§ 2. Why Lead a Moral Life?
PRELIMINARY REMARKS
Let me say at once that if, after the elimination of all untruths from Christianity, we could build a belief in God and immortality on the residue, we should then have a far more powerful incentive to right conduct than anything that I am about to urge. I fully admit that to tell the ordinary mortal brought up in the Christian faith to do right for right’s sake will often be futile, inspiring though the sentiment may be for some few of us. I admit also the fact that morality always tends to the well-being of the individual and the race. It is the one and only sound argument for the working of any ethical purpose in nature, and, if we can feel that in leading the moral life we are helping to carry out some high purpose in which we are personally concerned, such a belief will certainly be of great ethical value. In the following argument, however, I hope to show that, even without a religious incentive, we have all-sufficient reasons for leading the moral life. At present our morality is bound up with a belief which is false, and which people are beginning to feel and know to be false. Therefore it is more than ever necessary that we should learn more of those reasons for morality which do not depend upon this or that belief.
THE NECESSITY FOR MORALITY
The man who does not realise that any such cogent reasons exist will argue: “I quite understand that the welfare of society depends upon the moral conduct of its members; but why should I care for the good of society? There are many immoral things which I can do without being found out—without any harm coming to me, directly or indirectly. Neither do I believe in the familiar adage, ‘Follow nature, and you cannot go wrong.’ Civilisation is continually wrestling with nature; we go against nature a thousand times a day. Why should I not follow nature just so far as I can get out of my nerves a maximum of pleasure at the expense of a minimum of pain? Tell me, then, you who do not believe in hell or heaven, you who think we can live under a system of morality which entirely dispenses with supernatural sanctions, why should I lead a moral life?”
To this question I would reply by another: “Have you no self-respect, the commonest and most universal incentive to right conduct, and one which necessarily includes respect for others? Even if your body had health, would your mind have peace without morality?” The essence of happiness is a contented mind. Bodily ailments and other misfortunes, not of your own making, may often mar your efforts to obtain this desirable frame of mind; but the nearest approach to it that is possible will be gained by leading the moral life. Righteousness contributes usually to success and invariably to happiness, because it is in harmony with the needs and laws of health and social life. Note, please, that I say “contributes.” We are not speaking now of circumstances beyond man’s control—the calamities and catastrophes, daily and hourly occurring, in accordance with nature’s inexorable laws, which would not be affected either way by man’s conduct. Also, as there are conditions under which the body may not be affected by immorality discreetly pursued, it will be better to confine our attention to that which is always affected—the mind. This will be recognised more clearly when we grasp the fact that the true origin of the guide to conduct lies in the instincts inherited from our animal ancestors.321
Man is a social animal, and in his relations with his fellow-men his moral instinct is largely a development of the social instinct. To secure the happiness of the individual as well as of the community, this instinct demands satisfaction. There is nothing which depresses the mind of man or beast more than a thwarted instinct. Life, as Aristotle has well said, is energy which each individual exercises on those subjects in which he most delights. Man’s proper and natural pleasures must consist in the operations by which his work is done and his task accomplished. But various circumstances will often prevent a man or woman from exercising his or her special aptitudes. Thus a natural instinct is disappointed, and complete happiness is out of the question. In the case of the social instinct, its satisfaction, so far as possible, is a supreme necessity, if there is to be any approach to contentment of mind. To attain it there is only one course open—the moral life. Should the individual choose the immoral life, and should he even succeed in following it without suffering social ostracism, he will certainly injure not only the happiness of the community, but also his own chances of such real and permanent happiness as this world might otherwise have afforded him.
USELESSNESS OF VAGUE THREATS
But, it may be objected, the average man will not be deterred from wrong-doing by the fear of vague consequences; he is only concerned to snatch the immediate pleasure (or what seems to him to be a pleasure), to satisfy a momentary lust, to secure the gratification of his senses on the “bird-in-the-hand” principle. That is all very true, of course, and incidentally it accounts for the failure of Christianity or any other belief that relies for its ethical effect on a system of vague threats and promises. But once get rid of the nebulosity, and all is changed—so long, that is, as the brain is healthy, and the supremacy of reason acknowledged. Emotions of hate, cupidity, sensuality, and the like, are always liable, as are all other emotions, to cloud the reason—to derange the brain temporarily; how much more so when there is no clear perception of disagreeable consequences? No man in his senses will act with entire disregard of consequences; it is only when they are not sufficiently clear that they are disregarded. It is absurd to suppose that the ordinary man is such an unthinking animal that he never studies ultimate consequences. The most selfish men and women—and the religious world is not without its fair share of them—think of the morrow. No one more so. It is the exceptional individual of the happy-go-lucky sort, with no enemy but himself, on whom it is difficult to impress the need of thinking ahead.
THE NEED FOR AN EARLY EDUCATION IN ETHICAL PRINCIPLES
My contention, then, is that a feeling of certainty regarding ultimate consequences is, above all others, the most powerful factor in influencing conduct. This certainty will be attained through, and only through, the medium of education. Knowing this, it is the duty of parents and teachers to be continually implanting in the minds of the young the objects of right-doing and the consequences of wrong-doing, wholly apart from questions of belief, not only because such teaching enshrines a great truth, but because this truth is liable to be lost sight of in the mists of theological dogmas and metaphysical theories. Children, it is true, adopt moral principles out of regard for social and parental authority, and not as the result of reasoned conviction, so that at first the scientific reasons for right conduct will doubtless be to some extent unappreciated. But, meanwhile, a habit of mind will be forming, and, as the new teaching will appeal to the common sense of the growing mind, and not to its credulity, a reasoned conviction will shortly follow. Conduct developed in this manner, free from theological speculations, is based on a firm foundation, which no later experiences in life will be able to upset. It is not nebulous. It is not susceptible of change through an alteration in religious views. It is true. The future generation, so brought up, will regard the consequences of immorality with complete certitude, and will do so without having to extricate themselves, as the present generation must, from objectionable habits of thought and conduct engendered by erroneous teaching.
THE OBJECT-LESSON FURNISHED BY THE JAPANESE
This is no abstract theory. We have a concrete and magnificent example before us in a nation whose character is formed entirely by non-theological instruction. I refer, of course, to the Japanese. There are no people more refined, courteous, gentle, amiable, and innately æsthetic than these Latins of the Orient; no people more brave, hardy, and self-controlled; none more cleanly and healthy in body and happy in mind. The Japanese army, by its perfection of transport, commissariat, and equipment, its surgical and sanitary work, its discipline and dash, its passionate patriotism and its humanity to the conquered, surpasses the armies of the Christian nations who send their missionaries to Japan. With regard to sexual morality, “it must be remembered,” as Professor Inazo Nitobe remarks, “that, whatever charges may be made against the Japanese people, the same charge can be, and is, actually made against every country, England not excluded, by travellers, since it is usually the worst, the lax, side of life to which a foreigner is first introduced.”322 Personally, I should say that the charge could be met by pointing to the acknowledged virtues and physical condition of the Japanese, and asking, “Can these be the result of vicious habits?”
There are certain significant circumstances in connection with the present moral condition in Japan which we must not omit to take into consideration. “Untruthfulness, dishonesty, and brutal crime,” says Lafcadio Hearn, speaking of Old Japan, “were rarer then than now, as official statistics show; the percentage of crime having been for some years steadily on the increase—which proves, among other things, that the struggle for existence has been intensified. The virtue of Japanese wives was generally in all ages above suspicion.”323 “If there has been a serious relapse among us,” says another writer, “it has been the result of the shock occasioned by our contact with the new civilisation, and fortunately not the consequence of the abandoning of a belief in future punishment by an offended God.”324 (What food for thought—falling off in morality attributed to over-population and contact with a Christian civilisation!) How do the Japanese hope to solve this new problem? By Christianity? Not at all. “Men are beginning to see,” continues the same writer, “that in the domain of morality the excellent precepts and propositions by which their fathers were guided under the old régime, but which have since fallen into disrepute, are fundamentally correct, and that, with slight adaptations in the light of the new civilisation, the old code of morality will serve their purpose under the altered circumstances of the new era.”
Only the charge of lack of commercial morality has any foundation in fact, and, with regard to this, here is the true explanation, given, not by a Japanese apologist, but by a Christian missionary: “The Japanese are often charged, and with good reason, with a lack of commercial morality. In days when the military virtues reigned supreme, the handling of trade was deemed an employment which no gentleman would take up; hence the commerce of the country is largely in the hands of men who do not represent her best traditions. Again, certain restrictions of mercy were always granted in the undertaking of a contract, whereas foreigners naturally regard a contract as binding unconditionally. But, in both respects, methods of trade are improving, and in the excellent commercial schools it is taught that ‘Honesty is the best policy.’ Among members of the humblest ranks of life the most striking instances of honesty will be met with; a jinrikisha man will run after you with the parcel you have forgotten, a shopkeeper will walk to your house to bring you a few cents he accidentally overcharged you.”325
As to their purely secular education and the severance of belief from conduct, Baron Suyematsu remarks that, “to the outsiders who have not grown up in an atmosphere of this kind, it may appear somewhat difficult to comprehend how boys and girls could be thoroughly imbued with moral sentiments without connecting them in some way with religion; but when these are taught with thoroughness, basing their systematic exposition on the duties of human beings towards one another and to the State, and on the noble tradition of their [the children’s] own community and the characteristic virtues of their forefathers in which they ought to rejoice, and when appeals are made to the honour and pride which one should feel and value, and, above all, to the conscience of individuals, one’s thoughts appear to become imbued with the lessons conveyed, and moral notions thus taught seem to become, per se, a kind of undefined, but nevertheless potent and serviceable, religion.”326 Again, Baron Suyematsu tells us elsewhere that “the educated classes consider that he who does what is good for good’s sake, and not for a fear of anything exterior, is the most courageous man, and to be courageous is the most important feature of Bushido. The probability is that, were a Japanese gentleman a devout adherent of any particular form of religion, he would rather conceal it than make a display of it.”327
The words of other than Japanese writers may not be without some interest. A Christian friend of mine, once an English professor in a Japanese college, wrote to me lately: “I must admit that the Japanese do seem to have attained without Christianity a higher status than most Christian nations. Indeed, they appear to attain personal and national excellence without religion at all.” Again, another Englishman, who has spent a lifetime and occupies a high position in Japan, remarks (in the course of a letter replying to my queries): “There is not the remotest chance of Christianity becoming the religion of the State. For the last two centuries and a half the educated class have adopted the Agnostic ethical system of Confucius, which, once understood and embraced, can never be dislodged by the Christian or any other variety of theologian.”
Yet Dr. Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon, closes his book, The Witness of the Influence of Christ, with the familiar assertion of the inseparability of religion and ethics. It is an assertion which, now more than ever, the Churches are reiterating. Why? Is it not because they find that many are beginning to doubt its truth? I fear reiteration will not make it any truer. Only facts will appeal to the man who looks below the surface, and these all tend the other way.
In the Hibbert Journal for October, 1905, there is an article contributed by the editor which deserves the earnest attention of all thoughtful men. It is entitled “Moral Supremacy of Christendom.” The following quotations from it will suffice to show the far-reaching importance of the questions it raises: “Christendom, as a whole, long accustomed to treat all pagan races as morally inferior to herself, now stands confronted by a non-Christian civilisation, of vast power and splendid promise, whose claim to moral equality, at least, cannot be disregarded, except by those who are morally blind.... The hold of Christianity upon the peoples of the Western world is rooted in the conviction that this is the religion which produces the best men. To a greater degree than is commonly recognised, each Church or sect of Christendom thus derives its confidence from the final court of ethical appeal. Whatever ground be alleged for a given doctrine, whether of Scripture, authority, or reason, the argument would instantly lose its force if it were to appear that the ethical result of denying the doctrine was superior to that which followed its acceptance.”
CRIMINALITY
To return to the arguments of rational morality. A man may say: “I don’t care a bit about this social instinct you tell me of; I don’t know that I possess it. It is no use your prating to me about my happiness of mind, and the necessity of my being in harmony with my surroundings. I prefer to gratify the instinct—the passion—that I do feel, regardless of the consequences to others. Of course, I shouldn’t like everybody else to do the same. That is the beauty of my scheme, and I am not going to miss my opportunity in the short space of existence you tell me is all that lies before me. If it pleases me to make a beast of myself, I shall do so.” All I can say is that a man who really means that this is what he would do, if not deterred by belief, is an unfortunate, with criminal tendencies—is, in fact, of unsound mind. His reasoning, too, is unsound. He must expect others to follow his example, as his argument is that the whole world would become immoral and lawless without belief. He would suffer, therefore, with the rest, and then would be the first, if sane, to co-operate with his fellow-sufferers in putting down lawlessness. The most savage tribe looks after its own interests according to its lights. A man who disregards the interest of all but himself becomes an Ishmael, an outlaw, a criminal; and, in the approaching Rationalistic age, he will be specially “taken care of,” and treated as any other insane person.
What are the causes of criminality? The Devil—man’s sinful nature—the Religionist will reply. What does Science reply? Dr. McEwen, of Glasgow, relates in the Lancet how a labourer, after falling on his head from a scaffolding, developed immoral tendencies. A tumour had formed on his brain. This was successfully removed by trepanning, and the immoral tendencies disappeared. Again, Dr. Lydston tells us that Flesch examined the brains of fifty criminals, and found imperfections in all. “Vice and crime,” says Dr. Lydston, “will one day be shown more definitely than ever to be a matter to be dealt with by medical science rather than by law.”328 When brain defects (whether inherited or caused by environment) affecting the moral faculties, are universally recognised as the real source of criminal tendencies; when disease of the brain is no longer regarded as a disease of the soul—then, and not till then, will criminality materially diminish. Science will triumphantly succeed where Religion has dismally failed.
The sooner, therefore, criminality is looked upon as a disease of the brain, and dealt with accordingly, the better it will be for the human race. A day will surely come when, as Mr. Wells predicts,329 “crime and bad lives will be the measure of a State’s failure.” The modern Theist now admits that it is God’s pleasure to employ law, and not the suspension of law, to work out His purposes. Why, then, whether we are Theists or Agnostics, should we not study and apply those laws for our moral improvement? Even now we are doing so. Rationalism has taught us that prevention is better than cure, and its great ally, Science, is helping both in the prevention and the cure. But the process will be considerably accelerated when our energies and our fortunes are spent altogether in this direction, instead of being frittered away in futile attempts to obtain the same results by “spiritual” methods.
OUR AIDS
Again the supernaturalist may say: “I grant you, for the sake of argument, that, setting aside the ills of ‘outrageous fortune,’ the secret of happiness lies in obeying the social instinct; but human nature is weak, and requires assistance. How do you propose to replace the aid derived from belief? I am not a Japanese. I am not an Oriental, with an extraordinary power of self-abnegation for the sake of an idea. I am a phlegmatic Englishman, and I am not at all sure that, even if I had had this Bushido instilled into me, my character would have been any stronger than it is now after a Christian education.” Here let me again repeat that I do not for one moment contend that, if Christianity were true as now interpreted by liberal theology, or, again, if Theism, with its assurance of a benevolent God, were true, that, as Neo-Christians or Theists, we should not find belief helpful in our efforts to lead a moral and therefore innocently happy life; but an agnosticism regarding all supernatural beliefs appears to be the only possible attitude for an enlightened world, and it is this situation that we have now to face. Is there anything, then, that can in any way take the place of the ethical assistance330 afforded by belief in God and an after-life?
The answer of Rationalism has already been indicated—it is to the force of environment (in its broadest sense) that we must look in our struggle with hereditary weaknesses. We cannot get rid of our inherited qualities; but we can modify them by changing our environment. If our early education, our early environment, has been neglected, we still have it in our power to remedy, or partly remedy, this unfortunate circumstance by our choice of present environment. The hard case is that of a man so situated that to change his evil environment seems well-nigh impossible. Therefore it is that the reduction of pernicious environments is of paramount importance to the race, and this truth the rationalistic spirit of the age is now forcing to the front. Also, if the individual takes no interest in posterity, and refuses to study the question of heredity, the day will come when the law of the land will see to it that the sins or diseases of the fathers shall not be visited upon the children “unto the third and fourth generation.” It is the quality, not the quantity, of our children that we have to keep to the forefront.331 The methods will be simple, if somewhat drastic; but the need to apply them will continue to lessen in proportion as the laws of heredity and environment are better kept in view. “Over the past, represented by our own heredity, we have no control. We cannot change the facts which have made the degenerate, the neurotic, the hysterical, and the criminal; but these are only names for human beings who, by a certain train of causation, have had certain impulses developed and others left fallow or suppressed. A different train of causation will awaken the capabilities to hold these impulses in due check. This future, now represented by the environment, is greatly within our power. Heredity being but the transmitted effects of past environments, we have to make a suitable environment for growing organisms if we wish to mould them to our ideals; and this is the meaning of education.”332
THE IMPORTANCE OF A KNOWLEDGE OF THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY
Finally, it is very necessary that the origin of morality (as indicated by Spencer in his Data of Ethics, by Darwin in his Descent of Man, by Prince Kropotkin in his Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, and by Dr. C. W. Saleeby in his Evolution: The Master-Key) should be better understood. Hitherto the question of morality has been dealt with on wrong lines,333 and this applies to the teaching not only of Christian but also of non-Christian religionists. It applies to the works of those speculative philosophers who have denied the empirical origin of man’s moral feeling, and who have had recourse to subtle and unconvincing theories in order to assign a supernatural origin to the moral senses. These thinkers, in attempting to explain the “distinction of man,” the “why of existence,” and the “aim of nature,” set themselves the hopeless task of explaining a process which entails untold suffering upon sentient beings, and in which the modern Rationalist is unable to discover any ethical principle whatsoever.
Too much prominence cannot be given to the later conclusions of modern thought so eloquently set forth by Prince Kropotkin. Much as I appreciate all Mr. S. Laing’s writings, and especially, perhaps, the chapter on “Practical Life” with which he closes his admirable work, Modern Science and Modern Thought, I cannot agree with him when he says (p. 113 of the R. P. A. Cheap Reprint): “For practical purposes it is comparatively unimportant how this [the moral] standard got there.” It is, in my humble opinion, very important, for the reasons that are clearly demonstrated by Prince Kropotkin and other modern ethicists. So soon as the Darwinian theory of the origin of morals is fully accepted, great strides in the development of an improved morality will surely follow. In fine, “science, far from destroying the foundations of ethics, as it is so often accused of doing, gives to evolutionist ethics a philosophical certitude where the transcendental thinker had only a vague intuition to rely upon.”334
OPINIONS OF ETHICISTS
Let me now quote some instructive utterances by Rationalists335:—
“The foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge. She [Science] knows that the safety of morality lies neither in the adoption of this or that philosophical speculation, nor this or that theological creed, but in a real and living belief in that fixed order of nature which sends social disorganisation upon the track of immorality, as surely as it sends physical disease after physical trespasses. And of that firm and lively faith it is her mission to be priestess.”336 “Theological apologists, who insist that morality will vanish if their dogmas are exploded, would do well to consider the fact that, in the matter of intellectual veracity, science is already a long way ahead of the Churches; and that, in this particular, it is exerting an educational influence on mankind of which the Churches have shown themselves utterly incapable.”337—Huxley.
“A moral life is that form of existence which is based upon obedience to natural and social law.... By long transmission and inheritance of mental and physical qualities a certain moral sense, so to say, has been developed, now called ‘conscience,’ which suggests acts often amounting to self-sacrifice, and condemns and represses others, pleasant and even profitable to the individual, because detrimental to the race. Altruism and Utilitarianism have come to be so insensibly blended that it is difficult to detect where the one ends and the other begins.... We have attained a natural and instinctive preference for what is good and noble in conduct, irrespective of self-interest, just as we have risen to an instinctive appreciation of fine music and delicate perfume.... The moral life is derived from the universal experience of mankind, approved by the wisdom of the wise, and justified by the fate of the foolish.”338 [“We needs must love the noblest when we see it.”]—The Author of “Supernatural Religion.”
“The Supernaturalists charge the system of the Rationalists with a lack of any effective motive that can constrain ordinary and average men to live a moral life. ‘It is all very well,’ they say, ‘for your Spinozas, your Stuart Mills, and such like, to affect independence of supernatural sanctions, because they are exceptional men, and have powers of discernment and will, by which they appropriate to themselves the moral doctrine and practice of Christianity, while they refuse to acknowledge their debt.’… I daresay I might, with some success, retort the argument of Supernaturalism. ‘It is all very well,’ I might say, ‘for your apostles and saints, for your Augustines and Luthers and Bunyans, to depend on supernatural sanctions, because they are exceptional men, and have powers of imagination which turn shadows into substance.’… There is such a thing as self-respect; no man likes to feel ashamed of himself. There are very few who are not strongly moved by a desire to see wife and children or parents happy. Such influences as these have far more to do with moulding human life and resisting selfish passion than any fear of hell or desire of heaven, or any philosophical principles. And such influences as these will survive even when open denial of supernatural sanction becomes as general as tacit disbelief is now.”339—J. Allanson Picton.
“For the mass of mankind two motives serve to direct the main course of ethics. These are Prudence and Sympathy.... Prudence is the first step in morality.... Sympathy did not wait to be called into life by religion. It was born among the brutes.... In the case of man the sympathy which issues first through the natural emotions of family and sex is spread over an ever-widening area by the power of imagination. A greater faculty of entering into the feelings of others goes along with a deeper sensitiveness to their pains and joys. Their experience becomes ours. Our self is blended with theirs. We pity their actual sufferings, and, calling up in imagination the suffering our conduct might entail, we shrink from committing a wrong.... Pity is the characteristic mark of the later ethics.”340—F. J. Gould.
“One can say without exaggeration that the most religious times and the most religious peoples, or those in which or among whom the power of the Church has been the strongest, have, generally speaking, been the most immoral. One has evidence enough in the horrors of the Middle Ages, and, if to-day it be otherwise, it is not to religion we owe the change, but to the spread of education and the progress of intelligence.... It is one of the fatalest and most widespread of errors that morality without religion is impossible. It has long been scientifically acknowledged that morality, as such, is far older than religion.... Morality comes only as the consequence and result of the inevitable necessities of social intercourse.”341—Ludwig Büchner.
“The religion of the lower orders of Welshmen may be said to be high in the scale, while their morality is decidedly low.... What savage nations have been raised out of their degradation by Christianity?… I look upon the doctrine of future rewards and punishments as radically bad, and as bad for savages as for civilised men.”—Alfred Russel Wallace.342
“Heaven and hell have no more relation to the question than any other punishments. The hell which a thoroughly bad man dreads can only be a hell of physical suffering; and, if he abstains from crime through fear of fire, he is not a good man, but a bad man in chains.”343—Leslie Stephen.