💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › leo-tolstoy-right-and-wrong.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 12:16:11. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Right and Wrong Author: Leo Tolstoy Date: 1898 Language: en Topics: ethics, philosophy, morality Source: Original text from http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=10693, 2021.
When I was about thirty-seven years old I acted in a manner of which I
had always disapproved. I had known of other people acting in the same
way, and had always felt that they were doing wrong. It was in sex
matters that I sinned, and the case was the more startling because I had
been guilty of no outwardly wrong action of the kind since I was quite a
young man, and for about a year before the lapse I had been stirred by a
strong desire to change my whole way of life and be of more use in the
world than heretofore. And the question arose — Was I to confess my
conduct to those whose lives were linked to mine and whom I could not
wound without lacerating myself? or had I better conceal it?
If I told them the truth it would hurt them and I should fall in their
esteem, while, on the other hand, by not telling them I should be
entering on a course of concealment which would easily lead to
untruthfulness and ultimately, perhaps, to systematic deception.
I had from childhood kept a clear perception that truth is better than
falsehood, and the feelings which had grown up on this opinion caused me
now to be frank; and as soon as I had confessed, and saw how the
knowledge of my conduct acted on those who were nearest to me, it became
obvious that I must not repeat my misconduct. All the excuses and
justifications which seemed so plausible while I was looking at the
matter from my own point of view — swayed by a strong personal bias, —
vanished when I had to face the case as it really stood, and saw that it
affected not one or two people only, but necessarily reacted upon all
with whom they were in touch.
I had in fact run up against the root question of human conduct : Is
there a right and a wrong? I had assumed that it is right to tell the
truth and wrong to tell lies, and this had decided for me another
important question of conduct. Evidently each part of our conduct is
linked on to all the rest. Morality (i.e. right conduct) relates to all
we do, and knits our life into one organic whole. We cannot be moral in
one thing and irresponsible in another. If right and wrong can be
predicated of human actions at all, they relate to all our actions — and
we cannot separate out some one section of life (our family, our
business life, our sexual relations, our friendships and enmities, our
amusements, or our studies) and say that in this department we wish to
be free from the rule of right and wrong.
I was resident at that time in Russia where such problems are discussed
with great frankness, and with these thoughts working in my mind it came
natural to me to speak of them to some personal friends. I found that
more than one acquaintance had gone through experiences similar to my
own, but not all of them had felt it necessary or desirable to confess
their actions. This one, and that one, had chosen the path of
concealment, the ultimate consequences of which were not yet apparent.
For convenience sake let me speak as though the considerations which
were presented to me, and claimed my attention, all came from one and
the same friend.
I pleaded that surely truth is better than falsehood. This my friend
would not admit to be necessarily so ; he said he had become convinced
that our ideas of morality are conventional. He recognised an
evolutionary process going on in the ^vorld. Some power of w^hich we
know nothing, for reasons we cannot discern, ages ago evolved enormous
antediluvian animals with tremendous teeth and claws adapted to their
environment, and enabling them to fight — which was what they were
destined for. When the power (Nature) had done with them, it wiped them
all out and continued its process of evolving fresh types, which it
successively used up and wiped out. Among the rest came man. To man
nature has not given such terrible teeth and claws, but it has furnished
him with faculties which adapt him also to his environment. It has given
him a conscience and a capacity to feel sympathy and love. These, he
said, are evidently mere adaptations of the primitive tribal instincts
of the savage, which, in turn, w^ere adaptations of the sexual and
maternal instincts of the animals. Love is a lubricant designed to
enable the machinery of human society to work without too much friction.
It is merely one more adaptation of creatures to their environment, just
as were the teeth and claws of the antediluvian monsters. “What we call
“promptings of conscience” are merely inherited habits, the results of
the fear of punishment transmitted through the nervous system.
My friend stated the matter somewhat in this way: —
“We do not understand this Nature of which we are a part, nor do we know
its purpose. An earthquake swallows up a town; the bird tears the worm
to pieces; the beautiful rainbow represents both the fruitful and
life-giving rain, and the destructive and life — destroying flood which
sweeps the helpless child from its despairing mother.
“ Deify this Nature if you like ; talk, as the sentimentalists do, of
the perfect harmony which (they say) exists, or will some day exist,
between what is going on in Nature, and what we feel would satisfy us.
Or, like Moses, say that an all-good and all-powerful God created this
world as we see it and pronounced it to be quite satisfactory; or, like
the pessimists, curse Nature for her heartless cruelty, for being ‘red
in tooth and claw.’ But for those of us who care to be at aU truthful in
the matter, the plain fact remains that we simply do not know what
Nature is aiming at; many of her processes and operations are terrible,
shocking and revolting to what we are accustomed to call ‘our best
feelings,’ and we do not even know whether Nature is aiming at anything
at all.
“We may dislike death, decay, destruction, and misery — but they exist
and have to be reckoned with. All the efforts to believe, as the Greeks
did, in a beautiful harmony of Nature, like the Jewish attempts to
believe in a good God who overrules all things for the best, are merely
attempts to lull ourselves into a comfortable state of mind. They are
not rational beUefs but Epicurean consolations — a kind of intellectual
opium-eating.
“ We are infinitesimally small parts of an infinitely large whole which
we do not understand. If we knew the scheme of creation w^e might be
able to see how we fit into it, and whether our life has or has not any
meaning. But not understanding the plan and purpose of the whole
machine, it is hopeless to ask what this or that particular little wheel
is for. We are simply groping in the dark, and when we speak of right
and wrong we are only deceiving ourselves. Not knowing what Nature has
designed us for, we cannot know whether it is raore moral to oppose her
in her designs and be wiped out, or to assist her in her plans and
equally be wiped out.
“ For science tells us (only men dislike what is unpleasant, and
therefore this is often slurred over or kept in the background) that not
only is death inevitable, both for ourselves and our friends, but that
the human race itself will come to an end, and the earth will perish,
and the whole solar system will pass away. No doctor ever yet saved any
life; the utmost he could by any possibility do was to postpone the
inevitable death. All the progress people talk about is progress towards
the destruction of the world and the termination of the race.
“Reason, conscience, and love, therefore, are expedients, adaptations
designed by nature for her own unknown purposes, but, more than this,
they are merely temporary expedients. There is nothing permanent about
them. What is called the ‘soul’ or the ‘spirit’ is to the body what the
flame is to a candle — a result of its gradual combustion. The ‘spirit’
can no more continue to exist after the body has decomposed than the
flame can go on burning after the candle has been consumed.
“ Some people are fond of advising you to develop powers, and form
habits which tend towards life — and to shun others which tend towards
death. But this is a fallacious manner of expressing oneself, for none
of our faculties or habits tend anywhere but towards ultimate death. The
difference is only that some paths lead to the goal more quickly than
others.
“ So far from any clear rule of right or morality being discernible in
the operations of Nature, nothing of the kind exists even in the mind of
man. Human morality is merely conventional. It differs not only from the
morality of the bees and the ants and other animals, but even among men
themselves what is right in one age is wrong in another, and what is
moral in one country is immoral in another. Under the Mosaic law it was
right to slaughter one’s national enemies and to have a hundred wives.
In modern England most people are shocked if you have even half-a-dozen
wives, and though many people still admire a Cecil Rhodes for ‘painting
the map of Africa red’ with human blood, some people begin to disapprove
of killing men, and of regarding the lives of foreigners as being less
sacred than the lives of one’s own countrymen.”
My friend instanced to me a case in which his own conscience had led him
wrong. He had been brought up to think it wrong to read novels on
Sunday. When he was a young man he wanted to read a novel on Sunday, and
did so, but his conscience made him perfectly wretched about it. This,
however, only lasted till he had become accustomed to reading novels on
Sunday. Then he perceived that he “had been hampered by a ridiculous
Jewish superstition, the power of which was called conscience.”
“There is a continual shifting and surging of opinions backwards and
forwards, now to the left hand, and now to the right. Under such
circumstances, only the fanatic will try to dogmatise, and only the
ascetic will forgo the few pleasures, not harmful to our physical life,
which are open to us.”
Again my friend argued: “Even admitting that we could discern right from
wrong, could we alter our conduct? Could we be any better or any worse
than we are?
“ In nature there is no effect without an antecedent cause. Whatever is
now going on in the world is the effect of what was happening millions
of years ago. We have been shaped to what we are by the combined
influence of soil and climate acting on our food and our surroundings,
and on those of our ancestors for thousands of generations. There is no
spot on your body, no atom in your brain, no thought that rises within
you, but is an inevitable result of antecedent physical causes; that
cause may be what you had for dinner yesterday (causing indigestion and
irritability), but even the way you ate your yesterday’s dinner was
influenced by what your remote ancestors fed on millions of years ago,
when the foundations were laid of the character you have inherited.
“ Is it not sheer self-conceit and self-deception to imagine that we can
counteract the accumulated results of all these antecedent causes, which
have been operating steadily through the ages. Can we work miracles? Can
we bid the sun stand stiU ? or (what is equally impossible) say to the
inevitable result which must follow from what has gone before — ‘Thou
shalt not be!’ We fancy we are free to act only because we do not see
the threads by which we are moved — in reality we are mere automata.”
It is always painful to disagree on the fundamental problems of life and
conduct with those whom you respect and care for. It was so in this
case, and, moreover, a dread haunted me that perhaps the power which had
presented these problems to me, and given me a desire to solve them, and
a perception that their solution was necessary, had yet left me
incapable of solving them, — as a fish is sometimes left on dry land, a
few feet from the river, struggling and gasping for the water it is
unable to reach.
This fear disappeared when I came to face the difficulties seriously.
There was much that I could not solve or fathom, but what man needs to
know in order to steer his course aright can be found by those who
really seek it. The difficulty (it now seems to me) lies not so much in
perceiving what is right, as in doing it. But thought is enormously
important, because it is to man what the rudder is to a ship : it gives
the direction. The tide may carry the ship to one side, the wind may
even drive it back, but that does not mean that it is unimportant how
the ship is steered. Unless it be steered rightly, what hope is there of
reaching harbour? So it is with man. His actions result from his
feelings, but his feelings grow up rooted on his sense of the meaning of
life.
Thoughts such as those expressed by my friend do not often trouble
plain, honest folk, but they colour and influence the minds of many of
the sophisticated and over — instructed people of our day; and what
makes them perplexing is that they contain a certain proportion of
truth, and are often mixed up with theories and conclusions which are
vahd.
Pure gold is easily distinguishable from amalgam, but it is difficult to
separate the one from the other in a coin. So with a man’s view of life.
What is true and what is false may be easily distinguished if they are
once separated: perplexity arises from having them intermixed.
What I first felt about my friend’s arguments was that it would not do
for me to yield to them, for if I admitted them I should never know what
to like and what to dislike, what to do and what not to do. But no
sooner did this thought form itself than I felt ashamed of it. I felt
(not with my reason only but with my whole being) that : “ Truth is
great and shall prevail “ : that to truth we must be ready to say,
“Though thou shouldst elay me, yet will I love thee.” A passage from
Huxley recurred to my memory: “Granting that a religious creed would be
beneficial, my next step is to ask for a proof of the dogma. If this is
forthcoming it is my conviction that no drowning sailor ever clutched a
hen-coop more tenaciously than mankind will hold by such dogma, whatever
it may be. But if not, then I verily believe that the human race wiU go
its own evil way; and my only consolation lies in the reflection that
however bad our posterity may become, so long as they hold by the plain
rule of not pretending to beheve what they see no reason to believe,
because it may be to their advantage so to pretend, they will not have
reached the lowest depths of immorality.”
Yes, surely! No pleasure, no expediency, no profit, no utility, will
ever justify us in believing in the existence of right and wrong if it
be true indeed that modern thought (Science) has demonstrated that we
are but parts of an inscrutable whole, that we and our race must perish
utterly, body and spirit, — that all morality is merely conventional,
and that even our conscience and our reason are but inevitable results
of integrations and disintegrations of matter over which we have no
control.
The view of life which my friend represented flows logically enough, I
think, from the materialistic or synthetic philosophy which is to the
fore in our day.
We are surrounded by something which we call the material universe. The
perceptions which reach us through our five senses reveal to us an order
of Nature. What we perceive seems to obey fixed and definite laws which
we can investigate. Our own bodies, and even our brains, belong to this
external universe which we know through our senses, and the evolutionary
and synthetic philosophy deals with all this. It goes further and
undertakes to tell us all that can be known of the spirit in man. The
mainspring of life, the prime mover, it speaks of as the “unknown and
the unknowable,” and it invites us to dismiss it from our thoughts in
order to concentrate our attention on the knowable.
This philosophy professes to cover the whole ground of human knowledge,
and as long as I admitted that claim, and looked to it for guidance in
my own conduct, it baffled and perplexed me. My friend, on the basis of
this philosophy, demonstrated the absurdity of believing in an absolute
right and wrong, and Herbert Spencer, in the fourth great volume (”
Justice “) of the fifth great section (” Principles of Ethics “) of his
great scheme of Synthetic Philosophy, on this same basis seeks to
demonstrate that the existing system of landholding (by which the people
who till the land of England do not possess it, but live under the
control of those who do) is one which practically accords with the
principles of justice!
I could not help suspecting that when it deals with such questions the
synthetic philosophy oversteps the limits within which it is competent.
I next came to perceive that what the synthetic philosophy neglects is
the “ subjective “ view of life. This view regards “the spirit in man”
actuating his reason and his conscience, as being the most real of all
things. This spirit is the divine in man — a something durable,
permanent, and reliable. By means of it we are constituted judges —
having knowledge of good and evil. It is the “true life” the “hfe
eternal” (in Christ’s language) for the sake of which the physical life
may well be sacrificed. Compared to this, all that reaches us through
our five senses is external, foreign to us, unsatisfactory, changeable,
temporary. This subjective view has been held, and dwelt on, by all the
great religious teachers who have ever moved the hearts of men : by
Socrates, Lao-Tsze, Buddha, Christ, Paul, Wesley, Woolman, Tolstoy, and
by a host of others whose influence spreads from age to age and from
continent to continent.
Now, the question before us is this : “ Is there any real Right —
absolute, firm, immovable, durable; belonging to a real, eternal order
of things ? “ And this raises the further questions : Is there something
in each of us which is linked indissolubly to that real eternal order ?
Are we, therefore, brethren? Moved by the same spirit? Owing allegiance
to the same truth and the same duty?
Will the synthetic philosophy suffice to enable us to answer these
questions ? It professes to answer all the questions to which mankind
possesses any answer. It regards primarily what is external — what can
be perceived and investigated through the five senses. It calls these
things realities and facts, and it holds out hopes that by means of
these it will explain also your innermost perceptions ; and it warns you
that every other method is mere self-deception.
And, indeed, to many of us, at first, this outer world does seem more
solid and real than the inner world of our consciousness. We are, at
first, inclined to disbelieve the teachers who tell us that the external
is deceptive, unreliable, and temporary, and that the inner life alone
is reliable and permanent. We are ready to call them “Mystics,” and to
put their teaching aside as unsatisfactory. Only after much thought do
we begin to perceive to what an extent the external world deceives,
baffles, and perplexes us. The mere number of facts relating to this
external world is literally infinite, and we can know only a very few of
them. Even a Newton may well admit that he is like a little child
picking up pebbles by the shore of the ocean of the unknown. Even in the
things we thought we knew, how often we are deceived! To borrow an
example: you enter a room, a looking-glass fills one end of it and you
advance to speak to a lady you see there — till you touch the glass, and
your hand tells you that your eye has deceived you. When this happens we
call it an “optical illusion.” But there are cases in which we find our
difPerent senses combining to deceive us, and we then call it a “ fact.”
And as most men have senses similar to ours, when one man’s senses
deceive him he will easily find plenty of other people to confirm him in
his error, and when the people who have made a special study of the
matter are deceived, it becomes a “scientific fact.” For thousands of
years the earth was flat, and the sun rose in the east and sank in the
west each day. And how sure people usually are of their “scientific
facts,” — until a fresh generation sweeps them into the rubbish heap.
Have we not (particularly those of us who had not themselves
investigated it) felt sure that the “Law of Gravity” was some- thing
quite certainly and absolutely true? — and does not Edward Carpenter now
show us that it is “ a projection into a monstrous universality and
abstraction, of partially understood phenomena in a particular region of
observation?”[1] We are beginning to understand that the “ laws of
science “ are not absolutely, but at best only relatively true. Again,
how sure most people are that the trees are green. Someone with an eye
rather differently shaped sees red trees where I see green ones. But
being in a majority I say that he has a defect of the eye called
Daltonism. Really, so far as science has guessed at present, the tree is
neither green nor red. Certain waves of light pass from it to our eyes.
These waves impinge on the retina, the nerves pass on a sensation to our
brain, and we say we see green trees. If the other shape of eye were
more common, trees would be red.
Under the materialistic philosophy “ matter and force” are the ultimate.
Our investigation of them has to decide what importance we should attach
to man’s spirit: reason, conscience, and judging-faculty.
The contrary philosophy (call it Socratic, or Christian, as you please)
discerns the essential difference between that which perceives and that
which is perceived, and while it recognises and includes what can be
known of the external universe, admits the validity of the inductive
method of investigating nature and recognises that we learn and are
developed by what we perceive, yet instead of looking to the external to
decide for us what we are to regard as good or bad, it holds that all we
perceive has to be judged by the spirit of man. Pascal has put the
essential position thus: “Man is but a reed, the feeblest of things —
but he is a thinking reed. The whole universe need not rise in order to
crush him. A vapour, or a drop of water, is sufficient to kill him. But
when the universe crushes him, man still remains nobler than that which
kills him, because he knows that he is dying, while of the advantage the
universe has over him it knows nothing. Thus, all our dignity consists
in thought. It is by that, and not by time or space, that we should
raise ourselves. Let us therefore labour to think rightly: that is the
principle of morality.”
From the synthetic philosophy we get no clear guidance: only a piling up
of so-called “facts” and a process of generalising on these “ facts : “
different authorities coming to different conclusions, perplexing the
intellect but not stirring the heart. The subjective view said that
there is a divine life present in each of us. We must realise that it is
our true self. In it and not in our physical existence resides true,
real, permanent life. Trust it, use it, perceive that it is the ultimate
from which there is no appeal; realise that the same spirit lives in you
as lives in all your brother men— and you have grasped the master-key to
all the problems of morality, ethics, and religion.
This is the crux of the whole matter : each man must look within himself
and say whether he is conscious of a power approving and disapproving —
seeking for what is good. If a man be not conscious of it, if the idea
seem to him mystical, unreal, fantastic, — then” moraKty, as I
understand it, can have no meaning for him. But if he recognise this
life, or Kght, or spirit, or soul, or divine spark, or divinity (call it
what you will) in himself, he possesses the essential basis of morality
and religion.
Is there or is there not a right and wrong discernible to you and to me,
and incumbent upon us both ? If we use our minds freely (not swayed by
prejudices nor overmastered by our physical nature) can we, or can we
not, understand each other, sympathise with each other, aid each other
spiritually, and advance hand in hand together?
If not, we can never more approve or disapprove of any man’s conduct,
never be moved by admiration of any self — sacrifice, nor be touched by
righteous indignation at any wrong. If I have no judging — faculty,
capable of discerning right and wrong, I must remain neutral, and divide
my approbation and sympathy equally between the Judas who betrays, the
High Priest who prosecutes, the Pilate who condemns, and the Jesus who
sacrifices himself for the truth. If there be no right and no wrong, or
if they be not such as a plain man may find, or if they be different for
different men — then, not only the teaching of Christ, but every other
attempt that ever has been made to supply direction or guidance to
mankind must be futile.
The problem is a tremendous one: (1) On the one hand, admit the
existence of an absolute right incumbent on each of us, and it follows
that there exists a real, secure, and permanent spiritual order of
things to which we are linked by the spirit in us which recognises right
and wrong. (2) On the other hand, deny the existence of an absolute
right and wrong, and it inevitably follows that all our discussions and
efforts to influence each other are senseless.
But, important as the problem is, the solution is simple. We only need
to consider the facts of our own nature, facts of which we cannot but be
conscious, and we shall plainly see that we do distinguish right from
wrong. Which of us when he reads the story of Socrates does not admire
him for speaking the truth boldly before his judges. Which of us is
unable to perceive that Jabez Balfour did wrong when he devoured widows’
houses and for a pretence made long prayers? Do not the great and good
who are gone reach their hands to us across the ages, making us feel
that (however dormant it may be) in our innermost selves there dwells
some spark of that divine nature which made them heroes, saints, and
martyrs — that we, too (however unworthily), are sons of the same
spirit.
It still remains to meet my friend’s arguments, which, after this
preparation, will perhaps not prove a difficult task.
1. Conscience and love, we are told, are mere results of the physical
activities and chemical mobilities of matter operating through ages.
Have you ever seen a conjuror make a ball vanish? First, he lets you
examine a solid ball, then he manages to substitute a collapsible trick
ball for the real one, and rolling it between his hands it gradually
becomes smaller and smaller till at last you can’t see what has become
of it.
That is very much like what the materialist does with conscience.
Conscience is something real and actual, which influences me and of
which I am subjectively conscious. The philosopher comes along and
undertakes to make this con- science disappear. This he does by
substituting for the thing itself — of which we have knowledge at first
hand and not through our senses — the external phenomena which accompany
the existence of a conscience. Passing then from the phenomena which
indicate that I, and the people I know, have consciences, to similar
external phenomena which indicate that other people, further removed
from me, had consciences, he gradually leads us further and further from
what is familiar and sure, to what is distant and unknown, till at last
we reach the primitive tribe, the apes, the bees, and the ants, and,
past them, the colloid or jelly — like substances in which physical life
is supposed to have comtnenced. Here we have quite lost sight of
conscience. Instead of speaking about the thing itself (the power which
influences our conduct) he has discussed its derivation, and asked where
it comes from. Starting with the fundamental confusion of supposing that
something subjective (like conscience) can be explained by the objective
methods of biology, physics, or chemistry — he ends up by informing you
of the important fact that your conscience proceeds from chemical
activities and physical mobilities, the question how we ought to use our
conscience remaining unanswered.
2. Next we are told that Nature (of which we are parts) is non-moral and
inscrutable.
Well, I am prepared to admit that Nature appears to me to be non-moral.
I may devise plausible guesses to explain the earthquake or the flood,
but if, in order to know how to act, I had objectively to observe all
nature, to accumulate myriads of facts, to generalise from them, and by
searching to find out the purpose of creation, I should despair of ever
accomplishing the task, and should be ready to admit that we cannot know
right from wrong. We do not know the whole design of the universe, and
we should beware of involving ourselves in logical perplexities by
asserting (as Moses did) that God created the earth, or by saying (as
the nature-worshippers do) that all the ways of nature commend
themselves to our moral sense. We should content ourselves with making
sure of what is necessary and sufficient, and should not assert what is
questionable and cannot be verified.
But putting aside the ambitious design of fathoming the mind of the All,
— admitting that we, being finite, cannot grasp or span the infinite —
let us turn from what we cannot know to what we do know. Commune with
the spirit that is within you, and you will find that as the bird know^s
how to live in the air, and is not perplexed how to act, and as the fish
is able to live in the water, and knows what to do there, so raan too
can live his life, guided in its problems by the spirit within him, and
not unconscious that that same spirit links us, not only to our
fellow-men, but also to the faithful horse or trusty dog, and makes us
desire more comprehension of, and union with, the flowers, the grass,
and all that exists.
This does not mean that if man voluntarily indulges in ethical
conundrums which have no real application to his own life — he will
always be able to solve them. I remember being asked what an Eskimo
should do who saw the force of the vegetarian’s objection to taking
life, but who found that he w^ould die if he ceased to eat whale’s
blubber. I had to give it up ; because I am not an Eskimo, and do not
find it necessary to live on whale’s blubber. His course would depend on
the strength of his conviction, and on his readiness to sacrifice
physical existence for spiritual well-being.
3. Again, as to the temporary, and consequently unsatisfactory, nature
of human existence.
This is, I think, a very important point in my friend’s position, for it
links the question of the reality of right and wrong to the question
whether the spirit of which we are conscious in ourselves is finite or
infinite. There are people who wish to admit the existence of right and
wrong, but who incline to the belief that we perish utterly at the death
of our body, leaving behind only our dust and our influence, which in
its turn will perish when the world is used up and the sun cools down.
They think Christ must have been romancing if he ever said he could show
us life eternal, that being a matter we can know nothing about.
They say that life is to the body what the flame is to the candle. But
the analogy is misleading. The difference is that the flame has no
choice as to what it will do with the candle : it really depends on
chemical activities and physical mobiUties. But man’s spirit (which is
his real life) can and does enable him to decide that he will drown
himself out of jealousy, risk his life for patriotism, or go to the
stake for truth’s sake. For the analogy to be complete, the flame of the
candle would have to approve or disapprove of the stearin.
A truer analogy, I believe, would be to compare man’s hfe to an
electrical installation. When a good lamp is well attached a bright and
steady light is shown, if the lamp be badly attached the flame is
irregular, and when the lamp is broken the light goes out. But the
electric current (man’s life or spirit) continues to flow with equal
power whether the lamp (man’s body) be sound, or injured, or destroyed.
For those, however, who accept the materialist’s point of view, my
friend’s argument should, I think, be conclusive. It is unreasonable to
believe in any absolute right and wrong if our existence is only
temporary. Logically it does not matter whether the arrangement lasts,
say, for twenty years, till the death of the individual; or for millions
of years, till the extinction of the race. If our spirit be the product
of our brain, and our brain be admittedly perishable, what have we to do
with the eternal? Right and wrong belong to the domain of the infinite.
Morality depends upon that stream of tendency which makes for
righteousness yesterday, to-day, and for ever.
It needs, however, to be pointed out, that to say, as Christ did, that
man has eternal life, is not the same as asserting as a fact, as the
Buddhists do, that men will be re-incarnated, or as the European
churches do, that men will rise from the dead and have a personal
immortality. These (however plausible the one or the other may be) are
hypotheses which cannot be verified; and, dogmatically asserted, they
have produced a very natural reaction, and inclined men towards mere
negation. The influence of this reaction is perceptible aroimd us
to-day. The basis, however, on which Christ, or Socrates, built in this
matter still stands firm, and this much at least we have, many of us,
found in our own experience of life — that while we are chiefly occupied
with the physical and material side of life we need constant occupation
and stimulant to keep us from perceiving the approach of death; but when
we are occupied with the spirit, and are following after that which is
good, the fear of death finds no place, and we need no such
pre-occupation or hypnotic influence to blind us to it.
4. Next as to what my friend said about the instability of the moral
code.
It is true that no code of external rules exists which would fit all men
in all ages. But observe the working of your own mind, and it is easy to
see why this is so. What we desire and seek is perfection. No sooner is
one step gained than it becomes necessary to take another. Morality (by
which I mean right conduct) does not consist in reaching an attainable
spot and stagnating there, but, on the contrary, it consists in movement
forward. Through the ages men have been travelling along converging
lines towards one ultimate aim —the City of God.
If we are walking from York to London, wotdd it not be unreasonable to
tell us that we must be going wrong because yesterday we were anxious to
reach and rest at Grantham, while to-day we are entering Peterboro? The
immutability lies in the ultimate aim — when we approached Grantham we
were making for London, and so we are when we have pushed on to
Peterboro’.
The owner who begins to have some compassion for his slaves ; the owner
who lets his slaves go free; the woman who makes a friend of her
servant; the rich man who chooses a life of poverty for conscience sake
; the Father Damien who gives his life for the lepers — all are alike
moving towards the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
Which direction we should move in, is no insoluble enigma. When anyone
tells us that morality is mutable, that we are left without guidance,
and cannot know right from wrong, the reply is one which was given
thousands of years ago : “ It is not too hard for thee, neither is it
too far off. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, who shall go
up for us to heaven and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that
we may do it ? Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say,
who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, and make us to
hear it that we may do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy
mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.”
5. But we are told conscience veers round, as in the case of ray friend
with his Sunday novel.
Is not the case this? He had been accustomed to he guided by the
authority of his elders, and to use his own judging faculty merely
within prescribed hmits. Then he became conscious of a conflict between
his own reason and the dictates of authority. He should have faced the
problem squarely, and cleared his own mind. Finding (as all may find who
will think about it) that a man can and must think with his own head, he
would have been free to choose his path, and have felt no further
compunctions about following it. His conscience troubled him, I take it,
rather because he shirked the problem than because he read the novel.
Ultimately he did think for himself, and then his conscience was at
rest.
We are aU too apt to be intellectually lazy, shirking the problems of
life, and saying we do not know the solutions. We are all too apt to be
inteUectuaUy dishonest, not thinking freely about the questions life
puts before us, but allowing a secret bias for some friend, or book, or
creed, or church, or occupation, or amusement to swerve us from
following straight after truth. We are too apt to be intellectually
cowardly, not believing that our minds were given us to be used, and
that they are worth using and trusting.
6. Lastly, my friend contended that our thoughts, feelings, and actions
are pre-determined and inevitable results of what went before.
This is just where the man, whose view of life includes the subjective
perception of his own inner consciousness, finds himself at issue with
all the philosophic systems which try to confine themselves to a
knowledge of what can be studied through the five senses of seeing,
hearing, touching, smelling, and feeling. The root of the whole matter
is, that if we know^ ourselves we perceive an inward spirit preferring
good to evil. As Tolstoy puts it : “ Goodness is really the fundamental
metaphysical conception which forms the essence of our consciousness ;
it is a conception not defined by reason, it is that which can be
defined by nothing else but which defines everything else ; it is the
highest, the eternal aim of our life.”
Examining my own inner perceptions, I believe I possess a will. We do
not know why or how the spirit operates upon the physical brain, which,
but for that incoming life, ^vould be merely automatic. Neither science
nor inspiration have shown us how to produce life, or explained its
secret to us. The dilemma is that we must assume (1) either that we are
automata, or (2) that we possess some measure of will: and with the
facts of life before me I am driven to assume that I possiBss some
measure of will. We may reject religion as a superstition, morality as a
delusion, and duty as a fallacy, yet we shall continue to desire and
strive for something, if for nothing better than for the gratification
of some personal CElprice, or the satisfaction of some physical want.
We are not free from the limitations of time and space, nor are we free
from the influences of heredity, environment, soil, and climate : my
body is a result of what occurred before I was born. And this is what
should save us from harshly judging one another. “ Judge not that ye be
not judged “ would be sound and sensible advice, even if it’ were shown
that no Christ ever spoke it. For all judging of the kind we ourselves
might reasonably try to escape from — i.e. all judging in which the
judge assumes a position of superiority or seeks to inflict any penalty,
is, it seems to me, an evil. On the other hand, “Judge righteous
judgments” is not less necessary advice; for by seeking to perceive the
truth regarding ourselves and others, and about our mutual relations to
each other, we can best learn the lessons of life : learn to understand
and escape from our own faults and learn to help others.
Very much has been pre-determined for us. It seems impossible that we
should relapse into cannibalism, and equally impossible to live up to
the level of the highest truths we have seen.
We are like travellers who have passed through many miles of forest and
who can neither leap, at a bound, back to the entrance, nor overleap the
many miles which still lie before them. They are not free to do the
impossible, but they are free to select the direction in which they will
move. They can continue to advance, or can swerve to the right or left,
or can even turn back in despair.
The above are my perceptions as to the existence of right and wrong. If
they be erroneous I hope someone will explain to me my mistakes ; if
they be true I hope these thoughts may prove useful to some who still
are, as I tiU recently was, perplexed on the subject. Assuming them to
be in the main correct, I feel drawn to make an appreciation of them
with reference to the “advanced” people with whom I have come in contact
since I settled in England.
If there is such a thing as right, there must also be such a thing as
morality: conduct tending towards the right, conduct that makes for the
establishment of perfect relations among men, and the establishment of
the Kingdom of Righteousness. This being so, it is surely of supreme
importance to discern the right, if any. exist, as clearly as possible.
Progress is only desirable if it be progress in the right direction.
History shows us that all past civilisations progressed towards
destruction. We, therefore, must realise that to progress is not
sufficient: we must know what we are progressing towards, that is to
say, we must seek for a clear perception of the truth as to what is
right and what is wrong in human conduct. It is not enough to rid
ourselves of conventional ideas, prejudices, authorities, and legalities
; we must look well to it that these are replaced by a clear,
well-verified perception of what we are aiming at. For the house swept
and garnished and left empty was soon occupied by seven devils worse
than the first.
Before we are fit to destroy the old, or can do even that efficiently,
we must first know what we seek: what we hold to be right: towards what
ideal we are striving. This is true equally of the economic and the
sexual sides of life.
If you have perceived that, despite the struggle for existence which is
said to be a “ law of Nature,” mankind is slowly, through the ages,
climbing — through cannibalism, slavery, feudal tenure, serfdom, wagedom
— towards the brotherhood of man, and if your spirit approves that
advance, and longs to aid it, the time has come when you can profitably
use your perception of the absurdity of human law, and the iniquities of
competitive business. There is then no danger that you will encourage
others to forge bank-notes, because you see the wrong involved in
banking.
If you have perceived that, despite that struggle for sexual union which
we are told is a “law of Nature,” mankind has slowly, through the ages,
climbed — through unnatural vice, promiscuity, varietism, polygamy,
polyandry, monogamy, — towards greater and ever greater chastity and
purity, and if your spirit approves that advance (so that the “love
affairs” of a Christ are inconceivable to you) the time has come when
you can profitably use your perceptions that the conventions of society
are stumbling-blocks, legal penalties an iniquity, and that even
monogamy is far from affording a final solution of the problem. There
is, then, no danger that those whom you influence will, by your
misdirection, be led backwards to any of the customs from which the mass
of humanity have partially escaped, after the experience, the relapses,
and the painful efforts of many thousand years.
If you aim at freedom as an end in itself, careless as to how freedom
should be used when it is gained, then the more strenuous your efforts
are, the more surely will they evoke a reaction in those who feel that
life has an aim, and that in the conduct of our lives we all need
guidance, and are all (whether we know it or not) influencing and
guiding others. If you desire freedom, remember that it is truth which
alone can really set us free.
Even to our present perceptions, the “struggle for existence,” in war
and commerce, is no inscrutable evil, neither is sexual desire, — great
as are the evils that have resulted from each of these things.
Through war and patriotism, men, from mere isolated individuals, or
families, have been welded into groups capable of some heroism and some
self-sacrifice for a common cause. Through business competition men have
obtained some mastery over the laziness and self-indulgence of their
natures. Through this training (and thanks to the misery it has
involved) man is being driven forward (often by “a recoil from his own
vices”) to seek for wider union, and for a fairer field in which to use
his powers in the service of others. And men have at last come to a
point from which they can begin to discard as hindrances the means by
which they have advanced so far.
So it seems to be with the sex-passion. Who that has watched it awaken
in a selfish breast an interest in at least one other existence besides
his, or her own; and has seen how^, through that one other, it has
opened their hearts to sympathy with a whole class (or sometimes to a
perception of the iniquity of a social system) can fail to see that this
force also serves as a means to a good end ? But again, watching it
carefully, and seeing how this passion excites, torments, and
pre-occupies men and women; narrowing their interest to what concerns
one other or a few others — how can we but desire escape from it for
ourselves, and for all to whom we wish well ?
We should try neither to underrate nor to exaggerate the service these
things have rendered, and are rendering, to the development of man’s
nature. Patriotism is better than selfish isolation, but worse than a
recognition of the brotherhood of man. Industrious effort to secure
one’s own living is an advance on laziness, but is worse than zeal in
the service of all. Sexual attraction and the family bond, while they
may draw men from isolation and egotism, may also hamper man when more
developed, and confine his interests and activity to a narrower circle
and to a lower plane than they would reach were he free.
From this point of view, war, commerce, and sexual-attraction — useful
instruments in the progress of the race — tried by the standard of the
ideal, fall short and stand condemned as things w^e have to outgrow and
leave behind on our upward path towards a fuller spiritual life.
It may be said that what I haA’^e briefly indicated as my perception of
the inevitable and desirable line of human progress, is not the right
line at all. That the application of Christ’s law of love in economics
does not make towards the brotherhood of man, or that, in sex matters,
it does not make towards chastity and purity. Some may hold that
Christ’s law itself is erroneous; others that Christ was wrong in
attempting to apply it practically to the different phases of human life
; that he should not have expressed any definite opinions on such
difficult questions as those of property, law, government, or sex; that,
in fact, the application of the “law of love” — to such a problem, say,
as landowning — should not be considered in advance, but should be left,
by each individual, until the stress of events force him to take some
immediate personal action.
But my argument is that those who behave in progress at all should
understand that progress must have a direction — the stream must flow
somewhere. What we need is to discern which way it is flowing, and to
know whether we approve or disapprove of that direction. This can only
be done by unbiassed free-thinking.
My views may be all wrong, but then — those who care about the matter
should show me where the error Ues, and co-operate with me in seeking to
discern the true line of human advance. If Christ’s law of love be
wrong, — what is right ? If it be right, let us study its practical
apphcation both in economics and in sex matters.
Some, again, may say that the true line, on one or both these sides of
hf e, is undiscoverable ; we must wait and drift a bit. That, for the
present at least, the problems of morality are inscrutable. We may knock
but it will not be opened unto us, we may search but shall not find. We
are on the river of life but must not know whether to row upstream or
drift with the current.
But surely this attitude is a foolish one; the plain man, facing the
facts of life honestly, feels and knows it to be false. Life is
indivisible, and life is always in the present. There can be no solution
of the economic problem without a solution of the sex — problem. The two
are inseparably linked together in the life of man. And how can a man
help to guide his fellows unless he know in which direction to point
them on both these issues?
All who wish to leave the world better than they found it, all who think
they have perceived some truth, and hope to do some service, cannot
escape from the responsibility of serving in the same army with the
saints, the prophets, and the martyrs — i.e. with those to whom truth
was precious, and duty imperative; who saw clearly that there is a
morality embracing all our actions, discernible to man in the present —
now and for ever.
Like them we must perceive that truth and right exist, — and our earnest
effort must be that “righteousness shall flow down like a river and
truth like a mighty stream.”
The foregoing article appeared in the New Order of September 1898.
The plain, unperverted man needs no argument to show him that his spirit
strives towards goodness. But in the conflict between Church Christians
asserting what is un-verifiable, and scientists shutting from their
minds the plainest facts of their inner consciousness, so many cultiued
people become perplexed, that I have thought it worth preserving this
product of my own wanderings in the wilderness, in the hope that it may
be of use to some of them.
[1] “Modern Science — a Criticism,” published in the volume of essays
entitled “Civilisation, its Cause and Cure.”