[FAILINGS.]
By J. MORTIMER GRANVILLE.
We all have our failings, and for the most part we regard them tenderly. They do not count as offences; scarcely are they held to be faults. It is always a probable conjecture that an error of omission has been unintentional; not unfrequently it seems possible it was unavoidable. A sentiment of pity for, and even sympathy with, weakness overpowers the sense of grievance; the voice of the inward monitor is silenced, and the self-excused conscience sleeps. Meanwhile failings are the worst and most mischievous, the deadliest and least curable, of the ills to which the moral nature of man is heir. They are the sources of evil whence spring the blackest vices of human character, the false roots that nourish and sustain its parasites, and steal the sap of its inner life. A failing is not merely negative; its sinister aspect is one of positive wrong-doing, wherein some behest of the will is disobeyed, a measure of moral power wasted, a rebel habit formed or fostered. To compassionate failings in others is to beg the question of fact for the sake of politeness; to look with leniency on the errors which self would fain palliate, by assuming that they are unavoidable, is to play the traitor to Truth, and let the enemy into the citadel; whereas conscience is set to guard the nature of man from treachery not less carefully than to protect it against assault.
Failings may be moral, mental, or physical, as they show themselves in the character, the intellect, or the bodily habit and powers. It generally happens that what strikes the observer as a failing is compounded of errors in feeling, thought, and action combined. The practical question is how the overt evil came into existence; or, if happily the failing should be detected in an earlier stage of growth, before it has betrayed its presence by ugly consequences, we may ask: what are the mischievous forces, where are they at work, how can they be counteracted? Why has this person the “failing” of a tendency to excessive indulgence in drink or the gratification of some unbridled passion; and that individual a seeming inability to recognize and pursue the right and honest course of conduct in the presence of any so-called “temptation” or difficulty?
Some of the most regrettable and injurious failings which disfigure and defame the character run through families, appearing in successive generations and seeming to be inherited. This theory of their perpetuation is well founded; and it has been adduced as conclusive evidence of the truth of the hypothesis that mind, and, of course, character, is the mere outcome of matter. The force of the argument obviously rests on the assumption that nothing more than, or outside, matter can be transmitted from parent to child; that a particular constitution of brain and nerve centres, a special arrangement or combination of the elements which compose the mind-organ, may be reproduced, and, if it is, a similarity of character will be entailed; but as for the independent existence of mind, or spirit, that is a pure figment of the imagination, which science will sooner or later drive beyond the pale of credulity, and to which, even now, only a few thinkers avowedly cling!
Let us examine this proposition at close quarters. It may be stated thus. All we know of mind is expressed, and understood, by physical agencies and in the formulæ of material force. Speech communicates thought, and we think in words. The faculty of forming and employing words is a brain function. If a particular region of the brain be injured or diseased, the power of using language, at least in speech, is generally lost. The materialist argues from this and many similar facts that mind is the product of matter. He fails to perceive that the only warrantable deduction from his own data is that mind or spirit, call it what we will, can only express itself through the brain as an instrument. As well deny the skill or independent existence of a musician because he can not play the full score of an opera on a flute, as infer the non-existence of a soul from the fact that man cannot perform intellectual work without the organ of thought—the brain!
The capacity of the instrument doubtless limits the expression, but it supplies no measure of the power or skill of the performer, except in so far as the use he makes of the instrument may be a bad one. This exception is of great significance, and there will be something more to say about it presently. Meantime it is evident that, while the range of brain-power determines the manifestation of mind, it neither measures, nor affirms, nor disproves the independent existence of mind. The anatomist, the physiologist, and the chemist declare their inability to discover the traces of a soul in the physical organism. That no more proves the non-existence of a soul than the failure to recognize more than a certain number of planets at any stage in the history of astronomy demonstrated that there was nothing further to find.
The appeal against materialism lies to the instinct of common sense. If mind were the mere outcome of matter, science would long since have discovered some tolerably constant relation between peculiarities of physical development and manifestations of character; whereas every step onward in the progress of research tends to disprove the existence of any certain dependency or connection between morals and matter. Even such links as compose the stock-in-trade of the physiognomist and phrenologist are shown to be illusory, except in so far as they may be the effects, rather than the causes, of character, and are produced by culture—witness the effects of education on facial expression in the case of criminals. The theory of a criminal conformation of cranium has been abandoned like the silly affectation of being able to detect an offender by his “hang-dog” or “murderous” look.