Is Life Worth Living?

by W. H. Mallock

CHAPTER VII.

THE SUPERSTITION OF POSITIVISM.

Glendower. I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur. Why so can I, or so can any man, But will they come when you do call for them? Henry IV. Part 1.

General and indefinite as the foregoing considerations have been, they are quite definite enough to be of the utmost practical import. They are definite enough to show the utter hollowness of that vague faith in progress, and the glorious prospects that lie before humanity, on which the positive school at present so much rely, and about which so much is said. To a certain extent, indeed, a faith in progress is perfectly rational and well grounded. There are many imperfections in life, which the course of events tends manifestly to lessen if not to do away with, and so far as these are concerned, improvements may go on indefinitely. But the things that this progress touches are, as has been said before, not happiness, but the negative conditions of it. A belief in this kind of progress is not peculiar to positivism. It is common to all educated men, no matter what their creed may be. What is peculiar to positivism is the strange corollary to this belief, that man's subjective powers of happiness will go on expanding likewise. It is the belief not only that the existing pleasures will become more diffused, but that they will, as George Eliot says, become 'more intense in diffusion.' It is this belief on which the positivists rely to create that enthusiasm, that impassioned benevolence, which is to be the motive power of their whole ethical machinery. They have taken away the Christian heaven, and have thus turned adrift a number of hopes and aspirations that were once powerful. These hopes and aspirations they acknowledge to be of the first necessity; they are facts, they say, of human nature, and no higher progress would be possible without them. What the enlightened thought is to do is not to extinguish, but to transfer them. They are to be given a new object more satisfactory than the old one; not our own private glory in another world, but the common glory of our whole race in this.

Now let us consider for a moment some of the positive criticisms on the Christian heaven, and then apply them to the proposed substitute. The belief in heaven, say the positivists, is to be set aside for two great reasons. In the first place there is no objective proof of its existence, and in the second place there is subjective proof of its impossibility. Not only is it not deducible, but it is not even thinkable. Give the imagination carte blanche to construct it, and the imagination will either do nothing, or will do something ridiculous. 'My position [with regard to this matter]' says a popular living writer,[27] 'is this—The idea of a glorified energy in an ampler life, is an idea utterly incompatible with exact thought, one which evaporates in contradictions, in phrases, which when pressed have no meaning.'

Now if this criticism has the least force, as used against the Christian heaven, it has certainly far more as used against the future glories of humanity. The positivists ask the Christians how they expect to enjoy themselves in heaven. The Christians may, with far more force, ask the positivists how they expect to enjoy themselves on earth. For the Christians' heaven being ex hypothesi an unknown world, they do not stultify their expectations from being unable to describe them. On the contrary it is a part of their faith that they are indescribable. But the positivists' heaven is altogether in this world; and no mystical faith has any place in their system. In this case, therefore, whatever we may think of the other, it is plain that the tests in question are altogether complete and final. To the Christians, indeed, it is quite open to make their supposed shame their glory, and to say that their heaven would be nothing if describable. The positivists have bound themselves to admit that theirs is nothing unless describable.

What then, let us ask the enthusiasts of humanity, will humanity be like in its ideally perfect state? Let them show us some sample of the general future perfection; let them describe one of the nobler, ampler, glorified human beings of the future. What will he be like? What will he long for? What will he take pleasure in? How will he spend his days? How will he make love? What will he laugh at? And let him be described in phrases which when pressed do not evaporate in contradictions, but which have some distinct meaning, and are not incompatible with exact thought. Do our exact thinkers in the least know what they are prophesying? If not, what is the meaning of their prophecy? The prophecies of the positive school are rigid scientific inferences; they are that or nothing. And one cannot infer an event of whose nature one is wholly ignorant.

Let these obvious questions be put to our positive moralists—these questions they have themselves suggested, and the grotesque unreality of this vague optimism will be at once apparent. Never was vagary of mediæval faith so groundless as this. The Earthly Paradise that the mediæval world believed in was not more mythical than the Earthly Paradise believed in by our exact thinkers now; and George Eliot might just as well start in a Cunard steamer to find the one, as send her faith into the future to find the other.

Could it be shown that these splendid anticipations were well founded, they might perhaps kindle some new and active enthusiasm; though it is very doubtful, even then, if the desire would be ardent enough to bring about its own accomplishment. This, however, it is quite useless to consider, the anticipations in question being simply an empty dream. A certain kind of improvement, as I have said, we are no doubt right in looking for, not only with confidence, but with complacency. But positivism, so far from brightening this prospect, makes it indefinitely duller than it would be otherwise. The practical results therefore to be looked for from a faith in progress may be seen at their utmost already in the world around us; and the positivists may make the sobering reflection that their system can only change these from what they already see them, not by strengthening, but by weakening them. Take the world then as it is at present, and the sense, on the individual's part, that he personally is promoting its progress, can belong to, and can stimulate, exceptional men only, who are doing some public work; and it will be found even in these cases that the pleasure which this sense gives them is largely fortified (as is said of wine) by the entirely alien sense of fame and power. On the generality of men it neither has, nor can have, any effect whatever, or even if it gives a glow to their inclinations in some cases, it will at any rate never curb them in any. The fact indeed that things in general do tend to get better in certain ways, must produce in most men not effort but acquiescence. It may, when the imagination brings it home to them, shed a pleasing light occasionally over the surface of their private lives: but it would be as irrational to count on this as a stimulus to farther action, as to expect that the summer sunshine would work a steam-engine.

If we consider, then, that even the present condition of things is far more calculated to produce the enthusiasm of humanity than the condition that the positivists are preparing for themselves, we shall see how utterly chimerical is their entire practical system. It is like a drawing of a cathedral, which looks magnificent at the first glance, but which a second glance shows to be composed of structural impossibilities—blocks of masonry resting on no foundations, columns hanging from the roofs, instead of supporting them, and doors and windows with inverted arches. The positive system could only work practically were human nature to suffer a complete change—a change which it has no spontaneous tendency to make, which no known power could ever tend to force on it, and which, in short, there is no ground of any kind for expecting.