“It won’t work,” said Alcock, his eyes a little opened, sitting considering this young man with sudden interest. (Alcock had so far thought that, in the present company, nothing would be acceptable save, what he called, a popular exposition of his own views)—“Believe me,” he added with gravity to Hawkesbury, “I have gone through all this at length, repeatedly, and with care, and I am convinced that, with many drawbacks, free competition within and without is the only thing which will give us a civilization of progress. The real tendency of everything else, I say, is towards stagnation or retrogression. Free competition universal, the great problem of which is to be the dominant race will proceed to settle itself quickly and thoroughly. Until that problem is settled, we cannot hope for a Civilization worthy of the name. All the inferior races must be stamped out, all the stagnatory or retrogressive ideas eliminated, and the best men with the best knowledge left masters of the situation. It is impossible to foresee what such men may achieve. We may yet, perhaps, open communications with the planets and even modify the courses of the stars.”
“Well,” said Fitzgerald smiling, “we have had the Vision of the Future from the Christian, the Cultured, the Socialistic point of view, and now we see that Science too has her dreams. I have no objection myself to any of these Visions which, as I take it, all contain a not inconsiderable amount of truth. I would only observe that I believe them to be all impossible solely and individually. The Socialistic Future that would banish Christ, the Scientific that would also banish God, can no more exist as, in Mr. Alcock’s phrase, masters of the situation, than the Future of Christianity that would ignore the glory of our discoveries in Natural Law, or the Future of Culture that would deny to the People our highest joy.”
“No,” said Alcock drily, “we don’t want Superstition mixed up with Religion, that is clear enough.”
“Nor yet,” added Fitzgerald sweetly, “do we want Superstition mixed up without Religion.” (Alcock, with the look of a man who does not understand a thing and does not much care to, took a drink at his champagne, which, it was evident from the new expression on his face, was to his taste. Fitzgerald proceeded suavely to the table at large and more particularly to Maddock.) “For, as perhaps Mr. Alcock,” (with a slight bend of the head to Alcock), “will permit me to say, the purely scientific view of things, which sees, in the unrestrained application to civilized life of the brutality of Nature, the undoubted parent of a Civilization worthy of the name, may be after all, and I believe is, a great superstition. Is not a superstition a belief in a thing not worthy of that belief? And is it not, then, a superstition, in calculating the progress of Humanity, to leave out of all account, as the pure Scientists seem to me to do, the most distinctive thing in Humanity—Religion.”
“I should say,” observed Alcock, “that Reason is the most distinctive thing in Humanity.”
“Indeed?” asked Fitzgerald, “You surprise me! Is it not generally admitted now that the rudiments of Reason, and considerably more than the rudiments, are to be found in the animals? But I am not aware that anyone, not even Ernst Haeckel, has discovered in them the rudiments of Religion. Can we not, then, agree with Max Müller that it is ‘certain that what makes man man, is that he alone can turn his face to heaven; certain that he alone yearns for something that neither sense nor reason can supply?’”
Alcock had the look of a man who feels the prompting of flippancy and, restraining it, is amused at what his flippancy would have said. Fitzgerald, perceiving this, answered it:
“Müller,” he proceeded, “in criticising Kant, who is of course the Father of all the worshippers of Reason, again says finely that ‘he closed the ancient gates through which man had gazed into Infinity; but, in spite of himself, he was driven, in his “Criticism of Practical Reason,” to open a side-door through which to admit the sense of duty, and with it the sense of the Divine.—This is the vulnerable point in Kant’s philosophy,’ he goes on, ‘and if philosophy has to explain what is, not what ought to be, there will be and can be no rest till we admit, which cannot be denied, that there is in man a third faculty, which I call simply the faculty of apprehending the Infinite, not only in religion but in all things, a power independent of sense and reason, a power in a certain sense contradicted by sense and reason, but yet a very real power, which has held its own from the beginning of the world, neither sense nor reason being able to overcome it, while it alone is able to overcome both reason and sense.’”
“That it has held its own from the beginning of the world,” said Alcock, “is no proof that it will do so to the end.”
Fitzgerald smiled.