Part 8 (1/2)

This was a victory of the press rather than the platform. There has been no successor to the original Liberty League, and no rival to the Sunday Society. The latter was organised in 1875 in England, where there has been constant agitation since 1853 for opening the British Museum, Crystal Palace, and other public inst.i.tutions to their owners on Sunday.

Dean Stanley was president of this society; and among its members have been Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall, Charles Reade, Lecky, Miss Cobbe, Mrs. Craik, and many prominent clergymen. The real issue was stated clearly at one of the public meetings by Tyndall as follows: ”We only ask a part of the Sunday for intellectual improvement.” The justice of this request has been so far admitted that on May 24, 1896, all the national museums and galleries in London were opened for the first time on Sunday. Among these educational inst.i.tutions from which the owners are no longer shut out are the National Gallery and the South Kensington, British, and Natural History Museums. Many libraries and museums in other parts of England were opened some years earlier.

VIII. Nowhere has the platform done so much to regenerate the pulpit as in Chicago. Religious history has been largely a record of strife. There was little brotherly feeling between clergymen of different sects in America before 1860; but they were often brought into co-operation by the great war. Even Unitarians were shocked to hear Emerson speak with reverence of Zoroaster in 1838; but he won only applause in 1869 when he spoke of the charm of finding ”ident.i.ties in all the religions of men.”

This was at a convention of the Free Religious a.s.sociation, which has pleaded from the first for ”fellows.h.i.+p in religion,” and often made this real upon its platform. The secretary, Mr. Potter, said in 1872, that some of his hearers would live to see ”a peace convention” ”of representatives from all the great religions of the globe.” Chicago was so peculiarly cosmopolitan that the local managers of the Columbian Exposition were glad to have products of the various intellectual activities of mankind exhibited freely. Ample provision was made for conventions in behalf of education and reform; but what was to be done for religion?

An orthodox citizen of Chicago, Mr. Charles Carroll Bonney, took counsel in 1891 with Rev. J. LI. Jones, a Unitarian, who has been preaching for twenty years the essential oneness of all religions. Rabbis, bishops, and doctors of divinity were consulted also; and thus was formed the committee which invited ”the leading representatives of the great historic religions of the world for the first time in history,” to meet in friendly conference and show what they ”hold and teach in common,”

as well as ”the important distinctive truths” claimed for each religion.

Thus the Columbian Exposition offered an opportunity ”to promote and deepen the spirit of human brotherhood among religious men of diverse faiths,” ”to inquire what light each religion has afforded or may afford to the other religions of the world,” and, finally, ”to bring the nations of the earth into a more friendly fellows.h.i.+p in the hope of securing a permanent international peace.” Thus was announced the ”Parliament of Religions.” All the members were to meet as equals; and there was to be neither controversy nor domination. The Archbishop of Canterbury and some leading Protestants in America protested against abandoning the exclusive claims made for Christianity; and similar objections were offered by the Sultan of Turkey. The Jews, Buddhists, and other believers in the ancient religions welcomed the invitation, as did the dignitaries of the Greek Church, and also the Protestants on the continent of Europe, and many members of every Christian sect in the United States. The Catholic archbishops of America appointed a delegate; and many Methodist and Episcopalian bishops agreed to attend the Parliament.

The sessions were held in the permanent building erected in the centre of Chicago to accommodate the intellectual portion of the Exposition.

Four thousand people a.s.sembled on Monday, September 11, 1893, to see a Roman Catholic cardinal mount the platform at 10 A.M., in company with the s.h.i.+nto high-priest, an archbishop of the Greek Church, a Hindoo monk, a Confucian mandarin, and a long array of Buddhists and Taoists from the far East. All these dignitaries wore gorgeous robes of various colours. With them were a Pa.r.s.ee girl, a Theosophist, a Moslem magistrate from India, a Catholic archbishop from New Zealand, a Russian and an African prince, a negro bishop, several Episcopalian prelates, Rabbis, and Jewesses, missionaries returned from many lands, doctors of divinity of various Protestant sects, and the lady managers of the great Fair. A prominent Presbyterian pastor took the chair, and cordial declarations of the brotherhood of religions were made by Catholic archbishops, the s.h.i.+nto high-priest, a Buddhist delegate, and the Confucian sent by the Emperor of China. Full hearing was given in subsequent sessions to advocates of the Jain religion, which is perhaps the oldest, as well as of the Pa.r.s.ee, Jewish, Moslem, Taoist, and Vedic faiths, besides a score of the leading Christian denominations. The Parliament lasted seventeen days; and the audiences were so large that most of the essays were repeated in overflow meetings. There were also some forty congresses held in smaller halls for speakers who could not find room on the great platforms. One of these meetings was held by Jewesses, of whom nineteen spoke. Some of them were also heard from the platform of the Parliament; as were many clergy women.

Mr. Underwood presided at the Congress of Evolutionists. There was also a convention of the Free Religionists, in connection with the Parliament which they had made possible; but ”The Freethought Federation” could get no chance to meet in the great building, or even to sell pamphlets. Mr.

Bonney had proposed a union of all religions against irreligion; and this would have been in harmony with the policy adopted by many States of the American Union. Their Sunday laws and similar statutes show a purpose of encouraging all the popular sects alike, with little regard for the rights of citizens outside of these favoured a.s.sociations. Most of the speakers in the Parliament, especially the Buddhists, were so zealous for the brotherhood of man, that they protested against any discrimination on account of theology. The great audiences gave most applause to the broadest declarations; and the few utterances of Protestant bigotry were plainly out of place. The general tendency of the Parliament was strongly in favour of recognising the equal rights of all mankind, without regard to belief or unbelief. All legislation inconsistent with this principle will be swept away, sooner or later, by that great wave of public opinion which broke forth during the Parliament of Religions. There the golden age of religion began, and war must give place to peace.

CHAPTER VII. THE EVOLUTIONISTS

WE have seen how the Transcendentalists tried to suppress vivisection, in spite of all it has done for the health and happiness of mankind. The sanguinary intolerance of Robespierre and other disciples of Rousseau was described earlier in this volume. And the notorious inability of Carlyle and Garrison to argue calmly with those who differed with them further ill.u.s.trates the tendency of confidence in one's own infallibility. Only he who knows that he may be wrong can admit consistently that those who reject his favourite beliefs may be right.

The Parliament of Religions showed that there has been a growing conviction of the equal rights of holders of all forms of belief and unbelief; this conviction has been promoted by recognition of two great facts: first, that knowledge is based upon experience, and, second, that no one's life is so complete that he has nothing to learn from other people. If they do not believe as he does, it may be merely because experience has taught them truth which he still needs to learn. Each one knows only in part; and therefore no one can afford to take it for granted that anyone else is completely in error.

I. This tolerant method of thought has gained greatly in popularity since Darwin proved its capacity to solve the problem of the origin of man. The possibility that all forms of life, even the highest, are results of a natural process of gradual development has often been suggested by poets and philosophers. The probability was much discussed by men of science early in the nineteenth century; but it was not until 1858 that sufficient evidence was presented to justify acceptance of evolution as anything better than merely a theory. Twenty-one years had then elapsed since Darwin began a long series of investigations. In the first place, he collected an irresistible number of cases of the influence of environment in causing variations in structure, and of the tendency of such variations to be inherited. Most men who accepted these propositions admitted their insufficiency to account for the multiplicity of species; but the explanation became complete when Darwin discovered that any plant or animal which is peculiarly fit for survival in the continual struggle for existence is likely to become largely represented in the next generation. A spontaneous variation which prolongs the life of its possessor may thus become not only more common but more firmly fixed in successive generations, until a new species is established.

To this tendency Darwin gave the name ”natural selection”; but this term literally implies a deliberate choice by some superhuman power. Herbert Spencer proposed the phrase, ”survival of the fittest”; but it must be remembered that the fitness is not necessarily that of greater moral worth.

There may be merely such a superiority in strength and cunning as enables savages to devour a missionary. Spencer says that ”the expression, 'survival of the fittest,'” merely means ”the leaving alive of those which are best able to utilise surrounding aids to life, and best able to combat or avoid surrounding dangers.” Weeds are fitter than flowers for natural growth; and Joan of Arc proved unfit to survive in the contest against wicked men.

This discovery of Darwin's made it his duty to avow a view which was so unpopular that he felt as if he were about ”confessing a murder.” He was making ”a big book” out of the facts he had collected, when a ma.n.u.script statement of conclusions like his own was sent him by Wallace, who had discovered independently the great fact of the survival of the fittest.

Darwin wished at first to resign all claim to originality; but his friends insisted on his taking a share of the honour of the discovery.

Accordingly an essay, which he had written in 1844, was read in company with that sent him by Wallace before the Linnaean Society, in London, on July 1, 1858. The importance of the new view was so well understood that the entire first edition, amounting to 1250 copies, of Darwin's _Origin of Species_, which book he wrote soon after, was sold on the day of publication, November 24, 1859. Other editions followed rapidly, with translations into many languages. No book of the century has been more revolutionary.

II. Theologians still insisted on the supernatural creation of each species of plant or animal, and especially of the human race, in its final form. The inference that man had been developed by natural processes out of some lower animal, was easily drawn from the _Origin of Species_, though not expressly stated therein; and there was great alarm among the clergy. An Anglican bishop, who was nicknamed ”Soapy Sam” on account of his subserviency to public opinion, declared in a leading quarterly that Darwin held views ”absolutely incompatible” with the Bible, and tending to ”banish G.o.d from nature.” Other prominent Episcopalians called the new book ”an attempt to dethrone G.o.d,” and propagate infidelity. Cardinal Manning denounced the ”brutal philosophy”

which taught that ”There is no G.o.d, and the ape is our Adam.” Both Catholics and Protestants started anti-Darwinian societies in London, and, in 1863, Huxley saw ”the whole artillery of the pulpit brought upon the doctrine of evolution and its supporters.” The example of England was followed promptly by France and Germany. America was distracted by civil war; and her men of science were so few and timid that the denunciations of Darwinism which were prompted by the theological and metaphysical prejudices of Aga.s.siz were generally accepted as final decisions. The position of the Unitarians and Transcendentalists may be judged from the fact that, during a period of nearly three years after the publication of the _Origin of Species_, nothing was said about Darwinism in the extremely liberal divinity school where I was then a student. Evolutionism had to look for advocates in America to Spiritualists like Denton or unbelievers like Underwood at that period.

Clerical opposition increased the general unwillingness of scientific men to s.n.a.t.c.h up new views. As early as 1863, however, Darwin received the support of the famous geologist, Lyell, as well as of a younger naturalist destined to achieve even more brilliant success. Huxley has distinguished himself in arguments against the scientific value of the Bible. Among his other exploits was a demonstration that a chain, in which no link is missing, connects the horse with a small, extinct quadruped possessed of comparatively few equine peculiarities. In this case, transformation of species is an undeniable fact. Other young naturalists in England, as well as in Germany, gradually became willing to push the new view to its last results; and Darwin was encouraged to publish, in 1871, his elaborate account of the origin of our race, ent.i.tled _The Descent of Man_. The wrath of the churches blazed forth once more; and Gladstone entered the arena. Englishmen ventured no longer to say much about the differences between Moses and Darwin; for the obvious retort would have been, ”So much the worse for Moses.” A German Lutheran, however, bade his congregation choose between Christ and Darwin; and the infallibility of Moses was a.s.serted so zealously by a Parisian Catholic as to win formal thanks from the Pope.

America was now wide awake; irreligious tendencies were a.s.signed to evolutionism by the president of Yale, as well as by some Princeton professors; and one of these latter warned believers in the development of man that they would be punished as infidels after death. The verdict of men of science has at last been p.r.o.nounced so plainly as to be accepted by thoroughly educated people in the Northern States; but the Southerners are more bigoted. Even so late as 1894, a professor of biology at the University of Texas was dismissed, in violation of contract, for teaching evolutionism. A similar offence had been found sufficient, ten years before, by the Presbyterians of South Carolina, for driving a devout member of their own sect from his chair in a theological seminary. That popular writer on geology, Winch.e.l.l, was requested in 1878 by a Methodist bishop to resign a professors.h.i.+p at Nashville, Tennessee, where he had expressed doubt of the descent of all men from Adam. The geologist refused to resign, and the chair was suppressed.

Voltaire's chief grievance was the intolerance of Christianity. Paine and Bradlaugh complained that there was much immorality in the Old Testament. The most damaging of recent attacks have been made in the name of science. Genesis and geology had been found irreconcilable before the appearance of Darwinism; but the new system widened the breach. The most serious offence to the theologian, however, was that he could not longer point without danger of contradiction to beneficial peculiarities in the structure of plants and animals, as marks of the divine hand. The old argument about design was met by a demonstration that such peculiarities were apt to arise spontaneously, and become permanent under the pressure of the struggle for existence. The theologian has had to retreat to the position that Darwinism has not accounted for the soul, the intellect, and especially the intuitions.

III. Whether Darwin succeeded or not in this part of his work is not so important as the fact that, several years before he announced his great discovery, an elaborate account of the process by which the powers of thought and feeling have been developed gradually out of the lowest forms of consciousness was given by Herbert Spencer. The first edition of his _Principles of Psychology_, published in 1855, carried the explanation so far as to show the real origin and value of the intuitions. Their importance had been almost ignored by thinkers who relied entirely on individual experience, and greatly overrated by the Transcendentalists; but neither set of philosophers could explain these mysterious ideas. The infallibility of conscience is not to be reconciled with such facts as that Paul thought it his duty to persecute the Christians, or that Garrison, Sumner, John Brown, and Stonewall Jackson were among the most conscientious men of the century. The ancient Greeks agreed in recognising justice, but not benevolence, among the cardinal virtues; precisely the opposite error was made by Kant and Miss Cobbe; and a tabular view of all the lists of fundamental intuitions which have been made out by noted metaphysicians might be mistaken for a relic from the Tower of Babel. Emerson's religious instincts were not so much impressed as Parker's with the personality of G.o.d and immortality; but the difference seems almost insignificant when we remember what ideas of theology arose spontaneously in New Zealand.

How widely the intuition of beauty varies may be judged from the inability of aesthetic Chinamen to admire the white teeth and rosy cheeks of an English belle. Intuition is plainly not an infallible oracle; but is it merely a misleading prejudice?

The puzzle was solved when Spencer showed that intuition is a result of the experience of the race. Courage, for instance, was so important for the survival of a primitive tribe in the struggle against its neighbours, that every man found his comfort and reputation depend mainly on his prowess. If he fought desperately he gained wealth, honour, and plenty of wives; but cowards were maltreated by other men and scorned even by the women. The bravest man left the largest number of offspring; and every boy was told so early and earnestly to be courageous as to develop a pugnacious instinct, which has come down to the present day in much greater strength than is needed for the ordinary demands of civilised life. We love war too much, because our ancestors were in danger of not loving it enough for their own safety. As courage ceased to be the one all-important excellence, industry, fidelity, and honesty were found so useful as to be encouraged with a care which has done much to mould conscience into its present shape. Other virtues were inculcated in the same way. The welfare of the family was found to depend largely on the fidelity of wife to husband; and the result was that chast.i.ty has held a much higher place in the feminine than in the masculine conscience. So our religious instincts owe much of their strength to the zeal with which our ancestors sought to avert the divine wrath. Thus we have ideas which were originally only vague inferences from primitive experience, but which have gradually gained such strength and definiteness, that they have much more power than if we had thought them out unaided by the past. Spencer himself says, ”There have been, and still are, developing in the race certain fundamental moral intuitions” which ”are the results of acc.u.mulated experiences of utility, gradually organised and inherited,” but ”have come to be quite independent of conscious experience.” They ”have no apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility”; and thus conscience has acquired its characteristic disinterestedness.

When we feel this inner prompting to a brave or honest action which must be done promptly or left undone, it is our duty to act without hesitation or regard to our own interest. We are serving our race in the way which its experience has taught. Suppose, however, that there is time enough for deliberation, and that we see a possibility of harm to our neighbours, our family, or even to our own highest welfare. In this case, we ought to compare the good and evil results carefully. We should also do well to consider what was the decision of the consciences of the best and wisest men under similar circ.u.mstances. If we neglect these precautions, we may be in danger of following not conscience but pa.s.sion. There is also a possibility that conscience may embody only such primitive ideas of duty as have since been found incorrect. This has often been the case with persecutors and monarchists.

Generosity is still too apt to take an impulsive and reckless form which perpetuates pauperism. Spencer has taught us that conscience is worthy not only of obedience, but of education.

Spencer's attempt to subst.i.tute a thoughtful for a thoughtless goodness of character has been much aided by his protest against such undiscriminating exhortations to self-sacrifice as are constantly heard from the pulpit. Good people, and especially good women, welcome the idea of giving up innocent pleasure and enduring needless pain. The glory of martyrdom blinds them to the fact that, as Spencer says in his _Psychology_, ”Pains are the correlatives of actions injurious to the organism, while pleasures are the correlatives of actions conducive to its welfare.” In other words, ”Pleasures are the incentives to life-supporting acts, and pains the deterrents from life-destroying acts.” Abstinence from pleasure may involve loss of health.