These Studies also contain a long paper on the Philosophy of the Poor Laws, which, as I have narrated in a previous chapter, fell into fertile soil on the mind of an Australian gentleman and caused the introduction of some of the reforms I advocated into the Poor Law system of New South Wales.
There were also in this volume articles on “Hades”; on the “Morals of Literature”; and on the “Hierarchy of Art,” which perhaps have some value; but I have not of late years cared to press the book, and have not included it in Mr. Fisher Unwin’s Re-issue of 1893 on account of the paper it contains on “The Rights of Man and the Claims of Brutes.” This article, which appeared first in Fraser’s Magazine, Nov., 1863, was my earliest effort (so far as I know, the first effort of anybody) to work out the very obscure and difficult ethical problem to which it refers, in answer to the demands of Vivisectors. I am not satisfied with the position I took up in this paper. In the thirty years which have elapsed since I wrote it, my thoughts have been greatly exercised on the subject, and I think I see the “Claims of Brutes” more clearly, and find them higher than I did. But, though I believe that I expressed the most advanced opinion of that time on the duty of Man to the lower animals, and of the offence of cruelty towards them, I here enter my caveat against the quotation of this article (as was lately done by a zealous Zoophilist) as if it still represented exactly what I think on the subject after pondering upon it for thirty years, and taking part in the Anti-vivisection crusade for two entire decades.
I have mentioned this matter especially, because it is of some importance to me, and also because I do not find that there is any other opinion which I have ever published in any book or article, on morals or religion, which I now desire to withdraw, or even of which I care to modify the expression. It is a great happiness to me at the end of a long and busy literary life, to feel that I have never written anything of which I repent, or which I wish to unsay.
A collection of minor articles, with several fresh papers of a lighter sort,—an Allegory, The Spectral Rout, &c.—was also published by Trübner in 1867, under the name of Hours of Work and Play.
In 1872 Messrs. Williams & Norgate published a rather large collection of my Essays, under the name of Darwinism in Morals and other Essays. The first is a review of the theory of ethics expounded in Darwin’s Descent of Man. I argue that the moral history of mankind (so far as it is known to us) gives no support whatever to Mr. Darwin’s hypothesis that Conscience is the result of certain contingencies in our development, and that it might, at an earlier stage, have been moulded into quite another form, causing Good to appear to us Evil, and Evil Good.
“I think we have a right to say that the suggestions offered by the highest scientific intellects of our time to account for its existence on principles which shall leave it on the level of other instincts, have failed to approve themselves as true to the facts of the case. And I think, therefore, that we are called on to believe still in the validity of our own moral consciousness, even as we believe in the validity of our other faculties; and to rest in the faith (well-nigh universal) of the human race, in a fixed and supreme Law, of which the will of God is the embodiment and Conscience the Divine transcript.”—Darwinism in Morals, p. 32.
In this same volume (included in the re-issue) are essays on Hereditary Piety (a review of Mr. Galton’s Hereditary Genius); one on The Religion of Childhood, on Robertson’s Life; on “A French Theist” (M. Pécaut); and a series of studies on Eastern Religions; including reviews of Mr. Ferguson’s Tree and Serpent Worship (with which Mr. F. was so pleased that he made me a present, of his magnificent book); Bunsen’s God in History, Max Muller’s Chips from a German Workshop, and Mrs. Manning’s Ancient and Mediæval India. Each of these is a careful essay on one or other of the oriental faiths referring to many other books on each subject. Beside these there are in the same volume two articles on Unconscious Cerebration and Dreams, which excited some interest in their day; and seem to me (if I be not misled by vanity) to have forestalled a good deal which has been written of late years about the “subliminal” or “subjective” consciousness.
In 1875, Messrs. Ward, Lock & Tyler, for whose New Quarterly Magazine I had written two long articles on Animals in Fable and Art and the Fauna of Fancy, asked my consent to re-publishing them in their Country House Library. To this I gladly agreed, adding my article in the Quarterly Review on the Consciousness of Dogs; and that in the Cornhill: “Dogs whom I have met.” The volume was prettily got up, and published under the name of “False Beasts and True.”
From the close of 1874, when I undertook the Anti-vivisection crusade, my literary activity dwindled down rapidly to small proportions. In the course of eight years I wrote enough magazine articles to fill one volume, published in 1882, and containing essays on Magnanimous Atheism; Pessimism and One of its Professors, and a few other papers, of which the most important,—the Peak in Darien,—gives its name to the book. It is an argument, (with many facts cited in its support,) for believing that the dying, as they are passing the threshold, not seldom become aware of the presence of beloved ones waiting for them in the new state of existence which they are actually entering.
After this book I wrote little for some years, but in 1888 I was asked to contribute an article to the Universal Review on the Scientific Spirit of the Age. I gladly acceded, but the Editor desired to cut down my MS., so I published it as a book with a few other older papers; notably one on the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse; a half-humorous study of the pros and cons of Life in London, and Life in a Country house.