C"fgive theft Meakii vr the foti^uliag of a. College. In, iMt£olon.yt Gift of Professor William H. Taft THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE Some Press Notices of the First Edition The Spectator says : ' A book in which there is much eloquence, many really fine passages.' The Inquirer says : ' A series of essays, very practical and suggestive, on various aspects of the modern religious problem.' The Glasgow News says : ' A fresh and joyous exposition of the best and deepest experience of human life ; it deserves a warm welcome from all sorts and conditions of thinking men.' The Scotsman says : ' Eminently readable . . . reflects on every page the modern revolt from the tyranny of such relics of Medievalism as may yet encumber our Theology. . . Whatever be the defects of " these pagan essays," dulness is not among them.' / The Guide says : ' We whole-heartedly commend, not only a perusal, but a study of that book to our readers. Eminently opportune at a time when the most subtle and plausible attacks are made upon morality, and when guidance was never more neces sary on the most momentous problems of life. ' THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE FROM THEOLOGY TO RELIGION (being some essays in that direction) BY ROBERT LOCKE BREMNER POPULAR EDITION LONDON ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LIMITED 1906 ' Pie hoc potest dici : Deum esse Naturam.' Calvin. ' The region of Religion and the region of a completer Science are one.' Sie Oliver Lodge, F.R.S. ' Life comes before thought, religion before theology.' Sabatier. TO THE EEV. JOHN HUNTER, D.D. CONSPICUOUS AMONG MODERN PREACHERS IN SPIRITUALS, IN VERACITY, IN CATHOLICITY, THESE PAGAN ESSAYS IN REVERIE AND REASONING ARE WITH GRATITUDE AND ADMIRATION INSCRIBED Dunblane, Perthshire September 1904. CONTENTS PAOK I. OF THE NEW ERA, . . ' .1 II. OF PILGRIMAGE, 10 III. OF VIGIL AND THE CHOICE OF A WATCHMAN, . 33 IV. OF THE TYRANNY OF NAMES, .... 53 V. OF CRITICISM, ... 70 VI. OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM, . 90 VII. OF MIRACLE, . .108 VIII. OF EVOLUTION, .... . . 137 IX. OF EVOLUTION AND ETHICS, . 177 X. OF EVOLUTION AND FREEDOM, . . 210 XI. OF EVOLUTION AND RELIGION, . 239 XII. OF 'RELIGIOUS' EDUCATION, . . . 268 XIII. OF THE SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE, . . 284 OF THE NEW ERA ' Have the elder races halted ? Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas ? We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson, Pioneers ! O Pioneers ! All the past we leave behind ; We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world ; Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, Pioneers ! O Pioneers ! We primeval forests felling, We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines within ; We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving, Pioneers ! O Pioneers ! ' Walt Whitman. There is always a certain number of people — pro bably the majority, the 'great Whig rump' of the country's intelligence — who, too indolent to think for themselves, or to read with under standing the intellectual masters, are content with the achievements of former generations. They have inherited their fathers' point of view, 2 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE and they never cease to wonder why any one should adopt a different point of view. With ' gentle readers ' such as these one cannot be gentle. Stupidity is always a misfortune, but wilful stupidity is a crime, and doubly a crime in matters spiritual. The fact, of course, is that the world moves and - always has moved. Our fathers were in their time daring innovators, and if it be said that they derived their ' fundamentals ' from Apostolic days, the answer is the same. The Apostles and their godlike Leader were likewise daring innovators, and so were the prophets before them. Every age must be an age of stag nation or an age of innovation, of the discovery of new and newer truths or aspects of truth. How completely the intellectual and spiritual outlook has changed since Darwin — to take the typical name of the last century; why, inciden tally, it is no longer possible for many persons to profess and call themselves Christians in any recognised or authoritative sense of the word; how, nevertheless, it is possible to be reverent and humble, nay, devout, and, in a mainly silent but real sense, religious, the following pages may, it is hoped, help to show. The word which best sums up the intellectual temper of the present generation is ' critical.' It OF THE NEW ERA 3 tries the spirits that differ; it weighs in the balance ; it proves all things, and sternly refuses to do more than hold fast that which is good. A wholesome spirit is the spirit of our time, clean and pure and progressive; mainly perhaps en gaged in the destructive work of pulling down the slums of outworn and now uninhabitable ideas ; but only to make way for the fresh air of modern thought, and by and by, it may be, for the uprearing of new and well-built structures of spiritual experience. It is a mistake to imagine that the critical temper of our day regards destructive activity as an end in itself. It is a good thing, no doubt, to crush a lie, but it is better to replace it with a truth. It is good and necessary to clear a field of weeds which, when their bloom is past, will carry mis chief far and wide among adjacent fields, but it is better, when that is possible, to sow a new crop of useful cereals. It will indeed be strange and contrary to historical precedent if, as the out come of the present critical activity, there should not emerge a great Renaissance, the restatement of philosophic theory, the rise of a new poetry, the advent of a great literature, a revival of religion more notable, more pure, more gladsome, than the world has seen. The signs of the coming epoch are manifold and 4 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE manifest. The victorious march of the Sciehces, the wonderfully rapid growth of the social spirit, the gradually extending love for simple and beauti ful things, and, latest but not least, the emergence of the Imperial idea, with its implicit bond of brotherhood, with its controlling sense of duty and responsibility — these are a few of the many tokens that a new era has already dawned upon us with ever-increasing promise in its brightening horizon. Meantime, the work of the critical spirit is not quite over. On the contrary, signs of reaction are by no means wanting. The churches — especially the more ancient churches — are, it would almost seem, determined that, so far as the new era is to be an era of intellectual reforma tion, they will have no hand in it. True to their worst traditions, and singularly untrue to their Founder's method, they do not scruple to use the most powerful weapons in their armoury — their purely worldly power, their social standing, their aristocratic connection — to crush out opposition, to monopolize the education of the young, and to silence dissent. On the other hand, the more ancient churches have at least one valid claim upon the attention of the modern man. Hopelessly fossilized as is their creed and often their teaching, they have OF THE NEW ERA 5 preserved to a greater extent than the newer sects the simple religious culture that all men need and many long for. What the Free Churches have gained in vigour and independence and freedom of thought, they have often gained at the expense of dignity and simplicity. And so it happens that many cultivated people, for whom the aggressive, extempore devotions of the newer churches are quite impossible, can sometimes join in the more catholic forms of Anglican or Roman ritual because they give direct and simple utterance to the eternal human aspirations. In the new era men will silently put a supreme value upon Religion, We shall hear less about the Christian religion and the Mohammedan rehgion, and we shall see clearly that nothing can be further from true religion than theology. This is already becoming more widely manifest. Theology, as at present loosely used, stands for a great deal that is no more theological than quad ratic equations. The discussion of purely his torical and hterary questions connected with the Syriac scriptures, researches in Eastern ethnology and folklore and philology, the study of Assyrian and Egyptian myths and manners — all these interesting things are absurdly included under the term Theology, simply because they have a more or less slight connection with the 6 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE evolution of the Biblical books. All such researches, honestly carried out, are obviously useful and scientific, and because they are all popularly supposed to be theological, theology in the strict sense, ' the imperfect attempt to express in the language of the intellect, what has been immediately revealed to the spirit,'1 gets the credit of being a scientific pursuit ! He will do a great service who will make it plain to the simplest that religion, at all events, has no more to do with the tablets of Tel-el- Amarna than with the Tower of London, and, on the other hand, that theology in the stricter sense is not only not religion, but is a thoroughly vicious and irreligious attempt at the impossible. Religion, indeed, is a thing so fine, so intimate, so universal, that it cannot consort with company rough and uncouth as theological dogma. As saith the judicious Hooker, ' . . . the Most High, Whom although to know be life, and joy to make mention of His name, yet our soundest know ledge is to know that we know Him not as, indeed, He is, neither can know Him; and our safest eloquence concerning Him is our silence.' Let us hope that in the new era our Cathedral churches at least will be in every sense Temples of Worship and in no sense Halls of Dogma. 1 The late Rev. Dr. R. W. Dale. OF THE NEW ERA 7 Filled with silence or with music, untroubled in hymn or prayer or sermon by the discords of doctrine, may they lead us into the near presence of the Divine, and inspire us for the service of man! At the dawn of the new era the fate of the Church hangs in the balance. Will she purge herself bravely of dogma ? Will she fling open the doors of welcome to all devout persons? Will she finally prove herself in verity and truth a Holy Catholic Church ? If she will, our caps in the air, and the benison of God and Man upon all her borders! If not, her true power and ministry are surely ended. She will not die ia a century, but she will wane as she might have waxed, and the world will grow wiser and better without her help. Many a man there is who, by birth and nurture and every instinct in his nature, is a son of the Church, to whom it is a deep regret that he is shut out by simple honesty from her temple services. The glorious music of England's venerable Cathedrals, the solemn sweetness of Scotland's psalmody, may rend every fibre of one's being with the persuasive spell of their holy enchantment; yet meantime their rapture and inspiration are, it would seem, for those alone who believe in a horrible fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's veins. 8 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE Great, and probably final, is the opportunity of the Church. The world is wide and beautiful. Art is many sided and eternal ; music is spiritual, ethereal, the very gift of God. Knowledge in every sort is divine. Will the Church break with her engrained conservatism; will she take unto herself all the treasures of all the ages in trust for her sons and daughters who love her and yearn for her bosom? Or will she force them out to learn their lessons, but not from her; to work without her guidance; to laugh and be glad without her smile ; to find God and worship, but at no shrine of hers ? It may be even so. Then men will remember that they have still a Cathedral, older than the oldest built with hands, and many a means of grace that the prelates and parsons wot not of. The Church having overlived her day of usefulness, and repulsed the best of her children, will be left alone. But it will presently appear that the voice of God is to be heard, not only in wooden pews, proceeding out of wooden pulpits, but in the whistle of the blackbird and mavis, in the glad laughter of the sea waves, in the sunshine and the cloud, ' fire and hail, snow and vapour, stormy wind fulfilling His word.' It will be discovered that God is revealed, not only in His good son Jesus, but in all His children and in all OF THE NEW ERA 9 His creatures. Who can doubt that in the new era, when these glad tidings shall have reached the universal heart, men shall go out with joy, and shall be led forth with peace ; the mountains and the hills shall break forth before them into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands ? II OF PILGRIMAGE ' For life, with all it yields of joy and woe And hope and fear, Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love ; How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.' Browning : ' A Death in the Desert.' The true story of the pilgrimage of a human soul would be a most enthralling subject for a his torian, but it has never been told. Here a little and there a little we find concerning it in the great books of the world. A sudden, shy revela tion of a corner of a life is given therein to those who can read with understanding, and it is pre cisely because of these self- revelations that the great books of the world are great. We call such illuminative passages, 'flashes of insight,' as if modestly to hide from ourselves that our author is not so much guessing at us as revealing him self. Apart from these wonderful word-pictures, which only consummate art can give with truth, 10 OF PILGRIMAGE 11 the inner life of our pilgrimage is not merely too intimate, but too elusive, too delicate for speech. Never, even to my uttermost friend, can I fully tell what I am. Nor, if I could, would I dare to be expressly my naked self. It is the charm and distinction of friendship that, up to a point, even without expression, my friend understands, and that if, in a rare moment, I do partly lay bare my self, he will love me not the less. But it is the deepest tragedy of hfe that our nearest cannot wholly understand. Human souls seldom pilgrim far in merry company. We talk indeed of the people who 'hve in crowds'; but such persons are incap able of serious life. They are souls, by courtesy ; not by right of attainment. Those who really live, hve in great measure alone. No one fully appreciates their difficulties, the thrill of their joys, the intensity of their loves, the sting of their sorrows. ' The heart knoweth its own bitterness and a stranger doth not intermeddle with its joy.' A stranger ! How should a stranger intermeddle with my joy ? And we are all in our degree strangers. The kind mother who suckled us ; the good, . grave father who stood for us in the place of God; the brother 12 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE and sister who played with us and fought with us in days before the soul had come to its own — each is now a stranger from whom we hide our inmost self. The boy indentured to the sea, as he steps aboard the ship that is to bear him for the first time away from home, is indeed a type of the race. Pilgrimage is our destiny. Strangers and pilgrims are we all perforce. And, though we may set out with the brave heart of a boy and brass buttons on our breast, the cheer we would give sticks in our throat as our vessel moves off, and with the throb of a new emotion we know ourselves to be alone in a wide world — 'a stranger with Thee and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.' The experience comes variously to each of us, but to each true man and woman it comes inevitably, and it is best that we should face it at the outset with what grave resolution and courage we can. How then, pilgrim, is it not somewhat that all our fathers were even as we ? Is it not good to remember that we are called upon to do no extraordinary thing; that our fathers in olden time — those silent, winter-worn fellows in the north lands — fought and hunted and loved and wassailed in the days of their pilgrimage — each one as lonely a soul as thou or I, yet with more of the man OF PILGRIMAGE 13 in him, mayhap; ever ready for song and jest and the clash of steel ? I love that tale of the rugged northern viking whom the Christians got hold of, and would have baptized for his soul's sake. Nothing loth was he. The White Christ seemed as good a God as any in his theogony. So to the font he went merrily enough until, at the point of salvation, a thought struck his honest mind. ' Stay,' quoth he ; ' where said ye that I should pass after death, an I be baptized ? ' 'To heaven, dear brother,' answered the monks with joy. 'And where then are my forefathers; are they also in heaven ? ' queried the Northman. ' Not so, dear brother,' said the monks with sorrow ; ' they are in hell ! ' ' Ha ! is it so ? ' said the Northman ; ' no baptism, then, for me. Whither my good fathers have gone, thither shall I go too ; and so, gentle monks, farewell ! ' That, I take it, was the speech of a good man and a most proper gentleman; and those who think otherwise need read no further in this book; for its writer is no monk, wise in the lore of heaven and hell, but rather a pagan pilgrim, somewhat expert in love and other spiritual matters, but 'in all else most childish still.' Let us have courage, then. What the men of old have done and dared and suffered, we can 14 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE do and dare and suffer. The same joys and the same sorrows are ours, and in some ways we can fare farther than they. ' Strangers and pilgrims ! ' The phrase has a pathetic beauty as well as truth. It is no grand crusade, this life of ours. We are no league of banded knights full of a common purpose and high resolve. We are like driftwood on an ocean, tossed hither and thither by winds and waves of circumstance — meeting here and there other seafarers — meeting, touching, comming ling, and parting. These rare meetings when two souls for a brief space live one life are among the supreme moments in our pilgrimage. The time-worn figure is not adequate, however. I cannot believe that our friendships are merely the casual encounters of driftwood or even of ocean-tramps. I think they are arranged some what as we bring it about that A and B shall meet at our table a fortnight hence, and that C, who would be in the way, shall not be invited. But, apart from the presumption of such external influences, we do confessedly fix our own fate in some degree. In man (the last word of the evolution process), the most distinctive character is his comparative freedom. More free certainly than oxygen or oak, or even ape, he can choose his fellow-pilgrims, journey with those he would, OF PILGRIMAGE 15 escape from the society of those he deems unfit companions. This is a notable achievement, although its limitations are obvious and often tragic enough. Yesterday their eyes met — his and hers — flash answering flash of intelligence, accord, sympathy, that are never to meet again. He knew, and she, that this was a worthy comrade. Each soul leapt to meet its fellow; each felt the quick pang of recognition ; but thereupon, hard and cold, the bar of circum stance arose and interposed itself. Some con vention of society ; the guard's shrill whistle at a railway station — any trifle would serve — but the vital fact was that, inexorably as driftwood in a cross current, two congenial souls at the point to unite were torn asunder for evermore. This is surely vanity and vexation of spirit. But let us weigh our words. Is it indeed 'for evermore ? ' Who can say ? It may be — I think it will — that ' With the morn those angel-faces smile That I have loved long since and lost awhile.' Who knows but that there hes before us a life of vastly greater freedom — of infinite spiritual possibility, in which we shall know even as also we are known? The things we most desire to know — many, of the things we know best — are 16 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE not the things we can see or hear or smell or taste or touch. Love, peace, freedom, rest, the ' tender grace of a day that is dead,' the ' beauty of holiness,' — these and how many other things we have known in part, and with our whole soul would know more fully, if God would but grant us this benison 'beyond the veil.' One of the strangest limitations of our pilgrim age is the limit set to our loves by our duties. For certain good and onerous causes and con siderations our pilgrim has entered into some bond of faithfulness, implicit or expressed. Upon the horizon of his affections there presently arises a soul spiritually most near of kin to his, which by every token of kinship beckons him to the joy of loving intercourse. Every impulse of his higher nature, every sanction that seems divine within him (save one) impels him to embrace and welcome the lover whom good fortune hath brought. Yet, because of his bond and the duty that he needs must do, a dreadful barrier may be placed between them twain. Our faithful pilgrim then looks wistfully at his dear comrade and again at his bond ; and, because he is a true man, will turn away sorrowful but stern. He might have had great possessions, but will deny himself this utmost boon that he may, be faith ful. 'Farewell, sweet fellow,' saith he, not OF PILGRIMAGE 17 without tears, 'I may not have thee now; but as God is good, we shall surely meet at the end of our pilgrimage. Fare thee well!' But for an eternal hope, this also would be vanity and vexation of spirit. These are the true epochs in our pilgrimage, the milestones and cairns that mark our track. The dates of our birth, marriage, and death, as Emerson truly says, are insignificant and quite useless for biographical purposes. The true and vital facts in the lives most worth recording are the things that will never be recorded, the passionate loves, the remembered kisses, the exultant hopes, the profound despair of . our human days, — all the silent and secret influences that, known to none but the pilgrim himself, and dimly even to him, shaped the course and set the manner of his pilgrimage. To callow youth, the interventions of fate are intolerable; the very madness of revolt surges furiously in the blood. ' I cannot go,' cries poor Paolo in Mr Stephen Phillips' fine play: — ' I cannot go ; thrilling from Rimini, A tender voice makes all the trumpets mute.' Religion is a mockery, patience unmanly; rage and gloom are the famihar spirits of young solitude until scepticism rules the soul, dyspepsia 18 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE the body of the passionate pilgrim. By and by the experience of life makes that strangely tolerable which seemed intolerable. 'Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow,' wailed the crude maiden, in the hour of her first anguish. ' Wait, my daughter,' said Nature, • slow and ever patient herself ; ' wait, wait! Others too have gone through the fur nace; others shall tread it after thee. Wait, my poor daughter, wait ! ' Years move slowly by; then more rapidly; then very swiftly. The iron has entered into the soul of the pilgrim ; silently she has learned much; the past is for her no longer bitter, but full of solemn enrich ment and benediction. The future is unknown, but is veiled in hope. To have had a past is wisdom. To have a future is strength. Butter flies do not remember their past, and fine ladies will have no wrinkles in their faces; but these beauteous beings do not interest us. The history of our human pilgrimage is sometimes written on the furrowed face and the enlined hand ; but the spirit of each way-worn pilgrim always and inevitably bears the secret writing. Most pilgrimages, surely, are serious. Most lives, surely, have had their poem. And yet how many seem to have lived a life of prose from the days of their youth up, unemotional, OF PILGRIMAGE 19 unimaginative, unsympathetic, uninteresting ! Sudden contact with such persons begets a certain definable shock. We all naturally as sume, until the contrary startles us, that every one else must have shared our own experience. Are not we all pilgrims ? Well, yes ; but not all, it would seem, bound for the same fair haven. It is the most difficult thing in the world to realise the unlikeness of people — the difference of experience, the difference of ideals. The wor ship of money, for example ; the indubitable fact that John Smith, Esquire, whom one knows to be very well off, spends his days and his evenings planning, earnestly contriving, how he shall win more money this year than last ; the fact that he works in his office not only all day and every day, but until eight o'clock every night and eleven o'clock on mail nights, engrossed and absorbed with this chief end in view — is almost entirely unbelievable by, let us say, a scholar or a lover. Yet there are thousands of John Smiths. And when you come to think of it, the making of money is a great game, with an immense deal of excitement in it. There are risks to be run, dangers to be dared, difficulties to be fought at every turn. Once you are in the game, it may easily become all-engrossing, calling for concentration of mind, memory, alert- 20 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE ness, ability of a real if peculiar type. Your plan of life must needs be adjusted to suit the conditions of the game. Your days, your diet, your dress, your company, the kind of wife you marry, the kind of church you attend — all these are and must be regulated by the game you play. And when you have adjusted all these, you will not have much time or energy left for such trifles as science or love or religion. The 'successful' man of the world seldom reflects, until it is too late, that he is an object for pro found pity, inasmuch as the things he misses are the only real things. He thinks he knows the price of everything in the market; but the things that are priceless he passes by. The 'worth' of a man he estimates by the number of thousands of pounds that some one else gets when he dies ; not considering that a millionaire must be worthless indeed if his millions measure his worth. The allurement of gold, however, is a thing of degree, seldom strong in youth. Those whom the gods love are never wholly entangled thereby. But the insidious and gradual en croachment of ' the world ' upon time and atten tion, until both are like to be monopolized, is a very common experience, often requiring grim determination and high ideals to be resisted. Happy is the man of affairs who by early habit OF PILGRIMAGE 21 is used to look with indifference upon wealth and with supreme reverence upon character. Second only among the joys of our otherwise lonely pilgrimage is the joy of knowledge. It may be that we spend too much time in read ing newspapers; but, after all, who could fail to be fascinated by the miracle of our breakfast table? Yesterday a theatre was burned to the ground at Vienna; an Englishman was robbed at Monte Carlo; a Socialist spoke emphatically or wildly (according to your politics) in the German Reichstag; France and Russia formally embraced each other ; consols fell a point ; copper showed signs of vitality; pigs were flat; trunks steady. Advices from New York were reassur ing; a rebellion broke out in southern China; your friend's baby (another girl, unfortunately) was born in Melbourne; Baron Kioto died in Honolulu. For a penny or a halfpenny the great world takes you into its confidence; you (that hardly know your next-door neighbour) are acquainted with the gossip of a dozen courts, the scandal of fifty capitals. This enormously widened outlook is a great joy. The old maid in her little old house need no longer be parochial or petty. The great affairs of state and empire are her intimate concern, if she will, for two cents. There is always, no doubt, 22 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE a type of pilgrim for whom, curiously enough, the ongoings of modern folk have little interest. The botanical or astronomical or antiquarian zealot does not read newspapers with enthusiasm. He has elsewhere a wide, exhaustless world to roam throughout, and, compared with his pre decessors of but a few centuries ago, how great are the facilities of his pilgrimage ! The modern schoolboy knows things after a few hours' study that Kepler and Laplace, Cuvier and Buffon would have given much to know. The multitude of the sciences is indeed become appalling; but the apparent boundlessness of each separate field is rather a stimulus than a hindrance to exploration. He is a poor voyageur who has not yet selected for himself some favourite province, into every corner of which he means one day to paddle and portage; to whose map perhaps even he may contribute some corrections. We may in truth measure the intellectual vitality of a man by his interest in men and things. Too many pilgrims find their bookshelves full enough at forty or fifty. He who goes on buying new books after fifty will never grow old. Knowledge has been the joy of his pilgrimage, and he has the fresh and open mind that is the secret of perpetual youth. Well might Plato argue from knowledge to immortality. If death ends the OF PILGRIMAGE 23 pilgrimage, we are of all sentient beings the most unfortunate. My dog does not know so much as I, and, though born a Scot, has no overwhelming desire, so far as I can see, for higher education. When his day comes to die, I hope his affectionate and very human spirit may live on in Valhalla — perchance to welcome me ! But I am sure he would meet annihila tion with much greater composure than a man who has known what a fine thing it is to know. Whether it be mortality, however, or immortahty (as sundry tokens seem to hint, but none can tell), the visible and apparently final departure of a gifted man from the things he has known and worked amongst is pathetic enough. When the great botanist died the other day, we buried him, and how much we seemed to bury with him ! Here still lie his specimens, his rare ferns, his wonderful collection of books, his microscopes, his delicate self- invented instruments. They were dear to him, while he lived, as a dear mistress. He knew them all by name. He handled them tenderly and fondly. He was the living key to the whole mystery of them but now, dust and silence are his portion, and in gathering dust and silence his work remains behind. Careless hands will presently pack them up, ignorantly jumble them and scatter them, 24 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE Cold eyes will examine his manuscripts. Some lukewarm admirer will publish them, with altera tions he would have rejected and footnotes he would have despised. Meantime, there they lie — the rather meaningless monument of a great pilgrimage. 'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work nor device nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave whither thou goest.' To adapt an epigram of Mr. Edward Clodd, the book of the world is greater than the world of books. The most careful student of the novel of manners is not qualified by such study even for tolerable comportment in society. To know men, we must close the book and fare abroad with open eyes and ears. And it is one of the greatest of human delights to watch the human drama ; to observe the actors and the actresses ; to discover their motives, their varied interests, their passions, their prejudices. Under the eye lids of our fellow - pilgrims, what a wealth of interest there lies ! Look therein wisely, and you shall see stratagems, snares, duplicities, conceal ments, intrigues. Look again, and you find candour, confidence, pride, resolution, nobility. Look yet again, and love, tenderness, helpfulness, utter faithfulness, reward you with a sudden flash of eloquence swifter than speech. In one glance OF PILGRIMAGE 25 of a woman's dark eye you may have the plot of fifty novels. Woman is the great enigma whom all men would solve — exciting, baffling, eternally elusive. Man is her problem, but an easier one; for she has a quick understanding. To know one's fellows ; to watch with intelligence even some small process in the world-movement is well named 'the proper study of mankind.' The politics even of the village pump are inter esting, and the wider your society, the more intense your interest. This it is that lends to the great game of international diplomacy, to the whole life of capitals and courts, their supreme zest. It is the same game that is played at every cottage dance, at every board meeting in the parish hall; but it is played for greater stakes; its issue affects millions, and the players are often highly specialised experts. The world will have grown very old and very wise, and the hue of its dress will be drab, before it parts with its palaces, or cavils at coronations. Knowledge of a yet higher and graver sort there is, but its joys are more severe, and few are the pilgrims who attain thereto: the knowledge, to wit, begotten of contemplation ; of reflection upon consciousness; of the study of the philosophic systems of the present and the past, or the deeper problems of life. To enter into the temple of 26 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE this delight requires a mental equipment too costly, a training too laborious, and generally a monastic vow too exacting for the average work-a- day pilgrim. Except, perhaps, in Scotland, where till recently every ploughman was a theologian, metaphysical enthusiasm is not widely diffused in the western world, and the problems of pure intellect (close as is their relation to the world of the newspaper) remain as ever the exploration ground of the few enthusiastic mountaineers. Here and everywhere, strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. Closely connected with the other joys of our pilgrimage is the greatest of them all — rehgion. Here let our words be few; let us agree once for all to speak in parable and poesy. Theology from the days of the Assyrian monuments until now has been the vain and barren attempt of man to vulgarise the unutterable; to speak of the unspeakable. How should our personal pronouns otherwise than in symbol express the Infinite God? How dare we seek for trinities or unities in the presence of the Great Un searchable ? How should man ascribe his little human attributes, his little moralities, his little passions to the Eternal Source of All ? Literal ism here is blasphemy, and yet this blasphemous OF PILGRIMAGE 27 impertinence has been in fashion in all the churches of all the systems of all the ages. But I find that the few supreme souls — who never yet belonged to particular systems or particular epochs, but were World-men — Jesus, Goethe, Shakespeare, Plato, Emerson, and their peers, have spoken in parables, and without a parable have not spoken. Theology is not re ligion. It has more often been a hindrance than a help to men in the attainment of religion. It has gratuitously attempted to materialise the spiritual, to make gross and tangible the impalpable. For the religious ex perience is the most natural and most wonder ful among men; the commonest, yet the least communicable. The contact of the soul with God is, at least in a rudimentary degree, the universal experience. In your heart of hearts you have known the World-father. In the joy ful hours of youth, when the sun glinted on the dancing leaves and the sparkling waves, when the birds sang and your heart laughed within you, and health and love were yours, you felt in the exuberance of gratitude, ' My God, I thank Thee, Who hast made the earth so bright.' In the stress and sorrow of your pilgrimage, you bowed before Him. When your path was clouded by the mist of utter perplexity, 28 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE when you wished to do right and knew not what was right; in the very agony of doubt or despair you cried inwardly, ' Oh that I knew where I might find Him.' These moments of conscious or semi-conscious communion with or aspiration after God — poorly described as they are in the symbols of human speech — are the religious epochs that prove man's kinship with the Divine. He whose knowledge of men and affairs is limited, whose education has been neglected, lacks much. He who has never deeply loved, has never deeply lived. But he who has missed God (if we could figure the case) could hardly be said to have lived at all. The fact would seem to be that, having emerged from the ruck of sentient forms of life in the slow and natural process of the suns, the human species has come to be en rapport with what, for want of a fitter word, we call the Divine. Conscious of my dog -affinity, I am conscious also of a divine affinity, which is to me upon the whole — I would it were always — more at tractive and compelling than the other. We all know certain men and women who are im measurably better than ourselves — the heroes and heroines of our pilgrimage. They may call themselves Christians or Atheists. What we know is that they are god-like. They remind OF PILGRIMAGE 29 us, in their degree, of God. As we grow older, if we keep an open mind, we see that the church legends as well as the fairy tales of our childhood had a deep truth in them after all. We had grown so wise as to disbelieve them. But we grow wiser, and we find them deeply true after all! Good fairies are all about us, and wicked elves certainly lurk in dark corners to do us a mischief. And God is everywhere. The laughter of children, the beauty of women and trees and hills ; the affections of home ; our own high purposes; the honesty, courage, hero ism of our fellows — a thousand daily experiences reveal Him. The Author of the whole cosmic process is our good Father as well as the Father of the thunder bolt and the volcano. It is true that our joy in God, our proper knowledge of what we call in metaphor His care and help, will not demonstrate His existence to any clever person who denies or doubts it. But neither will our proper knowledge of any of the great secrets of hfe convince anybody of anything. John Smith, for example, will never guess them. He knows only the minor secret of ' getting on.' That he has made his own. To argue therefore about religion is ridiculous. One does not argue about the obvious. If the obvious is unfortunately hidden from A, who are B and 30 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE C that they should argue it into him? The highest things are at once the most visible and the most invisible. To the faculty that is culti vated and trained to observe them, they are clearly and brilliantly luminous; to the faculty that has long lain cobwebbed in the cellars of disuse, they are non-existent. I pray you, there fore, look to your faculty. No great excellence in any department of life is achieved without effort, without training. Ability to run a mile in five minutes will demand of a good athlete many months of practice; ability to hit the bull's eye four times in five at a thousand yards will not be securely attained after years of shooting. And is it to be thought that in spirituals attainment will come by accident? On the contrary, spiritual culture is just as necessary to spiritual attain ment as physical culture is to the acquisition of health. Spiritual experience demands for its full enjoyment precisely the same toll of strenuous resolve and persistent endeavour that all high experiences do. It involves the deliberate train ing of our thoughts and affections, the dehberate pursuit of serious ends, the continuous develop ment of the intellectual and moral and rehgious faculties common in posse to all our brothers and sisters. The musical taste may be cultivated; OF PILGRIMAGE 31 the moral taste may be educated; the artistic faculty also has its degrees of development, and even so it is with the religious faculty. All these are products of a natural evolution from rudi mentary forms. Their rudiments are traceable, not only in the other portions of the human family, but in other provinces of the animal kingdom. Their development has so far culmin ated in man, but in different degrees in different men. Be it ours to carry on the process, not to suffer any part of our great heritage to suffer extinction by neglect. God works and speaks in the wordless silence of eternity, and man's silence about God is often more honourable and eloquent than speech. Yet who that has known, in how feeble a measure soever, this high com munion that alone deserves the name of religion but will agree that herein hes the greatest sup port of his pilgrimage ? All things fail with the passing years. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life are phantoms all. Whether there be prophecies — moments of rare insight — they shall fail; whether there be tongues — gifts of rare genius — they shall cease ; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. Love — our own love — need never fail ; yet one day our lovers will seem to leave us, their love seem to 32 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE fail us. But in all our troubles and adversities whensoever they oppress us, in all time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth, in the hour of death, and in every day of judgment, God may be and shall be, if we diligently seek Him, the Guide and the Home of our pilgrimage. Ill OF VIGIL AND THE CHOICE OF A WATCHMAN ' Watchman, what of the night ? ' Isaiah xxi. 11. It would almost seem to any one who leans to contemplation that the great and wide desert to which the thinker of old could retire at will is closing in. Once, long ago, men had time to think. They trod a quieter earth. More spacious days filled with greater leisure, avocations less absorbing, engagements less peremptory — these were their portion. No doubt there was a genial bustle as the stately merchantman slipped her moorings at the wharf, or the stage coach thun dered royally up to the Angel, musically heralded by blast of horn, in the merry days of old. But with all allowances, nobody was driven to suicide by brain exhaustion, nor had nervous prostration become a lucrative branch of the fashionable physician's practice. Nowadays few even of what is sometimes ridiculously called 'the leisured class' c 34 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE have any leisure. Many more, no doubt, might have it if they would. Many do not want it, would not know what to do with it if they had it — truly a pathetic situation. The poor man has his own burden, but the rich man, too, is frequently bent and broken by his burden, the incessant care and worry of wealth, often a thankless and joyless responsibility well- nigh intolerable. As the result of the beneficent factory and labour legislation of the nineteenth century, the British handicraftsman and mechanic have now not only as much real leisure as most of the members of the so-caUed ' leisured class,' but more than the average shopkeeper, and much more than the busy professional or mercantile man. On the other hand, his work generally brings with it healthy physical fatigue; he is little inclined for mental exertion, and his hours are seldom consecrated to study or reflection. The mechanic apart, however, the Western world would seem year by year to be accelerating the pace of its life and encroaching upon the thinking hours of its units. More than ever, it takes a man of strong resolution and of small worldly ambition to be a thinker. The compen sations are great as of old to him who loves the life, and certainly lose nothing in value by the discipline essential to attainment. After all, the OF VIGIL AND CHOICE OF A WATCHMAN 35 watch-tower has never had any attraction for the crowd. The daring solitude of a well-advertised balloonist or Arctic explorer is generally com prehensible, but that a man should wistfully long for spiritual hermitage and retire with rapture to the first lone watch-tower he can find is to the profanum vulgus a quite mysterious symptom, suggesting nothing so readily as lunacy. More serious, however, than the encroachment of ' the world ' and its engagements upon one's time in these whirling days, much more serious, is the engrossment of one's attention and interest thereby to the detriment of what one feels to be the ' higher life.' Vigil is in three kinds. There be those that watch in cold and cloistered shrines for their soul's salvation, but theirs is a selfish, not a holy, vigil, and of them we shall not speak. Much higher than they are those whose whole drear life, destined by the fates to daily self- repression, is as the lonesome vigil of the hushed and silent sick-room. Burdened by con stant illness, hampered by the faithful care of some poor invalid or the chronic drag of an irksome but inevitable occupation, they spend their years — the long years — in the service of sorrow. Outside the window the sun gladdens the wold. The mavis and the message-boy 36 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE whistle aloud in merry harmony ; the ploughman sings at the plough; the harvest ripens; the bridge is builded ; the liner is launched ; all the world — the gay, sad, wonderful, motley world — moves and is moved, careering on its wild way among the other worlds ; but the watcher in this kind sees it not; hears but the distant hum of its seductive tumult, ever the more alluring that it is unattainable. Were there no compensations, these things would be insupportable. Ultra- altruism is scarcely better than ultra-egoism. But if the watcher even here is comfortless, he must be morbid as a flagellated monk. There is always some avenue by which the soul of the watcher can escape from the accidents of bodily imprisonment. Some books, some letters, one dear friend, may make a delightsome world. Many a gracious woman in the solitude of her quiet years is compassed about with a wealth of love and spiritual experience. Many a woman of fashion, busied from morning till night, with her wardrobe, her philanthropies, and her troops of ' friends,' knows little of love, little of joy, little of the deep things of the Eternal. That is one of the great compensations. Another is the half- unconscious development of the watcher in patience, in self-mastery, in sympathy. These are the true riches, and no discipline brings OF VIGIL AND CHOICE OF A WATCHMAN 37 them more surely than a long acquaintance with what we have called vigil in the second kind. It may be that our watcher will remain a silent example, bright and shining in the still ness of the world's night, hke the stars for ever and ever. Or it may be that one day, having perfectly learned the art of waiting, he shall be permitted to step forth into the noise and whirl of affairs, a true soul seven times purified, made calm and wise by the long Sabbath of his earlier experience. By vigil in the third kind I mean that strange world-consciousness alive in those fewest men who have eyes to see the inner significance of the world's ongoing. For there are two varieties of human eyes, and they are not the clearest that are most highly esteemed. The 'business faculty,' cultivated in this age to a pitch of refinement un known before, is the combination of quick obser vation, ready criticism, swift resolution on the one hand, and, on the other, the faculty of rapid action. Always before the action come the ob servation, criticism, and resolution — what may be called eyesight of a keen and useful sort, but inferior, because very limited in its scope. Altogether different are the eyes of a watch man like Isaiah or Teufelsdrockh. They do not impress one at first. They lack brilliance. 38 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE The rapid glance, the keen glitter of the 'busi ness faculty,' are wholly wanting. Rather abstracted, even vacant they seem, as though their gaze was fixed upon some far-off, inward, invisible thing. Especially stolid and disap pointing is the watchman's eye when it lights on gold. That which brightens the eye of the million creates no flash of interest in his. ' What stupidity ! ' says the world, or more politely thinks in silence ; for perhaps, on second thoughts, this philosopher has wealth and can afford to be in different. In that case, we — the gold-gladdened world — can not afford to be rude to him. Rather let us ask him to dinner with some nice people, and introduce him to our marriageable daughter. But the eye of the watchman is not stupid ; only his standard of values is different. He both sees the gold and appreciates it {i.e. literally ' puts a price upon it'). He also sees and is intensely interested and amused by that which the world does not think he sees at all — the play of motive in the man of gold. In a greater or lesser degree the world and the watch-tower are rival suitors for the heart of all serious persons. Which shall win in the wooing depends upon many things — temperament, en vironment, the state of one's bank account, alas ! But we may not doubt that it is still possible for OF VIGIL AND CHOICE OF A WATCHMAN 39 him who is manful enough to dare the enterprise, to make the world his opportunity, his scaling- ladder, and the watch-tower his rock of habita tion, whereunto he may continually resort. If all our days we have been profani in the Horatian sense, furth of the Fane, outside the temple of the spirit, wholly or mainly interested in the clink of the world's coin, the pretty sparkle of the world's bravery, the pride of place and power that endure but for the passing moment, we shall indeed have ' lived ' after a fashion, but we shall not have soared, we shall not have seen. How should a man see in a crowd ? Men who live in a desert can see the moons of Jupiter with un aided eye. We who herd in cities, the range of our vision blocked at every turn by walls of stone, do so to the detriment of our physical power of sight. Atrophy follows neglect as surely as cultivation increases capacity. What is a truism in the physical sphere is a httle remembered but profoundly important truth in the spiritual sphere. In these crowded lands of Europe most of our energy is too often absorbed in the daily struggle for existence, and so not only the opportunity for reflection but the capacity for it, and, saddest of all, the desire for it, pass away. The importance of the watch-tower is, however none the less. More indeed than in former days 40 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE do we need the voice, not of the priest, but of the prophet and teacher to sound among us. It is well that we should set apart men whose business it is to tell us of the Night, to report, as it were, from the eminence of a watch-tower the things it behoves us to know, and no more honour able function than this function of watchman is conceivable. Not seldom, however, our professional watch man, our statesmen, the governors of our cities, the occupants of our pulpits and university chairs are so careful and troubled about many things that their proper office cannot be worthily discharged. Not seldom they wholly misinterpret their func tion. Not seldom they are incapable of worthily fulfilling it under any circumstances. But the Watchmen of all the ages have rarely been of the official variety. They have stood apart, a lone race of prophets, the only ' apostohc succes sion ' universally recognisable or indeed worthy of serious recognition ; and it is always a black epoch in human history when a break in their succession occurs. Where there is no vision the people perish, and the prophetic herdsman of Tekoa was right in considering that a famine of bread and a thirst for water were visitants not more dread than a famine of spiritual food, or, as he put it, ' of hearing the Word of Yahveh.' OF VIGIL AND CHOICE OF A WATCHMAN 41 Let us give honour to the Immortals, those men of universal spirit whose calm, wise words are true for all time. Let us give honour to the Prophets, the revealers of the Eternal, who remind us of the great things we were like to have forgotten. Let us emulate them in their love for all simple and beautiful things. We who herd in ugly cities are, for the most part, far from the Kingdom of Heaven. The new era will show us — is already showing us — that the simple life of our pagan grahdsires was a better hfe than ours. Now and then, it is true, a dream cometh through the multitude of business ; but if we would attain in our measure to the Alpine heights of the land of Vision, then in a greater degree than heretofore the solitudes and simpli cities of Nature must be the portion of our cup. I know a way in a woodland wherein, when I walk alone, I am for the nonce the fellow of Plato and Emerson and Goethe ! Perfumed with the odour of the solemn pines, refreshed with the whisper ing wind, pointed upwards to the blue by each tall monitor, what elevation is mine, what joyous rapture, what a thoroughfare of quiet thoughts is my greenwood path to me ! Happy are the pilgrims that know the joy of woodland reverie, that can dream for long, sweet hours, lulled by the music of the sea — the melancholy music of the sea. 42 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE ' In China,' says John Chinaman — and I make no apology for quoting at length words so fine and true — ' In China, letters are respected not merely to a degree but in a sense which must seem, I think, to you unintelligible and over strained. But there is a reason for it. Our poets and literary men have taught their suc cessors for long generations to look for good not in wealth, not in power, not in misceUaneous activity, but in a trained, a choice, an exquisite appreciation of the most simple and universal relations of life. To feel, and in order to feel to express, or at least to understand the ex pression of all that is lovely in nature, of all that is poignant and sensitive in man, is to us in itself a sufficient end. A rose in a moonlit gar den, the shadow of trees on the turf, almond bloom, scent of pine, the wine-cup and the guitar ; these and the pathos of life and death, the long embrace, the hand stretched out in vain, the moment that glides for ever away, with its freight of music and light, into the shadow and hush of the haunted past, all that we have, all that eludes us, a bird on the wing, a perfume escaped on the gale — to all these things we are trained to respond, and the response is what we call literature. This we have ; this you cannot give us ; but this you may so easily take away. Amid the roar of looms OF VIGIL AND CHOICE OF A WATCHMAN 43 it cannot be heard; it cannot be seen in the smoke of factories ; it is killed by the wear and the whirl of Western life. And when I look at your business men, the men whom you most admire; when I see them hour after hour, day after day, year after year, toiling in the mill of their forced and undelighted labours ; when I see them importing the anxieties of the day into their scant and grudging leisure, and wearing themselves out less by toil than by carking and iUiberal cares, I reflect, I confess, with satisfaction on the simpler routine of our ancient industry, and prize, above all your new and dangerous routes, the beaten track so familiar to our accus tomed feet, that we have leisure, even while we pace it, to turn our gaze up to the eternal stars.' 1 Whether China is really the land of Vigil in the supreme sense claimed for it in this eloquent passage, I do not know, but that the reflective East has produced more seers of note than the energetic West is undoubtedly true. And that reminds me of a curious vision of my head upon my bed, ' which, as it contains a moral, I shall,' after the manner of Mr. Barlow of happy memory, ' now proceed to relate.' To me, then, in my dream, as I sate smoking 1 Letters from John Chinaman. London, 1902 : R. Brimley Johnson, fourth impression, pp. 32 et seq. 44 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE in the Bazaar of Damascus, there appeared a man of venerable aspect whom I knew to be a con firmed story-teller of high repute. Therefore I arose straightway, and, greeting him with the courtesy due to his years, bade him be seated beside me. ' The day is long, my father,' said I, ' and the shade of this place, praise be to Allah, is pleasant. If it please thee, therefore, to amuse this Frankish son of a dog with a tale of the East, as none knoweth better than thyself how to do, it is well. And if not, it is well also. But, I pray thee, deny me not.' The patriarch, whose name was Ibrahim, stroked his beard, and, being flattered by my request, gravely answered in the following manner : — ' Allah truly is great, and it is wonderful that my lord, who has travelled over the face of the whole earth and whose learning is deeper than the sea, should deign to hearken to the idle speech of such a contemptible worm as thy servant. Nevertheless, as thou hast com manded, so, by the help of Allah, shall it surely be done. Hear, then, my lord, the " Tale of the Three Candidates," or how the elders of an ancient city decided in the matter Of the Choice of a Watchman. 'On the edge of the great desert of Eph-ar- Moar there stood the ancient City of Many OF VIGIL AND CHOICE OF A WATCHMAN 45 Moons. Now the whole land was enchanted by reason of a mist that ever hung thereupon; to wit, upon the city and upon the going down of the forest, and upon the great desert ; upon man also and upon beast there lay a mist so that nothing could be clearly seen or known by reason thereof. Yet the men of that place were nowise ware thereof, nor knew that there was any mist upon them ; for that the land had suffered this enchantment from olden time — yea, for the years of many generations. As it is written in the Song of the Spheres, " Alas for thee, O desert of Eph-ar-Moar, and for the wayfarers that pass over thee, and for them that pitch their tents here and there upon thy waste places ! Alas for the daughters of the City of Many Moons — that fair city! For it shall come to pass that a mist shall descend upon them, and obscurity shall be the portion of their eyelids and of the eyelids of their children ; yet none shall know of the calamity that hath come upon them save he that is wise.'' 'Now it fell on a day that the elders of the city, that sate in the gate thereof, would ap point a Watchman that he should stand day and night upon the wall of the city and look forth over the desert and bring tidings of all 46 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE that befell. Then there stood three young men and did obeisance before the elders of the city, and one of the elders said unto the first, " Who art thou, my son, and what is thy request?" And the young man answered and said in a loud voice, " I am Kokh SMr, the son of Dogmah, the scribe, and my father is a cantankerous man and a learned, of the sons of the priesthood. I pray you, therefore, make me Watchman of the city." And the elders answered and said, " Tell us, then; hast thou skill in watching? What hast thou done?" Then answered Kokh Shur boldly and said, "Many days have I journeyed over the desert, to the east and to the west and to the north and to the south ; and I know the green places thereof and the wells thereof, the rocks also and the place of tombs and of the couching of lions. Moreover, I know the times of the passage of the caravans, each one according to his season. With men also of strange speech have I spoken, and I can dis cern afar off between one man and another in his going; yea, nought happeneth in the city or in the desert that I wot not of it ; where fore, I pray you, make me Watchman of the city!" 'Then they that stood by, hearing the young man speak boldly and seeing that he was a OF VIGIL AND CHOICE OF A WATCHMAN 47 forward youth, said among themselves, " Lo ! this young man hath wondrous knowledge, and doubtless he will find favour in the eyes of the elders. Lo! he is the son of Dogmah, the scribe, a cantankerous man, but a learned." But the elders of the city answered Kokh Shur and said, " Young man, thou hast answered well for thyself, and if thou canst watch as well as thou canst talk, it were most meet to grant thee the desire of thine heart. Yet, whereas there may be others than thou, go thy way and come again at such an hour and we shall speak with thee again." And Kokh Shur answered and said, " Lo ! I know well that ye will find none other man equal unto me in knowledge or in clearness of eyesight. Nevertheless, I shall go away and come again as ye have said"; and he went his way. 'Then stood forth one surnamed Agnostikos, and he was older than Kokh Shur, more humble- minded also, and withal an honest youth and a comely; and he hkewise did obeisance unto the elders. And the elders said unto him, "What is thy name and what is thy father's name, and what is thy request?" For in the City of Many Moons it behoved any man who sought office therein not only that he should be competent to fulfil the same, but that he 48 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE should have a presentable father. Therefore said they unto the young man, "Who is thy father ? " Then answered the young man, " Men call me Agnostikos, but in truth who my father was I wot not certainly. Some say I am the son of one, Adam, long dead; others that my father was of the race of the Pithecoids, and these show many proofs thereof. But, howso that may be, make me, I pray you, Watchman of the city." Then spake the elders among themselves, and said that it seemed nowise likely that a fatherless man would make a good Watchman. Nevertheless, because the youth was humble of seeming, whereas he was not ashamed to be thought of the kin of the Pithecoids — a family of low descent that of old had dwelt in trees and forests where no man was — it seemed good to the elders to inquire further of his knowledge and skill in watching. Therefore said they unto Agnostikos, " We would hear further of thy skill and what thou knowest concerning the desert and the city and the things that are therein. Speak for thyself, therefore, and show cause why thou shouldest be Watchman." But Agnostikos answered and said, "Nay, my masters, very ignorant am I of all the things whereof ye have spoken, and withal I am slow of speech. Ask me not, therefore, of OF VIGIL AND CHOICE OF A WATCHMAN 49 my knowledge; for lo! I have indeed been a Watchman from my youth up; yet know I for certain but one thing only." ' Then answered one of the elders whose name was Terrib-ul-Phul, '' Lo ! this is a strange thing that thou sayest. Thou hast been long a Watch man, and knowest but one thing only. What is this that thou sayest ? " Then said Agnostikos, " Yea, of a truth, one thing only have I found by much searching, to wit, that none knoweth anything certainly in the City of Many Moons. For, if I look to the north or to the south or to the east or to the west, I find a magical mist that lieth upon the city and upon the desert, so that no man can see aught truly as it is in very deed, but only the appearances of things." Then they that stood by laughed, say ing that this fellow was surely a madman, and no fit Watchman for so great a city. The elders also looked doubtfully one upon another, and some said that this was strange doctrine; others that the son of Dogmah seemed to have greater skill than this youth, who knew not so much as who was his own father. But the wisest of the elders said that the words of the young man were words of wisdom and truth, whereas of old time a mist of enchantment had indeed fallen upon the land as their fathers had told 50 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE them. Wherefore they bade the young man, even Agnostikos, to stand aside until they should know the uttermost of the matter. ' Then came the third of the young men, and he also did obeisance before the elders, and they asked of him his name and the name of his father, and the nature of his behest. And the young man answered and said, "My name is Discipulus, and I also am of the generation of the Pithecoids. Are not we all the sons of Theos, the overlord of the land ? Some of my brethren are in the city; other some are in the desert; and some are afar off, trading in the streets of the cities that are beyond the desert. I pray you, make me the Watchman ? " Then said the elders, " Hast thou heard the young men, even Kokh Shur, the son of Dogmah, and Agnostikos who knoweth not his father's beard ? Tell us, therefore, art thou a better Watchman than they?" Now, when the elders had made an end of speaking, Discipulus answered and said, " Yea, my masters, I have heard them both. Kokh Shur I like not, albeit he spake well and boldly ; nor have I found hitherto that he seeth best that talketh most and loudest. Agnostikos, my brother, is a good man, and spake that which was true ; for in truth the whole land lieth under a mist of enchantment, as OF VIGIL AND CHOICE OF A WATCHMAN 51 it is written in the Song of the Spheres; and what men see from the walls of the city is but the appearance of things. Yet methinks our overlord will in the fulness of time cause this veil to be taken from the face of the city and from the face of the desert, and all men will see clearly. In the meanwhile I would that ye should build a watch-tower higher than the common, that the top of it may rise above the mist. Peradventure that which is in very deed may thereby become visible to the eye of the Watchman, and not that only which appears to be. Wherefore, go to ; let us no longer be content with our ignorance, but strive after true knowledge and wisdom." 'Now Discipulus was a very goodly youth, of a beautiful countenance, and the elders looking upon him loved him, and thought that his words were as the words of an angel. Yet, be cause he bade them do an hard thing, to wit, to build a tower of so great a height, they that stood by murmured against him, saying that all their Watchmen hitherto had been content to look forth from the walls of the city. Never theless the wisest among the elders would have made choice of Discipulus to be the Watchman ; yet were they overborne by the murmuring of them that stood by. 52 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE 'And the same day they chose Kokh Shur, the son of Dogmah, the scribe, and appointed him to be Watchman over the city. Nor hath it been told me that any great good or any great ill hath happened thereby. Allah alone is great. Hath not one of your own prophets truly said, "With stupidity and a sound diges tion man may front much " ? ' Then I awoke, and behold the thing seemed to me to be a parable concerning Vigil, and I understood the interpretation thereof. IV OF THE TYRANNY OF NAMES ' What are your Axioms, and Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, words . . . Be not the slave of Words.' Sartor Sesartus. What is thy name? Naturally enough, that is the first question that occurs to most people when, as will sometimes happen, the new man appears. The new musician, the new philosopher, the new artist, the new writer has entered our society. We wish at once to classify him, to ticket him, and so sort him away among our memories for convenient future reference. It is not enough that a servant announces him^as Mr. Anthropos ; we must needs know whether he is a Wagnerian or a Tone -poet; a Kantian or a Hegelian ; a Pre-Raphaelite or an Impressionist ; a Realist or a Romancer. Scanty justice is like to be done to the new man at this rate ; for who that ever was a man at all wrote his own express label, or was adequately 'classified' even by his dearest friend ? Yet it is felt almost as a griev- 53 54 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE ance in our superficial society, if, at his first appearance, the bold adventurer does not readily lend himself to classification. He must, it is argued, be comparable to something or some body. He must belong to a school or party or sect. If (by some unreasonable twist) he seems absolutely unattached, then he surely approxi mates to the standpoint of This personage, or recalls the attitude of That. And so we rummage in the store -closets of memory until we have ' placed ' our adventurer in such company as he, belike, would hold of small account, and thereby we give him his name. Now, it is to be observed that the notable thing about a man worthy of any consideration is not his resemblance to other men, but that wherein he differs from other men. The essence of the individual is his individuality. On first acquaintance we are each to each an ' unknown quantity.' But presently what char acter we have will reveal itself, and we shall stand declared. Half the joy of hving in society is the discovery of individuality. No voyage of exploration is more enchanting, no triumph of discovery greater than that which brings us into contact with a new personality. Nothing, in a world of mystery, is so mysterious or so moving as the disclosure of a new person. I am un- OF THE TYRANNY OF NAMES 55 worthy of companionship if I bracket my friend even with Plato or Jesus. It is a sort of insult to the individuality of these noble personages; but it is no less an insult to the manliness of my friend. Why must he be labelled Platonist or Christian ? Why cannot he stand on his own feet? I cannot describe him adequately to you by any conglomeration of epithets. He is a man. He is himself. That is the distinctive thing about him. If you would discover partially his true character, as I have done, you must know him as I do. Every individual worth knowing stands alone. There is that about him which silently distinguishes him from the rest, somewhat as a gentleman is distinguished from the common crowd. And it is just this note of distinction — this rare, elusive, personal character — that makes him interesting, worthy of all attention and worship. The most modest of worshipful men has a lordly element in him — an indefinable finality that shuts him off from all others and announces him a separate Person. • Biography, therefore, is upon the whole a rather hopeless art. Biographies at the best are conglomerations of episodes and epithets, more or less skilfully selected. And what a gap there is between a character and a conglomeration of episodes and epithets ! 56 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE Our first quarrel with names, therefore, is that they are always inadequate. The Atheist is much more than an atheist, the Artist is also a thinker, a dreamer, a father, a brother, a borrower, a purchaser, a bargainer, a lover, and how much more ? Our common names, Socialist, Philanthropist, and so on, are altogether too convenient, and have a positively dangerous tendency to conceal individuality, and by conse quence to make us think lightly of individuality. Now the world does not want more Platonists or Christians. It wants more men. Men of the same high courage, the same calm outlook as Plato and Jesus, who called themselves by no names ; whom it was impossible to classify ; who were content to live nobly their own life in their own new way. Why are we all so prone, so conformist ? Come, brothers ; rise and walk erect. We are on a high and difficult pilgrimage, of which the end is God. The world is wide and beautiful, and there is much for each of us to explore, much to endeavour, much to attain. Each, then, to his several journey, grasping his goodly staff, until the end of the day. Then, howsoever our wayfaring may have sped, we shall have 'made a name for ourselves.' Not such a name, to be sure, as shall go resounding down the ages. That may or may not be. But, OF THE TYRANNY OF NAMES 57 whether we have lived truly or falsely, our name — not our unimportant common name, as Social ist, Christian, Evolutionist, and the like — but our most important 'proper' name — will assuredly reward us in the end of the day. What each of us, through much hard pilgriming and the grace of God, hath made of himself, that and no other shall he stand declared and denominated in the end of the day. God has adjectives for all characters, and the names He gives will be accurate portraits. As for man, his days are as grass, and his Names the most shadowy ap proximations. But another insidious peril links in the name- givings and classifications of modern society, to wit ; first, that men — not being things — may very well be labelled this or that at one moment, and yet be wholly misfitted by such a description at the next. Even a caterpillar may turn into a butterfly, and require a new name, and what may not a man turn into ? We say of our friend, He is a good man ; but he is not always good. He is wise, noble, generous ; but he is not always so. We say of our enemy, He is a bad lot, a mean, contemptible blockhead. Yet he is not always bad or mean or contemptible; on the contrary, there are some people in the world, you may be sure, who know him for something quite 58 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE otherwise than bad and mean; who have seen him in a different light, and love and respect him. Take heed, therefore, lest calling him fool and blockhead you pass judgment upon yourself. There are other standards of wisdom than your standard. The man's outer life may have failed to reach the worldly - wise level of the Book of Proverbs, but his inner life may have soared as high as the Beatitudes of Jesus, and his righteousness • be greater than the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees. We had better look carefully to our weights and measures, were it only for this, that our fellows will inevitably apply to us the same standard that we are wont to judge our neighbours by. ' With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.' But secondly, not only do men change, subtly but surely, from day to day ; but the names and classifications of yesterday will not do for to day. What philosophers call the content of names — such as Liberal and Conservative, Repubhcan and Democrat, Sociahst, Christian, Imperialist — is ever changing. The names are loose, in definite, fluid. Nothing could be more loose and indefinite; and yet — and herein lies the OF THE TYRANNY OF NAMES 59 peril of such classification — they are habitually used as if they were definite, rigid, and absolute. Upon superficial persons, therefore, who have never accustomed themselves to go to the root of matters, but think names of more account than ideas, they often exercise despotic influence. I have known an able preacher, simply because he was commonly known as a Unitarian, rejected with horror in a district where Unitarianism was unfashionable, while another, who was well known to be at one with him in doctrine, but called himself an Independent, found much favour. And so the like fine play upon the word Catholic 1 has accompanied much bloodshed and cruelty. Perhaps there is no name-word which has led to more misunderstanding, bitterness, wrath, clamour, and evil -speaking than Christianity, and it may very well serve as a final and more ample illustration of the foolish tyranny of names. In the first place, it is, as we have seen, a totally inadequate name, in that, whatever be the mean ing attached to it, a man or woman who is named Christian is certainly much more or much less than Christian, and the essential and important 1 Surely Roman Catholicism is as grotesque a contradictory as man's name -giving proclivity has yet produced. One might as well say Cumberland Cosmopolitanism, or Aberdeen Universalism. 60 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE thing about him or her is his or her individual quality or personal note, and not his or her Christianity. In the second place, no name- word of our time is more indefinite. Probably among the many millions who profess and call themselves Chris tians, not ten persons, if you gave them a sheet of notepaper and a pencil, would write down an identical statement of what, in their opinion, the word means. And if one were to take the trouble of collating the definitions of past centuries, the divergence of view as to the content of the word would be still more astounding. That, notwith standing all this vagueness, it should have so long remained a test word and shibboleth, is a striking proof of the dense conservatism of the average man. But signs are multiplying that intelhgent persons at least are in revolt ; that the density grows less and less opaque. It is beginning to be generally seen that what Christianity meant at Antioch about 50 a.d. is certainly not what it meant in Rome about 1500, or in Worms about 1600, or in London about 1900. What Christian ity means in Westminster Abbey is not quite what it means in Spurgeon's Tabernacle or the City Temple. The Christianity of a Welsh Methodist, an Irish Catholic, a Highland Seces sionist, and a Midland Quaker of the old School OF THE TYRANNY OF NAMES 61 are not identical, but very different indeed. Each oracle claims to be Christian, and, so far as the plain man can see, with equally great or equally little right. No one can give us an authoritative definition. Tolstoi, Martineau, D. L. Moody, New man, Kingsley, and Mrs. Eddy are among the most effective preachers of the last few decades. Yet how various their message, how different their audience, how divergent their type of mind ! It were hardly an exaggeration to say that they have had nothing in common save this, that each professed and called himself a Christian. But no two of them could have agreed upon a definition of Christianity. On the contrary, each of them has in fact not only given but made it the busi ness of a lifetime to give to the world a definition and exposition of Christianity differing in its fundamental details from those propounded by all the others ! In these circumstances, the question is being asked with ever-increasing frequency by the kind of people who formerly would without hesitation have joined churches and called themselves Christians, whether, after all, the name is of such paramount importance, whether, in short, it is not on the whole honester to do as the late Professor Huxley did, and subscribe oneself neither Christian nor anti-Christian, but extra- 62 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE Christian, i.e. outside the whole dubious and tortuous business. Outside, as inside, it would seem possible to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.1 This may or may not be Christianity, but it is admittedly true Religion. It will certainly be retorted that the differences that distinguish Christians of various types have been grossly exaggerated and too little emphasis laid upon the broad principles that bind them together in a general concordance. It may be so, but the difficulty is to find anywhere an agree ment even upon general principles. To a dispas sionate and careful observer, however, one thing does seem plain, that within the last half century Christianity has been altering its centre of gravity. Regarded as a combine comprehending many ' groups,' it has been upon the whole sifting and rearranging its groups. Whereas, hitherto, there had been a preponderance of educated opinion in favour of the Fall of Man, Atonement by the Blood of Christ, and Eternal Damnation being re garded as fundamental, there is now, one gathers, a preponderance of educated opinion in favour of the Ascent of Man, the ethical teaching of Jesus, and the Eternal Hope being regarded as the im portant things. All the old groups, and many 1 Micah vi. 8. OF THE TYRANNY OF NAMES 63 new ones, are still in the combine, but it does seem that their relative importance is steadily altering in this direction. The change will be welcomed or deplored according to the group to which the observer belongs, but the fact will hardly be denied even by those who find themselves in the less important groups. Now, these two facts — to wit, first, that the term Christianity is loose, fluid, and ambiguous, and second, that even if it be held to have a more or less definite centre of gravity, that centre of gravity is constantly changing, and has observ ably changed within the last fifty years — are, one would think, conclusive against making the term a password into any sort of society. Yet how many qualified teachers of youth, to take but one example, are still pointedly asked by their em ployers, ' Are you a Christian ? ' or ' What is your church connection ? ' and know well that upon their answer to these foolish and irrelevant questions depends their employment ! The gradual change which has come over men's minds with regard to the fundamentals of Chris tianity has been due to many causes, prominent among which have been two, viz. men's widen ing knowledge of the outer world and their growing desire for honest investigation in the theological sphere. 64 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE Theology was, naturally enough, the last domain into which scientific criticism was permitted to intrude, but its comparatively recent intrusion has already been effectual to a surprising degree, and, in so far as Christianity stands for theology, the result has been, on the whole, disturbing, not to say disastrous. If, indeed, one may judge from utterances of modern men like Dean Farrar, Canon Hensley Henson, Bishop Gore, and Principal Fairbairn in England; Principal Caird and Professors A. B. Bruce, George Adam Smith, and Marcus Dods in Scotland, Christianity is very much less a theological and very much more an ethical term than it was before Carlyle wrote his Sartor and Darwin his Origin of Species. If, however, it be contended that one must take as the true expression of Christianity the official documents of the churches, then one might choose as perhaps the most concise and simple of these documents the so-called Apostles' Creed, which is officially authoritative in the Roman and Anglican communions, and would be, I suppose, officially accepted by most of the churches of the western world. One does hear of an increasing revolt against the further domination or even use of the Athanasian Creed ; but the Apostles' Creed is still so unweariedly murmured in season and out of season, that the inference to its vahdity OF THE TYRANNY OF NAMES 65 as the essence of ' Christianity ' seems to be more than justified. Here, therefore, follows the Creed commonly called the Apostles' Creed : — J ' I believe in God the Father Almighty; Maker of heaven and earth ; And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary, Suffered under Pontius Pilate, Was crucified, dead, and buried, He descended into hell ; The third day He rose again from the dead, He ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty ; From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. ' I believe in the Holy Ghost ; The holy Catholick Church ; The Communion of Saints ; The Forgiveness of Sins_ ; The Resurrection of the body ; And the life everlasting. Amen.' Of the untold millions of devout persons who have murmured and re-murmured these remark able sentences innumerable millions of times, one wonders how many have ever at any time pulled themselves up, saying, 'Now, do I?' One feels perfectly certain that the real sense of at least half the murmurers is no other than this : — ' I believe in murmuring what the Prayer Book bids me murmur, and in genuflecting when every body else genuflects. ' I believe my father and mother of blessed 1 It seems to be established that none of the Apostles had any hand in its composition, and that its terms were not finally adjusted before 600 a.d. E 66 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE memory all their lives murmured these very words, And my grandparents before them in like manner, And that my children will do the same when I am gone. ' And my grandchildren in the like manner after them. I hope they will. Amen.' At all events, short and simple as this wonder ful Creed is when compared with many official documents of ecclesiastical origin, it is quite safe to say that it is not now the real or working creed of one Christian in a thousand. A man's real or working creed consists of the things which seem to him, in his heart of hearts, to matter. That many millions would still seriously protest their adherence to the Apostles' Creed is true but insignificant when their hfe and conversation prove that their real creed is something totally diverse. You believe that Jesus was born of a virgin ? Well, many devout and simple persons agree with you. But what is the practical use of the belief to you or them ? Does it make you an honester man of business ? Does it make you a kinder master ? Does it make you a more scrupulously faithful servant ? Does it make you a more lov ing "friend ? Does it in the slightest degree affect your joyous, filial intercourse with the good God ? It does not. It has no sort of relation to any of these things. And these are the things that matter. OF THE TYRANNY OF NAMES 67 You believe in the resurrection of the body ? Well, does your belief help you to keep your body clean and pure and wholesome ? Does it in the faintest degree strengthen your stern control of the bodily cravings and passions that sometimes threaten to master you ? It has not and cannot have any such result. Yet these are the things that matter. What becomes of the body after death is quite insignificant compared with now it is managed during life. The same grave sentence must be passed upon most of the propositions in this astonishing creed. The things to which our murmuring assent is solemnly invited — be they facts or fictions — are for the most part things that do not matter ! The things I believe in my heart of hearts, the things I live for and work for and dream of day by day — these are my real creed ; these are the things that matter. If they are beautiful things, it is well with me. If they are ugly things, I am an unworthy son of my Father, fit only for the husks that the swine do eat. But at least I may avoid the solemn pretence of ' saying after ' some brainless curate, as the confession of my faith, an antiquated series of propositions which — whether they are false or true — are not the real or working creed of one Christian in a thousand. So much it was necessary to say in defence of 68 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE nameless manhood; in defiance of the Tyranny of Names. No name is as yet more respectable than ' Christian,' or more coveted by the millions that do not think. Nevertheless it is confessedly inadequate, ambiguous, misleading in a high degree. How then? Shall we still use it as a password ? ShaU we still implicitly or explicitly profess and call ourselves Christians? Were it not a thousand times better to say, ' I am, by the choice of my good parents (or otherwise, as the case may be), John Smith ; by the wiU of AUah, a man. I believe in riches and place and power; I believe in the pleasures of the table and in all forms of sensual indulgence that are respectable, and do not interfere with my other ambitions; I do not know what to believe in matters of theology, nor do I care a jot.' That is the real or working creed of a very con siderable proportion of those who at present have the impudence to call themselves Christians. It would obviously tend to clearness of thought if they dropped the name. Then there are others — X, for example — whose creed runs thus : — ' I believe in love, in patience, in self-control, in knowledge. Not as though I had already attained ; far from it. But, deep in my heart of hearts — since my father gave me the benediction of his example, and my mother, the OF THE TYRANNY OF NAMES 69 beautiful vision of her saintlihood — I have wished for nothing so much as these things. And I beheve in them and in everything that makes for them. What to believe in matters of theology, I neither know nor care.' That is the real or working creed of many a silent man and woman inside and outside the Christian churches. Already you will find a considerable number outside, and, unless the churches quickly drop Apostles' Creeds, vest ments, controversies, and other more or less hoary futilities, there wiU presently be found a greater and greater number of eccirct-Christians. Socrates was content to be known as Socrates ; Jesus, as Jesus. Both were assuredly in their degree sons of God, and many a man who cannot repeat the so-called Christian Creed can pray the prayer that Socrates prayed on that warm sum mer afternoon under the plane-tree by the banks of the Ilissus : — ' O beloved God of the forests and flocks, and all ye divinities of this place, grant me to become beautiful in the inner man, and that whatever outward things I have may be at peace with those within. May I deem the wise man rich, and may I have so much wealth and so much only as a good man can manage and enjoy ! Do we need anything else, Phsedrus ? For myself, I have prayed enough.' OF CRITICISM ' The Inquirie of Truth, which is the Love-making or Wooing of it ; The Knowledge of Truth, which is the Presence of it ; and the Beleefe of Truth, which is the Enioying of it ; is the Soveraigne Good of humane Nature.' — Bacon. The laws which regulate the exercise of criticism have never been comprehensively enunciated. Critics abound, and criticism is universal; but a Science of Criticism is not even yet in its infancy, and so vast, and, at the same time, so elusive and subtle is the nature of the theme, that one cannot wonder at the fact. On the other hand, it is of so much importance that the critical spirit should be properly cultivated that it is clearly worth our while to examine for a moment some of the general principles which underlie all criticism, whether of men and manners, or literature or art. In such an attempt, it may not be ir relevant, perhaps, to begin with a brief inquiry as to the family history of the word itself. 'Criticism' is one of a large group of words 70 OF CRITICISM 71 having a common origin in a Sanskrit root-word KRI, which means 'to pour out.' In its Greek derivatives, KRI comes to signify 'to divide,' or ' separate' or ' distinguish.' A judge, i.e. the man who par excellence divides or distinguishes be tween one and another, was in Greece called the Krites, and the word 'crisis' meaning first a separation or judgment, and then a parting of the ways, and ' criterion,' a test, by which to dis tinguish or separate between one thing and another, are closely related to Krites. In Latin, another daughter of Sanskrit, the same root idea reappears, and has given us the words ' discern,' to see things apart or clearly as a judge does (or ought to), its noun-brother 'discretion,' and its adjective-sister 'discreet.' 'Decreet' or 'decree,' judgment or sentence, and its old verb, ' decern,' to give judgment, still in everyday use in the Scots law courts, preserve the same notion, while 'crime,' 'incriminate,' 'recriminate,' and 'disr criminate,' and, no doubt, many others, are perhaps rather more pervaded with the allied notion of separation or division. 'Critical' and 'criticism' are clearly derived from the Greek Krites or judge, and so the first and root meaning of Criticism is judgment, dis crimination, discernment. This root meaning it has never lost. Criticism is still judgment — the 72 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE judgment we pass on the books we read, the pictures we see, the music, the oratory we hear, the men we meet. It is the analysis of character, of motive, of life, the sentence we pronounce a hundred times a day on ourselves and others. Now there is a threefold duty which pertains to every judge in every land. First, he ought to know the law; Second, he ought to know the facts of the particular case before him ; and Third, he ought to apply the law to the facts. In general, the judge has the further power, where necessary, to enforce the execution of his decree, but this power is no part of his strictly judicial function. The function of all criticism resembles, and indeed is almost identical with, this threefold judicial function. Every judge on the civil or criminal bench is a critic, the outlook and scope of whose criticism is limited on the one hand by the particular laws which constitute the foundation of his judgments, and on the other by the particular cases which arise for their application. And just as every judge is a critic in a limited way, so every critic of art, or music, or books, or men, or history, is, each in his own sphere, a judge. In our civil tribunals, questions of civil right are debated and decided by reference to the OF CRITICISM 73 standard of civil right embodied in our statute- book. In our criminal tribunals, questions of moral rectitude are decided with reference to the standard of right and wrong embodied in our criminal code. And so in the various spheres of criticism, questions of art and music, of litera ture and life, are, or at least ought to be, debated, and decided by reference to the laws which obtain in these several spheres. What makes a true critique more difficult of at tainment than a just sentence or decree is that, in place of an approximately strict and definite code of laws, the critic must perforce accommodate himself to the looseness of variable standards, the subtlety of fluctuating methods. Take the sphere of Art, for instance. Who can lay down a law by reference to which every picture may be accur ately pronounced good or bad? Where is the manual of procedure by which you could test the artist's technique or manner ? Where is the pain fully nice and laboriously exhaustive statute-book by which each artistic product is to be judged ? To what dictionary of critical decisions can we appeal if we would finally settle the merits of a Turner or a Corot or a MUlet ? There is but one answer to these questions, and yet we aU flatter ourselves that we know a good picture when we see it ! It puzzles us at first that there should be 74 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE so many schools of criticism, and that they should differ so evidently. We feel that there must be a code, a principle, a law, could we but find it. And if, in the clash of tongues and the conflict of criticisms, we are sometimes tempted to despair of reaching the truth, it is well to keep ever in mind that the highest things are always hidden. Nature does not expose her treasures on the sur face, but makes them difficult of access. The higher we rise in the scale of being, the more deeply we penetrate Nature's misty caverns, the more daringly we explore the secrets of life and of death, of eternity and infinity, so much the more elusive and difficult becomes our quest. And so it is that laws and principles — our trusty guiding stars as we voyaged among the so-called ' ' exact sciences ' — seem to fail us here, and, in their place, flit apparently the mere phantoms and shadows of laws and principles. Of these we can only predict that presently they will change their cloudy shapes or disappear altogether. Take, for instance, the sphere of ethics. We say that there seems to be no absolute good. What was accounted good in the childhood of the world is not good for us, and much that our fathers revered is foolishness to us. The greatest teachers of the world have, in point of fact, been always rebels — men at war with the principles of OF CRITICISM 75 the past, whose appearance on the scene has been, as it were, the signal to their blinder brethren that the phantoms and shadows after which they have hitherto groped are now about to change their shape, or have already done so. The great critics are, as often as not, great prophets, herald ing the advent of a new day when the old criteria shall be passed away, and all things become new. But it is worth our while to observe that, even in the comparatively exact sciences, there is a continual fluctuation of standards. I suppose the science of law may be called a comparatively exact science. We have there at least all the clearness derivable from an exact and compre hensive code of statutes, and the further ad vantage of voluminous reports in which are recorded the interpretation of these statutes in hundreds of thousands of particular cases. Yet, every year, there will arise ten thousand entirely new cases, each with its peculiar -features, clamouring for new interpretations ; and not only so, but at any moment the most valuable text book may be rendered partly or wholly useless by the passing of a new statute. The case is precisely similar in Medicine. It is now a thoughtless proverb that 'doctors differ,' for, in the modern exactitude of knowledge, any given disease would probably be diagnosed and 76 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE treated in the same way by ninety-nine out of any hundred competent doctors. On the other hand, the pharmacopoeia is altered with each new dis covery, and the fashions of treatment vary from year to year. So that a true criticism in the higher worlds of taste and letters and manners may not be so im possible as it seems. If, amid the ever-changing principles of legal science, sound judgments are framed and pronounced; and, if the laws of medical science, made only to be broken, admit, nevertheless, of almost infallible diagnoses and accurate treatment, we may well believe that, however the canons of taste may vary in suc cessive epochs, and however widely the rules of good hving may differ with the race, the climate, or the age, a criticism of taste or of manners sound for the time at least, may be not only possible but useful. Nay, further, as behind the continual flux of legislation and medical theory lie eternal principles of justice and eternal laws of health, we may conclude that there are deeper canons of taste and more abiding laws of life than are visible on the surface ; that these canons and laws may some day be recognised, and that, there fore, a science of absolutely sound criticism may yet 'in the progress of the suns' come to be within our reach. OF CRITICISM 77 For criticism, as has been said, is only possible where there are laws or principles or canons, be fore which the thing criticised may, as it were, be arraigned, and by which it is to be judged. Lord Karnes, who, in his celebrated book on The Elements of Criticism, published in 1771, somewhat loosely and variously defined criticism as ' a philosophical inquiry into the principles of the fine arts,' ' a thorough acquaintance with the prmciples of the fine arts,' and again, ' delicacy of taste,' pauses for a moment to answer the question just raised; but almost the only encouragement he offers to the thinker despairing amid the Babel of diverse critics is the somewhat feeble and in consequent reflection that the best critics always think alike. Stated thus baldly, Karnes's dogma seems too wide a generalization to be contro verted, but too vague to be of any use. There are in fact two ways in which criticism may be regarded. We may regard it in its rela tive aspect, and say that its function is to judge or estimate the worth of men and things by reference to the best current standard of value ; or we may regard it in its ultimate or absolute aspect, and say that its function is to appreciate the worth of men and things by reference to the ideally best standard of value. I. Now, Criticism in the former sense is clearly 78 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE a necessary, and, indeed, quite inevitable, human tendency, but, in attempting to ascertain what is the best current standard of value in any sphere of criticism, we are met at the outset by the apparent paradox that, as the standard must be largely subjective, and vary with each critic, it follows that every critic and every criticism is in turn criticizable by every other. Even were we forced to admit, however, that there is no fixed objective standard of worth, we are not compelled to conclude that criticism is in itself an idle pursuit, or that critics are one and all entirely superfluous and unprofitable gentlemen! To do so would, I am afraid, be to condemn ourselves en bloc. We are all critics of a kind, and can scarcely be otherwise. If we had been born into absolute solitude, we might not require to learn the art of criticism ; but, to live a wholesome life, we must needs have society, and move and act in the midst of our fellows. No one of us liveth to himself. We influence those around us and are influenced by them in a thousand subtle ways. The man in whom the faculty of criticism is dormant cannot live wisely. He will either sub ordinate his own personality and swim with the tyrannical stream of fashion and convention, or he will obtrude his individuality at the wrong time, and offend when he ought to give way. A OF CRITICISM 79 sound criticism of hfe can alone guide us to that weU-mannered independence, that well-balanced individualism that can estimate men and affairs in their due proportion ; that can distinguish be tween the essential and the non-essential; that knows when one may bend without loss of self- respect, and that, on the other hand, can rise in an emergency to the heroic pitch of individualism, and defy a fashion that is foolish, or scorn a con ventionality that is base. Lord Karnes's remark in defence of the criticism he proposes in the sphere of belles lettres is really apphcable to all criticism. 'Nor ought it,' he says, 'to be overlooked that the reasonings em ployed in the fine arts are of the same kind with those which regulate our conduct. Mathematical and metaphysical reasonings have no tendency to improve our knowledge of man, nor are they applicable to the common affairs of life; but a just taste of the fine arts, derived from rational principles, furnishes elegant subjects for con versation, and prepares us for acting in the social state with elegance and dignity' (Introd., 11th ed., p. xiii). In short, in fulfilling its main function, criti cism serves many ends of the utmost utility, and has a most important bearing on life and character. It is the work of criticism to detect 80 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE and expose faUacies and lies, to distinguish between form and substance, to evolve general laws from a mass of phenomena. Not the least important part of her work is reflex and educative. The exercise of criticism educates the critic. The man whose mind stays always at home is only half educated. He ought to look abroad and judge. The man who looks abroad and stands upon his watch-tower and judges freely of aU matters builds himself into a man. And while we recognize that criticism educates the critic, we need not forget that the converse is true. All things interact. It is true that the practice of criticism makes men of us : it is equally true that only good men can criticize truly. Not a bad model for us all is the criticism you get from a schoolboy — free and bold, frank in admiration, fearless in condemnation. The man with ' mud at the bottom of his eye,' as Emerson phrased it, cannot judge truly. The man with the clear eye can; and, though his judgment be contrary to the fashion of his day, fashion will inevitably come round to him by and by. The first and last duty of the critic is that he himself be true. If I am unworthy, I cannot be a judge. Burns, Browning, Bradlaugh, stand in native dignity and self-sufficiency at the OF CRITICISM 81 bar, and who am I that I should pass sentence on them, if I myself am concealed and crooked ? Their music or their manners condemn me if I am out of tune or contemptible. But, on the other hand, if I am erect and know myself true, the presence of Plato or Jesus or Shakespeare shaU not overawe me or confuse me: rather they shall greatly refresh and help me. Not the least part of the function of criticism is unconsciously reflex. It rebounds unawares upon the critic. In all the ways and byways of life, in all the churches and lecture-haUs, in all markets and picture-galleries, he who criticizes this or that, whether favourably or adversely, illuminates not solely, or indeed chiefly, the object of his criticism. He exposes most of all his own powers, the range of his own intellect, the warmth or the coldness of his own heart. When you pass judgment on a man, you pass judgment on yourself. If you criticize my actions, my motives, my appearance, my style, it is quite possible that you may throw some hght upon them. What is certain is that you will throw a great deal of light upon yourself Our criticism reveals us. If, for example, we compromise with evil, we are ourselves com promised. If, on the other hand, we are true critics, we shall know nothing of compromise. 82 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE He who always intuitively says of evil, ' It is evil,' and of good, ' It is good,' not only per forms the critical function rightly, but lays bare and patent his own rectitude. And the principle is by no means confined to the sphere of practical morals : it is of infinite apphcation. Your politician, your ecclesiastic, your shopboy, have different problems to solve; and, in their diverse methods of criticizing, they daily expose themselves to judgment in a hundred ways. If we, the critics, would escape the humilia tions of this quite inevitable result of criticism, we should criticize ourselves from time to time. No part of the function of criticism is more im portant than that which inverts the gaze of the wide-eyed critic upon himself. In Bunyan's day there was too much introspection. The analysis was often grotesque and morbid. To-day there is far too little. We live in crowds ; we travel all our days in express trains. We eat and sleep and work and meet our friends, and eat and sleep and work and meet our friends. But who among us goes aside to think ? We do not hke to think. When we do think, we think of everything and everybody rather than of ourselves. Yet self- criticism is one of the highest human achieve ments — that which most differentiates man from his animal brothers and still more clearly OF CRITICISM 83 from his vegetable cousins. It presupposes a very complex organism, a mental apparatus so fine and intricate that it can extract its own entity, hold up its own Ego for contemplation, and discuss its own personality. It was, in effect, this self-criticism that led Descartes to his faith in the reahty of Spirit. He found himself able to doubt the existence of the material world, able to doubt even his own existence. Yet the doubt was there and remained there. Even in the last analysis, when he doubted of his doubt, a shadowy doubt survived all cataclysms. The doubt remained behind; had to be accounted for. And, in the conclusion that, behind this obstinately permanent doubt, there was reality and personaUty, Descartes laid the basis of his phUosophy. Dubito ergo sum : ' I doubt, there fore I am.' Cogito ergo sum : ' I think, therefore I exist.' That was the well-known history of his triumph over a universal scepticism. But by self-criticism we do not alone intend a process so abstract and severely intellectual as the Cartesian Method. The phrase means more than self-consciousness. It means introspection — self-examination, if you will — reflection, the throwing of the mind back upon itself, as opposed to the mere observation of outward things. In a way, all our criticism involves introspection, be- 84 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE cause in judging of outward things we intuitively compare and contrast them with our inward ideals. But there is a more deliberate and voluntary retort upon ourselves which consti tutes our peculiar dignity, and which is par excellence called Self-Criticism. It is given to us in our silent moments to reflect upon our own acts, to call in question our own motives, to examine our own fluencies, to cross-question our own dogmas. And, within right limits, this self- criticism is most beneficial. It teaches us, or ought to teach us, tolerance. We revise our own standards in the light of experience. We modify our old decalogues with the charity born of failure. And this revision and modification we are the better able to extend to others that they have first meUowed and matured ourselves. II. We now come to deal briefly with that really higher, indeed, the only perfect criticism, which estimates men and books and things not with reference to the highest current, but from the absolutely highest standard — the standard of the universal, the infinite, the eternal, the spiritual. And, lest this may seem too grandUo- quently vague, I hasten to add that this perfect criticism is rather an Ideal than an Actual. But, as the inspired chisel of old Greek sculpture out lined human forms more utterly symmetrical OF CRITICISM 85 than one could find among a thousand athletes, so the function of criticism is not merely to work persistently from the highest standpoint available, but to rest satisfied with none but the very loftiest. I do not care whether the critic be a critic of books like Matthew Arnold, or a critic of life like Carlyle or Emerson, or a critic of painting like Ruskin, his true standpoint is the universal, his true function is to estimate the worth of the pictures or men or books he meets by their relation to spiritual and eternal realities. The practical question, how criticism may attain, or, at any rate, approximate the stand point of the universal, has, so far as literary criticism is concerned, been admirably discussed in Matthew Arnold's essay on The Function of Criticism at the Present Time. Briefly, the critic has here a negative duty and a positive. In the first place, he must avoid unworthy parti- zanships. His criticism should know nothing of the petty limitations of sect and creed and party. We all recognize, for example, that a criticism of, say, Romeo and Juliet written from the , stand point of a Reformed Presbyterian, or imbued with the peculiar sentiment of a Plymouth Brother, would necessarily be somewhat unsatisfactory; but every one does not recognize that a criticism of, let us suppose, political life in the nineteenth 86 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE century, written from the standpoint of a Con servative or of a Radical, must be an inadequate criticism in proportion as the conservative or radical bias of the critic is allowed to influence his conclusions. It would be too extreme to hold that a man attached to a particular party or sect is ipso facto incapable of just criticism in any direction, but it is true that, just in so far as he permits himself to be influenced by a parochial outlook or tinges his criticism with local colour, in so far, in short, as he is a partial or one sided critic, his criticism is imperfect criticism. In the second place — and in this lies the positive duty of the critic — he must know as much as possible, not only of his own subject, but of all cognate subjects. In our more respect able journals and reviews this fuU knowledge is demanded from every contributor. When you read a leading article in the Times on British relations with Abyssinia, you know that the writer has a practicaUy perfect acquaintance with Abyssinian history during the last fifty years. In the life of James Macdonell, Journalist, you find that the man whose anonymous pen, writing leaders for the Times, influenced European states men, included, among many wonderful accom plishments, an exact and intimate acquaintance with the enormous subject of modern French OF CRITICISM 87 politics. Knowledge, wide and accurate, is the basis of aU true criticism, and the wider the knowledge the better the criticism. A thorough knowledge of anything presupposes a sympathetic study of it, and in turn fosters new sympathy, and no one can criticize that which he has not studied with . the interest begotten of sympathy. It is true that ' he prayeth best, who loveth best all things, both great and small.' It is also true that he criticizeth best who loveth and knoweth most. It is a common but erroneous notion that width of sympathy is incompatible with strength of character, and, in fact, indicates flabbiness and want of backbone. The fallacy consists in iden tifying the empty toleration begotten of indiffer ence with the generous sympathy fostered by knowledge. This is the true solution of the seeming paradox that, as every critic has his own ideal, an absolute critique is unattainable. It is true that we can never ' eliminate the personal equation ' ; it is true that all criticism must reflect the personality of the critic; but, when our critic is a great man, great in knowledge, in warmth of heart and breadth of mind, the true function of criticism, viz. to estimate men and things by reference to an ideal standard of value, will be greatly served. 88 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE Viewed in its ideal aspect, criticism has a noble mission — to keep our life pure and sweet, to help us to shun the glittering aUurements of the pass ing day, to prove all things, and to hold fast that which is good. Part of its high office is to ex amine the dusty corners of our current theologies, to pour its searchlight radiance on the cobwebs of our current philosophies, to make a pitiless ex posure of all traditional fallacies and insincerities which arrogate to themselves the pretension of infallibility. Nor is its function the less noble when it concerns itself with art and letters — those worlds in which our own is reproduced. The ideal criticism has the lofty task of reminding all artists and writers of prose and poetry that their true office is not only to reproduce our common life, but, as has been weU said, ' to re produce our common life replete with a spiritual meaning and a moral intensity often lost sight of and obscured ' (Principal John Caird : Sermon on Religion and Art). The ideal criticism presupposes more than even wide knowledge and wide sympathy. It presup poses that clear, calm vision of things unseen by the crowd, that prophetic insight into the deep things of the universe which is not given to the man of affairs, nor even imagined by him, which comes now and then to the soul of a great musi- OF CRITICISM 89 cian soaring on the lofty heights of some sublime harmony, and now and then to the soul of a great poet as he stands alone upon the Alpine peak of some supreme revelation, and trembles to tell the things which he has seen to the commonplace world below. It is true that the perfect critic has not yet arrived, that the ideal of criticism is stiU un realized, but it is surely also true that the more nearly the critics approach the standpoint of the universal, the more loyally they persist in view ing life from the watch-tower of the eternal, the more perfectly they wUl be able to perform the function of criticism. VI OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM 'And not by Eastern windows only, When daylight comes, comes in the light. In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly ; But Westward, look ! the land is bright. ' A.. H. Clough. ' We consider Bibles and religions divine — I do not say they are not divine, I say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still ; It is not they who give the life, it is you who give the life. ' Walt Whitman. One of the departments of critical science in which, within recent years, useful and effective work has been done is that relating to our know ledge of the Bible. It is hardly too much to say that within the last half-century a revolution has been wrought in the way in which educated men look at the Bible. In our fathers' day it was a thing apart — a Book so peculiarly sacred that criticism, however rational, of its history and structure was not to be thought of. To them the scriptures or writings collected under the names OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM 91 Old Testament and New Testament were in very truth the Word of God, whose authority depended not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God. To them the whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary to man's salvation, faith, and life were to be found therein. To apply to the Bible, therefore, the critical method was at first sight hke the application to a venerable oak of the axe of a reckless Vandal. On reconsideration, however, it became clear that, so far as concerned the Bible, these fears were imaginary. Intelligent criticism, as we have seen, never has any other result than to deepen our veneration for all beautiful and noble things. On the other hand, it is the sworn enemy of Traditionalism, however old and respectable the tradition may be. If the traditional view of the Bible, inculcated by the churches and their creeds, is found to be narrow and false, it is the business of criticism to expose the churches and the creeds, and to clear the ground for a larger and truer interpretation. Clearing the ground is often sorry work, especi ally when, to repeat our metaphor, it involves the destruction of ancient and fair trees. But if a noble House is to be built, and merry children reared therein, we think it well that even the virgin forest should bow. These old trees are akin 92 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE to us in more ways than one. We came from afar and they sheltered us in the time of our youth, and our ancestry and theirs met and parted in the days of old. Yet, because we are higher than they and our noble House must needs be builded, they must go. If, moreover, we should find that our fair trees bear poisoned fruit that may deal mischief among our merry bairns, we shall grasp our axe with sterner hand, and set out the more relentlessly to clear the ground. Now, ancient and respectable as are the churches and creeds, and incalculable as their influence for good has been, it is possible to forget that they have too often been cumberers of the ground and obstacles to progress in the intellectual sphere. We hear so much of the good they have done — and indeed see it for ourselves — that the incalcul able evil they have done is often entirely for gotten. He who runs may read their indictment in the pages of Mr. Lecky's History of Rational ism, in the late Mr. Cotter Morison's Service of Man, and in other chronicles. There have, in fact, been no worthier saints, no sturdier martyrs in the churches than the saints and martyrs of science whose blood the Church has spilled in the name of God. In these days, the churches do not spill the blood of those who dare to disagree ; they only call them evil names. There arose, for one OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM 93 instance, Charles Bradlaugh, a man with a god like passion for justice and the moral elevation of his fellows ; and yet because he sturdily said the truth, that he had not found God, and would not profess to believe in what he had not found, all his good work and his veracity were forgotten, and he was hooted at and derided and despised as an 'Atheist,' a name which he explicitly dis claimed for himself. Thomas Henry Huxley was a manful fighter for truth, as he conceived it, and a scholar supreme in his own domain ; yet, because he boldly attacked what he believed to be super stition and error, he was assailed as a ' Materialist ' (a description which he repudiated as incorrect), and his name is Anathema in the churches to this day. Time would fail 'to teU of Charles Darwin, of Thomas Carlyle — even of Matthew Arnold and James Martineau. These aU (and how many more) lived and worked in the very spirit of godliness, doing and teaching what of the highest each had found for himself, thereby nobly and greatly helping forward the Kingdom of God upon this earth. Yet each was, in his degree, a martyr. The poor Church, quibbling earnestly of doctrines, caring supremely about stoles and chasubles, postures and incense, and aU church magic, turned upon each for many a day the lofty stare of stupid hostility, and dealt out to each, 94 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE first, distortion, and then condemnation, where welcome and benediction had been most meet. ' What was my surprise,' wrote Max Miiller of his early Oxford days, 'when I found that most of these exceUent and reaUy learned men were much more interested in the validity of Anglican orders, in the wearing of gowns and surplices, in the question of candlesticks and genuflections. " What has this to do with true rehgion ? " I said to dear Johnson. ..." God has to be served by very different things, and there is danger of the formal prevaUing over the essential." ' And so it has come to pass that the thoughts of our great emancipators have sunk into the world's heart and become part and parcel of our higher hfe and the stimulus of our higher activities, while the poor church has somehow lost our confidence and daUy engenders more widespread and deeper suspicion. It is stUl true that the great majority of the respectable are nominaUy churchmen and chapelgoers, but when one re members that in Jesus' day it was fashionable not only to attend the synagogue, but to stone and crucify nonconformists of blameless hfe, that argument is no longer convincing. It is, on the other side, quite as fair to say that, if you take the men of education and ability, the doctors, lawyers, men of science, teachers, as well as those OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM 95 more scattered instances of the cultivated mind that occur in every rank and condition of life, from the thoughtful handicraftsman to the thoughtful man of leisure — if you take, in short, the non- clerical and unofficial (and for that reason some times unsuccessful) brains of Europe, you will find the great majority to be already outside all the churches and outside all the creeds. The traditional view of the Bible — to wit, that it is one book, absolutely accurate, absolutely authoritative, because directly and infallibly in spired by God from cover to cover, is precisely one of these primeval up-growths that for aU our sakes had to be feUed and removed as a cumberer of the ground. This view is indeed already so long and so widely discredited that to most men of any culture it will seem hardly worth while stating, much less confuting. Yet the world is ruled by its refined women quite as much as by its cultivated men. And that many, perhaps most, women of refinement and character (often, it must be added, of colossal ignorance) cling with the conservative instinct of their sex to the traditional view is not only a fact, but almost the sole fact of importance. The nurture of in tellectual falsehood is always calamitous, and most calamitous where the fosterer, however well-intentioned, is a person of influence. Now, 96 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE women from their influence with children are the great propagandists, and the intellectual squint is precisely one of those ' characters ' which have a fatal tendency to reappear as one generation succeeds another. It would be interesting to trace the causes of this admitted ultra-con servatism in women. Why should the 'eternal feminine ' be so prone to reactionary tendencies ? It is not apparently due to any lack of mental capacity. Contrary to the general opinion, I am sure that women think more clearly and logicaUy than men — when they do think. One never observes a woman flounder or contradict herself, for example, in public speech. Few things, in deed, are more delightful than to hear a woman of refinement speak on almost any subject. In ninety -nine cases out of a hundred she has mastered her subject; she knows exactly what she is going to say, and she says it with ir resistible grace and charm. Unfortunately, this natural gift of clarity in thinking is continually robbed of its proper value by the intrusion of her unreasoned and generally rather violent likes and dislikes. Pre-eminent among the latter is the fatal dislike of new ideas, especially in what is erroneously termed the religious sphere. Thus it happens that the average English gentlewoman abhors the application of the critical method to OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM 97 the Bible, as though religion itself were in danger. It takes time and a calm judgment to discover that religion is never in danger ; that the sacred and vital realities of religious experience have as little to do with Hebrew literature as poetry has to do with logic, or love with printing. Truth and tradition are not one and indivisible, but they have been associated so long that they seem to be so. To interfere with tradition, therefore, is declared to be disloyalty to the truth. The curious thing is that, like all Protestant church -folk, the Englishwoman has long since abandoned belief in an infallible Pope, infaUible Councils, and an infallible Church. These, she agrees, were untenable. But all the more ten aciously does she cling to the tenet, not a whit more defensible, but very comforting, of an infallible Book. Recently, however, with remarkable rapidity, this last position has also been generally evacu ated. Scarcely one theologian of eminence contends for verbal inspiration. 'Plenary' in spiration was the watchword for a space, but that shady compromise died young. The modern theologian still does battle for ' inspiration,' but, so far as the plain man can see, it is of the same kind, if not degree, as he would wiUingly concede to Carlyle, Browning, or Wordsworth 98 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE at their highest. Nor is it claimed for aU parts of these once sacred Grammata in equal measure. No self-respecting theologian would now venture to claim for the Babylonian legends retailed by the Jahvistic writer in Genesis, the 'cursing psalms,' the genealogies, or even the luscious Eastern idyll caUed the Song of Songs, the same degree or even kind of 'inspiration' that pro duced the work of the later Psalmists and prophets, the writer of the Book of Job, or the Preacher. The profound and widespread dissonance of the modern and the ancient doctrine of inspiration is nowhere more clearly recognized than among the clergy themselves. But the clergy, unfortunately, lie under a double disability. In the first place, the greater portion of their hearers consists of uneducated or half-educated persons who know nothing of the trend of modern thought, and would only be shocked if they did. Secondly, their creed in too many cases makes cowards of them. They shrink, and naturally enough, from stating boldly what they know to be inconsistent with their ordination vows. The clerical dilemma in these days is, in fact, a distinctly painful one, and the more veracious and honourable the cleric, the more painful it becomes. In the end, as one often observes, refuge is sought in silence on the OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM 99 vital subjects in dispute. Eternal punishment, blood-atonement, the Virgin's womb, the infaUi- bility of Scripture are not frankly assaUed as outworn and untenable dogmas. They are simply let alone. The sermon of a modern preacher of ability deals with social, ethical, and other problems, partly no doubt because of their urgent importance, but partly also because they are non-committal, and do not embarrass the preacher. The commonplace man in the pew hardly notices the omission, especially as in hymn and even prayer the ' old theology ' still finds a place. These pulpit methods, however natural, are surely highly discreditable, and they certainly account for more ' non-churchgoing ' than is generally supposed. The genuine obstacle to truth-telling, the root and kernel of the whole difficulty, is the in iquitous system of compulsory subscription. But for the deep-rooted ultra-conservatism, fostered mainly by women, but engrained in many other wise able men, and nowhere more powerful than in ecclesiastical systems, the stupid subscription to ancient creeds and confessions and formula} would long ago have perished in the using. The plea that it is the only possible bond which can hold together clerical organizations is a false and foolish plea. Outward unity could be infinitely 100 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE better secured on the simple basis of common social service or a common form of church government. Meantime, incalculable harm is done by the system of subscription. It tends on the one hand to stereotype theological opinion. It tends on the other to close the mouths of men too honest to suffer their opinions to be stereotyped, and, still worse, it tempts them to use words in one sense which they know their hearers understand in another sense. The ques tion of the existence or non-existence of organ ized churches is rapidly becoming a secondary question among educated and serious persons. That the Church, with her great wealth and opportunities, is still capable of exercising enor mous influence for good among the uneducated, no one can deny; but the fact is that through out the former class an increasing number of individuals are asking whether it is necessary, except for the sake of social position and re spectability, to join the Church at all. That this is due in great part to contempt for clerical paltering with the most elementary veracities there cannot be any doubt. One is glad to acknowledge, on the other hand, the many noble exceptions. Here and there a voice may be heard with the true and manly ring of utter fearlessness and utter truth. Were OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM 101 it not for the ominous growth of the extreme High Church party — the lineal descendant of the party whose intolerant bigotry, in all the ages, has lighted the fires of all the persecutions, Roman, Protestant, and Pagan — one might say without reserve that it is from Established Church pulpits that one most often hears out spoken criticism and frank appreciation of the scientific facts and discoveries that affect the current theology. On the other hand, while the personal integrity of such preachers is beyond question, what can one think of their position? They have taken certain vows upon them ; they have solemnly asseverated that an ancient con fession of faith is the confession of their individual faith, and yet they proclaim weekly, secure in the consciousness of their church's favour, tenets whoUy subversive of its official creed! Such a state of things, stupid though we are beyond belief, must surely right itself presently. And then, little as churchmen may inchne to beheve it, no one will welcome the clearing of the air more cordially than those outsiders — and they are a growing number — who pray that Jerusalem may have true peace and prosperity within her borders. As things stand, the smaller independent churches can offer for the most part only a 102 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE poor emolument and a social position compar able in its insignificance to that of a young Jewish carpenter, nineteen centuries ago. But they can also offer to a man who feels he must preach, and knows what he would say, an honour able intellectual freedom which the benefices and bishoprics of the creed -bound churches do not carry in their gift. It is a bitter reflection for the honest tradi tionalist that nowadays his foes are they of his own household. His enemy is within the camp. The critical work which up to the middle of last century was almost entirely left to outsiders to do, which too often was faithfully done by them amid the calumny and contumely of the churches, is now being done, and thoroughly well done, by the most intellectual churchmen of the day. Strange as it may seem that persons who hold high office in the creed -bound churches should use their position to discredit their own official manifestoes, one can only rejoice to see that the facts are being made known, that the truth is at last being told by those who are more likely to be listened to than any outsider can hope to be. Sappers and miners, it is true, who should contrive the demolition of their own city's rotten bulwarks would probably meet with shorter shrift at their townsmen's hands than OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM 103 the Higher Critics have for the most part met with in recent years. They are indeed doing excellent work, though hardly the work they were enhsted to do. And the plain man may be excused if he cherishes a preference for the less equivocal position of Carlyle, Huxley, or Bradlaugh — to choose but three now universally respected names, with httle but their honesty in common — who signed no creeds and wore no vestments, but spake as they were moved by the holy spirit of sincerity. The high personal character of the Higher Critics themselves is, of course, not in dispute, and whatever may be said about the patent ambiguity of their position must not for a moment be understood as a reflection upon that. One thing is plain, that to their candour and inteUectual honesty it is due that the modern attitude to the Bible more and more tends to be the same as the modern attitude to all great literature. We are now inquiring into the facts about the evolution of these old Syrian documents which, being bound together as by a series of accidents it has happened, we call the Bible. We are asking such questions as these: Who wrote them? When were they written? How did they get into their present shape? Who com piled the canon and decided which books should 104 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE be included and which left out ? Did the canon at first include books afterwards rejected, and reject books afterwards included ? Is there any evidence at all of the supernatural origin or miraculous preservation of the canonical books? What about the non-canonical books ? Are the former, as plainly as the fragments of the latter, < human documents,' with nothing uncanny about them? It is obvious to any one having the smallest acquaintance with letters that some of the men who wrote the Hebrew and Aramaic ' scriptures ' were gifted with the loftiest imagination, the most consummate hterary power, and — what is most to the point — were supreme exponents for all time of 'the religious sense.' To maintain that all who had a hand in this work were so, would be to maintain an absurd and untenable proposition. The Bible is not a book ; it is, as the late Mr. Matthew Arnold said, two hteratures. It is only the voice of ignorance or prejudice that proclaims it as in any real sense a unity. One of the many charms of these ancient books, especiaUy of the Hebrew scriptures, is their matchless diversity, and nothing but the most narrow and unscrupulous 'reading into' them of distorted meanings can discover the 'scarlet thread' of reference to Jesus of Nazareth and OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM 105 his supposed 'sacrificial work' which to the old evangelical constituted almost their only value. To one who approaches them as literature they are fuU of the most abundant charm. Eastern song and story; Eastern folk-lore and history and character; Eastern manners and dress and politics; philology for the student of word-lore; eloquence for the orator ; fountains of poesy and art and true rehgion — all these and hundreds of other delightsome things are to be found in these Hebrew books. Yet the reader who revels therein, and, in his simplicity or perversity, fails to find ' the scarlet thread,' is stiU unspiritual in the eyes of the truly converted person — a stranger to grace, to be pitied and prayed for ! So that our thanks are greatly deserved by all who in the name of truth have come forward to emancipate the world in this department of Biblical Criticism from the narrower bondage of olden days. The emancipation means that men everywhere are coming to have more joyous, free, and intimate contact with nature ; that their eyesight is clearing, their outlook widening; that facts are coming to have more importance for them as facts, to be explained in relation to other facts, and not in relation to any a priori assump tions. Emancipation means that the student's question is no longer, How does this thing consort 106 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE with the assumed word of God ; with any written and authentic revelation ; with any church-be gotten and therefore inspired tradition or doc trine? but rather, What are the facts about this thing? What can I, by investigation, by experiment, by analysis, discover as to its nature and relations ? What, in short, is known or knowable concerning it? Emancipation is de liverance from the bondage of an obsolete statute, an authority no longer authoritative. All original thinkers have been not only free thinkers, but bringers of freedom. The minds of men tend to run along the lines of least resistance. Years and centuries of easy running deepen the ruts insensibly till the driver can no longer see over the hedge, and presently his world narrows into a byway. Then comes a mightier Charioteer, who, despising the ruts, drives, not without turmoil and peril, over the higher ground. ' Ho ! brothers,' quoth he, ' there is a wider world than yours; follow me, I pray you, over this rough ground, and you shall see fair landscapes, I promise you.' Much laughter and scorn he gets at first from the rut-runners, but by and by one and another, incited by his gladsome speech and song, with painful effort force their way out to join their leader in the wider and freer world he hath won for them. OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM 107 Even so it is in spirituals as in this parable. That was a fine day of freedom in the history of our race, when the young Jewish carpenter left the Torah-ruts of ceremonial and tradition, and led the way into a joyous world of practical goodness and humanity. That was another when Martin Luther, of most brave, human, and jocund memory, leapt the forbidden gate-bars of priestly intervention, and beckoned his brothers to enter with erect and manly step the House of God their Father. That was another for many a man when Thomas Carlyle — grim, humorous, tender, truth-flashing, wonderful Thomas Carlyle — revealed the hitherto unimaginable truth, that 'a deep sense of Religion was compatible with the entire absence of theology';1 when he rent off the clothes of Hypocrisy and showed men how ugly she looked in her nakedness by the side of her stern but comely rival, the chaste virgin Veracity. Other gates of freedom have been flung open by other men, worthy each and all of the name, Emancipator ; and now it would seem that things are come to a hard pass with all 'supernatural sanctions ' — with aU forms of authority that claim supernatural or magical sanction, or bolster up themselves with any glorified lie whatsoever. 1 Huxley, Life and Letters, 1st edition, i. p. 220. VII OF MIRACLE ' A mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.'— Leaves of Grass. ' There is no doubt but God can make unnaturall Appari tions : but that He does it so often, as men need to feare such things, more than they feare the stay or change of the course of Nature, which He also can stay or change, is no point of the Christian faith.' — Leviathan. In this new era the temper of a man's wit and the quality of his faith may be gauged by nothing more accurately than by his attitude to ' the miraculous.' In one sense, indeed, everything is miraculous. Being is a miracle. Becoming is a miracle. Even from the standpoint of a thorough going Berkeleyan ideahsm that finds no reality in the outward and objective, the very shows of sense, the infinite seemings and phantasmagoria of things, are not these ' miracle enough ' ? The universe startles us when we use our tele scope. Its minutiae are monstrous to our gaze when focussed under our microscope. But, when 108 OF MIRACLE 109 we come to think of it, the commonest experience is at bottom as marvellous as the most uncom mon. Signs and wonders, visible to the naked eye, meet us at every turn of the everyday road. Through the multitude of business they some times flit as a dream ! they positively crowd upon us in the reverie of our arm-chair. My friend called upon me to-day. What admirable things took place during our too brief interview. Signs and wonders of sight and recognition; the, ' miracles ' of hght- waves and retina pictures and colour sensations; signs and wonders of sound and hearing — the ' miracle ' of air- waves and ear- vibrations and nerve-telegrams, so many hundred or even thousand per second ; signs and wonders of intellect and emotion — pleasure, love, the quickened pulse, electric, unspoken messages of friendship. In five swift minutes, what a world of events, innumerable, immeasurable, incalculable ! In short, if by miracle you mean a thing mar veUous, astonishing, then each stone of the pave ment is not only a miracle but a mine of miracles. As saith the beloved Walt Whitman, ' A mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.' And to this we could all respond with a heartfelt Amen. But something other than this is intended by ' miracle.' It is not merely a marvel. It is not 110 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE merely a thing unexplained. It is not even a thing inexplicable. There are millions, if not sextillions, of facts which are still unexplained, which, indeed, in the present state of our know ledge, remain absolutely incapable of explanation, which nevertheless are not held by any intelligent person to be ' miraculous.' The ultimate ' How ' and ' Why ' of everything in the universe remain unsolved mysteries ; but that the vast majority of things have a perfectly natural 'how' and a perfectly natural 'why,' no educated person doubts. That the planets move in elliptical orbits we did not know at all three hundred years ago. We do not know yet the ultimate reason why they should so behave; but, thanks to Kepler and Newton, we know that by the same natural law of gravitation the apple drops and the planet spins. And the moment we understand that the law of gravitation explains the relative behaviour of all bodies, we see that the notion of special interference is unnecessary to explain that be haviour. Not only so, but the very announcement of such a general law tends to discredit a great many alleged occurrences which, if true, would conflict with it. Thus to most men in the dark ages there was no difficulty in believing in the bodily ascension of Jesus into space (although OF MIRACLE 111 it was recognized as a miracle or marvel). Belief was easy when they did not know that a natural law of universal apphcation binds the human body to the earth in exactly the same way as the earth is bound to the sun. ' Ignorance of naturaU causes,' said Hobbes, ' disposeth a man to credulity.' Again, we have only now discovered the exist ence in certain substances of the wonderful pro perty caUed radio-activity. This discovery will, beyond question, supply us with the key to many hitherto unexplained phenomena. And the whole progress of science tends to assure us that what we know not now we shall know hereafter, and that the region of the unknown will continue to shrink before the slow but gradual advance of rational investigation. The present limitation of our knowledge being everywhere admitted, it is clear that when clergy men and others talk of ' the miraculous,' they do not simply mean ' the unexplained.' Something other than this is intended, else the odium theo- logicum attached to those who ' do not believe in the miraculous' would be incomprehensible. Only the other day a worthy and successful clergyman, who had invited the present writer to address his congregation on some questions of civic reform, on discovering that he apparently 112 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE did not 'believe in the miraculous,' promptly cancelled the invitation. A miracle in the usual sense is something preternatural, something contrary to the ascer tained laws of nature. It is not merely a ' sport ' or lusus naturce, but the result of the direct interference of a preternatural Power. Now, assuming that there is an all-powerful Comp troller at the back of aU natural processes and phenomena, it is not a priori untenable that miracles might happen. It is not irrational, that is to say, to conceive in advance that such a Power might occasionally intervene to stop or change or modify the course of events in a manner which, by comparison with its ordinary manner, would seem capricious. But neither would it be irrational a priori to conceive of absolute cosmic anarchy. We might have been born into a lawless chaos of a world in which the aU-powerful ComptroUer intervened directly in every single event, a world in which the only law was caprice and every incident a miracle. It is one thing, however, to say that a proposition is logically tenable, and quite another to assert that it is probable, and still another to maintain that it is true. Those who believe in the miracu lous do not stop short with the thesis that, a priori, miracles are possible eVen in a world of OF MIRACLE 113 law — a thesis to which a great many people might assent. They go on to maintain that miracles have happened, and the onus of proving this undoubtedly rests upon them. Now this is a pure question of evidence, and it is weU to remember that before we can possibly be justified in believing, and especially in asking or commanding others to believe in an alleged preternatural occurrence, we are bound to satisfy ourselves and them that the evidence for it is good and sufficient. It would be going too far to maintain that any one who fearlessly investigates the evidence wUl find that, so far from being good and sufficient, it is ludicrously insufficient. So much depends upon the investigator's intellectual equipment and prepossessions. But to hear some people talk, one would suppose that these high questions - were only for the professional theologian and the ecclesiastical scholar ! Were this true, it would be an excellent argument for the clerical domination of earher centuries, from which we Britons have at length so happily escaped. But it is not true. The evidence for the best authen ticated 'miracles' is patent to every man of educa tion. A few pence or shillings will carry him to the nearest free library, and he will find it there. Now, it is the bare and literal truth that in this H 114 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE new era the evidence tends more and more to appear insufficient to an ever-increasing number of reasonable and educated persons. It is in creasingly seen to be significant that the alleged occurrence of miracles has invariably taken place among the credulous and ignorant ; that the wit nesses to miracles are invariably superstitious or neurotic folk ; that with the steady growth of the rational spirit and the spread of education, the belief in the miraculous steadily declines ; and, finally, that the domain of miracle, once wide and comprehensive, has within two centuries dwindled into positive insignificance. In these days, what residuum of belief in miracle there is, lingers almost exclusively among the clergy and those who are most influenced by them. The patient work of Science has opened out so many clear avenues in the dark forest, all of them letting in radiance, health, and freedom of outlook where gloom and disease and fear reigned aforetime, that the true nature of the forest is becoming rapidly more apparent. And ever, as this enlightenment proceeds, men are finding out that the forest is not in the least what the theological word-choppers of past time had told them. Men are coming, therefore, greatly to prefer the wood-choppers to the word- choppers, because their growing experience tends OF MIRACLE 115 upon the whole to confidence in the workmanship of those and to distrust of the announcements of these. So that now ' People's lips salute only doers, lovers, satisfiers, positive knowers. There will shortly be no more priests ; I say their work is done.' It would be unfair to leave the matter thus. Much of the best, most scholarly, and most honest spade-work and axe-work done of recent years in what we have caUed the forest has been done by theologians and churchmen, who have proved themselves as truly men of science as any others. Unfortunately historical criticism, as applied to the miracle-literature, is one of the youngest of the sciences, and for a churchman to be a ' man of science ' in this department is to incur the risk of being branded heretical — a very terrible risk indeed. But when we find an outspoken man like Canon Hensley Henson, when writing of the bodily resurrection of Jesus, admitting that the ' candid Christian . . . cannot escape the inference that the evidence for the quasi-historical statements of the Creed is of a highly complicated, dubious, and even contradictory character'; and when even the conservative Dean of Westminster (Dr. J. Armitage Robinson), when writing of the Virgin- birth, can say: 'A man would be bold who 116 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE should deny that all miracles may some day be seen to be only results of higher laws, which are at present hidden from our imperfect knowledge,' we see how unfair it would be to condemn the whole army of the priesthood en bloc for the sins of its rank and file. On the other hand, the average clerical attitude to miracle is better represented by that of the worthy and successful clergyman referred to than by that of Mr. Henson or Dr. Robinson. The distinctively clerical type of inteUect is so far reactionary that it clings to 'the preternatural' with a curious devotion. Nowadays the favourite word is 'supernatural,' because, fortunately for mankind, even the clerical inteUect has at last given up the dogma (of which it once was the prime exponent) of diabolic interference. How many thousands of old, innocent, and defenceless women were pitilessly tortured and done to death as devU-possessed witches, at the direct instiga tion and command of the Presbyterian ministers of Scotland between 1563 and 1723, to take but one example, no one will ever know. But we do know that long after the educated classes in England had ceased to believe in witchcraft, and after the practice of witch-burning had ceased in Scotland, the clerical intellects in Presbytery assembled were stiU to be found ' declaring their OF MIRACLE 117 belief in witchcraft and deploring the scepticism which was general.' To-day subter- naturalism has quite disap peared, but super-naturalism still prevails. Only the fewest men recognize that there is no more real connection between a hving faith in the su preme Father and belief in miracle than there is between true religion and false theology. For the one the sole but sufficient proof is religious experience ; for the other the evidence diminishes year by year. So far as English readers are con cerned, Matthew Arnold's dictum, ' Miracles do not happen,' is already accepted as true of ninety- nine recorded miracles in every hundred. The prodigies recorded by ancient historians (not of Jewish race) and by mediaeval biographers are dismissed with a smile. Who believes the pro digies related with entire conviction by Hero dotus, or those reported with a certain amount of scepticism by Livy ? Who in Protestant England believes that when Paul the Hermit died, two lions issued from the desert, dug his grave, uttered mourning howls, and then knelt to sup plicate a blessing ? Who believes that shoals of fish thronged to hear the preaching of St. Antony? Yet thousands of indolent inteUects are stiU prepared to believe the million-fold more remarkable tale that the whole solar system sud- 118 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE denly paused in its majestic sweep at the bidding of one Joshua, the leader of a petty Semitic tribe, that, in a desert skirmish, he and his tribesmen, forsooth, might have longer daylight in which to complete their little victory ! As Matthew Arnold has pointed out in his exquisitely lucid manner, there is no sort of difference between the kind of evidence for the miracles recorded by Herodotus and the kind of evidence for the miracles recorded by the writers and editors of the Jewish and Aramaic scriptures. Both are set down in obvious good faith by men of undoubted veracity; both have precisely the same sort of circumstantial detaU that grows up round such stories ; both not infrequently appear in different accounts with just the same sort of discrepancies in detail. Yet many who scoff at the miracles of Herodotus believe in the miracles of Matthew. In the same way educated Roman Cathohcs, whose early atmosphere has been redolent of mediaeval miracle, and who shrink from the repudiation of the stories they have learned in childhood, shrug their shoulders with impatience at the mention of modern miracles. It is long since even Protestant church-folk began to hesitate over the Old Testament miracles. Balaam's ass that spoke ; Jonah's ' great fish,' that appeared with dramatic propriety (as a OF MIRACLE 119 submarine motor-boat might in a modern novel) to house the prophet, and with equal dramatic propriety vomited him out upon the dry land; Aaron's rod that budded ; Adam's rib that became his wife; the dial-shadow that went backward ten degrees — these and many others are now very generally relegated to the region of myth and fable to which they clearly belong. The real battle-ground is now the field of New Testament miracle, and to any one even super ficially acquainted with the trend of modern theological discussion it is apparent that, in another decade or two at the most, the only miracles seriously contended for by the abler men wiU be the Virgin-birth and physical resur rection of Jesus. Even now it is significant that the theological camp is hopelessly divided on these two extraordinary problems. One school proclaims with the energy of complete conviction, interfused with something like despair, that they are the foundation facts of the Christian religion ; another maintains that they are absolutely un essential, that the accounts are radically contra dictory, and that the probabilities are altogether against their 'historicity'; while a third insists that, notwithstanding the contradictions, the events are undoubtedly historical, but suggests that there is nothing miraculous about either 120 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE the aUeged Virgin-birth or bodily resurrection. They were simply due to the operation of 'higher laws at present hidden from our im perfect knowledge!' To the outsider it seems rather inconsistent to pick and choose among miracles, the testimony for which is in every case similar in kind and in many cases identical, not only in kind but in degree. One could understand, and, up to a certain point, respect, the uncompromising be liever of last century, who stood rigidly for the infallible inspiration and authority of the Chris tian canon. To a man who, like the late Mr. Gladstone, had his feet upon the Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture, all things were possible. He could swallow Jonah's ' great fish ' — and how much else ? — as readily as the great fish is re ported to have swallowed Jonah ! Every decently informed person is aware, however, that, so far as the Old Testament documents are concerned, the claim to infallible inspiration and authority is not now maintained by any theologians of repute.1 The late date of the Pentateuch, for 1 It is worthy of note that reverence for the integrity and authority of ' the canon ' was much less common in the sixteenth than in the first half of the nineteenth century. Luther spoke in his usual free and boisterous fashion of Job, Proverbs, Isaiah, Hebrews, and Jude, and quite disrespectfully OF MIRACLE 121 example, the composite character of its books, the evident traces of repeated editing and com- pUation and rejection, have been discovered and exposed by careful scholarship, and are matters of common knowledge. The theory of verbal inspiration has been long given up in favour of the theory that the Scriptures ' contain the record of a progressive revelation' — a very different thing. In short, the old and quite inteUigible basis of belief in the preternatural, in so far as the Old Testament is concerned, is completely undermined. With regard to the New Testament, it is already the complaint of the younger scholars that in our own language the pioneer work of criticism and investigation has hardly been begun. But signs are not wanting that the work wiU be done before long, and done, too, on strictly scientific lines. The appearance of the Encyclopaedia Biblica one cannot but hail as one of the healthiest signs of the times. It is, as I suppose all must admit, a magnificent piece of genuine scientific work. That scholars will find, however, any justification for putting the of Esther, Ecclesiastes, Jonah, James, and the Apocalypse. Calvin considered the last-named book unintelligible, and prohibited the pastors of Geneva from attempting its inter pretation. (See Sir William Hamilton's Discussions, 3rd ed. 1866, pp. 510, 518.) 122 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE two miracles referred to on a higher evidential plane than the others is in itself unhkely, and certainly receives no support from this monu mental Encyclopaedia. It is often, rather stupidly, objected that to call in question the authenticity of New Testa ment miracles is to assaU the veracity of the writers who record them. The crude dUemma is often stated thus : Either the writers purposely concocted lies, and are therefore unworthy of any credence at all, or they credulously accepted fairy-tales, and thereby proved themselves un trustworthy historians. We have the same evi dence for the miracles as for the Sermon on the Mount and the parables. If the miracles are unhistorical, what ground is there for maintain ing the ' historicity ' of any part of the gospels ? This is surely an absurd objection. In the first place, we do not question the general accuracy of the pagan historians because in all good faith they reported incredible miracles. The pages of Herodotus — to take but one example — are quaintly iUuminated by many miraculous prodi gies; yet the reader 'cannot help feeling,' says one scholar, 'as though he was listening to an old man who, from the inexhaustible stores of his knowledge and experience, teUs his stories with that single-hearted simplicity and naivete OF MIRACLE 123 which are the marks and indications of a truth ful spirit.'1 'That which charms the readers of Herodotus,' says another of his critics, 'is that chUdlike simplicity of heart which is ever the companion of an incorruptible love of truth, and that happy, winning style which cannot be attained by any art or pathetic excitement, and is found only where manners are true to nature.' 2 Nor do we caU in question the general veracity of the superstitious people whom we meet stiU in out-of-the-way places. On the contrary, while we may smile at their credulity, we often accept their testimony as perfectly sufficient for inci dents of an ordinary or even of an extraordinary but natural character. So it surely ought to be with these Jewish narratives. Making all allow ance for ..the creduhty of the narrators and of those who furnished them with the mythical elements of their story, we need not call in question either their own bona fides or their general veracity in recording the floating tradi tions to which they happily gave permanence. Nor need we doubt the general truth of the 1 Dr. Leonard Schmitz in Smith's Diet, of Qreek and Roman Biography, etc., 1849. 2 Dahlmann : LTerodot. aus seinem Buche sein Leben, quoted ibid. 124 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE traditions themselves in so far as they relate to matters of a non-miraculous nature. That very simplicity and credulity of theirs no doubt deprive their narratives of any claim to 'in fallible inspiration' — a claim which is now, as we have seen, generally abandoned ; but that these narratives do give upon the whole a true and graphic record of the life and teaching of Jesus, the godlike 'Son of Man,' it is surely permissible (in the absence of direct evidence to the contrary) to beheve. For, in the second place — and this is the really conclusive answer to what we have called the stupid argument about the evidence for the Sermon on the Mount being the same as the evidence for the miracles — it must be re membered that evidence sufficient to attest an ordinary occurrence or even an extraordinary occurrence of a natural kind, is not at aU sufficient to attest an occurrence of a miraculous kind. On the contrary, we are not justified in believing in a miracle unless it is proved by evidence of the most rigid quality and of over whelming weight. We are bound to insist upon conclusive demonstration, first, that the alleged incident really took place ; secondly, that it took place precisely as recorded ; and thirdly, that no natural explanation of it is possible. ' The thing OF MIRACLE 125 they pretend to be a miracle,' said the wise Hobbes, ' we must both see it done and use all means possible to consider whether it be really done; and not only so, but whether it be such as no man can do the like by his naturall power, but that it requires the immediate hand of God.' The moment we realize that these tests are necessary, we see how far short of sufficiency the evidence for New Testament miracle comes. Apart from the general creduhty, ignorance of natural causes, and superstition, which were admittedly characteristic of the place and age, and which raise a presumption that miraculous happenings would be readily imagined and as readily accepted, there is the further quite fatal objection that in most cases the narrator is reporting what he did not, and often could not, know at first hand. He reports what has filtered down to him in the form of a floating tradition, quite half a century old. For such beautiful incidents as that of the woman with the alabaster box of ointment in the house of Simon the Pharisee, and the story of the woman taken in adultery, we need no such rigid tests. These are incidents against which there is no antecedent improbability. Given the place and time and the noble and remarkable character of the central 126 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE figure, they might, quite apart from evidence, be reasonably looked upon as among the most typical and antecedently probable incidents pre served in the floating tradition. On the other hand, the reported turning of water into wine at the marriage in Cana of Gahlee is an 'un- naturall Apparition,' both antecedently improb able and unsupported by evidence of any weight whatever. It is recorded in one gospel only, and that written, according to the most con servative reckoning, about 78 A.D., i.e. more than fifty years after the alleged occurrence. Accord ing to other scholars, the gospel was written about 170 a.d. There are grave reasons for doubt as to whether the author, who shows a curious ignorance of Jewish custom, was one of the Apostles. There is no reason to believe that he was present on the occasion when the miraculous metamorphosis is said to have occurred. At the best, the evidence for this miracle is that one man fifty-two years after the event wrote down that water was turned into wine at the will of Jesus of Nazareth. We have, indeed, the further state ment of Epiphanius that ' at each anniversary of the miracle of Cana, the water of the springs of Cibyra in Caria and Gerasa in Arabia was changed into wine ; that he himself had drunk of the trans formed water of Cibyra, and his brothers of that of OF MIRACLE 127 Gerasa.' x This ' corroboration ' is circumstantial indeed; but unfortunately ho one believes the corroborator ! ' But,' it is frequently objected, ' on the assump tion that Jesus was divine, where is the antecedent improbability of His working miracles ? ' Even on such an assumption the antecedent improbability lies in this, that, in so far as we have sufficient evidence, it aU tends to show that the action of Deity never conflicts, and therefore presumably never has conflicted, with ascertained natural law. On the contrary, within our experience, almost everything that happens is clearly seen to be in accordance with natural law, and nothing that happens is contrary to it. The antecedent proba bility, therefore, is that this has been so in the past and will continue to be so in the future. The doctrine of the deity of Jesus, moreover, is itself based upon a miracle of the most stupendous sort, for which the evidence is singularly weak,2 and as 1 Epiphanius, Haer., Ii. xxx., cited in God and the Bible, pop. ed. 1897, p. 232. 2 Professor Lobstein of Strasbourg has shown in his Virgin- Birth of Christ, recently translated, how hopelessly at variance the two narratives are. He also points out that the Messiah- ship is supported by two irreconcilable genealogies both connecting Jesus with King David through Joseph ; that ' having related the answer of Jesus to Mary : " Wist ye not that I must be in my Father's house ? " the Evangelist adds : " They understood not the saying which he spake unto 128 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE to which, as we have seen, even the theological camp is now divided against itself. To leave the matter thus, however, would be to have overstated the case for New Testament miracle in one important detail. It should be remembered that we have not got in one single instance the original manuscripts of any of the Biblical writings. What we have got are copies of copies of copies in a series of unknown length. No MS. even of the New Testament or any part of it exists which was written until the fourth century after Christ ! No. MS. of the Hebrew Bible exists which is older than the ninth century a.d. ! The amount of interpolation, mutilation, and editing of the originals which has taken place is therefore unknown. Too much must not be made of this, first, because the mass of manuscript authority for the life of Jesus is enormously more weighty than that for any of the classical histories; and, secondly, them " ' ; and that Mary's fear for her son's sanity (Mark iii. 20-31) and the incredulity of his brethren (John vii. 5) as to his divine mission are alike inconceivable on the assumption of his preternatural birth. He also proves not only that the supposed prophetic reference in Isaiah vii. 14, ' Behold a Virgin shall be with child,' etc., has an obvious local signifi cance, but that the word ' virgin ' is a misquotation ! The author of Matthew's gospel quotes from the Septuagint Greek version, which erroneously renders a Hebrew word meaning 'young woman,' and incapable of meaning 'virgin,' by 17 7rapdevos. OF MIRACLE 129 because, although the number of different manu script readings is naturally overwhelming, the number of those which seriously affect the sense is singularly smaU. On the other hand, it is obvious that the bulk of the interpolation, mutilation, and editing which beyond doubt took place would be done in the early centuries, the manuscripts of which are wholly lost. Once fixed, the zeal of the early Church and the infinite care of the Massoretic guild ensured the greatest possible accuracy. It is significant that the beautiful and apparently typical story of the woman taken in adultery is not found in most of the earliest manuscripts, and that those which contain it vary much from each other. New Testament miracle dies hard. But that it is as certainly dying as any other sort of miracle becomes more obvious every day. Obvious per haps chiefly by this, that one never hears now the old 'argument from miracles.' Once, and that not long ago, they were constantly adduced as evidences of the deity of Jesus. Now even the popular preacher feels instinctively that there is a presumption against them in his hearers' minds. They carry no conviction, and so he turns the argument round about and urges that, Jesus be ing Jahveh, all things were possible to him, even miracles ! The change is most significant. It is a tacit admission that the miracles are not in 130 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE themselves facts so firmly established that they may be caUed in to fortify something else still more wonderful; but that something else, still more wonderful, must be called in to fortify them. It means, indeed, that the miracles ascribed to Jesus were not miracles at all. This position is frequently taken up quite frankly. Jesus, it is said, being an unique personaUty, was able to do unique things ; being God, He was able to raise the dead; being in a special sense divine by nature, He was naturally able to do things which appear unnatural; that (as the Dean of Westminster suggests) miracles are only ' results of higher laws which are at present hidden from our imperfect knowledge.' This virtual concession (in all but one point) of the principle of continuity is com paratively reasonable, and so far its growing acceptance is a good sign. But of course the argument is not new. There were sceptical persons even in Saint Paul's day, and his argu ment was the same : ' Why should it be a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?' The modern answer is that it is not a thing incredible, but a thing antecedently impro bable and (noting particularly the division in the theological camp itself) a thing quite unproved.1 1 See article on ' Resurrection and Ascension Narratives,' by Dr. P. W. Schmiedel, in Encyclopaedia Biblica. OF MIRACLE 131 But, if we have described with anything like accuracy the present limited domain of miracle, what a marvellous change has come over the intellectual firmament ! Only a few centuries ago, men's thoughts were engrossed and oppressed and dominated by the often sinister and dreadful influence of ' belief in the miraculous.' When the iron rule of the Church was most absolute, prodigies and ' unnaturall Apparitions ' abounded on every hand. The belief in witchcraft was universal, and at certain periods was actively fostered by the clergy. The presence and power of Satan were everywhere recognized. Plague and pestUence, drought and disease, were at tributed, not to natural causes, but to the direct intervention of diabolic agency. Learning, which meant knowledge of the classical authors, was deliberately confined to the monasteries. The best kind of learning, nature -knowledge, was abjured. Scientific discoveries, as soon as they came into conflict with church -miracle or the ipsissima verba of Scripture, were angrily op posed by Church-authority, and as the power of the Church rose to its climax, the opposition frequently meant ruin to the man of science. Belief in the Antipodes was for centuries an alarming Manichsean heresy, disproved in the clearest manner by Scripture texts. Roger Bacon 132 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE in the thirteenth century, for the crime of being a devoted student of science, suffered fourteen long years of lonely imprisonment. Copernicus' book, De Revolutionibus Orbium, inasmuch as it taught 'that false Pythagorean doctrine, wholly contrary to divine Scripture, concerning the mobility of the earth and the fixity of the sun,' was condemned by the Cardinals of the Index in 1616. Gahleo, for the hke heresy, was in 1633 compelled, under threat of brutal torture, to abjure it upon his knees. In the words of the brilliant historian of the progress of Rationalism in Europe, ' it is marvel lous that science should ever have revived amid the fearful obstacles theologians cast in her way. . . . Everything was done to cultivate a habit of thought the direct opposite of the habits of science. The constant exaltation of blind faith, the countless miracles, the childish legends, all produced a condition of besotted ignorance, of grovelling and trembling credulity that can scarcely be paralleled except amongst the most degraded barbarians. Innovation of every kind was regarded as a crime : superior knowledge excited only terror and suspicion. If it was shown in speculation, it was called heresy. If it was shown in the study of nature, it was caUed magic' OF MIRACLE 133 We cannot altogether afford to smUe at our forefathers of the seventeenth century. The day is happUy past when to reason about transub stantiation and consubstantiation was like light ing a match in a powder-magazine. The secular arm can no longer be invoked for the punishment of heretics of blameless hfe. But the old type of theological argument persists with a remarkable persistence. Many are yet alive who can recollect the fierce theological tempest, the stormy sounds of which have not yet died away, which greeted the appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species and Descent of Man in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Evolution by Natural Selec tion was not reconcilable with ' Holy Scripture ' ; therefore it was wrong. Man was specially created from the dust of the ground. Woman was formed out of a rib skilfully extracted by Jahveh from the first man while he slept in ' a deep sleep.' Each of the innumerable animal and vegetable species inhabiting the earth was separately and almost simultaneously created. Is it not written in the Book of Genesis ? This, for quite a number of ordinarily intelhgent people, settled the matter. A smaller number, however, were presently in revolt; and as the revolt became alarming and those best able to judge took sides with the rebels, a more reasonable type of theo- 134 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE logian appeared who maintained that the Book of Genesis was not to be taken too seriously. It was a poetic way of describing the beginning of things useful in the childhood of the race, but no longer true for us. It was comparable to George Mac- donald's beautiful poem, 'Where did you come from, Baby dear?' for teaching which to the bairns no one would dismiss the nursery-governess — poetic and unhistorical though its account of Baby's origin may be. So that, upon the whole, the once universal dominion of miracle has been silently shrinking to very paltry and insignificant dimensions, and in all likelihood wiU shortly disappear. Is this to be regretted? Surely not. If, indeed, 'the miraculous' had any close connection with Re ligion, such as it has all along had with theology, its manifest waning would be of ill omen for the new era. But happily it has no such connection. A miracle is not a mysterious something intui tively revealed to elect persons by the operation of a divine spirit. It is either a historical fact or an unhistorical fable. Which of these it is can be determined only by the evidence, and the evidence is open to all who will fairly examine it. Whether or not a man believes in the miraculous is no point of Religion. Whether he has faith in God is the one vital concern of Rehgion. Living OF MIRACLE 135 faith in God and behef in the miraculous are as different as things can well be. It is true that the God in Whom we trust often 'moves in a mysterious way' — mysterious to us because we know in part and prophesy in part — but that God moves in a non-natural way, we have no right to believe without evidence. Miracle is non-natural. Religion, the sum of the highest and finest human experiences, is natural — as natural as the lowest and most commonplace. These differ from it as the primary animal sensations of touch and smell differ from the ripe and glorious experiences of a cultivated musical taste. The latter are complex, incommunicable, mysterious, but most real and most natural. None the less real and none the less natural in that their appeal is a private appeal. What you heard in St. James's Hall or at Bayreuth you cannot tell your most intimate friend. You can only throw out some poor hints whereby, if his soul is akin to your soul, he will understand you wonderfully well. So the appeal of Religion is a private appeal. So the words God and Rehgion are mere hints of supreme experiences which many know, but none can express for those who know them not. To teach or to suggest that they are connected, even re motely connected, with such external affairs as the raising of dead bodies or the turning of 136 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE water into wine, is a positive 'superfluity of naughtiness.' More and more it becomes clear that Religion has no sort of relation to Theology, whether by theology we denote the whole field of historical, critical, and doctrinal discussion, or, more strictly, the 'science of God' — a name which surely con demns itself. Presently men will abandon so vain and spurious a science. If the nature of God and the relations of God and man must be set forth in human words, let it not be attempted after this manner, but in the manner of the highest poesy and parable alone. Horse-dealers may catalogue with precision the 'points' of a favourite horse, and dog-fanciers the features of a pedigree pup; but he were no true lover who should attempt a scientific inventory of his mistress's charms. Let us of the new era, there fore, drop our spurious theology and our unproven and unnecessary miracle — which have long, too long, posed as Religion — and attend to the deeper things that belong unto our peace. Let us toll no mournful bell for the passing of the Supernatural ; but welcome Religion with a joyous peal as the finest and most natural achievement of our human days. VIII OF EVOLUTION ' Immense have been the preparations for me, Faithful and friendly the arms that have help'd me ; Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen ; For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings, They sent influences to look after what was to hold me. ' Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me, My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it. ' For it the nebula cohered to an orb, The long, slow strata piled to rest it on, Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care. ' All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me, Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.' Walt Whitman. If any competent person were asked to review the history of the nineteenth century and to select the idea which dominated the latter half of it, his selection would undoubtedly be the idea of Evolution. 137 138 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE There has grown up a looseness in the use of the word which is, in some respects, rather de plorable, for men are more often perverted by words than by ideas. The word is much older than Darwin, and may mean, and in current literature often means, simply the unfolding or development of this or that. The evolution of a drama is the unfolding of its plot. The evolu tion of the bicycle means its historical develop ment from the primeval 'boneshaker,' through the ' ordinary ' and ' safety,' with first ' sohd,' then 'cushion,' and finally every variety of 'pneumatic' tyres, up (or down, if you will) to the very latest product of the present year of grace, with its free-wheel, interchangeable gear, rim- brake, acetylene lamp, electric motor, or other wise, as the case may be. Every one who is at all scrupulous in his use of words knows that, in talking of the evolution of the drama or of the evolution of the bicycle, he is employing the term in a popular and non- scientific sense. The drama does not evolve before our eyes by ' natural selection.' The bicycle itseK does not ' struggle for existence,' though its maker, especially if he is an honest man, may very likely have to do so. But, the idea of organic evolution having caught hold of the scientific imagination, the OF EVOLUTION 139 word is frequently used, even by quasi-scientific writers, in a sense which, though justifiable in many respects, is not the same sense as it bears in the biological sphere. For example, we hear of the evolution of the solar system. Now, it is admittedly metaphor to speak of a struggle for existence, even among plants, but it is rather violent metaphor to speak of a struggle for existence among the stars and suns of the universe. Vast and innumerable as is the multitude of the heavenly host, they are not, even in the same sense as the units of the plant world, engaged in a deadly war from which only the fittest emerge victorious. By compari son, theirs is the eternal peace of all inanimate things. Silently, from century to century, they roU onward in serried ranks, changing, it is true, as the rocks change, but otherwise without a visible trace of the freedom which all living things possess. By comparison with these, those briUiant orbs are but the dull slaves of inexor able mechanical law. What is really meant by the evolution of the solar system is simply the history of the solar system. According to the Nebular Hypothesis, indeed, the solar system contains an infinite number of star -species which have had their origin from ' a few forms or one,' but there is no suggestion that the 140 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE stars have been begotten, and have multiphed in accordance with the laws of heredity and variation. Again, we hear of the evolution of theology. This does not mean that from one primary theology-germ aU types of theology, past and present, have been begotten, have struggled for existence, and disappeared or survived, accord ing as they were 'fit,' or otherwise. It simply means the history of theology. Neither the solar system, nor theology, nor ethics, nor language can (except as the merest figure of speech) be described as an organism, and, consequently, the term evolution, as applied to them, does not mean organic evolution in the sense in which Darwin used the word. Mr. Herbert Spencer, whose massive intellect was as clear as it was profound, is perhaps the most conspicuous example in Enghsh phUosophy of that precision in the use of words which is the note of aU great thinkers. He points out that Evolution may be used in three different senses — (1) Inorganic Evolution, embracing the genesis and history of the whole inorganic universe, terrestrial and celestial; (2) Organic Evolution, relating to the genesis and history, psychical and physical, of all hving species, plant and animal; and (3) Super-Organic Evolution, which OF EVOLUTION 141 treats of the genesis and history of those pro ducts and processes which imply the co-ordinated actions of many individuals in certain organic species, and especially in man. Super-Organic Evolution has, in short, to do with aU the socio logical phenomena which a study of mankind (especially) reveals. Among these phenomena he includes pohtics, ethics, theology, and the immense variety of human institutions and systems connected therewith. In some ways it is unfortunate that things so different as the natural history of the earth's crust, the natural history of the vertebrata, and the natural history of human ethics should all have come to be ' summarily comprehended ' under one term, Evolution. Even assuming, as every one who studies the evidence is tempted to do, that the old Ginnunga-gap between the inorganic and the organic wUl one day be bridged, and, further, that the psychical or spiritual and the material wUl presently be found, as has long been suspected, to have a common denominator, it wiU be well to keep steadily in view that, even so, inorganic evolution, organic evolution, and super-organic evolution are quite distinguishable, if analogous terms. On the other hand, if the evidence should ultimately establish a thorough going identity between aU parts of the world- 142 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE process, as it may at no distant date, the birth of so general and descriptive a name may prove to have been an inspiration of happy significance. To speak first of Organic Evolution, it is some times said by persons who ought to know better, ' Evolution, after all, is only a hypothesis, a theory of the universe. Prove it, and I shall believe. Meantime, I am justified in suspending judg ment.' Now, that is a criticism which no sincere and well-informed man now makes. It means that the critic has not studied the evidence. Precisely the same re-mark might be made of the theory of gravitation. It, too, is at best a theory, which can never be absolutely proved to hold universally. No one can prove by actual demonstration or experiment that it holds out side the range of our telescopes or microscopes. No one can offer direct evidence of its application in Orion or the Pleiades, but, on the other hand, every fact we know tends to establish it. In every department of life and of science it is found correct, and the cumulative evidence for it is absolutely irresistible. What Newton's mathematical work was to the seventeenth century, Darwin's biological work has been in the nineteenth. It has called new science into being, and has given a quite unprecedented stimulus to thought and work in philosophy, OF EVOLUTION 143 as well as in science. Throughout the vast domain of biological science — the science of life — in its two great branches, Botany and Zoology, the conception of Evolution reigns supreme. Each of these branches, Plant Life and Animal Life, has its multifold divisions, subdivisions, classes, orders, and sub-orders. Each of these has its regiment of patient, original workers devoted to the scientific inves tigation of its special phenomena and a litera ture pecuharly its own. When one reflects that, practically without exception, this vast army is composed of evolutionists, that throughout the length and breadth of this enormous hterature the Evolution Theory is not only explicitly or imphcitly adopted, but supported and confirmed by the observation and description of innumer able phenomena, one begins to recognize the significance of the theory, and the importance of its bearing on every department of thought. Let us then examine one or two of the lines of argument which have led to the universal adoption of this great doctrine in biological science, and its relation to that province of modern thought and behef, the boundaries of which may be conveniently indicated by the word Theology. This, it must be confessed, is a bold under- 144 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE taking. In one sense, the province of modern theological thought must be held to include not only the thought of the most advanced and liberal thinkers in the modern churches, but the contemporaneous survivals of ancient beliefs and superstitions embodied in all the creeds which still linger on in our midst. These creeds are parts, and important parts, of modern theological phenomena, however ancient their origin may be. For that matter, so are the doctrines of Bud dhism, for instance, which influence countless milhons of inteUects as subtle, and lives as im portant (from their possessors' point of view) as our own. So, too, the primitive theology of the West African Bantu is modern ; it is contem poraneous with our own, and the Evolution Theory would certainly modify to an alarming extent the primitive beliefs of the Bantu and the Zulu, if these interesting folk — quite as in teresting as the average Cockney — were able to appreciate it. For us, however, it will be enough to examine the actual modifications which have, in fact, been and are being made upon the theo logy current among ourselves. Even this is a formidable task. Who may decide, in these days of doctrinal confusion of tongues, what is worthy to be included, and what is to be held as excluded, from the province of modern theological thought? OF EVOLUTION 145 One's gaze naturaUy turns to the churches. In the churches we have, on the one side, the ever- increasing tendency to obliterate distinctions. The old is everywhere making compromise with the new, and removing the ancient landmarks. From time to time it reconnoitres the enemy's position, evacuates its former strongholds, and orders new hnes of defence. The partiality, in fact, of modern theological thought for this elusive, strategical method is one of its some what exasperating features. If you persecute it in one city, it flees to another. If you attack its weakest positions, it maintains that these were never essential. If you lay siege to its cardinal facts — or what have tiU now been considered its cardinal facts — you are calmly told that these are not now understood literally — they are mythical or allegorical or symbolical or poetical expressions of important truth. If, finally, you assaU the ipsissima verba of creed and confes sion, you learn with astonishment that creeds and confessions are chiefly valuable as historical documents, interesting, no doubt, as expressions of more or less ancient theological belief, but not, by any means, to be regarded as component parts of modern theology. The question that inevitably arises in a serious mind is: — Whom can we take as a fair representa- K 146 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE tive of the current theology ? What is the current theology ? That is the one side of the picture. On the other side, and in rather sharp contrast with this disconcerting tendency to compromise and conciliation, one is met by a bewildering babel of loud and angry voices, the owner of each contradicting, if not blaspheming, all the rest, and all perhaps entitled to a place in the province of modern theological thought as weU as their more amiable, if less vertebrate brethren. Truth, it would seem, lies behind each of these unamiable voices; each claims a practical monopoly of the ultimate secrets of the universe, and is in haste to announce them. AU are equaUy in earnest, equally confident, equally intolerant, and, the scientific outsider is apt to add, equally intolerable. It is, therefore, no idle sneer, but the inevitable question of a serious mind :— Whom can we take as a fair represen tative of the current theology? What is the current theology? At first sight it would seem that, in the midst of such diversity of gifts and operations, we must find it impossible to trace the effects or results of anything whatever. On the other hand, when one looks deeper, one finds that the apparent confusion is not so great after all, and that the resemblances and points of agreement, while OF EVOLUTION 147 much fewer than is often supposed, are upon the whole more remarkable and vital than the divergent and variable elements. After aU is said, the deepest problems of theology, as of all philosophy, centre round three great words : the Universe, Man, God. Strictly, theology has to do with the last alone, but theology has always had something — generally quite inaccurate — to say as to the origin and nature of the Uni verse, the origin and nature of Man, and the relation of each to the other and to God. Dur ing the past half-century the attitude of theology to all three has been profoundly modified. Think ing men do not and cannot hold the same con ceptions about the Universe, about Man, and about God that their fathers held, and the change of view has been, to a great extent, due to the widespread acceptance of the principles of Organic Evolution. Organic Evolution connotes a whole group of principles described by such phrases as Natural Selection, Survival of the Fittest, Sexual Selec tion, Variation, Heredity, etc., which found, as regards biology, their first great exponents in the late Charles Darwin, and Mr. Alfred Russel WaUace. Its acceptance involves the direct and complete overthrow of three theological dogmas of prime importance, to wit, the Doctrine of 148 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE Special Creation, the Doctrine of Design, and the Doctrine of Man's place in Nature. Indirectly, but by inevitable consequence, its acceptance involves the rejection of the Doctrine of the Infallibility of Scripture, a doctrine of the most profound importance for theology. I. Our fathers believed that the early chapters of the Book of Genesis gave us a literal account of the origin of the universe. They believed that God, by a great number of separate and simul taneous, or nearly simultaneous, acts of creation, introduced upon this earth, ready-made, so to speak, all the different species of plants and animals which now exist. The theory of Evolu tion, on the contrary, maintains that all the wonderful variety of species which are now, and have been at any past time, upon the earth, have been slowly developed or evolved from a few simple forms, or, perhaps, from one, in the long course of unnumbered ages. As a matter of observed fact, all hfe — the life of the simplest plants, and the life of the simplest animal forms, as well as the life of highly organ ized beings like ourselves — is a struggle for ex istence. Innumerable millions of living units are hourly born, of which only a few can possibly survive. Among these mUlions there forthwith OF EVOLUTION 149 ensues what may be likened to a battle with surrounding circumstances, such as climate, soil, atmosphere, and thousands of other conditions — in which those alone which are best fitted to survive do survive. This process, by which the fittest survive, was metaphorically called by Darwin 'Natural Selection,' because Nature, as it were, selects the individuals and the types that please her best. Two principles or laws of nature regulate this process. One is the principle of Variation, viz., that no two individuals, even of the same species, exactly resemble each other. The other is the principle of Heredity, which may be roughly stated as this : that the characteristics of individual members of a species tend to re appear in their offspring. Now, Darwin's great hypothesis seized hold of these two principles — which operate among plants just as among animals — and applied them to the universal struggle for existence. It is reasonable to sup pose that, when a favourable variation appeared in an individual — favourable, that is, to its sur vival — it should recur in that individual's off spring; and the chances of its recurring with wider and ever wider frequency are greater than the chances of a useless or unfavourable variation, because those individuals who are not possessed of the favourable variation are to that extent 150 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE handicapped in the race of life, and more likely to die before they have offspring, than the indi viduals who possess the favourable variation. Consequently, the favourable variation tends to reappear in subsequent generations, while the useless or unfavourable variations tend to die out and disappear. Now, one might hastily conclude that the result of this tendency would be that organisms would first approximate, and then reach a state of perfect 'fitness,' and remain in that state. But we have to remember that the conditions in which all organisms live are them selves continually changing; and that no two organisms live in a precisely similar environment, so that, as Mr. Herbert Spencer has happily phrased it, life is a 'continual adjustment of internal relations to external relations,' an action of environment upon ever -changing organisms, and a reaction of organisms upon their ever- changing environment. The conclusion, therefore, to which Darwin came was that, just as individual organisms are known to develop, so different species 'undergo modification, and that the existing forms of life are the descendants by true generation of pre existing forms.' In other words, he maintained that, 'granted a sufficient length of time since life first appeared upon the earth, it is conceivable OF EVOLUTION 151 that all the different animals and plants which we see at present upon the globe may have been produced by the action of natural selection upon the offspring of a few primordial forms, or, it may be, of a single primitive being.' (Nicholson, Zoo logy, 1887, p. 42.) Writing about twenty years before Darwin's work, it was still possible for one of Scotland's greatest sons, Dr. Thomas Chalmers, to speak of the opposite doctrine — special creation and fixity of species — as part and parcel both of science and theology. He calls it 'the universal faith of naturahsts . . . that the species do not run the one into the other, They are separated, and that by barriers which are permanent and in vincible. . . . Within the limits of a species there might be manifold varieties, but these limits can never be transgressed to the formation of another distinct and widening species in the animal kingdom. . . . There is no transition of the species into each other — therefore they present us with so many separate chains, which have maintained the separation during the whole currency of their existence. They diverge not into other species, nor is one species appended to another. They have either had distinct origins, or they have been distinct from all eternity.' {Natural Theology, vol. i. pp. 244, 245.) It can 152 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE therefore be readily understood how the publica tion of Darwin's theory roused a theological tempest that has not yet died away. In accord ance with all her past traditions, the Church did her best to crush the bold attack upon her belief in special creation and the fixity of species. But men of scientific spirit went on working and investigating, pledged to no theory, with the result that every year saw fresh confirmations of Darwin's accuracy, and that nowadays ' it may be said that naturalists have generaUy, if not universaUy, abandoned the belief in the fixity of species and the doctrine of special creation.' (Nicholson, Zoology, p. 40.) It may be of interest, therefore, to indicate, in the briefest possible way, some of the lines of evidence which make the Evolution hypothesis practicaUy irresistible. (1) We find it possible to classify or group all the organic species, both animal and vegetable, in a regularly ascending scale, rising from forms of the simplest kind up, by gradual stages of ever- increasing structural complexity, to Man himself, whose body is the most complex of all structural types. True, there are quite a number of species of which it could not be said that all the in dividuals in the one were more highly organized, or more complete than those composing the OF EVOLUTION 153 other; but the larger division to which these species naturaUy belong is graded off as a division from its neighbour divisions, and finds its sure place in any accurate classification, structural or functional — higher than some, lower than others, in the scale of structural or functional com plexity. Now, when the great fact is brought home to our minds that it is possible so to classify and arrange aU earthly species; when we see that the whole array of living species can be marshalled in a regularly ordered pro cession, or — to choose a metaphor still more apt — when we see that the innumerable host of sub -kingdoms, classes, orders, families, genera, and species spread themselves out precisely as the greater and lesser arms, the branches, and branchlets, the stems and twigs, and endless ramifications of some great tree, it becomes at once the natural and spontaneous thought in our minds that all these species must have a common ancestry; they must have sprung from the same stock originaUy, however widely they have now diverged. The assertion of this evident relationship is just another way of saying that the innumerable species which at present exist are the result of a slow and gradual process of evolution from a few original forms, or even from one. In no other way can we account for 154 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE the nice gradations, the fine shading off of structural types, but on the hypothesis that they are aU related. What then becomes of the other theory ? — the theory that God, at a given moment, separately created all the different species ready-made ? On that assumption, would it not be rather extra ordinary that they should all have been made to look exactly like the branches of a family if, as a matter of fact, they were not descended from a common ancestor at all ? That is, in brief, the ' Argument from Classification.' (2) Another fact which supports the theory of Evolution of species from a few pre-existing forms, or one, as opposed to the theory of special creation, is this : In the case of many of the higher species, the embryo has been watched at the various stages of its development, and it has been found that what is destined to become an adult animal high up in the scale, passes, while yet in the embryonic state, through various grades of development, representing the per manent condition of adult animals of a lower type. 'Not only is the embryo, in many cases, extremely unlike the adult animal, but there are many cases in which the former has a habitat and mode of life entirely different' from 'those suitable to the latter.' (Nicholson, op. cit, p. 56.) OF EVOLUTION 155 For one example, there is a species of sala mander, ' which differs from most salamanders in being exclusively terrestrial.' 'Its young ones can never require gills, yet, when the embryo is examined, it is found to possess gills like aquatic salamanders, and when placed in water, it swims about hke the tadpoles of the water newt.' Similarly, the young of the frog itself has at first a long swimming taU like a fish, but no limbs; then gUls are developed, and the tadpole breathes water like a fish, though the full-grown frog has lungs, and breathes like a man. The young tadpole, too, lives on vegetable food, though the fuU-grown frog is carnivorous. Subsequently the giUs are gradually covered up by a flap of skin growing back from the jaw, hind legs begin to show, and lungs are developed, the blood is gradiiaUy diverted from the gills to the lungs until the gills become atrophied; the legs are fully developed, and the animal is converted into a perfect frog on a small scale, air-breathing, and carnivorous, hke the grown-up frog that it will by and by become. (Ibid., p. 595.) The only reasonable deduction from these facts surely is that the presently existing Frog Species is descended from a purely aquatic species ; that, by a change of its environment, and by modifi cations acquired by — or favourable variations 156 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE occurring in — individuals, and transmitted from parent to offspring, the species, slowly and graduaUy, evolved into its present condition. Now, the frog is not an exceptional instance. The late Professor Romanes says (Org. Evol., p. 64): 'The higher animals almost invariably pass through the same embryological stages as the lower ones, up to the time when the higher animal begins to assume its higher characters.' Even at this time of day, a great many people may still be found who have no doubt (as our fathers had no doubt) but that Man is a being quite distinct from all other beings, not only from the time he is born, but in his pre-natal condition. Perhaps most of us do remember enough of the little physiology we learned at school to admit that Man is really an animal, but that, at any stage of his existence, he is other than the highest animal comes rather as a shock to most people still. What, then, does the biologist teU us about Man ? ' His development begins from a speck of hving matter, similar to that from which the development of a plant begins. And, when his animality becomes established, he exhibits the fundamental anatomical qualities which char acterize such lowly animals as the jelly-fish. Next, he is marked off as a vertebrate, but it cannot be said whether he is to be a fish, a OF EVOLUTION 157 snake, a bird, or a beast.' All these are verte brates. 'Later on, it is evident that he is to be a mammal: but not tUl still later can it be said to which order of mammals he belongs.' (Romanes, Org. Evol., pp. 64, 65.) When the human embryo is carefully studied, a number of remarkable facts come to light. For example, at an early stage, the human embryo has actual shts in its neck, one on each side, exactly as fishes have. These are caUed giU-clefts, and the arteries carrying the blood from the heart branch out towards these giU-clefts, just as they do in fishes. In fishes, however, the gill-clefts are responsive to these advances, and throw out little filaments to meet the arteries. These filaments are the means of respiration which fishes use, but in Man (as in other air-breathing vertebrates) they are not thrown out; no connection is ever effected with the giU-clefts, and the giU-clefts finaUy close up. At a later stage the unborn young of Man has a very decided tail, consider ably longer at that stage than the limbs, and provided with muscles all ready for use, the extensor muscle 'being especiaUy well marked.' (Professor Turner, quoted by Romanes.) During the sixth month of its existence, moreover, the human embryo is coated very thickly with woolly hair, except on the palms of the hands, and the 158 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE soles of the feet, which, of course, corresponds with the mature state of most of the 'lower' animals. One of the differences between grown-up Man and the grown-up apes — which come nearest to him in structure — is that Man's great toe is his great toe, being larger than its neighbours, whereas in apes the corresponding toe is smaUer than its neighbours. An American man of science, however, has recently found that, in the human embryo, when about an inch long, the great toe is shorter than the others, and sticks out from the side of the foot, very much in the same way as the apes' great toe always does. (Professor Wyman, quoted by Romanes, Org. Evol., p. 69.) Now, what conclusion do these facts, and many hundreds of facts like these, compel us to adopt ? Is it not evident to any fair-minded person that they give us a very strong argument in favour of the development of higher species by ascent from lower ones ? It is hardly conceivable that, if each species was separately created, it would have been arranged that the individuals composing it should, in the various stages of their embryonic career, represent a succession of types lower than the type of their own species. What could be the object of such a progressive development? OF EVOLUTION 159 On the other hand, if the higher species have attained their present elevation by gradual evolution from lower forms, it is natural that their embryonic history should be a rapid and condensed history of that evolution. To give but one more example, which supphes, perhaps, the strongest link in a very strong chain of evidence, it wiU be remembered that, by the law of Natural Selection, it is ' the fittest ' which survive — not the highest, necessarUy, nor the ideally best, necessarily, but those which most thoroughly adapt themselves to their environ ment are Nature's favourites in the ' struggle for existence.' Now, suppose that the environment — which, like the organism, is always changing — happens to be such that organisms of a com paratively low type suit it best, it follows from the law of Natural Selection that, in the course of time, any organisms of a comparatively high type which happen to be in it will tend to de generate. In the case of individuals, we know that this is precisely what happens. The Evolution theory is that the same process goes on in the case of whole species : that some of the comparatively low, i.e. simple, species have degenerated from higher, i.e. more complex, species, through a change in their environment gradually causing the necessary modifications in form and function. 160 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE Now, it is easy to see what a powerful argument it would be, were the evolutionist able to point to the embryonic development of these degenerate species, and show that, just as the embryo in the higher species presents a succession of lower stages in their history, so the embryo in these degenerate species represents, in the course of its development, the higher civilizations from which they have descended. As it happens, the evolutionist is able to do this. The most typical case of degeneration, perhaps, is the case of parasites; that is, animals which, as we know them, live by attaching themselves to other animals, and drawing their nourishment from the animals they inhabit. To take but one example of many, there is a large group of little animals known as fish -lice, which are parasitic — the adult females entirely so — which fix themselves in the skin, gills, or eyes of fishes. It is obvious that, in such an environ ment, what the adult female fish-louse speciaUy wants is a powerful grip, and a well-developed means of suction. These two things, accordingly, she has. She has no use for eyes, and, although she belongs to an order of animals (the Copepods) which have eyes, she has none. She has no need of organs of locomotion, and, although the non parasitic Copepods have feet adapted for swim- OF EVOLUTION 161 ming, she either has mere apologies for feet, or has none at all. She has no need of a mouth adapted for chewing, and, although the non parasitic species of Copepods have a mouth usuaUy adapted for chewing, she has only a mouth, if you can caU it so, adapted for suction. But the important point is this, that the young larvce of these parasitic fish-lice have all the typical characteristics of the free, non-parasitic Copepods. They have eyes; they have feet adapted for swimming; they have a mouth fitted for chewing; and it is only when they rapidly grow into adults that these things disappear, and the degenerate, parasitic animal appears. Can any one doubt that this parasitic species is descended from a non-parasitic species ? If it is not, if it was specially created, why should its young be more highly organized than its adult members? The conclusion seems inevi table that here again the history of the indivi dual is but a brief riswmi of the history of the species. That is the argument from embryology. One more argument may be quoted — to some people, perhaps, the strongest of all — I refer to the existence in many of the higher species of rudimentary organs, or imperfect organs, con necting them with other species, generally lower in the scale of being. 162 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE Not simply in the embryonic stage, but even after birth and in the adult stage, traces of organs quite useless to their present possessors are, in many cases, found, which can only indi cate that the species of animal in which they are found is descended from a species which had these organs, and used them. Thus, seals have imperfect hind legs, with all the typical bones, but greatly shortened and bent backwards, so as to be of no use at aU for walking, but ' admirably adapted for swimming ' (Nicholson). In whales, again, the hind legs are visible in the skeleton, while ' the arm, which is used as a fin, still retains the bones of the shoulder, forearm, wrist, and fingers, although they are all enclosed in a fin-shaped sack so as to render them quite useless for any other purpose than swimming' (Romanes, Org. Evol., p. 28). Now, to an un prejudiced mind, there can be but one explana tion of these phenomena, viz., that the seal and the whale, which belong to the great sub- kingdom of Mammals, are descended from a species which were once terrestrial in their habitat. Most of the mammals are still terres trial, and the only possible way of accounting for the rudimentary arms and feet of seals and whales is that, long, long ago, some change in their ancestors' environment made an aquatic OF EVOLUTION 163 life necessary, and that in the course of ages these limbs underwent gradual modifications adapting them to their new environment. Perhaps one of the most striking instances of rudimentary characters occurs in the horse. It is well known that the knee in a horse's leg really corresponds to our wrist or ankle, and that the part of the leg between the knee and the hoof corresponds to the middle toe or middle finger, which has been immensely developed at the ex pense of the remaining fingers or toes. The remaining fingers and toes, however, have not entirely disappeared, for, in the horse as we know it, the splint-bones, as they are called — that is, the rudimentary bones of two of these toes — are stiU visible, one on each side of the shank bone. Now, in quadrupeds or Mammalia, the normal number of digits is five to each limb. It would therefore be a valuable bit of evidence for the evolutionist if he could show that the horse is descended from an ancestor which had five toes. It so happens that Nature has writ ten for us a volume of extremely ancient history, with iUustrations. The chapters of this book, which we are only just beginning to understand, are the successive strata of rock, piled one on the top of the other, which form the earth's crust, and the illustrations are the fossils to be found in 164 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE these several strata. When we turn over the pages of this geological record, beginning at the end and going backward, what do we find ? We find a succession of horse-like animals, those in the most recent times exactly like our one-toed friend; those further back with the two rudi mentary toes much better developed; further back still, with three good serviceable toes ; and, further back still, Professor Marsh has found an animal with four toes on the fore-feet and three toes on the hind feet, which he. thinks is of the horse species. One would have thought this was quite sufficient evidence of the evolution of the horse to justify the conclusion of Professor Huxley, in 1870, that the horse must have had a five-toed ancestor, and that this would very likely be verified some day; and yet Huxley's prophetic remark, I am told, was received by his theological critics with scornful contempt. Since then, however, the ancestor has been dis covered in the shape of a horse-like fossil in the Lower Eocene deposits of North America, which has on its fore-feet four complete toes and the rudiments of a fifth (see Romanes, Org. Evol., p. 44. ; Nicholson, Zoology, pp. 778, 779). The case of the horse furnishes one of the most complete examples of ' links ' between the present species and its long-distant ancestry; OF EVOLUTION 165 but, in many other cases, one or more of these missing links have been supplied by the Geologic Record. In the face of such evidence, it seems fatuous indeed to maintain that, on a given day, some six thousand, or six hundred thousand, years ago, the horse sprang suddenly into being — hoofs and all. It is, on the contrary, evident that the horse's ancestors, having used one toe in walking, at the expense of the others, the species has, by the slow evolution of ages, not only lost the use of the others, but, to a great extent, lost the organs themselves. We ourselves know how, even in the short space of a human life, we may visibly reduce the muscles of our legs by continually using tramcars and cable-cars, or may visibly develop them by walking and cycling; and it can no longer be doubted that the profound modifi cations of structure and of function, which en able us to classify different animals and plants under different species, have been slowly brought about by the working of the very same law. II. The conception of evolution, as will readily be seen, cuts not only against the old theory of Special Creation, but completely knocks the bot tom out of the old 'Argument from Design.' That argument was this. Everywhere through- 166 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE out Nature we observe innumerable instances of adaptation. The organs of men, animals, and plants are beautifully and harmoniously fitted for the functions which they have to perform. Now, suppose we picked up a watch for the first time, and, after carefully examining the intricate workings of spring and lever and wheel, discovered that it was exactly fitted for marking the time of day, what should we conclude ? We should con clude that this remarkable combination of parts did not happen by chance ; we should say it must have had an inteUigent maker who purposely adapted it for the keeping of time. So, from our observations of the innumerable adaptations in Nature, we must conclude that the Creator purposely designed the marvellous array of species, each for its own special environment, and a Creator who did that must be an intelligent Creator. Now, that ' argument from design ' is, of course, perfectly syUogistic. If the premises are true, the conclusion is sound. But the evolutionist cannot accept the minor premise. It is not true that Nature exhibits adaptations which are un questionably purposive. On the contrary, the adaptations which she exhibits are the result of an involuntary and inevitable natural selection of those types which happened to be fittest in the OF EVOLUTION 167 struggle for existence. It is true that existing species are adapted to their environment; but that is not because they were so created, but because the species which were not so adapted have tended to die out, and those which were have tended to survive. It seems hardly neces sary, at this time of day, to discuss this point further, because it is now generally conceded that the old argument has lost its force. One iUustration of a miUion may be given, simply to make clear the opposite standpoints. In the polar bear, Paley would have said, you have the evidence of beneficent design. The Creator, in the beginning, created the polar bear with a thick coat and a white colour, just that it might be fit for its environment. Not so, says the evolutionist ; the presumption is that, in the ancestral species of northern bear, those individuals which had white fur tended to survive because they succeeded in approaching and catching their prey better than others, and those with thick fur tended to survive because they best stood the cold. Other types could not so thoroughly adapt themselves to their environment, and tended to die out. So that the thick white-furred varieties persisted, and among them the polar bear now existing. But Evolution not only explains away the facts 168 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE on which Paley and his school founded, but produces a vast array of facts quite inconsistent with it, a few of which have been already men tioned. Why, for example, should the young of terrestrial salamanders have gills which they will never use ? Why, if whales were especiaUy designed to be aquatic, should they have lungs and the rudiments of feet ? Why should the young larvae of the fish-lice have eyes for seeing, and feet for swimming, and mouths for chewing, if they were designed to live a parasitic life, and neither see, nor chew, nor swim ? Why should man have the rudiment of a tail which he never uses, if he was speciaUy created, ready-made, for his present environment ? These facts, and hun dreds of thousands like them, are simply inex plicable on the theory of Design. On the theory of Evolution, they are just what one would expect — the remnants of earlier stages — the reminiscences of past history.1 III. This brings us, lastly, to the third and most important point of relation between Evolu- 1 None the less rational, of course, is Tennyson's fine line : 'Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs.' It is no longer valid to argue from particular instances of adaptation to Design ; but, that the general course of cosmic history reveals or at all events is consistent with a 'pur poseful ' Cause, is still quite tenable. OF EVOLUTION 169 tion and Theology, viz., the profound modification Evolution has wrought in our conception of Man's place in Nature. To our forefathers Man was a being outside the rest of the Universe — not only speciaUy and separately created, but of a nature whoUy distinct from aU other species. The more thoroughly and carefuUy, however, he is studied on his physical side, the more evident it becomes that he, too, is a child of evolution — very animal of very animal. Bone for bone, he corresponds with the anthropoid • apes (Tylor, Anthropology, p. 40), who are next below him in the scale of structural complexity ; and by all zoologists his physical characters are classed along with those of the lemurs and apes as those of the order of Primates. ' In the Natural Order of Primates,' says Mr. Tylor (Anthropology, p. 45), ' to which Man be longs, with the monkeys and lemurs, the series of brains shows a remarkable rise of development from lower to higher forms. The lemur has a smaU and comparatively smooth brain, whereas the high anthropoid apes have brains which strikingly approach man's.' 'Without question,' said Huxley (Man's Place in Nature, p. 65), ' the mode of origin and the early stages of the de velopment of Man are identical with those of the animals immediately below him in the scale ; 170 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE without a doubt, in these respects, he is far nearer to apes than the apes are to the dog.' Thus far we have been dealing with Evolution in the limited Darwinian sense, viz., the evolution of species by natural selection. The conception, however, of a purely natural development, which has so completely solved the problems of biology, has laid hold of the scientific imagination, and not a few of the most brilliant minds of the century have applied it, on the whole, with entire success in provinces outside biology. Thus in the science of Comparative Philology, in sharp contrast with the Tower -of- Babel theory, it is now an axiom that, for example, all the Aryan or Indo-European languages are closely related to each other; that they have gradually evolved from a primitive stock, being modified by their several environments. A very slight amount of knowledge is required to show that Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian are aU direct descendants of the Latin tongue; that aU the Teutonic languages — German, Dutch, Scandinavian, and English — are similarly related ; and that, so far from having had a miraculous and instantaneous origin, they have developed, and are still developing, in a gradual and quite natural manner. Again, the mental characteristics of Man have OF EVOLUTION 171 been shown, beyond all question, by Romanes and others, to differ, not in essence, but only in degree, from the mental characteristics of the so-called 'lower' animals (see especially Mental Evolution in Man, Romanes). Mr. Herbert Spencer, who, even before Darwin's work appeared, was working on the same lines, not in the department of biology, but in psychology — the science of mind — devoted a long lifetime of patient investigation and reflection to no less colossal a task than the scientific interpre tation of all the phenomena of organic nature. His monumental work has now been brought to a successful conclusion, and his systematic investigations in biology, psychology, sociology, and ethics have practically proved to any one who studies the vast accumulation of data that the evolution of species by natural selection is only one expression of a universal principle, and that the human mind, the doctrines and sanc tions of human morality, and the usages and institutions of human society have followed the course of a natural development as truly as the plant and animal organisms with which biology deals. The theologians of the future wiU have to adjust their creeds to the new conception that Man is at once the creature and the crown of 172 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE a long evolutionary process; that there is no thing preternatural or exceptional about him; that, in his mind and body alike, he is but the highest expression of the very same laws which govern plants and animals; that his higher instincts and emotions, his moral codes and theological systems are not preternatural pheno mena, but slowly developed natural attainments, of which the rudiments can still be discovered, and the stages of their development traced. It is not a little significant that already one of the ablest exponents of Natural Religion in this country, the late Professor A. B. Bruce, of the Free Church College, Glasgow, in the first volume of his Gifford Lectures, frankly recog nizes the changed conditions of the theological problem. He not only sees clearly that the old argument of design has lost its value, but cor dially accepts the evolution theory as far as man's physical organism is concerned. What is much more remarkable in a theologian, Professor Bruce, while not absolutely committing himself, strongly inclines to the belief that Evolution is a law of universal application, that it describes the spiritual as well as the material history of Man; and he finds therein a stronger argument than ever for the existence and rational nature of God. ' It is not yet,' he • says, ' a settled matter OF EVOLUTION 173 that man is out and out the child of evolution. That he is the product of evolution on the animal side of his nature is generally acknowledged. Any dispute stiU outstanding relates to the psychical aspect of his being — to his intellect and his moral nature. . . . For one who is mainly concerned for the religious significance of man's position in the universe, the interest by no means lies exclusively on the more conservative side of the question. ' Making Man, in his entire nature, subject to evolutionary law (if this can be done without sacrifice of essential truth) presents certain advantages for the cause of Theism. On this view evolution becomes an absolutely uni versal method of creation, whereof Man, in his whole being, is the highest and final product. And what we gain from this conception is the right to interpret the whole process by its end. If we place Man, in his higher nature, outside the process, we lose this right. If human reason and conscience have no part in the great move ment, then their possessor is neither explained by the movement, nor does he, in turn, explain it. But bring him, soul as well as body, within the movement, and we are entitled to point to all in him that is highest, and say, This is what was aimed at all along, this is the goal towards 174 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE which the age-long process of creation was marching, even towards the evolution of mind and spirit under the guidance of an eternal Reason' (Providential Order of the World, pp. 25, 26). This clearly shows how far we have traveUed from the days of Paley and Chalmers. Nothing could better exhibit the profound modification of view which the Evolution theory has brought about among all thinking men. In conclusion, two things are worth noting. First, Evolution affords no absolute guarantee of progress. Degeneration goes on side by side with progress. It is aU a matter of environment. It is quite possible to conceive of the arrival of a new set of conditions, in which only the lowest forms of life could survive, and, in that case, the higher forms would either die out or degenerate. Secondly, It is a mistake to suppose, as many do, that the Evolution hypothesis is directly atheistic; that, by the substitution of a natural explanation of phenomena for a supernatural, God is banished from the universe. On the contrary, when we retrace the steps of the his tory of things until we confront the primal cell, the elemental atom, the question springs at once, and with a thousand-fold greater energy, to our lips, How came you here, and whence? The OF EVOLUTION 175 First Cause of the universe seems more wonder ful, more inscrutable, more infinite than ever. Whether or no we are to accept Professor Bruce's forcible argument that God must have a nature actually akin to the highest product of His evolu tion, it is reasonable to suppose that the nature of that highest product should give us a some what better approximation to the nature of its Cause than any other. If in the theory of evolu tion Man has found the solution of the Universe, then Man has caught a retrospective glimpse, as it were, of what the Great First Cause may be judged to have seen in advance, long before the evolutionary movement began. In his very capa city for this vision, even in his ability to state the problem, Man may fairly be held to evince a degree of kinship with the Maker of the prob lem. There is nothing in the evolutionary theory inconsistent with the theory of Rehgion that the Unseen Author of the whole movement, which has so far culminated in the human mind, should be capable of entering into some sort of conscious relation with its highest product — a relation more intimate than was possible in the earlier stages, with the earlier products. Evolution deals a fatal blow at many traditions and at high authorities ; yet the faith that is really founded on experience is, in the last resort, as unassailable as any other 176 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE fact of experience. Organic evolution has finally displaced special creation. Overboard, with special creation, have gone the amusing Baby lonian legends of the origin of Woman, of the Garden of Eden, the faU of Man, and the Tower- of-Babel theory of language. One indirect but vital consequence has been the shipwreck of faith in the verbal inspiration and accuracy of the Hebrew sacred writings. More important stiU, super-organic evolution, with its evidences for a purely natural history of the mind and morals of Man, and its absolute proof of the close and intimate connection between mental states and brain-movements, has made it more difficult than ever, as we shall see, to believe in Free- Will, and imperatively demands a restate ment of the theological doctrine of Sin.1 Mean while, though the truly religious man needs no argument for the truth and reahty of his own deepest experience, it is weU to remember that Evolution interposes no argument against it. It is, on the contrary, still certainly possible to believe in God, and to recognize the Author of All as, in a very real sense, our Father, with whom we, best among all His children, may hold converse and communion. 1 Such a restatement has been attempted with much suc cess by Mr. F. R. Tennant in his remarkable Hulsean Lectures on The Origin and Propagation of Sin, 1903. IX OF EVOLUTION AND ETHICS ' Systems of morals, maxims of conduct, are so many and- marks left to show the route by which the soul is marching ; casts, as it were, of her features at various stages of her growth, but never the final record of her perfect countenance. ' Dickinson: The Meaning of Good. Assuming that the theory of the evolution of species by natural selection is beyond all reason able doubt applicable to the physical history of aU vegetable and animal forms, and that it accounts, not indeed ultimately, but immediately and directly, for the wonderful and almost limit less variety of living species, the question very naturaUy arises, whether man on his psychical or mental side is likewise the product of a natural evolution: whether his powers of think ing or reasoning have been graduaUy and natur aUy acquired and developed from more simple and rudimentary faculties: whether his inteUi- gence differs from the intelligence of his next- of-kin among the lower animals, not in kind, M 178 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE but in degree : whether, in short, instead of being, as was long supposed, a direct and super natural donation from the deity, man's intellect is rather the supreme fact and achievement of nature — slowly and gradually arrived at by the natural operation of the same natural laws that account for his physical structure and his physical faculties. It is an indirect tribute to the tremendous impact that Darwin's great idea has made upon nineteenth century thought, and the impulse it has given to the scientific habit of mind, that nowadays there seems at first sight only one possible answer to the problem as thus stated. Fifty years ago supernaturalism would have given a negative, and probably a vituperative reply. To-day, every thinking man has almost a pre judice in favour of naturalism. Men look for and expect to find natural causes for aU phe nomena, and, wherever an adequate natural cause can be assigned, to accept it in preference to any cause of alleged supernatural origin. The question as just stated, however, is much too wide for our present purpose. We cannot now discuss the general question of the origin of mind or intelligence, but must assume at least the possibility that these are in part derivable on the lines indicated. OF EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 179 The discussion before us at the moment is not as to whether man's inteUectual development, as a whole, has proceeded upon evolutionary lines ; but, whether that department of his inteUectual activity, which we caU moral or ethical, can be legitimately regarded as the product of natural evolution in the same sense that aU the departments of his activity which we caU physical can be so regarded. What, in fact, is the relation between the theory of evolution on the one hand, and the facts of man's moral nature and the principles of right and wrong on the other ? The question as thus limited is undoubtedly one of the most important that can be pro pounded, and its far-reaching issues make it the more necessary to weigh the evidence at our disposal carefuUy before giving our reply. As we shaU see, there are those who, while ad mitting natural causes for the origin and growth of human intelhgence up to a certain point, draw the line a long way short of ethics and rehgion. In our discussion it will be desirable to keep in mind that there are two closely related, but perfectly distinct, problems to be discussed. The first question is — What account does the theory of evolution give of the origin and de- 180 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE velopment of the great moral concepts, such as justice, fidelity, generosity, veracity, chastity, and how far is the account it gives satisfactory ? The second question is — What bearing has the theory of evolution upon the doctrine that man is a free moral agent ? I. To Mr. Herbert Spencer belongs the great distinction of having made the first systematic attempt to put ethics upon an evolutionary footing, or, as he expresses it, to find 'for the principles of right and wrong in conduct at large a scientific basis' (Data of Ethics, 1879, Preface). In what clear and measured language, and with what a carefully prepared foundation of fact and argument he has done so, is familiar to all students of the great ' System of Synthetic Philosophy,' to the elaboration of which he devoted a long life. At the same time, it must not be forgotten that Darwin, while he did not elaborate the evolutionary theory of ethics, un doubtedly maintained and so far expounded and illustrated it in his Descent of Man (1871), eight years before Mr. Spencer published the first part of his ' Ethics ' (Data of Ethics). The fundamental assumption of the evolution ary theory of ethics will be readily admitted. It will be admitted, to begin with, that man is a OF EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 181 more or less social being; and, further, that morality relates to his conduct as a social being, that is, to his consciousness of a relationship to his fellow-men, and his conduct towards them in view of that conscious relationship. ' No man liveth to himself,' and even those thoughts and actions which are primarily most individualistic, such as the selection of his food, or his house, or the regulation of his exercise, may in virtue of this conscious relationship come to have a moral significance. According to the evolutionary theory, however, this social consciousness has been of slow and gradual growth. The exceedingly complex thing which we understand by society hardly exists at aU among primitive men. Society, to the philosophic eye of Mr. Spencer, is an organism of a highly developed type, exhibiting remark able differentiation of function and corresponding complexity of structure. Like those physical organisms that are lowest down in the scale of being, in which every necessary function is per formed by one or two organs which serve alike the purposes of nutrition, digestion, locomotion, and reproduction, society in its earliest stages was almost absolutely simple. Among primitive men the individual was practically self-support ing and self-sufficient. He fetched and carried 182 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE for himself, he cooked his own food, made his own tools, and weapons, and clothes ; he hunted, and travelled, and camped at his own free will ; ' his hand was against every man, and every man's hand against him.' In place of society there was only a collocation of individual units, none of whom recognized, in the modern sense, any social obligation. A further stage arrived when a certain coherence among members of the same family began to be recognized. The coherence was meantime, however, simply the coherence of 'status.' The father was lord : the wives he had captured and the children he had begotten were his absolute property, but as such there was a certain bond of union introduced which in a modified form developed later into the conception of the tribe. Gradually 'Society progressed from status to contract.' Men came to see that in certain circumstances there was a distinct advantage to be gained by acting together, especially in self- defence. It became apparent that two were as a general rule better than one, and that three were still better than one. Three, if they agreed to act together, and had anything like ordinary luck, could kill one : and the obvious advantage of that was that they could possess themselves of his wives, and oxen, and asses, and everything OF EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 183 that was his. But, in order to get A and B to unite with you in the killing of C, it was found desirable to explain that they were to get equal shares of his means and estate, heritable and moveable, real and personal, wherever situated : and it was further found quite necessary to stick to your bargain; otherwise A and B, having learned their lesson, were not at all unlikely to combine for a purpose much less agreeable than the original one. Hence, in all probability, it was that society ' progressed from status to contract,' and the advantages of contract were so obvious that it graduaUy became general, and society in the modern sense fairly began to be. The society in which men began to live, and work, and fight together, and to agree upon certain rules or laws according to which they would live, and work, and fight, is several stages higher in the scale of being than the collection of heterogeneous Ishmaels whose hands were against every man, and every man's hand against them. As time went on, it was discovered that while all men could hunt and fight, some had greater skill than their fellows in the casting and mould ing of weapons, some others in the building of boats, and yet others in the art of tilling the ground. So the men who were unskilled in those arts bade these bide at home with the women 184 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE and chUdren, when they themselves went forth to war and the chase, and brought them good gifts of food and spoils of war, whereas (albeit they had done no hunting or fighting) they were none the less useful citizens, and should also be paid for their work. In some such wise as this, we may be sure society slowly progressed from the simplicity of inorganic unity to the more complex condition of organic unity in which each man, and, in the stiU more complex societies, each group of men, acted as an organ in the social organism. Now, it must be noted that this progress bears the closest possible resemblance to the evolution of physical species by natural selection. For it cannot be doubted that Nature has selected for. preservation these societies in which this favourable variation has appeared, and it is significant that the societies in which differentiation of function has been carried to the greatest perfection are every where in the ascendant, while those races which have remained nearest to their primal simplicity of structure and function are decadent, and indeed are rapidly becoming obsolete. It is necessary to keep steadily in view the foregoing theory of the origin and development of society, if we would grasp intelligently the theory of ethics, or duty, that is correlative with it. OF EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 185 It is obvious that for a simple barbarian Ishmael hving in a non-social state there could be no appreciable clash between selfish desire and duty. He ate, and drank, and slept, and hunted in order to satisfy his animal cravings. He slew his feUow-men, if they looked dangerous, with the same readiness as he slew a wild beast : only with the greater exultation and dehght that, as a rule, it required the greater cunning and resource to do it. When, however, men came to live in social unity, a change came over the spirit of their dreams. The distinct advantages secured by social life curtailed individual liberty of action. It was no longer possible for a man wholly to do that which seemed right in his own eyes. He had to look at things less and less from the purely individual, and more and more from the social, point of view. He had to identify his interests with the interests of his family, or tribe, or clan : and if he declined to do so, society made short work with him. At a very early stage men came to see that it was necessary to define to each other the conditions upon which they would live and work in social unity, and to punish any member who committed a breach of the social contract. The promulgation of aU the moral codes the world has seen, including the ethical portion of the Ten Commandments, down to the 186 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE latest modification of the enormous statute law of Great Britain, has had its origin in the necessity for making a clear and ever clearer definition of the social contract. As society progressed, it would naturaUy come to be felt a shameful thing to commit any breach of that contract. The freer, more individualistic spirits had, as time went on, less and less chance of perpetuation. They were either killed off directly or driven into isolation. The struggle for existence between Ishmaels on the one hand, and law-abiding members of a tribe, or corporation, or state, on the other, became, century by century, more hopeless for the Ishmaels. In other words, Nature, in the shape of society, selected the social type of man for permanence, and those individuals who had the ' favourable variation ' of social-mindedness not only tended to survive as contrasted with the Ishmaels, but tended to transmit their useful variation to their offspring. The phrase, the ' social type of man,' does not, of course, denote any fixed type. All things are in constant flux. Human society itself is continu ally changing in structure, and so, of course, are the terms of that contract, written or unwritten, which exists between itself and the individuals who compose it. So that the social type at one stage is very different from the social type at OF EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 187 another stage, varying, in fact, with the code that obtains in the society of which the individual happens to be a member. It is quite obvious that so-called 'manly virtues,' such as courage, activity, determination, and endurance, would tend to survival even in the earliest non -social stage of development. The ' ethics of enmity,' as Mr. Spencer happily calls it, would linger also among all mUitant tribes and nations. The sacred duty of the blood-feud or vendetta, the morality of robbery and piracy when directed against foreigners, and the glory of man-slaying, are only some of the moral concepts of earlier times which are by no means yet extinct. It is also easy to see that the social virtues of honesty, veracity, loyalty, temperance, and justice, while not affecting so strongly the chances of survival of the individual, would greatly increase the likelihood of the sur vival of those tribes or clans among whose members they were most widely practised, in the struggle for existence with other tribes in which they were comparatively absent. As the ages roll on, social man develops a social conscience, which comes to act more or less automatically or instinctively — giving praise to those acts which conform to the social ideal, and blame to those which are disconform thereto. 188 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE In other words, the ethical sentiment of any society reacts upon the consciousness of the individuals who compose it; and there is a tendency in these individuals to praise and blame the same acts and kinds of acts. It is increas ingly felt to be a shameful thing to commit any breach of the social contract, and this moral attitude being a 'favourable variation,' that is, a characteristic tending to assist the individuals who possess it (and still more the societies in which most individuals possess it) in the struggle for existence, is transmitted to succeeding genera tions (subject, of course, to modification from time to time), until it comes to be — here in one form, and there in another — a part of every man's natural inheritance. Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, who shares with Darwin the honour of having first stated the law of natural selection, sums up this view of the origin of ethics (in which, as we shall see, he does not concur) thus : ' The moral sense is said to have been developed from the social instincts of savages, and to depend mainly on the enduring discomfort produced by any action which excites the general disapproval of the tribe. Thus every act of an individual which is believed to be contrary to the interests of the tribe excites its unvarying disapprobation, OF EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 189 and is held to be immoral ; while every act, on the other hand, which • is, as a rule, beneficial to the tribe is warmly and constantly approved, and is thus considered to be right or moral. From the mental struggle, when an act that would benefit self is injurious to the tribe, there arises conscience ; and thus the social instincts are the foundation of the moral sense and of the fundamental principles of morality ' (Darwinism, 1890, p. 462). This, then, is a brief and bald, but, I think, fairly accurate statement of the origin and de velopment of ethics from the naturahstic or evolutionary point of view. It is worthy of note, however, that all believers in evolution by natural selection do not agree in considering the theory applicable in the ethical sphere. Weismann, for example, denies that either in the physical or the intellectual sphere acquired characters are ever transmitted from father to son, and Darwin himself, though he strongly inclined to the belief that acquired characteristics were transmitted, generaUy spoke with caution on the subject. Mr. A. R. WaUace, who agrees with Weismann so far as to reject, or at least greatly discount, Mr. Spencer's doctrine of the direct action of 190 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE environment in the modification of species, justly contends with reference to man's ethical development that the only characters with which natural selection has to do are those which are favourable or unfavourable to survival in the struggle for existence ; and he argues that many ethical conceptions either have no bearing on the chance of survival or are positively unfavour able thereto. Among these he instances ' the constancy of the martyr, the unselfishness of the philanthropist, the devotion of the patriot, the enthusiasm of the artist, the resolute and persevering search of the scientific worker after nature's secrets . . . the love of truth, the de light in beauty, the passion for justice, and the thrill of exultation with which we hear of any act of courageous self-sacrifice ' (Darwinism, p. 474). To the same apparent effect is the whole bur then of Huxley's much-discussed essay on Evol ution and Ethics, in which he solemnly bids us remember that though our altruistic ethic is a very fine thing, it is actually and directly opposed to the cosmic process, which is war to the knife and devil take the hindmost (Collected Essays, vol. ix. pp. 81-82). This warning did not seem to come with a very good grace from an exponent of naturalism like Huxley, and so, on OF EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 191 publication of the essay in 1893, Mr. Spencer per tinently inquired how, according to Mr. Huxley, our altruistic ethic had managed to emerge at all from the ' cosmic process,' if it were directly opposed to that process. Whereupon, of course, Huxley had to explain away all that he seemed to mean in a lengthy prolegomenon. The theory of the evolution of ethical concepts by natural selection, be it true or false, has an undoubted fascination for the modern mind, in that it brings man's ethical developments into line with the rest of the world-process. The great idea of continuity has cast a spell over modern thought. For the ancients, there were gods many and lords many: Nature was not one, but various. For us, the universe is one, and harmonious. We delight to bring her multi fold phenomena under the domain of one general law; the scientific spirit of our day rejoices over one synthesis that holds water more than over ninety and nine just analyses that 'explain' nothing; and therefore to find an underlying principle of unity that shaU reconcile such ap parently different entities as the physical nature and the moral nature of man is quite in harmony with our preconceptions and prepossessions. That the evolutionary theory of ethics gives ex facie a more rational and probable account , 192 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE of the development of ethical sentiments than the old theory of ' divine precepts, miraculously conveyed,' must also be conceded. It affords, for one thing, an explanation of the existence of widely different conceptions of morality held among different peoples, and for another, the extraordinary anomalies which appear in the ethical deliverances of the same nation and even the same individual at different times and under different circumstances. This brings us to the consideration of our second problem, viz. : — II. The bearing of the theory not only upon the origin of particular moral concepts, but also upon the doctrine that man is a free moral agent. In the first place, if the great law which under lies the evolution of the physical characteristics of the human species, viz., natural selection, or the elimination of the unfit, operates also, to the exclusion of every other principle, in the development of man's ethical characteristics, then the code of morality of any particular com munity is, so to speak, chosen for it by inexorable necessity; because by the operation of natural selection all other codes are excluded. And further, the attitude of each individual man to the code of his community would, on such an assumption, be determined with equal rigidity. OF EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 193 Nature selects for survival those races which are best fitted to survive in the struggle for exist ence, seizing upon and perpetuating all favour able variations of structure and function. Those races which do not possess the qualities that make for survival tend gradually to disappear — often going through long stages of degenera tion and decay before their final obliteration. It may be difficult at any particular time to distinguish the quahties which tend to survival, or to say which races have those qualities and which have not; but for both classes alike it must be predicated at any given epoch that their physical quahties are what they are by the simple - operation of natural law, in the Spen- cerian sense of the word ' natural.' And the question, we are discussing is, ' Are their ethical characteristics determined in the same way by the operation of natural law ? ' Or, to state the problem in its individual aspect, 'If it be the case that our moral attitude — yours and mine — is whoUy determined by our past history and our present environment; if we are, on the ethical side of us, as on the physical, merely links in an endless chain of natural causation, can it be said that any act of ours is morally good or moraUy bad ? ' Good or bad it may still be, of course, from the utilitarian or social 194 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE standpoint. That is to say, its results may be beneficial or otherwise for ourselves or society; but is this all that we mean by morality? In the popular use of the words (a use dictated by universal experience), the moral goodness or badness of an act essentially lies in this: that the doer of the act has a free choice between good and evil, and either deliberately or instinctively chooses the good or the evil. It is quite plain that if our moral attitude is determined whoUy or even to the same extent as the shape of our hands or the number of our toes is determined, by natural selection, we are no more ' respon sible' for the one than for the others. We practicaUy cannot help ourselves, and though we think ourselves free, we are the bond slaves of natural law. Huxley, no doubt, is at pains to repudiate the doctrine of necessity as any thing other than a ' logical conception ' ; but this simply means that we can conceive of a state of things in which the laws of nature, such as gravitation, would not be laws. W. K. Clifford, indeed, out-and-out evolutionist as he was, greatly daring, asserted that he could conceive a state of things in which two and two would not make four. But it is none the less abun dantly clear that both these writers are scien tifically certain that natural laws do in point of OF EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 195 fact regulate human ethics as completely as they regulate the fall of a stone when it is dropped, or the rotation of the earth around the sun. Now, the earth ' cannot help itself in the matter of its orbit around the sun. That orbit is approximately an eUipse, and an ellipse, so far as the earth is concerned, it will remain for ever. The law which regulates the mutual attraction of the sun and its satellites is the law of gravitation, and though the earth fre quently leaves its true elliptical orbit, and describes curves which are more or less ap preciably non-elliptical, this turns out, when .examined, to be in strict accordance with the very same law. What has happened is that some other great mass has in its orbit come near to the earth, and its counter-attraction has caused the slight divergence from the ' true ' orbit. So, says the Spencerian evolutionist, it is with man. His moral nature often appears to violate the rules which regulate his physical nature : he seems indeed on that side to be free from law altogether, or to be a law unto himself, but it is not really so. As certainly as the one-toed horse is sprung from an ancestor that had three toes, and he again from one that had four, so surely has man become what he is by the opera- 196 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE tion of natural selection — that purely natural process by which the unfit are eliminated and the fit survive. Now, it is quite time to observe that in these latter days the Spencerian evolutionist is not having it all his own way; but before we part company with him, we must notice one fact — and that perhaps the strongest — in favour of what we may respectfully call the 'helpless and hopeless ' theory of morals. It is now recognized, not only that there is a complete parallelism between what we may call mental activity and movements of the physical brain, but that par ticular mental manifestations are associated with particular parts of the brain. To say that for every thought we think there is a correspond ing change in the ' grey matter ' of the brain, is to say what every one knows. It is not perhaps so widely recognized that the actual seat of the will, for example, has been definitely located in some of the lower animals. If a certain part of the brain is removed, the power of volition is taken away, while other faculties, such as obser vation, power of movement, etc., remain un impaired. Thus a pigeon, from whose brain the volitional cells have been taken away, would starve to death in a granary unless food were put into its mouth. Again, if a man's will- OF EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 197 power is lost for the performance of particular functions only, a skiUed anatomist can tell in advance that a particular section of the volitional area is diseased, and when the man dies, the post-mortem corroborates his diagnosis (Laing, A Modern Zoroastrian, p. 192). Now, the natural conclusion of this appears to be that the mental act of volition is entirely depen dent upon (1) the existence of certain material cells of grey matter, and (2) upon the occurrence of certain changes in these cells. And as the material components of the brain are what they are as the natural result of the operation of the natural evolution of species, it seems to follow that human volition is also a natural result of the operation of the same law — in other words, is not a free cause, but a determined effect. Now, the true answer to this, it seems to me, is, not to deny that human volition is a ' natural ' product, but to extend our conception of nature and our use of the word 'natural' so as to embrace other forces and other laws than those whose action we fully comprehend. This is what a man like Huxley means to say when, in his moments of illumination, he hotly repu diates the name of 'materialist.' He does not believe (in these moments) that the only 198 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE realities are matter and motion ; he believes that mental states are not changes of matter. They are the 'expression' of these changes: they certainly are quite as real as matter and its changes; indeed we are indebted to them for all our knowledge of matter and material states. But while he admits all this, Huxley contends that the only workmanlike way to discuss the facts of the universe is to talk of them in terms of matter, and not in terms of spirit. He goes further, and positively exults in the thought that the progress of science . . . ' now more than ever means the extension of the province of what we call matter and causa tion, and the concomitant gradual banishment from all regions of human thought of what we caU spirit and spontaneity' ('Physical Basis of Life,' Collected Essays (1893), p. 159). In view of this exultation, it is rather astonishing to find him solemnly perorating only four pages later in the same essay on the immense import ance of the conviction (if we are to be of any use in the world) that ' our volition counts for something as a condition of the course of events ' (ibid., p. 163). Whether Huxley's attention was specially directed to this paradox in the storm of criticism which his essay evoked in 1868, I do not know, but it is instructive to observe OF EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 199 that on its repubhcation in 1892 he appends a note on the use of the word ' volition,' as thus : ' Or to speak more accurately, the physical state of which volition is the expression' — a rubric which rather spoils the peroration. Of course we are quite well aware that the 'physical state' counts for something, just as the physical state of our teeth, or our stomach, counts for something — and often for a very great deal — as a condition of the course of events. But on the Huxleyan theory, the physical state of the grey matter of our brain is the result of the operation during miUions of years of the law of evolution, and there it is — ' we can't help ourselves.' If, then, that physical state for which we are in no way responsible is in turn the cause of our vohtion, as Huxley and Clifford maintain, what becomes of free-will ? And, if there is no free-wiU, what becomes of our morahty ? As the late Samuel Laing says : ' Without freedom of will, there can be no conscience, no right, or wrong, in acting in accordance or otherwise with the instincts of moral law, however these instincts may have been derived ' (A Modern Zoroastrian, p. 191). Unfortunately for 'naturalists' of the me chanical school there is one awkward fact in their way, viz., the universal and instinctive belief 200 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE of mankind in the freedom of the wiU. Dare any man tell me that I am not free to select my words and sentences; that, in the arrange ment of my points and paragraphs, my volition is entirely controlled by changes in the cellular construction of my brain, over which I, the conscious but fettered looker-on, had no control whatever? If any man tells me this, I shall reply in parUamentary language (if my volitional cells will allow me) that he is not exhibiting a strict regard for truth. If there is one fact of experience better demonstrated than another, it is precisely this: that man feels himself to be free in soml mysterious, but very real sense. It is one thing to admit that brain-changes, and mental states, proceed on paraUel fines, are invariably associated, so far as we can discover, and even that the brain -change precedes the mental state, and quite another thing to admit that the brain -change is the sole cause of the mental state. The fact is that Mr. Herbert Spencer's theory is a mechanical theory of the universe. He has set out to explain all possible phenomena in all their possible relations with matter, motion, and force as his only data: and as free-will does not fit into his vast machine, it has got to be discarded. Huxley, who was not hopelessly committed to any theory of the OF EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 201 universe, nevertheless regarded man as a machine — ' a conscious automaton ' — and although, as we have seen, he occasionaUy speaks of man's voli tion 'counting for something,' and of our being ' able in many respects to do as we like,' what he means is that the physical state corresponding to volition 'counts for something,' and that the volitions and desires that accompany our actions are caused by antecedent or concomitant physical changes, which are themselves externaUy deter mined. Consequently, little as he likes it, free- wiU has got to go, and, of course, the march of ' matter and causation ' everywhere triumphs over 'spirit and spontaneity.' What he says of the relation between brain activity and its corre sponding volitional ' expression ' is that we have just ' as much reason ' for saying that the former is the cause of the latter as we have for regarding any event as the cause of any other event (cf. 'Animal Automatism,' Collected Essays, vol. i. pp. 238, 239, and pp. 243, 244). Our answer is that we have not ' as much reason,' because there are at least two established facts of experience against such a theory of causation. The first is the universal consciousness of freedom ; the second is the recognized influence of psychical changes upon physical tissue. Despair causes dyspepsia. Grief whitens the hair. Joy cures 202 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE disease. ' Laugh and be fat ' is a truer proverb than 'brain-cells in action cause thought.' How defective the mechanical theory of man, and the universe, is in many other respects is conclusively shown in a recent remarkable book, which has already made its mark on the thought of the day — Naturalism and Agnosticism, by Professor James Ward of Cambridge. But are we then to conclude that the doctrine of evolution by natural selection has no sort of bear ing upon the moral nature of man ? By no means. It is true that Mr. Russel Wallace, who, as we have seen, rejects the evolution of moral concepts, would also have us reject the evolution of an ethical faculty by natural selection, holding that man's ethical and spiritual development are due to an unknown power of a spiritual nature. He distinctly scores by quoting instances of inteUect ual characters which have made their appearance quite suddenly and recently in human history — much too late in that history to justify the supposition that they were in any way characters favourable to survival in the struggle for ex istence. Such, he maintains, are the extra ordinary developments within historical times — of the mathematical faculty, the musical faculty, and the artistic faculty in individuals of the human species. These faculties have no sort of OF EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 203 relation apparently to the struggle for existence. They differ widely, moreover, from the character istics preserved by natural selection in another important respect. Characters selected by nature are necessarily present in all members of the particular species which they differentiate; and, though not present in uniform perfection in all the members, the degree in which they vary is very limited. The degree has, in fact, been carefuUy calculated, and has been found to be something between one-fifth and one-sixth from the mean. On the other hand, in the case of the mathematical faculty, which has made gigantic strides within the last three centuries, the musical faculty, and the artistic faculty, even though it be granted that they are present in a rudimentary form in aU men, the number of those who have a genuine talent for either mathematics or art is found by school statistics to be certainly not more than about one per cent.; while musical talent, though much more common, 'is almost entirely wanting in one-half even of civilized men ' (Dar winism, p. 471). Moreover, these faculties are not only sporadic among civilized peoples, but the difference between the highest and the lowest extremes is enormous — the former being perhaps a thousand times greater than the latter (ibid., p. 473). 204 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE It seems somewhat doubtful, however, whether these instances help us greatly with regard to the development of an ethical faculty which un doubtedly appeared at a much earlier date, is the universal heritage of mankind, and would certainly to some extent exert an influence favourable to survival, in a struggle for existence with non-ethical species. A more suggestive hint towards the solution of the problem is that thrown out by Laing in his book, A Modern Zoroastrian (pp. 194, 195), where, after describing the intimate connection between volition and the physiological brain processes, he comes back to the 'instinctive, ineradicable feeling which comes home to every one with a conviction even stronger than the evidence of the senses, that we really have a choice between opposite courses, and can decide on our own actions — a conviction which is obviously the foundation of aU conscience and of all morality.' 'We feel,' he says, 'the con viction that there is a something which we caU soul, mind, or in the last analysis, " I myself, I," which sits, as Von Moltke might do, in a cabinet, receiving conflicting telegraphic messages from different generals, and deciding there and then what order to flash out in reply. What can we say to this ? That it is like space and time, OF EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 205 one of the categories of thought, or primary moulds in which thought is cast. We do not know what space and time really are in their essence . . . any more than we do in the case of will. They may be illusions, but we accept them, and of necessity accept them as facts.' This is a somewhat startling, and, so far as I know, original suggestion; but closely aUied to the newer philosophical conception of the uni verse, in which the doctrine of cosmic evolution in its largest application finds a place. If I at all understand the movement of the latest and ripest thought of the time, the modern mind is prepared to receive with cordiality what ever in the way of facts evolutionary science can offer. The old theology, for example, which represented God sitting apart, but constantly interfering with His own creation in non-natural ways, is as dead as a door nail : the very different conception that God set the vast machine agoing, or rather set the primordial germ evolving, and left it then to work out mechanically an entirely independent existence, if it ever really had its day, has also ceased to be. The thinker of to-day argues somewhat after this fashion : ' Science presupposes an ultimate and persistent force that works without let or hindrance along the lines of cosmic evolution. If it is permissible to specu- 206 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE late as to the nature of this force, surely the universe itself must be my text-book, and where in the universe must I look for the fullest revela tion of that which underlies it all? Surely in that which by common consent is higher rather than in that which is lower: in the organic, therefore, rather than the inorganic : in man, therefore, rather than the monera : in the mental, moral, and spiritual nature of man, finally, rather than in his physical nature. The former is thus far nature's highest achievement, and it is reason able to believe that the crowning fact of nature should be likest to the underlying, all-pervading, ever-persisting energy which informs it all.' Thus the present Master of Balliol, in his Evolution of Religion, says : ' The problem of rehgion has for us moderns taken a definite shape, both for those who accept and those who reject it. It would be acknowledged by almost every one that we are now shut up to the al ternative, either that there is no God, or that the revelation of God must be sought in the whole process of nature and history, regarded as a development which finds its ultimate and its culminating expression in the life of man as a spiritual being.' As we have seen, the Spencerian or mechanical theory of evolution has no place for free-will, and OF EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 207 when confronted with the universal experience of mankind, comes to a complete deadlock. ' Can a nut, or a crank, or even the eccentric of a steam- engine, rise up in rebellion against the sum of its parts and decline its inevitable task?' asks the mechanical evolutionist. ' Can the organs rise up spontaneously against the organism, and refuse to perform their determined functions ? ' demands the biological evolutionist. ' How then can man, who is a part of the universal machine — an organ in the universal organism — possess freedom ? ' ' It may be a great mystery,' replies man ; ' but I am free for all that.' It is at this point that what Ward calls ' The Newer Teleology ' steps in with the reminder that neither the biologist nor the mechanical evolutionist professes to give an ultimate solution of anything, and that while they may get along well enough with matter and motion for the purely scientific purposes of measurement and calculation, it may after all be impossible to explain everything in terms of matter and motion. The fact is that science, strictly speaking, has no business to theorise about the ultimate and the absolute. Its province is to examine, measure, and calculate the phenomenal, and report results. It is the province of philosophy to 'speculate,' that is, take a wide view of the facts of ex- 208 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE perience which science brings her, and to offer what theory seems best fitted to explain the facts. The assumption of the 'Newer Teleology' is that the infinite and eternal energy, presup posed by all evolutionary science, is of a nature and character akin to, although infinitely tran scending the spiritual nature of man; that the progress from star-mist to cosmos, from mineral to protoplasm, from monera to man, has been no accidental evolution, but a movement informed by a force or energy comparable in character to a free conscious wiU working towards a definite end or goal. It is not necessary to assume, as Professor Bruce and Professor Fiske (Man's Destiny) do, that that end is man's moral nature. Man may be only a stepping-stone to stiU higher types: but the point is that on this theory each successive stage in the cosmic evolu tion has been, so to speak, a day's march nearer the divine, and that, therefore, as the human will graduaUy came above the horizon — the last and grandest product thus far of natural evolution — partaking as it did in a higher degree than anything known before of the essential character of the free energy of its ultimate source, it too would be free — not absolutely, only rela tively, free; but, nevertheless, free in a sense OF EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 209 more deep, and real, and natural, than anything else, save Nature, which is God. God gradually unlocking the prison-doors of Being; Man gradually emerging with unsteady step towards the free, fresh airs of the Divine. That is evolution from the standpoint of the Newer Teleology. Obviously there was no Sin in the prison-house stage, when man was purely animal ; because he had no windows and knew no better. But when, having tasted the sweet breath of human freedom, he wantonly staggers back to bondage, he fails of his higher self and ' comes short of the glory of God.' Anon, he is ashamed and struggles forth again, and in each struggle vindicates his freedom. We are, therefore, entitled to conclude that the natural evolution of the human race is consistent not only with the gradual emergence of moral codes of every variety and of a social conscience in individual members of a community leading them to conform to the code ; but also with the emergence of that higher morality which fre quently condemns the code and always involves individual freedom of choice. X OF EVOLUTION AND FREEDOM ' If my body come from the brutes, tho' somewhat finer than their own, I am heir and this my kingdom. Shall the royal voice be mute? No, but if the rebel subject seek to drag me from the throne, Hold the sceptre, Human Soul, and rule thy Province of the brute.' Tennyson. ' In the great primeval morn, my immortal will was born, Part of that stupendous Cause which conceived the Solar Laws, Lit the suns and filled the seas, royalest of pedigrees.' Ella Wheeler Wilcox. The argument for Fatalism presents itself in two forms. It wears an old and still popular dress to attract the man in the street, or, rather, in the pew, and a new costume, cut in more severe and scientific lines, wherewith to seduce the graver man of the study and the laboratory. But, decked in whatever guise, the argument comes to this, that man is in no real sense a free moral agent. He is simply the involuntary product of a million inevitable natural forces. OF EVOLUTION AND FREEDOM 211 For the moment these forces are convergent, and their resultant is Man. Presently they will diverge to various issues, and Man, their helpless product, will have had his day and cease to be. At least, he will cease to be Man as we know him. For these miUion inevitable natural forces, substitute ' God,' and you have the popular and pewish variant of the fatalistic conception. For those who beheve in the 'Eternal Decrees' of God and ' predestination ' in the theological sense, it is but a step to the heavy conclusion of the Jonathan Edwards' school, that the in finite power of the Supreme Cause of all things not only determines our ultimate destination in heaven or heU, but directly controls our every act and thought. The supposed existence of a ' personal devU ' certainly complicates the matter until it is realized that the DevU's alleged charter, to go about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, must itself be subject to well-defined hmitations. And thus the primitive idea of God as a far-off Eastern Despot, surrounded by in numerable spies, and exercising upon his subjects the myriad-handed influence of omnipotent and omniscient control, is worked out to a logical conclusion. As saith Saint Augustine : ' Man is inevitably destined either to evil by his natural corruption, or to good by the Holy Ghost.' 212 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE There is really not much to choose between the ultra -Calvinistic conception of a super human despot and the Greek and Roman con ception of the inehictabile fatum, which hung like a gloomy shadow over the destmy of gods and men alike. The former has the advantage of 'personality,' but the conception of a Divine Person who brings millions of human persons into being predestined to endless sin and torture is at least as gruesome as that of the vague, im personal Fate that dogs an Ajax to his doom. I have spoken of this semi-theological concep tion as still popular, but one is glad to think that, except in remote parts of this realm, it is now far from common. It may, therefore, be dismissed as altogether too crude to merit further discussion. Coming in between the quasi-theological argu ment and the modern scientific argument, is the argument of the old psychology, that our volitions or acts of will are governed and determined by ' the strongest motive ' ; in other words, that desire is invariably the cause of will, and that therefore our will is not free. This was the position of the Determinists, strictly so caUed. To my mind, the discrimination of Locke be tween WiU and Desire (albeit it runs counter to his own deterministic argument) is quite conclusive as against this old determinism : OF EVOLUTION AND FREEDOM 213 ' The wiU,' he says, ' is perfectly distinguished from desire, which in the very same action may have a quite contrary tendency from that which our wiU sets us upon. A man, whom I cannot deny, may oblige me to use persuasions to another which at the same time I am speaking I may wish not to prevail on him. In this case it is plain the will and desire run counter ' (Essay on the Human Understanding, Book ii., sect. 30). Much more significant for us, because the direct outcome of scientific investigation and culture, is the modern Fatalism, which by another avenue arrives at the same negative conclusion, viz., that it is no longer possible to believe in human freedom. I do not say free-wUl; for, rightly looked at, free-wiU, free-thought, and free-action stand or faU together. The question is not simply, 'Have I power to act?' which even the fatalist concedes, but, 'Have I power to regulate my thinking ; have I power to choose between this and that ; have I power not merely to act, but to regulate my acting ? ' The modern fatalist is not a very common type, partly because few people have sufficient inteUigence to appre hend the premises of the argument, and still fewer the courage to maintain its conclusion when the premises are accepted; but partly, perhaps, because fatalism is almost universally 214 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE accounted to be a lie. The fatalistic or deter- minist conclusion is that conduct is the joint product of character and environment; that one's character is determined by one's past, while environment means circumstances of time and place, society, climate, weather, health, etc. etc., over which one has, for the most part, no control. It follows that I have inevitably become what I am, and that I shall inevitably become what I become. I have no real freedom of thought or of action, and am, therefore, in no degree the maker or the moulder of my destiny. I am simply a ' conscious automaton.' ' Ought ' and ' ought not' are loose and inaccurate. 'Must' and ' must not ' are the correct, though not quite synonymous, terms. Duty is, no doubt, a grand old word, and it is true that people so constituted as to have, or rather to imagine that they have, ' a sense of duty ' are likely to do more useful work upon the whole than those who lack the attri bute. But it is quite obvious that to talk of doing one's duty when one's every act is the inevitable outcome of one's past and of circum stances over which one has no control, is to talk nonsense. If one cannot help being what he is or doing what he does, there is no merit in being a saint; there is no demerit in being a sinner. No doubt every organized society has its code, OF EVOLUTION AND FREEDOM 215 and, if you are to be comfortable, you will con form to that code. The Must and Must Not of organized society are represented by lawyers and policemen and other things, which have a way of becoming extremely disagreeable if your character leads you to overlook the code. This is annoying, if you are a sinner. It is stiU more exasperating when, as wiU sometimes happen, you are a saint. Because, mark you, you ' can not help ' being a saint. The very extremity of pathos would surely be reached were a saintly fatahst to be arrested for, say, obstructing street traffic by preaching the Inevitableness of Destiny. In the dock, next morning, our friend pleads ' not guilty,' and conclusive evidence on the fact of obstruction is led. The accused being asked whether he has anything to say: 'Yes, your honour,' quoth he, 'this, that I could not help doing what I did.' 'What do you mean?' says the puzzled magistrate. ' I mean that, having regard to my age-long past and to my yesterday's environment, I was quite unable to act otherwise. If your honour, in short, was capable of knowing and appreciating all the circumstances, over which, of course, I had no control, you would see that my conduct was inevitable.' ' I should see no thing of the sort,' would probably be the reply of the Philistine on the bench. ' You are a grown 216 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE man and ought to know better. Anyhow, the law says that you have no right to obstruct traffic. Your Past does not seem to have led you into this Court before, and I hope your Future won't. Seven-and-sixpence or thirty days. Next case ! ' In such rough-and-ready fashion Society (which, of course, cannot help itself any more than the individual can) disposes of those who transgress its code, often paying, it must be admitted, little or no attention to the real difficulty of the problem. Complicated as are the social codes of the Statute-book, the Exchange, the turf, or the drawing-room — the web of circumstance, the texture of the human mind, the labyrinth of motives and memories and tendencies — these are infinitely more complex still. It is a service to draw our attention to them as fatahsm does. It is weU to remember, at least in the case of our fellows, that their crimes would often seem to us peccadillos, did we know the circumstances over which they had no control; could we read their motives with the sympathetic insight where with an affectionate Father reads the heart of his child. Modern fatahsm is based upon quite an impos ing array of scientific investigations and con- OF EVOLUTION AND FREEDOM 217 elusions. The increasing study of hypnotic phenomena, insanity, criminology, and, above aU, comparative biology, has resulted in the enlistment of many notable scientific persons under the drab-coloured banner of determinism — persons who, when they are not too deadly dull and serious to laugh at anything, find in the ridi culous conception of human freedom a subject of inextinguishable mirth. Thus the common argument, that man must be free because he feels free, is met by the retort that under the influence of hypnotic suggestion a man has precisely the same feeling of freedom, whereas his acts, his wUl, his ideas, are, for the time, completely under the control of the hypnotizer. Similarly with regard to insanity; whUe the lawyer (who, of course, always sides with the traditional moralist) insists upon knowing whether the individual 'knew what he was doing,' and (if he did) maintains his respon sibility, the doctors more and more tend to the view that the existence of any disease whatever in the brain so affects the mind and will of the subject that he is entirely irresponsible (cf. Hamon, The Illusion of Free- Will, p. 85, et seq.). So, too, the scientific study of criminology has gone far to prove that the commission of anti- 218 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE social acts is, in many cases, associated with some form or other of physical degeneracy. Thus kleptomania, which a judge is generally wiUing to recognize if the person is rich, is said to be quite as common among the poor; incen diarism is frequently a mania with young girls at the age of puberty; homicidal mania, sexual perversions, dipsomania, indecent exposures — all of which lead to acts regarded as criminal and to consequent punishment — are said to be symptoms of physical diseases which, although the subject is always perfectly conscious of what he is doing, render him quite incapable of resist ing the criminal impulse. The tendency, in fact, of modern criminology is to enlarge enormously the area of irresponsibility. ' Every day ' (says in effect Dr. Cabade) ' we come in contact, in life, with people who are really diseased, who come, go, occupy themselves with their business, often better than the greater number of the people said to be reasonable, but who, nevertheless, are absolutely irresponsible for their acts. There are insane persons, indeed, a great number of insane persons, who live ap parently like all the world. They are capable of occupying public situations, and they per form every day and at every moment very complex intellectual operations, but they are OF EVOLUTION AND FREEDOM 219 reaUy irresponsible' (Hamon, The Illusion of Free-Will, etc., pp. 90-91). ' Without doubt,' he says again (De la Respon- sibiliU Criminelle, p. 179), ' it is very beautiful and even very useful to say and proclaim aloud that it is necessary to moderate one's passions, to restrain and check them, but this is easy to say and to do for those who possess a well- balanced brain, free from all physiological defects, whether hereditary or acquired. These great preachers always make me think of the sergeant who found fault with a hunchback, telling him it was very easy to hold oneself upright. Alas ! it is no more easy to maintain rectitude of con duct and action with a brain impaired in its anatomical or functional integrity, than it is for a vertebral column, the direction of which is defective, to hold itself upright ' (loc. cit, p. 179). The more, in fact, one studies the crimino logical argument, the more depressing it becomes. It would seem that we should pull down all our prisons and build lunatic asylums. And, having done so, it would further seem desirable that we should all without exception go and live therein. 'Do there really exist in our civhized times,' asks M. Hamon, ' any healthy people ? ' And he rephes : ' There is reason to doubt it.' ' There is not,' says Dr. Capitan. ' There is not, so to say, 220 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE one living being, above all in civUized social sur roundings, that is not more or less touched with arthritism. The arthritic individual is an in valid, and as such he does not think or act like a healthy being. His intellectual evolution is troubled. And it is the same with the intelli gence of all those whose organism is physically more or less deranged.' Frequently, according to Poletti, there is no intellectual difference between the criminal and the non-criminal. But, in point of fact, we are not only all more or less insane, we are all more or less criminal. We are, perhaps, accustomed to think that crime is more frequent among the poorer class of citi zens. What said Lazare Carnot at the end of the eighteenth century ? ' There are no inno cents among the aristocracy.' What said EmUe Henry at the close of the nineteenth ? ' Among the middle class there are no innocents.' StiU more emphatically, M. Hamon maintains : ' The criminal is the normal and the honest man an anomaly. I defy the refutation of this assertion if by criminal is meant the author of an injury to the community or to an individual ' (op. cit, pp. 3, 79). And M. Marandon de Montyeul, who speaks of crime in the stricter sense as an outrageously anti-social act, says: 'Each of us bears in his OF EVOLUTION AND FREEDOM 221 brain a sleeping criminal proclivity, the awaken ing of which depends in part upon his lethargy, in part upon the degree of exciting influences acting upon him, so that the delinquent of to morrow, according to circumstances, may be perhaps you, perhaps I' (Archives d' Anthro pologic Criminelle, 1892). Page after page to the same effect might be quoted, and the consequent depression of our spirit might proportionately deepen, untU, with a feeling of positive rehef, we recall the joyful ' fact ' that, after aU, we are not to blame. Free- wUl is a delusion. Responsibility does not exist. We are all criminals, but what of that? We cannot help being criminals, and, if we are punished for our crimes (for society is a stupid beast, and has a nasty way of kicking when it is hurt), if we are punished, then we shall at any rate have a claim for admission to the noble army of martyrs. This is not intended as a joke ; the logical criminologist like Hamon, the logical biologist hke Haeckel, sees no humour in the situation. 'Like the idea of God,' says the former, 'the idea of free-will is a product of the human mind which by degrees has developed in the brain. No more than God is free-will a reality. It is an illusion pure and simple' (loc. cit, p. 12). 222 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE ' We now know,' says the latter, ' that each act of the will is as fatally determined by the organi zation of the individual and as dependent on the momentary condition of his environment as every other psychic activity. The character of the in clination was determined long ago by heredity from parents and ancestors ; the determination to each particular act is an instance of adaptation to the circumstances of the moment, wherein the strongest motive prevails according to the laws which govern the statics of emotion' (Haeckel, Riddle of the Universe, cap. vii.). Crime, therefore, to the logical determinist, is not essentially worthy of reprobation and punish ment. Crime is simply, according to M. Hamon, 'a conscious act which injures the hberty of action of an individual of the same species' (p. 65). 'The individual being determined,' he says again, ' that is to say, being as he cannot help being, all the conditions given, it necessarily follows that there is no merit or demerit in acting as he has done. He could not help doing so' (loc. cit, p. 39). Right and wrong are clearly unscientific terms. We are accustomed in our thoughtless way to speak of things as good, bad, and indifferent. It would be more scientific to drop the good and the bad. Determinism, it would appear OF EVOLUTION AND FREEDOM 223 leads to indifferentism, if not to nihilism. Every possible moral proposition will presently be whittled down to the one concise and convincing thesis, ' Whatever is, is.' Then, con versation wiU languish and clubs wiU collapse; pulpiteers and policemen will find their occupa tion gone, and the non-committal voice of the determinist turtle will alone be heard in the land. So far as we have gone, there might still appear to a person of a sanguine temper a loophole of escape from the determinist barricade. At the worst, we are not all hypnotized, and to include us without exception among the insane and the criminal is surely nothing but the grotesque exaggeration of a few narrow specialists. What, then, about those of us who are really normal? May not we claim to be possessed of free-will, free-thought, self-control? Alas! this is wholly to mistake the argument. You may succeed in eluding the alienist and the criminalist and the pathologist, only to be finally and literally im prisoned in the ' cells ' of the biologist. You may vaunt with justice your freedom from every single aUment, bodily or mental, known to the doctors; but one thing you 'have,' and have always ' had,' viz., ' cells.' You cannot get away from your ' ceUs.' You are made up of ceUs like 224 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE every other living organism — from the tiniest speck of protoplasm to the giant oak or the mammoth of the prime. Any microscope wiU tell you so. And the real strength of modern determinism lies in this, that the men who have studied most closely the origin and development of organic life in its bewildering variety of forms are the most determined determinists. Facile princeps, I suppose, among living biolo gists is Dr. Ernst Haeckel of Jena, one of the few nature-workers who are worthy to be caUed men of science, because they do not suffer themselves to be wholly absorbed in their own department, but seek to grasp the true significance of its facts and their relationship to other facts in the universe. This mighty endeavour is, as he quite recognizes, the work of philosophy rather than science, but he insists with proper emphasis that philosophy without science is worthless. He is not afraid, this doughty, dogmatic German, to claim for himself the name of PhUosopher ; and his Monistic Philosophy is set out with admirable clearness in his Welt Rdthsel (The Riddle of the Universe), which you may have in good Enghsh for sixpence. I do not agree with those who think the book ' hard reading.' There are many hard words, to wrestle with which an elementary knowledge of Latin and Greek is certainly desir- OF EVOLUTION AND FREEDOM 225 able, but for the rest, it needs but concentration, a cool head, and a blue pencil to discover that honest Dr. Haeckel is not an infallible guide to the Universe after aU. He is honest, this German Doctor ; for he teUs us frankly, though with keen disappointment, how one after another among his most eminent contemporaries, Virchow, Du Bois- Reymond, Baer, and Wundt, who in their youth were Monist and promising, have in their later years abandoned the monistic position, just as Immanuel Kant, with less knowledge of the 'facts,' had done a century before. He has the courage, moreover, of aU high-souled men. He is neither afraid to be caUed bad names himself, nor to bestow them upon those with whom he disagrees. He rather glories in the fact that his phUosophy is materialistic and atheistic, and he denounces the reactionary tendencies of clerical ism and Christian superstition with a whole hearted indignation that it does one good to see. The question which interests us at the moment is Haeckel's teaching with regard to the freedom of the wiU. As we have already seen, he is an out-and-out determinist. ' The human wUl,' he says, 'has no more freedom than that of the higher animals, from which it differs only in degree, not in kind ' . . . ' each act of the will p 226 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE is as fataUy determined by the organization of the individual and as dependent on the momentary conditions of his environment as every other psychic activity.' Both of these propositions, of course, we concede. Everything, we know, tends to prove that we are related mentaUy, as weU as physically, to the higher animals. We must further recognize at once that we cannot draw any absolute line of demarcation between our wiU and our other psychic activities. And it foUows that the thesis Dr. Haeckel has to prove, before he calls upon us to give up our freedom, is that, not the will only, but aU our psychic activities are directly determined by the organ ization — i.e. the physical organization — of the individual. Now, does he prove this ? He does not. He asserts and reasserts it until one comes to think it must be true ; but of direct evidence that mind is a function of matter he gives us not a single sample. Please do not mistake. Nowhere in Darwin, Romanes, Herbert Spencer, or Huxley (for aU of whom Dr. Haeckel has words of the highest esteem) is there a summary statement of the Evolution Theory more careful, logical, and convincing than the statement of it given in this great book. I defy any fair-minded man to read this statement and give due weight to the mass of solid fact and acute argument OF EVOLUTION AND FREEDOM 227 therein contained and yet deny that evolution, chiefly by natural selection, is the proper name for the historical process by which the organic world has reached its present condition, and is steadUy passing on into its future condition. I wiU go further, and say that Romanes and Haeckel have made it aU but impossible to doubt that the evolution of mind has been, in the main, concomitant and contemporaneous with the evolution of organic matter; that aU, or almost aU, the phenomena of the human mind have their lowly counterparts in the lower animals, and their stih more lowly originals in the lowhest of living forms — the ceU — and, further, that psychic development in plant, in animal, and in man alike has coincided with the growing complexity of the nervous structure and the gradual differentiation and perfection (in the higher forms) of the brain. Now, . if this involves determinism, I am a determinist; but I venture to maintain that it does nothing of the kind. It is one thing to prove that the human mind and the organic matter of the human body have developed side by side, with equal step, along simUar lines. This is what Haeckel has proved. But it is quite a different thing to maintain either that mind and matter are one, or that mind is merely a function 228 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE of matter, and whoUy determined by matter. This we are not going to believe simply because the man with the microscope says so. Yet this is the proposition that must not only be maintained, but established, before Dr. Haeckel or any one else can disprove the existence of freedom of thought and freedom of wiU. I hold no brief for the dualistic philosophies and defunct theological conceptions of antiquity, or the clerical systems of to-day, upon which the modern man of science is wont to pour the vials of his wrath. On the contrary, I find his wrath, though non-scientific, quite natural and intelligible. If there is one thing which in the history of the world has hindered the progress of free thought and free scientific development, it has been the conservative prepossessions of theology and the power-loving characteristics of clericalism. I come to the subject with only one prepossession, which I find is not peculiar to me, that I am, in some perhaps mysterious, but very real sense, a free thinker, and I ask in all sincerity for evidence that I am not. The onus of proof clearly lies with the man who denies that I am free, and, if he offers me not bread, but a stone, I shall consider myself justified, not only in declining to swallow it, but in projecting it rapidly in the direction of the OF EVOLUTION AND FREEDOM 229 donor. One hears that in Germany 'Haeckel- ismus' stands for a certain pathological condi tion, intermediate, I suppose, between ignorant ' bumptiousness ' and learned ' dogmatism.' It is certain that the dogmatic complacency of Dr. Haeckel is in striking contrast to the humility of his master, Darwin. It is impossible to summarize the facts which are supposed to lead to the fatalistic conclusion better than in the following paragraph, taken from The Riddle of the Universe (pp. 72, 73). Haeckel is at the moment arguing against the immortality of the soul, but the grounds of his argument are precisely those with which he meets the, to him, absurd illusion of free-will. 'The physiological argument,' he says, 'shows that the human soul is not an independent, immaterial substance, but, like the soul of all the higher animals, merely a collective title for the sum-total of man's cerebral functions; and these are just as much de termined by physical and chemical processes as any of the other vital functions, and just as amenable to the law of substance. The histological argument is based on the extremely complicated microscopic struc ture of the brain : it shows us the true " elementary organs of the soul" in the ganglionic cells. The ex perimental argument proves that the various functions of the soul are bound up with certain special parts of the brain, and cannot be exercised unless these are in a normal condition ; if the areas are destroyed, 230 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE their function is extinguished ; and this is especially applicable to the "organs of thought," the four central instruments of mental activity. The pathological argu ment is the complement of the physiological; when certain parts of the brain (the centres of speech, sight, hearing, etc.) are destroyed by sickness, their activity (speech, vision, hearing, etc.) disappears ; in this way, Nature herself makes the decisive physiological ex periment. The ontogenetic argument puts before us the facts of the development of the soul in the individual ; we see how the child-soul gradually unfolds its various powers; the youth presents them in full bloom, the mature man shows their ripe fruit; in old age we see the gradual decay of the psychic powers, corre sponding to the senile degeneration of the brain. The phylogenetic argument derives its strength from palaeontology, and the comparative anatomy and physiology of the brain; co-operating with and com pleting each other, these sciences prove to the hilt that the human brain (and, consequently, its function — the soul) has been evolved step by step from that of the mammal, and, still further back, from that of the lower vertebrate.' Disregarding the assumption involved in the last clause, that ' the soul ' is a ' function ' of the brain, what can you make of a thinker who in one sentence expressly defines the human soul as ' the sum-total of man's cerebral functions,' and in the next but one speaks of 'the various functions of the soul,' as if the soul were neither a function nor a sum-total of functions, but itseK OF EVOLUTION AND FREEDOM 231 an independent entity ? The fact seems to be — reluctant though one may be to admit it — that the most able men of science, accustomed to the greatest exactitude about weights and measure ments when dealing with physical characters, become loose and inaccurate whenever they soar into the unaccustomed altitudes of metaphysical speculation. This is by no means an isolated instance of downright confusion of speech and thought. The book, notwithstanding the lucidity of its general argument, abounds in them. Nor is it accidental. It occurs again on page 39, where, after stating that the psyche (or soul) is 'merely a coUective idea of all the psychic functions of protoplasm,' the author goes on in the same paragraph to say that: — ' A certain chemical composition and a certain physical (.) activity of the psychoplasm are indis pensable, before the soul can function or act.' We found it difficult to see how a ' sum-total of functions' could 'function.' It would be still more interesting to learn how a ' collective idea ' can ' function.' But there is another and equaUy serious verbal confusion in the same paragraph. 'We have given,' says our author, 'to that part of the protoplasm' (living substance) 'which seems to be the indispensable substratum of psychic life, the 232 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE name of psyehoplasm (the soul substance in the monistic sense).' The activity of this psyehoplasm is further down identified as 'the soul.' 'The activity of the psyehoplasm, which we call the soul,' says Haeckel. So that in one paragraph we have three defini tions of ' the soul.' It is (1) a coUective idea of psychic functions: it is (2) a something which can itself function or act : it is (3) ' the activity of the psyehoplasm.' But the psyehoplasm is a part of the protoplasm, i.e. living matter. The soul, therefore, is the activity of living matter. This last is undoubtedly the plain English of much questionable Greek and German. Now Dr. Haeckel has a perfect right to define his terms as he pleases, and, if he wishes us to understand by soul the activity of living matter, we know where we are. We might as weU say ' molecular motion ' at once, as the pure materi alist does. No doubt Dr. Haeckel, for the sake of clearness, generally distinguishes between psychic activity and other sorts of activity, but he does not do so consistently;1 and it is obvious that mental processes are to him just as really 1 e.g., Memory, heredity, and reproduction are loosely identified on p. 43, and different characteristic movements are assumed to be ' spiritual qualities,' p. 49. OF EVOLUTION AND FREEDOM 233 material processes as growth, nutrition, repro duction, and even chemical changes. What we look for, however, is evidence, and this he does not give. He traces for us with admirable skill the evolution of hving forms from the primitive ceU, through the protozoa (unicellular forms and ccenobia, or multi-ceUular forms which do not possess tissue) to the metazoa with their accumu lation of ceUs and cell-formed tissue which, in the higher forms, develop into the complex nervous and gastric systems found in the verte brates. He also expounds the rise and progress of the human mind from its lowly origin in the ' cell-soul ' through the ' tissue-soul,' to the ' nerve-soul.' But nowhere does he give us any proof whatever that mind is wholly determined by matter. Suppose you prove this concomitance of mental and material phenomena to be invariable, you do not thereby prove the dependence of mind on matter. Take for an analogy, Thought and Language. Thought and language are closely connected. You see them develop in the grow ing child side by side. Among primitive peoples, whose vocabulary is limited, you find only the most elementary ideas. Even among the higher races of mankind the extensive vocabulary of the ancient Greek and the modern Frenchman is 234 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE associated with a greater refinement and subtlety of thinking than is possessed by their compara tively speechless neighbours. The concomitance, in fact, of thought and speech could be worked out in great detail. Yet who will be so bold as to say that thought is a function of speech, and wholly determined by speech ? Is it not just as probable that speech is a function of thought, and whoUy determined by thought ? Is it not even conceivable that, having attained a certain facility in thinking by the aid of speech, our race may presently arrive at a stage where words will be of less and less account ? The intricate con ceptions and reasonings of mathematics are, to a great extent, independent of symbol : the word less language of music and art, the inarticulate voice of mountain and forest and sea — these, as our mind develops, become ever more audible, ever more comprehensible. Fatalism, then, as expounded by its modern upholders, rests upon a frankly materialistic basis. If my wUl and my other mental activities are whoUy determined by the momentary con dition of my physical brain, then my wiU is certainly not free in any inteUigible sense. If, on the other hand, it be only partiaUy so de termined, it is partially free ; if it is less affected by physical conditions than, say, the will of a OF EVOLUTION AND FREEDOM 235 Kaffir or a Patagonian, then my freedom is greater than theirs. And comparative or relative freedom would be something to be thankful for. I do not know of any one who maintains that man, finite as he is, is absolutely free : what the modern fatalist maintains is that he has no mental or moral freedom at all. It seems to me, however, that the fatalistic argument would tumble to pieces at once if you assumed that the universe had a spiritual basis. A spirituahstic monism is just as logical and as tenable as a materialistic monism. Except, per haps, to men whose days and nights are spent in the laborious investigation of physical cells and their evolution, it is just as credible. One finds even a scientific worker like Dr. Haeckel himself arguing for the existence of ' unconscious memory ' in the ' hypothetical molecules ' that go to the making of ceUs (p. 34), and, still more wonderful, laying down as his 'own opinion — and that of many other scientists — that the two fundamental forms of substance, ponderable matter and ether, are not dead and only moved by extrinsic force, but they are endowed with sensation and wiU (though naturally of the lowest grade) ' (p. 78). And one begins to ask in some astonishment : ' Is Haeckel also among the prophets ? ' 236 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE A spiritualistic monism would take account of one or two little things that materialistic monism omits to explain — the curious and enormous in fluence which mind has upon matter — how a great grief can cause the rapid degeneracy of brain and heart ; how a great joy can cause the rapid repair of diseased tissue; how a great terror can whiten the hair and stop the heart beat of a healthy man ; how love and hope and charity and calmness of mind tend to health and strength of body ; how despair and mental anxiety and worry tend to physical disorder. It is natural for the physiologist and the physicist to magnify their office ; but it may be that we have listened to them with a trifle too much respect. The world is wide, gentlemen, and we must not too readily conclude that the voice of the dissecting-room and the laboratory is the only voice of authority. Each of us knows himself to be master in his own house. Even Haeckel savagely attacks the clericals, as if they, poor fellows, could help their reactionary tend encies ! If a man tells me I am the bond-slave of my body, I shall not argue with him. I shall simply say : ' You are another.' We are in a region where proof in the ordinary sense is impossible. The highest things are in capable of proof. You cannot lead evidence of OF EVOLUTION AND FREEDOM 237 the sort that can be taken down by a shorthand writer about the deepest facts of life. Our memories, our dreams, our ideals, our struggles, our victories, our defeats, the love of friends, the sorrow and bitterness of experience; these and many other great things are incapable of formal proof. The question is rather one of probabUities, if you will, than proof. It is a case of estimating the comparative likehhood of rival hypotheses. If you think the telegraph wire the essential thing, and the electric current merely its function — weU, we shaU not agree. And if you think the material apparatus of nerve and ganglion the essential thing, and thought merely its function — then again we shaU differ. That the two are connected we know ; how they are connected we do not know. As Professor Ward has said, ' The problem of the relation of Mind to Mechanism still remains' (Naturalism and Agnosticism, ii. p. 302). And until it is proved and not merely asserted that the mechanism controls the mind, the songs of human freedom may echo round the world. Bravely and nowise falsely sang Henley (like every true singer since the world began): — ' Out of the night that covers me Black as the Pit from pole to pole, 238 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE I thank whatever gods there be For my unconquerable soul. ' In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. ' It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate : I am the captain of my soul.' XI OF EVOLUTION AND RELIGION ' Life comes before thought ; religion before theology. ' Sabatier. ' The region of Religion and the region of a completer Science are one.' — Sib Oliver Lodge, F.R.S. The word ' Religion ' is one of those unhappy words which are destined to bear the weight of a hundred different employments. It stands for theology, it stands for piety, it stands for belief, it stands for the thing believed. Generally, no distinction is made between religion and a reli gion. In one man's pages religion means Chris tianity; in another's, Buddhism; in another's, Mohammedanism ; in another's it means only the Roman Christianity, or the Protestant Chris tianity, or the Greek Christianity. In still nar rower local usage it is often limited to the ' grace ' possessed by the speaker, with a doubt ful and hesitating admission of the possibility that one or two other people in his parish also ' have religion ! ' One does not need to object to any of these 239 240 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE usages. The really important thing is that it be not used unawares in two different senses. As used throughout this book, it stands simply for religious experience, ' the contact of the soul with God.' By the words ' Reason ' and ' Rational ' it is intended to describe not only man's argumenta tive faculty, by which he reflects upon evidence, accepts or rejects it, deduces certain conclusions from certain premises, and so on ; but also, in a wider and more comprehensive sense, to describe all those things which differentiate man mentally from his animal ancestry. Both these uses are legitimate. What has raised man so enormously above even the nearest of his animal kinsfolk has been the slow, natural evolution of his rational nature, which at the out set was simply his power of ' putting two and two together' a little more systematically than his poor relations.' That great natural gift was in its rudimentary stage the one thing that enabled him (in other respects a very defenceless per sonage) to light a fire, to learn the use of tools — two most epoch-making discoveries — and by degrees to obtain ' dominion over the creatures.' The emergence of the rational faculty in man was, in short, the arrival of ' the favourable varia- OF EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 241 tion' which chiefly determined his character as a new and separate species, and secured for him the chance of survival as one of the 'fittest' in the struggle for existence. From its rudimentary origin, and from sub serving this primary function of self-defence, the scope of the rational faculty has grown ever more and more comprehensive. Originally, so far as we can judge, a ' superior kind of cunning,' it is now the great glory of our race. In the age-long, wonderful march of the human proces sion ; in the buUding up of empire after empire ; in the expansion of learning; in the progress of material civilization; but also in the songs of the poets; in the immortal monuments of art; in the music of stately cathedrals ; in the silent aspirations and religious experiences of the hearts of men, we equaUy recognize the traces of man's rational development. In contrast with his nearest cousins in the animal kingdom, man alone is capable of appre ciating the uniformity of nature — the unvarying sequence of cause and effect ; he alone is capable of investigating the order of the universe, and of deUberately ordering his own behaviour in ac cordance therewith. The ' lower ' animals act, so far as we can ascertain, without troubling about reasons either for their own actions or for any- Q 242 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE thing else. Man is ever seeking for reasons, not only for the justification of his own actions, but for the order of external phenomena. The more rational a man is, the more ardent is his search for reasons. Unlike his kinsmen, the dog and the ape, he is not content to take things for granted. He assumes that there is a reason for everything, and he tries to find it out. No doubt his explanations of natural phenomena and his conception of their relations have been frequently incorrect — sometimes absurdly so — in the past ; but the rational faculty shows itself primarily in the search for reasons, and only secondarily in the discovery of true reasons. Primitive man accounted for the phenomena of nature by sup posing the perpetual and miraculous intervention of supernatural agencies in which no rational man now believes. Yet primitive man was immeasur ably more rational than the primitive cow or cat (which he may perhaps have worshipped) just because he made at least an effort to account for things which they, it would appear, took for granted with placid stupidity. As time went on, men ceased to be satisfied with some of the reasons already invented. Weighed in the balance of experience, they were found wanting, and by slow degrees everything came to be referred to experience as the only trustworthy guide, and OF EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 243 the relations of natural phenomena, or what we call natural laws, were inductively ascertained and finally formulated only after they had been verified by repeated trial and experiment. It is curious and significant that during the long centuries of the progress of the rational move ment the organized opposition to the movement has invariably proceeded from theological systems and churches, which have likewise almost in variably claimed for themselves a monopoly of rehgious knowledge and authority. No one who has read Mr. Lecky's careful History of Ration alism can doubt that the history of the gradual development of the rational faculty is the history of the progress ol mankind from the darkness of superstition to the clear hght of acquired know ledge. Whether the churches wiU or will not reahze, in time to save themselves from a calami tous end, that their reactionary tendency is a fatal tendency, is very doubtful. That they will ever again have the power that once they had to check the advancing tide of scientific progress and to put back the clock of civilization by decades and even centuries is, one would hope, quite impossible. But that we are still on the battle ground between Rationalism and Reaction is obvious to any one who studies the signs of the times. 244 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE The essence of rationalism is the conception of the uniformity of nature — the conception, based on all the facts we know, that, on the one hand, things do not happen by chance, and, on the other, that neither do they happen by miraculous inter vention of any supernatural agency. Indeed, at this time of day, as we have seen, the rational development of any individual man may be pretty well gauged by his attitude to this very question of the miraculous. The rational man, brought face to face with an aUeged new fact or set of facts not apparently explicable on any recognized hypothesis, or referable to any natural law already ascertained, does not nowadays set the matter down to the miraculous interposition of a deity as his credulous forefathers would have done. If a case of rising from the dead were to occur now, as was acutely pointed out by Professor Henry Jones the other day, and the evidence were absolutely irresistible, the rational man would not set it down as a miracle, but would simply begin to revise his conception of death. He first of all investigates the evidence upon which the occurrence — say a cure of some physical disorder at Lourdes — is based, and, if the testimony is absolutely reliable, he makes a careful and precise note ot the fact or set of facts, and waits for the natural explanation which OF EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 245 he feels perfectly convinced will some day be forthcoming. Probably most men in Protestant countries would approve of this attitude towards a miracle at Lourdes, but it scarcely follows that they are more rational than the Roman Catholics, whom they deeply suspect of trickery. At any rate, all the churches which are numerically the most powerful and socially the most respectable beheve, or profess to believe, in miracles quite as surprising as those of Lourdes. To the rational man, who prefers evidence to dogma, there is just as little reason for accepting the miracles related in the sacred books of the Hebrews as there is for accepting the miracles related in obvious good faith by credulous historians of other nationahties. The later miracles of the Synoptists and the Fourth Gospel have ac quired a wholly fictitious value from their in clusion in biographies of Jesus. They were recorded, one gathers, by honest Syrian peasants in a credulous age as ordinary facts of ordinary experience, capable of verification like any other external phenomena, and they are not supported by evidence such as would now be accepted in the courts of law of any civilized country. It is indeed a most unfortunate thing that the churches of Christendom (at least in their official capacity) should so consistently have 246 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE allied themselves with the reactionary forces of ignorance and superstition. By persistently preaching supernaturalism and opposing the in evitable onward movement of rational inquiry, they have, beyond question, brought not only the particular theologies for which they stand (or stood), but religion itself into discredit. Though still strong numericaUy, their alliance is declined by an increasing number of thought ful persons; but the really serious element in the situation is that religion itself is — largely through their hostile spirit — come to be regarded as unworthy of the serious attention of rational men. That this attitude is temporary, I hope and believe ; that it is a mistaken attitude, I am profoundly convinced. On the one hand, the churches have not, and never have had, a monopoly of religious ex perience. Before churches were invented, men talked with God, and the vision and revelation of spiritual things wih not wholly cease in the land though churches should be disestablished and even disendowed. On the other hand, the rational nature of man possesses a much broader and grander claim to our respect than this, that it has been the father of the sciences. Man's rational nature has indeed begotten the sciences, but it has also begotten OF EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 247 the philosophies, the arts, the literatures of past and present ages, and — quite distinct from all these — there remains religion, that contact of the soul with God, the greatest achievement of human development, which (notwithstanding Mr. A. J. Balfour and Mr. Benjamin Kidd) we be lieve to be a true and legitimate daughter of the rational nature of man. Some members of this numerous progeny are dead. Astrology and the magical sciences long since had their decent burial. The ancient phUosophies are obsolete.1 There remain: the modern sciences, the arts and religion, these three, and the greatest of these is religion. You may look at the world — that is, from the scientific, the artistic, or the religious point of view — aU are good and have their place. From each standpoint man acquires knowledge of a cer tain kind, and exercises a different set of faculties. To begin with, the sciences have clearly estab hshed their right to be heard, and the majority of thinking men look, and at the moment must look, at the world from the scientific point of 1 ' Philosophy,' as distinguished from ' the philosophies,' I take to be another word for the general exercise of the rational faculty rather than any specific exercise or product of it. 248 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE view. It may weU be that we are at the thresh old of a new epoch — I believe we are — when the spiritual and eternal wiU lay hold upon the minds of men as the supreme realities. When that day of revival dawns, men wiU arise with ' the hght of a royal purpose' shining in their faces to seek after the simple things that are of most account ; to wit, love, hope, beauty, faith — in short, to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Meantime, it cannot be doubted that the pre ference of the 'man in the street' for the scientific point of view is largely due to the fact that the sciences have recently ministered enormously to the material well-being of the race. Within one crowded century they have given us railways and steamships, telegraphs, telephones, torpedo- boats and Maxims, antiseptics and ansesthetics, electric light and traction, and how much more ! We can now live more comfortably and kill each other more easily than our forefathers could. This is very convenient ; but it is too often for gotten that all the so-called practical results of scientific inquiry are good just in so far as they help us to make the most of ourselves; in so far as they are servants and handmaidens of our higher life, of our inteUectual, moral, and spiritual faculties. In so far as they compel or OF EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 249 encourage men to herd together in mean streets and toil with deadly monotony in ugly occupa tions ; in so far as they stunt the sense of beauty or tend to obliterate individuality or prevent the free enjoyment of Nature and communion with sky and mountain and sea; in so far as they tend to concentrate men's minds on the things of to-day to the exclusion of the long yesterday and the long to-morrow — the tyranny of these developments is wholly bad, and will assuredly overthrow the Ninevehs that yield thereto. The ultimate vindication of the sciences lies, of course, not in their practical results, but in the comparative honesty and humihty of their methods, and in the vast additions they have made to the sum of human knowledge. Now, what is meant by the scientific point of view? As currently used it means, I take it, the view that the universe contains an infinite number of apparently heterogeneous elements which exist in space and time, and are continu ally subject to processes of combination and dis integration; that of the origin and character of these ultimate units, nothing is known but that in combination they are capable to some extent of investigation and analysis, and are found in many instances to be interrelated in remarkable ways. A multitude of these interrelations has 250 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE in fact, emerged, and in the scientific point of view there is a strong probability that, if we knew more, we should find relativity everywhere ; that no flower blossoms in the crannied waU but is related to every other flower and to every other fact in the universe. The reality of phenomena is at least hypo- thetically assumed by all scientific workers. I am aware that the more philosophical among them take sides as in past ages on the question of the nature of this reality. To the modern scientific idealist, of whom Mr. Karl Pearson may be taken as a brilliant example, the phenomena of Nature need have no objective reality. At all events they are not, and cannot be, directly known. The only objects of knowledge exist in his mind as 'concepts or ideas,' begotten of 'sense -impressions' (Chances of Death, p. 184). We are entirely ignorant of what lies behind sensation (ibid., p. 193). But this formal dis tinction, though of the deepest significance, does not at the moment affect us. Mr. Pearson's reasonings when he is at work, say, on repro ductive selection, or on ' male and female varia tion,' are framed and expressed as if the natural phenomena he is discussing had objective reahty; and ninety-nine out of every hundred chemists or biologists or astronomers, to put it mildly, carry OF EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 251 on their investigations and write their treatises without any hint whatever that when they talk of sulphate of hydrogen, or skull-measurements, or star-dust, they really mean mental 'concepts,' or 'percepts' of theirs with which they have been experimenting. In any event the scientific idealist admits the subjective reality of his mental concepts. Among the underlying assumptions, therefore, of the sciences we find the following : — That aU things exist in a state of constant change; that all things change in accordance with laws of unvarying uniformity ; that all things and their changes have a sort of mutual relation to each other and to their sum. Now these articles in the creed of Modern Science are admittedly not capable of absolute demonstration. They are only working hy potheses ; . but they have been verified by trial and experiment in many instances, they have been confirmed by the results of long and care ful investigation — in a word, they are so firmly established by experience that at this stage in the history of the universe they are and must be acted upon as if they were true. A man who acts as if they were not true is, compara tively speaking, not a 'rational man.' He is 252 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE incapable, that is, of appreciating evidence, or of reasoning from the particular to the general. Take, for example, the proposition as to the uniformity of Nature, which I take to be the basic proposition of all the natural sciences. The fisherman of the Hebrides, who will turn aside from his intention to go to sea for a whole day if some 'unlucky' person or thing crosses his path in the morning, does not be heve in this fundamental assumption. Although everything points to a continuance of good weather and abundance of fish, he is irrationaUy convinced that some supernatural, or subter- natural, or at least preternatural, agency wiU bring him disaster if he goes to sea ; and there fore his boats and nets lie idle, his money is lost, and his bairns are dinnerless because Dugald is not a rational man ! Probably the word which best expresses the Rationalistic, or, as we prefer to call it, the Rational, attitude to things in general, is the word Naturalism, and the conviction expressed by that word is the conviction that there is not, and cannot be, anything supernatural, or subternatural, or preternatural — that natural law reigns everywhere. I admit that this conviction is simply a conviction, a creed, if you will ; but it is already the creed of the vast majority of OF EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 253 scientific workers and of a large and growing body of educated men. It seems to me probable that Naturalism will sooner or later be the creed of every man and woman whose opinion is worthy of any consideration. What then becomes of religion, music, painting, poetry — of all the so-called higher developments of man's rational nature ? Have not we been accustomed to bow to their authority ? Have not we heard of inspiration and revelation ? Is there no such thing as imaginative insight ? Do not we constantly hear a sharp distinction made between the natural man and the spiritual man? Now to these grave questions I believe the answer is this : that the religious and aesthetic faculties and activities of man are just as natural, just as truly the outcome of his natural evolution, as his reasoning faculty and his scientific activity. We have too long been taught to beheve that there is a great gulf fixed between God and Nature. Even Calvin, who was a much greater man than most Calvinists, admitted centuries ago (albeit with the qualification that the phrase was inaccurate and harsh), ' Pie hoc potest dici : Deum esse Naturam,' ' It is possible to say with 254 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE reverence that God and Nature are one.' If the full meaning of this great thought had been realized before, we should have had less theology, less talk of the supernatural and of miracles, and probably much deeper and more widespread religious experience. It is now dawning on men's minds that while a quarrel between science and theology was inevitable, a quarrel between religion and science is as impossible as a quarrel between poetry and science ; that God fulfils Himself in many ways, and that there are many avenues to truth. Naturalism may, and probably will, become the creed of every thinking man ; but the charm and rapture yielded by the musical faculty to those who cultivate it will not thereby be diminished ; poets and prophets will stUl see visions of truth and beauty, and the sense of God's presence wiU remain the heritage of those who diligently seek Him. All these things are natural things. It is not considered unnatural even by a man whose musical faculty is deficient and almost rudi mentary, that his more gifted brother should enter into the deep enjoyment of fine music. The musician, it is true, cannot prove the reahty of his aesthetic experience to any one else by any OF EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 255 scientific demonstration ; yet we do not think his experience to be an illusion. On the contrary, any one who is in any measure able to under stand him can well beheve that in his wonderful world he is perhaps nearer to the portals of reality than, say, the student of protoplasm and its evolution. The musical faculty is not uni versal, except perhaps in rudimentary form. If you have no musical faculty, Pan would have piped to you in vain ; the sound of many voices in some grand chorale will not touch you ; Beet hoven agonizing in the birth-pangs of production may even seem to you a fool, and the rendering of his immortal symphonies a disagreeable noise ; but your scepticism does not prove the musical sense a delusion, nor its cultivation a snare. There are, moreover, degrees in the exercise and function of this as of all human faculties. A man who uses every means in his power to cultivate the faculty will — other things being equal — be more musical than the man who neglects to cultivate it. I suppose it is true that some men are born with a finer ear and taste for music than others, and that heredity and environment have much to do with its development in the individual. The laws which govern its evolution are not fully known, but the anthropologist does not doubt that it had 256 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE a perfectly natural history, a perfectly natural evolution. But it does not foUow that the musician is able to describe or the anthropolo gist able to state in scientific terms the content of the aesthetic experience of one who possesses a highly developed musical faculty. The whole region of musical experience is higher than the ordinary, and belongs to him alone who can enter into the land to possess it. The student of physical science may indeed investigate the laws of sound and harmony, and be able to talk sensibly and accurately about tone and pitch, nodes and vibrations ; but, unless he is the possessor of a cultured musical faculty, the language of music is to him practically unin- teUigible. We have all heard of the blind man who, being asked if he had any idea of the colour red, replied that he conceived it was some what like the sound of a trumpet. Not more absolutely unintelligible are the higher human achievements in music, in art, in poetry, in religion to the man who, by virtue of his narrower range of experience, is blind, or deaf, or dumb thereto. Modern men of science are quite well aware that so far from having exhausted the secrets of Nature, they are only at the threshold of the universe, and that many a key must be turned OF EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 257 before her house of many mansions is explored. The attitude of the sciences is in some ways more modest and less dogmatic than in former days. The phenomena of telepathy, and even of appari tions, are now being carefully and scientifically investigated by a Society which numbers some men of the first eminence among its members. In short, all scientific men worthy of the name are weU aware that Nature is a far wider word than most people reahze. So far as one can see, they have no desire to quarrel with re ligion. AU that they object to is the ignorant dogmatism that contradicts established scientific results and produces no evidence to support the contradiction. Now the question comes to be whether the artistic, the poetic, and the religious faculties are not so many keys, wherewith to open the doors of the unseen world that lies about us. The sciences have their admitted limitations; they do not penetrate to the core of things. Of what lies behind sensation they confessedly know nothing. Is it unreasonable to maintain that the poetic, artistic, and religious faculties are permitted glimpses — for the most part quite incommuni cable, quite unprovable, and therefore non-rational 258 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE in the limited sense of the word, but none the less real — into that mysterious domain to which the reasoning faculty cannot penetrate ? I venture to maintain that this is so ; that, just as the message of fine music, though incapable of interpretation to the non-musical intelligence, is valid and valuable to the soul of the music- lover, so man's religious faculty may and does, when cultivated to fine issues, naturally and joyously supplement the imperfect knowledge imparted by his powers of observation and induction. ' I have seen,' says Wordsworth, ' A curious child who dwelt upon a tract Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell ; To which, in silence hushed, his very soul Listened intensely : and his countenance soon Brightened with joy : for from within were heard Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native sea. Even such a shell the universe itself Is to the ear of Faith : and there are times, I doubt not, when to you it doth impart Authentic tidings of invisible things.' (The Excursion : Book iv.) The analogy between the religious and the musical faculties exists also between these and what we may call the poetic or prophetic and the other artistic faculties. All these are part OF EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 259 of man's rational equipment. The mind or soul of man cannot indeed be split up into com partments. There is a close connection between all the parts of his being : but for clearness' sake it is possible to differentiate between these several powers of his marvellously complex nature. It cannot be denied that in the work of the highest artistic and poetic genius there is an imaginative insight, a power of interpretation so far above the common that to the mass of men the expressed result is uninteUigible. The poet and the artist see visions and dream dreams that cannot be told in human speech. That which they do tell is but a part of the vision, and the language in which they speak is a parable or a picture or a song. To enter into their world at all one must be half a poet or half an artist ; one must have a certain amount of cultivation in this high sort. I have travelled among the Grampian Hills with a Lowland farmer, one of those sordid persons who carry their soul in their pocket; to whom the jingle of 'siUer' is a far sweeter sound than the sough of the wind on the heather. I well re member his contemptuous reception of my remark that this was a glorious country. ' Na ! na ! ' said he ; 'it 's a puir country this ! ' Both of us were right. Glorious in respect of colour and contour of rocky ridge and peak, the 260 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE land was not, like the fat Lowlands, flowing with milk and honey — or, at least, money — which rejoice the hearts of men who live by bread alone. One feels more acutely, the higher one goes in the sphere of being, how inadequate words are. The higher, sensuous impressions are incapable of adequate expression. Even the reasoner, the man of science, is compelled to use words in a meta phorical sense. Darwin was careful to point out that Natural Selection was a metaphor. ' Words are grown so false,' says the Clown in Twelfth Night, ' I am loth to prove reason by them.' ' Wise men's counters,' said Hobbes, ' they do but reckon by them : but they are the money of fools.' The masters of speech and song can do, and have done, much. The poet and the prophet are the best interpreters, not only of what we call ex ternal nature, but of spiritual experiences — the best name-givers to spiritual conceptions, but their words too are metaphors. As we rise to these higher things, moreover, there is another reason for silence. We are on holy ground. ' Keep thy foot when thou goest to the House of God : for to draw nigh to hear is better than to give the sacrifice of fools. Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any word before God: for God is in the OF EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 261 world of spirit and thou upon the earth : there fore let thy words be few.' Of his rehgion, as of the other great achieve ments of his pilgrimage — his loves, his dreams, his memories, his ideals — the wise man seldom speaks. There is a certain barbarity in drawing aside the curtain. Paradoxical as it seems, it is true that the deeper and richer, the more worth communicating our experience is, the more im penetrable becomes the veil of our separation. Those whose sensuous, inteUectual, spiritual nature moves in high altitudes, live in splendid isolation. They cannot speak or sing the highest things that they know to any mortal ear in any human words ; not because their experiences are unreal, not because they themselves are less than rational, but because mortal ears are dull of hear ing and human words are symbols of but limited capacity. We call our masters, poets and pro phets, not because they have created for us all the beauty or spoken to us all the truth that they knew themselves, but because they, rather than we, have seen into the heart of things, and have been enabled to give us, as few could give, some hint of the unspeakable realities. 'Poetry,' said Plato, ' comes nearer to vital truth than history.' 'There are things too high to be spoken of,' says one of the finest spiritual teachers of last 262 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE century— the late Dr. Martineau ; ' which cease to be high by being made objects of ordinary speech. Language occupies the mid-region of our life. . . . If we were all animal, we could not use it : if we were as God, we should give it up, and lapse, like him, into eternal silence. . . . Religion in the soul is like a spirit hiding in enshadowed forests : call it into the staring light, it is exhaled and seen no more. . . . Men in deep reverence do not talk to one another, but remain with hushed mind side by side ' (Endeavours after the Christian Life, 9th ed., pp. 493-494). It would be an easy thing to throw ridicule upon a religion like Dr. Martineau's, and one regrets to find, even among serious-minded men of science, a disposition to treat such confessions with contempt. Yet one may safely affirm that this same religious experience has been the finest attainment of men, in all ages of human history, who have lived in the conscious presence of God. It is no supernatural or unnatural thing : it is simply the best and greatest of natural things that— God having ordered forth the eternal evolu tion or progression or procession of things which we call the universe — man should in the process of the suns find himself at the head of the pro cession — a being unlike others, not in kind, but by many degrees, and chiefly by this, that he is OF EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 263 capable of entering into a measure of conscious communion with the Author of all reality. Cap able, that is, if he use and cultivate the supreme faculty he possesses. It is now matter of common knowledge that all our mental faculties are closely correlated to, if not dependent upon, the movements of our physi cal brain, and it seems more than likely that the actual physical correlative of the religious faculty — or at least the region of the physical brain corresponding to its exercise — may one of those days be definitely located. This is, of course, just what we should expect. We have the authority of Mr. Herbert Spencer for the statement — based, as most of his statements are, upon an exceed ingly wide and careful induction — that the re ligious faculty ' is as normal as any other faculty ' (First Principles, p. 16). In another remarkable passage containing his mature opinion, he considers it possible that ' by further more developed intelligences the course of things now apprehensible only in part may be apprehensible all together, with an accompany ing feeling as much beyond that of the present cultured man as his feeling is beyond that of the savage. . . . But one truth must grow ever clearer — the truth that there is an inscrutable Existence everywhere manifested, to which he can neither 264 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE find nor conceive either beginning or end. Amid the mysteries which become the more mysterious the more they are thought about, there will re main the one absolute certainty that he is ever in presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed ' (Eccles. Inst, pp. 842, 843). This striking conclusion of one of the most systematic thinkers and reasoners of our day is arrived at, of course, not from a criticism of religious experience, but from a criticism of ex ternal phenomena and their laws. The poet, however, and the man of religious experience can even now speak with greater confidence. In the beautiful description of a sunset towards the end of the Excursion, Wordsworth makes the Priest exclaim : — ' Eternal Spirit ! Universal God ! Power inaccessible to human thought Save by degrees, and steps which Thou hast deigned To furnish.' These ' degrees and steps ' ; what are they but the stages of the natural evolution of that religious experience which may perhaps seem to those who have it not, a delusion, but to those who have in some small measure been privileged to enjoy it, the supreme fact in their lives. That it has been a fact of untold value to a OF EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 265 multitude whom no man can number can scarcely be denied. A man shut in by perplexity, unsure of the future, anxious to do right, but uncertain which path to choose, often seeks the guidance and advice of the friends in whom he has confi dence, and may be greatly helped thereby. But it is one of the pathetic hmitations of our human nature that we are often of little use to each other in the supreme crises of hfe. In the great moments of our friend's history we are wonder fully helpless. But the universal testimony of rehgious men is that even in these circumstances they have had the most powerful assurance and conviction of the presence and help of God, their Father and Friend. Their prayer, ' Teach me Thy way, O God,' has never been unanswered; they have been, sometimes quite consciously, guided and sustained where all seemed dark and hopeless. God has been to them a refuge, a very present help in the time of trouble. There is a true heroism in the man who, being destitute of this experience, yet fronts the world bravely and uprightly without any conscious reliance upon divine aid and protection. Yet the religious man is, I believe, none the less courageous that he has asked for courage ; none the less wise that he has asked for wisdom; none the less self- reliant (though it seem a paradox), as he goes 266 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE about his daily work, in that evening, morning, and at noon his thoughts and desires, his will ahd affections, his plans and future purposes are being laid before Him who is the strength of his heart and his portion for ever. Some of the many things which enter into the religious experience of men we caU aspiration, penitence, thanksgiving, worship, consecration : some of the many things which flow from it we call inspiration, guidance, comfort in sorrow, a wider outlook, a wider charity, a deeper patience, a greater gladness — to these things the saints, apostles, prophets, martyrs of all climes and all creeds and a nameless multitude of humbler witnesses testify with one heart and voice; and yet the innermost things they have known they cannot testify aright. Religion, then, is essentially natural. And it seems to me that the conception of the religious faculty as a purely natural and distinctively human faculty places it at once on a rational basis, different altogether from the non-rational basis of supernatural sanctions and miraculously revealed authority upon which it has too long been allowed to rest. Rational or non-rational, however, the fact remains that the religious faculty not only OF EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 267 exists, but, like all our other faculties, can be developed by cultivation or atrophied by neglect ; that in the familiar words of our old Scotch paraphrase, ' Our hearts, if God we seek to know, Shall know Him, and rejoice ; His coming like the morn shall be, Like morning songs His voice.' XII OF ' RELIGIOUS ' EDUCATION ' Now I re-examine philosophies and religions.' ' They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.' Walt Whitman : Song of the Open Road. The only school of Religion is Life. The only Religious Educator is God. The only Religious Lesson-book is Experience. We are grown so accustomed to hear animated debate on ' The Bible in Schools,' ' The Secularization of Educa tion,' 'The National Duty of Teaching Religion in our Schools,' that we are in some danger of believing that the State can, if it will, directly 'teach rehgion.' We are in some danger of re garding the subsidy or endowment of 'Church Schools,' or the exclusive appointment of teachers who are church members, or the inclusion of Bible and Catechism lessons in school time tables as direct means of 'fostering the reli gious education of the young.' A moment's OF 'RELIGIOUS' EDUCATION 269 reflection is sufficient to convince any sensible person that these methods have no such result, and, in the nature of things, cannot possibly have any such result. That they are well meant, that they do an enormous amount of good, it is not necessary for our present purpose either to affirm or deny. The point is that they do not 'foster the religious education of the young.' What they do foster — generaUy in a singularly ineffectual manner — is the theological education of the young and the ecclesiastical education of the young. And he would be an impious man, in these high days, who should assert that Religion is the same thing as Theology or Ecclesiasticism, or even a combination of both. Yet everywhere what is properly, if barbarously, termed ' denominational education ' is confounded with ' rehgious education,' except by those whose barbarism is of a quality so refined that they beheve in ' undenominational religious educa tion.' Some men, however, are coming to see that all this talk of ' religious ' teaching in schools is so much nonsense. You can no more teach Religion in schools than you can teach Love in schools. And I have not yet found a school authority whose time-tables provide for a course of lessons in love. It would be easy to employ, in support 270 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE of the teaching of love, the precise arguments that the advocate of ' religious education ' em ploys in support of the teaching of religion. ' It is of the highest importance in our national life,' we might say, ' that our children should grow up imbued with those loving principles which are at the basis of aU good character.' Or again, ' If our children are to be left with their affections untrained at the critical age when they are most responsive to good impressions, what hope is there for our future as a nation ? ' Or again, ' Unless the State provides for the cultivation and regulation of the child's affections, for the development of that faculty of love which God has implanted, then Great Britain is on the high road to Tophet and Anarchy.' All which statements may be very wise or very foolish, or partly wise and partly foohsh, but, at all events, their practical outcome does not ap pear to be a readjusted school time-table, with an hour fixed (say 10.15 a.m. to 11.15 a.m.) for the teaching of love. Now, why should this be so ? We all recognize ' the importance of the subject.' The subject has a vast literature. Every one who has written anything worth reading, from the erotic poets to Mr. Herbert Spencer, has written about it. There should be, one would think, no lack of text-books. Even if there were, we all OF 'RELIGIOUS' EDUCATION 271 know in our heart of hearts that the French poet was right who sings : — ' Oh ! 'tis love, 'tis love, That makes the world go round,' and that Saint Paul — great, wonderful wizard saint that he was — spake truly when he said, ' Now abideth Faith, Hope, Love, these three ; and the greatest of these is Love.' Yet every sane man recognizes that the idea of shutting clrildrfin up in the most pleasant schoolroom in the world from 10.15 am. to 11.15 a.m. to learn Love is nothing but a grotesquerie of the wildest description. No argument is needed. The thing is obviously impossible. Yet many persons still beheve that it is possible, by shutting children up in schoolrooms for an hour or half an hour daily, to teach them Religion. Now, we maintain, on the contrary, that you can no more teach Religion by way of book-learning than you can teach Love by way of book-learning. The free romps in the playground, the school discipline, the look on the teacher's face, the tone of the teacher's voice, the teacher's kindly pat on the shoulder, the teacher's stern displeasure at wrong-doing, above aU, the intercourse with the other children — these are some of the things that teach a boy all the rehgion or irreligion he is likely to learn at school. Lessons in love and religion are the sim- 272 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE plest, deepest, most real lessons of life. Formal education in love and religion is preposterous. 'How then? Shall we exclude the Bible and the Catechism from schools?' exclaim the twenty-three thousand beneficed and unbene ficed clergymen of the Church of England, in a horror of great darkness, at which I certainly am in no mood to mock. But, seriously, will the heavens faU if you exclude the Catechism ; if you exclude all the Catechisms that ever were written ? The Catechisms are not Religion ; they are theological text-books, and for the most part hopelessly unsuited to the temper and quality of the child-mind. Even could one grant — which God forbid — that the theological conceptions they embody were the distiUed essence of truth, it is a fatal mistake in educating children to sin against the temper and quality of the child-mind. To pretend for even half an hour a day that these ill-phrased questions and answers are Rehgion — to give children to understand that tasteless paragraphs, destitute of style, express the great realities of Religion — is not only a fatal mistake, it is — with the best intentions in the world — an enormous crime. In ninety cases in a hundred, where any impression is made, children never get over it. Their whole conception of Religion in after-life is coloured with the hateful impression OF 'RELIGIOUS' EDUCATION 273 that Religion is an external thing connected with metaphysical doctrines, catechisms, formularies, rites, ceremonies. All their hfetime they are subject to bondage, half-believing that a slip or an oversight in this matter of doctrine or ceremonial will affect their weU-being here and hereafter. If Religion were indeed connected in the remotest way with doctrines about the Eternal or with church ceremonials and vestments, it might be well to devote half an hour a day to their exposition. But, Religion being an ex perience, and neither a creed nor a wardrobe, the half hour is worse than wasted. As employed at present, and in so far as it leaves any impres sion at aU upon the child-mind, it leaves a false and distorted impression. These words are care fully chosen; false, we say, because it is false that the deepest, sweetest, holiest experience of the soul of man, his communion with God, his rapture of aspiration and inspiration, should be falsely identified with behef in baptism and god fathers and the miraculous conception of the Virgin Mary; distorted, we say, because, as the chUd finds out sooner or later, the importance of the church is, in all such catechetical conun drums, imphcitly exaggerated. Why not drop such futilities, and do what it is quite possible and very necessary to do, viz., teach ethics — the s 274 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE best current morahty — both directly and in directly in schools. Simple ethical ideas and propositions are quite well suited to the temper and' quahty of the child-mind. Nothing, for example, could be better worth getting by heart than this : ' My duty toward my Neighbour is ... To order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters; to hurt nobody by word nor deed; to be true and just in aU my dealing; to bear no malice nor hatred in my heart; to keep my hands from picking and stealing, and my tongue from evU-speaking, lying, and slander ing; to keep my body in temperance, soberness, and chastity ; not to covet nor desire other men's goods, but to learn and labour truly to get mine own living ; and to do my duty in that state of life unto which it shall please God to caU me.' Nor could any one, save a cynic, cavil at the tender response that immediately follows. ' My good chUd, know this, that thou art not able to do these things of thyself, nor to walk in the Commandments of God, and to serve Him with out His special grace, which thou must learn at all times to call for by diligent prayer.' Spoken kindly and affectionately by a white-haired minis ter, these essentiaUy true and most memorable words come near to the teaching of rehgion. The first quoted passage is simply and finely OF 'RELIGIOUS' EDUCATION 275 ethical — admirable in diction, elevated in idea, and perfectly fitted to the temper and quality of the child-mind. It is the one universal thing in the Catechism of the Anglican Church, the one thing everywhere, and eternally true for all sorts and conditions of men that is taught therein. Being ethical, and neither trivial nor theological, we have no quarrel with it. The second passage, the tender response is so beautiful, so natural on the lips, as we have sup posed, of a gentle and venerable man, that one hesitates to say that it is out of place. Yet in the elementary and workaday schoolroom it is surely out of place. The words are true. The way of a man is not in himself. It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. But the lesson is a high and difficult one. Gradually the wisest among men, and they alone, fuUy learn it. That our highest wisdom is fallible ; that we are very helpless in the mesh of circumstance ; that our footsteps are apt to slide ; that there is only one true Guide in all our human perplexities — these are lessons that only long, and often bitter, ex perience can drive home. Before a man comes to admit in his inmost heart that he is not capable of ordering his conversation aright, of 'walking in the commandments of God' with out the help and guidance of ' His special grace,' 276 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE he must have lived long enough to try the ex periment. The Hebrew saint who urged men to ' trust in the Eternal with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding ; in all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths,' was not only a wise but an experienced man. The Hebrew saint who poured forth, the 143rd Psalm — who cried out of the depths, ' Hear me speedily, 0 Eternal ; my spirit faileth. ... In Thee do I trust; cause me to know the way wherein I should walk ; for I lift up my soul unto Thee ! ' — had learned by heart, and would never forget, the Catechism of Ex perience that is taught in the school of life. ' My good child, know this, that thou art not able to do these things of thyself.' True indeed ; eternally, irrevocably true ; but think of the futility of ' teaching ' so deep and so difficult a truth to the simple inexperience of young boy hood and young girlhood ! They cannot in the nature of things attain unto it. Unless — which may God grant !-r— it passes over their heads un heeded for the joyous present, it can but make them dangerous prigs. It can but check the boundless energy of their happy activity, and paralyse their ardent effort after well-doing. The Catechism here is too ambitious, as in most other places too trivial and false, to suit OF 'RELIGIOUS' EDUCATION 277 the temper and the quality of the child-mind. Even if it were otherwise, surely the home and not the schoolroom, the parent or minister and not the man with the birch or the woman with the spectacles, is the appropriate medium for such deep and tender instruction. The Shorter Catechism, compiled by the West minster Assembly of Divines, was, next to the Bible, the theological text-book of the writer from chUdhood. Knowing it, and, in a sense, loving it from end to end, he finds it difficult to forgive the ignorant ridicule which is often poured upon it. That such a book essentially, though not evidently, controversial, should have held a supreme place for two hundred1 years in the churches and schools of Scotland ; that its essen tial teaching should have entered into the core and fibre of what is best in Scottish life and thought, ought, one would think, to defend it sufficiently against the attacks of those whose acquaintance with it is superficial. It is not too much to say that the always grave and serious and sometimes majestic propositions of the Shorter Catechism have done much to mould the life and thought of Scotland for generations. In this it succeeded because it was peculiarly well suited to the temper and quality of the Scots 1 Omitting the Prelatic domination of 1661 to 1690. 278 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE mind. In a country not only rigorous in climate, but so poor in material resources, and so sparsely populated as the mountainous North was in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, men are naturally more prone than their Southern neighbours to gravity and seriousness of life. They have time and inclination to brood upon high things in a degree that is now become difficult, and is yearly becoming less possible. The change that has swept over Scotland since the introduction of railways, telegrams, daily newspapers and wealth has made her descent from the intellectual altitude of the Shorter Catechism obvious enough. The days are past when every ploughman whistled in Latin, and carried a Geneva gown in his wallet. For the intellectual Scot, Edina is still Scotia's darling seat ; the home of her historic moments ; the stately monument of her lost causes and her literary reminiscences ; but the brain and heart of the people are no longer centred in Edinburgh. And in the strenuous working and thinking and hammering of the large-hearted, miUion-peopled, smoke-begirt city of the West, there is neither time nor inclination for the Shorter Catechism. It is still ' taught ' in her schools, because, with a touch of sentiment natural enough, she insists upon it. It was taught — with a vengeance — in OF 'RELIGIOUS' EDUCATION 279 her young days, and she has not yet realized that her children cannot learn in school what they do not find at home. The Shorter Catechism, it is safe to predict, will shortly disappear from the time-table. That it once was an educational force is due mainly to the fact that the people whom it dominated were an exceptional race. They had the makings of a scholar in every household. They were sufficiently poor to be in earnest about their theology. For generations they had fought for it, and suffered for it, and this book summed up in fine words all their own finest thoughts about God and His ways. To the average modern Scotsman the Cove nants, the Revolution Settlement, the Secession and Rehef are words almost empty of meaning. They stir his blood no longer, though the old, strenuous days have left their mark on every fibre of his being. He has almost forgotten 1 the Ten Years' Conflict and the Disruption of 1843, and he becomes more English year by year. His theology grows less vertebrate. His pulpits no longer resound with the ' decrees of God ' and the doctrine of ' effectual calling.' The ' galleries ' no 1 This was written before the far-reaching judgment of the House of Lords in ' the Scottish Church Case ' (Bannatyne v. Overtoun, 1st August 1904) had vividly recalled to every Scots man that last heroic impulse that could properly be called national. 280 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE longer reverberate with fearsome rhetoric about the 'pains of hell.' Words like 'justification' and 'atonement' have taken on new meanings, and, with the emergence from black poverty and grim bloodshed, there has grown up a more humane and kindly attitude to the Eternal and His doings among men, than is exhibited in the stern logic of the Shorter Catechism. When we come to the Bible, we enter upon the consideration of a different and much wider problem. The question, 'Are we to allow the Bible in schools ? ' is just about as wise a question as, ' Shall we allow the universe into the schools ? ' For the Bible is a microcosm of letters ; and the answer is, ' Of course you wiU ; you cannot keep it out.' You cannot teach history without it. Poetry is saturated with it. The finest English prose has caught its music and its melody from the English Bible. No one can really know the English Bible and remain 'uneducated,' and, on the other hand, poor indeed is the man or woman who knows it not with the intimate knowledge of love. Yet, speaking as one who knows and loves the Bible better — incomparably better — than any other book, I am sure you can no more teach children the Bible in schoolrooms than you can teach them the universe in schoolrooms. What you can very easily do, and what is commonly OF 'RELIGIOUS' EDUCATION 281 done, is to teach them a false and distorted view of the Bible — you can very easUy persuade them, for example, without intending it, that the Bible is the duUest and dreariest lesson-book in existence. Or you can convince them that the Bible is aU one book — which they will the more readUy believe that they unfortunately almost always see it bound up in one volume — and that its sixty-six books, written at various times by most various hands over some three thousand years, are only sixty-six chapters of one book. Or again, you may get them to believe the horrible tale that a ' scarlet thread ' (blood colour) runs through all the books from Genesis (where the Eternal is shown to prefer Abel and his bloody sacrifice of animal life to Cain and his bloodless sacrifice of fruits and flowers) to Revela tion (where Jesus is the sacrifice, and there is a fountain filled with His blood in which bad people wash their dirty clothes, and immediately become good in the eyes of the Eternal). One often observes that this surprising ' scarlet thread ' theory is a favourite with old ladies of particu larly mild and benevolent character. Nor, one must admit, does it in the least shock children, who are notoriously fond of gore. But aU these methods of ' teaching ' the Bible are just so many devices of crass stupidity. Intended, as they no 282 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE doubt are, to produce young Christians, they frequently result in the spread of irreligion and immorality. In the immediate present, moreover, they do a serious mischief to the cause of letters, which it is surely one of the primary objects of all education to foster. They blunt — these foolish methods — when they do not destroy, the feeling for literature which could else be cultivated among children with peculiar success by the in telligent study of those parts of the English Bible that are suited to the temper and quahty of the child-mind. I have said you can no more teach the Bible than you can teach the universe in the school room. But, just as in the schoolroom you can give the child an inkling of the great outer world in which he has opened his wondering eyes, so you can give him — if you teach him properly — an inkling of the still more wonderful inner world — the spiritual world of imagination, of poetry, of morals, and of intellect. 'If you teach him properly,' that is to say, if you put him in the way of teaching himself. The art of real teach ing is the art of stimulating curiosity. The kind of curiosity you stimulate should be higher and ever higher, as the pupils advance. To the temper and quality of the child-mind the naive stories of Joseph and David and Ruth and Esther OF 'RELIGIOUS' EDUCATION 283 and Tobit are as admirably suited as -_Esop's Fables, or the Fairy Book; and if your senior classes can be effectively introduced to Shake speare and Milton and Goethe, they can and ought to be effectively introduced to Amos and Joel and Ecclesiastes; to the masterpieces of the second Isaiah, and the matchless music of the finer Psalms. The answer, therefore, to the question, Shall we teach the Bible in schools? must depend upon the answer to the question, How do you propose to teach it ? If you wish to make theological capital out of it, to degrade it from its lofty place in the world of universal letters, to be the text book of your Protestantism, or the spelling-book of your Christianity, then you had better leave it, like the Catechisms, out of the curriculum. Religion — the true Rehgion that underlies true Cathohcism and true Buddhism as certainly as it underlies true Protestantism — will not suffer, but benefit, by the exclusion. But if you are heedful that the youth of your country should have access at least to the immortal kingdoms by one of the finest of gateways and stateliest of avenues, then teach them to study the Bible without preposses sion, and to love it with unfeigned affection/ XIII OF THE SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE ' Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth, And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers. ' Walt Whitman. It will be taken for an axiom, I suppose, that no man is wholly bad who acknowledges the good. Now, surely the man who is come to such a pass that the good is no longer recognizable by his inmost self — nay, whoUy admirable to his inmost self — is yet to be found. Your inveterate idler admires energy in other people ; your dissipated toper recognizes not only the excellence of sociableness, the worth of generosity, but even, by contrast with himself, the virtues of self-control and temperance. The devotee of ' business,' whose whole bent apparently is to ' make ' money — as if the money and the very capacity to dis cover and lay hands upon it were not already OF THE SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE 285 'made' for him — even he, the slave of gold, recognizes, now and then, the beauty of un worldly aims. The slave of lust daUy does penance before the altar of purity. No man, then, is wholly bad, and the old classi fication of men as good men and bad men is found to be as inaccurate as the sharp distinc tion drawn by the primitive church folk between ' the saved ' and ' the lost.' The very simplicity of such distinctions is fatal, because experience presently shows us that the world is complex. And the more we learn about it, the more com plex it is found to be. The dogmatism of a man is generaUy in inverse ratio to the extent of his knowledge. The scientific spirit is essentially teachable, humble, reverent. There is no com munion between culture and cocksureness. As in the days of Socrates, so now, the one sure tenet of the wisest man is that he knows very little indeed. The appropriate answer to the loud- voiced dogmatism of ignorance is silence and a quiet smile. Many dogmas have already died. Even dogmatism will die some day and be buried. But is there, then, no certainty of anything ? Hath God left Himself without witness ? That were surely somewhat unlikely, looked at a priori. That Man, the latest and greatest product of His evolution, should be capable of thought and 286 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE feeling, should acquire some control over the forces of nature, should invent telephones, and discover Rontgen rays — to put it at the lowest, and be yet left without a hint of the true char acter of the situation — his own position in the universe; God's relation thereto and to himself — sounds improbable, does it not? Or to take another hne: that men should be able to speak to each other in mutual understanding — I do not say in verbal speech, but through silent sympathy — heart unlocking heart in the mysterious ways of love ; in the language of lowly charities ; in the language of heroic deeds; in the deepest, most wonderful, most thrilling language of music — I say, that a Chopin and a Tschaikowsky should be able to translate the very agony and throb of an exquisite, hidden grief into the chords of a Marche Funebre and an Elegie — these achieve ments make it easy to conceive as possible a certain divine communion with the Soul of things. No doubt we are not all Chopins. Some of our kin have harsh voices and ugly faces. There is that worships in the outer court, and there is that penetrates within the veil, and he, it may be, only once a year. But we have a right to take our supreme examples, and frame our ideals from their highest. The True, The Beauti ful, and The Good are not so much working OF THE SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE 287 hypotheses as intuitive Certainties, reached by the rapid flight of an uplifted soul, somewhat as natural laws are reached by the rapid generaliza tion of a scientific mind. One dropped stone, accurately observed, is sufficient to suggest the law of gravitation. One pure and perfect love makes us sure of God. Suppose our ideals to be merely working hypotheses, the most cultivated cannot afford to dispense with them. They have at least a perennial beauty and utility, and that is more than can be said for the Doctrine of Eternal Punishment and the Dogma of Three-Persons- but-One-Substance. Hell and Homob'usion lend themselves better, I grant you, to argument and declamation, because we seldom argue about, or even whisper, the things that lie very near our heart. But that does not make them true. You will say that there is no propriety in comparing things so different — ideals and doctrines. These are to be received by the intellect, those by the soul, you wiU say. Well, there are intellects like that ! One stiU comes across them occasionaUy. One used to be told that these doctrines were matters of faith, which is not primarily an intellectual faculty; but it is a hopeful sign of the modern church that she begins to discriminate between what we may call head-belief and heart-belief— 288 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE between logic and inspiration. The very word ' doctrines,' as the late Mr. Froude has said, suggests quack medicines. It is a somewhat strange feature of an age distinguished beyond all its forerunners for scientific attainment, that the increase of know ledge has tenfold increased humility. The man of widest research knows best how far beyond his ken lie the limits of truth — how probable it is that truth has no limit. It is an elementary proposition of the philosopher that nothing can be fully known apart from its relations to other things. And if this be so, how small is the sum of our knowledge ! The man of science can fur nish some details of the structure of the ' flower in the crannied wall.' The philosopher can tell something of its relative position in the ascend ing scale of being — give you some hint of its place in the evolution scheme. But why its variations are these and thus, the man of science cannot say; what are its ultimate relations, the philosopher can no more teU than Tennyson could. It is indeed a great thing that these gentlemen appreciate their limitations. There is, nevertheless, a kind of knowledge, higher, deeper than that of which we have spoken, yielding a more perfect certainty, if you con cede degrees of certainty, yet, strangely enough, OF THE SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE .289 quite or almost quite incommunicable — I mean the knowledge begotten of Love. The friend who is as myself, into whose eyes I have looked ; the woman whose lips I have kissed, and whose heart of hearts I have explored ; the boy whose pure confidences have been given to me, un worthy and exultant — of these I do know some thing. I cannot tell you what I know or how I know ; still less can I convince you, if you are sceptical, that I know at all ; yet herein lies the great Reahty of life. Though the earth be re moved, and the mountains be cast into the midst of the sea; though the heavens be rolled to gether as a scroll, and the elements melt with fervent heat, yet hath Love had her vision. I know, and am known. Knowledge, in this high sort, is no mere affair of the inteUect, whatever else it be. It has no literature to speak of, no grammar, no vocabu lary; no words or alphabet at all essential. It is written down, indeed, in the tablets of the soul, it has impalpable signs and tokens all its own; and not its least wonderful feature is its Certainty, its Reality. Without it, whoso liveth must be counted dead while he liveth. With it, no one need be ashamed. WUliam Morris, hav ing had some experience, sang of himself as ' grown wise in Love, but in all else most childish T 290 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE still.' This is a wisdom to be proud of, if you will, and it is open to every one that thirsteth. That answering flash of Sympathy that reveals and iUumines all things, is it not Divine ? The quick insight of lover and friend sees everything without speech; understands what cannot be told ; anticipates the unuttered desire. Who that knows it not, has not prayed for it ? Who that knows it, but gives thanks to God? Crown of our human days, thou makest sorrow beautiful and gladness sacred and failure triumphant ! Be it ever mine to wear thee in all time of my friends' tribulation ! Be it ever mine to see thee as a halo on some loving brow, when stress and sorrow are my portion ! Love does not admit of scientific demonstra tions, and so, it seems to me, God can neither be argued out of existence nor into it. When it comes to logic-chopping and demonstration and scientific evidence, we are all, and must remain, agnostical. But if we give honour to the part of us which is most spiritual, and, when it comes to the pinch, most real, we must aU be wor shippers. ' Like a man in wrath, my heart stood up and answered : " I have felt." ' All best friend ship is hallowed by the presence of God. He is the very atmosphere of our purest loves. Love is not passion. In the wilder gusts of passion — OF THE SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE 291 reminiscent of earUer stages in the evolution of our race — that rend and torture and tear us, there is a selfish, tiger element that is the antithesis of Love. Love seeketh not her own. Passion greedily, gluttonously seeketh her own, and the end thereof is misery and want. The train of thought is not merely analogical. It is not merely that the knowledge of God is like the swift intuitions of human sympathy, but that love itself is of God, and God is Love. ' But this,' you say, ' is dogmatism, and you may just as well give us Hell and Homoousion and the rest for good measure.' No; if you have loved, you do not make such an objection. If you wUl summon your own heart, and recall the loves of bygone years — the deepest affections of to-day — you will catch yourself praying for your lover ere the moment flies. You will know that God was there. The sense of the divine is, once more, like the musical faculty. A certain imaginative sym pathy, an ear attuned to the perception and discrimination of harmonies, are presupposed. Lack of these in certain individuals did not empty our concert-halls when Joachim played, or Albani sang. There are at least a few in every city who visit a seventh heaven of en- 292 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE tranced enjoyment when a Beethoven Symphony is finely rendered. To them a charge of dogma tism would seem an idle jest. They know. More or less imperfectly they understand the divine ideas that surged in the brain of the maestro, and found expression in his magnificent and imperishable music. And shall you and I cry 1 dogmatism ' because a poor mortal has seen somewhat of the very light of God, and whispers his dull account of it ? Surely not. There are men and women who have passed through great tribulation : they have lost the love of friends, they have encountered suspicion and poverty and illness, and by the manifest, tender help of God, ets they know, they are to-day standing upon a rock with songs in their hearts. There are plain persons, unaccustomed to rhetoric, whose faces have been lit with a holy radiance, because in the midst of silent, faithful toil, they have had a rare experience of their Father's gracious presence and help. There are souls who, in a time of per plexity, have cried unto God, and God gave them the strength and guidance they desired. These men and women know in whom they have trusted, and to themselves the cry of ' dogmatism ' is fool ishness. Their knowledge is incommunicable, but none the less real. They cannot beat you down with arguments; but, as you know your friend, they have held communion with God. If it be OF THE SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE 293 not dogmatic to say, ' I know my friend,' neither is it dogmatic to say in lowly joy; 'I have walked with God.' I do not think my lover is an illusion. If you are a good atheist, my experience and yours will not seem to agree. But I am not greatly desirous to convert you. It is highly probable that in aU other respects you are a better man than I. True, my doctor listens more patiently than you do when I describe to him my physical symptoms. More than that, allowing for my possible exaggerations and ignorance, he often makes my account of matters the basis of his treatment. It is all he has to go by. He does not sneer at me for a dogmatist, but hears me out with patient interest. Yet my symptoms are my very own, and if my doctor has never had just such symptoms himself, and for any reason suspects my accuracy, I cannot argue with him. Nothing is conclusive to another save identity of experience. But the iUustration is a poor one. Any miser able invahd can describe his symptoms with approximate accuracy; but where is the bound ing schoolboy, the hardy Highland gillie, the sinewy horseman of the prairie that can ade quately expound the meaning of radiant health ? Health glows in the cheek, fires the dark eye, lends grace and energy to the supple limbs, but it is no more capable of exposition and argument 294 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE than the beauty of the sunlit landscape in which its possessor revels. Love and God are the sunlit landscape of the healthy soul. Yet another analogy. Music and Art may be cultivated; but they may also be neglected. If they are neglected, the musical sense, the artistic faculty, wiU languish and decay. So the men who sacrifice their affections on the altar of ambition, who count their money-bags rather than their friends, are not only like to be un loved, but inevitably grow unloving. 'I have a fellowship with hearts to keep and cultivate,' and uncultivated fellowships soon wither away. Dis use of physical organs invariably spells degenera tion, and the ultimate penalty for disuse is atrophy. The intellectual and spiritual energies that in their degree differentiate man from his animal ancestors are under the same law. The faculty of imagination, the artistic sense, the musical sense, the mathematical faculty — these are developed by culture, and die away for want of culture. And how should a man suppose that the highest faculty of all will not also suffer by neglect? So far as I have learned, no animal ancestor of mine quite possesses the faculty of Worship — the sense of God. Primitive man all the world over has it in rudimentary form. We alone among the primates have so much as formed the conception of Worship, and we may OF THE SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE 295 lose it by mere neglect. The philosophic atheist, who manfuUy denies the existence of God, has a certain compensation in his consciousness of integrity and superiority. The hell of degenera tion and atrophy is reserved for the nations that simply 'forget' God. The careless surrender of higher things for lower is always shameful. For those who have been once enlightened, who have tasted of the heavenly gift, who have been made partakers of the spirit of hohness and have tasted the good word of God, to neglect these beautiful things is worse than foUy : it is the unpardonable sin. They are hke unto a slothful husbandman who letteth his most fair and fertile field lie long faUow, whereon wiU presently grow a wilderness of foul weeds, spreading soon over all his lands. Upon the whole we deprecate argument on the higher things. Scoff as you will, Love and Music and Joy are above aU arguments but one — the argumentum ad hominem — the argument from experience. Counting heads is often a poor vindication and quite inconclusive : yet it is not wholly insignificant that we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses. I do not mean to count the martyrs. Atheism, too, has had many martyrs. All good men and women are martyrs. Neither shall I count the number of the Buddhists and set them against the Pres byterians, nor again the number of the Primitive 296 THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE Methodists and set them against the Plymouth Brethren. I shall try to be more catholic and reasonable, and yet hold it for something that this experience — being indeed a most sure and solemn bond, that may fitly be caUed Religion — is no soUtary, isolated phenomenon. I appeal, therefore, to thee, my Hebrew, my Roman brother, my Salvation Army sister, my Ma hometan, my Buddhist "cousin, my far-off kins man of the woods and islands — 'Hast thou known the near presence of the Divine ? Hast thou received strength, not thine own? Hast thou committed thy way to God, and hath He sustained thee ? Hast thou trusted also in Him, and hath He brought it to pass, numberless times and ways, that thou alone couldst tell of ? ' And, like the whisper of many waves on a summer shore, I hear the answer from East and West, ' Yes, yes ; it is even so with me.' I verUy believe that they that have Religion are more than they that enter into the sanctuary of Music or stand within the temple of Art. Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press