Conscience & Fanaticism: An Essay on Moral Values

by George Henry Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers

Whether for good or evil the influence of religion on the conduct of men daily grows less. Religious fanaticism is gradually giving place to secular and political fanaticism, whose votaries shriek in the name of Democracy, Socialism or other watchword of Utopia, ever attempting to impose new moral values bearing as little correspondence to reality as the old values. Neither can recent attempts to express the old religion in terms of modern thought revive that which is perishing of inanition. Huxley wrote thus of the attempt: "If the religion of the present differs from that of the past, it is because the theology of the present has become more scientific than that of the past, not because it has renounced idols of wood and idols of stone, but begins to see the necessity of breaking in pieces the idols built up of books and traditions, and fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs, and of cherishing the noblest and most human of man's emotions by worship, 'for the most part of the Silent Sort,' at the altar of the unknown and unknowable...."

We have no desire to follow in the wake of an unprovoked attack on the churches, our concern is the defence of a rational, against the imposition of an irrational, code of morality.

But ethical systems are still built upon the fantastical dogmas of religious or political visionaries. "Ethics," say the former, "cannot be built securely upon anything less than the Religious Sanctions." The rules which govern the practical conduct of life must conform to "divine laws" which in their interpretation have passed through a metamorphosis as varied and dissimilar as the habits and customs which distinguish the twentieth century from the second! Was it a sign of the security and infallibility of ethics founded on religious beliefs that Christian England as late as the beginning of the Eighteenth Century[35] sanctioned the execution and torture of harmless old women for the imaginary crime of witchcraft? It must be remembered that the moral code of the period, enforced by the laws of the land, reflected contemporary religious thought. Lecky, referring to the causes upon which witchcraft depended, says:[36] "It resulted, not from accidental circumstances, individual eccentricities, or even scientific ignorance, but from a general predisposition to see Satanic agency in life. It grew from, and it reflected, the prevailing modes of religious thought; and it declined only when those modes were weakened or destroyed." 5.

The fact is, as most impartial students of psychology admit, that both religious and political ethics owe far more of their character to the "emotional cravings" combined with the interested propaganda current in the age, than to any real value they may possess from a utilitarian or, assuming the Divinity to be rational, from a Divine point of view. Ibsen has truly said that moral values are dependent on power-conditions; morals, politics and law are to a great extent shaped and propelled by might-conditions, by the fancied needs and interests of dominant classes; but the greatest factor in power-condition is psychic; the greatest world-propellant, the ultima vires, is more mind than muscle; it is this great world force which I have spoken of as Cosmic Suggestion.[37] Too little may yet be known of this force to trace its means of transmission, but the reality of its existence can no longer be doubted. It has been described in the following way: there exists an effluence or force generated by, or resulting from, the molecular activity of each individual brain. These forces are constantly influencing the souls of men, encountering, overcoming, and repelling opposition, and reacting upon the conscious intelligence of the authors of their generation; or they may unite themselves into groups and operate collectively, forming a psychic stream of power.[38]

The fact of this power must be received into the monistic system as part of the one great law. A purely materialistic monism cannot contain it. Though we postulate a single law with a dual aspect or duality within unity, whatever hypothesis we assume will be of less importance than the discovery and co-ordination of the invariable laws of its operation. We accept the principle of "monism" not, I fancy, because we are compelled to do so by the logic of Haeckel, the great exponent of modern monism, or of his fellow-scientists, but because we are driven to do so without their help. The principle of oneness and unity, alone, is capable of satisfying our intellect, our sense of order and logic. There cannot be conflicting truths; there cannot exist true systems which disprove each other; all knowledge is complementary; there cannot be true objective facts and equally true subjective ideals which contradict them; otherwise the world is chaos and there is no reality. But if we know anything we know that matter is real and thought is real, and the law of their inter-relationship is within the same reality. No commonplace of science is more widely known or more firmly established than the law of the conservation of energy or of the persistence of force and of matter, which Haeckel calls the law of substance. Can we be content to believe that no force exists that is not susceptible to physical analysis? Or does the first step towards the elucidation of the ultimate and unsolved riddle of existence, that is, the real character of substance or the cosmos, lie (as we believe) in the direction of reconciling the metaphysical with the monistic system?

We seek no escape from the underlying principle of one universal law which determines all matter, life and energy; but our monism must comprise the psychic factor. For us this cannot be stated in physiological terms. Force cannot be regarded as a pure attribute of matter. Recent advances in psychological research appear to endorse this view. It is, in any case, less important to insist upon one particular hypothesis, when much, at the present stage of knowledge, is insoluble, than to appreciate by observation and introspection the laws that appear to evolve from it.

Haeckel cannot conceive mind apart from matter or, conversely, protoplasm without mind (for him they develop concurrently); yet why should the fact that both are subject to the same cosmic law invalidate the idea of the persistency of an immaterial force, which may even under certain conditions, or metamorphoses, break the partnership with matter; provided that the unit of psychic force is in itself immaterial?[39] This psychic unit Haeckel terms psychoplasm, that is, the materialistic basis of mind in protoplasm. The laws of psychic phenomena, however, only appear intelligible when we concede that the psychoplasm possesses an immaterial aspect which, at a certain stage of development, may persist as "force," even after the disintegration of matter into its chemical components. On the other hand, it may, below a certain stage of development or intensity, lose cohesion and dissipate; organic matter, however, is never without it. The wonderful discoveries of recent psychological research, especially in the department of hypnotism, in the facts of memory and above all in the evidence lately forthcoming of the existence of telepathy, should encourage us to adopt a hypothesis which, to the materialistic philosopher, appears chimerical.[40] A final decision of the ultimate problem remains at present unattainable, its discussion is therefore of necessity speculative in character. But the need for recognizing the existence of a psychic factor, whose phenomena cannot be reconciled on a materialistic basis, makes its inclusion in the cosmic system imperative. This need is the greater in view of the tendency amongst an ever-increasing class to relegate all psychic phenomena to the chaotic realms of emotional thought, resulting in the propagation of the wildest fanaticism under such titles as Spiritualism, Christian Science or Theosophism.

There are two modes of thought and they lead in opposite directions: emotional assumption and analytical investigation; the two systems are illustrated by the world phenomenon of religious beliefs arising from a common source, and in their development splitting up, breaking away and variating, whilst all scientific knowledge unifies and becomes reconciled during its progress, all laws eventually resolving themselves into one. It is often said, and it is well to remember, that no system of human belief is without some fact to sustain it. But when the great variety of antagonistic beliefs that have sprung from different conceptions of the same facts are taken into account, one must realize, as too few educationalists do, that the value of human opinions and beliefs depends far more on habits of mind and methods of assimilation than on the ultimate facts on which they are based, or the conviction with which they are held.

There are many people so ignorant of human nature and psychological fact that they imagine the truth of a statement may be demonstrated by the credulity with which it has been received, forgetting that faith fills the void of ignorance where scepticism is reserved for new ideas.

So long as education comprises the inculcation of beliefs founded on emotional assumption (it should be clear to any one who thinks on the subject that few beliefs outside the analytical and exact sciences are logically reasoned out from fundamental principles) and the facile repetition of archaisms is appraised as intellectual thought; in short, so long as our methods are retrospective rather than critical, emotion and fanaticism will triumph over reason.