment that,
as it is "the function of words to delimitate, one defeats
the purpose of language by stretching the meaning
of a word until it has lost all precision and unity of
meaning."<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> A definition that includes everything
may as well, for all the use it is, not cover anything.</p>

<p>Equally faulty are those definitions that are based
upon an assumed conscious effort to explain the
mysteries of existence. No stranger lapse ever overtook
a great thinker than occurred to Herbert Spencer
when he described religion as consisting in a worship
of the unknowable, and as due to the desire to explain
a mystery ever pressing for interpretation. Granting
the existence of an Unknowable, the sense of its
presence belongs to the later stages of mental evolution,
not to the earlier ones. Metaphysical and
mystical theories of religion are indications of its disintegration,
not of its beginnings. Primitive man
began to believe in ghosts and gods for the same
reasons that he believed in other things; he worshipped
his gods for very concrete considerations. Even the
distinction between "spiritual" and material exist<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">{78}</a></span>ence
is quite foreign to his mind. Such distinctions
arise gradually with the progress of knowledge and its
disintegrating influence on inherited beliefs. If
primitive man may be credited with a philosophy, and
if one may use the word in a purely convenient sense,
then one may say that he is neither a dualist, nor a
pluralist, but a monist. The soul or double he believes
in is similar to the body he sees; the unseen
forces he credits with various activities are of the
same kind as those with which he is acquainted. To
read our conceptions into the mind of primitive man
because we use our words to explain his thoughts is a
procedure that is bound to end in confusion. Man's
earliest conception of things is vague and indefinite.
Later, he distinguishes differences, qualitative and
quantitative, his conception of things becomes more
definite, and distinctions are set up that lay the foundations
of science and philosophy, and which mark their
separation from religion.</p>

<p>So far as one can see there are only two causes why
people should continue to use the word religion after
giving up all for which it properly stands. One is
sheer conservatism. When, for instance, Thomas
Paine said, "To do good is my religion," he had at
least the justification of believing in a deity, but apart
from this the only cause for his calling the desire to do
good a religion is that there had grown up the fashion
of calling one's rule of life a religion. The other cause
is the ill-repute that has been attached to those who
avow themselves as being without religion. Orthodoxy
saw to it that they were treated as pariahs without
social status, and, in many cases, legal rights.
Once upon a time it was useless unless one believed in
the <em>right</em> religion. Nowadays, any religion will do, or
anything that one cares to call a religion. But not to
have any religion at all still puts one outside the pale<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">{79}</a></span>
of respectability, and there seem to be few who can
stand that. And supernatural religion&mdash;the only
genuine article&mdash;being impossible with many, these
may still, if they care to, save their face by professing
to use the name, even if they have not the thing.
Orthodoxy is very accommodating nowadays.</p>

<p>Leaving for a time the question of how religion
actually does arise, we may turn to those writers
who define religion in terms of ethics. It may be
admitted that so far as the later stages of religion are
concerned considerable emphasis is laid upon ethics.
But we can only make religion a part of ethics by
expanding the term morality so as to include
everything, or by contracting it so as to exclude all
the lower forms of religious belief. And any definition
of religion that does not embrace all its forms is
obviously inaccurate. It is not at all a question of
defining the higher in terms of the lower, or the lower
in terms of the higher, it is simply the need of so defining
religion that our definition will cover all
religions, high and low, and thus deal with their
essential characteristics.</p>

<p>The only sense in which ethics may be said to be
included in religion lies in the fact that in primitive
times religion includes everything. The fear of unseen
intelligences is one of the most powerful factors
of which early humanity is conscious, and the necessity
for conciliating them is always present. The religious
ceremonies connected with eating and drinking, with
lying down and rising up, with sowing and reaping,
with disease, hunting, and almost every circumstance
of primitive life prove this. Differentiation and discrimination
arise very slowly, but one after another
the various departments of life do shake off the controlling
influence of religion. Ethics may, therefore,
be said to originate in the shadow of religion&mdash;as do<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">{80}</a></span>
most other things&mdash;but in no sense can morality be
said to owe its origin to religion. Its origin is deeper
and more fundamental than religion. As a matter of
practice morality is independent of religious belief and
moral theory, and as a matter of theory the formulation
of definite moral rules is substantially independent
of religion and is an assertion of its independence. Indeed,
the conflict between a growing moral sense and
religion is almost as large a fact in the social sphere as
the conflict between religion and science is in the
intellectual one.</p>

<p>In all its earlier stages religion is at best non-moral.
It becomes otherwise later only because of the reaction
of a socialized morality on religious beliefs. Early
religion is never concerned with the morality of its
teaching, nor are the worshippers concerned with the
morality of their gods. The sole question is what the
gods desire and how best to satisfy them. We cannot
even conceive man ascribing ethical qualities to his
gods until he has first of all conceived them in regard
to his fellow men. The savage has no <em>moral</em> reverence
for his gods; they are magnified men, but not perfect
ones. He worships not because he admires, but because
he fears. Fear is, indeed, one of the root causes
of religious belief. Professor Leuba quite admits the
origin of religion is fear, but he reserves the possibility
of man being occasionally placed under such favourable
conditions that fear may be absent. We admit the
possibility, but at present it remains a possibility only.
At present all the evidence goes to prove the words of
Ribot that, "The religious sentiment is composed
first of all of the emotion of fear in its different degrees,
from profound terror to vague uneasiness, due to faith
in an unknown mysterious and impalpable power."
And if that be admitted, we can scarcely find here the
origin of morality.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">{81}</a></span>
What is here overlooked is the important fact that
while religion, as such, commences in a reasoned process,
morality is firmly established before mankind is
even aware of its existence. A formulated religion is
essentially of the nature of a theory set forth to explain
or to deal with certain experiences. Morality, on the
other hand, takes its rise in those feelings and instincts
that are developed in animal and human
societies under the pressure of natural selection. The
affection of the animal for its young, of the human
mother for its child, the attraction of male and female,
the sympathetic feelings that bind members of the
same species together, these do not depend upon
theory, or even upon an intellectual perception of their
value. Theory tries to account for their existence,
and reason justifies their being, but they are fundamentally
the product of associated life. And it is
precisely because morality is the inevitable condition
of associated life that it has upon religion the effect of
modifying it until it is at least not too great an outrage
upon the conditions of social well-being. All
along we can, if we will, see how the developing moral
sense forces a change in religious teaching. At one
time there is nothing revolting in the Christian doctrine
of election which dooms one to heaven and another to
hell without the slightest regard to personal merit. At
another the doctrine of eternal damnation is rejected
as a matter of course. Heresy hunting and heretic
burning, practised as a matter of course by one
generation become highly repulsive to another. In
every direction we see religious beliefs undergoing
a modification under the influence of moral and social
growth. It is always man who moralizes his gods;
never by any chance is it the gods who moralize man.</p>

<p>If we are to arrive at a proper understanding of
religion we can, therefore, no more assume morals to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">{82}</a></span>
be an integral part of religion than we can assume
medicine or any of the special arts, all of which may be
associated with religion. It will not even do to define
religion with Mr. W. H. Mallock<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> as a belief that the
world "has been made and is sustained by an intelligence
external to and essentially independent of it."
That may pass as a definition of Theism, but Theism is
only one of the phases of religion, and the idea of a
creator independent of the universe is one that is quite
alien to the earlier stages of religion. And to deny
the name of religion to primitive beliefs is to put oneself
on the level of the type of Christian who declines
to call any superstition but his own religion. It is for
this reason impossible to agree with Professor Leuba
when he says that "the idea of a creator must take
precedence of ghosts and nature beings in the making
of a religion." If by precedence the order of importance,
from the standpoint of later and comparatively
modern forms of religion, is intended, the statement
may pass. But if the precedence claimed is a time
order, the reply is that, instead of the idea of a creator
taking precedence of ghosts and nature beings, it is
from these that the idea of a creator is evolved. It is
quite true Professor Leuba holds that "belief in the
existence of unseen anthropopathic beings is not
religion. It is only when man enters into relation with
them that religion comes into existence," but so soon
as man believes in the existence of them he believes
himself to be in relation with them, and a large part of
his efforts is expended in making these relations of an
amicable and profitable character.</p>

<p>A further definition of religion, first given, I think,
by the late Professor Fiske, but since widely used, as a
craving for "fulness of life," must be dismissed as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">{83}</a></span>
equally faulty. For if by fulness of life is meant the
desire to make it morally and intellectually richer, the
answer is that this desire is plainly the product of a
progressive social life, of which much that now passes
for religion is the adulterated expression. Apologetically,
it is an attempt so to state religion that it may
evade criticism of its essential character. From one
point of view this may be gratifying enough, but it is
no help to an understanding of the nature of religion.
And how little religion does help to a fuller life will be
seen by anyone who knows the part played by
organized religion in mental development and how
blindly obstructive it is to new ideas in all departments
of life. All these attempts to define religion in terms
of ethics, of metaphysics, or as the craving after an
ideal are wholly misleading. It is reading history
backwards, and attributing to primitive human nature
feelings and conceptions which it does not and cannot
possess.</p>

<p>In another work<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> I have traced the origin of the
belief in God to the mental state of primitive mankind,
and there is no need to go over the same ground here
at any length. Commencing with the indisputable
fact that religion is something that is acquired, an
examination of the state of mind in which primitive
mankind faced, and still faces, the world, led to the
conclusion that the idea of god begins in the personification
of natural forces by the savage. The growth of
the idea of God was there traced back to the ghost, not
to the exclusion of other methods of god making, but
certainly as one of its prominent causes. I must refer
readers to that work who desire a more extended treatment
of the god-idea.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">{84}</a></span>
What remains to be traced here, in order to understand
the other factor that is common to religions, is
the belief in a continued state of existence after death,
or at least of a soul.</p>

<p>It has been shown to the point of demonstration by
writers such as Spencer, Tylor, and Frazer, that the
idea of a double is suggested to man by his experience
of dreams, swoons, and allied normal and abnormal
experiences. Even in the absence of evidence coming
to us from the beliefs of existing tribes of savages, the
fact that the ghost is always depicted as identical in
appearance with the living person would be enough to
suggest its dream origin. But there are other considerations
that carry the proof further. The savage
sees in his dreams the figures of dead men and assumes
that there is a double that can get out of the body
during sleep. But he also dreams of dead men, and
this is also proof that the dead man still exists. Death
does not, then, involve the death of the ghost, but only
its removal to some other sphere of existence. Further,
the likeness of sleep itself to death is so obvious and
so striking that it has formed one of the most insistent
features of human thought and speech. With primitive
man it is far more than a figure of speech. The
Melanesians put this point of view when they say,
"the soul goes out of the body in some dreams, and
if for some reason it does not come back the man is
found dead in the morning." Death and dreaming have,
therefore, this in common, they are both due to the
withdrawal of the double. Hence we find a whole
series of ceremonies designed to avert death or to
facilitate the return of the double. The lingering of
this practice is well illustrated by Sir Frederick Treves
in his book, <cite>The Other Side of the Lantern</cite>. He there
tells how he saw a Chinese mother, with the tears
streaming down her face, waving at the door of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">{85}</a></span>
house the clothing of a recently deceased child in order
to bring back the departed spirit.</p>

<p>Death is thus the separation of the double from the
body; but if it may return, its return is not always a
matter of rejoicing, for we find customs that are
plainly intended to prevent the ghost recognizing the
living or to find its way back to its old haunts. Thus
Frazer has shown that the wearing of black is really
a form of disguise. It is a method taken to disguise the
living from the attentions of the dead. It is in order to
avoid recognition by spirits who wish to injure them
that the Tongans change their war costume at every
battle. The Chinese call their best beloved children
by worthless names in order to delude evil spirits. In
Egypt, too, the children who were most thought of
were the worst clad. In some places the corpse is
never carried out through the door, but by a hole in
the side of the hut, which is afterwards closed so that
the ghost may not find its way back.</p>

<p>The ghost being conceived as at all points identical
with living beings, it demands attention after death.
It needs food, weapons, servants, wives. In this way
there originates a whole group of burial customs, performed
partly from fear of what the ghost may do if
its wants are neglected. The custom of burying food
and weapons with the dead thus receives a simple explanation.
These things are buried with the dead man
in order that their spirit may accompany his to the next
world and serve the same uses there that they did here.
The modern custom of scattering flowers over a grave
is unquestionably a survival of this primitive belief.
The killing of a wife on the husband's grave has the
same origin. Her spirit goes to attend the husband in
the ghost-land. In the case of a chief we have the
killing of servants for the same reason. When Leonidas
says, "Bury me on my shield, I will enter even<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">{86}</a></span>
Hades as a Lacedæmonian," he was exhibiting the
persistence of this belief in classical times. The
Chinese offer a further example by making little paper
houses, filling them with paper models of the things
used by the dead person, and burning them on the
grave. All over the world we have the same class of
customs developing from the same beliefs, and the
same beliefs projected by the human mind when
brought face to face with the same class of phenomena.</p>

<p>As the ghost is pictured as like the physical man, so
the next world is more or less a replica of this. The
chief distinction is that there is a greater abundance of
desirable things. Hunting tribes have elysiums where
there is an abundance of game. The old Norse heaven
was a place where there was unlimited fighting. The
gold and diamonds and rubies of the Christian heaven
represent a stage of civilization where these things had
acquired a special value. Social distinctions, too, are
often maintained. The Caribs believe that every time
they secure an enemy's head they have gained a servant
in the next world. And all know the story of the
French aristocrat who, when threatened with hell,
replied, "God will think twice before damning a
person of my quality."</p>

<p>Several other consequences of this service paid to
the dead may be noted. The ghost being drawn to the
place where the body is buried, the desire to preserve
the corpse probably led to the practice of embalming.
The grave becomes a place of sanctity, of pilgrimage,
and of religious observance, and it has been maintained
by many writers, notably by Mr. W. Simpson
in his <cite>Worship of Death</cite>, that the service round the
grave gives us the beginning of all temple worship.</p>

<p>But from this brief view of the beginnings of religion
we are able to see how completely fallacious are all
those efforts to derive religion from an attempt to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">{87}</a></span>
achieve an ideal, from a desire to solve certain philosophical
problems, or from any of the other sources
that are paraded by modern apologists. The origin
and nature of religion is comparatively simple to understand,
once we have cleared our minds of all these
fallacies and carefully examine the facts. Religion is
no more than the explanation which the primitive mind
gives of the experiences which it has of the world.
And, therefore, the only definition that covers all the
facts, and which stresses the essence of all religions,
high and low, savage and civilized, is that given by
Tylor, namely, the belief in supernatural beings. It is
the one definition that expresses the feature common to
all religions, and with that definition before us we are
able to use language with a precision that is impossible
so long as we attempt to read into religion something
that is absent from all its earlier forms, and which is
only introduced when advanced thought makes the
belief in the supernatural more and more difficult to
retain its hold over the human mind.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">{88}</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br />
THE UTILITY OF RELIGION.</h2>

<p>The real nature of religion being as stated, it having
originated in an utterly erroneous view of things,
it would seem that nothing more can be needed to
justify its rejection. But the conclusion would not be
correct, at least so far as the mass of believers or
quasi-believers are concerned. Here the conviction
still obtains that religion, no matter what its origin,
still wields an enormous influence for good. The
curious thing is that when one enquires "what religion
is it that has exerted this beneficent influence?" the
replies effectually cancel one another. Each means by
religion his own religion, and each accuses the religion
of the other man of all the faults with which the Freethinker
accuses the whole. The avowed object of our
widespread missionary activity is to save the "heathen"
from the evil effects of their religion; and there is not
the least doubt that if the heathen had the brute force
at their command, and the impudence that we have,
they would cordially reciprocate. And the efforts of
the various Christian sects to convert each other is too
well known to need mention. So that the only logical
inference from all this is that, while all religions are,
when taken singly, injurious, taken in the bulk they
are sources of profound benefit.</p>

<p>It is not alone the common or garden order of religionist
who takes up this curious position, nor is it
even the better educated believer; it is not uncommon
to find those who have rejected all the formal religions<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">{89}</a></span>
of the world yet seeking to discover some good that
religion has done or is doing. As an illustration of
this we may cite an example from Sir James Frazer,
than whom no one has done more to bring home to
students a knowledge of the real nature of religious
beliefs. It is the more surprising to find him putting
in a plea for the good done by religion, not in the
present, but in the past. And such an instance, if it
does nothing else, may at least serve to mitigate our
ferocity towards the common type of religionist.</p>

<p>In an address delivered in 1909, entitled "Psyche's
Task: A discourse concerning the influence of superstition
on the growth of Institutions," he puts in a plea
for the consideration of superstition (religion) at
various stages of culture. Of its effects generally, he
says:&mdash;</p>

<blockquote><p>That it has done much harm in the world cannot be
denied. It has sacrificed countless lives, wasted untold
treasures, embroiled nations, severed friends,
parted husbands and wives, parents and children,
putting swords and worse than swords between them;
it has filled gaols and madhouses with its deluded
victims; it has broken many hearts, embittered the
whole of many a life, and not content with persecuting
the living it has pursued the dead into the grave
and beyond it, gloating over the horrors which its
foul imagination has conjured up to appal and torture
the survivors. It has done all this and more.</p></blockquote>

<p>Now this is a severe indictment, and one is a little
surprised to find following that a plea on behalf of this
same superstition to the effect that it has "among
certain races and at certain times strengthened the
respect for government, property, marriage, and
human life." In support of this proposition he cites a
large number of instances from various races of people,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">{90}</a></span>
all of which prove, not what Sir James sets out to
prove, but only that religious observances and beliefs
have been connected with certain institutions that are
in themselves admirable enough. And on this point
there is not, nor can there be, any serious dispute.
One can find many similar instances among ourselves
to-day. But the real question at issue is a deeper one
than that. It is not enough for the religionist to show
that religion has often been associated with good things
and has given them its sanction. The reply to this
would be that if it had been otherwise religion would
long since have disappeared. The essential question
here is, Have the institutions named a basis in secular
and social life, and would they have developed in the
absence of superstition as they have developed with
superstition in the field?</p>

<p>Now I do not see that Sir James Frazer proves either
that these institutions have not a sufficient basis in
secular life&mdash;he would, I imagine, admit that they have;
or that they would not have developed as well in the
absence of superstition as they have done with it. In
fact, the whole plea that good has been done by superstition
seems to be destroyed in the statements that
although certain institutions "have been based partly
on superstitions, it by no means follows that even
among these races they have never been based on anything
else," and that whenever institutions have proved
themselves stable and permanent "there is a strong
presumption that they rest on something more solid
than superstition." So that, after all, it may well be
that superstition is all the time taking credit for the
working of forces that are not of its kind or nature.</p>

<p>Let us take the example given of the respect for
human life as a crucial test. Admitting that religions
have taught that to take life was a sinful act, one
might well interpose with the query as to whether it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">{91}</a></span>
was ever necessary to teach man that homicide within
certain limits was a wrong thing. Pre-evolutionary
sociology, which sometimes taught that man originally
led an existence in which his hand was against every
other man, and who, therefore, fought the battle of
life strictly off his own bat, may have favoured that
assumption. But that we now know is quite wrong.
We know that man slowly emerged from a pre-human
gregarious stage, and that in all group life there is an
organic restraint on mutual slaughter. The essential
condition of group life is that the nature of the
individual shall be normally devoid of the desire for the
indiscriminate slaughter of his fellows. And if that
is true of animals, it is certainly true of man. Primitive
human society does not and cannot represent a
group of beings each of whom must be restrained by
direct coercion from murdering the other.</p>

<p>In this case, therefore, we have to reckon with both
biological and sociological forces, and I do not see that
it needs more than this to explain all there is to explain.
Human life is always associated life, and this means
not alone a basis of mutual forbearance and co-operation,
but a development of the sympathetic feelings
which tends to increase as society develops, they being,
as a matter of fact, the conditions of its growth. And
whatever competition existed between tribes would
still further emphasize the value of those feelings that
led to effective co-operation.</p>

<p>The question, then, whether the anti-homicidal
feeling is at all dependent upon religion is answered
in the negative by the fact that it ante-dates what we
may term the era of conscious social organization.
That of whether religion strengthens this feeling still
remains, although even that has been answered by
implication. And the first thing to be noted here is
that whatever may be the value of the superstitious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">{92}</a></span>
safeguard against homicide it certainly has no value as
against people outside the tribe. In fact, when a
savage desires to kill an enemy he finds in superstition
a fancied source of strength, and often of encouragement.
Westermarck points out that "savages carefully
distinguish between an act of homicide committed
in their own community and one where the
victim is a stranger. Whilst the former is under
ordinary circumstances disapproved of, the latter is in
most cases allowed and often regarded as praiseworthy."
And Frazer himself points out that the belief in immortality
plays no small part in encouraging war
among primitive peoples,<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> while if we add the facts
of the killing of children, of old men and women,
and wives, together with the practice of human sacrifice,
we shall see little cause to attribute the development
of the feeling against homicide to religious
beliefs.</p>

<p>In one passage in his address Sir James does show
himself quite alive to the evil influence of the belief
in immortality. He says:&mdash;</p>

<blockquote><p>It might with some show of reason be maintained
that no belief has done so much to retard the economic
and thereby the social progress of mankind as the
belief in the immortality of the soul; for this belief
has led race after race, generation after generation,
to sacrifice the real wants of the living to the
imaginary wants of the dead. The waste and destruc<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">{93}</a></span>tion
of life and property which this faith has entailed
has been enormous and incalculable. But I am not
here concerned with the disastrous and deplorable
consequences, the unspeakable follies and crimes and
miseries which have flowed in practice from the
theory of a future life. My business at present is
with the more cheerful side of a gloomy subject.</p></blockquote>

<p>Every author has, of course, the fullest right to select
whichever aspect of a subject he thinks deserves treatment,
but all the same one may point out that it is this
dwelling on the "cheerful side" of these beliefs that
encourages the religionist to put forward claims on
behalf of present day religion that Sir James himself
would be the first to challenge. There is surely
greater need to emphasize the darker side of a creed
that has thousands of paid advocates presenting an
imaginary bright side to the public gaze.</p>

<p>But what has been said of the relation of the feeling
against homicide applies with no more than a variation
of terms to the other instances given by Sir James
Frazer. Either these institutions have a basis in utility
or they have not. If they have not, then religion can
claim no social credit for their preservation. If
they have a basis in utility, then the reason for their
preservation is to be found in social selection, although
the precise local form in which an institution appears
may be determined by other circumstances. And
when Sir James says that the task of government has
been facilitated by the superstition that the governors
belonged to a superior class of beings, one may safely
assume that the statement holds good only of individual
governors, or of particular forms of government. It
may well be that when a people are led to believe that
a certain individual possesses supernatural powers, or
that a particular government enjoys the favour of
supernatural beings, there will be less inclination to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">{94}</a></span>
resentment against orders than there would be otherwise.
But government and governors, in other words,
a general body of rules for the government of the
tribe, and the admitted leadership of certain favoured
individuals, would remain natural facts in the absence
of superstition, and their development or suppression
would remain subject to the operation of social or
natural selection. So, again, with the desire for private
property. The desire to retain certain things as belonging
to oneself is not altogether unnoticeable among
animals. A dog will fight for its bone, monkeys
secrete things which they desire to retain for their own
use, etc., and so far as the custom possesses advantages,
we may certainly credit savages with enough
common-sense to be aware of the fact. But the curious
thing is that the institution of private property is not
nearly so powerful among primitive peoples as it is
among those more advanced. So that we are faced
with this curious comment upon Sir James's thesis.
Granting that the institution of private property has
been strengthened by superstition we have the strange
circumstance that that institution is weakest where
superstition is strongest and strongest where superstition
is weakest.</p>

<p>The truth is that Sir James Frazer seems here to
have fallen into the same error as the late Walter
Bagehot, and to have formed the belief that primitive
man required breaking in to the "social yoke." The
truth is that the great need of primitive mankind is not
to be broken in but to acquire the courage and determination
to break out. This error may have originated
in the disinclination of the savage to obey <em>our</em> rules,
or it may have been a heritage from the eighteenth
century philosophy of the existence of an idyllic
primitive social state. The truth is, however, that
there is no one so fettered by custom as is the savage.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">{95}</a></span>
The restrictions set by a savage society on its members
would be positively intolerable to civilized beings.
And if it be said that these customs required formation,
the reply is that inheriting the imitability of the pre-human
gregarious animal, this would form the basis
on which the tyrannizing custom of primitive life is
built.</p>

<p>There was, however, another generalization of Bagehot's
that was unquestionably sound. Assuming that
the first step necessary to primitive mankind was to
frame a custom as the means of his being "broken in,"
the next step in progress was to break it, and that was
a far more difficult matter. Progress was impossible
until this was done, and how difficult it is to get this
step taken observation of the people living in civilized
countries will show. But it is in relation to this second
and all important step that one can clearly trace the
influence of religion. And its influence is completely
the reverse of being helpful. For of all the hindrances
to a change of custom there is none that act with such
force as does religion. This is the case with those
customs with which vested interest has no direct connection,
but it operates with tenfold force where this
exists. Once a custom is established in a primitive
community the conditions of social life surround it
with religious beliefs, and thereafter to break it means
a breach in the wall of religious observances with
which the savage is surrounded. And so soon as we
reach the stage of the establishment of a regular priesthood,
we have to reckon with the operation of a vested
interest that has always been keenly alive to anything
which affected its profit or prestige.</p>

<p>It would not be right to dismiss the discussion of a
subject connected with so well-respected a name as
that of Sir James Frazer and leave the reader with the
impression that he is putting in a plea for current<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">{96}</a></span>
religion. He is not. He hints pretty plainly that his
argument that religion has been of some use to the
race applies to savage times only. We see this in such
sentences as the following: "More and more, as time
goes on, morality shifts its grounds from the sands of
superstition to the rock of reason, from the imaginary
to the real, from the supernatural to the natural.... The
State has found a better reason than these old wives'
fables for guarding with the flaming sword of justice
the approach to the tree of life," and also in saying
that, "If it can be proved that in certain races and at
certain times the institutions in question have been
based partly on superstition, it by no means follows
that even among these races they have never been
based on anything else. On the contrary ... there is
a strong presumption that they rest mainly on something
much more solid than superstition." In modern
times no such argument as the one I have been discussing
has the least claim to logical force. But that,
as we all know, does not prevent its being used by
full-blown religionists, and by those whose minds are
only partly liberated from a great historic superstition.</p>

<p>It will be observed that the plea of Frazer's we have
been examining argues that the function of religion in
social life is of a conservative character. And so far
he is correct, he is only wrong in assuming it to have
been of a beneficial nature. The main function of religion
in sociology is conservative, not the wise conservatism
which supports an institution or a custom
because of its approved value, but of the kind that
sees in an established custom a reason for its continuance.
Urged, in the first instance, by the belief
that innumerable spirits are forever on the watch,
punishing the slightest infraction of their wishes,
opposition to reform or to new ideas receives definite
shape and increased strength by the rise of a priest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">{97}</a></span>hood.
Henceforth economic interest goes hand in
hand with superstitious fears. Whichever way man
turns he finds artificial obstacles erected. Every
deviation from the prescribed path is threatened with
penalties in this world and the next. The history of
every race and of every science tells the same story,
and the amount of time and energy that mankind has
spent in fighting these ghosts of its own savage past
is the measure of the degree to which religion has kept
the race in a state of relative barbarism.</p>

<p>This function of unreasoning conservatism is not, it
must be remembered, accidental. It belongs to the
very nature of religion. Dependent upon the maintenance
of certain primitive conceptions of the world
and of man, religion dare not encourage new ideas lest
it sap its own foundations. Spencer has reminded us
that religion is, under the conditions of its origin,
perfectly rational. That is quite true.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> Religion meets
science, when the stage of conflict arises, as an opposing
interpretation of certain classes of facts. The one
interpretation can only grow at the expense of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">{98}</a></span>
other. While religion is committed to the explanation
of the world in terms of vital force, science is
committed to that of non-conscious mechanism.
Opposition is thus present at the outset, and it must
continue to the end. The old cannot be maintained
without anathematizing the new; the new cannot be
established without displacing the old. The conflict
is inevitable; the antagonism is irreconcilable.</p>

<p>It lies, therefore, in the very nature of the case that
religion, as religion, can give no real help to man in
the understanding of himself and the world. Whatever
good religion may appear to do is properly to be
attributed to the non-religious forces with which it is
associated. But religion, being properly concerned
with the relations between man and mythical supernatural
beings, can exert no real influence for good on
human affairs. Far from that being the case, it can
easily be shown to have had quite an opposite effect.
There is not merely the waste of energy in the direction
above indicated, but in many other ways. If we confine
ourselves to Christianity some conception of the
nature of its influence may be formed if we think what
the state of the world might have been to-day had the
work of enlightenment continued from the point it had
reached under the old Greek and Roman civilizations.
Bacon and Galileo in their prisons, Bruno and Vanini
at the stake are illustrations of the disservice that
Christianity has done the cause of civilization, and
the obstruction it has offered to human well-being.</p>

<p>Again, consider the incubus placed on human progress
by the institution of a priesthood devoted to the
service of supernatural beings. In the fullest and
truest sense of the word a priesthood represents a parasitic
growth on the social body. I am not referring to
individual members of the priesthood in their capacity
as private citizens, but as priests, as agents or repre<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">{99}</a></span>sentatives
of the supernatural. And here the truth is
that of all the inventions and discoveries that have
helped to build up civilization not one of them is owing
to the priesthood, as such. One may confidently say
that if all the energies of all the priests in the whole
world were concentrated on a single community, and
all their prayers, formulæ, and doctrines devoted to the
one end, the well-being of that community would not
be advanced thereby a single iota.</p>

<p>Far and away, the priesthood is the greatest parasitic
class the world has known. All over the world, in both
savage and civilized times, we see the priesthoods of
the world enthroned, we see them enjoying a subsistence
wrung from toil through credulity, and from
wealth through self-interest. From the savage
medicine hut up to the modern cathedral we see the
earth covered with useless edifices devoted to the
foolish service of imaginary deities. We see the priesthood
endowed with special privileges, their buildings
relieved from the taxes which all citizens are compelled
to pay, and even special taxes levied upon the
public for their maintenance. The gods may no longer
demand the sacrifice of the first born, but they still
demand the sacrifice of time, energy, and money that
might well be applied elsewhere. And the people in
every country, out of their stupidity, continue to maintain
a large body of men who, by their whole training
and interest, are compelled to act as the enemies of
liberty and progress.</p>

<p>It is useless arguing that the evils that follow religion
are not produced by it, that they are casual, and will
disappear with a truer understanding of what religion
is. It is not true, and the man who argues in that way
shows that he does not yet understand what religion is.
The evils that follow religion are deeply imbedded in
the nature of religion itself. All religion takes its rise<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">{100}</a></span>
in error, and vested error threatened with destruction
instinctively resorts to force, fraud, and imposture, in
self defence. The universality of the evils that accompany
religion would alone prove that there is more than
a mere accident in the association. The whole history
of religion is, on the purely intellectual side, the history
of a delusion. Happily this delusion is losing its hold
on the human mind. Year by year its intellectual and
moral worthlessness is being more generally recognized.
Religion explains nothing, and it does nothing that is
useful. Yet in its name millions of pounds are
annually squandered and many thousands of men withdrawn
from useful labour, and saddled on the rest of
the community for maintenance. But here, again,
economic and intellectual forces are combining for
the liberation of the race from its historic incubus.
Complete emancipation will not come in a day, but it
will come, and its arrival will mark the close of the
greatest revolution that has taken place in the history
of the race.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">{101}</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<br />
FREETHOUGHT AND GOD.</h2>

<p>Why do people believe in God? If one turns to the
pleas of professional theologians there is no lack of
answers to the question. These answers are both
numerous and elaborate, and if quantity and repetition
were enough, the Freethinker would find himself hopelessly
"snowed under." But on examination all these
replies suffer from one defect. They should ante-date
the belief, whereas they post-date it. They cannot be
the cause of belief for the reason that the belief was
here long before the arguments came into existence.
Neither singly nor collectively do these so-called
reasons correspond to the causes that have ever led a
single person, at any time or at any place, to believe
in a God. If they already believed, the arguments were
enough to provide them with sufficient justification to
go on believing. If they did not already believe, the
arguments were powerless. And never, by any chance,
do they describe the causes that led to the existence of
the belief in God, either historically or individually.
They are, in truth, no more than excuses for continuing
to believe. They are never the causes of belief.</p>

<p>The evidence for the truth of this is at hand in the
person of all who believe. Let one consider, on the
one hand, the various arguments for the existence of
God&mdash;the argument from causation, from design, from
necessary existence, etc., then put on the other side the
age at which men and women began to believe in deity,
and their grasp of arguments of the kind mentioned.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">{102}</a></span>
There is clearly no relation between the two. Leaving
on one side the question of culture, it is at once
apparent that long before the individual is old enough
to appreciate in the slightest degree the nature of the
arguments advanced he is already a believer. And if
he is not a believer in his early years, he is never one
when he reaches maturity, certainly not in a civilized
society. And when we turn from the individual
Goddite to Goddites in the mass, the assumption that
they owe their belief to the philosophical arguments
advanced becomes grotesque in its absurdity. To
assume that the average Theist, whose philosophy is
taken from the daily newspaper and the weekly
sermon, derives his conviction from a series of abstruse
philosophical arguments is simply ridiculous. Those
who are honest to themselves will admit that they were
taught the belief long before they were old enough to
bring any real criticism to bear upon it. It was the
product of their early education, impressed upon them
by their parents, and all the "reasons" that are afterwards
alleged in justification are only pleas why they
should not be disturbed in their belief.</p>

<p>Are we in any better position if we turn from the
individual to the race? Is the belief in God similar to,
say, the belief in gravitation, which, discovered by a
genius, and resting upon considerations which the
ordinary person finds too abstruse to thoroughly understand,
becomes a part of our education, and is accepted
upon well established authority? Again, the facts
are dead against such an assumption. It is with
the race as with the individual. Science and philosophy
do not precede the belief in God and provide the
foundation for it, they succeed it and lead to its modification
and rejection. We are, in this respect, upon
very solid ground. In some form or another the belief
in God, or gods, belongs to very early states of human<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">{103}</a></span>
society. Savages have it long before they have the
slightest inkling of what we moderns would call a
scientific conception of the world. And to assume that
the savage, as we know him, began to believe in his
gods because of a number of scientific reasons, such
as the belief in universal causation, or any of the other
profound speculations with which the modern theologian
beclouds the issue, is as absurd as to attribute
the belief of the Salvation Army preacher to philosophical
speculations. Added to which we may note
that the savage is a severely practical person. He is
not at all interested in metaphysics, and his contributions
to the discussions of a philosophical society would
be of a very meagre character. His problem is to deal
with the concrete difficulties of his everyday life, and
when he is able to do this he is content.</p>

<p>But, on the other hand, we know that our own belief
in God is descended from his belief. We know that we
can trace it back without a break through generations
of social culture, until we reach the savage stage of
social existence. It is he who, so to speak, discovers
God, he establishes it as a part of the social institutions
that govern the lives of every member of the group;
we find it in our immaturity established as one of
those many thought-forms which determine so powerfully
our intellectual development. The belief in God
meets each newcomer into the social arena. It is impressed
upon each in a thousand and one different
ways, and it is only when the belief is challenged by an
opposing system of thought that philosophical theories
are elaborated in its defence.</p>

<p>The possibility of deriving the idea of God from
scientific and philosophic thought being ruled out,
what remains? The enquiry from being philosophical
becomes historical. That is, instead of discussing
whether there are sufficient reasons for justifying the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">{104}</a></span>
belief in God, we are left with the question of determining
the causes that led people to ever regard the
belief as being solidly based upon fact. It is a
question of history, or rather, one may say, of anthropology
of the mental history of man. When we read of
some poor old woman who has been persecuted for
bewitching someone's cattle or children we no longer
settle down to discuss whether witchcraft rests upon
fact or not; we know it does not, and our sole concern
is to discover the conditions, mental and social, which
enabled so strange a belief to flourish. The examination
of evidence&mdash;the legal aspect&mdash;thus gives place to
the historical, and the historical finally resolves itself
into the psychological. For what we are really concerned
with in an examination of the idea of God is the
discovery and reconstruction of those states of mind
which gave the belief birth. And that search is far
easier and the results far more conclusive than many
imagine.</p>

<p>In outlining this evidence it will only be necessary
to present its general features. This for two reasons.
First, because a multiplicity of detail is apt to hide
from the general reader many of the essential features
of the truth; secondly, the fact of a difference of
opinion concerning the time order of certain stages in
the history of the god-idea is likely to obscure the fact
of the unanimity which exists among all those qualified
to express an authoritative opinion as to the nature of
the conditions that have given the idea birth. The
various theories of the sequence of the different phases
of the religious idea should no more blind us to the
fact that there exists a substantial agreement that the
belief in gods has its roots in the fear and ignorance of
uncivilized mankind, than the circumstance that there
is going on among biologists a discussion as to the
machinery of evolution should overshadow the fact<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">{105}</a></span>
that evolution itself is a demonstrated truth which no
competent observer questions.</p>

<p>In an earlier chapter we have already indicated the
essential conditions which lead to the origin of religious
beliefs, and there is no need again to go over that
ground. What is necessary at present is to sketch as
briefly as is consistent with lucidity those frames of
mind to which the belief in God owes its existence.</p>

<p>To realize this no very recondite instrument of research
is required. We need nothing more elaborate
than the method by which we are hourly in the habit
of estimating each other's thoughts, and of gauging
one another's motives. When I see a man laugh I
assume that he is pleased; when he frowns I assume
that he is angry. There is here only an application of
the generally accepted maxim that when we see
identical results we are warranted in assuming
identical causes. In this way we can either argue from
causes to effects or from effects to causes. A further
statement of the same principle is that when we are
dealing with biological facts we may assume that
identical structures imply identical functions. The
structure of a dead animal will tell us what its functions
were when living as certainly as though we had the
living animal in front of us. We may relate function
to structure or structure to function. And in this we
are using nothing more uncommon than the accepted
principle of universal causation.</p>

<p>Now, in all thinking there are two factors. There is
the animal or human brain, the organ of thought, and
there is the material for thought as represented by the
existing knowledge of the world. If we had an exact
knowledge of the kind of brain that functioned, and the
exact quantity and quality of the knowledge existing,
the question as to the ideas which would result would
be little more than a problem in mathematics. We<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">{106}</a></span>
could make the calculation with the same assurance
that an astronomer can estimate the position of a
planet a century hence. In the case of primitive mankind
we do not possess anything like the exact knowledge
one would wish, but we do know enough to say
in rather more than a general way the kind of thinking
of which our earliest ancestors were capable, and what
were its products. We can get at the machinery of the
primitive brain, and can estimate its actions, and that
without going further than we do when we assume that
primitive man was hungry and thirsty, was pleased
and angry, loved and feared. And, indeed, it was because
he experienced fear and pleasure and love and
hate that the gods came into existence.</p>

<p>Of the factors which determine the kind of thinking
one does, we know enough to say that there were two
things certain of early mankind. We know the kind
of thinking of which he was capable, and we have a
general notion of the material existing for thinking.
Speaking of one of these early ancestors of ours, Professor
Arthur Keith says, "Piltdown man saw, heard,
felt, thought and dreamt much as we do," that is,
there was the same <em>kind</em> of brain at work that is at work
now. And that much we could be sure of by going
no farther back than the savages of to-day. But as
size of brain is not everything, we are warranted in
saying that the brain was of a relatively simple type,
while the knowledge of the world which existed, and
which gives us the material for thinking, was of a very
imperfect and elementary character. There was great
ignorance, and there was great fear. From these two
conditions, ignorance and fear, sprang the gods. Of
that there is no doubt whatever. There is scarcely a
work which deals with the life of primitive peoples to-day
that does not emphasize that fact. Consciously
or unconsciously it cannot avoid doing so. Long ago<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">{107}</a></span>
a Latin writer hit on this truth in the well-known
saying, "Fear made the gods," and Aristotle expressed
the same thing in a more comprehensive form
by saying that fear first set man philosophizing. The
undeveloped mind troubles little about things so long
as they are going smoothly and comfortably. It is
when something painful happens that concern is
awakened. And all the gods of primitive life bear this
primal stamp of fear. That is why religion, with its
persistent harking back to the primitive, with its
response to the "Call of the Wild" still dwells upon
the fear of the Lord as a means of arousing a due sense
of piety. The gods fatten on fear as a usurer does upon
the folly of his clients, and in both cases the interest
demanded far outweighs the value of the services
rendered. At a later stage man faces his gods in a
different spirit; he loses his fear and examines them;
and gods that are not feared are but poor things. They
exist mainly as indisputable records of their own
deterioration.</p>

<p>Now to primitive man, struggling along in a world
of which he was so completely ignorant, the one certain
thing was that the world was alive. The wind
that roared, the thunder that growled, the disease that
left him so mysteriously stricken, were all so many
living things. The division of these living forces into
good and bad followed naturally from this first conception
of their nature. And whatever be the stages
of that process the main lines admit of no question, nor
is there any question as to the nature of the conditions
that brought the gods into existence. On any scientific
theory of religion the gods represent no more than the
personified ignorance and fear of primitive humanity.
However much anthropologists may differ as to
whether the god always originates from the ghost or
not, whether animism is first and the worship of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">{108}</a></span>
ghost secondary or not, there is agreement on that
point. Whichever theory we care to embrace, the
broad fact is generally admitted that the gods are the
products of ignorance and fear. Man fears the gods
as children and even animals fear the unknown and the
dangerous.</p>

<p>And as the gods are born of conditions such as those
outlined, as man reads his own feelings and passions
and desires into nature, so we find that the early gods
are frankly, obtrusively, man-like. The gods are
copies of their worshippers, faithful reflections of
those who fear them. This, indeed, remains true to
the end. When the stage is reached that the idea
of God as a physical counterpart of man becomes repulsive,
it is still unable to shake off this anthropomorphic
element. To the modern worshipper God
must not possess a body, but he must have love, and
intelligence&mdash;as though the mental qualities of man are
less human than the bodily ones! They are as human
as arms or legs. And every reason that will justify the
rejection of the conception of the universe being ruled
over by a being who is like man in his physical aspects
is equally conclusive against believing the universe to
be ruled over by a being who resembles man in his
mental characteristics. The one belief is a survival of
the other; and the one would not now be accepted
had not the other been believed in beforehand.</p>

<p>I have deliberately refrained from discussing the
various arguments put forward to justify the belief in
God in order that attention should not be diverted
from the main point, which is that the belief in deity
owes its existence to the ignorant interpretation of
natural happenings by early or uncivilized mankind.
Everything here turns logically on the question of
origin. If the belief in God began in the way I have outlined,
the question of veracity may be dismissed. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">{109}</a></span>
question is one of origin only. It is not a question of
man first seeing a thing but dimly and then getting a
clearer vision as his knowledge becomes more thorough.
It is a question of a radical misunderstanding of certain
experiences, the vogue of an altogether wrong interpretation,
and its displacement by an interpretation of
a quite different nature. The god of the savage was
in the nature of an inference drawn from the world of
the savage. There was the admitted premiss and there
was the obvious conclusion. But with us the premiss
no longer exists. We deliberately reject it as being
altogether unwarrantable. And we cannot reject the
premiss while retaining the conclusion. Logically,
the god of the savage goes with the world of the
savage; it should have no place in the mind of the
really civilized human being.</p>

<p>It is for this reason that I am leaving on one side all
those semi-metaphysical and pseudo-philosophical
arguments that are put forward to justify the belief in
God. As I have already said, they are merely excuses
for continuing a belief that has no real warranty in
fact. No living man or woman believes in God because
of any such argument. We have the belief in
God with us to-day for the same reason that we have
in our bodies a number of rudimentary structures. As
the one is reminiscent of an earlier stage of existence
so is the other. To use the expressive phrase of Winwood
Reade's, we have tailed minds as well as tailed
bodies. The belief in God meets each newcomer to
the social sphere. It is forced upon them before they
are old enough to offer effective resistance in the shape
of acquired knowledge that would render its lodgement
in the mind impossible. Afterwards, the dice of
social power and prestige are loaded in its favour, while
the mental inertia of some, and the self-interest of
others, give force to the arguments which I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">{110}</a></span>
called mere mental subterfuges for perpetuating the
belief in God.</p>

<p>Only one other remark need be made. In the beginning
the gods exist as the apotheosis of ignorance.
The reason the savage had for believing in God was
that he did not know the real causes of the phenomena
around him. And that remains the reason why people
believe in deity to-day. Under whatever guise the
belief is presented, analysis brings it ultimately to that.
The whole history of the human mind, in relation to
the idea of God, shows that so soon as man discovers
the natural causes of any phenomenon or group of
phenomena the idea of God dies out in connection
therewith. God is only conceived as a cause or as an
explanation so long as no other cause or explanation is
forthcoming. In common speech and in ordinary
thought we only bring in the name of God where uncertainty
exists, never where knowledge is obtainable.
We pray to God to cure a fever, but never to put on
again a severed limb. We associate God with the
production of a good harvest, but not with a better
coal output. We use "God only knows" as the
equivalent of our own ignorance, and call on God for
help only where our own helplessness is manifest. The
idea remains true to itself throughout. Born in ignorance
and cradled in fear, it makes its appeal to the
same elements to the end. And if it apes the language
of philosophy, it does so only as do those who purchase
a ready-made pedigree in order to hide the
obscurity of their origin.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">{111}</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.<br />
FREETHOUGHT AND DEATH.</h2>

<p>In the early months of the European war a mortally
wounded British soldier was picked up between the
lines, after lying there unattended for two days. He
died soon after he was brought in, and one of his last
requests was that a copy of Ruskin's <cite>Crown of Wild
Olive</cite> should be buried with him. He said the book
had been with him all the time he had been in France,
it had given him great comfort, and he wished it to be
buried with him. Needless to say, his wish was carried
out, and "somewhere in France" there lies a soldier
with a copy of the <cite>Crown of Wild Olive</cite> clasped to his
breast.</p>

<p>There is another story, of a commoner character,
which, although different in form, is wholly similar in
substance. This tells of the soldier who in his last
moments asks to see a priest, accepts his ministrations
with thankfulness, and dies comforted with the repetition
of familiar formulæ and customary prayers. In
the one case a Bible and a priest; in the other a volume
of lectures by one of the masters of English prose.
The difference is, at first, striking, but there is an
underlying agreement, and they may be used together
to illustrate a single psychological principle.</p>

<p>Freethinker and Christian read the record of both
cases, but it is the Freethinker alone whose philosophy
of life is wide enough to explain both. The Freethinker
knows that the feeling of comfort and the fact
of truth are two distinct things. They may coalesce,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">{112}</a></span>
but they may be as far asunder as the poles. A
delusion may be as consoling as a reality provided it
be accepted as genuine. The soldier with his copy of
Ruskin does not prove the truth of the teachings of
the <cite>Crown of Wild Olive</cite>, does not prove that Ruskin
said the last word or even the truest word on the subjects
dealt with therein. Neither does the consolation
which religion gives some people prove the truth of its
teachings. The comfort which religion brings is a
product of the belief in religion. The consolation that
comes from reading a volume of essays is a product of
the conviction of the truth of the message delivered,
or a sense of the beauty of the language in which the
book is written. Both cases illustrate the power of
belief, and that no Freethinker was ever stupid enough
to question. The finest literature in the world would
bring small comfort to a man who was convinced that
he stood in deadly need of a priest, and the presence
of a priest would be quite useless to a man who believed
that all the religions of the world were so many
geographical absurdities. Comfort does not produce
conviction, it follows it. The truth and the social
value of convictions are quite distinct questions.</p>

<p>There is here a confusion of values, and for this we
have to thank the influence of the Churches. Because
the service of the priest is sought by some we are asked
to believe that it is necessary to all. But the essential
value of a thing is shown, not by the number of people
who get on with it, but by the number that can get on
without it. The canon of agreement and difference is
applicable whether we are dealing with human nature
or conducting an ordinary scientific experiment.
Thus, the indispensability of meat-eating is not shown
by the number of people who swear that they cannot
work without it, but by noting how people fare in its
absence. The drinker does not confound the abstainer;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">{113}</a></span>
it is the other way about. In the same way there is
nothing of evidential value in the protests of those who
say that human nature cannot get along without
religion. We have to test the statement by the cases
where religion is absent. And here, it is not the Christian
that confounds the Freethinker, it is the Freethinker
who confounds the Christian. If the religious
view of life is correct the Freethinker should be a very
rare bird indeed; he should be clearly recognizable as
a departure from the normal type, and, in fact, he was
always so represented in religious literature until he
disproved the legend by multiplying himself with confusing
rapidity. Now it is the Freethinker who will
not fit into the Christian scheme of things. It is
puzzling to see what can be done with a man who repudiates
the religious idea in theory and fact, root and
branch, and yet appears to be getting on quite well in
its absence. That is the awkward fact that will not
fit in with the religious theory. And, other things
equal, one man without religion is greater evidential
value than five hundred with it. All the five hundred
prove at the most is that human nature can get on with
religion, but the one case proves that human nature can
get on without it, and that challenges the whole religious
position. And unless we take up the rather
absurd position that the non-religious man is a sheer
abnormality, this consideration at once reduces religion
from a necessity to a luxury or a dissipation.</p>

<p>The bearing of this on our attitude towards such a
fact as death should be obvious. During the European
war death from being an ever-present fact became an
obtrusive one. Day after day we received news of the
death of friend or relative, and those who escaped that
degree of intimacy with the unpleasant visitor, met him
in the columns of the daily press. And the Christian
clergy would have been untrue to their traditions and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">{114}</a></span>
to their interests&mdash;and there is no corporate body more
alert in these directions&mdash;if they had not tried to exploit
the situation to the utmost. There was nothing new
in the tactics employed, it was the special circumstances
that gave them a little more force than was
usual. The following, for example, may be accepted
as typical:&mdash;</p>

<blockquote><p>The weight of our sorrow is immensely lightened if
we can feel sure that one whom we have loved and
lost has but ascended to spheres of further development,
education, service, achievement, where, by and
by, we shall rejoin him.</p></blockquote>

<p>Quite a common statement, and one which by long
usage has become almost immune from criticism. And
yet it has about as much relation to fact as have the
stories of death-bed conversions, or of people dying
and shrieking for Jesus to save them. One may,
indeed, apply a rough and ready test by an appeal to
facts. How many cases has the reader of these lines
come across in which religion has made people calmer
and more resigned in the presence of death than others
have been who were quite destitute of belief in religion?
Of course, religious folk will repeat religious phrases,
they will attend church, they will listen to the
ministrations of their favourite clergyman, and they
will say that their religion brings them comfort. But
if one gets below the stereotyped phraseology and puts
on one side also the sophisticated attitude in relation
to religion, one quite fails to detect any respect in
which the Freethinking parent differs from the Christian
one. Does the religious parent grieve less? Does
he bear the blow with greater fortitude? Is his grief
of shorter duration? To anyone who will open his
eyes the talk of the comfort of religion will appear to
be largely cant. There are differences due to char<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">{115}</a></span>acter,
to temperament, to training; there is a use of
traditional phrases in the one case that is absent in
the other, but the incidence of a deep sorrow only
serves to show how superficial are the vapourings of
religion to a civilized mind, and how each one of us is
thrown back upon those deeper feelings that are inseparable
from a common humanity. The thought of
an only son who is living with the angels brings no
real solace to a parent's mind. Whatever genuine comfort
is available must come from the thought of a
life that has been well lived, from the sympathetic
presence of friends, from the silent handclasp, which
on such occasions is so often more eloquent than
speech&mdash;in a word, from those healing currents that
are part and parcel of the life of the race. A Freethinker
can easily appreciate the readiness of a clergyman
to help a mind that is suffering from a great
sorrow, but it is the deliberate exploitation of human
grief in the name and in the interests of religion, the
manufacturing of cases of death-bed consolation and
repentance, the citation of evidence to which the experience
of all gives the lie, that fill one with a feeling
akin to disgust.</p>

<p>The writer from whom I have quoted says:&mdash;</p>

<blockquote><p>It is, indeed, possible for people who are Agnostic
or unbelieving with regard to immortality to give
themselves wholly to the pursuit of truth and to the
service of their fellowmen, in moral earnestness and
heroic endeavour; they may endure pain and sorrow
with calm resignation, and toil on in patience and
perseverance. The best of the ancient Stoics did so,
and many a modern Agnostic is doing so to-day.</p></blockquote>

<p>The significance of such a statement is in no wise
diminished by the accompanying qualification that
Freethinkers are "missing a joy which would have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">{116}</a></span>
been to them a well-spring of courage and strength."
That is a pure assumption. They who are without
religious belief are conscious of no lack of courage,
and they are oppressed by no feeling of despair. On
this their own statement must be taken as final. Moreover,
they are speaking as, in the main, those who are
fully acquainted with the Christian position, having
once occupied it. They are able to measure the relative
value of the two positions. The Christian has no such
experience to guide him. In the crises of life the behaviour
of the Freethinker is at least as calm and as
courageous as that of the Christian. And it may certainly
be argued that a serene resignation in the
presence of death is quite as valuable as the hectic
emotionalism of cultivated religious belief.</p>

<p>What, after all, is there in the fact of natural death
that should breed irresolution, rob us of courage, or fill
us with fear? Experience proves there are many things
that people dread more than death, and will even seek
death rather than face, or, again, there are a
hundred and one things to obtain which men and
women will face death without fear. And this readiness
to face or seek death does not seem to be at all
determined by religious belief. The millions of men
who faced death during the war were not determined
in their attitude by their faith in religious dogmas. If
questioned they might, in the majority of cases, say
that they believed in a future life, and also that they
found it a source of strength, but it would need little
reflection to assess the reply at its true value. And as
a racial fact, the fear of death is a negative quality.
The positive aspect is the will to live, and that may be
seen in operation in the animal world as well as in the
world of man. But this has no reference, not even the
remotest, to a belief in a future life. There are no "Intimations
of Immortality" here. There is simply one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">{117}</a></span>
of the conditions of animal survival, developed in man
to the point at which its further strengthening would
become a threat to the welfare of the species. The
desire to live is one of the conditions that secures the
struggle to live, and a species of animals in which this
did not exist would soon go under before a more virile
type. And it is one of the peculiarities of religious
reasoning that a will to live here should be taken as
clear proof of a desire to live somewhere else.</p>

<p>The fear of death could never be a powerful factor in
life; existence would be next to impossible if it were.
It would rob the organism of its daring, its tenacity,
and ultimately divest life itself of value. Against that
danger we have an efficient guard in the operation of
natural selection. In the animal world there is no fear
of death, there is, in fact, no reason to assume that
there exists even a consciousness of death. And with
man, when reflection and knowledge give birth to that
consciousness, there arises a strong other regarding
instinct which effectively prevents it assuming a too
positive or a too dangerous form. Fear of death is, in
brief, part of the jargon of priestcraft. The priest has
taught it the people because it was to his interest to do
so. And the jargon retains a certain currency because
it is only the minority that rise above the parrot-like
capacity to repeat current phrases, or who ever make
an attempt to analyse their meaning and challenge
their veracity.</p>

<p>The positive fear of death is largely an acquired
mental attitude. In its origin it is largely motived by
religion. Generally speaking there is no very great
fear of death among savages, and among the pagans of
old Greece and Rome there was none of that abject
fear of death that became so common with the establishment
of Christianity. To the pagan, death was a
natural fact, sad enough, but not of necessity terrible.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">{118}</a></span>
Of the Greek sculptures representing death Professor
Mahaffy says: "They are simple pictures of the grief
of parting, of the recollection of pleasant days of love
and friendship, of the gloom of an unknown future.
But there is no exaggeration in the picture." Throughout
Roman literature also there runs the conception of
death as the necessary complement of life. Pliny puts
this clearly in the following: "Unto all, the state of
being after the last day is the same as it was before the
first day of life; neither is there any more variation of
it in either body or soul after death than there was
before death." Among the uneducated there does
appear to have been some fear of death, and one may
assume that with some of even of the educated this was
not altogether absent. It may also be assumed that
it was to this type of mind that Christianity made its
first appeal, and upon which it rested its nightmare-like
conception of death and the after-life. On this
matter the modern mind can well appreciate the attitude
of Lucretius, who saw the great danger in front of the
race and sought to guard men against it by pointing
out the artificiality of the fear of death and the cleansing
effect of genuine knowledge.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>So shalt thou feed on Death who feeds on men,<br />
And Death once dead there's no more dying then.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The policy of Christianity was the belittling of this
life and an exaggeration of the life after death, with a
boundless exaggeration of the terrors that awaited the
unwary and the unfaithful. The state of knowledge
under Christian auspices made this task easy enough.
Of the mediæval period Mr. Lionel Cust, in his <cite>History
of Engraving during the Fifteenth Century</cite>, says:&mdash;</p>

<blockquote><p>The keys of knowledge, as of salvation, were entirely
in the hands of the Church, and the lay public,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">{119}</a></span>
both high and low, were, generally speaking, ignorant
and illiterate. One of the secrets of the great
power exercised by the Church lay in its ability to
represent the life of man as environed from the outset
by legions of horrible and insidious demons, who
beset his path throughout life at every stage up to
his very last breath, and are eminently active and
often triumphant when man's fortitude is undermined
by sickness, suffering, and the prospect of dissolution.</p></blockquote>

<p>F. Parkes Weber also points out that, "It was in
mediæval Europe, under the auspices of the Catholic
Church, that descriptions of hell began to take on their
most horrible aspects."<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> So, again, we have Sir
James Frazer pointing out that the fear of death is not
common to the lower races, and "Among the causes
which thus tend to make us cowards may be numbered
the spread of luxury and the doctrines of a gloomy
theology, which by proclaiming the eternal damnation
and excruciating torments of the vast majority of mankind
has added incalculably to the dread and horror
of death."<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p>

<p>No religion has emphasized the terror of death as
Christianity has done, and in the truest sense, no religion
has so served to make men such cowards in its
presence. Upon that fear a large part of the power of
the Christian Church has been built, and men having
become so obsessed with the fear of death and what
lay beyond, it is not surprising that they should turn to
the Church for some measure of relief. The poisoner
thus did a lucrative trade by selling a doubtful remedy
for his own toxic preparation. More than anything
else the fear of death and hell laid the foundation of
the wealth and power of the Christian Church. If it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">{120}</a></span>
drew its authority from God, it derived its profit from
the devil. The two truths that emerge from a sober
and impartial study of Christian history are that the
power of the Church was rooted in death and that it
flourished in dishonour.</p>

<p>It was Christianity, and Christianity alone that made
death so abiding a terror to the European mind. And
society once Christianized, the uneducated could find
no adequate corrective from the more educated. The
baser elements which existed in the Pagan world were
eagerly seized upon by the Christian writers and
developed to their fullest extent. Some of the Pagan
writers had speculated, in a more or less fanciful
spirit, on a hell of a thousand years. Christianity
stretched it to eternity. Pre-Christianity had reserved
the miseries of the after-life for adults. Christian
writers paved the floor of hell with infants, "scarce a
span long." Plutarch and other Pagan moralists had
poured discredit upon the popular notions of a future
life. Christianity reaffirmed them with all the exaggerations
of a diseased imagination. The Pagans held
that death was as normal and as natural as life. Christianity
returned to the conception current among
savages and depicted death as a penal infliction. The
Pagan art of living was superseded by the Christian art
of dying. Human ingenuity exhausted itself in depicting
the terrors of the future life, and when one
remembers the powers of the Church, and the murderous
manner in which it exercised them, there is small
wonder that under the auspices of the Church the fear
of death gained a strength it had never before attained.</p>

<p>Small wonder, then, that we still have with us the
talk of the comfort that Christianity brings in the face
of death. Where the belief in the Christian after-life
really exists, the retention of a conviction of the
saving power of Christianity is a condition of sanity.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">{121}</a></span>
Where the belief does not really exist, we are fronted
with nothing but a parrot-like repetition of familiar
phrases. The Christian talk of comfort is thus, on
either count, no more than a product of Christian
education. Christianity does not make men brave in
the presence of death, that is no more than a popular
superstition. What it does is to cover a natural fact
with supernatural terrors, and then exploit a frame
of mind that it has created. The comfort is only
necessary so long as the special belief is present.
Remove that belief and death takes its place as one of
the inevitable facts of existence, surrounded with all
the sadness of a last farewell, but rid of all the terror
that has been created by religion.</p>

<p>Our dying soldier, asking for a copy of the <cite>Crown of
Wild Olive</cite> to be buried with him, and the other who
calls for priestly ministrations, represent, ultimately,
two different educational results. The one is a product
of an educational process applied during the darkest
periods of European history, and perpetuated by a
training that has been mainly directed by the self-interest
of a class. The other represents an educational
product which stands as the triumph of the pressure of
life over artificial dogmas. The Freethinker, because
he is a Freethinker, needs none of those artificial
stimulants for which the Christian craves. And he
pays him the compliment&mdash;in spite of his protests&mdash;of
believing that without his religion the Christian would
display as much manliness in the face of death as he
does himself. He believes there is plenty of healthy
human nature in the average Christian, and the Freethinker
merely begs him to give it a chance of finding
expression. In this matter, it must be observed, the
Freethinker makes no claim to superiority over the
Christian; it is the Christian who forces that claim
upon him. The Freethinker does not assume that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">{122}</a></span>
difference between himself and the Christian is nearly
so great as the latter would have him believe. He believes
that what is dispensable by the one, without loss,
is dispensable by the other. If Freethinkers can devote
themselves to "the pursuit of truth and the service of
their fellow men," if they can "endure pain and
sorrow with calm resignation," if they live with
honour and face death without fear, I see no reason
why the Christian should not be able to reach the
same level of development. It is paying the Freethinker
a "violent compliment," to use an expression
of John Wesley's, to place him upon a level of excellence
that is apparently so far above that of the
average Christian. As a Freethinker, I decline to
accept it. I believe that what the Freethinker is, the
Christian may well become. He, too, may learn to do
his duty without the fear of hell or the hope of heaven.
All that is required is that he shall give his healthier
instincts an opportunity for expression.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">{123}</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.<br />
THIS WORLD AND THE NEXT.</h2>

<p>In the preceding chapter I have only discussed the fact
of death in relation to a certain attitude of mind. The
question of the survival of the human personality after
death is a distinct question and calls for separate treatment.
Nor is the present work one in which that topic
can be treated at adequate length. The most that can
now be attempted is a bird's eye view of a large field
of controversy, although it may be possible in the
course of that survey to say something on the more
important aspects of the subject.</p>

<p>And first we may notice the curious assumption that
the man who argues for immortality is taking a lofty
view of human nature, while he who argues against it
is taking a low one. In sober truth it is the other way
about. Consider the position. It is tacitly admitted
that if human motive, considered with reference to
this world alone, is adequate as an incentive to action,
and the consequences of actions, again considered with
reference to this world, are an adequate reward for
endeavour, then it is agreed that the main argument
for the belief in immortality breaks down. To support
or to establish the argument it is necessary to show that
life divorced from the conception of a future life can
never reach the highest possible level. Natural human
society is powerless in itself to realize its highest
possibilities. It remains barren of what it might be,
a thing that may frame ideals, but can never realize
them.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">{124}</a></span>
Now that is quite an intelligible, and, therefore, an
arguable proposition. But whether true or not, there
should be no question that it involves a lower view of
human nature than the one taken by the Freethinker.
He does at least pay human nature the compliment of
believing it capable, not alone of framing high ideals,
but also of realizing them. He says that by itself it is
capable of realizing all that may be legitimately demanded
from it. He does not believe that supernatural
hopes or fears are necessary to induce man to live
cleanly, or die serenely, or to carry out properly his
duties to his fellows. The religionist denies this, and
asserts that some form of supernaturalism is essential
to the moral health of men and women. If the Freethinker
is wrong, it is plain that his fault consists in
taking a too optimistic view of human nature. His
mistake consists in taking not a low view of human
nature, but a lofty one. Substantially, the difference
between the two positions is the difference between
the man who is honest from a conviction of the
value of honesty, and the one who refrains from stealing
because he feels certain of detection, or because he
is afraid of losing something that he might otherwise
gain. Thus, we are told by one writer that:&mdash;</p>

<blockquote><p>If human life is but a by-product of the unconscious
play of physical force, like a candle flame soon
to be blown out or burnt out, what a paltry thing it is!</p></blockquote>

<p>But the questions of where human life came from, or
where it will end, are quite apart from the question of
the value and capabilities of human life now. That
there are immense possibilities in this life none but a
fool will deny. The world is full of strange and
curious things, and its pleasures undoubtedly outweigh
its pains in the experience of normal man or woman.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">{125}</a></span>
But the relations between ourselves and others
remain completely unaffected by the termination of
existence at the grave, or its continuation beyond. It
is quite a defensible proposition that life is not worth
living. So is the reverse of the proposition. But it is
nonsense to say that life is a "paltry thing" merely
because it ends at the grave. It is unrestricted egotism
manifesting itself in the form of religious conviction.
One might as well argue that a sunset ceases to be
beautiful because it does not continue all night.</p>

<p>If I cannot live for ever, then is the universe a
failure! That is really all that the religious argument
amounts to. And so to state it, to reduce it to plain
terms, and divest it of its disguising verbiage, almost
removes the need for further refutation. But it is
seldom stated in so plain and so unequivocal a manner.
It is accompanied with much talk of growth, of an
evolutionary purpose, of ruined lives made good, thus:</p>

<blockquote><p>Seeing that man is the goal towards which everything
has tended from the beginning, seeing that the
same eternal and infinite Energy has laboured through
the ages at the production of man, and man is the
heir of the ages, nothing conceivable seems too great
or glorious to believe concerning his destiny.... If
there is no limit to human growth in knowledge and
wisdom, in love and constructive power, in beauty
and joy, we are invested with a magnificent worth
and dignity.</p></blockquote>

<p>So fallacy and folly run on. What, for example, does
anyone mean by man as the goal towards which everything
has tended since the beginning? Whatever
truth there is in the statement applies to all things
without exception. It is as true of the microbe as it is
of man. If the "infinite and eternal Energy"
laboured to produce man, it laboured also to produce<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">{126}</a></span>
the microbe which destroys him. The one is here as
well as the other; and one can conceive a religious
microbe thanking an almighty one for having created
it, and declaring that unless it is to live for ever in
some microbic heaven, with a proper supply of human
beings for its nourishment, the whole scheme of
creation is a failure. It is quite a question of the
point of view. As a matter of fact there are no "ends"
in nature. There are only results, and each result becomes
a factor in some further result. It is human
folly and ignorance which makes an end of a consequence.</p>

<p>After all, what reason is there for anyone assuming
that the survival of man beyond the grave is even
probably true? We do not know man as a "soul"
first and a body afterwards. Neither do we know him
as a detached "mind" which afterwards takes
possession of a body. Our knowledge of man commences
with him, as does our knowledge of any
animal, as a body possessing certain definite functions
of which we call one group mental. And the two
things are so indissolubly linked that we cannot even
think of them as separate. If anyone doubts this
let him try and picture to himself what a man is like
in the absence of a body. He will find the thing simply
inconceivable. In the absence of the material organism,
to which the mind unquestionably stands in the
relation of function to organ, what remains is a mere
blank. To the informed mind, that is. To the intelligence
of the savage, who is led, owing to his
erroneous conception of things, to think of something
inside the body which leaves it during sleep, wanders
about, and then returns on awakening, and who because
of this affiliates sleep to death, the case may be
different. But to a modern mind, one which is
acquainted with something of what science has to say<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">{127}</a></span>
on the subject, the conception of a mind existing apart
from organization is simply unthinkable. All our
knowledge is against it. The development of mind
side by side with the development of the brain and the
nervous system is one of the commonplaces of scientific
knowledge. The treatment of states of mind as functions
of the brain and the nervous system is a common-place
of medical practice. And the fact that diet,
temperature, health and disease, accidents and old
age, all have their effects on mental manifestations is
matter of everyday observation. The whole range of
positive science may safely be challenged to produce a
single indisputable fact in favour of the assumption
that there exists anything about man independent of
the material organism.</p>

<p>All that can be urged in favour of such a belief is
that there are still many obscure facts which we are
not altogether able to explain on a purely mechanistic
theory. But that is a confession of ignorance, not an
affirmation of knowledge. At any rate, there does not
exist a single fact against the functional theory of
mind. All we <em>know</em> is decidedly in its favour, and a
theory must be tested by what we know and by what it
explains, not by what we do not know or by what it
cannot explain. And there is here the additional truth
that the only ground upon which the theory can be
opposed is upon certain metaphysical assumptions
which are made in order to bolster up an already existing
belief. If the belief in survival had not been
already in existence these assumptions would never
have been made. They are not suggested by the facts,
they are invented to support an already established
theory, which can no longer appeal to the circumstances
which gave it birth.</p>

<p>And about those circumstance there is no longer the
slightest reason for justifiable doubt. We can trace<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">{128}</a></span>
the belief in survival after death until we see it commencing
in the savage belief in a double that takes its
origin in the phenomena of dreaming and unusual
mental states. It is from that starting point that the
belief in survival takes its place as an invariable
element in the religions of the world. And as we
trace the evolution of knowledge we see every fact
upon which was built the belief in a double that survived
death gradually losing its hold on the human intelligence,
owing to the fact that the experiences that
gave it birth are interpreted in a manner which allows
no room for the religious theory. The fatal fact about
the belief in survival is its history. That history shows
us how it began, as surely as the course of its evolution
indicates the way in which it will end.</p>

<p>So, as with the idea of God, what we have left in
modern times are not the reasons why such a belief is
held, but only excuses why those who hold it should
not be disturbed. That and a number of arguments
which only present an air of plausibility because they
succeed in jumbling together things that have no connection
with each other. As an example of this we
may take the favourite modern plea that a future life
is required to permit the growth and development of
the individual. We find this expressed in the quotation
above given in the sentence "if there is no limit
to human growth, etc.," the inference being that unless
there is a future life there is a very sharp limit set
to human growth, and one that makes this life a
mockery. This plea is presented in so many forms that
it is worth while analysing it a little, if only to bring
out more clearly the distinction between the religious
and the Freethought view of life.</p>

<p>What now is meant by there being no limit to human
growth? If by it is meant individual growth, the
reply is that there is actually a very sharp limit set to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">{129}</a></span>
growth, much sharper than the average person seems
to be aware of. It is quite clear that the individual is
not capable of unlimited growth in this world. There
are degrees of capacity in different individuals which
will determine what amount of development each is
capable of. Capacity is not an acquired thing, it is an
endowment, and the child born with the brain capacity
of a fool will remain a fool to the end, however much
his folly may be disguised or lost amid the folly of
others. And with each one, whether he be fool or
genius, acquisitions are made more easily and more
rapidly in youth, the power of mental adaptation is
much greater in early than in later life, while in old
age the capacities of adaptation and acquisition become
negligible quantities. And provided one lives
long enough, the last stage sees, not a promise of
further progress if life were continued, but a process
of degradation. The old saying that one can't put a
quart into a pint pot is strictly applicable here. Growth
assumes acquisition; acquisition is determined by
capacity, and this while an indefinite quantity (indefinite
here is strictly referable to our ignorance, not
to the actual fact) is certainly not an unlimited one.
Life, then, so far as the individual is concerned, does
not point to unlimited growth. It indicates, so far as
it indicates anything at all, that there is a limit to
growth as to all other things.</p>

<p>Well, but suppose we say that man is capable of indefinite
growth, what do we mean? Let us also bear
in mind at this point that we are strictly concerned
with the individual. For if man survives death he
must do it as an individual. To merely survive as a
part of the chemical and other elements of the world,
or, to follow some mystical theologians, as an indistinguishable
part of a "world-soul," is not what
people mean when they talk of living beyond the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">{130}</a></span>
grave. Here, again, it will be found that we have confused
two quite distinct things, even though the one
thing borrows its meaning from the other.</p>

<p>When we compare the individual, as such, with the
individual of three or four thousand years ago, can we
say with truth that the man of to-day is actually
superior to the man of the earlier date? To test the
question let us put it in this way. Does the man of
to-day do anything or think anything that is beyond
the capacity of an ancient Egyptian or an ancient
Greek, if it were possible to suddenly revive one and
to enable him to pass through the same education
that each one of us passes through? I do not think
that anyone will answer that question in the affirmative.
Reverse the process. Suppose that a modern
man, with exactly the same capacity that he now has
had lived in the days of the ancient Egyptians or the
ancient Greeks, can we say that his capacity is so much
greater than theirs, that he would have done better
than they did? I do not think that anyone will answer
that question in the affirmative either. Is the soldier
of to-day a better soldier, or the sailor a better sailor
than those who lived three thousand years ago? Once
more the answer will not be in the affirmative. And
yet there are certain things that are obvious. It is
plain that we all know more than did the people of
long ago, we can do more, we understand the past
better, and we can see farther into the future. A
schoolboy to-day carries in his head what would have
been a philosopher's outfit once upon a time. Our
soldiers and sailors utilize, single-handed, forces greater
than a whole army or navy wielded in the far-off days
of the Ptolemies. We call ourselves greater, we think
ourselves greater, and in a sense we are greater than
the people of old. What, then, is the explanation of
the apparent paradox?</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">{131}</a></span>
The explanation lies in the simple fact that progress
is not a phenomenon of individual life at all. It
is a phenomenon of social existence. If each generation
had to commence at the exact point at which its predecessors
started it would get no farther than they got.
It would be an eternal round, with each generation
starting from and reaching the same point, and progress
would be an inconceivable thing. But that we
know is not the case. Instead of each generation starting
from precisely the same point, one inherits at least
something of the labours and discoveries of its predecessors.
A thing discovered by the individual is
discovered for the race. A thought struck out by the
individual is a thought for the race. By language, by
tradition, and by institutions the advances of each
generation are conserved, handed on, and made part of
our racial possessions. The strength, the knowledge,
of the modern is thus due not to any innate superiority
over the ancient, but because one is modern and the
other ancient. If we could have surrounded the
ancient Assyrians with all the inventions, and given
them all the knowledge that we possess, they would
have used that knowledge and those inventions as
wisely, or as unwisely as we use them. Progress is
thus not a fact of individual but of racial life. The
individual inherits more than he creates, and it is in
virtue of this racial inheritance that he is what he is.</p>

<p>It is a mere trick of the imagination that converts
this fact of social growth into an essential characteristic
of individual life. We speak of "man" without
clearly distinguishing between man as a biological unit
and man as a member of a social group developing in
correspondence with a true social medium. But if
that is so, it follows that this capacity for growth is, so
to speak, a function of the social medium. It is conditioned
by it, it has relevance only in relation to it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">{132}</a></span>
Our feelings, our sentiments, even our desires, have
reference to this life, and in a far deeper sense than is
usually imagined. And removed from its relation to
this life human nature would be without meaning or
value.</p>

<p>There is nothing in any of the functions of man, in
any of his capacities, or in any of his properly understood
desires that has the slightest reference to any life
but this. It is unthinkable that there should be. An
organ or an organism develops in relation to a special
medium, not in relation to one that&mdash;even though it
exists&mdash;is not also in relation with it. This is quite
an obvious truth in regard to structures, but it is not
always so clearly recognized, or so carefully borne in
mind, that it is equally true of every feeling and desire.
For these are developed in relation to their special
medium, in this case, the existence of fellow beings
with their actions and reactions on each other. And
man is not only a member of a social group, that much
is an obvious fact; but he is a product of the group in
the sense that all his characteristic human qualities
have resulted from the interactions of group life. Take
man out of relation to that fact, and he is an enigma,
presenting fit opportunities for the wild theorizing of
religious philosophers. Take him in connection with
it, and his whole nature becomes susceptible of understanding
in relation to the only existence he knows
and desires.</p>

<p>The twin facts of growth and progress, upon which
so much of the argument for a future life turns nowadays,
have not the slightest possible reference to a
life beyond the grave. They are fundamentally not
even personal, but social. It is the race that grows, not
the individual, he becomes more powerful precisely because
the products of racial acquisition are inherited
by him. Remove, if only in thought, the individual<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">{133}</a></span>
from all association with his fellows, strip him of all
that he inherits from association with them, and he
loses all the qualities we indicate when we speak of
him as a civilized being. Remove him, in fact, from
that association, as when a man is marooned on a
desert island, and the more civilized qualities of his
character begin to weaken and in time disappear.
Man, as an individual, becomes more powerful with the
passing of each generation, precisely because he is
thus dependent upon the life of the race. The secret
of his weakness is at the same time the source of his
strength. We are what we are because of the generations
of men and women who lived and toiled and died
before we were born. We inherit the fruits of their
labours, as those who come after us will inherit the
fruits of our struggles and conquests. It is thus in the
life of the race that man achieves immortality. None
other is possible, or conceivable. And to those whose
minds are not distorted by religious teaching, and who
have taken the trouble to analyse and understand their
own mental states, it may be said that none other is
even desirable.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">{134}</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.<br />
EVOLUTION.</h2>

<p>Language, we have said above, is one of the prime
conditions of human greatness and progress. It is the
principal means by which man conserves his victories
over the forces of his environment, and transmits them
to his descendants. But it is, nevertheless, not without
its dangers, and may exert an influence fatal to exact
thought. There is a sense in which language necessarily
lags behind thought. For words are coined to
express the ideas of those who fashion them; and as the
knowledge of the next generation alters, and some
modification of existing conceptions is found necessary,
there is nothing but the existing array of words
in which to express them. The consequence is that
there are nearly always subtle shades of meaning in the
words used differing from the exact meaning which the
new thought is trying to express. Thought drives us to
seek new or improved verbal tools, but until we get
them we must go on using the old ones, with all their
old implications. And by the time the new words
arrive thought has made a still further advance, and
the general position remains. It is an eternal chase
in which the pursued is always being captured, but is
never caught.</p>

<p>Another way in which language holds a danger is
that with many words, especially when they assume
the character of a formula, they tend to usurp the
place of thinking. The old lady who found so much
consolation in the "blessed" word Mesopotamia, is
not alone in using that method of consolation. It does
not meet us only in connection with religion, it is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">{135}</a></span>
encountered over the whole field of sociology, and even
of science. A conception in science or sociology is
established after a hard fight. It is accepted generally,
and thereafter takes its place as one of the many established
truths. And then the danger shows itself. It is
repeated as though it had some magical virtue in itself;
it means nothing to very many of those who use it,
they simply hand over their mental difficulties to its
care, much as the penitent in the confessional hands
over his moral troubles to the priest, and there the
matter ends. But in such cases the words used do not
express thought, they simply blind people to its
absence. And not only that, but in the name of these
sacred words, any number of foolish inferences are
drawn and receive general assent.</p>

<p>A striking illustration of this is to be found in such
a word as "Evolution." One may say of it that while
it began as a formula, it continues as a fiat. Some invoke
it with all the expectancy of a mediæval magician
commanding the attendance of his favourite spirits.
Others approach it with a hushed reverence that is
reminiscent of a Catholic devotee before his favourite
shrine. In a little more than half a century it has
acquired the characteristics of the Kismet of the
Mohammedan, the Beelzebub of the pious Christian,
and the power of a phrase that gives inspiration to a
born soldier. It is used as often to dispel doubt as it
is to awaken curiosity. It may express comprehension
or merely indicate vacuity. Decisions are pronounced
in its name with all the solemnity of a "Thus saith
the Lord." We are not sure that even to talk about
evolution in this way may not be considered wrong.
For there are crowds of folk who cannot distinguish
profundity from solemnity, and who mistake a long
face for the sure indication of a well-stored brain. The
truth here is that what a man understands thoroughly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">{136}</a></span>
he can deal with easily; and that he laughs at a difficulty
is not necessarily a sign that he fails to appreciate
it, he may laugh because he has taken its measure.
And why people do not laugh at such a thing
as religion is partly because they have not taken
its measure, partly from a perception that religion cannot
stand it. Everywhere the priest maintains his hold
as a consequence of the narcotizing influence of ill-understood
phrases, and in this he is matched by the
pseudo-philosopher whose pompous use of imperfectly
appreciated formulæ disguises from the crowd the
mistiness of his understanding.</p>

<p>A glance over the various uses to which the word
"Evolution" is put will well illustrate the truth of
what has been said. These make one wonder what, in
the opinion of some people, evolution stands for. One
of these uses of evolution is to give it a certain moral
implication to which it has not the slightest claim. A
certain school of Non-Theists are, in this matter, if not
the greatest offenders, certainly those with the least
excuse for committing the blunder. By these evolution
is identified with progress, or advancement, or a
gradual "levelling up" of society, and is even
acclaimed as presenting a more "moral" view of the
Universe than is the Theistic conception. Now,
primarily, this ascription of what one may call a moral
element to evolution is no more than a carrying over
into science of a frame of mind that properly belongs to
Theism. Quite naturally the Theist was driven to try
and find some moral purpose in the Universe, and to
prove that its working did not grate on our moral
sense. That was quite understandable, and even
legitimate. The world, from the point of view of the
Goddite, was God's world, he made it; and we are
ultimately compelled to judge the character of God
from his workmanship. An attack on the moral<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">{137}</a></span>
character of the world is, therefore, an attack on the
character of its maker. And the Theist proceeded to
find a moral justification for all that God had done.</p>

<p>So far all is clear. But now comes a certain kind of
Non-Theist. And he, always rejecting a formal
Theism and substituting evolution, proceeds to claim
for his formula all that the Theist claimed for his. He
also strives to show that the idea of cosmic evolution
involves conceptions of nobility, justice, morality, etc.
There is no wonder that some Christians round on
him, and tell him that he still believes in a god.
Substantially he does. That is, he carries over into
his new camp the same anthropomorphic conception
of the workings of nature, and uses the same pseudo-scientific
reasoning that is characteristic of the Theist.
He has formally given up God, but he goes about
uncomfortably burdened with his ghost.</p>

<p>Now, evolution is not a fiat, but a formula. It has
nothing whatever to do with progress, as such, nor with
morality, as such, nor with a levelling up, nor a
levelling down. It is really no more than a special
application of the principle of causation, and whether
the working out of that principle has a good effect or a
bad one, a moralizing, or a demoralizing, a progressive,
or a retrogressive consequence is not "given" in the
principle itself. Fundamentally, all cosmic phenomena
present us with two aspects&mdash;difference and change&mdash;and
that is so because it is the fundamental condition
of our knowing anything at all. But the law of
evolution is no more, is nothing more serious or more
profound than an attempt to express those movements
of change and difference in a more or less precise
formula. It aims at doing for phenomena in general
exactly what a particular scientific law aims at doing
for some special department. But it has no more a
moral implication, or a progressive implication than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">{138}</a></span>
has the law of gravitation or of chemical affinity. The
sum of those changes that are expressed in the law of
evolution may result in one or the other; it has resulted
in one or the other. At one time we call its consequences
moral or progressive, at another time we call
them immoral or retrogressive, but these are some of
the distinctions which the human mind creates for its
own convenience, they have no validity in any other
sense. And when we mistake these quite legitimate
distinctions, made for our own convenience, and argue
as though they had an actual independent existence,
we are reproducing exactly the same mental confusion
that keeps Theism alive.</p>

<p>The two aspects that difference and change resolve
themselves into when expressed in an evolutionary
formula are, in the inorganic world, equilibrium, and,
in the organic world, adaptation. Of course, equilibrium
also applies to the organic world, I merely put
it this way for the purpose of clarity. Now, if we confine
our attention to the world of animal forms, what
we have expressed, primarily, is the fact of adaptation.
If an animal is to live it must be adapted to its surroundings
to at least the extent of being able to overcome
or to neutralize the forces that threaten its
existence. That is quite a common-place, since all it
says is that to live an animal must be fit to live, but all
great truths are common-places&mdash;when one sees them.
Still, if there were only adaptations to consider, and if
the environment to which adaptation is to be secured,
remained constant, all we should have would be the
deaths of those not able to live, with the survival of
those more fortunately endowed. There would be
nothing that we could call, even to please ourselves,
either progress or its reverse. Movement up or down
(both human landmarks) occurs because the environment
itself undergoes a change. Either the material<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">{139}</a></span>
conditions change, or the pressure of numbers initiates
a contest for survival, although more commonly one
may imagine both causes in operation at the same time.
But the consequence is the introduction of a new
quality into the struggle for existence. It becomes a
question of a greater endowment of the qualities that
spell survival. And that paves the way to progress&mdash;or
the reverse. But one must bear in mind that,
whether the movement be in one direction or the other,
it is still the same process that is at work. Evolution
levels neither "up" nor "down." Up and down is
as relative in biology as it is in astronomy. In nature
there is neither better nor worse, neither high nor low,
neither good nor bad, there are only differences, and
if that had been properly appreciated by all, very few
of the apologies for Theism would ever have seen the
light.</p>

<p>There is not the slightest warranty for speaking of
evolution as being a "progressive force," it is, indeed,
not a force at all, but only a descriptive term on all
fours with any other descriptive term as expressed in a
natural law. It neither, of necessity, levels up nor levels
down. In the animal world it illustrates adaptation
only, but whether that adaptation involves what we
choose to call progression or retrogression is a matter
of indifference. On the one hand we have aquatic life
giving rise to mammalian life, and on the other hand,
we have mammalian life reverting to an aquatic form of
existence. In one place we have a "lower" form of
life giving place to a "higher" form. In another
place we can see the reverse process taking place. And
the "lower" forms are often more persistent than the
"higher" ones, while, as the course of epidemical
and other diseases shows certain lowly forms of life
may make the existence of the higher forms impossible.
The Theistic attempt to disprove the mechanistic con<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">{140}</a></span>ception
of nature by insisting that evolution is a law
of progress, that it implies an end, and indicates a
goal, is wholly fallacious. From a scientific point of
view it is meaningless chatter. Science knows nothing
of a plan, or an end in nature, or even progress. All
these are conceptions which we humans create for our
own convenience. They are so many standards of
measurement, of exactly the same nature as our agreement
that a certain length of space shall be called a
yard, or a certain quantity of liquid shall be called a
pint. To think otherwise is pure anthropomorphism.
It is the ghost of God imported into science.</p>

<p>So far, then, it is clear that the universal fact in
nature is change. The most general aspect of nature
which meets us is that expressed in the law of
evolution. And proceeding from the more general to
the less general, in the world of living beings this
change meets us in the form of adaptation to environment.
But what constitutes adaptation must be determined
by the nature of the environment. That will
determine what qualities are of value in the struggle
for existence, which is not necessarily a struggle
against other animals, but may be no more than the
animal's own endeavours to persist in being. It is,
however, in relation to the environment that we must
measure the value of qualities. Whatever be the nature
of the environment that principle remains true. Ideally,
one quality may be more desirable than another, but if
it does not secure a greater degree of adaptation to the
environment it brings no advantage to its possessor.
It may even bring a positive disadvantage. In a
thieves' kitchen the honest man is handicapped. In a
circle of upright men the dishonest man is at a discount.
In the existing political world a perfectly
truthful man would be a parliamentary failure. In the
pulpit a preacher who knew the truth about Chris<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">{141}</a></span>tianity
and preached it would soon be out of the
Church. Adaptation is not, as such, a question of
moral goodness or badness, it is simply adaptation.</p>

<p>A precautionary word needs be said on the matter of
environment. If we conceive the environment as made
up only of the material surroundings we shall not be
long before we find ourselves falling into gross error.
For that conception of environment will only hold of
the very lowest organisms. A little higher, and the
nature of the organism begins to have a modifying
effect on the material environment, and when we come
to animals living in groups the environment of the
individual animal becomes partly the habits and
instincts of the other animals with which it lives.
Finally, when we reach man this transformation of the
nature of the environment becomes greatest. Here it is
not merely the existence of other members of the same
species, with all their developed feelings and ideas to
which each must become adapted to live, but in virtue
of what we have described above as the social medium,
certain "thought forms" such as institutions, conceptions
of right and wrong, ideals of duty, loyalty,
the relation of one human group to other human
groups, not merely those that are now living, but also
those that are dead, are all part of the environment to
which adjustment must be made. And in the higher
stages of social life these aspects of the environment
become of even greater consequence than the facts of a
climatic, geographic, or geologic nature. In other
words, the environment which exerts a predominating
influence on civilized mankind is an environment that
has been very largely created by social life and growth.</p>

<p>If we keep these two considerations firmly in mind
we shall be well guarded against a whole host of
fallacies and false analogies that are placed before us
as though they were unquestioned and unquestionable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">{142}</a></span>
truths. There is, for instance, the misreading of
evolution which asserts that inasmuch as what is called
moral progress takes place, therefore evolution involves
a moral purpose. We find this view put forward not
only by avowed Theists, but by those who, while
formally disavowing Theism, appear to have imported
into ethics all the false sentiment and fallacious reasoning
that formerly did duty in bolstering up the idea of
God. Evolution, as such, is no more concerned with
an ideal morality than it is concerned with the development
of an ideal apple dumpling. In the universal
process morality is no more than a special illustration
of the principle of adaptation. The morality of man is
a summary of the relations between human beings that
must be maintained if the two-fold end of racial
preservation and individual development are to be
secured. Fundamentally morality is the formulation
in either theory or practice of rules or actions that make
group-life possible. And the man who sees in the
existence or growth of morality proof of a "plan" or
an "end" is on all fours with the mentality of the
curate who saw the hand of Providence in the fact that
death came at the end of life instead of in the middle
of it. What we are dealing with here is the fact of
adaptation, although in the case of the human group
the traditions and customs and ideals of the group
form a very important part of the environment to which
adaptation must be made and have, therefore, a
distinct survival value. The moral mystery-monger
is only a shade less objectionable than the religious
mystery-monger, of whom he is the ethical equivalent.</p>

<p>A right conception of the nature of environment and
the meaning of evolution will also protect us against
a fallacy that is met with in connection with social
growth. Human nature, we are often told, is always
the same. To secure a desired reform, we are assured,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">{143}</a></span>
you must first of all change human nature, and the
assumption is that as human nature cannot be changed
the proposed reform is quite impossible.</p>

<p>Now there is a sense in which human nature is the
same, generation after generation. But there is another
sense in which human nature is undergoing constant
alteration, and, indeed, it is one of the outstanding
features of social life that it should be so. So far as
can be seen there exists no difference between the
fundamental capacities possessed by man during at
least the historic period. There are differences in
people between the relative strengths of the various
capacities, but that is all. An ancient Assyrian
possessed all the capacities of a modern Englishman,
and in the main one would feel inclined to say the same
of them in their quantitative aspect as well as in their
qualitative one. For when one looks at the matter
closely it is seen that the main difference between the
ancient and the modern man is in expression. Civilization
does not so much change the man so much as it
gives a new direction to the existing qualities.
Whether particular qualities are expressed in an
ideally good direction or the reverse depends upon the
environment to which they react.</p>

<p>To take an example. The fundamental evil of war
in a modern state is that it expends energy in a harmful
direction. But war itself, the expression of the
war-like character, is the outcome of pugnacity and the
love of adventure without which human nature would
be decidedly the poorer, and would be comparatively
ineffective. It is fundamentally an expression of these
qualities that lead to the quite healthy taste for exploration,
discovery, and in intellectual pursuits to that
contest of ideas which lies at the root of most of our
progress. And what war means in the modern State
is that the love of competition and adventure, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">{144}</a></span>
pugnacity which leads a man to fight in defence of a
right or to redress a wrong, and without which human
nature would be a poor thing, are expended in the way
of sheer destruction instead of through channels of
adventure and healthy intellectual contest. Sympathies
are narrowed instead of widened, and hatred of
the stranger and the outsider, of which a growing
number of people in a civilized country are becoming
ashamed, assumes the rank of a virtue. In other words,
a state of war creates an environment&mdash;fortunately
for only a brief period&mdash;which gives a survival value
to such expressions of human capacity as indicate a
reversion to a lower state of culture.</p>

<p>We may put the matter thus. While conduct is a
function of the organism, and while the <em>kind</em> of reaction
is determined by structure, the <em>form</em> taken by
the reaction is a matter of response to environmental
influences. It is this fact which explains why the
capacities of man remain fairly constant, while there
is a continuous redirecting of these capacities into new
channels suitable to a developing social life.</p>

<p>We are only outlining here a view of evolution that
would require a volume to discuss and illustrate
adequately, but enough has been said to indicate the
enormous importance of the educative power of the
environment. We cannot alter the capacities of the
individual for they are a natural endowment. But we
can, in virtue of an increased emphasis, determine
whether they shall be expressed in this or that
direction. The love of adventure may, for example,
be exhausted in the pursuit of some piratical enterprise,
or it may be guided into channels of some useful
form of social effort. It lies with society itself to see
that the environment is such as to exercise a determining
influence with regard to expressions of activity
that are beneficial to the whole of the group.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">{145}</a></span>
To sum up. Evolution is no more than a formula
that expresses the way in which a moving balance of
forces is brought about by purely mechanical means.
So far as animal life is concerned this balance is expressed
by the phrase "adaptation to environment."
But in human society the environment is in a growing
measure made up of ideas, customs, traditions, ideals,
and beliefs; in a word, of factors which are themselves
products of human activities. And it is for this reason
that the game of civilization is very largely in our own
hands. If we maintain an environment in which it is
either costly or dangerous to be honest and fearless in
the expression of opinion, we shall be doing our best
to develop mental cowardice and hypocrisy. If we
bring up the young with the successful soldier or
money-maker before them as examples, while we continue
to treat the scientist as a crank, and the reformer
as a dangerous criminal, we shall be continuing the
policy of forcing the expression of human capacity on
a lower level than would otherwise be the case. If
we encourage the dominance of a religion which while
making a profession of disinterested loftiness continues
to irradiate a narrow egotism and a pessimistic view of
life, we are doing our best to perpetuate an environment
which emphasizes only the poorer aspects of
human motive. Two centuries of ceaseless scientific
activity have taught us something of the rules of the
game which we are all playing with nature whether
we will or no. To-day we have a good many of the
winning cards in our hands, if we will only learn to
play them wisely. It is not correct to say that
evolution necessarily involves progress, but it does
indicate that wisdom and foresight may so control the
social forces as to turn that ceaseless change which is
indicated by the law of evolution into channels that
make for happiness and prosperity.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">{146}</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.<br />
DARWINISM AND DESIGN.</h2>

<p>The influence of the hypothesis of evolution on
religion was not long in making itself felt. Professor
Huxley explained the rapid success of Darwinism by
saying that the scientific world was ready for it. And
much the same thing may be said of the better
representatives of the intellectual world with regard
to the bearing of evolution on religion. In many
directions the cultivated mind had for more than half
a century been getting familiar with the general conception
of growth in human life and thought. Where
earlier generations had seen no more than a pattern to
unravel there had developed a conviction that there
was a history to trace and to understand. Distant
parts of the world had been brought together during
the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, readers
and students were getting familiarized with the mass
of customs and religious ideas that were possessed by
these peoples, and it was perceived that beneath the
bewildering variety of man's mental output there were
certain features which they had in common, and which
might hold in solution some common principle or
principles.</p>

<p>This common principle was found in the conception
of evolution. It was the one thing which, if true, and
apart from the impossible idea of a revelation, nicely
graduated to the capacities of different races, offered
an explanation of the religions of the world in terms
more satisfactory than those of deliberate invention<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">{147}</a></span>
or imposture. Once it was accepted, if only as an instrument
of investigation, its use was soon justified.
And the thorough-going nature of the conquest
achieved is in no wise more clearly manifested than in
the fact that the conception of growth is, to-day, not
merely an accepted principle with scientific investigators,
it has sunk deeply into all our literature and
forms an unconscious part of popular thought.</p>

<p>One aspect of the influence of evolution on religious
ideas has already been noted. It made the religious
idea but one of the many forms that were assumed by
man's attempt to reduce his experience of the world to
something like an orderly theory. But that carried
with it, for religion, the danger of reducing it to no
more than one of the many theories of things which
man forms, with the prospect of its rejection as a
better knowledge of the world develops. Evolution
certainly divested religion of any authority save such
as it might contain in itself, and that is a position a
religious mind can never contemplate with equanimity.</p>

<p>But so far as the theory of Darwinism is concerned it
exerted a marked and rapid influence on the popular
religious theory of design in nature. This is one of
the oldest arguments in favour of a reasoned belief in
God, and it is the one which was, and is still in one
form or another, held in the greatest popular esteem.
To the popular mind&mdash;and religion in a civilized
country is not seriously concerned about its failing
grip on the cultured intelligence so long as it keeps
control of the ordinary man and woman&mdash;to the
popular mind the argument from design appealed with
peculiar force. Anyone is capable of admiring the
wonders of nature, and in the earlier developments of
popular science the marvels of plant and animal
structures served only to deepen the Theist's admiration
of the "divine wisdom." The examples of com<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">{148}</a></span>plexity
of structure, of the interdependence of parts,
and of the thousand and one cunning devices by which
animal life maintains itself in the face of a hostile
environment were there for all to see and admire.
And when man compared these with his own conscious
attempts to adapt means to ends, there seemed as
strong proof here as anywhere of some scheming intelligence
behind the natural process.</p>

<p>But the strength of the case was more apparent than
real. It was weakest at the very point where it should
have been strongest. In the case of a human product
we know the purpose and can measure the extent of
its realization in the nature of the result. In the case
of a natural product we have no means of knowing
what the purpose was, or even if any purpose at all
lies behind the product. The important element in
the argument from design&mdash;that of purpose&mdash;is thus
pure assumption. In the case of human productions
we argue from purpose to production. In the case of
a natural object we are arguing from production to an
assumed purpose. The analogy breaks down just
where it should be strongest and clearest.</p>

<p>Now it is undeniable that to a very large number of
the more thoughtful the old form of the argument
from design received its death blow from the Darwinian
doctrine of natural selection. In the light of this
theory there was no greater need to argue that intelligence
was necessary to produce animal adaptations
than there was to assume intelligence for the sifting of
sand by the wind. As the lighter grains are carried
farthest because they are lightest, so natural selection,
operating upon organic variations, favoured the better
adapted specimens by killing off the less favoured
ones. The fittest is not created, it survives. The
world is not what it is because the animal is what it is,
the animal is what it is because the world is as it is.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">{149}</a></span>
It cannot be any different and live&mdash;a truth demonstrated
by the destruction of myriads of animal forms,
and by the disappearance of whole species. The case
was so plain, the evidence so conclusive, that the
clearer headed religionists dropped the old form of the
argument from design as no longer tenable.</p>

<p>But the gentleman who exchanged the errors of the
Church of Rome for those of the Church of England is
always with us. And the believer in deity having
dropped the argument from design in one form immediately
proceeded to revive it in another. This was,
perhaps, inevitable. After all, man lives in this world,
and if proof of the existence of deity is to be gathered
from his works, it must be derived from the world we
know. So design <em>must</em> be found somewhere, and it
must be found here. Only one chance was left. The
general hypothesis of evolution&mdash;either Darwinism
alone, or Darwinism plus other factors&mdash;explained the
development of animal life. But that was <em>within</em> the
natural process. What, then, of the process as a whole?
If the hand of God could not be seen in the particular
adaptations of animal life, might it not be that the
whole of the process, in virtue of which these particular
adaptations occurred, might be the expression
of the divine intelligence? God did not create the
particular parts directly, but may he not have created
the whole, leaving it for the forces he had set in
motion to work out his "plan." The suggestion was
attractive. It relieved religion from resting its case
in a region where proof and disproof are possible, and
removed it to a region where they are difficult, if not
impossible. So, as it was not possible to uphold the
old teleology, one began to hear a great deal of the
"wider teleology," which meant that the Theist was
thinking vaguely when he imagined he was thinking
comprehensively, and that, because he had reached a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">{150}</a></span>
region where the laws of logic could not be applied, he
concluded that he had achieved demonstration. And,
indeed, when one gets outside the region of verification
there is nothing to stop one theorizing&mdash;save a dose of
common-sense and a gracious gift of humour.</p>

<p>In another work (<cite>Theism or Atheism</cite>) I have dealt
at length with the argument from design. At present
my aim is to take the presentation of this "wider
teleology" as given by a well-known writer on philosophical
subjects, Mr. F. C. S. Schiller, in a volume
published a few years ago entitled <cite>Humanism: Philosophical
Essays</cite>. And in doing so, it is certain that
the theologian will lose nothing by leaving himself in
the hands of so able a representative.</p>

<p>Mr. Schiller naturally accepts Darwinism as at least
an important factor in organic evolution, but he does
not believe that it excludes design, and he does believe
that "our attitude towards life will be very
different, according as we believe it to be inspired and
guided by intelligence or hold it to be the fortuitous
product of blind mechanisms, whose working our helpless
human intelligence can observe, but cannot
control."</p>

<p>Now within its scope Darwinism certainly does
exclude design, and even though the forces represented
by natural selection may be directed towards
the end produced, yet so far as the play of these forces
is concerned they are really self-directing, or self-contained.
The argument really seems to be just mere
theology masquerading as philosophy. Theories do
play some part in the determination of the individual
attitude towards life, but they do not play the important
part that Mr. Schiller assumes they play. It is
easily observable that the same theory of life held by
a Christian in England and by another Christian in
Asia Minor has, so far as it affects conduct, different<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">{151}</a></span>
results. And if it be said that even though the results
be different they are still there, the reply is that they
differ because the facts of life compel an adjustment
in terms of the general environment. Mr. Schiller
admits that the "prevalent conduct and that adapted
to the conditions of life must coincide," and the
admission is fatal to his position. The truth of the
matter is that the conditions of life being what they
are, and the consequences of conduct being also what
they are, speculative theories of life cannot, in the
nature of the case, affect life beyond a certain point;
that is, if life is to continue. That is why in the
history of belief religious teachings have sooner or
later to accommodate themselves to persistent facts.</p>

<p>Mr. Schiller brings forward two arguments in
favour of reconciling Darwinism and Design, both of
them ingenious, but neither of them conclusive. With
both of these I will deal later; but it is first necessary
to notice one or two of his arguments against a non-Theistic
Darwinism. The denial of the argument from
design, he says, leads farther than most people
imagine:&mdash;</p>

<blockquote><p>A complete denial of design in nature must deny
the efficacy of all intelligence as such. A consistently
mechanical view has to regard all intelligence as
otiose, as an "epi-phenomenal by-product" or fifth
wheel to the cart, in the absence of which the given
results would no less have occurred. And so, if this
view were the truth, we should have to renounce all
effort to direct our fated and ill-fated course down the
stream of time. Our consciousness would be an unmeaning
accident.</p></blockquote>

<p>A complete reply to this would involve an examination
of the meaning that is and ought to be attached to
"intelligence," and that is too lengthy an enquiry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">{152}</a></span>
to be attempted here. It is, perhaps, enough to point
out that Mr. Schiller's argument clearly moves on
the assumption that intelligence is a <em>thing</em> or a quality
which exists, so to speak, in its own right and which
interferes with the course of events as something from
without. It is quite probable that he would repudiate
this construction being placed on his words, but if he
does not mean that, then I fail to see what he does
mean, or what force there is in his argument. And it
is enough for my purpose to point out that "intelligence"
or mind is not a thing, but a relation. It
asserts of a certain class of actions exactly what
"gravitation" asserts of a certain class of motion,
and "thingness" is no more asserted in the one case
than it is in the other.</p>

<p>Intelligence, as a name given to a special class of
facts or actions, remains, whatever view we take of its
nature, and it is puzzling to see why the denial of
extra natural intelligence&mdash;that is, intelligence
separated from all the conditions under which we
know the phenomenon of intelligence&mdash;should be
taken as involving the denial of the existence of
intelligence as we know it. Intelligence as connoting
purposive action remains as much a fact as gravity or
chemical attraction, and continues valid concerning
the phenomena it is intended to cover. All that the
evolutionist is committed to is the statement that it is
as much a product of evolution as is the shape or colouring
of animals. It is not at all a question of self-dependence.
Every force in nature must be taken
for what it is worth, intelligence among them. Why,
then, does the view that intelligence is both a product
of evolution and a cause of another phase of evolution
land us in self-contradiction, or make the existence of
itself meaningless? The truth is that intelligence
determines results exactly as every other force in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">{153}</a></span>
nature determines results, by acting as a link in an
unending sequential chain. And the question as to
what intelligence is <i>per se</i> is as meaningless as what
gravitation is <i>per se</i>. These are names which we give
to groups of phenomena displaying particular and
differential characteristics, and their purpose is served
when they enable us to cognize and recognize these
phenomena and to give them their place and describe
their function in the series of changes that make up
our world.</p>

<p>Mr. Schiller's reply to this line of criticism is the
familiar one that it reduces human beings to automata.
He says:&mdash;</p>

<blockquote><p>The ease with which the Darwinian argument dispenses
with intelligence as a factor in survival excites
suspicion. It is proving too much to show that
adaptation might equally well have arisen in automata.
For we ourselves are strongly persuaded that
we are not automata and strive hard to adapt ourselves.
In us at least, therefore, intelligence <em>is</em> a
source of adaptation.... Intelligence therefore is a
<i>vera causa</i> as a source of adaptations at least co-ordinate
with Natural Selection, and this can be
denied only if it is declared inefficacious <em>everywhere</em>;
if all living beings, including ourselves, are declared
to be automata.</p></blockquote>

<p>One is compelled again to point out that Darwinism
does not dispense with intelligence as a factor in
survival, except so far as the intelligence which determines
survival is declared to be operating apart from
the organisms which survive. The conduct of one of
the lower animals which reacts only to the immediate
promptings of its environment is of one order, but the
response of another animal not merely to the immediate
promptings of the environment, but to remote<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">{154}</a></span>
conditions, as in the selection of food or the building of
a home of some sort, or to the fashioning of a tool,
does obviously give to the intelligence displayed a
distinct survival value. And that effectively replies
to the triumphant conclusion, "If intelligence has no
efficacy in promoting adaptations, <i>i.e.</i>, if it has no
survival value, how comes it to be developed at all?"</p>

<p>Darwinism would never have been able to dispense
with intelligence in the way it did but for the fact that
the opposite theory never stood for more than a mere
collection of words. That species are or were produced
by the operations of "Divine Intelligence" is merely
a grandiloquent way of saying nothing at all. It is
absurd to pretend that such a formula ever had any
scientific value. It explains nothing. And it is quite
obvious that some adaptations do, so far as we know,
arise without intelligence, and are, therefore, to use
Mr. Schiller's expression, automata. (I do not like the
word, since it conveys too much the notion of someone
behind the scenes pulling strings.) And it is on his
theory that animals actually are automata. For if
there be a "Divine mind" which stands as the active
cause of the adaptations that meet us in the animal
world, and who arranges forces so that they shall work
to their pre-destined end, what is that but converting
the whole of the animal world into so many automata.
One does not escape determinism in this way; it is
only getting rid of it in one direction in order to reintroduce
it in another.</p>

<p>And one would like to know what our conviction
that we are not automata has to do with it. Whether
the most rigid determinism is true or not is a matter
to be settled by an examination of the facts and a careful
reflection as to their real significance. No one
questions that there is a persuasion to the contrary;
if there were not there would be nothing around which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">{155}</a></span>
controversy could gather. But it is the conviction that
is challenged, and it is idle to reply to the challenge by
asserting a conviction to the contrary. The whole
history of human thought is the record of a challenge
and a reversal of such convictions. There never was a
conviction which was held more strenuously than that
the earth was flat. The experience of all men in every
hour of their lives seemed to prove it. And yet to-day
no one believes it. The affirmation that we are "free"
rests, as Spinoza said, ultimately on the fact that all
men know their actions and but few know the causes
thereof. A feather endowed with consciousness, falling
to the ground in a zigzag manner, might be equally
convinced that it determined the exact spot on which
it would rest, yet its persuasion would be of no more
value than the "vulgar" conviction that we independently
adapt ourselves to our environment.</p>

<p>Mr. Schiller's positive arguments in favour of reconciling
Darwinism with design&mdash;one of them is
really negative;&mdash;are concerned with (1) the question
of variation, and (2) with the existence of progress.
On the first question it is pointed out that while
Natural Selection operates by way of favouring certain
variations, the origin or cause of these variations remains
unknown. And although Mr. Schiller does not
say so in as many words, there is the implication, if I
rightly discern his drift, that there is room here for a
directing intelligence, inasmuch as science is at present
quite unable to fully explain the causes of variations.
We are told that Darwin assumed for the purpose of
his theory that variations were indefinite both as to
character and extent, and it is upon these variations
that Natural Selection depends. This indefinite
variation Mr. Schiller asserts to be a methodological
device, that is, it is something assumed as the groundwork
of a theory, but without any subsequent verifica<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">{156}</a></span>tion,
and it is in virtue of this assumption that intelligence
is ruled out of evolution. And inasmuch as
Mr. Schiller sees no reason for believing that variations
are of this indefinite character, he asserts that there is
in evolution room for a teleological factor, in other
words, "a purposive direction of variations."</p>

<p>Now it hardly needs pointing out to students of
Darwinism that indefinite variation is the equivalent
of "a variation to which no exact limits can be
placed," and in this sense the assumption is a perfectly
sound one. From one point of view the variations
must be definite, that is, they can only occur within
certain limits. An elephant will not vary in the
direction of wings, nor will a bird in the direction of a
rose bush. But so long as we cannot fix the exact
limits of variation we are quite warranted in speaking
of them as indefinite. That this is a methodological
device no one denies, but so are most of the other
distinctions that we frame. Scientific generalizations
consist of abstractions, and Mr. Schiller himself of
necessity employs the same device.</p>

<p>Mr. Schiller argues, quite properly, that while
Natural Selection states the conditions under which
animal life evolves, it does not state any reason why it
should evolve. Selection may keep a species stationary
or it may even cause it to degenerate. Both are fairly
common phenomena in the animal and plant world.
Moreover, if there are an indefinite number of variations,
and if they tend in an indefinite number of
directions, then the variation in any one direction can
never be more than an infinitesimal portion of the
whole, and that this one should persist supplies a still
further reason for belief in "a purposive direction of
variations." Mr. Schiller overlooks an important
point here, but a very simple one. It is true that any
one variation is small in relation to the whole of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">{157}</a></span>
possible or actual number of variations. But it is not
in relation to quantity but quality that survival takes
place, and in proportion to the keenness of the struggle
the variation that gives its possessor an advantage need
only be of the smaller kind. In a struggle of endurance
between two athletes it is the one capable of holding
out for an extra minute who carries off the prize.</p>

<p>Further, as Mr. Schiller afterwards admits, the very
smallness of the number of successful variations makes
against intelligence rather than for it, and he practically
surrenders his position in the statement, "the
teleological and anti-teleological interpretation of
events will ever decide their conflict by appealing to
the facts; for in the facts each finds what it wills and
comes prepared to see." After this lame conclusion it
is difficult to see what value there is in Mr. Schiller's
own examination of the "facts." Not that it is
strictly correct to say that the facts bear each view out
equally. They do not, and Mr. Schiller only justifies
his statement by converting the Darwinian position,
which is teleologically negative, into an affirmative.
The Darwinian, he says, denies intelligence as a cause
of evolution. What the Darwinian does is to deny the
validity of the evidence which the teleologist brings to
prove his case. The Theist asserts mind as a cause of
evolution. The Darwinian simply points out that the
facts may be explained in quite another way and without
the appeal to a quite unknown factor.</p>

<p>And here one might reasonably ask, why, if there
is a directive mind at work, are there variations at all?
Why should the "directive intelligence" not get
earlier to work, and instead of waiting until a large
number of specimens have been produced and then
looking them over with a view to "directing" the
preservation of the better specimens, why should it not
set to work at the beginning and see that only the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">{158}</a></span>
desirable ones make their appearance? Certainly that
is what a mere human intelligence would do if it could.
But it is characteristic of the "Divine Intelligence"
of the Theist that it never seems to operate with a tenth
part of the intelligence of an ordinary human being.</p>

<p>Moreover, Mr. Schiller writes quite ignoring the
fact that the "directive intelligence" does not direct the
preservation of the better specimens. What it does, if
it does anything at all, is to kill off the less favoured
ones. Natural Selection&mdash;the point is generally overlooked
by the Theistic sentimentality of most of our
writers&mdash;does not preserve anything. Its positive
action is not to keep alive but to kill. It does not take
the better ones in hand and help them. It seizes on all
it can and kills them. It is the difference between a
local council that tried to raise the standard of health
by a general improvement of the conditions of life, and
one that aimed at the same end by killing off all
children that failed to come up to a certain standard.
The actual preservation of a better type is, so far as
Natural Selection is concerned, quite accidental. So
far as Natural Selection operates it does so by elimination,
not by preservation.</p>

<p>Mr. Schiller's other plea in favour of Design is concerned
with the conception of progress. He points
out that while degeneration and stagnation both occur
in nature, yet&mdash;</p>

<blockquote><p>life has been on the whole progressive; but progress
and retrogression have both been effected under the
same law of Natural Selection. How, then, can the
credit of that result be ascribed to Natural Selection?
Natural Selection is equally ready to bring about
degeneration or to leave things unchanged. How,
then, can it be that which determines which of the
three possible (and actual) cases shall be realized?... It
cannot be Natural Selection that causes one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">{159}</a></span>
species to remain stationary, another to degenerate,
a third to develop into a higher form.... Some
variable factor must be added to Natural Selection.</p></blockquote>

<p>But why? Evolution, as we have pointed out in a
previous chapter, makes for adaptation in terms of
animal preservation. If the adaptation of an animal
to its environment is secured by "degenerating" or
"developing" or by remaining stationary, it will do
one of the three. That is the normal consequence of
Natural Selection, and it is surprising that Mr.
Schiller does not see this. He is actually accusing
Natural Selection of not being able to do what it does
on his own showing. The proof he himself gives of
this operation of Natural Selection in the examples he
cites of its ineffectiveness. If Natural Selection could
not make for degeneration or development, in what
way would it be able to establish an equilibrium between
an animal and its surroundings? Really, there
is nothing that so strengthens one's conviction of the
truth of the Freethought position so much as a study
of the arguments that are brought against it.</p>

<p>Mr. Schiller is really misled, and so misleads his
readers by an unjustifiable use of the word "progress."
He says that evolution has been, on the whole, progressive,
and appeals to "progress" as though it were
some objective fact. But that is not the case. There
is no "progress" in the animal world, there is only
change. We have dealt with this in a previous chapter,
and there is no need to again labour the point. "Progress"
is a conception which we ourselves frame, and
we measure a movement towards or away from this
arbitrary standard of ours in terms of better or worse,
higher or lower. But nature knows nothing of a
higher or a lower, it knows only of changing forms
more or less fitted to live in the existing environment.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">{160}</a></span>
Scientifically, life has not progressed, it has persisted,
and a <i>sine qua non</i> of its persistence has been adaptation
to environment.</p>

<p>Progress, then, is not a "natural" fact, but a
methodological one. It is a useful word and a
valuable ideal. I am not protesting against its use,
only against its misuse. It is one of the many
abstractions created by thinkers, and then worshipped
as a reality by those who forget the origin and purpose
of its existence. And in this we can see one of the
fatal legacies we have inherited from Theistic methods
of thinking. The belief that things are designed to be
as they are comes to us from those primitive methods
of thinking which personify and vitalize all natural
phenomena. We have outgrown the crude frame of
mind which saw direct volitional action in a storm or in
the movements of natural forces. The development
of civilized and scientific thinking has removed these
conceptions from the minds of educated men and
women, but it has left behind it as a residuum the
habit of looking for purpose where none exists, and
of reading into nature as objective facts our own
generalizations and abstractions. And so long as we
have not outgrown that habit we are retaining a fatal
bar to exact scientific thinking.</p>

<p>Finally, and this consideration is fatal to any theory
of design such as Mr. Schiller champions, adaptation
is not a special quality of one form of existence, but a
universal quality of all. There is not a greater degree
of adaptation here and a less degree there, but the
same degree in every case. There is no other meaning
to adaptation except that of adjustment to surroundings.
But whether an animal lives or dies,
whether it is higher or lower, deformed or perfect, the
adjustment is the same. That is, every form of
existence represents the product of forces that have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">{161}</a></span>
made it what it is, and the same forces could not have
produced anything different. Every body in existence,
organic or inorganic, constitutes in ultimate analysis a
balance of the forces represented by it. It is not
possible, therefore, for the Theist to say that design
is evidenced by adaptation in one case and its absence
in another. There is adaptation in every case, even
though it may not be the adaptation we should like to
see. It is not possible for the Theist to say that the
<em>degree</em> of adaptation is greater in the one case than in
the other, for <em>that</em> is the same in every case. What
needs to be done if design is to be established is to prove
that the forces we see at work could not have produced
the results that emerge without the introduction of a
factor not already given in our experience. Anything
else is mere waste of time.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">{162}</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.<br />
ANCIENT AND MODERN.</h2>

<p>In the preceding chapters we have, without saying it
in so many words, been emphasizing the modern as
against the ancient point of view. The distinction may
not at first glance appear to be of great moment, and
yet reflection will prove it to be of vital significance.
It expresses, in a sentence, the essence of the distinction
between the Freethinker and the religionist.
Objectively, the world in which we are living is the
same as that in which our ancestors lived. The same
stars that looked down upon them look down upon us.
Natural forces affected them as they affect us. Even
the play of human passion and desire was the same
with them as with us. Hunger and thirst, love and
hatred, cowardice and courage, generosity and greed
operate now as always. The world remains the same
in all its essential features; what alters is our conception
of it&mdash;in other words, the point of view.</p>

<p>The question thus resolves itself into one of interpretation.
Freethinker and religionist are each living
in the same world, they are each fed with the same
foods and killed with the same poisons. The same
feelings move both and the same problems face both.
Their differences are constituted by the canon of interpretation
applied. It is on this issue that the conflict
between religion and science arises. For religion is
not, as some have argued, something that is supplementary
or complementary to science, nor does it deal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">{163}</a></span>
with matters on which science is incompetent to express
an opinion. Religion and science face each other
as rival interpretations of the same set of facts, precisely
as the Copernican and the Ptolemaic systems
once faced each other as rival interpretations of
astronomical phenomena. If the one is true the other
is false. You may reject the religious or the scientific
explanation of phenomena, but you cannot logically
accept both. As Dr. Johnson said, "Two contradictory
ideas may inhere in the same mind, but they
cannot both be correct."</p>

<p>Now while it is true that in order to understand the
present we must know the past, and that because the
present is a product of the past, it is also true that a
condition of understanding is to interpret the past by
the present. In ordinary affairs this is not questioned.
When geologists set out to explain the causes of
changes in the earth's surface, they utilize the present-day
knowledge of existing forces, and by prolonging
their action backward explain the features of the
period they are studying. When historians seek to
explain the conduct of, say Henry the Eighth, they
take their knowledge of the motives animating existing
human nature, and by placing that in a sixteenth
century setting manage to present us with a picture of
the period. So, again, when the thirteenth century
monkish historian gravely informs us that a particular
epidemic was due to the anger of God against the
wickedness of the people, we put that interpretation
on one side and use our own knowledge to find in
defective social and sanitary conditions the cause of
what occurred. Illustrations to the same end may be
found in every direction. It is, indeed, not something
that one may accept or reject as one may take or leave
a political theory, it is an indispensible condition of
rational thinking on any subject whatsoever.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">{164}</a></span>
Accepted everywhere else, it is in connection with
religion that one finds this principle, not openly
challenged, for there are degrees of absurdity to which
even the most ardent religionist dare not go, but it is
quietly set on one side and a method adopted which is
its practical negation. Either the procedure is inverted
and the present is interpreted by the past, as
when it is assumed that because God did certain things
in the past therefore he will continue to do the same
things in the present, or it is assumed that the past
was unlike the present, and, therefore, the same
method of interpretation cannot be applied to both
cases. Both plans have the effect of landing us, if not
in lunacy, at least well on the way to it.</p>

<p>It is indispensible to the religionist to ignore the
principle above laid down. For if it is admitted that
human nature is always and everywhere the same, and
that natural forces always and everywhere act in the
same manner, religious beliefs are brought to the test
of their conformity with present day knowledge of
things and all claim to objective validity must be
abandoned. Yet the principle is quite clear. The
claim of the prophets of old to be inspired must be
tested by what we know of the conditions of "inspiration"
to-day, and not by what unenlightened people
thought of its nature centuries ago. Whether the
story of the Virgin Birth is credible or not must be
settled by an appeal to what we know of the nature of
animal procreation, and not by whether our faith urges
us to accept the statement as true. To act otherwise is
to raise an altogether false issue, the question of
evidence is argued when what is really at issue is that
of credibility. It is not at all a matter of whether there
is evidence enough to establish the reality of a particular
recorded event, but whether our actual knowledge
of natural happenings is not enough for us to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">{165}</a></span>
rule it out as objectively untrue, and to describe the
conditions which led to its being accepted as true.</p>

<p>Let us take as an illustration of this the general
question of miracles. The <cite>Oxford Dictionary</cite> defines a
miracle as "A marvellous event occurring within
human experience which cannot have been brought
about by human power or by the operation of any
natural agency, and must, therefore, be ascribed to the
special intervention of the deity or some supernatural
being." That is a good enough definition, and is
certainly what people have had in mind when they
have professed a belief in miracles. A miracle must
be something marvellous, that is, it must be unusual,
and it must not be even conceivably explainable in
terms of the operation of natural forces. If it is
admitted that what is claimed as a miracle might be
explained as the result of natural forces provided our
knowledge was extensive enough and exact enough, it
is confessed that miracle and ignorance are convertible
terms. And while that may be true enough as a matter
of fact, it would never suit the religious case to admit
it in so many words.</p>

<p>Nor would it make the case any better to argue that
the alleged miracle has been brought about by some
superior being with a much greater knowledge of
nature than man possesses, but which the latter may
one day acquire. That is placing a miracle on the same
level as a performance given by a clever conjuror,
which puzzles the onlooker because he lacks the
technical knowledge requisite to understand the
methods employed. A miracle to be a miracle must not
be in accordance with natural laws, known or unknown,
it must contravene them or suspend their
operation.</p>

<p>On the other hand, the demand made by some critics
of the miraculous, namely, that the alleged miracle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">{166}</a></span>
shall be performed under test conditions, is absurd,
and shows that they have not grasped the essential
point at issue. The believer's reply to such a demand
is plain and obvious. He says, a miracle is by its
nature a rare event, it is performed under special circumstances
to serve a special purpose. Where, then, is
the reason in asking that this miracle shall be re-performed
in order to convince certain people that it has
already occurred? To arrange for the performance of
a miracle is an absurdity. For it to become common is
to destroy both its character as a miracle and the
justification for its existence. A miracle must carry
its own evidence or it fails of its purpose and ceases to
be a miracle at all. Discussion on these lines ends, at
best, in a stalemate.</p>

<p>It is just as wide of the mark to discuss miracles as
though it were a question of evidence. What possible
evidence could there be, for example, that Jesus fed
five thousand people with a few loaves and fishes, and
had basketfuls left at the end of the repast? Suppose
it were possible to produce the sworn testimony of the
five thousand themselves that they had been so fed.
Would that produce conviction? Would it do any
more than prove that they believed the food had been
so expanded or multiplied that it was enough for them
all? It would be convincing, perhaps, as proof of an
act of belief. But would it prove any more than that?
Would it prove that these five thousand were not
the victims of some act of deception or of some
delusion? A belief in a miracle, whether the belief
dates from two thousand years since or from last week,
proves only&mdash;belief. And the testimony of a Salvation
Army convert as to the truth of the resurrection of
Jesus Christ is as good, as evidence, as though we had
the sworn testimony of the twelve apostles, with that
of the grave-diggers thrown in.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">{167}</a></span>
The truth is that the question of belief in the
miraculous has nothing whatever to do with evidence.
Miracles are never established by evidence, nor are
they disproved by evidence, that is, so long as we use
the term evidence with any regard to its judicial
significance. What amount or what kind of evidence
did the early Christians require to prove the miracles
of Christianity? Or what evidence did our ancestors
require to prove to them that old women flew through
the air on broomsticks, or bewitched cows, or raised
storms? Testimony in volumes was forthcoming, and
there is not the slightest reason for doubting its
genuineness. But what amount or kind of evidence
was required to establish the belief? Was it evidence
to which anyone to-day would pay the slightest regard?
The slightest study of the available records is
enough to show that the question of evidence had
nothing whatever to do with the production of the
belief.</p>

<p>And, on the other hand, how many people have
given up the belief in miracles as a result of a careful
study of the evidence against them? I have never
heard of any such case, although once a man disbelieves
in miracles he may be ready enough to produce
reasons to justify his disbelief in them. The man who
begins to weigh evidence for and against miracles has
already begun to disbelieve them.</p>

<p>The attitude of children in relation to the belief in
fairies may well be taken to illustrate the attitude of
the adult mind in face of the miraculous. No evidence
is produced to induce the belief in fairies, and none is
ever brought forward to induce them to give it up.
At one stage of life it is there, at another it is gone. It
is not reasoned out or evidenced out, it is simply outgrown.
In infancy the child's conception of life is so
inchoate that there is room for all kinds of fantastic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">{168}</a></span>
beliefs. In more mature years certain beliefs are automatically
ruled out by the growth of a conception of
things which leaves no room for beliefs that during
childhood seemed perfectly reasonable.</p>

<p>Now this is quite on all-fours with the question of
miracles. The issue is essentially one of psychology.
Belief or disbelief is here mainly determined by the
psychological medium in which one lives and moves.
Given a psychological medium which is, scientifically,
at its lowest, and the belief in the miraculous
flourishes. At the other extreme miracles languish
and decay. Tell a savage that the air is alive with good
and bad spirits and he will readily believe you. Tell it
to a man with a genuine scientific mind and he will
laugh at you. Tell a peasant in some parts of the
country that someone is a witch and he will at once
believe it. Tell it to a city dweller and it will provide
only occasion for ridicule. People who accept miracles
believe them before they happen. The expressed belief
merely registers the fact. Miracles never happen
to those who do not believe in them; as has been said,
they never occur to a critic. Those who reject
miracles do so because their acceptance would conflict
with their whole conception of nature. That is
the sum and substance of the matter.</p>

<p>A further illustration may be offered in the case of
the once much debated question of the authenticity of
the books of the New Testament and the historicity of
the figure of Jesus. It appears to have been assumed
that if it could be shown that the books of the New
Testament were not contemporary records the case
against the divinity of Jesus was strengthened. On the
other hand it was assumed that if these writings represented
the narratives of contemporaries the case
for the truth of the narratives was practically proven.
In reality this was not the vital issue at all. It would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">{169}</a></span>
be, of course, interesting if it could be shown that there
once existed an actual personage around whom these
stories gathered, but it would make as little difference
to the real question at issue as the demonstration of
the Baconian authorship of <cite>Hamlet</cite> would make in the
psychological value of the play.</p>

<p>Suppose then it were proven that a person named
Jesus actually existed at a certain date in Judea, and
that this person is the Jesus of the New Testament.
Suppose it be further proven, or admitted, that the
followers whom this person gathered around him believed
that he was born of a virgin, performed a
number of miracles, was crucified, and then rose from
the dead, and that the New Testament represents their
written memoirs. Suppose all this to be proven or
granted, what has been established? Simply this.
That a number of people believed these things of someone
whom they had known. But no Freethinker need
seriously concern himself to disprove this. He may,
indeed, take it as the data of the problem which he
sets out to solve. The scientific enquirer is not really
concerned with the New Testament as a narrative of
fact any more than he is concerned with Cotton
Mather's <cite>Invisible World Displayed</cite> as a narrative of
actual fact. What he is concerned with is the frame of
mind to which these stories seemed true, and the social
medium which gave such a frame of mind a vogue.
It is not at all a question of historical evidence, but of
historical psychology. It is not a question of the
honesty of the witnesses, but of their ability, not
whether they wished to tell the truth, or intended to
tell the truth, but whether they were in a position to
know what the truth was. We have not to discuss
whether these events occurred, such a proposition is
an insult to a civilized intelligence, the matter for dis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">{170}</a></span>cussion
is the conditions that bring such beliefs into
existence and the conditions that perpetuate them.</p>

<p>The development of social life and of education thus
shifts the point of view from the past to the present.
To understand the past we do not ask what was it that
people believed concerning the events around them,
but what do we know of the causes which produce beliefs
of a certain kind. Thus, we do not really reject the
story of Jesus turning water into wine because we are
without legal evidence that he ever did anything of
the kind, but because, knowing the chemical constituents
of both water and wine we know that such a
thing is impossible. It is only possible to an uninstructed
mind to which water and wine differ only in
taste or appearance. We do not reject the story of the
demoniacs in the New Testament because we have no
evidence that these men were possessed of devils, or
that Jesus cast them out, but because we have exactly
the same phenomena with us to-day and know that it
comes within the province of the physician and not of
the miracle worker. It is not a matter of evidence
whether a man rose from the dead or not, or whether
he was born of a virgin or not, but solely a question of
examining these and similar stories in the light of
present day knowledge. The "evidence" offered is
proof only of belief, and no one ever questioned the
existence of that. And if the proof of belief is required
there is no need to go back a couple of thousand years
or to consult ancient records. The testimony of a
present day believer, and the account of a revival
meeting such as one may find in any religious newspaper
will serve equally well. As is so often the case,
the evidence offered is not merely inadequate, it is
absolutely irrelevant.</p>

<p>Past events must be judged in the light of present
knowledge. That is the golden rule of guidance in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">{171}</a></span>
judging the world's religious legends. And that canon
is fatal to their pretensions. On the one hand we see
in the life of contemporary savages and in that of
semi-civilized peoples all the conditions and the beliefs
that meet us in the Bible and among the early Christians.
And with our wider and more exact knowledge
we are able to take exactly the same phenomena that
impressed those of an earlier generation and explain
them without the slightest reference to supernatural
powers or beings. The modern mind is really not
looking round for evidence to disprove the truth of
Christian legends. It knows they are not true. There
is no greater need to prove that the miracles of Christianity
never occurred, than there is to prove that an
old woman never raised a storm to wreck one of the
kings of England. The issue has been changed from
one of history to one of psychology. It is the present
that of necessity sits in judgment on the past, and it is
in the light of the knowledge of the present that the
religions of the past stand condemned.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">{172}</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV.<br />
MORALITY WITHOUT GOD.</h2>

<p>The mystery-monger flourishes almost as well in
ethics as he does in theology. Indeed, in some respects
he seems to have forsaken one field of exercise only to
find renewed scope in the other. He approaches the
consideration of moral questions with the same hushed
voice and "reverential" air that is so usual in theology,
and talks of the mystery of morality with the
same facility that he once talked about the mystery of
godliness&mdash;and with about an equal amount of enlightenment
to his hearers or readers.</p>

<p>But the mystery of morality is nearly all of our own
making. Essentially there is no more mystery in
morality than there is in any other question that may
engage the attention of mankind. There are, of course,
problems in the moral world as there are in the
physical one, and he would be a fool who pretended
to the ability to satisfactorily solve them all. The
nature of morality, the causes that led to the development
of moral "laws," and still more to the development
of a sense of morality, all these are questions
upon which there is ample room for research and
speculation. But the talk of a mystery is misleading
and mystifying. It is the chatter of the charlatan, or
of the theologian, or of the partly liberated mind that
is still under the thraldom of theology. In ethics we
have exactly the same kind of problem that meets us
in any of the sciences. We have a fact, or a series of
facts, and we seek some explanation of them. We may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">{173}</a></span>
fail in our search, but that is not evidence of a
"mystery," it is proof only of inadequate knowledge,
of limitations that we may hope the future will enable
us to overcome.</p>

<p>For the sake of clarity it will be better to let the
meaning of morality emerge from the discussion rather
than to commence with it. And one of the first things
to help to clear the mind of confusion is to get rid of the
notion that there is any such thing as moral "laws"
which correspond in their nature to law as the term is
used in science. In one sense morality is not part of
physical nature at all. It is characteristic of that part
of nature which is covered by the human&mdash;at most by
the higher animal&mdash;world. Nature can only, therefore,
be said to be moral in the sense that the term
"Nature" includes all that is. In any other sense
nature is non-moral. The sense of values, which is,
as we shall see, of the essence of the conception of
morality, nature knows nothing of. To speak of
nature punishing us for <em>bad</em> actions or rewarding us
for <em>good</em> ones is absurd. Nature neither punishes nor
rewards. She meets actions with consequences, and is
quite indifferent to any moral consideration. If I am
weakly, and go out on a cold, wet night to help someone
in distress, nature does not act differently than it
would if I had gone out to commit a murder. I stand
exactly the same chances in either case of contracting
a deadly chill. It is not the moral value of an action
with which natural forces are concerned, but merely
with the action, and in that respect nature never discriminates
between the good man and the bad, between
the sinner and the saint.</p>

<p>There is another sense in which moral laws differ
from natural laws. We can break the former but not
the latter. The expression so often used, "He broke
a law of nature," is absurd. You cannot break a law<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">{174}</a></span>
of nature. You do not break the law of gravitation
when you prevent a stone falling to the ground; the
force required to hold it in the air is an illustration of
the law. It is, indeed, one of the proofs that our
generalization does represent a law of nature that
it cannot be "broken." For broken is here only
another word for inoperative, and a law of nature that
is inoperative is non-existent. But in the moral
sphere we are in a different world. We not only can
break moral laws, we do break them; that is one of the
problems with which our teachers and moralisers have
constantly to deal. Every time we steal we break the
law "Thou shalt not steal." Every time we murder
we break the law "Thou shalt not kill." We may keep
moral laws, we ought to keep them, but we can, quite
clearly, break them. Between a moral law and a law
of nature there is plainly a very radical distinction.
The discovery of that distinction will, I think, bring
us to the heart of the subject.</p>

<p>Considering man as merely a natural object, or as a
mere animal, there is only one quality that nature demands
of him. This is efficiency. Nature's sole law
is here "Be Strong." How that strength and efficiency
is secured and maintained is of no consequence whatever.
The heat he requires, the food he needs may be
stolen from others, but it will serve. The food will not
nourish the less, the fire will not warm the less. So
long as efficiency is acquired it is a matter of absolute
indifference how it is secured. Considered as a mere
animal object it is difficult to see that morality has any
meaning at all for man. It is when we come to regard
him in his relation to others that we begin to see the
meaning and significance of morality emerge.</p>

<p>Now one of the first things that strike us in connection
with moral laws or rules is that they are all statements
of relation. Such moral commands as "Thou<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">{175}</a></span>
shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not kill," the commands
to be truthful, kind, dutiful, etc., all imply a relation
to others. Apart from this relation moral rules have
simply no meaning whatever. By himself a man could
neither steal, nor lie, nor do any of the things that we
habitually characterize as immoral. A man living by
himself on some island would be absolved from all
moral law; it would have no meaning whatever for
him. He would be neither moral nor immoral, he
would simply be without the conditions that make
morality possible. But once bring him into relations
with his kind and his behaviour begins to have a new
and peculiar significance, not alone to these others,
but also to himself. What he does affects them, and
also affects himself so far as they determine the character
of his relations to these others. He must, for
example, either work with them or apart from them.
He must either be on his guard against their securing
their own efficiency at his expense, or rest content that
a mutual forbearance and trust will govern their
association. To ignore them is an impossibility. He
must reckon with these others in a thousand and one
different ways, and this reckoning will have its effect
on the moulding of his nature and upon theirs.</p>

<p>Morality, then, whatever else it may be, is primarily
the expression of a relation. And the laws of morality
are, consequently, a summary or description of those
relations. From this point of view they stand upon
exactly the same level as any of the arts or sciences.
Moral actions are the subject matter of observation,
and the determination of their essential quality or
character is by the same methods as we determine the
essential quality of the "facts" in chemistry or
biology. The task before the scientific enquirer is,
therefore, to determine the conditions which give to
moral rules or "laws" their meaning and validity.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">{176}</a></span>
One of the conditions of a moral action has already
been pointed out. This is that all moral rules imply a
relation to beings of a similar nature. A second feature
is that conduct represents a form of efficiency, it is a
special feature of the universal biological fact of
adaptation. And the question of why man has a
"moral sense" is really on all fours with, and presents
no greater mystery than is involved in, the question of
why man has digestive organs, and prefers some kinds
of food to others. Substantially, the question of why
man should prefer a diet of meat and potatoes to one of
prussic acid is exactly the question of why society
should discourage certain actions and encourage
others, or why man's moral taste should prefer some
forms of conduct to other forms. The answer to both
questions, while differing in form, is the same in
substance.</p>

<p>Man as we know him is always found as a member
of a group, and his capacities, his feelings, and tastes
must always be considered in relation to that fact. But
considering man merely as an animal, and his conduct
as merely a form of adaptation to environment, the
plain consideration which emerges is that even as an
individual organism he is compelled, in order to live,
to avoid certain actions and to perform others, to
develop certain tastes and to form certain distastes.
To take our previous illustration it would be impossible
for man to develop a liking for life-destroying foods.
It is one of the conditions of living that he shall eat
only that food which sustains life, or that he shall
abstain from eating substances which destroy it. But
conduct at that stage is not of the kind which considers
the reasons for acting; indeed, life cannot be based
upon considered action, however much reason may
justify the actions taken. Further, as all conscious
action is prompted by the impulse to do what is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">{177}</a></span>
pleasant and to avoid what is unpleasant, it follows, as
Spencer pointed out, that the course of evolution sets
up a close relation between actions that are pleasurable
in the performance and actions that are life preserving.
It is one of the conditions of the maintenance of life
that the pleasurable and the beneficial shall in the
long run coincide.</p>

<p>When we take man as a member of a group we have
the same principle in operation, even though the form
of its expression undergoes alteration. To begin with,
the mere fact of living in a group implies the growth
of a certain restraint in one's relations to, and of
reciprocity in dealing with, others. Men can no more
live together without some amount of trust and confidence
in each other, or without a crude sense of
justice in their dealings with each other, than an
individual man can maintain his life by eating deadly
poisons. There must be a respect for the rights of
others, of justice in dealing with others, and of confidence
in associating with others, at least to the extent
of not threatening the possibility of group life. There
are rules in the game of social life that must be
observed, and in its own defence society is bound to
suppress those of its members who exhibit strong anti-social
tendencies. No society can, for example,
tolerate homicide as an admitted practice. There is,
thus, from the earliest times, a certain form of
elimination of the anti-social character which results
in the gradual formation of an emotional and mental
disposition that habitually and instinctively falls into
line with the requirements of the social whole.</p>

<p>To use an expression of Sir Leslie Stephen's, man as
a member of the group becomes a cell in the social
tissue, and his fitness to survive is dependent upon,
positively, his readiness to perform such actions as the
welfare of the group require, and, negatively, upon his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">{178}</a></span>
refraining from doing those things that are inimical to
social welfare.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> Moreover, there is the additional fact
that the group itself is, as a whole, brought into contact
with other groups, and the survival of one group
as against another is determined by the quality and the
degree of cohesion of its units. From this point of
view, participation in the life of the group means more
than refraining from acts that are injurious to the
group, it involves some degree of positive contribution
to social welfare.</p>

<p>But the main thing to note is that from the very
dawn of animal life the organism is more or less under
the pressure of a certain discipline that tends to establish
an identity between actions which there is a
tendency to perform and those that are beneficial to
the organism. In the social state we simply have this
principle expressed in another way, and it gives a degree
of conscious adaptation that is absent from the pre-social
or even the lower forms of the social state. It is
in the truly social state also that we get the full influence
of what may be called the characteristically
human environment, that is, the operation of ideas and
ideals. The importance of this psychological factor in
the life of man has been stressed in an earlier chapter.
It is enough now to point out that from the earliest
moment the young human being is, by a process of
training, imbued with certain ideals of truthfulness,
loyalty, duty, etc., all of which play their part in the
moulding of his character. However much these ideals<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">{179}</a></span>
may vary in different societies, the fact of the part
played by them in moulding character is plain. They
are the dominant forces in moulding the individual to
the social state, even while the expressions of the social
life may be in turn checked by the fact that social conduct
cannot persist if it threatens those conditions
upon which the persistence of life ultimately depends.</p>

<p>There is one other consideration that must be noted.
One very pregnant fact in life is that nature seldom
creates a new organ. What it usually does is to refashion
an old one, or to devote an old one to new uses.
This principle may be seen clearly in operation in connection
with moral evolution. On the one hand the
various forces that play upon human nature drive the
moral feelings deeper into it. On the other hand it
develops them by their steady expansion over a wider
area. Whether it is an actual fact or not&mdash;I do not
stress it because the point is the subject of discussion&mdash;it
is at least possible that the earliest human group is
the family. And so long as that was the case such feelings
of right and wrong as then existed will have been
confined to the family. But when a group of families
combine and form the tribe, all those feelings of confidence,
justice, etc., which were formerly characteristic
of the smaller group are expanded to cover
the larger one. With the expansion of the tribe to the
nation we have a further development of the same
phenomenon. There is no new creation, there is
nothing more than expansion and development.</p>

<p>The process does not and cannot, obviously, stop
here. From the tribe to the nation, from the nation to
the collection of nations which we call an empire, and
from the empire to the whole of humanity. That
seems the inevitable direction of the process, and there
does not require profound insight to see it already on
the way. Development of national life involves a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">{180}</a></span>
growing interdependence of the world of humankind.
Of hardly any nation can it be said to-day that it is
self-supporting or self-contained or independent.
There is nothing national or sectarian in science, and
it is to science that we have to look for our principal
help. All over the world we utilize each other's discoveries
and profit by each other's knowledge. Even
economic interdependence carries with it the same
lesson. The human environment gets gradually
broader and wider, and the feelings that have hitherto
been expanded over the narrower area have now to be
expanded over the wider one. It is the gradual
development of a human nature that is becoming
adapted to a conception of mankind as an organic unit.
Naturally, in the process of adaptation there is conflict
between the narrower ideals, conserved in our
educational influences, and the wider ones. There are
still large numbers of those who, unable to picture the
true nature of the evolutionary process owing to
their own defective education, yet think of the world
in terms of a few centuries ago, and still wave the flag
of a political nationalism as though that were the end
of social growth, instead of its being an early and
transient expression of it. But this conflict is inevitable,
and the persistence of that type can no more
ensure its permanent domination than the persistence
of the medicine man in the person of the existing
clergyman can give permanence to the religious idea.</p>

<p>There is, then, no mystery about the fact of
morality. It is no more of a mystery than is the compilation
of the multiplication table, and it has no greater
need of a supernatural sanction than has the law of
gravitation. Morality is a natural fact, and its enforcement
and growth are brought about by natural means.
In its lower form, morality is no more than an expression
of those conditions under which social life is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">{181}</a></span>
possible, and in its higher one, an expression of those
ideal conditions under which corporate life is desirable.
In studying morality we are really studying the
physiology of associated life, and that study aims at the
determination of the conditions under which the best
form of living is possible. It is thus that here, as
elsewhere, man is thrown back upon himself for enlightenment
and help. And if the process is a slow
one we may at least console ourselves with the reflection
that the labours of each generation are making the
weapons which we bring to the fight keener and better
able to do their work.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">{182}</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV.<br />
MORALITY WITHOUT GOD.<br />
(<i>Continued.</i>)</h2>

<p>In the preceding chapter I have been concerned with
providing the most meagre of skeleton outlines of the
way in which our moral laws and our moral sense have
come into existence. To make this as clear as possible
the chapter was restricted to exposition. Controversial
points were avoided. And as a matter of fact there are
many religionists who might concede the truth of what
has been said concerning the way in which morality
has arisen, and the nature of the forces that have
assisted in its development. But they would proceed
to argue, as men like Mr. Balfour and Mr. Benjamin
Kidd, with others of the like, have argued, that a
natural morality lacks all coercive power. The Freethought
explanation of morality, they say, is plausible
enough, and may be correct, but in conduct we have to
deal not merely with the correctness of things but with
sanctions and motives that exercise a compulsive influence
on men and women. The religionist, it is
argued, has such a compulsive force in the belief in
God and in the effect on our future life of our obedience
or disobedience to his commands. But what kind of
coercion can a purely naturalistic system of morals
exert? If a man is content to obey the naturalistic
command to practise certain virtues and to abstain
from certain vices, well and good. But suppose he
chooses to disregard it. What then? Above all,
on what compulsion is a man to disregard his own in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">{183}</a></span>clinations
to act as seems desirable to himself, and not
in conformity with the general welfare? We disregard
the religious appeal as pure sentimentalism, or worse,
and we at once institute an ethical sentimentalism
which is, in practice, foredoomed to failure.</p>

<p>Or to put the same point in another way. Each
individual, we say, should so act as to promote the
general welfare. Freethinker and religionist are in
agreement here. And so long as one's inclinations
jump with the advice no difficulty presents itself. But
suppose a man's inclinations do not run in the desired
direction? You tell him that he must act so as to
promote the general well-being, and he replies that he
is not concerned with the promotion of the public
welfare. You say that he <em>ought</em> to act differently, and
he replies, "My happiness must consist in what I regard
as such, not in other people's conception of what
it should be." You proceed to point out that by persisting
in his present line of conduct he is laying up
trouble for the future, and he retorts, "I am willing
to take the risk." What is to be done with him? Can
naturalism show that in acting in that way a man is
behaving unreasonably, that is, in the sense that he
can be shown to be really acting against his own
interests, and that if he knew better he would act
differently?</p>

<p>Now before attempting a reply to this it is worth
while pointing out that whatever strength there may
be in this criticism when directed against naturalism,
it is equally strong when directed against supernaturalism.
We can see this at once if we merely
vary the terms. You tell a man to act in this or that
way "in the name of God." He replies, "I do not
believe in God," and your injunction loses all force.
Or, if he believes in God, and you threaten him with
the pains and penalties of a future life, he may reply,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">{184}</a></span>
"I am quite willing to risk a probable punishment
hereafter for a certain pleasure here." And it is
certain that many do take the risk, whether they express
their determination to do so in as many words
or not.</p>

<p>What is a supernaturalist compelled to do in this
case? His method of procedure is bound to be something
like the following. First of all he will seek to
create assent to a particular proposition such as "God
exists, and also that a belief in his existence creates an
obligation to act in this or that manner in accordance
with what is believed to be his will." That proposition
once established, his next business will be to
bring the subject's inclinations into line with a prescribed
course of action. He is thus acting in precisely
the same manner as is the naturalist who starts from an
altogether different set of premises. And both are
resting their teaching of morals upon an intellectual
proposition to which assent is either implied or expressed.
And that lies at the basis of all ethical teaching&mdash;not
ethical practice, be it observed, but teaching.
The precise form in which this intellectual proposition
is cast matters little. It may be the existence of God,
or it may be a particular view of human nature or of
human evolution, but it is there, and in either case the
authoritative character of moral precepts exists for
such as accept it, and for none other. Moral practice
is rooted in life, but moral theory is a different matter.</p>

<p>So far, then, it is clear that the complaint that Freethought
ethics has nothing about it of a compulsive or
authoritative character is either a begging of the
question or it is absurd.</p>

<p>Naturalistic ethics really assert three things. The
first is that the continuance of life ensures the performance
of a certain level of conduct, conduct being merely
one of the means by which human beings react to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">{185}</a></span>
necessities of their environment. Second, it asserts
that a proper understanding of the conditions of existence
will in the normally constituted mind strengthen
the development of a feeling of obligation to act in
such and such a manner; and that while all non-reasonable
conduct is not immoral, all immoral conduct is
fundamentally irrational. Third, there is the further
assumption that at bottom individual and general
welfare are not contradictory, but two aspects of the
same thing.</p>

<p>Concerning the second point, Sir Leslie Stephen
warns us (<cite>Science of Ethics</cite>, p. 437) that every attempt
so to state the ethical principle that disobedience will
be "unreasonable" is "doomed to failure in a world
which is not made up of working syllogisms." And
for the other two points Professor Sorley (<cite>Ethics of
Naturalism</cite>, p. 42) tells us that "It is difficult ... to
offer any consideration fitted to convince the individual
that it is reasonable for him to seek the happiness of
the community rather than his own"; while Mr.
Benjamin Kidd asserts that "the interests of the individual
and those of the social organism are not either
identical or capable of being reconciled, as has been
necessarily assumed in all those systems of ethics
which have sought to establish a naturalistic basis of
conduct. The two are fundamentally and inherently
irreconcilable, and a large proportion of the existing
individuals at any time have ... no personal interest
whatever in the progress of the race, or in the social
development we are undergoing."</p>

<p>It has already been said that however difficult it may
be to establish the precise relationship between reason
and ethical commands, such a connection must be
assumed, whether we base our ethics on naturalistic or
supernaturalistic considerations. And it cannot be
denied by anyone to-day that a causal relation must<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">{186}</a></span>
exist between actions and their consequences, whether
those causal consequences be of the natural and non-moral
kind, or of the more definitely moral order such
as exists in the shape of social approval and disapproval.
And if we once grant that, then it seems
quite allowable to assume that provided a man perceives
the reason underlying moral judgments, and
also the justification for the sense of approval and disapproval
expressed, we have as much reason for
calling his conduct reasonable or unreasonable as we
have for applying the same terms to a man's behaviour
in dressing in view of the variations of the temperature.</p>

<p>Consequently, while I agree that <em>in the present state
of knowledge</em> it is impossible in all cases to demonstrate
that immoral conduct is irrational in the sense that it
would be unreasonable to refuse assent to a mathematical
proposition, there seems no justification for
regarding such a state of things as of necessity
permanent. If a scientific system of ethics consists in
formulating rules for the profitable guidance of life,
not only does their formulation presuppose a certain
constancy in the laws of human nature and of the world
in general, but the assumption is also involved that one
day it may be possible to give to moral laws the same
precision that now is attached to physiological laws
and to label departure from them as "unreasonable"
in a very real sense of the word.</p>

<p>The other objection that it is impossible to establish
a "reasonable" relation between individual and social
well-being arises from a dual confusion as to what is
the proper sphere of ethics, and of the mutual relation
of the individual and society. To take an individual
and ask, "Why should he act so as to promote the
general welfare?" is to imply that ethical rules may
have an application to man out of relation with his
fellows. That, we have already seen, is quite wrong,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">{187}</a></span>
since moral rules fail to be intelligible once we
separate man from his fellows. Discussing ethics
while leaving out social life is like discussing the
functions of the lungs and leaving out of account the
existence of an atmosphere.</p>

<p>If, then, instead of treating the individual and
society as two distinct things, either of which may
profit at the expense of the other, we treat them as
two sides of the same thing, each an abstraction when
treated alone, the problem is simplified, and the solution
becomes appreciably easier. For the essential
truth here is that just as there is no such thing as a
society in the absence of the individuals composing it,
so the individual, as we know him, disappears when we
strip him of all that he is in virtue of his being a part
of the social structure. Every one of the characteristic
human qualities has been developed in response to the
requirements of the social medium. It is in virtue of
this that morality has anything of an imperative nature
connected with it, for if man is, to use Sir Leslie
Stephen's phrase, a cell in the social tissue, receiving
injury as the body social is injured, and benefitting as
it is benefitted, then the refusal of a man to act so that
he may promote the general welfare can be shown to
be unreasonable, and also unprofitable to the individual
himself. In other words, our efficiency as an individual
must be measured in terms of our fitness to
form part of the social structure, and consequently the
antithesis between social and personal well-being is
only on the surface. Deeper knowledge and a more
exact understanding reveals them as two sides of the
same fact.</p>

<p>It may be granted to Mr. Kidd that "a large proportion
of the existing individuals at any time" have
no <em>conscious</em> interest in "the progress of the race or in
the development we are undergoing," and that is only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">{188}</a></span>
what one would expect, but it would be absurd to
therefore come to the conclusion that no such identity
of interest exists. Molière's character, who all his life
had been talking prose without knowing it, is only a
type of the majority of folk who all their lives are acting
in accordance with principles of which they are
ignorant, and which they may even repudiate when
they are explained to them. From one point of view
the whole object of a scientific morality is to awaken a
conscious recognition of the principles underlying conduct,
and by this means to strengthen the disposition
to right action. We make explicit in language what
has hitherto been implicit in action, and thus bring
conscious effort to the aid of non-conscious or semi-conscious
behaviour.</p>

<p>In the light of the above consideration the long and
wordy contest that has been waged between "Altruists"
and "Egoists" is seen to be very largely a
waste of time and a splutter of words. If it can be
shown on the one hand that all men are not animated
by the desire to benefit self, it is as easy to demonstrate
that so long as human nature is human nature, all conduct
must be an expression of individual character,
and that even the morality of self-sacrifice is self-regarding
viewed from the personal feelings of the agent.
And it being clear that the position of Egoist and
Altruist, while each expressing a truth, is neither expressing
the whole truth, and that each does in fact
embody a definite error, it seems probable that here,
as in so many other cases, the truth lies between the
two extremes, and that a reconciliation may be effected
along these lines.</p>

<p>Taking animal life as a whole it is at least clear that
what are called the self-regarding feelings must come
first in order of development. Even with the lower
races of human beings there is less concern shown with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">{189}</a></span>
the feelings and welfare of others than is the case with
the higher races of men. Or, again, with children we
have these feelings strongest in childhood and undergoing
a gradual expansion as maturity is reached.
This is brought about, as was shown in the last chapter,
not by the destruction of existing feelings, but by their
extension to an ever widening area. There is a transformation,
or an elaboration of existing feelings under
the pressure of social growth. One may say that
ethical development does not proceed by the destruction
of the feeling of self-interest, so much as by its
extension to a wider field. Ethical growth is thus on
all fours with biological growth. In biology we are all
familiar with the truth that maintenance of life is
dependent upon the existence of harmonious relations
between an organism and its environment. Yet it is
not always recognized that this principle is as true of
the moral self as it is of the physical structure, nor
that in human evolution the existence of others becomes
of increasing importance and significance. For
not only do I have to adapt myself, mentally and
morally, to the society now existing, but also to
societies that have long since passed away and have
left their contribution to the building up of <em>my</em> environment
in the shape of institutions and beliefs and
literature.</p>

<p>We have in this one more illustration that while the
environment of the animal is overwhelmingly physical
in character, that of man tends to become overwhelmingly
social or psychological. Desires are created that
can only be gratified by the presence and the labour of
others. Feelings arise that have direct reference to
others, and in numerous ways a body of "altruistic"
feeling is created. So by social growth first, and afterwards
by reflection, man is taught that the only life
that is enjoyable to himself is one that is lived in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">{190}</a></span>
companionship and by the co-operation of others. As
Professor Ziegler well puts the process:&mdash;</p>

<blockquote><p>Not only on the one hand does it concern the
interests of the general welfare that every individual
should take care of himself outwardly and inwardly;
maintain his health; cultivate his faculties and
powers; sustain his position, honour, and worth, and
so his own welfare being secured, diffuse around him
happiness and comfort; but also, on the other hand,
it concerns the personal, well understood interests of
the individual himself that he should promote the
interests of others, contribute to their happiness, serve
their interests, and even make sacrifices for them.
Just as one forgoes a momentary pleasure in order to
secure a lasting and greater enjoyment, so the individual
willingly sacrifices his personal welfare and
comfort for the sake of society in order to share in the
welfare of this society; he buries his individual well-being
in order that he may see it rise in richer and
fuller abundance in the welfare and happiness of the
whole community (<cite>Social Ethics</cite>, pp. 59-60).</p></blockquote>

<p>These motives are not of necessity conscious ones.
No one imagines that before performing a social action
each one sits down and goes through a more or less
elaborate calculation. All that has been written on this
head concerning a "Utilitarian calculus" is poor fun
and quite beside the mark. In this matter, as in so
many others, it is the evolutionary process which demands
consideration, and generations of social struggle,
by weeding out individuals whose inclinations
were of a pronounced anti-social kind, and tribes in
which the cohesion between its members was weak,
have resulted in bringing about more or less of an
identification between individual desires and the
general welfare. It is not a question of conscious
evolution so much as of our becoming conscious of an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">{191}</a></span>
evolution that is taking place, and in discussing the
nature of morals one is bound to go beyond the expressed
reasons for conduct&mdash;more often wrong than
right&mdash;and discover the deeper and truer causes of instincts
and actions. When this is done it will be
found that while it is absolutely impossible to destroy
the connection between conduct and self-regarding
actions, there is proceeding a growing identity between
the gratification of desire and the well-being of the
whole. This will be, not because of some fantastical
or ascetic teaching of self-sacrifice, but because man
being an expression of social life is bound to find in
activities that have a social reference the beginning and
end of his conduct.</p>

<p>The fears of a morality without God are, therefore,
quite unfounded. If what has been said be granted, it
follows that all ethical rules are primarily on the same
level as a generalization in any of the sciences. Just
as the "laws" of astronomy or of biology reduce to
order the apparently chaotic phenomena of their respective
departments, so ethical laws seek to reduce to
an intelligible order the conditions of individual and
social betterment. There can be no ultimate antithesis
between individual reason and the highest form of
social conduct, although there may exist an apparent
conflict between the two, chiefly owing to the fact that
we are often unable to trace the remote effects of conduct
on self and society. Nor can there be an
ultimate or permanent conflict between the true interests
of the individual and of society at large. That
such an opposition does exist in the minds of many is
true, but it is here worthy of note that the clearest and
most profound thinkers have always found in the field
of social effort the best sphere for the gratification of
their desires. And here again we may confidently hope
that an increased and more accurate appreciation of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">{192}</a></span>
the causes that determine human welfare will do much
to diminish this antagonism. At any rate it is clear
that human nature has been moulded in accordance
with the reactions of self and society in such a way
that even the self has become an expression of social
life, and with this dual aspect before us there is no
reason why emphasis should be laid on one factor
rather than on the other.</p>

<p>To sum up. Eliminating the form of coercion that
is represented by a policeman, earthly or otherwise,
we may safely say that a naturalistic ethics has all
the coercive force that can be possessed by any
system. And it has this advantage over the coercive
force of the supernaturalist, that while the latter tends
to weaken with the advance of intelligence, the former
gains strength as men and women begin to more clearly
appreciate the true conditions of social life and development.
It is in this way that there is finally established
a connection between what is "reasonable" and what
is right. In this case it is the function of reason to
discover the forces that have made for the moralization&mdash;really
the socialization&mdash;of man, and so strengthen
man's moral nature by demonstrating the fundamental
identity between his own welfare and that of the group
to which he belongs. That the coercion may in some
cases be quite ineffective must be admitted. There
will always, one fancies, be cases where the personal
character refuses to adapt itself to the current social
state. That is a form of mal-adaptation which society
will always have to face, exactly as it has to face cases
of atavism in other directions. But the socializing and
moralizing process continues. And however much this
may be, in its earlier stages, entangled with conceptions
of the supernatural, it is certain that growth will
involve the disappearance of that factor here as it has
done elsewhere.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">{193}</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI.<br />
CHRISTIANITY AND MORALITY.</h2>

<p>The association of religion with morality is a very
ancient one. This is not because the one is impossible
without the other, we have already shown that this is
not the case. The reason is that unless religious beliefs
are associated with certain essential social
activities their continuance is almost impossible. Thus
it happens in the course of social evolution that just
in proportion as man learns to rely upon the purely
social activities to that extent religion is driven to
dwell more upon them and to claim kinship with them.</p>

<p>While this is true of religions in general, it applies
with peculiar force to Christianity. And in the last
two or three centuries we have seen the emphasis
gradually shifted from a set of doctrines, upon the
acceptance of which man's eternal salvation depends,
to a number of ethical and social teachings with which
Christianity, as such, has no vital concern. The
present generation of Christian believers has had what
is called the moral aspect of Christianity so constantly
impressed upon them, and the essential and doctrinal
aspect so slurred over, that many of them have come to
accept the moral teaching associated with Christianity
as its most important aspect. More than that, they
have come to regard the immense superiority of Christianity
as one of those statements the truth of which
can be doubted by none but the most obtuse. To have
this alleged superiority of Christian ethical teaching
questioned appears to them proof of some lack of moral
development on the part of the questioner.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">{194}</a></span>
To this type of believer it will come with something
of a shock to be told quite plainly and without either
circumlocution or apology that his religion is of an intensely
selfish and egoistic character, and that its
ethical influence is of a kind that is far from admirable.
It will shock him because he has for so long been told
that his religion is the very quintessence of unselfishness,
he has for so long been telling it to others, and
he has been able for so many generations to make it
uncomfortable for all those who took an opposite view,
that he has camouflaged both the nature of his own
motives and the tendency of his religion.</p>

<p>From one point of view this is part of the general
scheme in virtue of which the Christian Church has
given currency to the legend that the doctrines taught
by it represented a tremendous advance in the development
of the race. In sober truth it represented nothing
of the kind. That the elements of Christian religious
teaching existed long before Christianity as a religious
system was known to the world is now a commonplace
with all students of comparative religions, and is
admitted by most Christian writers of repute. Even in
form the Christian doctrines represented but a small
advance upon their pagan prototypes, but it is only
when one bears in mind the fact that the best minds
of antiquity were rapidly throwing off these superstitions
and leading the world to a more enlightened
view of things, we realize that in the main Christianity
represented a step backward in the intellectual
evolution of the race. What we then see is Christianity
reaffirming and re-establishing most of the old
superstitions in forms in which only the more ignorant
classes of antiquity accepted them. We have an
assertion of demonism in its crudest forms, an affirmation
of the miraculous that the educated in the Roman
world had learned to laugh at, and which is to-day<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">{195}</a></span>
found among the savage people of the earth, while
every form of scientific thought was looked upon as an
act of impiety. The scientific eclipse that overtook the
old pagan civilization was one of the inevitable consequences
of the triumph of Christianity. From the
point of view of general culture the retrogressive
nature of Christianity is unmistakable. It has yet to
be recognized that the same statement holds good in
relation even to religion. One day the world will
appreciate the fact that no greater disaster ever overtook
the world than the triumph of the Christian
Church.</p>

<p>For the moment, however, we are only concerned with
the relation of Christianity to morality. And here my
thesis is that Christianity is an essentially selfish creed
masking its egoistic impulses under a cover of unselfishness
and self-sacrifice. To that it will probably
be said that the charge breaks down on the fact that
Christian teaching is full of the exhortation that this
world is of no moment, that we gain salvation by learning
to ignore its temptations and to forgo its pleasures,
and that it is, above all other faiths, the religion of
personal sacrifice. And that this teaching is there it
would be stupid to deny. But this does not disprove
what has been said, indeed, analysis only serves to
make the truth still plainer. That many Christians
have given up the prizes of the world is too plain to be
denied; that they have forsaken all that many struggle
to possess is also plain. But when this has been
admitted there still remains the truth that there is a
vital distinction in the consideration of whether a man
gives up the world in order to save his own soul, or
whether he saves his soul as a consequence of losing
the world. In this matter it is the aim that is important,
not only to the outsider who may be passing
judgment, but more importantly to the agent himself.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">{196}</a></span>
It is the effect of the motive on character with its subsequent
flowering in social life that must be considered.</p>

<p>The first count in the indictment here is that the
Christian appeal is essentially a selfish one. The aim
is not the saving of others but of one's self. If other
people must be saved it is because their salvation is
believed to be essential to the saving of one's own soul.
That this involves, or may involve, a surrender of one's
worldly possessions or comfort, is of no moment.
Men will forgo many pleasures and give up much
when they have what they believe to be a greater purpose
in view. We see this in directions quite unconnected
with religion. Politics will show us examples
of men who have forsaken many of what are to others
the comforts of life in the hopes of gaining power and
fame. Others will deny themselves many pleasures in
the prospect of achieving some end which to them is of
far greater value than the things they are renouncing.
And it is the same principle that operates in the case of
religious devotees. There is no reason to doubt but
that when a young woman forsakes the world and
goes into a cloister she is surrendering much that
has considerable attractions for her. But what she
gives is to her of small importance to what she gains
in return. And if one believed in Christianity, in immortal
damnation, with the intensity of the great
Christian types of character, it would be foolish not to
surrender things of so little value for others of so great
and transcendent importance.</p>

<p>To do Christians justice they have not usually made
a secret of their aim. Right through Christian literature
there runs the teaching that it is the desire of
personal and immortal salvation that inspires them,
and they have affirmed over and over again that but for
the prospect of being paid back with tremendous interest
in the next world they could see no reason for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">{197}</a></span>
being good in this one. That is emphatically the
teaching of the New Testament and of the greatest of
Christian characters. You are to give in secret that
you may be rewarded openly, to cast your bread upon
the waters that it may be returned to you, and Paul's
counsel is that if there be no resurrection from the
dead then we may eat, drink, and be merry for death
only is before us. Thus, what you do is in the nature
of a deliberate and conscious investment on which you
will receive a handsome dividend in the next world.
And your readiness to invest will be exactly proportionate
to your conviction of the soundness of the
security. But there is in all this no perception of the
truly ethical basis of conduct, no indication of the
inevitable consequences of conduct on character.
What is good is determined by what it is believed will
save one's own soul and increase the dividend in the
next world. What is bad is anything that will imperil
the security. It is essentially an appeal to what is
grasping and selfish in human nature, and while you
may hide the true character of a thing by the lavish use
of attractive phrases, you cannot hinder it working
out its consequences in actual life. And the consequence
of this has been that while Christian teaching
has been lavish in the use of attractive phrases its
actual result has been to create a type of character
that has been not so much immoral as <em>a</em>moral. And
with that type the good that has been done on the one
side has been more than counterbalanced by the evil
done on the other.</p>

<p>What the typical Christian character had in mind in
all that he did was neither the removal of suffering nor
of injustice, but the salvation of his own soul. That
justified everything so long as it was believed to contribute
to that end. The social consequences of what
was done simply did not count. And if, instead of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">{198}</a></span>
taking mere phrases from the principal Christian
writers, we carefully examine their meaning we shall
see that they were strangely devoid of what is now
understood by the expression "moral incentive."
The more impressive the outbreak of Christian
piety the clearer does this become. No one could have
illustrated the Christian ideal of self-sacrifice better
than did the saints and monks of the earlier Christian
centuries. Such a character as the famous St. Simon
Stylites, living for years on his pillar, filthy and
verminous, and yet the admired of Christendom, with
the lives of numerous other saints, whose sole claim to
be remembered is that they lived the lives of worse than
animals in the selfish endeavours to save their shrunken
souls, will well illustrate this point. If it entered the
diseased imagination of these men that the road to
salvation lay through attending to the sick and the
needy, they were quite ready to labour in that
direction; but of any desire to remove the horrible
social conditions that prevailed, or to remedy the injustice
of which their clients were the victims, there
is seldom a trace. And, on the other hand, if they
believed that their salvation involved getting away
from human society altogether and leading the life of
a hermit, they were as ready to do that. If it meant
the forsaking of husband or wife or parent or child,
these were left without compunction, and their
desertion was counted as proof of righteousness. The
lives of the saints are full of illustrations of this.
Professor William James well remarks, in his <cite>Varieties
of Religious Experience</cite>, that "In gentle characters,
where devoutness is intense and the intellect feeble,
we have an imaginative absorption in the love of God
to the exclusion of all practical human interests....
When the love of God takes possession of such a mind
it expels all human loves and human uses." Of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">{199}</a></span>
Blessed St. Mary Alacoque, her biographer points out
that as she became absorbed in the love of Christ she
became increasingly useless to the practical life of the
convent. Of St. Teresa, James remarks that although
a woman of strong intellect his impression of her was
a feeling of pity that so much vitality of soul should
have found such poor employment. And of so famous
a character as St. Augustine a Christian writer, Mr.
A. C. Benson, remarks:&mdash;</p>

<blockquote><p>I was much interested in reading St. Augustine's
<cite>Confessions</cite> lately to recognize how small a part, after
his conversion, any aspirations for the welfare of
humanity seem to play in his mind compared with
the consciousness of his own personal relations with
God. It was this which gave him his exuberant
sense of joy and peace, and his impulse was rather
the impulse of sharing a wonderful and beautiful
secret with others than an immediate desire for
their welfare, forced out of him, so to speak, by
his own exultation rather than drawn out of him by
compassion for the needs of others.</p></blockquote>

<p>That is one of the most constant features which
emerges from a careful study of the character of
Christian types. St. Francis commenced his career
by leaving his parents. John Fox did the same. In
that Puritan classic, <cite>The Pilgrim's Progress</cite>, one of the
outstanding features is the striking absence of emphasis
on the value of the social and domestic virtues, and the
Rev. Principal Donaldson notes this as one of the
features of early Christian literature in general.
Christian preaching was for centuries full of contemptuous
references to "filthy rags of righteousness,"
"mere morality," etc. The aim of the saints
was a purely selfish and personal one. It was not even
a refined or a metaphysical selfishness. It was a simple<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">{200}</a></span>
teaching that the one thing essential was to save one's
own soul, and that the main reason for doing good in
this world was to reap a benefit from it in the world to
come. If it can properly be called morality, it was
conduct placed out at the highest rate of interest.
Christianity may often have used a naturally lofty
character, it was next to impossible for it to create one.</p>

<p>If one examines the attack made by Christians upon
Freethought morality, it is surprising how often the
truth of what has been said is implied. For the complaint
here is, in the main, not that naturalism fails to
give an adequate account of the nature and development
of morality, but that it will not satisfy mankind,
and so fails to act as an adequate motive to right conduct.
When we enquire precisely what is meant by
this, we learn that if there is no belief in God, and if
there is no expectation of a future state in which rewards
and punishments will be dispensed, there
remains no inducement to the average man or woman
to do right. It is the moral teaching of St. Paul over
again. We are in the region of morality as a deliberate
investment, and we have the threat that if the
interest is not high enough or certain enough to satisfy
the dividend hunting appetite of the true believer,
then the investment will be withdrawn. Really this is
a complaint, not that the morality which ignores Christianity
is too low but that it is too high. It is doubted
whether human nature, particularly Christian human
nature, can rise to such a level, and whether, unless
you can guarantee a Christian a suitable reward for
not starving his family or for not robbing his neighbour,
he will continue to place any value on decency or
honesty.</p>

<p>So to state the case makes the absurdity of the
argument apparent, but unless that is what is meant it
is difficult to make it intelligible. To reply that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">{201}</a></span>
Christians do not require these inducements to behave
with a tolerable amount of decency is not a statement
that I should dispute; on the contrary, I would affirm
it. It is the Christian defender who makes himself
and his fellow believers worse than the Freethinker
believes them to be. For it is part of the case of the
Freethinker that the morality of the Christian has
really no connection with his religion, and that the
net influence of his creed is to confuse and distort his
moral sense instead of developing it. It is the argument
of the Christian that makes the Freethinker
superior to the Christian; it is the Freethinker who
declines the compliment and who asserts that the
social forces are adequate to guarantee the continuance
of morality in the complete absence of religious belief.</p>

<p>How little the Christian religion appreciates the
nature of morality is seen by the favourite expression
of Christian apologists that the tendency of non-religion
is to remove all moral "restraints." The
use of the word is illuminating. To the Christian
morality is no more than a system of restraints which
aim at preventing a man gratifying his appetite in
certain directions. It forbids him certain enjoyments
here, and promises him as a reward for his abstention
a greater benefit hereafter. And on that assumption
he argues, quite naturally, that if there be no after life
then there seems no reason why man should undergo
the "restraints" which moral rules impose. On this
scheme man is a born criminal and God an almighty
policeman. That is the sum of orthodox Christian
morality. To assume that this conception of conduct
can have a really elevating effect on life is to misunderstand
the nature of the whole of the ethical and
social problem.</p>

<p>What has been said may go some distance towards
suggesting an answer to the question so often asked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">{202}</a></span>
as to the reason for the moral failure of Christianity.
For that it has been a moral failure no one can doubt.
Nay, it is an assertion made very generally by Christians
themselves. Right from New Testament times
the complaint that the conduct of believers has fallen
far short of what it should have been is constantly met
with. And there is not a single direction in which
Christians can claim a moral superiority over other
and non-Christian peoples. They are neither kinder,
more tolerant, more sober, more chaste, nor more
truthful than are non-Christian people. Nor is it quite
without significance that those nations that pride
themselves most upon their Christianity are what they
are. Their state reflects the ethical spirit I have been
trying to describe. For when we wipe out the disguising
phrases which we use to deceive ourselves&mdash;and
it is almost impossible to continually deceive others
unless we do manage to deceive ourselves&mdash;when we
put on one side the "rationalizing" phrases about
Imperial races, carrying civilization to the dark places
of the earth, bearing the white man's burden, peopling
the waste places of the earth, etc., we may well ask
what for centuries have the Christian nations of the
world been but so many gangs of freebooters engaged
in world-wide piracy? All over the world they have
gone, fighting, stealing, killing, lying, annexing, in a
steadily rising crescendo. To be possessed of natural
wealth, without the means of resisting aggression, has
for four centuries been to invite the depredations of
some one or more of the Christian powers. It is the
Christian powers that have militarized the world in the
name of the Prince of Peace, and made piracy a
national occupation in the name of civilization. Everywhere
they have done these things under the shelter of
their religion and with the sanction of their creed.
Christianity has offered no effective check to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">{203}</a></span>
cupidity of man, its chief work has been to find an
outlet for it in a disguised form. To borrow a term
from the psycho-analysts, the task of Christianity has
been to "rationalize" certain ugly impulses, and so
provide the opportunity for their continuous expression.
The world of to-day is beginning to recognize
the intellectual weakness of Christianity; what it has
next to learn is that its moral bankruptcy is no less
assured.</p>

<p>One of the great obstacles in the way of this is the
sentimentalism of many who have given up all
intellectual adherence to the Christian creed. The
power of the Christian Church has been so great, it has
for so long had control of the machinery of public
education and information, that many find it almost
impossible to conclude that the ethical spirit of Christianity
is as alien to real progress as are its cosmical
teachings. The very hugeness of this century-old
imposture blinds many to its inherent defects. And
yet the continuous and world-wide moral failure of
Christianity can only be accounted for on the ground
that it had a fatal moral defect from the start. I have
suggested above what is the nature of that defect. It
has never regarded morality as a natural social growth,
but only as something imposed upon man from without.
It has had no other reason for its existence than
the fear of punishment and the hope of reward.
Christian morality is the morality of the stock
exchange <em>plus</em> the intellectual outlook of the savage.
And with that in control of national destinies our
surprise should be, not that things are as they are, but
rather that with so great a handicap the world has
contrived to reach its present moderate degree of
development.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">{204}</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII.<br />
RELIGION AND PERSECUTION.</h2>

<p>Intolerance is one of the most general of what we may
call the mental vices. It is so general that few people
seem to look upon it as a fault, and not a few are prepared
to defend it as a virtue. When it assumes an
extreme form, and its consequences are unpleasantly
obvious, it may meet with condemnation, but usually
its nature is disguised under a show of earnestness and
sincere conviction. And, indeed, no one need feel
called upon to dispute the sincerity and the earnestness
of the bigot. As we have already pointed out, that
may easily be seen and admitted. All that one need
remark is that sincerity is no guarantee of accuracy,
and earnestness naturally goes with a conviction
strongly held, whether the conviction be grounded on
fact or fancy. The essential question is not whether a
man holds an opinion strongly, but whether he has
taken sufficient trouble to say that he has a right to
have that opinion. Has he taken the trouble to
acquaint himself with the facts upon which the expressed
opinion is professedly based? Has he made a
due allowance for possible error, and for the possibility
of others seeing the matter from another and a different
point of view? If these questions were frankly and
truthfully answered, it would be found that what we
have to face in the world is not so much opinion as
prejudice.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">{205}</a></span>
Some advance in human affairs is indicated when it
is found necessary to apologise for persecution, and a
still greater one when men and women feel ashamed
of it. It is some of these apologies at which we have
now to glance, and also to determine, if possible, the
probable causes of the change in opinion that has
occurred in relation to the subject of persecution.</p>

<p>A favourite argument with the modern religionist is
that the element of persecution, which it is admitted,
has hitherto been found in association with religion, is
not due to religion as such, but results from its connection
with the secular power. Often, it is argued,
the State for its own purposes has seen fit to ally itself
with the Church, and when that has taken place the
representatives of the favoured Church have not been
strong enough to withstand the temptation to use
physical force in the maintenance of their position.
Hence the generalization that a State Church is always
a persecuting Church, with the corollary that a
Church, as such, has nothing to do with so secular a
thing as persecution.</p>

<p>The generalization has all the attractiveness which
appeals to those who are not in the habit of looking
beneath the surface, and in particular to those whose
minds are still in thraldom to religious beliefs. It is
quite true that State Churches have always persecuted,
and it is equally true that persecution on a general
scale could not have been carried on without the
assistance of the State. On the other hand, it is just
as true that all Churches have persecuted within the
limits of their opportunity. There is no exception to
this rule in any age or country. On a wider survey it
is also clear that all forms of religious belief carry
with them a tendency to persecution more or less
marked. A close examination of the facts will show
that it is the tendency to toleration that is developed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">{206}</a></span>
by the secular power, and the opposite tendency manifested
by religion.</p>

<p>It is also argued that intolerance is not a special
quality of religion; it is rather a fault of human nature.
There is more truth in this than in the previous plea,
but it slurs over the indictment rather than meets it.
At any rate, it is the same human nature that meets
us in religion that fronts us in other matters, and there
is no mistaking the fact that intolerance is far more pronounced
in relation to religion than to any other subject.
In secular matters&mdash;politics, science, literature,
or art&mdash;opinions may differ, feelings run high, and a
degree of intolerance be exhibited, but the right to differ
remains unquestioned. Moreover, the settlement of
opinion by discussion is recognized. In religion it is
the very right of difference that is challenged, it is the
right of discussion that is denied. And it is in connection
with religion alone that intolerance is raised to
the level of a virtue. Refusal to discuss the validity of
a religious opinion will be taken as the sign of a highly
developed spiritual nature, and a tolerance of diverging
opinions as an indication of unbelief. If a political
leader refused to stand upon the same platform with
political opponents, on non-political questions, nearly
everyone would say that such conduct was intolerable.
But how many religious people are there who would
see anything wrong in the Archbishop of Canterbury
refusing to stand upon the same platform as a well-known
Atheist?</p>

<p>We are here approaching the very heart of the subject,
and in what follows I hope to make clear the
truth of the following propositions: (1) That the great
culture ground of intolerance is religion; (2) That the
natural tendency of secular affairs is to breed tolerance;
(3) That the alliance of religion with the State has
fostered persecution by the State, the restraining<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">{207}</a></span>
influences coming from the secular half of the partnership;
(4) That the decline of persecution is due to
causes that are quite unconnected with religious
beliefs.</p>

<p>The first three points can really be taken together.
So far as can be seen there is no disinclination among
primitive peoples to discuss the pros and cons of
matters that are unconnected with religious beliefs.
So soon as we get people at a culture stage where the
course of events is seen to be decided by human
action, there goes on a tolerance of conflicting opinions
that is in striking contrast with what occurs with such
matters as are believed to directly involve the action of
deity. One could not expect things to be otherwise.
In the carrying on of warfare, as with many other
tribal activities, so many of the circumstances are of a
determinable character, and are clearly to be settled by
an appeal to judgment and experience, that very early
in social history they must have presented themselves
as a legitimate field for discussion, and to discussion,
as Bagehot says, nothing is sacred. And as a matter of
fact we have a survival of this to-day. However intolerant
the character, so long as we are dealing with
secular matters it is admitted that differences of
opinion must be tolerated, and are, indeed, necessary
if we are to arrive at the wisest conclusion. The most
autocratic of monarchs will call upon his advisers and
take their dissension from his own views as a matter of
course. But when we get to the field of religion, it is
no longer a question of the legitimacy of difference,
but of its wrongness. For a religious man to admit a
discussion as to whether his religious belief is founded
on fact or not is to imply a doubt, and no thoroughly
religious man ever encourages that. What we have is
prayers to be saved from doubt, and deliberate efforts
to keep away from such conditions and circumstances<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">{208}</a></span>
as may suggest the possibility of wrong. The ideal
religious character is the one who never doubts.</p>

<p>It may also be noted, in passing, that in connection
with religion there is nothing to check intolerance at
any stage. In relation to secular matters an opinion
is avowedly based upon verifiable facts and has no
value apart from those facts. The facts are common
property, open to all, and may be examined by all.
In religion facts of a common and verifiable kind are
almost wanting. The facts of the religious life are
mainly of an esoteric character&mdash;visions, intuitions,
etc. And while on the secular side discussion is
justified because of the agreement which results from
it, on the religious side the value of discussion is discounted
because it never does lead to agreement. The
more people discuss religion the more pronounced the
disagreement. That is one reason why the world over
the only method by which people have been brought
to a state of agreement in religious doctrines is by
excluding all who disagreed. It is harmony in
isolation.</p>

<p>Now if we turn to religion we can see that from the
very beginning the whole tendency here was to stifle
difference of opinion, and so establish intolerance as a
religious duty. The Biblical story of Jonah is a case
that well illustrates the point. God was not angry with
the rest of the ship's inhabitants, it was Jonah only
who had given offence. But to punish Jonah a storm
was sent and the whole crew was in danger of shipwreck.
In their own defence the sailors were driven
to throw Jonah overboard. Jonah's disobedience was
not, therefore, his concern alone. All with him were
involved; God was ready to punish the whole for the
offence of one.</p>

<p>Now if for the ship we take a primitive tribe, and
for Jonah a primitive heretic, or one who for some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">{209}</a></span>
reason or other has omitted a service to the gods, we
have an exact picture of what actually takes place.
In primitive societies rights are not so much individual
as they are social. Every member of the tribe is
responsible to the members of other tribes for any
injury that may have been done. And as with the
members of another tribe, so with the relation of the
tribe to the gods. If an individual offends them the
whole of the tribe may suffer. There is a splendid
impartiality about the whole arrangement, although
it lacks all that we moderns understand by Justice.
But the point here is that it makes the heretic not
merely a mistaken person, but a dangerous character.
His heresy involves treason to the tribe, and in its own
defence it is felt that the heretic must be suppressed.
How this feeling lingers in relation to religion is well
seen in the fact that there are still with us large
numbers of very pious people who are ready to see in
a bad harvest, a war, or an epidemic, a judgment of
God on the whole of the people for the sins of a few.
It is this element that has always given to religious
persecutions the air of a solemn duty. To suppress the
heretic is something that is done in the interests of the
whole of the people. Persecution becomes both a
religious and a social duty.</p>

<p>The pedigree of religious persecution is thus clear.
It is inherent in religious belief, and to whatever extent
human nature is prone to intolerance, the tendency
has been fostered and raised to the status of a virtue by
religious teaching and practice. Religion has served
to confuse man's sense of right here as elsewhere.</p>

<p>We have thus two currents at work. On the one
hand, there is the influence of the secular side of life,
which makes normally for a greater tolerance of
opinion, on the other side there is religion which can
only tolerate a difference of opinion to the extent that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">{210}</a></span>
religious doctrines assume a position of comparative
unimportance. Instead of it being the case that the
Church has been encouraged to persecute by the State,
the truth is the other way about. I know all that may
be said as to the persecutions that have been set on foot
by vested interests and by governments, but putting on
one side the consideration that this begs the question
of how far it has been the consequence of the early
influence of religion, there are obvious limits beyond
which a secular persecution cannot go. A government
cannot destroy its subjects, or if it does the government
itself disappears. And the most thorough scheme of
exploitation must leave its victims enough on which to
live. There are numerous considerations which weigh
with a secular government and which have little
weight with a Church.</p>

<p>It may safely be said, for example, that no government
in the world, in the absence of religious considerations
would have committed the suicidal act
which drove the Moors and the Jews from Spain.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> As
a matter of fact, the landed aristocracy of Spain resisted
suggestions for expulsions for nearly a century
because of the financial ruin they saw would follow.
It was the driving power of religious belief that finally
brought about the expulsion. Religion alone could
preach that it was better for the monarch to reign over
a wilderness than over a nation of Jews and unbelievers.
The same thing was repeated a century later in the
case of the expulsion of the Huguenots from France.
Here again the crown resisted the suggestions of the
Church, and for the same reason. And it is significant
that when governments have desired to persecute in
their own interests they have nearly always found it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">{211}</a></span>
advantageous to do so under the guise of religion. So
far, and in these instances, it may be true that the
State has used religion for its own purpose of persecution,
but this does not touch the important fact that,
given the sanction of religion, intolerance and persecution
assume the status of virtues. And to the credit of
the State it must be pointed out that it has over and
over again had to exert a restraining influence in the
quarrels of sects. It will be questioned by few that
if the regulative influence of the State had not been
exerted the quarrels of the sects would have made a
settled and orderly life next to impossible.</p>

<p>So far as Christianity is concerned it would puzzle
the most zealous of its defenders to indicate a single
direction in which it did anything to encourage the
slightest modification of the spirit of intolerance.
Mohammedans can at least point to a time when, while
their religion was dominant, a considerable amount of
religious freedom was allowed to those living under its
control. In the palmy days of the Mohammedan rule
in Spain both Jews and Christians were allowed to
practise their religion with only trifling inconveniences,
certainly without being exposed to the fiendish
punishments that characterized Christianity all over
the world. Moreover, it must never be overlooked
that in Europe all laws against heresy are of Christian
origin. In the old Roman Empire liberty of worship
was universal. So long as the State religion was
treated with a moderate amount of respect one might
worship whatever god one pleased, and the number
was sufficient to provide for the most varied tastes.
When Christians were proceeded against it was under
laws that did not aim primarily to shackle liberty of
worship or of opinion. The procedure was in every
case formal, the trial public, time was given for the
preparation of the defence, and many of the judges<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">{212}</a></span>
showed their dislike to the prosecutions.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> But with
the Christians, instead of persecution being spasmodic
it was persistent. It was not taken up by the
authorities with reluctance, but with eagerness,
and it was counted as the most sacred of duties.
Nor was it directed against a sectarian movement
that threatened the welfare of the State.
The worst periods of Christian persecution were
those when the State had the least to fear from
internal dissension. The persecuted were not those
who were guilty of neglect of social duty. On the
contrary they were serving the State by the encouragement
of literature, science, philosophy, and commerce.
One of the Pagan Emperors, the great Trajan, had
advised the magistrates not to search for Christians,
and to treat anonymous accusations with contempt.
Christians carried the search for heresy into a man's
own household. It used the child to obtain evidence
against its own parents, the wife to secure evidence
against the husband; it tortured to provide dictated
confessions, and placed boxes at church doors to receive
anonymous accusations. It established an index
of forbidden books, an institution absolutely unknown
to the pagan world. The Roman trial was open, the
accused could hear the charge and cite witnesses for
the defence. The Christian trial was in secret; special
forms were used and no witnesses for the defence were
permitted. Persecution was raised to a fine art.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">{213}</a></span>
Under Christian auspices it assumed the most damnable
form known in the history of the world. "There
are no wild beasts so ferocious as Christians" was
the amazed comment of the Pagans on the behaviour
of Christians towards each other, and the subsequent
history of Christianity showed that the Pagans were
but amateurs in the art of punishing for a difference
of opinion.</p>

<p>Up to a comparatively recent time there existed a
practically unanimous opinion among Christians as to
the desirability of forcibly suppressing heretical
opinions. Whatever the fortunes of Christianity, and
whatever the differences of opinion that gradually
developed among Christians there was complete
unanimity on this point. Whatever changes the Protestant
Reformation effected it left this matter untouched.
In his <cite>History of Rationalism</cite> Lecky has
brought forward a mass of evidence in support of this,
and I must refer to that work readers who are not
already acquainted with the details. Luther, in the
very act of pleading for toleration, excepted "such as
deny the common principles of the Christian religion,
and advised that the Jews should be confined as madmen,
their synagogues burned and their books
destroyed." The intolerance of Calvin has became a
byword; his very apology for the burning of Servetus,
entitled <cite>A Defence of the Orthodox Faith</cite>, bore upon
its title page the significant sentence "In which it is
proved that heretics may justly be coerced with the
sword." His follower, Knox, was only carrying out
the teaching of the master in declaring that "provoking
the people to idolatry ought not to be exempt from the
penalty of death," and that "magistrates and people are
bound to do so (inflict the death penalty) unless they
will provoke the wrath of God against themselves."
In every Protestant country laws against heresy were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">{214}</a></span>
enacted. In Switzerland, Geneva, Sweden, England,
Germany, Scotland, nowhere could one differ from the
established faith without running the risk of torture
and death. Even in America, with the exception of
Maryland,<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> the same state of things prevailed. In
some States Catholic priests were subject to imprisonment
for life, Quaker women were whipped through
the streets at the cart's tail, old men of the same denomination
were pressed to death between stones. At
a later date (about 1770) laws against heresy were
general. "Anyone," says Fiske,&mdash;</p>

<blockquote><p>who should dare to speculate too freely about the
nature of Christ, or the philosophy of the plan of
salvation, or to express a doubt as to the plenary
inspiration of every word between the two covers of
the Bible, was subject to fine and imprisonment.
The tithing man still arrested the Sabbath-breakers,
and shut them up in the town cage in the market-place;
he stopped all unnecessary riding or driving
on Sunday, and haled people off to the meeting-house
whether they would or no.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a></p></blockquote>

<p>And we have to remember that the intolerance shown
in America was manifested by men who had left their
own country on the ostensible ground of freedom of
conscience. As a matter of fact, in Christian society
genuine freedom of conscience was practically unknown.
What was meant by the expression was the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">{215}</a></span>
right to express one's own religious opinions, with the
privilege of oppressing all with whom one happened
to disagree. The majority of Christians would have as
indignantly repudiated the assertion that they desired
to tolerate non-Christian or anti-Christian opinions as
they would the charge of themselves holding Atheistic
ones.</p>

<p>How deeply ingrained was the principle that the
established religion was justified in suppressing all
others may be seen from a reading of such works as
Locke's <cite>Letters on Toleration</cite>, and Milton's <cite>Areopagitica</cite>,
which stand in the forefront of the world's
writings in favour of liberty of thought and speech.
Yet Locke was of opinion that "Those are not at all
to be tolerated who deny the being of a God.
Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds
of human society, can have no hold upon an Atheist.
The taking away of God, though but even in thought,
dissolves all." And Milton, while holding that it was
more prudent and wholesome that many be tolerated
rather than all compelled, yet hastened to add "I mean
not tolerated popery and open superstition, which as it
extirpates all religious and civil supremacies so should
itself be extirpated." In short, intolerance had become
so established a part of a society saturated in
religion that not even the most liberal could conceive
a state of being in which all opinions should be placed
upon an equal footing.</p>

<p>Yet a change was all the time taking place in men's
opinions on this matter, a change which has in recent
years culminated in the affirmation of the principle
that the coercion of opinion is of all things the least
desirable and the least beneficial to society at large.
And as in so many other cases, it was not the gradual
maturing of that principle that attracted attention so
much as its statement in something like a complete and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">{216}</a></span>
logical form. The tracing of the conditions which have
led to this tremendous revolution in public opinion will
complete our survey of the subject.</p>

<p>It has already been pointed out that in primitive
societies a very important fact is that the relation of the
individual to the community is of a different nature
from that which exists in a later stage of culture. The
whole is responsible for the part in a very literal sense,
and especially so in regard to religious beliefs. Individual
rights and responsibilities have but a precarious
existence at best. The individual exists far more
for the benefit of the tribe than the tribe can be said to
exist for the benefit of the individual. The sense of
corporate responsibility is strong, and even in secular
affairs we see this constantly manifested. When a
member of one tribe inflicts an injury upon a member
of another tribe, retaliation on any one of the group to
which the offending person belongs will suffice. We
see the remnants of this primitive view of life in the
feuds of schoolboys, and it is also manifested in the
relations of nations, which move upon a lower ethical
level than do individuals. Most wars are ostensibly
waged because in some obscure way the nation is held
responsible for the offences of one or more individuals.
And an instance of the same feeling is seen in the now
obsolete practice of punishing the members of a man's
family when the parents happen to have committed
certain offences.</p>

<p>In religion, as we have already pointed out, the
sense of corporate responsibility completely governs
primitive man's sense of his relation to the tribal gods.
In the development of the tribal chief into the tribal
god the ghost is credited with much the same powers
as the man, with the added terror of having more
subtle and terrible ways of inflicting punishment. The
man who offends the ghost or the god is a standing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">{217}</a></span>
danger to the whole of the tribe. The whole of the
tribe becomes responsible for the offence committed,
and the tribe in self protection must not alone take
measures to punish the offender, but must also guard
itself against even the possibility of the offence being
perpetrated. The consequence is that there is not a
religion in which one can fail to trace the presence of
this primitive conception of personal and social
responsibility, and consequently, where we cannot find
persecution, more or less severe, and also more or less
organized, in the interest of what is believed to be
social welfare. In the case of the failure of the Spanish
Armada to effect the conquest of England, the
Spanish monarch was convinced that its non-success
was partly due to his not having weeded out the
heretics from his own dominion before troubling about
the heretics abroad. And right down to our own day
there has not been a national calamity the cause of
which has not been found by numbers of religious
people to lie in the fact that some members of the
suffering nation have offended God. The heretic becomes,
as we have already said, a social danger of the
gravest description. Society must be guarded against
his presence just as we learn to-day to protect ourselves
against the presence of a death-dealing germ.
The suppression of heresy thus becomes a social duty,
because it protects society from the anger of the gods.
The destruction of the heretic is substantially an act of
social sanitation. Given the primitive conception of
religion, affiliated to the existing conception of corporate
responsibility, and persecution becomes one of
the most important of social duties.</p>

<p>This, I believe, is not alone the root of persecution,
but it serves to explain as nothing else can its persistence
in social life and the fact of its having became
almost a general mental characteristic. To realize this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">{218}</a></span>
one need only bear in mind the overpowering part
played by religious conceptions in early communities.
There is nothing done that is not more or less under
the assumed control of supernatural agencies. Fear is
the dominant emotion in relation to the gods, and
experience daily proves that there is nothing that can
make men so brutal and so callous to the sufferings of
others as can religious belief. And while there has all
along been a growing liberation of the mind from the
control of religion, the process has been so slow that
this particular product of religious rule has had time to
root itself very deeply in human nature. And it is in
accordance with all that we know of the order of
development that the special qualities engendered by a
particular set of conditions should persist long after
the conditions themselves have passed away.</p>

<p>The conditions that co-operate in the final breaking
down of the conviction of the morality of
persecution are many and various. Primarily, there is
the change from the social state in which the conception
of corporate responsibility is dominant to one
in which there is a more or less clearly marked line
between what concerns the individual alone and what
concerns society as a whole. This is illustrated in the
growth from what Spencer called the military type of
society to an industrial one. In the case of a militant
type of society, to which the religious organization is
so closely affiliated, a State is more self contained, and
the governing principle is, to use a generalization of
Sir Henry Maine's, status rather than contract. With
the growth of commerce and industrialism there is
developed a greater amount of individual initiative, a
growing consideration for personal responsibility, and
also the development of a sense of interdependence
between societies. And the social developments that
go on teach people, even though the lesson may be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">{219}</a></span>
unconsciously learned, to value each other in terms of
social utility rather than in terms of belief in expressed
dogmas. They are brought daily into contact
with men of widely differing forms of opinion; they
find themselves working in the same movements, and
participating in the same triumphs or sharing the same
defeats. Insensibly the standard of judgment alters;
the strength of the purely social feelings overpowers
the consciousness of theological differences, and thus
serves to weaken the frame of mind from which
persecution springs.</p>

<p>The growing complexity of life leads to the same
end. Where the conditions of life are simple, and the
experiences through which people pass are often repeated,
and where, moreover, the amount of positive
knowledge current is small, conclusions are reached
rapidly, and the feeling of confidence in one's own
opinions is not checked by seeing others draw different
conclusions from the same premises. Under such conditions
an opinion once formed is not easily or quickly
changed. Experience which makes for wider knowledge
makes also for greater caution in forming
opinions and a greater readiness to tolerate conclusions
of an opposite character at which others may have
arrived.</p>

<p>Finally, on the purely intellectual side one must
reckon with the growth of new ideas, and of knowledge
that is in itself quite inconsistent with the established
creed. If the primary reason for killing the heretic is
that he is a social danger, one who will draw down on
the tribe the vengeance of the gods, the strength of
that feeling against the heretic must be weakened by
every change that lessens men's belief in the power
of their deity. And one must assume that every time
a fresh piece of definite knowledge was acquired towards
the splendid structure that now meets us in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">{220}</a></span>
shape of modern science there was accomplished something
that involved an ultimate weakening of the belief
in the supremacy of the gods. The effect is cumulative,
and in time it is bound to make itself felt. Religious
opinion after religious opinion finds itself attacked and
its power weakened. Things that were thought to be
solely due to the action of the gods are found to occur
without their being invoked, while invocation does not
make the slightest difference to the production of given
results. Scientific generalizations in astronomy, in
physics, in biology, etc., follow one another, each
helping to enforce the lesson that it really does not
matter what opinions a man may hold about the gods
provided his opinions about the world in which he is
living and the forces with which he <em>must</em> deal are
sound and solidly based. In a world where opinion is
in a healthy state of flux it is impossible for even
religion to remain altogether unchanged. So we have
first a change in the rigidity of religious conceptions,
then a greater readiness to admit the possibility of
error, and, finally, the impossibility of preventing the
growth and expression of definitely non-religious and
anti-religious opinions in a community where all sorts
of opinions cannot but arise.</p>

<p>With the social consequences of religious persecution,
and particularly of Christian persecution, I
have dealt elsewhere, and there is no need to repeat
the story here. I have been here concerned with
making plain the fact that persecution does not arise
with a misunderstanding of religion, or with a decline
of what is vaguely called "true religion," nor does it
originate in the alliance of some Church with the
secular State. It lies imbedded in the very nature of
religion itself. With polytheism there is a certain
measure of toleration to gods outside the tribe, because
here the admitted existence of a number of gods<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">{221}</a></span>
is part of the order of things. But this tendency to
toleration disappears when we come to the monotheistic
stage which inevitably treats the claim to
existence of other gods in the same spirit as an ardent
royalist treats the appearance of a pretender to the
throne. To tolerate such is a crime against the
legitimate ruler. And when we get the Christian
doctrine of eternal damnation and salvation tacked on
to the religious idea we have all the material necessary
to give the persecutor the feeling of moral obligation,
and to make him feel that he is playing the part of a
real saviour to society.</p>

<p>At bottom that is one of the chief injuries that a
religion such as Christianity inflicts on the race; it
throws human feeling into some of the most objectionable
forms, and provides a religious and moral
justification for their expression. The very desire to
benefit one's fellows, normally and naturally healthy,
thus becomes under Christian influences an instrument
of oppression and racial degradation. The Christian
persecutor does not see himself for what he is, he
pictures himself as a saviour of men's souls by suppressing
the unbeliever who would corrupt them.
And if Christianity be true he is correct in thinking
himself such. I have no hesitation in saying that if
Christianity be true persecution becomes the most
important of duties. A community that is thoroughly
Christian is bound to persecute, and as a mere matter
of historic fact every wholly Christian community has
persecuted. The community which says that a man
may take any religion he pleases, or go without one
altogether if he so chooses, proclaims its disbelief in
the importance of religion. The measure of religious
freedom is also the measure of religious indifference.</p>

<p>There are some experiences through which a human
being may pass the effects of which he never com<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">{222}</a></span>pletely
outgrows. Usually he may appear to have put
them quite out of his mind, but there are times when
he is lifted a little out of the normal, and then the recollection
of what he has passed through comes back
with terrifying force. And acute observers may also
be able to perceive that even in normal circumstances
what he has passed through manifests itself for the
worse in his everyday behaviour. So with religion and
the life history of the race. For thousands of generations
the race has been under the influence of a teaching
that social welfare depended upon a right belief
about the gods. The consequence of this has been that
persecution became deeply ingrained in human nature
and in the social traditions which play so large a part
in the character building of each new generation. We
have as yet hardly got beyond the tradition that lack of
religion robs a man of social rights and dispenses with
the necessity for courteous and considered treatment.
And there is, therefore, small cause for wonder that
the element of intolerance should still manifest itself
in connection with non-religious aspects of life. But
the certain thing is that throughout the whole of our
social history it is religion that has been responsible
for the maintenance of persecution as a social duty.
Something has been done in more recent times to
weaken its force, the growth of science, the rationalizing
of one institution after another&mdash;in a word, the
secularizing of life&mdash;is slowly creating more tolerant
relations between people. But the poison is deep in the
blood, and will not be eradicated in a generation.
Religion is still here, and so long as it remains it will
never cease&mdash;under the guise of an appeal to the higher
sentiments of man&mdash;to make its most effective appeals
to passions of which the best among us are most
heartily ashamed.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">{223}</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.<br />
WHAT IS TO FOLLOW RELIGION?</h2>

<p>Books on the future of religion are numerous, and to
one blessed with a sense of humour, full of entertainment.
They are also not without instruction of a
psychological kind. Reliable information as to what
the future will be like they certainly do not give, but
they do unlock the innermost desires of the writers
thereof. They express what the writers of the
prophecies would like the future to be. And they
create the future state on earth exactly as devout
believers have built up the character of their heaven
beyond the clouds. Every form of faith which they
disagree with is rejected as not possessing the element
of vitality, with the result that there is only their own
form left. And that, they triumphantly proclaim, is
the religion of the future.</p>

<p>But the future has an old-fashioned and disconcerting
habit of disappointing expectations. The factors
that govern human nature are so many and so complex,
their transmutations and combinations are so numerous,
that it is as well to tread cautiously, and to a very
considerable extent leave the future to take care of itself.
At the utmost all that we can do with safety is
to detect tendencies, and to hasten or retard their
development as we think them good or bad. The
factors that make up a science of human nature are
not to-day so well-known and so well understood that
we can depict the state of society a century hence with
the same certainty that we can foretell the position of
the planet Venus in the year 2000.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">{224}</a></span>
My aim in this chapter is, therefore, not to describe
precisely what will be the state of society when religious
belief has ceased to exist. It is rather to offer a
general reply to those gloomy individuals who declare
that when the aims of the Freethinker are fully
realized we shall find that in destroying religion we
have destroyed pretty much all that makes human
life worth living. We have managed to empty the
baby out with the bath.</p>

<p>The most general form of this fear is expressed in
calling Freethought a creed of negation, or a policy of
destruction, and assuring the world that mankind can
never rest content with such things. That may be
quite true, but we fail to see in what way it touches
Freethought. A Freethought that is wholly destructive,
that is a mere negation, is a creation of the pulpit,
and belongs to the same class of imaginative efforts as
the pietistic outbursts of famous unbelievers on their
death-beds. That such things could have obtained so
wide a currency, and be looked upon as quite natural
occurrences, offers demonstrative evidence of the
paralyzing power of Christian belief on the human
mind.</p>

<p>As a matter of fact, neither reformers in general nor
Freethinkers in particular deserve the charge of being
mere destructionists. They are both far more interested
in building up than they are in pulling down,
and it is sheer lack of understanding that fixes the
eyes of so many on one aspect of the reformer's task
and so steadily ignores the other one. Of course, the
phenomenon is not an unusual one. In a revolution
it is the noise, the street fighting, the breaking of old
rules and the shattering of established institutions that
attract the most attention. The deeper aims of the
revolutionists, the hidden social forces of which the
revolution is the expression, the work of reconstruc<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">{225}</a></span>tion
that is attempted, escape notice. The old order
shrieks its loudest at the threat of dissolution, the new
can hardly make its voice heard. Carlyle's division of
the people into the shrieking thousands and the dumb
millions is eternally true. And even the millions are
impressed with the importance of the thousands because
of the noise they are able to make.</p>

<p>Actually the charge to which reformers in general
are open is that of a too great zeal for reconstruction,
a belittling of the difficulties that stand in the way of a
radical change. They are apt to make too small an
allowance for the occurrence of the unexpected and the
incalculable, both of which are likely to interfere with
the fruition of the most logical of schemes. And they
are so obsessed with reconstruction that destruction
seems no more than an incident by the way. A little
less eagerness for reconstruction might easily result in
a greater concern for what is being pulled down. The
two greatest "destructive" movements of modern
times&mdash;the French revolution of 1789 and the Russian
revolution&mdash;both illustrate this point. In both movements
the leading figures were men who were obsessed
with the idea of building a new world. They saw this
new world so clearly that the old one was almost
ignored. And this is equally true of the literature that
precedes and is the mouthpiece of such movements.
The leading appeal is always to what is to be, what
existed is only used as a means of enforcing the
desirability of the new order. It is, in short, the
mania for reconstruction that is chiefly responsible for
the destruction which so horrifies those whose vision
can never see anything but the world to which they
have become accustomed.</p>

<p>In parenthesis it may be remarked that it is a tactical
blunder to make one's attack upon an existing institution
or idea depend upon the attractiveness of the ideal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">{226}</a></span>
state depicted. It enables critics to fix attention on the
precise value of the proposed remedy instead of discussing
whether the suggested reform is necessary.
The attacker is thus placed in the position of the
defender and the point at issue obscured. This is,
that a certain institution or idea has outgrown its usefulness
and its removal is necessary to healthy growth.
And it may well be that its removal is all that is
required to enable the social organism to function
naturally and healthily. The outworn institution is
often the grit in the machine that prevents it running
smoothly.</p>

<p>This by the way. The fact remains that some of our
best teachers have shown themselves apt to stumble in
the matter. Without belief in religion they have too
often assumed that its removal would leave a serious
gap in life, and so would necessitate the creation of a
number of substitutes to "take the place of religion."
Thus, no less profound a thinker than Herbert Spencer
remarks in the preface to his <cite>Data of Ethics</cite>:&mdash;</p>

<blockquote><p>Few things can happen more disastrous than the
death and decay of a regulative system no longer fit,
before another and a better regulative system has
grown up to replace it. Most of those who reject the
current creed appear to assume that the controlling
agency furnished by it may safely be thrown aside,
and the vacancy left unfilled by any other controlling
agency.</p></blockquote>

<p>Had Spencer first of all set himself to answer the
question, "What is it that the Freethinker sets himself
to remove?" or even the question, "What is the
actual control exerted by religion?" one imagines
that the passage above given would either never have
been written or would have been differently worded.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">{227}</a></span>
And when a man such as Spencer permits himself to
put the matter in this form one need not be surprised
at the ordinary believer assuming that he has put an
unanswerable question to the Freethinker when he
asks what it is that we propose to put in the place of
religion, with the assumption that the question is on
all fours with the enquiry as to what substitutes we
have for soap and coal if we destroy all stocks of these
articles.</p>

<p>The question assumes more than any scientific Freethinker
would ever grant. It takes for granted the
statement that religion does at present perform some
useful function in the State. And that is the very
statement that is challenged. Nor does the Freethinker
deny that some "controlling agency" is
desirable. What he does say is that in the modern
State, at least, religion exerts no control for good, that
its activities make for stagnation or retrogression, that
its removal will make for the healthier operation of
other agencies, and that to these other and non-religious
agencies belongs the credit which is at
present given to religion.</p>

<p>Moreover, Spencer should not have needed reminding
that systems of thought while they have any vital
relation to life will successfully defy all attempts at
eradication. The main cause of the decay of religion
is not the attack made upon it by the forces of reasoned
unbelief. That attack is largely the conscious expression
of a revolt against a system that has long lost
all touch with reality, and so has ceased to derive
support from current life and thought. From this
point of view the reformer is what he is because he is
alive to the drift of events, susceptible to those social
influences which affect all more or less, and his
strength is derived from the thousand and one subtle
influences that extend from generation to generation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">{228}</a></span>
and express themselves in what we are pleased to call
the story of civilization.</p>

<p>But the quotation given does represent a fairly
common point of view, and it is put in a form that is
most favourable to religious pretensions. For it
assumes that religion does really in our modern lives
perform a function so useful that it would be the height
of folly to remove it before we had something equally
useful to take its place. But something in the place of
religion is a thing that no scientific Freethinker desires.
It is not a new religion, or another religion that the
world needs, but the removal of religion from the
control of life, and a restatement of those social qualities
that have hitherto been expressed in a religious form
so that their real nature will be apparent to all. Then
we shall at last begin to make progress with small
chance of getting a serious set-back.</p>

<p>This does not, of course, deny that there are many
things associated with religion for the absence of which
society would have cause for regret. It is part of the
Freethought case that this is so. And it may also be
admitted that large numbers of people honestly believe
that their religious beliefs serve as motives to the expression
of their better qualities. That, again, is part
of the delusion we are fighting. We cannot agree
that religion, as such, contains anything that is
essentially useful to the race. It has maintained its
power chiefly because of its association with serviceable
social qualities, and it is part of the work of Freethought
to distinguish between what properly belongs
to religion and what has become associated with it
during its long history. At present the confusion
exists and the fact need cause no surprise. At best
the instincts of man are deep-laid, the motives to conduct
are mostly of an obscure kind, and it would be
cause for surprise if, seeing how closely religion is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">{229}</a></span>
associated with every phase of primitive life, and how
persistent are primitive modes of thinking, there were
not this confusion between the actual part played by
religion in life and the part assigned it by tradition.</p>

<p>At any rate, it is idle to argue as though human
conduct was governed by a single idea&mdash;that of
religion. At the most religious beliefs represent no
more than a part of the vast mass of influences that
determine human effort. And when we see how
largely religious beliefs are dependent upon constant
stimulation and protection for their existence, it seems
extremely unlikely that they can hold a very vital
relation to life. The impotency of religion in matters
of conduct is, too, decisively shown in the fact that it
is quite impossible to arrange men and women in a
scale of values that shall correspond with the kind or
the fervency of their religious beliefs. A religious
person may be a useful member of society or he may
be a quite useless one. A profound religious conviction
may be accompanied by the loftiest of ideals or
by the meanest of aims. The unbeliever may be, and
often is, a better man than the believer. No business
man would ever think of making a man's religion the
condition of taking one into his service, or if he did
the general opinion would be that it indicated bigotry
and not shrewdness. We find it quite impossible to
determine the nature of religious belief by watching
the way people behave. In no stage of social life does
religion provide us with anything in the nature of a
differentiating factor.</p>

<p>It was argued by the late Sir James Fitzjames
Stephen, himself a Freethinker, that as men have for a
long time been in the habit of associating moral feelings
with the belief in God, a severance of the two may
entail moral disaster. It is, of course, hard to say
what may not happen in certain cases, but it is quite<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">{230}</a></span>
certain that such a consequence could not follow on any
general scale. One has only to bring a statement of
this kind down from the region of mere theory to that
of definite fact to see how idle the fear is. If, instead
of asserting in a vague way that the moral life is in
some way bound up with religious beliefs we ask what
moral action or moral disposition is so connected, we
realize the absurdity of the statement. Professor
Leuba well says:&mdash;</p>

<blockquote><p>Our alleged essential dependence upon transcendental
beliefs is belied by the most common experiences
of daily life. Who does not feel the absurdity
of the opinion that the lavish care for a sick child by
a mother is given because of a belief in God and
immortality? Are love of father and mother on the
part of children, affection and serviceableness between
brothers and sisters, straightforwardness and
truthfulness between business men essentially dependent
upon these beliefs? What sort of person
would be the father who would announce divine
punishment or reward in order to obtain the love and
respect of his children? And if there are business
men preserved from unrighteousness by the fear of
future punishment, they are far more numerous who
are deterred by the threat of human law. Most of
them would take their chances with heaven a hundred
times before they would once with society, or perchance
with the imperative voice of humanity heard
in the conscience (<cite>The Belief in God and Immortality</cite>,
p. 323).</p></blockquote>

<p>And in whatever degree the fear may be justified in
special cases, it applies to any attempt whatever that
may be made to disturb existing conventions. Luther
complained that some of his own converts were behaving
worse as Protestants than they behaved as
Catholics, and even in the New Testament we have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">{231}</a></span>
the same unfavourable comparison made of many of
Christ's followers when compared with the Pagans
around them. A transference of allegiance may easily
result in certain ill-balanced minds kicking over the
traces, but in the long run, and with the mass, the
deeper social needs are paramount. There was the
same fear expressed concerning man's political and
social duties when the relations of Church and State
were first challenged. Yet the connection between the
two has been quite severed in some countries, and very
much weakened in many more, without society in the
least suffering from the change. On the contrary, one
may say that man's duties towards the State have been
more intelligently perceived and more efficiently discharged
in proportion as those religious considerations
that once ruled have been set on one side.</p>

<p>The reply of the Freethinker to the question of
"What is to follow religion?" may, therefore, easily be
seen. In effect it is, "Nothing at all." In any study of
social evolution the properly equipped student commences
his task with the full conviction that whatever
the future may be like its germs are already with us.
If nature does not "abhor a vacuum" it has at least
an intense dislike to absolute beginnings. The future
will be an elaboration of the present as the present is
an elaboration of the past. For good or evil that
principle remains unimpeachable.</p>

<p>The essential question is not, What is to follow
religion? but rather what will the disappearance of
religion affect that is of real value to the world. The
moment the question is raised in this unambiguous
manner the answer suggests itself. For assume that
by some strange and unexpected happening there set
in a raging epidemic of common sense. Assume that
as a consequence of this the world was to awake with
its mind completely cleared of all belief in religion.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">{232}</a></span>
What would be the effect of the transformation? It is
quite clear that it would not affect any of the fundamental
processes of life. The tragi-comedy of life
would still be performed, it would run through the
same number of acts, and it would end in the same
happy or unhappy manner. Human beings would
still get born, they would grow up, they would fall in
love, they would marry, they would beget their kind,
and they would in turn pass away to make room for
another generation. Birth and death, with all their
accompanying feelings, would remain. Human society
would continue, all the glories of art, the greatness of
science, all the marvels and wonders of the universe
would be there whether we believed in a God or not.
The only difference would be that we should no longer
associate these things with the existence of a God.
And in that respect we should be following the same
course of development that has been followed in many
other departments of life. We do not nowadays
associate the existence of spirits with a good or a bad
harvest, the anger of God with an epidemic, or the
good-will of deity with a spell of fine weather. Yet in
each case there was once the same assumed association
between these things, and the same fears of what would
happen if that association was discarded. We are only
carrying the process a step further; all that is required
is a little courage to take the step. In short, there is
not a single useful or worthy quality, intellectual or
moral, that can possibly suffer from the disappearance
of religion.</p>

<p>On this point we may again quote from Professor
Leuba:&mdash;</p>

<blockquote><p>The heroism of religious martyrs is often flaunted
as marvellous instances of the unique sustaining
strength derived from the belief in a personal God<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">{233}</a></span>
and the anticipation of heaven. And yet for every
martyr of this sort there has been one or more heroes
who has risked his life for a noble cause, without the
comfort which transcendental beliefs may bring. The
very present offers almost countless instances of
martyrs to the cause of humanity, who are strangers
to the idea of God and immortality. How many men
and women in the past decade gladly offered and not
infrequently lost their lives in the cause of freedom,
or justice, or science? In the monstrous war we are
now witnessing, is there a less heroic defence of home
and nation, and less conscious self-renunciation
among the non-believers than among the professed
Christians? Have modern nations shown a more intense
or a purer patriotism than ancient Greece and
Rome, where men did not pretend to derive inspiration
for their deeds of devotion in the thoughts of
their gods.... The fruitful deeds of heroism are at
bottom inspired not by the thought of God or a
future life, but by innate tendencies or promptings
that have reference to humanity. Self sacrifice,
generosity, is rooted in nothing less superficial and
accidental than social instincts older than the human
race, for they are already present in a rudimentary
form in the higher animals.</p></blockquote>

<p>These are quite familiar statements to all Freethinkers,
but to a great many Christians they may come with all
the force of a new revelation.</p>

<p>In the earlier pages of this work I have given what I
conceive solid reasons for believing that every one of
the social and individual virtues is born of human
intercourse and can never be seriously deranged for
any length of time, so long as human society endures.
The scale of values may well undergo a change with
the decay of religion, but that is something which is
taking place all the time, provided society is not in a
state of absolute stagnation. There is not any change<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">{234}</a></span>
that takes place in society that does not affect our
view of the relative value of particular qualities. The
value we place upon personal loyalty to a king is not
what it once was. At one stage a man is ready to place
the whole of his fortune at the disposal of a monarch
merely because he happens to be his "anointed"
king. To-day, the man who had no better reason for
doing that would be looked upon as an idiot. Unquestioning
obedience to established authority, which
once played so high a part in the education of children,
is now ranked very low by all who understand what
genuine education means. From generation to generation
we go on revising our estimate of the value of
particular qualities, and the world is the better for the
revision. And that is what we may assume will occur
with the decay of religious belief. We shall place a
higher value upon certain qualities than we do at
present and a lower value upon others. But there will
be no discarding the old qualities and creation of new
ones. Human nature will be the same then as now,
as it has been for thousands of years. The nature of
human qualities will be more directly conceived and
more intelligently applied, and that will be an undesirable
development only for those who live by
exploiting the ignorance and the folly of mankind.</p>

<p>Thus, if one may venture upon a prophecy with regard
to the non-religious society of the future it may
be said with confidence that what are known as the
ascetic qualities are not likely to increase in value.
The cant of Christianity has always placed an excessive
value upon what is called self-sacrifice. But there
is no value in self-sacrifice, as such. At best it is only
of value in exceptional circumstances, as an end it
is worse than useless, and it may easily degenerate
from a virtue to a vice. It assumed high rank with
Christian teachers for various reasons. First, it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">{235}</a></span>
an expression of that asceticism which lies at the root
of Christianity, second, because Christianity pictured
this world as no more than a preparation for another,
and taught that the deprivations and sufferings of the
present life would be placed to a credit account in the
next one, and third, because it helped men and women
to tolerate injustice in this world and so helped the
political game that governments and the Christian
Church have together played. A really enlightened
society would rank comparatively low the virtue of
asceticism. Its principle would be not self-sacrifice
but self-development.</p>

<p>What must result from this is an enlargement of
our conception of justice and also of social reform.
Both of these things occupy a very low place in the
Christian scale of virtues. Social reform it has never
bothered seriously about, and in its earlier years
simply ignored. A people who were looking for the
end of the world, whose teaching was that it was for
man's spiritual good to suffer, and who looked for all
help to supernatural intervention, could never have
had seriously in their minds what we understand by
social reform. And so with the conception of Justice.
There is much of this in pre-Christian literature, and
its entrance into the life and thought of modern
Europe can be traced directly back to Greek and
Roman sources. But the work of the Christian, while
it may have been to heal wounds, was not to prevent
their infliction. It was to minister to poverty, not to
remove those conditions that made poverty inevitable.</p>

<p>A Spanish writer has put this point so well that I
cannot do better than quote him. He says:&mdash;</p>

<blockquote><p>The notion of justice is as entirely foreign to the
spirit of Christianity as is that of intellectual honesty.
It lies wholly outside the field of its ethical vision.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">{236}</a></span>
Christianity&mdash;I am not referring to interpretations disclaimed
as corruptions or applications which may be
set down to frailty and error, but to the most idealized
conceptions of its substance and the most exalted
manifestations of its spirit&mdash;Christianity has offered
consolation and comfort to men who suffered under
injustice, but of that injustice itself it has remained
absolutely incognizant. It has called upon the weary
and heavy laden, upon the suffering and the afflicted,
it has proclaimed to them the law of love, the duty of
mercy and forgiveness, the Fatherhood of God; but
in that torment of religious and ethical emotion which
has impressed men as the summit of the sublime, and
been held to transcend all other ethical ideals, common
justice, common honesty have no place. The ideal
Christian is seen in the saint who is seen descending
like an angel from heaven amid the welter of human
misery, among the victims of ruthless oppression and
injustice ... but the cause of that misery lies wholly
outside the range of his consciousness; no glimmer of
right or wrong enters into his view of it. It is the
established order of things, the divinely appointed
government of the world, the trial laid upon sinners
by divine ordinance. St. Vincent de Paul visits the
hell of the French galleys; he proclaims the message
of love and calls sinners to repentance; but to the
iniquity which creates and maintains that hell he
remains absolutely indifferent. He is appointed
Grand Almoner to his Most Christian Majesty. The
world might groan in misery under the despotism
of oppressors, men's lives and men's minds might be
enslaved, crushed and blighted; the spirit of Christianity
would go forth and <em>comfort</em> them, but it would
never occur to it to redress a single one of those
wrongs. It has remained unconscious of them. To
those wrongs, to men's right to be delivered from
them, it was by nature completely blind. In respect
to justice, to right and wrong, the spirit of Christianity
is not so much immoral as amoral. The
notion was as alien to it as the notion of truth. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">{237}</a></span>cluded
in its code was, it might be controversially
alleged, an old formula, "the golden rule," a commonplace
of most literature, which was popular in
the East from China to Asia Minor; but that isolated
precept was never interpreted in the sense of justice.
It meant forgiveness, forbearing, kindness, but never
mere justice, common equity; those virtues were far
too unemotional in aspect to appeal to the religious
enthusiast. The renunciation of life and all its
vanities, the casting overboard of all sordid cares for
its maintenance, the suppression of desire, prodigal
almsgiving, the consecration of a life, the value of
which had disappeared in his eyes, to charity and love,
non-resistance, passive obedience, the turning of the
other cheek to an enemy, the whole riot of these
hyperbolic ethical emotions could fire the Christian
consciousness, while it remained utterly unmoved by
every form of wrong, iniquity and injustice (Dr.
Falta de Gracia. Cited by Dr. R. Briffault, <cite>The
Making of Humanity</cite>, pp. 334-5.)</p></blockquote>

<p>That, we may assume, will be one of the most striking
consequences of the displacement of Christianity in the
social economy. There will be less time wasted on
what is called philanthropic work&mdash;which is often the
most harmful of all social labours&mdash;and more attention
to the removal of those conditions that have made the
display of philanthropy necessary. There will not be
less feeling for the distressed or the unfortunate, but
it will be emotion under the guidance of the intellect,
and the dominant feeling will be that of indignation
against the conditions that make human suffering and
degradation inevitable, rather than a mere gratification
of purely egoistic feeling which leaves the source of
the evil untouched.</p>

<p>That will mean a rise in the scale of values of what
one may call the intellectual virtues&mdash;the duty of
truthseeking and truth speaking. Hitherto the type<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">{238}</a></span>
of character held up for admiration by Christianity has
been that of the blind believer who allowed nothing to
stand in the way of his belief, who required no proofs
of its truth and allowed no disproofs to enter his mind.
A society in which religion does not hold a controlling
place is not likely to place a very high value upon such
precepts as "Blessed are those who have not seen and
yet have believed," or "Though he slay me yet will I
trust him." But a very high value will be placed upon
the duty of investigation and the right of criticism.
And one cannot easily over-estimate the consequences
of a generation or two brought up in an atmosphere
where such teachings obtain. It would mean a receptiveness
to new ideas, a readiness to overhaul old
institutions, a toleration of criticism such as would
rapidly transform the whole mental atmosphere and
with it enormously accentuate the capacity for, and the
rapidity of, social progress.</p>

<p>There is also to be borne in mind the effect of the
liberation of the enormous amount of energy at present
expended in the service of religion. Stupid religious
controversialists often assume that it is part of the
Freethinker's case that religion enlists in its service
bad men, and much time is spent in proving that
religious people are mostly worthy ones. That could
hardly be otherwise in a society where the overwhelming
majority of men and women profess a religion of
some sort. But that is, indeed, not the Freethinker's
case at all, and if the badness of some religious people
is cited it is only in answer to the foolish argument that
religionists are better than others. The real complaint
against religion is of a different kind altogether. Just
as the worst thing that one can say about a clergyman
intellectually is, not that he does not believe in what
he preaches, but that he does, so the most serious indictment
of current religion is not that it enlists in its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">{239}</a></span>
service bad characters, but that it dissipates the energy
of good men and women in a perfectly useless manner.
The dissipation of Christian belief means the liberating
of a store of energy for service that is at present being
expended on ends that are without the least social
value. A world without religion would thus be a world
in which the sole ends of endeavour would be those of
human betterment or human enlightenment, and probably
in the end the two are one. For there is no real
betterment without enlightenment, even though there
may come for a time enlightenment without betterment.
It would leave the world with all the means of
intellectual and æsthetic and social enjoyment that
exist now, and one may reasonably hope that it will
lead to their cultivation and diffusion over the whole
of society.</p>

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<div id="footnotes">
<h2>FOOTNOTES:</h2>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> It will ease my feelings if I am permitted to here make a
protest against the shameless way in which this suggestive
writer has been pillaged by others without the slightest
acknowledgement. They have found him, as Lamb said of
some other writers, "damned good to steal from." His
series of volumes, <cite>Problems of Life and Mind</cite>, have been
borrowed from wholesale without the slightest thanks or
recognition.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <cite>Study of Psychology</cite>, pp. 139, 161-5. So again, a more
recent writer says: "It is not man himself who thinks but
his social community; the source of his thoughts is in the
social medium in which he lives, the social atmosphere which
he breathes.... The influence of environment upon the human
mind has always been recognized by psychologists and philosophers,
but it has been considered a secondary factor. On
the contrary, the social medium which the child enters at
birth, in which he lives, moves and has his being, is fundamental.
Toward this environment the individual from childhood
to ripest old age is more or less receptive; rarely can
the maturest minds so far succeed in emancipating themselves
from this medium so far as to undertake independent
reflection, while complete emancipation is impossible, for all
the organs and modes of thought, all the organs for constructing
thoughts have been moulded or at least thoroughly
imbued by it" (L. Gumplowicz, <cite>Outlines of Sociology</cite>, p. 157).</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <cite>Social Psychology</cite>, pp. 330-1.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> "The tyranny exercised unconsciously on men's minds is
the only real tyranny, because it cannot be fought against.
Tiberius, Ghengis Khan, and Napoleon were assuredly redoubtable
tyrants, but from the depths of their graves Moses,
Buddha, Jesus, and Mahomet exerted on the human soul a
far profounder tyranny. A conspiracy may overthrow a
tyrant, but what can it avail against a firmly established
belief? In its violent struggle with Roman Catholicism it is
the French Revolution that has been vanquished, and this in
spite of the fact that the sympathy of the crowd was
apparently on its side, and in spite of recourse to destructive
measures as pitiless as those of the Inquisition. The only
real tyrants that humanity has known have always been the
memories of its dead, or the illusions it has forged for itself"
(Gustave Le Bon, <cite>The Crowd</cite>, p. 153).</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> See <cite>Early History of Institutions</cite>, and <cite>Early Law and
Custom</cite>.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> <cite>Principles of Sociology</cite>, Vol. I.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> <cite>Origins of English History</cite>, p. 261.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Speaking of the Inquisition, Mr. H. C. Lea, in his classic
<cite>History of the Inquisition</cite>, says, "There is no doubt that the
people were as eager as their pastors to send the heretic to
the stake. There is no doubt that men of the kindliest
tempers, the profoundest aspirations, the purest zeal for
righteousness, professing a religion founded on love and
charity, were ruthless where heresy was concerned, and were
ready to trample it out at any cost. Dominic and Francis,
Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, Innocent III. and St.
Louis, were types, in their several ways, of which humanity,
in any age, might feel proud, and yet they were as unsparing
of the heretic as Ezzelin di Romano was of his enemies. With
such men it was not hope of gain or lust of blood or pride of
opinion or wanton exercise of power, but sense of duty, and
they but represented what was universal public opinion from
the thirteenth to the seventeenth century." Vol. I., p. 234.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> This seems to me to give the real significance of Nationality.
It has been argued by some that nationality is a pure
myth, as unreal as the divinity of a king. The principal
ground for this denial of nationality appears to be that so-called
national characteristics are seen to undergo drastic
transformation when their possessors are subject to a new
set of influences. This may be quite true, but if nationality,
in the sense of being a product of biological heredity, is ruled
out, it does not follow that nationality is thereby destroyed.
The fact may remain but it demands a different interpretation.
And if what has been said above be true, it follows that
nationality is not a personal fact, but an extra or super-personal
one. It belongs to the group rather than to the
individual, and is created by the possession of a common
speech, a common literature, and a common group life. And
quite naturally, when the individual is lifted out of this
special social influence its power may well be weakened, and
in the case of his children may be non-existent, or replaced
by the special characteristics of the new group into which he
is born. The discussion of nationality ought not, therefore,
to move along the lines of acceptance or rejection of the conception
of nationality, but of how far specific national characteristics
admit of modification under the pressure of new
conditions.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> It would take too long to elaborate, but it may be here
noted that in the human group the impelling force is not so
much needs as desires, and that fact raises the whole
issue from the level of biology to that of psychology. So long
as life is at a certain level man shares with the animal the
mere need for food. But at another level there arises not
merely the need for food, but a desire for certain kind of
food, cooked in a particular manner, and served in a special
style. And provided that we do not by hunger reduce man to
the level of the beast again, the desire will be paramount
and will determine whether food shall be eaten or not. So,
again, with the fact of sex and marriage. At the animal
level we have the crude fact of sex, and this is, indeed, inescapable
at any stage. But the growth of civilization brings
about the fact that the need for the gratification of the
sexual appetite is regulated by the secondary qualities of
grace of form, or of disposition, which are the immediate determinants
of whether a particular man shall marry a particular
woman or not. Again, it is the <em>desire</em> for power and
distinction, not the <em>need</em> for money that impels men to spend
their lives in building up huge fortunes. And, finally, we have
the fact that a great many of our present needs are transformed
desires. The working man of to-day counts as needs,
as do we all more or less, a number of things that began as
pure desires. We say we need books, pictures, music, etc.
But none of these things can be really brought under the
category of things necessary to life. They are the creation
of man's mental cravings. Without them we say life would
not be worth living, and it is well that we should all feel so.
Professor Marshall rightly dwells upon this point by saying:
"Although it is man's wants in the early stages of development
that give rise to his activities, yet afterwards each new
step is to be regarded as the development of new activities
giving rise to new wants, rather than of new wants giving
rise to new activities."&mdash;(<cite>Principles of Economics</cite>, Vol. I.,
p. 164.)</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> It is a curious thing, as Philip Gilbert Hamerton points
out in one of his essays, that in England religious freedom
appears to exist in inverse proportion to rank. The king has
no freedom whatever in a choice of religion. His religion is
part of the position. An English nobleman, speaking generally,
has two religions from which to choose. He may be
either a member of the established Church or of the Roman
Catholic. In the middle classes there is the choice of all sorts
of religious sects, so long as they are Christian. Religious
dissent is permitted so long as it does not travel beyond the
limits of the chapel. And when we come to the better class
working man, he has the greatest freedom of all. His social
position does not depend upon his belonging to this or that
Church, and he may, to borrow a phrase from Heine, go to
hell in his own fashion.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> See specially Vol. I., chapters 6, 7, and 8. One is sorely
tempted to engage in what would be a rather lengthy aside
on the mental freedom enjoyed by the people of ancient
Greece, but considerations of cogency advise a shorter comment
in this form. In the first place we have to note that
neither the Greeks nor the Romans possessed anything in
the shape of "sacred" books. That, as the history of Mohammedanism
and Christianity shows, is one of the most
disastrous things that can happen to any people. But apart
from this there were several circumstances connected with
the development of the Greek peoples that made for freedom
of opinion. There was no uniform theology to commence
with, and the configuration of the country, while enough to
maintain local independence, was not enough to prevent a
certain amount of intercourse. And it would certainly seem
that no people were ever so devoid of intolerance as were the
ancient Greeks. It is true that the history of Greece was not
without its examples of intolerance, but these were comparatively
few, and, as Professor Bury says, persecution was never
organized. The gods were criticized in both speeches and
plays. Theories of Materialism and Atheism were openly
taught and were made the topic of public discussion. There
was, indeed, a passion for the discussion of all sorts of subjects,
and to discussion nothing is sacred. The best thought
of Rome owed its impetus to Greece, and at a later date it
was the recovered thought of Greece which gave the impetus
to Mohammedan Spain in its cultivation of science and philosophy,
and so led to the partial recovery of Europe from the
disastrous control of the Christian Church. Nor need it be
assumed that the work of Greece was due to the possession
of a superior brain power. Of that there is not the slightest
vestige of proof. It is simply that the ancient Greek lived
in a freer mental atmosphere. The mind had less to hamper
it in its operations; it had no organized and powerful Church
that from the cradle to the grave pursued its work of preventing
free criticism and the play of enlightened opinion.
For several centuries the world has been seeking to recover
some of its lost liberties with only a very moderate success.
But if one thinks of what the Greeks were, and if one adds
to what they had achieved a possible two thousand years of
development, he will then have some notion of what the
triumph of the Christian Church meant to the world.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> See on this point Heeren's <cite>Historical Treatises</cite>, 1836, pp.
61-70.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> <cite>Religion and the Child</cite>, Pioneer Press.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Of the evil of an incautious use of current words we have
an example in the case of Darwin. Neither his expressions
of regret at having "truckled to public opinion" at having
used the term "creator," nor his explicit declaration that the
word was to him only a synonym of ignorance, prevented
religious apologists from citing him as a believer in deity on
the strength of his having used the word.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> <cite>The Psychological Origin and Nature of Religion</cite>, p. 92.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> <cite>Religion as a Credible Doctrine</cite>, p. 11.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> <cite>Theism or Atheism</cite>, Chapter 2.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> The state of war which normally exists between many, if
not most, neighbouring savage tribes, springs in large
measure directly from their belief in immortality; since one
of the commonest motives to hostility is a desire to appease
the angry ghosts of friends who are supposed to have perished
by baleful arts of sorcerers in another tribe, and who, if
vengeance is not inflicted on their real or imaginary
murderers, will wreak their fury on their undutiful fellow-tribesmen.&mdash;<cite>The
Belief in Immortality</cite>, Vol. I., p. 468.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> It may with equal truth be said that all beliefs are with a
similar qualification quite rational. The attempt to divide
people into "Rationalists" and "Irrationalists" is quite
fallacious and is philosophically absurd. Reason is used in
the formation of religious as in the formation of non-religious
beliefs. The distinction between the man who is religious
and one who is not, or, if it be preferred, one who is superstitious
and one who is not, is not that the one reasons and
the other does not. Both reason. Indeed, the reasoning of the
superstitionist is often of the most elaborate kind. The
distinction is that of one having false premises, or drawing
unwarrantable conclusions from sound premises. The only
ultimate distinctions are those of religionist and non-religionist,
supernaturalist and non-supernaturalist, Theist or
Atheist. All else are mere matters of compromise, exhibitions
of timidity, or illustrations of that confused thinking which
itself gives rise to religion in all its forms.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> <cite>Aspects of Death in Art and Epigram</cite>, p. 28.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> <cite>Golden Bough</cite>, Vol. IV., p. 136.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> The question of what are the things that are essential to
the welfare of the group, and the fact that individuals are
often suppressed for doing what they believe is beneficial to
the group, with the kindred fact that there may exist grave
differences of opinion on the matter, does not alter the
essential point, which is that there must exist sufficient conformity
between conduct and group welfare to secure survival.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> For this, as well as for the general consequences of
persecution on racial welfare, see my pamphlet <cite>Creed and
Character</cite>.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> I am taking the story of the persecutions of the early
Christians for granted, although the whole question is surrounded
with the greatest suspicion. As a matter of fact the
accounts are grossly exaggerated, and some of the alleged
persecutions never occurred. The story of the persecutions is
so foreign to the temper of the Roman government as to
throw doubt on the whole account. The story of there being
ten persecutions is clearly false, the number being avowedly
based upon the legend of the ten plagues of Egypt.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> The case of Maryland is peculiar. But the reason for the
toleration there seems to have been due to the desire to give
Catholics a measure of freedom they could not have elsewhere
in Protestant countries.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> For a good sketch of the Puritan Sunday in New England
see <cite>The Sabbath in Puritan New England</cite>, by Alice Morse
Earle. For an account of religious intolerance see the account
of the Blue Laws of Connecticut as contained in Hart's
<cite>American History told by Contemporaries</cite>, Vol. I.</p></div>
</div>
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