A CHAMPION OF ORTHODOXY.

BY AN ECLECTIC.

Mr. W. H. Mallock is really a very redoubtable defender of orthodox thought as against what are considered the aggressions of science. He has given himself the trouble to inquire pretty deeply into the theories and systems that he attacks, and he has a very forcible way of putting his case. He has at his command the weapons of ridicule and sarcasm, and in his New Republic he has given to the controversial literature of the day by far its most brilliant satire. For my own part, I very much prefer to read Mr. Mallock as a satirist than as a controversialist, and his faults, as I consider them, of occasional unfairness and sarcastic exaggeration, do not seem by any means so conspicuous in the irregular skirmishing of satire as in the formal procedure of regular logical warfare. But in a book that he has recently published he has chosen to discard the comedian, and appear on the stage of literature in the serious drama. He puts his book forward as a weighty contribution, to an important discussion, and it is only fair to take it and deal with it in the spirit in which it is offered. In reading the dialectics of this gentleman I cannot shake off the impression made by his first and most successful book, and I constantly feel myself in doubt how far he is to be taken in earnest. But that my own infirmity in this respect shall not prevent me from giving a fair account of the argument, I will as far as possible quote Mr. Mallock's own words.

The title of the book Is Life Worth Living ? (London, Chatto and Windus, 1879) only imperfectly states the real question discussed. This is—Would life be worth living on the mere basis of the system of materialistic science ? Mr. Mallock's contention is that the development of physical science in our day is assailing the very existence of religion, and that in destroying religion it is destroying everything that gives value and dignity to human life.

Under the old religions, "judged of by itself, this life would indeed be vanity ; but it was not to be judged of by itself. All its ways seemed to break short aimlessly in precipices, or to be lost hopelessly in deserts. They led to no visible end. True; but they led to ends that were invisible—to spiritual and eternal destinies, to triumphs beyond all hope, and portentous failures beyond all fear." Scientific men, or as he calls them positivists, in taking away this final goal have declared that they leave the essential value of life undiminished: "They have taken everything away from life that to wise men hitherto has seemed to redeem it from vanity. They have to prove to as that they have not left it vain. They have to prove those things to be solid that have hitherto been thought hollow ; those things to be serious that have hitherto been thought contemptible. They must prove to us that we shall be contented, with what has never yet contented us, and that the wisest minds will thrive within limits that have hitherto been thought too narrow for the narrowest."

He maintains that religion has always added an element to the highest ideals and feelings of mankind, which leaves them worthless when it is abstracted, and of the elevation thus imparted by religion to the sentiment of love thus writes:—

" They [i.e., the positivists] have imagined that what religion adds to love is the hope of prolongation only, not of development ; and thus we find Professor Huxley curtly dismissing the question by saying that the quality of such a pleasure ' is obviously in no way affected by the abbreviation or prolongation of our conscious life.' How utterly this is beside the point may be shown instantly by a very simple example. A painter, we will say, inspired with some great conception, sets to work at a picture, and finds a week of the intensest happiness in preparing his canvas and laying his first colours. Now the happiness of that week is, of course, a fact for him. It would not have been greater had it lasted a whole fortnight, and it would not have been less had he died at the week's end. But though obviously, as Professor Huxley says, it in no way depends on its prolongation, what it does depend on is the belief that it will be prolonged, and that in being prolonged it will change its character. It depends on the belief on the painter's part that he will be able to continue his painting, and that as he continues it, his picture will advance to completion. The positivists have confused the true saying that the pleasure of painting one picture does not depend on the fact that we shall paint many, with the false saying that the pleasure of beginning that one does not depend on the belief that we shall finish it. On this last belief it is plain that the pleasure does depend, largely if not entirely; and it is precisely this last belief that positivism takes away."

This is very well and forcibly put, and it brings plainly to the front the narrowing of the and spiritual horizon which is caused by the relinquishment of religious faith. His criticism of the influence of "positivism" on morality is equally incisive, though it is marred by a singularly unfair attempt to represent the morality of George Eliot—the most self-sacrificing morality taught by any contemporary moralist—as all issuing in a desire to choose the pleasantest way of life. He contends, as many have contended, that the universal sanctions of morality are destroyed by the theory he discusses. "Suppose that, on positive grounds, I find pleasure in humility, and my friend finds pleasure in pride, and so far as we can form a judgment the happiness of us both is equal; what possible grounds can I have for calling my state better than his? . . . To say that his immoral state was worse than my moral state would be a phrase incapable of any practical meaning. It might mean that, could my friend be made to think as I do, he would be happier than he is at present; but we have here an impossible hypothesis and an an verifiable conclusion. It is true enough that I might present to my friend some image of my own inward state and of all the happiness it gave me; but if, having compared his happiness and mine as well as he could, he still liked his own best, exhortatation would have no power, and reproach no meaning."

The issue of the whole argument is that the scientific theories now in vogue are radically destructive of all that makes the happiness, the dignity, and the moral worth of human life, and that life on such terms is not worth living. This is the argumentative result, but the reader naturally asks does the author also educe any practical result, and if so what is it? Does he regard this as a proof that the theories are false, or, if they are true, does he offer his conclusion as one of absolute despair? What he does is this, he appeals to the moral will as against the merely scientific reason, and points to the haven of religion as a place of escape from all the destructive influences of positivism. Religion is to be our refuge, and not one of its dogmas is to be overlooked. We cannot even do without a hell if we really want to make life worth living. "The Christian conception of morality necessitates the affirmation of hell," and "the denial of hell is the denial of Christian morality." The issue, then, from all these difficulties and perplexities is to be religion. We must, as Mr. Mallock repeatedly urges upon us, "believe because it is impossible." If we ask him if any form of religion, if all religions, have this saving power, he at once distinguishes. For all our purposes he tells us the creeds of the Eastern world are utterly useless. Here, then, for about three-fourths of the great human family there is no salvation. Mr. Mallock, not judging as a bigot, but as a calm, rational philosopher, with one graceful wave of his hand consigns six or seven hundred millions of human beings to despair in the present life and perdition in the future. For them life is certainly not worth living. But their case is not worth the consideration of an advanced theological thinker and champion of orthodoxy. We must be Christian, then, but is this sufficient? Well, no; Mr. Mallock regrets to say that more than this is wanted. Protestantism is utterly useless for the purpose of making life worth living. We are beginning to find out what a sham Protestantism is. "We are at last beginning to see in it neither the purifier of a corrupted revelation, nor the corrupter of a pure revelation, but the practical denier of all revelation whatsoever." " It is religion from which not only the supernatural element is disappearing, but in which the natural element is fast becoming nebulous." "Protestantism, in fact, is at last becoming explicitly what it always was implicitly, not a supernatural religion which fulfils the natural, but a natural religion which denies the supernatural." The upshot of it all is that the only rock of refuge is the Catholic church. The Church of Rome, Mr. Mallock assures us, "is ideally, if not actually, the Parliament of the believing world." She "essentially is the spiritual sense of humanity." Having by this time left philosophy and mere reason far behind, he spreads his pinions wide, and soars high and far. He even ventures to declare that "there is no point, probably, connected with this question about which the general world is so misinformed and ignorant as the sober but boundless charity of what it calls the anathematising church. So little, indeed, is this charity understood generally, that to assert it seems," modestly says Mr. Mallock, "a startling paradox." Paradox seems a term utterly inadequate to such talk as this. We can only deal with facts as we find them, and one wishes to ask Mr. Mallock are, then, the Inquisition, the persecution in the Netherlands, the war of extermination against the Albigenses, but the mere fictions of bigoted and sectarian historians? We cannot obtain his answer to this. But it is sufficient to know that only so far as mankind can abjure science, philosophy, and reason, and positivism, and Protestantism, and surrender all its claims to liberty of thought to an infallible church, only so far will it find life worth living.

By this time the reader is strongly disposed to ask is Mr. Mallock really presenting us with a grave argument, or only, after the manner of the New Republic, with a satire on reasoning, the drift of which is not altogether clear. Our perplexities on the subject are rather intensified than lightened when we remember that when this work was appearing in parts in a review, Mr. Mallock, finding himself referred to as a Catholic, added a note to contradict the statement, and to describe himself as a philosophical doubter. It is not, then, for himself, but for the multitude that this refuge is indicated, and he begs you not to believe that he is converted by his own arguments. Really, this is bewildering. The position of the Catholic is easily understood. So is that of the scientific agnostic. But that of the man who, holding the views of the latter, passionately calls on the rest of the world to become converted to the faith of the former, is one which I for one, certainly do not think tends to make life any more worth living. As against such a position, I would quote the words of an author for whom Mr. Mallock entertains a very high degree of respect. He says :—" There is no example, so far as I know, to be found in all history of men having been stimulated or affected in any important way—none, at any rate, of their having been restrained or curbed—by a mere that was known to have no reality to correspond to it." These words express the belief of Mr. Mallock, and I extract them from Is Life Worth Living ?

Mr. Mallock's relation to the question does not require further discussion, but it might be that there was cogency in his argument, though he has not convinced himself by his own reasoning. It is worth looking at the matter on general grounds. The first objection that occurs to the reader is that this charge against science of destroying morality is not made for the first time. It has been made against every new doctrine that has been preached, and that has elevated the thoughts and broadened the views of mankind. The introduction of every new element into human thought, whether it came in the shape of the philosophy of Socrates or the religion of the Sermon on the Mount, has been opposed by just such arguments as these. These defenders of orthodoxy underrate the vitality and elasticity of morality. Morality is an essential element of human life, and if it can no longer subsist under the old conditions, it has always shown a great readiness to thrive under the new ones. Creeds come and go, in different parts of the world they differ as the soil or the climates differ, but morality is cosmopolitan, and lives as comfortably with one as with another.

But there is another answer that one wishes to make to such arguments as these, and it applies, also, to the demands that are being made on all sides for a resort to a state system of religious instruction. To believe these champions, we have only to establish religion in a position of supremacy, and the happiest consequences would arise to, human life and to society. They strangely forget that the state they desire is not a new one. It is a very old one. It has been tried for very many centuries. For hundreds of years the theological principle ruled human life, shaped or influenced mankind's governments, dictated his education, made of him all it was able to make. I do not now ask that kind of a life was that which it made or him. It is sufficient to bear in mind that the practical outcome of this supremacy of religious over civil life for many centuries is the decision in most civilised countries that it exist no longer. The more civilised the nation the more clearly does this resolve make itself apparent Civilisation and science and liberal thought won their way in the teeth of religious orthodoxy. Orthodoxy opposed astronomy, opposed geology, opposes now the doctrine of development, and has in politics always opposed the progress of liberalism. When we look round on human life as it exists on the present day, and estimate the elements by which it has been humanised, by which deeper, broader sympathy with sentient life has been developed, by which man has been lifted out of the narrow circle of self and made to understand his responsibilities to the race and to all living nature, by which his feelings and moral ideas have been refined, elevated chastened, and by which we have won the condition—imperfect as it is—which we have attained to-day as compared with that of five hundred years ago, how much of all those blessings is due to the growth of the scientific principle which is now denounced as hostile to and destructive of morality. And can we believe that an element which in its progress has brought such beneficial conditions in its train, and which has so powerfully tended to the elevation and development of morality, will as it attains greater influence and predominance extinguish morality altogether?

And now I willingly allow that the scientific theory of life is an utterly inadequate one. So is the artistic idea, so is the social idea, and so, I maintain, is the religious idea. Had the latter reigned supreme over all man's activity and achievements, some of the richest and noblest of these would have been relentlessly stifled. Humanity wants more than either of these ideals can supply. It wants them all, and all at once. Not all in full development in a single individual; this were too much to ask ; but all in the possession of the race. All in free activity, working independently and in harmony, and each contributing what it has to give to the life and progress of man. "Only mankind together," so says a great master spirit of modern times, " is the true man." In mankind, as a whole, there is ample room for all of these ideals and aspirations. It is in the perfect harmony and proportionate development of all of these phases of its nature that the perfection of humanity consists, not in the subordination of all to one, still less in the extermination of all but one, that that one may monopolise the whole of man's being and activity.

Australasian (Melbourne, Vic. : 1864 - 1946), Saturday 11 October 1879, page 6