Is Life Worth Living?

by W. H. Mallock

The positive theory is that the health of the social organism is the real foundation of morals	[49]
But social health is nothing but the personal health of all the members of the society	[51]
It is not happiness itself, but the negative conditions that make happiness for all	[51]
Still less is social health any high kind of happiness	[54]
It can only be maintained to be so, by supposing	[55]
Either, that all kinds of happiness are equally high that do not interfere with others	[55]
Or, that it is only a high kind of happiness that can be shared by all	[56]
Both of which suppositions are false	[57]
The conditions of social health are a moral end only when we each feel a personal delight in maintaining them	[58]
In this case they will supply us with a small portion of the moral aid needed	[59]
But this case is not a possible one	[60]
There is indeed the natural impulse of sympathy that might tend to make it so	[61]
But this is counterbalanced by the corresponding impulse of selfishness	[63]
And this impulse of sympathy itself is of very limited power	[63]
Except under very rare conditions	[63]
The conditions of general happiness are far too vague to do more than very slightly excite it	[64]
Or give it power enough to neutralise any personal temptation	[66]
At all events they would excite no enthusiasm	[67]
For this purpose there must be some prize before us, of recognised positive value, more or less definite	[67]
And before all things, to be enjoyed by us individually	[67]
Unless this prize be of great value to begin with, its value will not become great because great numbers obtain it	[71]
Nor until we know what it is, do we gain anything by the hope that men may more completely make it their own in the future	[72]
The modern positive school requires a great general enthusiasm for the general good	[73]
They therefore presuppose an extreme value for the individual good	[74]
Our first enquiry must be therefore what the higher individual good is	[76]

[CHAPTER IV.]
GOODNESS AS ITS OWN REWARD.

What has been said in the last chapter is really admitted by the positive school themselves	[77]
As we can learn explicitly from George Eliot	[78]
In Daniel Deronda	[78]
That the fundamental moral question is, 'In what way shall the individual make life pleasant?'	[79]
And the right way, for the positivists, as for the Christians, is an inward way	[80]
The moral end is a certain inward state of the heart, and the positivists say it is a sufficient attraction in itself, without any aid from religion	[81]
And they support this view by numerous examples	[82]
But all such examples are useless	[83]
Because though we may get rid of religion in its pure form	[83]
There is much that we have not got rid of, embodied still in the moral end	[84]
To test the intrinsic value of the end, we must sublimate this religion out of it	[86]
For this purpose we will consider, first, the three general characteristics of the moral end, viz.	[88]
Its inwardness	[88]
Its importance	[89]
And its absolute character	[91]
Now all these three characteristics can be explained by religion	[93]
And cannot be explained without it	[96]
The positive moral end must therefore be completely divested of them	[100]
The next question is, will it be equally attractive then?	[100]

[CHAPTER V.]
LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS.

The positivists represent love as a thing whose value is self-dependent	[101]
And which gives to life a positive and incalculable worth	[103]
But this is supposed to be true of one form of love only	[104]
And the very opposite is supposed to hold good of all other forms	[105]
The right form depends on the conformity of each of the lovers to a certain inward standard	[105]
As we can see exemplified in the case of Othello and Desdemona, etc.	[107]
The kind and not the degree of the love is what gives love its special value	[108]
And the selection of this kind can be neither made nor justified on positive principles	[109]
As the following quotations from Théophile Gautier will show us	[110]
Which are supposed by many to embody the true view of love	[110]
According to this view, purity is simply a disease both in man and woman, or at any rate no merit	[116]
If love is to be a moral end, this view must be absolutely condemned	[117]
But positivism cannot condemn it, or support the opposite view	[117]
As we shall see by recurring to Professor Huxley's argument	[118]
Which will show us that all moral language as applied to love is either distinctly religious or else altogether ludicrous	[122]
For it is clearly only on moral grounds that we can give that blame to vice, which is the measure of the praise we give to virtue	[123]
The misery of the former depends on religious anticipations	[124]
And so does also the blessedness of the latter	[125]
As we can see in numerous literary expressions of it	[126]
Positivism, by destroying these anticipations, changes the whole character of the love in question	[128]
And prevents love from supplying us with any moral standard	[131]
The loss sustained by love will indicate the general loss sustained by life	[131]

[CHAPTER VI.]
LIFE AS ITS OWN REWARD.

We must now examine what will be the practical result on life in general of the loss just indicated	[132]
To do this, we will take life as reflected in the mirror of the great dramatic art of the world	[134]
And this will show us how the moral judgment is the chief faculty to which all that is great or intense in this art appeals	[136]
We shall see this, for instance, in Macbeth	[137]
In Hamlet	[137]
In Antigone	[137]
In Measure for Measure, and in Faust	[138]
And also in degraded art just as well as in sublime art	[139]
In profligate and cynical art, such as Congreve's	[140]
And in concupiscent art	[141]
Such as Mademoiselle de Maupin	[141]
Or such works as that of Meursius, or the worst scenes in Petronius	[142]
The supernatural moral judgment is the chief thing everywhere	[143]
Take away this judgment, and art loses all its strange interest	[144]
And so will it be with life	[145]
The moral landscape will be ruined	[145]
Even the mere sensuous joy of living in health will grow duller	[146]
Nor will culture be of the least avail without the supernatural moral element	[148]
Nor will the devotion to truth for its own sake, which is the last refuge of the positivists when in despair	[149]
For this last has no meaning whatever, except as a form of concrete theism	[152]
The reverence for Nature is but another form of the devotion to truth, and its only possible meaning is equally theistic	[157]
Thus all the higher resources of positivism fail together	[161]
And the highest positive value of life would be something less than its present value	[161]

[CHAPTER VII.]
THE SUPERSTITION OF POSITIVISM.

From what we have just seen, the visionary character of the positivist conception of progress becomes evident	[163]
Its object is far more plainly an illusion than the Christian heaven	[164]
All the objections urged against the latter apply with far more force to the former	[165]
As a matter of fact, there is no possible object sufficient to start the enthusiasm required by the positivists	[167]
To make the required enthusiasm possible human nature would have to be completely changed	[168]
Two existing qualities, for instance, would have to be magnified to an impossible extent—imagination	[169]
And unselfishness	[170]
If we state the positive system in terms of common life, its visionary character becomes evident	[172]
The examples which have suggested its possibility are quite misleading	[173]
The positive system is really far more based on superstition than any religion	[175]
Its appearance can only be accounted for by the characters and circumstances of its originators	[175]
And a consideration of these will help us more than anything to estimate it rightly	[178]
And will let us see that its only practical tendency is to deaden all our present interests, not to create any new ones	[179]

[CHAPTER VIII.]
THE PRACTICAL PROSPECT.