So far, the procedure is one of rejecting demonstrably fallacious beliefs in regard to the general order of things, substantially on the lines on which tested and testable conclusions have been substituted for old delusions in what we term ‘the sciences.’ At every step the rationalist is assailed, just as were and are the reformers of the sciences; first by angry epithets, then by bad arguments as to ‘evidence,’ then by cooler attempts to demonstrate that his method will lead to moral harm, whether or not to present or future punishment at the hands of an angry God. In particular he is assured that on his principles there can be no restraint upon men’s evil proclivities; and that even the most thoughtful man runs endless dangers of wrong-doing when he substitutes his private judgment for the ‘categorical imperative’ embodied either in religious codes or in the current body of morality.[4] To such representations the critical answer is that undoubtedly the application of reason to moral issues incurs the risks of fallacy which beset all reasoning in science so-called; but that, on the other hand, every one of those risks attaches at least equally to all acceptance of ‘authoritative’ teaching. Galileo could not well err worse than ancient Semites or Christian priests in matters scientific; and Clifford could not conceivably div agate more dangerously in morals than did the plotters and agents of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Even if we put out of the account the overwhelming record of undenied wickedness wrought in the name of God and faith, there never has been, and there is no prospect of our ever seeing, unanimity of moral opinion among even the most disciplined types of religious believers in ‘authority.’ Even in the Catholic Church it would be difficult to find any two men of judicial habit of mind who agree in all points as to what is ‘right.’
Nor is the rationalist’s position a whit more open to utilitarian criticism (for his religious opponents, it will be observed, are narrowly utilitarian even in professing to combat his utilitarianism) when he is challenged upon his acceptance of ‘the voice of conscience,’ otherwise the ‘categorical imperative.’ The Kantian argument on that head is a fallacy of shifting terms. Mental hesitation as to obeying the sense of ‘ought’ is the proof of the vacillation of the perception of ‘oughtness.’ When I feel, first, that I ‘ought’ to forgive a peculator, and then that I ‘ought’ to give him up to ‘justice’; or, alternatively, that I ought to rise earlier, and, again, that I may as well enjoy more sleep, I have reduced the ‘categorical imperative’ to the last term in a calculation. And exactly the same thing is done by the believer who is perplexed as to the ‘voice of God.’ Religious history and biography are full of avowals, on the one hand, of the murderous clash of convictions alike resting on ‘revelation’ of all kinds, and, on the other hand, of the agonies of zealots ‘wrestling in prayer’ to know what is really the divine will.[5] Cromwell’s life illustrates both orders of dilemma, with a sufficiency of resultant moral evil to arrest propaganda on the side of faith. And the philosopher of the ‘categorical imperative’ miscarries as instructively as does the soldier of divine will. Kant, on the one hand, vetoes even the telling of a lie to a would-be murderer to put him astray, and, on the other hand, commends to ‘enlightened’ clergymen the systematic preaching of their religion in a double sense, because populus vult decipi. The ‘categorical imperative,’ as propounded by him, is a form of self-deception.
When, again, the psychic facts are critically faced and the ‘categorical imperative’ is rationally recognised as either the sum of the persisting moral judgments or the mere verbalism that we ought to do what we feel we ought to do, the rationalist is still at no disadvantage, utilitarian or other. It is not there that his tether tightens. Religious morality, as finally ratified by the more thoughtful among religious men, is but the endorsement of ‘natural’ morality. There is not one social commandment, as distinguished from religious or ritualist dogma, that did not emerge as a prescription of the natural moral sense, primitive or otherwise—a supererogatory proof that the religious prescriptions are from the same source. All surviving religious ethic is to-day actually accredited as such, precisely because—and only in so far as—it conforms to natural judgment. Without resort to that tribunal, the religionist could not discriminate between the sanction of the sixth commandment and the law of the levirate, which he has cancelled.
The religious sanction, therefore, is logically null, in terms of the religious man’s own mental processes.[6] There is left him, to discredit the rationalist, only the threat that the God whom he terms infinitely good will or may punish the unbeliever for not believing on the strength of a Bible packed with incredible narrative and indefensible doctrine. The anti-rationalist position is thus reduced to ‘Pascal’s wager’—at once the most childish and, from the standpoint of other and nobler religious thought, the most irreligious argument ever advanced by a competent intelligence on the side of faith. Pascal’s thesis is that if the unbeliever is wrong, he runs a frightful risk of future torment; whereas, if he should after all be right, he will be no worse off after death for having believed. So the ‘belief’ required of him is a simple mindless and faithless conformity to a conditional threat. To such moral perversity can religion persuade.
To Pascal’s wager there have been many retorts. Mill declared that if a God should doom him to hell for having been unable to believe in such a God, ‘to hell he would go’—glad, by implication, not to be in heaven. Mansel’s sole answer was a puerile attempt at a pious sneer. Clifford, in effect, denounced the Pascalian appeal for what it was, a base appeal to fear.[7] But it is unnecessary to resort to such logical supererogation. There are two obvious and decisive rebuttals to Pascal’s doctrine on purely logical ground. Firstly, his thesis is available to the Moslem or the polytheist no less than to the Christian; and when put from either of these sides it leaves the Christian running the very risk with which he menaces the unbeliever. He may have chosen the wrong God. Secondly, the hypothetical Good God, if in any intelligible sense worthy of the name, would conceivably be as likely to send Pascal to hell for dishonouring him as to send the honest atheist there for refusing to make-believe. The pietist has dishonoured himself to no purpose.
The a posteriori argument for religious conformity has thus come to nothing; and the process of argument has revealed the religio-utilitarian champion of morality as traitor to that cause. There is left him, indeed, the plea that religious fears and sanctions are good for the ill-disposed believer, who ought, therefore, not to be disillusioned. As regards the simple dogma of deity, the position has the emphatic support of Voltaire. But Voltaire declined to use the favourite menaces of faith, as do many religionists of to-day; and if those menaces are to be rationally vindicated, there must first be raised the question whether they could not be improved upon for the purpose professed. Leaving that task to those who affect them, the rationalist may claim to be justified in acting on the maxim that honesty is the best policy in the intellectual as in the commercial life. There has been no such historical harvest of moral betterment from the religion of fear as could induce him of all men to employ it as a moral prophylactic.
Thus far he figures as the vindicator of simple veracity against those who, in the name of morals, would make it of no account. He has still to meet, indeed, the challenge: What of the ill-disposed among your own way of thinking? If an unbeliever should see his way to gain by falsehood or licit fraud, what should deter him? Much satisfaction appears to be derived by many well-meaning people from the propounding of this dilemma. They may or may not be gratified by the answer that if a rationalist should not be, by training and bias, spontaneously averse to lying and cheating, or generally unwilling to do otherwise than he would be done by, or sensitive enough to the blame of his fellows to fear it, there is indeed no more security for his veracity or honesty than for that of a typical Jesuit or a pious company promoter. One can but add that, seeing that in the terms of the case he began by unprofitably avowing an unpopular opinion, he is presumably, on the average, rather less likely to lie for gain than those who confessedly find the sheer fear of consequences a highly important consideration in their own plan of life, and who have at the same time the promise from their own code of plenary pardon for all sins on the simple condition of ultimate repentance.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Even Professor F. H. Bradley, the ablest of living English philosophers, is responsible for the proposition that ‘to wish to be better than the world is to be already on the threshold of immorality’ (Ethical Studies, 1876, p. 180). As the book has not been reprinted, despite much demand, it may be inferred that the author no longer stands to all its positions.