Lectures and Essays

by Goldwin Smith

The moral aspiration—the striving after an ideal of character, personal and social, the former in and through the latter—seems to be the special note of the life, institutions, literature, and art of Christendom. Christian Fiction, for example, is pervaded by an interest in the development and elevation of character for which we look in vain in the Arabian Nights, where there is no development of character, nothing but incident and adventure. Christian sculpture, inferior perhaps in workmanship to that of Phidias, derives its superior interest from its constant suggestion of a spiritual ideal. The Christian lives, in a manner, two lives, an outward one of necessary conformity to the fashions and ordinances of the present world; an inner one of protest against the present world and anticipation of an ideal state of things; and this duality is reproduced in the separate existence of the spiritual society or Church, submitting to existing social arrangements, yet struggling to transcend them, and to transmute society by the realization of the Christian's social ideal. With this is necessarily connected a readiness to sacrifice present to future good, and the interests of the present to future good, and the interests of the present world to those of the world of hope. Apart from this, the death of Christ (and that of Socrates also), instead of being an instance of "sweet reasonableness," would be out of the pale of reason altogether.

It is perhaps the absence of an ideal that prevents our feeling satisfied with Utilitarianism. The Utilitarian definition of morality has been so much enlarged, and made to coincide so completely with ordinary definitions in point of mere extent, that the difference between Utilitarianism and ordinary Moral Philosophy seems to have become almost verbal. Yet we feel that there is something wanting. There is no ideal of character. And where there is no ideal of character there can hardly be such a thing as a sense of moral beauty. A Utilitarian perhaps would say that perfect utility is beauty. But whatever may be the case with material beauty, moral beauty at all events seems to contain an element not identical with the satisfaction produced by the appearance of perfect utility, but suggestive of an unfulfilled ideal.

Suppose spiritual life necessarily implies the expectation of a Future State, has physical science anything to say against that expectation? Physical Science is nothing more than the perceptions of our five bodily senses registered and methodized. But what are these five senses? According to physical science itself, nerves in a certain stage of evolution. Why then should it be assumed that their account of the universe, or of our relations to it, is exhaustive and final? Why should it be assumed that these are the only possible organs of perception, and that no other faculties or means of communication with the universe can ever in the course of evolution be developed in man? Around us are animals absolutely unconscious, so far as we can discern, of that universe which Science has revealed to us. A sea anemone, if it can reflect, probably feels as confident that it perceives everything capable of being perceived as the man of science. The reasonable supposition, surely, is that though Science, so far as it goes, is real, and the guide of our present life, its relation to the sum of things is not much more considerable than that of the perceptions of the lower orders of animals. That our notions of the universe have been so vastly enlarged by the mere invention of astronomical instruments is enough in itself to suggest the possibility of further and infinitely greater enlargement. To our bodily senses, no doubt, and to physical science, which is limited by them, human existence seems to end with death; but if there is anything in our nature which tells us, with a distinctness and persistency equal to those of our sensible perceptions, that hope and responsibility extend beyond death, why is this assurance not as much to be trusted as that of the bodily sense itself? There is apparently no ultimate criterion of truth, whether physical or moral, except our inability, constituted as we are to believe otherwise; and this criterion seems to be satisfied by a universal and ineradicable moral conviction as well as by a universal and irresistible impression of sense.

We are enjoined, some times with a vehemence approaching that of ecclesiastical anathema, to refuse to consider anything which lies beyond the range of experience. By experience is meant the perceptions of our bodily senses, the absolute completeness and finality of which, we must repeat, is an assumption, the warrant for which must at all events be produced from other authority than that of the senses themselves. On this ground we are called upon to discard, as worthy of nothing but derision, the ideas of eternity and infinity. But to dislodge these ideas from our minds is impossible; just as impossible as it is to dislodge any idea that has entered through the channels of the senses; and this being so, it is surely conceivable that they may not be mere illusions, but real extensions of our intelligence beyond the domain of mere bodily sense, indicating an upward progress of our nature. Of course if these ideas correspond to reality, physical science, though true as far as it goes, cannot be the whole truth, or even bear any considerable relation to the whole truth, since it necessarily presents Being as limited by space and time.

Whither obedience to the dictates of the higher part of our nature will ultimately carry us, we may not be able, apart from Revelation, to say; but there seems no substantial reason for refusing to believe that it carries us towards a better state. Mere ignorance, arising from the imperfection of our perceptive powers, of the mode in which we shall pass into that better state, or of its precise relation to our present existence, cannot cancel an assurance, otherwise valid, of our general destiny. A transmutation of humanity, such as we can conceive to be brought about by the gradual prevalence of higher motives of action, and the gradual elimination thereby of what is base and brutish, is surely no more incredible than the actual development of humanity, as it is now, out of a lower animal form or out of inorganic matter.

What the bearing of the automatic theory of human nature would be upon the hopes and aspirations of man, or on moral philosophy generally, it might be difficult, no doubt, to say. But has any one of the distinguished advocates of the automatic theory ever acted on it, or allowed his thoughts to be really ruled by it for a moment? What can be imagined more strange than an automaton suddenly becoming conscious of its own automatic character, reasoning and debating about it automatically, and coming automatically to the conclusion that the automatic theory of itself is true? Nor is there any occasion here to entangle ourselves in the controversy about Necessarianism. If the race can act progressively on higher and more unselfish motives, as history proves to be the fact, there can be nothing in the connection between our actions and their antecedents inconsistent with the ascent of man. Jonathan Edwards is undoubtedly right in maintaining that there is a connection between every human action and its antecedents. But the nature of the connection remains a mystery. We learn its existence not from inspection, but from consciousness, and this same consciousness tells us that the connection is not such as to preclude the existence of liberty of choice, moral aspiration, moral effort, moral responsibility, which are the contradictories of Necessarianism. The terms cause and effect, and others of that kind, which the imperfection of psychological language compels us to use in speaking of the mental connection between action and its antecedents, are steeped from their employment in connection with physical science, in physical association, and the import with them into the moral sphere the notion of physical enchainment, for which the representations of consciousness, the sole authority, afford no warrant whatever.

Another possible source of serious aberration, we venture to think, will be found in the misapplication of the doctrine of survivals. Some lingering remains of its rudimentary state in the shape of primaeval superstitions or fancies continue to adhere to a developed, and matured belief; and hence it is inferred, or at least the inference is suggested, that the belief itself is nothing but a "survival," and destined in the final triumph of reason to pass away. The belief in the immortality of the soul, for example, is found still connected in the lower and less advanced minds with primaeval superstitions and fancies about ghosts and other physical manifestations of the spirit world, as well as with funeral rites and modes of burial indicating irrational notions as to the relations of the body to the spirit. But neither these nor any special ideas as to the nature of future rewards and punishments or the mode of transition from the present to the future state, are really essential parts of the belief. They are the rudimentary imaginations and illusions of which the rational belief is gradually working itself clear. The basis of the rational belief in the immortality of the soul, or, to speak more correctly, in the continuance of our spiritual existence after death is the conviction, common, so far as we know, to all the higher portions of humanity, and apparently ineradicable, that our moral responsibility extends beyond the grave; that we do not by death terminate the consequences of our actions, or our relations to those to whom we have done good or evil; and that to die the death of the righteous is better than to have lived a life of pleasure even with the approbation of an undiscerning world. So far from growing weaker, this conviction appears to grow practically stronger among the most highly educated and intelligent of mankind, though they may have cast off the last remnant of primitive or medieval superstition, and though they may have ceased to profess belief in any special form of the doctrine. The Comtists certainly have not got rid of it, since they have devised a subjective immortality with a retributive distinction between the virtuous and the wicked; to say nothing of their singular proposal that the dead should be formally judged by the survivors, and buried, according to the judgment passed upon them, in graves of honour or disgrace.

With regard to religion generally there is the same tendency to exaggerate the significance of "survivals," and to neglect, on the other hand, the phenomena of disengagement. Because the primitive fables and illusions which long adhere to religion are undeniably dying out, it is asserted, or suggested, that religion itself is dying. Religion is identified with mythology. But mythology is merely the primaeval matrix of religion. Mythology is the embodiment of man's childlike notions as to the universe in which he finds himself, and the powers which for good or evil influence his lot; and, when analysed, it is found beneath all its national variations to be merely based upon a worship of the sun, the moon, and the forces of Nature. Religion is the worship and service of a moral God and a God who is worshipped and served by virtue. We can distinctly see, in Greek literature for instance, religion disengaging itself from mythology. In Homer the general element is mythology, capable of being rendered more or less directly into simple nature- worship, childish, non-moral, and often immoral. But when Hector says that he holds omens of no account, and that the best omen of all is to fight for one's country, he shows an incipient reliance on a Moral Power. The disengagement of religion from mythology is of course much further advanced and more manifest when we come to Plato; while the religious faith, instead of being weaker, has become infinitely stronger, and is capable of supporting the life and the martyrdom of Socrates. When Socrates and Plato reject the Homeric mythology, it is not because they are sceptics but because Homer is a child.

But it is in the Old Testament that the process of disengagement and the growth of a moral out of a ceremonial religion are most distinctly seen:—

"'Wherewith shall I come before Jahveh,
And bow myself down before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
With the sacrifice of calves of a year old?
—Will Jahveh be pleased with thousands of rams,
With ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my first-born for my transgression,
The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?'
'—He hath showed thee, O man, what is good,
And what Jahveh doth require of thee;
What but to do justly to love mercy,
And to walk humbly with thy God?'"