Part 6 (1/2)
And now to consider more closely the grounds of Mr. Laing's very cheerful view of a world in which, for all we know, there is no soul, no G.o.d, and certainly no faith. Since of the two former we know and can know nothing, we must build our happiness, our morality, our ”religion,”
on a basis whereof they form no part. He believes that morality will be able to hold its own distinct, not only from all belief in revelation, in a personal G.o.d, and in a spiritual soul, but in spite of a philosophy which by tracing the origin of moral judgments to mere physical laws of hereditary transmission of experienced utilities, robs them of all authority other than prudential, and convicts them of being illusory so far as they seem to be of higher than human origin.
Herein, as usual, he treads in the steps of Professor Huxley, ”the greatest living master of English prose” (though why his mastery of prose should add to his weight as a philosopher, we fail to see). ”Such ideas _evidently_ come from education, and are not the results either of inherited instinct [15] or of supernatural gift.... Given a being with man's brain, man's hands, and erect stature, _it is easy to see_ how ...
rules of conduct ... must have been formed and fixed by successive generations, according to the Darwinian laws.” [16]
He tells us: ”We may read the Athanasian Creed less, but we practise Christian charity more in the present than in any former age.” [17]
”Faith has diminished, charity increased.” [18]
Of moral principles, he says: ”Why do we say that ... they carry conviction with them and prove themselves?... Still, there they are, and being what they are ... it requires no train of reasoning or laboured reflection to make us _feel_ that 'right is right,' and that it is _better_ for ourselves and others to act on such precepts ... rather than to reverse these rules and obey the selfish promptings of animal nature.” [19] ”It is _clearly_ our highest wisdom to follow right, not from selfish calculation, ... but because 'right is right.' ... For practical purposes it is comparatively unimportant how this standard got there ... as an absolute imperative rule.” [20] As to the apprehended ill effect of agnosticism on morals, he says: ”The foundations of morals [21] are fortunately built on solid rock and not on s.h.i.+fting sand.
It may truly be said in a great many cases that, as individuals and nations become more sceptical, they become more moral.” [22] ”_If there is one thing more certain than another_ in the history of evolution, it is that morals have been evolved by the same laws as regulate the development of species.” [23]
These citations embody Mr. Laing's opinions on this point, and show very clearly his utter incapacity for elementary philosophic thought. Here, as elsewhere, as soon as he leaves the bare record of facts and embarks in any kind of speculation, he shows himself helpless; however, he tries to fortify his own courage and that of his readers, with ”it is clear,”
”it is evident,” ”it is certain.”
To say that ”right is right,” sounds very oracular; but it either means that ”right” is an ultimate spring of action, inexplicable on evolutionist principles, or that right is the will of the strongest, or an illusory inherited foreboding of pain, or a calculation of future pleasure and pain, or something which, in no sense, is a true account of what men _do_ mean by right. To say that moral principles ”carry conviction with them, and prove themselves” _(i.e._, are self-evident), unless, as we suspect, it is mere verbiage conveying nothing particular to Mr. Laing's brain, is to deny that right has reference to the consequences of action as bearing on human progress and evolution, which is to deny the very theory he wishes to uphold. No intuitionist could have spoken more strongly. Then we are a.s.sured that we ”feel” rightness, or that ”right is right”--apparently as a simple irresoluble quality of certain actions--and with same breath, that ”it is _better_ for ourselves and others to act on these rules,” where he jumps off to utilitarianism again; and then we are forbidden to ”obey the selfish impulses of our animal nature”--a strange prohibition for one who sees in us nothing but animal nature, who denies us any free power to withstand its impulses. Then it is ”clearly our highest wisdom to follow right”--an appeal to prudential motives--”not from any selfish calculations”--a repudiation of prudential motives--”but because 'right is right'”--an appeal to a blind unreasoning instinct, and a prohibition to question its authority. We are told that for practical purposes it matters little whence this absolute imperative rule originates. Was there ever a more unpractical and short-sighted a.s.sertion! Convince men that the dictates of conscience are those of fear or selfishness, that they are all mere animal instincts, that they are anything less than divine, and who will care for Mr. Laing's appeal to blind faith in the ”rightness of right”?
As long as Christian tradition lives on, as it will for years among the ma.s.ses, the effects of materialist ethics will not be felt; but as these new theories filter down from the few to the many, they will inevitably produce their logical consequences in practical matters. No one with open eyes can fail to see how the leaven is spreading already. Still the majority act and speak to a great extent under the influence of the old belief, which they have repudiated, in the freedom of man's will and the Divine origin of right. It is quite plain that Mr. Laing has either never had patience to think the matter out, or has found it beyond his compa.s.s. Having thus established morality on a foundation independent of religion and of everything else, making ”right” rest on ”right,” he a.s.sumes the prophetic robe, and on the strength of his seventy years of experience and philosophy poses as a _Cato Major_ for the edification of the semi-scientific millions of young persons to whom he addresses his volumes. We have a whole chapter on Practical Life, [24] on self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, full of portentous plat.i.tudes and ancient saws; St. Paul's doctrine of charity, and all that is best in the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, is liberated from its degrading a.s.sociation with the belief in a G.o.d who rewards and punishes.[25] We are ”to act strenuously in that direction which, after _conscientious_ inquiry, seems the best, ... and trust to what religious men call Providence, and scientific men Evolution, for the result,” and all this simply on the bold a.s.sertion of this sage whose sole aim is ”to leave the world a little better rather than a little worse for my individual unit of existence.” [26]
And here we may inquire parenthetically as to the motive which urges Mr.
Laing to throw himself into the labours of the apostolate and to become such an active propagandist of agnosticism. We are told[27] that the enlightened should be ”liberal and tolerant towards traditional opinions and traditional practices, and trust with cheerful faith to evolution to bring about _gradually_ changes of form,” &c.; that the influence of the clergy is ”on the whole exerted for good,” and it is frankly acknowledged that Christianity has been a potent factor in the evolution of modern civilization. It has, however, nearly run its course, and the old order must give place to the new, _i.e._, to agnosticism. But even allowing, what we dare say Mr. Laing would not ask, that the speculative side of the new religion is fully defined and worked out, and ready to displace the old dogmatic creeds, yet its practical aspect is so vague that he writes: ”I think the time is come when the intellectual victory of agnosticism is so far a.s.sured, that it behoves thinking men to _begin to consider_ what practical results are likely to follow from it.” [28]
In the face of this confession we find Mr. Laing industriously addressing himself to ”those who lack time and opportunity for studying,” [29] to the ”minds of my younger readers, and of the working cla.s.ses who are striving after culture,” [30] ”to what may be called the semi-scientific readers, ... who have already acquired some elementary ideas about science,” ”to the millions;” [31] and endeavouring by all means in his power to destroy the last vestige of their faith in that religion which alone provides for them a definite code of morality strengthened by apparent sanctions of the highest order, and venerable at least by its antiquity and universality. [32] And while he is thus busily pulling down the old scaffolding, he is calmly _beginning_ to consider the practical results. This is his method of ”leaving the world a little better than he found it.” He professes to understand and appreciate ”In Memoriam.” Has he ever reflected on the lines: ”O thou that after toil and storm,” [33] when the practical conclusion is--
Leave thou thy sister, when she prays, Her early Heaven, her happy views; Nor thou with shadowed hint infuse A life that leads melodious days.
Her faith through form is pure as thine, Her hands are quicker unto good; O sacred be the flesh and blood, To which she links a truth divine.
On his own principles he is convicted of being a lover of mischief. No, one is sorely tempted to think that these men are well aware that the moral sense which sound philosophy and Christian faith have developed, is still strong in the minds and deeper conscience of the English-speaking races, and that were they to present materialism in all its loathsome nudity to the public gaze, they would be hissed off the stage. And so they dress it up in the clothes of the old religion just for the present, with many a quiet wink between themselves at the expense of the ”semi-scientific” reader.
We have already adverted to Mr. Laing's utter incapacity for anything like philosophy, except so far as that term can be applied to a power of raking together, selecting, and piling up into ”a popular shape” the sc.r.a.ps of information which favour the view whose correctness he was convinced of ere he began. A few further remarks may justify this somewhat severe estimate. After stating that in the solution of life and soul problems, science stops short at germs and nucleated cells, he proceeds with the usual tirade against metaphysics: ”Take Descartes'
fundamental axiom: _Cogito ergo sum_.... Is it really an axiom?... If the fact that I am conscious of thinking proves the fact that I exist, is the converse true that whatever does not think does not exist?...
Does a child only begin to exist when it begins to think? If _Cogito ergo sum_ is an inst.i.tution to which we can trust, why is not _Non cogito ergo non sum?_” [34] Here is a man posing before the gaping millions as a philosopher and a severe logician, who thinks that the proposition, ”every cow is a quadruped,” is disproved by the evident falsehood of, ”what is not a cow is not a quadruped,” which he calls ”the converse.” He sums up magnificently by saying: ”These are questions to which no metaphysical system that I have ever seen, can return the semblance of an answer;” giving the impression of a life devoted to a deep and exhaustive study of all schools of philosophy. Mr. Laing here surely is addressing his ”younger readers.”
He tells us elsewhere [35] that, ”when a.n.a.lyzed by science, spiritualism leads straight to materialism;” free-will ”can be annihilated by the simple mechanical expedient of looking at a black wafer stuck on a white wall;” that if ”Smith falls into a trance and believes himself to be Jones, he really is Jones, and Smith has become a stranger to him while the trance lasts.... I often ask myself the question, If he died during one of these trances, which would he be, Smith or Jones? and I confess it takes some one wiser than I am to answer it.” Without pretending to be wiser than Mr. Laing, we hope it will not be too presumptuous for us to suggest that if Smith dies in a trance _believing_ himself to be Jones, he is under a delusion, and that he really is Smith. Else it would be very awkward for poor Jones, who in nowise believes himself to be Smith. Mr. Laing would have to break it gently to Jones, that, ”in fact, my dear sir, Smith borrowed your personality, and unfortunately died before returning it; and as to whether you are yourself or Smith, as to whether you are alive or dead, 'I confess it takes some one wiser than I am to decide.'” That a man's own name, own surroundings, own antecedents, are all objects of his thought, and distinguished from the _self, ego,_ or _subject_ which contemplates them, has never suggested itself to Mr. Laing. That though Smith may mistake every one of these, yet the term ”I” necessarily and invariably means the same for him, the one central, constant unity to which every _non-ego_ is opposed. And this from a man who elsewhere claims an easy familiarity with Kant.
”Again what can be said of love and hate if under given circ.u.mstances they can be transformed into one another by a magnet?” What indeed? And how is it that the gold-fish make no difference in the weight of the globe of water?
His conclusion to these inquiries is: ”When Shakespeare said, 'We are such stuff as dreams are made of,' he enumerates what has become a scientific fact. The 'stuff' is in all cases the same--vibratory motions of nerve particles.” [36] Thus knowledge, self-consciousness, free-choice, is as much a function of matter as fermentation, or crystallisation--a mode of motion, not dissimilar from heat, perhaps transformable therewith.
Recapitulating this farrago of nonsense on p. 188, he adds a new difficulty which ought to make him pause in his wild career. ”What is the value of the evidence of the senses if a suggestion can make us see the hat, but not the man who wears it; or dance half the night with an imaginary partner? Am I 'I myself, I,' or am I a barrel-organ playing 'G.o.d save the Queen,' if the stops are set in the normal fas.h.i.+on, but the 'Ma.r.s.eillaise' if some cunning hand has altered them without my knowledge? These are questions which I cannot answer.” He cannot answer a question on which the value of his whole system of physical philosophy depends; uncertain about his own ident.i.ty, about the evidence of his senses, he would make the latter the sole rule and measure of cert.i.tude, and deny to man any higher faculty by which alone he can justify his trust in his cognitive faculties. Another instance of his absolute ignorance of common philosophic terminology is when he a.s.serts that according to theology we know the dogmas of religion by ”intuition.” [37]
This doctrine rests on Cardinal Newman's celebrated theory of the ”Illative Sense.” Surely a moment's reflection on the meaning of words, not to speak of a slight acquaintance with the book referred to, would have saved him from confounding two notions so sharply distinguished as ”intuition” and ”inference.” Again, ”There can be no doubt there are men often of great piety and excellence who have, or fancy they have, a sort of sixth sense, or, as Cardinal Newman calls it, an 'illative sense,' by which they see by intuition ... things unprovable or disprovable by ordinary reason.” [38] Can a man who makes such reckless travesties of a view which he manifestly has never studied, be credited with intellectual honesty?
Doubtless, the semi-scientific millions will be much impressed by the wideness of Mr. Laing's reading and his profound grasp of all that he has read, when they are told casually that ”s.p.a.ce and time are, ... to use the phraseology of Kant, 'imperative categories;'” [39] but perhaps to other readers it may convey nothing more than that he has heard a dim something somewhere about Kant, about the categories, about s.p.a.ce and time being schemata of sense, and about the _categorical imperative._ It is only one instance of the unscrupulous recklessness which shows itself everywhere. Akin to this is his absolute misapprehension of the Christian religion which he labours to refute. He never for a moment questions his perfect understanding of it, and of all it has got to say for itself. Brought up apparently among Protestants, who hold to a verbal inspiration [40] and literal interpretation of the Scriptures, who have no traditional or authoritative interpretation of it, he concludes at once that his own crude, boyish conception of Christianity is the genuine one, and that every deviation therefrom is a ”climbing down,” or a minimizing. He has no suspicion that the wider views of interpretation are as old as Christianity itself, and have always co-existed with the narrower.
He regards the Christian idea of G.o.d as essentially anthropomorphic.
Indeed, whether in good faith or for the sake of effect, he brings forward the old difficulties which have been answered _ad nauseam_ with an air of freshness, as though unearthed for the first time, and therefore as setting religion in new and unheard-of straits. So, at all events, it will seem to the millions of his young readers and to the working cla.s.ses.
Let us follow him in some of his destructive criticism, or rather denunciations, in order to observe his mode of procedure. ”The discoveries of science ... make it impossible for _sincere_ men to retain the faith,” &c., [41] therefore all who differ from Mr. Laing are insincere. ”It is _absolutely certain_ that portions of the Bible are not true; and those, important portions.” [42] This is based on two premisses which are therefore absolutely certain, (i) Mr. Laing's conclusions about the antiquity of man--of which more anon; (43) his baldly literal interpretation of the Bible as delivered to him in his early ”infancy. On p. 253, we have the ancient difficulty from the New Testament prophecy of the proximate end of the world, without the faintest indication that it was felt 1800 years ago, and has been dealt with over and over again. Papias [44] is lionized [45] in order to upset the antiquity of the four Gospels--which upsetting, however, depends on a dogmatic interpretation of an ambiguous phrase, and the absence of positive testimony. Here again there is no evidence that Mr. Laing has read any elementary text-book on the authenticity of the Gospels. He is ”perfectly clear” as to the fourth Gospel being a forgery; again for reasons which he alone has discovered. [46] Paul is the first inventor of Christian dogma, without any doubt or hesitation. But the undoubted results of modern science ... shatter to pieces the whole fabric. _It is as certain as that_ 2 + 2 = 4 that the world was not created in the manner described in Genesis.”
As regards harmonistic difficulties of the Old and New Testaments, he a.s.sumes the same confident tone of bold a.s.sertion without feeling any obligation to notice the solutions that have been suggested. It makes for his purpose to represent the orthodox as suddenly struck dumb and confounded by these amazing discoveries of his. He sees discrepancies everywhere in the Gospel narrative, e.g.: [47]