But the amount of pure and almost spontaneous malevolence in the world is probably far greater than we at first imagine. In public life the workings of this side of human nature are at once disclosed and magnified, like the figures thrown by a magic lantern on a screen, to a scale which it is impossible to overlook. No one, for example, can study the anonymous press without perceiving how large a part of it is employed systematically, persistently and deliberately in fostering class, or race, or international hatreds, and often in circulating falsehoods to attain this end. Many newspapers notoriously depend for their existence on such appeals, and more than any other instruments they inflame and perpetuate those permanent animosities which most endanger the peace of mankind. The fact that such newspapers are becoming in many countries the main and almost exclusive reading of the poor forms the most serious deduction from the value of popular education. How many books have attained popularity, how many seats in Parliament have been won, how many posts of influence and profit have been attained, how many party victories have been achieved, by appealing to such passions! Often they disguise themselves under the lofty names of patriotism and nationality, and men whose whole lives have been spent in sowing class hatreds and dividing kindred nations may be found masquerading under the name of patriots, and have played no small part on the stage of politics. The deep-seated sedition, the fierce class and national hatreds that run through European life would have a very different intensity from what they now unfortunately have if they had not been artificially stimulated and fostered through purely selfish motives by demagogues, political adventurers and public writers.
Some of the very worst acts of which man can be guilty are acts which are commonly untouched by law and only faintly censured by opinion. Political crimes which a false and sickly sentiment so readily condones are conspicuous among them. Men who have been gambling for wealth and power with the lives and fortunes of multitudes; men who for their own personal ambition are prepared to sacrifice the most vital interests of their country; men who in time of great national danger and excitement deliberately launch falsehood after falsehood in the public press in the well-founded conviction that they will do their evil work before they can be contradicted, may be met shameless, and almost uncensured, in Parliaments and drawing-rooms. The amount of false statement in the world which cannot be attributed to mere carelessness, inaccuracy, or exaggeration, but which is plainly both deliberate and malevolent, can hardly be overrated. Sometimes it is due to a mere desire to create a lucrative sensation, or to gratify a personal dislike, or even to an unprovoked malevolence which takes pleasure in inflicting pain.
Very often it is intended for purposes of stockjobbing. The financial world is percolated with it. It is the common method of raising or depreciating securities, attracting investors, preying upon the ignorant and credulous, and enabling dishonest men to rise rapidly to fortune. When the prospect of speedy wealth is in sight, there are always numbers who are perfectly prepared to pursue courses involving the utter ruin of multitudes, endangering the most serious international interests, perhaps bringing down upon the world all the calamities of war. It is no doubt true that such men are only a minority, though it is less certain that they would be a minority if the opportunity of obtaining sudden riches by immoral means was open to all, and it is no small minority who are accustomed to condone these crimes when they have succeeded. It is much to be questioned whether the greatest criminals are to be found within the walls of prisons. Dishonesty on a small scale nearly always finds its punishment. Dishonesty on a gigantic scale continually escapes. The pickpocket and the burglar seldom fail to meet with their merited punishment, but in the management of companies, in the great fields of industrial enterprise and speculation, gigantic fortunes are acquired by the ruin of multitudes and by methods which, though they evade legal penalties, are essentially fraudulent. In the majority of cases these crimes are perpetrated by educated men who are in possession of all the necessaries, of most of the comforts, and of many of the luxuries of life, and some of the worst of them are powerfully favoured by the conditions of modern civilisation. There is no greater scandal or moral evil in our time than the readiness with which public opinion excuses them, and the influence and social position it accords to mere wealth, even when it has been acquired by notorious dishonesty or when it is expended with absolute selfishness or in ways that are positively demoralising. In many respects the moral progress of mankind seems to me incontestable, but it is extremely doubtful whether in this respect social morality, especially in England and America, has not seriously retrograded.
In truth, while it is a gross libel upon human nature to deny the vast amount of genuine kindness, self-sacrifice and even heroism that exists in the world, it is equally idle to deny the deplorable weakness of self-restraint, the great force and the widespread influence of purely evil passions in the affairs of men. The distrust of human character which the experience of life tends to produce is one great cause of the Conservatism which so commonly strengthens with age. It is more and more felt that all the restraints of law, custom, and religion are essential to hold together in peaceful co-operation the elements of society, and men learn to look with increasing tolerance on both institutions and opinions which cannot stand the test of pure reason and may be largely mixed with delusions if only they deepen the better habits and give an additional strength to moral restraints. They learn also to appreciate the danger of pitching their ideals too high, and endeavouring to enforce lines of conduct greatly above the average level of human goodness. Such attempts, when they take the form of coercive action, seldom fail to produce a recoil which is very detrimental to morals. In this, as in all other spheres, the importance of compromise in practical life is one of the great lessons which experience teaches.
CHAPTER VIII
The phrase Moral Compromise has an evil sound, and it opens out questions of practical ethics which are very difficult and very dangerous, but they are questions with which, consciously or unconsciously, every one is obliged to deal. The contrasts between the rigidity of theological formulæ and actual life are on this subject very great, though in practice, and by the many ingenious subtleties that constitute the science of casuistry, many theologians have attempted to evade them. A striking passage from the pen of Cardinal Newman will bring these contrasts into the clearest light. 'The Church holds,' he writes, 'that it were better for sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, though it harmed no one, or steal one poor farthing without excuse.'[24]
It is certainly no exaggeration to say that such a doctrine would lead to consequences absolutely incompatible with any life outside a hermitage or a monastery. It would strike at the root of all civilisation, and although many may be prepared to give it their formal assent, no human being actually believes it with the kind of belief that becomes a guiding influence in life. I have dwelt on this subject in another book, and may here repeat a few lines which I then wrote. If 'an undoubted sin, even the most trivial, is a thing in its essence and its consequences so unspeakably dreadful that rather than it should be committed it would be better that any amount of calamity which did not bring with it sin should be endured, even that the whole human race should perish in agonies, it is manifest that the supreme object of humanity should be sinlessness, and it is equally manifest that the means to this end is the absolute suppression of the desires. To expand the circle of wants is necessarily to multiply temptations and therefore to increase the number of sins.' No material and intellectual advantages, no increase of human happiness, no mitigation of the suffering or dreariness of human life can, according to this theory, be other than an evil if it adds even in the smallest degree or in the most incidental manner to the sins that are committed. 'A sovereign, when calculating the consequences of a war, should reflect that a single sin occasioned by that war, a single blasphemy of a wounded soldier, the robbery of a single hen-coop, the violation of the purity of a single woman is a greater calamity than the ruin of the entire commerce of his nation, the loss of her most precious provinces, the destruction of all her power. He must believe that the evil of the increase of unchastity which invariably results from the formation of an army is an immeasurably greater calamity than any national or political disasters that army can possibly avert. He must believe that the most fearful plagues and famines that desolate his land should be regarded as a matter of rejoicing if they have but the feeblest and most transient influence in repressing vice. He must believe that if the agglomeration of his people in great cities adds but one to the number of their sins, no possible intellectual or material advantages can prevent the construction of cities being a fearful calamity. According to this principle every elaboration of life, every amusement that brings multitudes together, almost every art, every accession of wealth, that awakens or stimulates desires is an evil, for all these become the sources of some sins, and their advantages are for the most part purely terrestrial.'
Considerations of this kind, if duly realised, bring out clearly the insincerity and the unreality of much of our professed belief. Hardly any sane man would desire to suppress Bank Holidays simply because they are the occasion of a considerable number of cases of drunkenness which would not otherwise have taken place. No humane legislator would hesitate to suppress them if they produced an equal number of deaths or other great physical calamities. This manner of measuring the relative importance of things is not incompatible with a general acknowledgment of the fact that there are many amusements which produce an amount of moral evil that overbalances their advantages as sources of pleasure, or of the great truth that the moral is the higher and ought to be the ruling part of our being. But the realities of life cannot be measured by rigid theological formulæ. Life is a scene in which different kinds of interest not only blend but also modify and in some degree counterbalance one another, and it can only be carried on by constant compromises in which the lines of definition are seldom very clearly marked, and in which even the highest interest must not altogether absorb or override the others. We have to deal with good principles that cannot be pushed to their full logical results; with varying standards which cannot be brought under inflexible law.