He tells us: "We may read the Athanasian Creed less, but we practise
Christian charity more in the present than in any former age." [17]
"Faith has diminished, charity increased." [18]
Of moral principles, he says: "Why do we say that … they carry conviction with them and prove themselves?… Still, there they are, and being what they are … it requires no train of reasoning or laboured reflection to make us feel that 'right is right,' and that it is better for ourselves and others to act on such precepts … rather than to reverse these rules and obey the selfish promptings of animal nature." [19] "It is clearly our highest wisdom to follow right, not from selfish calculation, … but because 'right is right.' … For practical purposes it is comparatively unimportant how this standard got there … as an absolute imperative rule." [20] As to the apprehended ill effect of agnosticism on morals, he says: "The foundations of morals [21] are fortunately built on solid rock and not on shifting sand. It may truly be said in a great many cases that, as individuals and nations become more sceptical, they become more moral." [22] "If there is one thing more certain than another in the history of evolution, it is that morals have been evolved by the same laws as regulate the development of species." [23]
These citations embody Mr. Laing's opinions on this point, and show very clearly his utter incapacity for elementary philosophic thought. Here, as elsewhere, as soon as he leaves the bare record of facts and embarks in any kind of speculation, he shows himself helpless; however, he tries to fortify his own courage and that of his readers, with "it is clear," "it is evident," "it is certain."
To say that "right is right," sounds very oracular; but it either means that "right" is an ultimate spring of action, inexplicable on evolutionist principles, or that right is the will of the strongest, or an illusory inherited foreboding of pain, or a calculation of future pleasure and pain, or something which, in no sense, is a true account of what men do mean by right. To say that moral principles "carry conviction with them, and prove themselves" (i.e., are self-evident), unless, as we suspect, it is mere verbiage conveying nothing particular to Mr. Laing's brain, is to deny that right has reference to the consequences of action as bearing on human progress and evolution, which is to deny the very theory he wishes to uphold. No intuitionist could have spoken more strongly. Then we are assured that we "feel" rightness, or that "right is right"—apparently as a simple irresoluble quality of certain actions—and with same breath, that "it is better for ourselves and others to act on these rules," where he jumps off to utilitarianism again; and then we are forbidden to "obey the selfish impulses of our animal nature"—a strange prohibition for one who sees in us nothing but animal nature, who denies us any free power to withstand its impulses. Then it is "clearly our highest wisdom to follow right"—an appeal to prudential motives—"not from any selfish calculations"—a repudiation of prudential motives—"but because 'right is right'"—an appeal to a blind unreasoning instinct, and a prohibition to question its authority. We are told that for practical purposes it matters little whence this absolute imperative rule originates. Was there ever a more unpractical and short-sighted assertion! Convince men that the dictates of conscience are those of fear or selfishness, that they are all mere animal instincts, that they are anything less than divine, and who will care for Mr. Laing's appeal to blind faith in the "rightness of right"?
As long as Christian tradition lives on, as it will for years among the masses, the effects of materialist ethics will not be felt; but as these new theories filter down from the few to the many, they will inevitably produce their logical consequences in practical matters. No one with open eyes can fail to see how the leaven is spreading already. Still the majority act and speak to a great extent under the influence of the old belief, which they have repudiated, in the freedom of man's will and the Divine origin of right. It is quite plain that Mr. Laing has either never had patience to think the matter out, or has found it beyond his compass. Having thus established morality on a foundation independent of religion and of everything else, making "right" rest on "right," he assumes the prophetic robe, and on the strength of his seventy years of experience and philosophy poses as a Cato Major for the edification of the semi-scientific millions of young persons to whom he addresses his volumes. We have a whole chapter on Practical Life, [24] on self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, full of portentous platitudes and ancient saws; St. Paul's doctrine of charity, and all that is best in the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, is liberated from its degrading association with the belief in a God who rewards and punishes.[25] We are "to act strenuously in that direction which, after conscientious inquiry, seems the best, … and trust to what religious men call Providence, and scientific men Evolution, for the result," and all this simply on the bold assertion of this sage whose sole aim is "to leave the world a little better rather than a little worse for my individual unit of existence." [26]
And here we may inquire parenthetically as to the motive which urges Mr. Laing to throw himself into the labours of the apostolate and to become such an active propagandist of agnosticism. We are told[27] that the enlightened should be "liberal and tolerant towards traditional opinions and traditional practices, and trust with cheerful faith to evolution to bring about gradually changes of form," &c.; that the influence of the clergy is "on the whole exerted for good," and it is frankly acknowledged that Christianity has been a potent factor in the evolution of modern civilization. It has, however, nearly run its course, and the old order must give place to the new, i.e., to agnosticism. But even allowing, what we dare say Mr. Laing would not ask, that the speculative side of the new religion is fully defined and worked out, and ready to displace the old dogmatic creeds, yet its practical aspect is so vague that he writes: "I think the time is come when the intellectual victory of agnosticism is so far assured, that it behoves thinking men to begin to consider what practical results are likely to follow from it." [28] In the face of this confession we find Mr. Laing industriously addressing himself to "those who lack time and opportunity for studying," [29] to the "minds of my younger readers, and of the working classes who are striving after culture," [30] "to what may be called the semi-scientific readers, … who have already acquired some elementary ideas about science," "to the millions;" [31] and endeavouring by all means in his power to destroy the last vestige of their faith in that religion which alone provides for them a definite code of morality strengthened by apparent sanctions of the highest order, and venerable at least by its antiquity and universality. [32] And while he is thus busily pulling down the old scaffolding, he is calmly beginning to consider the practical results. This is his method of "leaving the world a little better than he found it." He professes to understand and appreciate "In Memoriam." Has he ever reflected on the lines: "O thou that after toil and storm," [33] when the practical conclusion is—
Leave thou thy sister, when she prays,
Her early Heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadowed hint infuse
A life that leads melodious days.
Her faith through form is pure as thine,
Her hands are quicker unto good;
O sacred be the flesh and blood,
To which she links a truth divine.
On his own principles he is convicted of being a lover of mischief. No, one is sorely tempted to think that these men are well aware that the moral sense which sound philosophy and Christian faith have developed, is still strong in the minds and deeper conscience of the English-speaking races, and that were they to present materialism in all its loathsome nudity to the public gaze, they would be hissed off the stage. And so they dress it up in the clothes of the old religion just for the present, with many a quiet wink between themselves at the expense of the "semi-scientific" reader.
We have already adverted to Mr. Laing's utter incapacity for anything like philosophy, except so far as that term can be applied to a power of raking together, selecting, and piling up into "a popular shape" the scraps of information which favour the view whose correctness he was convinced of ere he began. A few further remarks may justify this somewhat severe estimate. After stating that in the solution of life and soul problems, science stops short at germs and nucleated cells, he proceeds with the usual tirade against metaphysics: "Take Descartes' fundamental axiom: Cogito ergo sum…. Is it really an axiom?… If the fact that I am conscious of thinking proves the fact that I exist, is the converse true that whatever does not think does not exist?… Does a child only begin to exist when it begins to think? If Cogito ergo sum is an institution to which we can trust, why is not Non cogito ergo non sum?" [34] Here is a man posing before the gaping millions as a philosopher and a severe logician, who thinks that the proposition, "every cow is a quadruped," is disproved by the evident falsehood of, "what is not a cow is not a quadruped," which he calls "the converse." He sums up magnificently by saying: "These are questions to which no metaphysical system that I have ever seen, can return the semblance of an answer;" giving the impression of a life devoted to a deep and exhaustive study of all schools of philosophy. Mr. Laing here surely is addressing his "younger readers."
He tells us elsewhere [35] that, "when analyzed by science, spiritualism leads straight to materialism;" free-will "can be annihilated by the simple mechanical expedient of looking at a black wafer stuck on a white wall;" that if "Smith falls into a trance and believes himself to be Jones, he really is Jones, and Smith has become a stranger to him while the trance lasts…. I often ask myself the question, If he died during one of these trances, which would he be, Smith or Jones? and I confess it takes some one wiser than I am to answer it." Without pretending to be wiser than Mr. Laing, we hope it will not be too presumptuous for us to suggest that if Smith dies in a trance believing himself to be Jones, he is under a delusion, and that he really is Smith. Else it would be very awkward for poor Jones, who in nowise believes himself to be Smith. Mr. Laing would have to break it gently to Jones, that, "in fact, my dear sir, Smith borrowed your personality, and unfortunately died before returning it; and as to whether you are yourself or Smith, as to whether you are alive or dead, 'I confess it takes some one wiser than I am to decide.'" That a man's own name, own surroundings, own antecedents, are all objects of his thought, and distinguished from the self, ego, or subject which contemplates them, has never suggested itself to Mr. Laing. That though Smith may mistake every one of these, yet the term "I" necessarily and invariably means the same for him, the one central, constant unity to which every non-ego is opposed. And this from a man who elsewhere claims an easy familiarity with Kant. "Again what can be said of love and hate if under given circumstances they can be transformed into one another by a magnet?" What indeed? And how is it that the gold-fish make no difference in the weight of the globe of water?