Landripp belonged to the new school of materialists. His religion was the happiness of humanity. Man to him was a mere chance product of the earth’s crust, evolved in common with all other living things by chemical process. With the cooling of the earth—or may be its over-heating, it really did not matter which—the race would disappear—be buried, together with the history of its transient passing, beneath the eternal silences. Its grave might still roll on—to shape itself anew, to form out of its changed gases another race that in some future æon might be interested in examining the excavated evidences of a former zoological period.
Meanwhile the thing to do was to make man as happy as possible for so long as he lasted. This could best be accomplished by developing his sense of brotherhood out of which would be born justice and good will. Man was a gregarious animal. For his happiness he depended as much upon his fellows as upon his own exertions. The misery and suffering of any always, sooner or later, resulted in evil to the whole body. In society, as it had come to be constituted, the happiness of all was as much a practical necessity as was the health of all. For its own sake, a civilized community could no more disregard equity than it dare tolerate an imperfect drainage system. If the city was to be healthy and happy it must be seen to that each individual citizen was healthy and happy. The pursuit of happiness for ourselves depended upon our making others happy. It was for this purpose that the moral law had developed itself within us. So soon as the moral law within us came to be acknowledged as the only safe guide to all our actions, so soon would Man’s road to happiness lie clear before him.
That something not material, that something impossible to be defined in material terms had somehow entered into the scheme, Mr. Landripp was forced to admit. In discussion, he dismissed it—this unknown quantity—as “superfluous energy.” But to himself the answer was not satisfactory. By this reasoning the superfluous became the indispensible, which was absurd. There was his own favourite phrase: The preservation of the species; the moral law within, compelling all creatures to sacrifice themselves for the good of their progeny. To Mr. Arnold S. Landripp, aware of his indebtedness for his own existence to the uninterrupted working of this law; aware that his own paternal affections had for their object the decoying of Mr. Arnold S. Landripp into guarding and cherishing and providing for the future of Miss Emily Landripp; who in her turn would rejoice in labour for her children, and so ad infinitum, the phrase might have significance. His reason, perceiving the necessity of the law, justified its obligations.
But those others? Unpleasant-looking insects—myriads of them—who wear themselves out for no other purpose than to leave behind them an egg, the hatching of which they will not live to see. Why toil in darkness? Why not spend their few brief hours of existence basking in their beloved sunshine? What to them the future of the Hymenoptera? The mother bird with outstretched wings above the burning nest, content to die herself if only she may hope to save her young. Natural affection, necessary for the preservation of the species. Whence comes it? Whence the origin of this blind love—this blind embracing of pain that an unknown cause may triumph.
Or take the case of Mr. Arnold S. Landripp’s own particular family. That hairy ancestor, fear-haunted, hunger-driven, fighting against monstrous odds to win a scanty living for himself. Why burden himself still further with a squalling brood that Mr. Arnold S. Landripp may eventually evolve? Why not knock them all on the head and eat the pig himself? Who whispered to him of the men of thought and knowledge who should one day come, among whom Mr. Arnold S. Landripp, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, should mingle and have his being?
Why does the present Mr. Landripp impair his digestion by working long into the night that Millsborough slums may be the sooner swept away and room be made in Millsborough town for the building of decent dwellings for Mr. Landripp’s poorer brethren? The benefiting of future generations! The preservation and improvement of the species? To what end? What sensible man can wax enthusiastic concerning the progress of a race whose final goal is a forgotten grave beneath the debris of a derelict planet.
To Mr. Landripp came also the reflection that a happiness that is not and cannot by its nature be confined to the individual, but is a part of the happiness of all; that can be marred by a withered flower and deepened by contemplation of the stars must, of necessity, have kinship with the Universal. That a happiness, the seeds of which must have been coeval with creation, that is not bounded by death must, of necessity, be linked with the Eternal.
Working together of an evening upon the plans for the new dwellings, Anthony and he would often break off to pursue the argument. Landripp would admit that his own religion failed to answer all his questions. But Anthony’s religion contented him still less. Why should a just God, to whom all things were possible, have made man a creature of “low intelligence and evil instincts,” leaving him to welter through the ages amid cruelty, blood and lust, instead of fashioning him from the beginning a fit and proper heir for the kingdom of eternity? That he might work out his own salvation! That a few scattered fortunates, less predisposed to evil than their fellows or possessed of greater powers of resistance, might struggle out of the mire—enter into their inheritance: the great bulk cursed from their birth, be left to sink into destruction. The Christ legend he found himself unable to accept. If true, then God was fallible, His omniscience a myth—a God who made mistakes and sought to rectify them. Even so, He had not succeeded. The number of true Christians—the number of those who sought to live according to Christ’s teaching were fewer today than under the reign of the Cæsars. During the Middle Ages the dying embers of Christianity had burnt up anew. Saint Francis had insisted upon the necessity of poverty, of love—had preached the brotherhood of all things living. Men and women in increasing numbers had for a brief period accepted Christ not as their scapegoat but as their leader. There had been men like Millsborough’s own Saint Aldys—a successful business man, as business was understood in his day—who on his conversion had offered to the service of God not ten per cent. of his booty but his whole life. Any successful business man of today who attempted to follow his example would be certified by the family doctor as fit candidate for the lunatic asylum. Two thousand years after Christ’s death one man, so far as knowledge went, the Russian writer Tolstoy, had made serious attempt to live the life commanded by Christ. And all Christendom stood staring at him in stupefied amazement. If Christ had been God’s scheme for the reformation of a race that He Himself had created prone to evil then it had tragically failed. Christianity, a feeble flame from the beginning, had died out, leaving the world darker, its last hope extinguished.
They had been working long into the short June night. Landripp had drawn back the curtains and thrown open the window. There came from the east a faint pale dawn.