MR. FITZJAMES STEPHEN'S CREED.
MR. FITZJAMES STEPHEN has added a preface to the second edition of his "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,"* in answer to some criticisms passed upon his work by Mr. Morley and Mr. Harrison. As we do not, except on one point, very materially differ from Mr. Stephen on the subject of his con- troversies with these two critics, so far, at least, as he answers them in this preface, but are inclined to think he has the best of the argument, we should not notice this further explanation of his views, but for the opportunity it gives us for referring to a subject on which, when we reviewed Mr. Stephen's book in June last, we had no space to comment adequately,—we mean, on Mr. Stephen's somewhat remarkable type of moral and religious creed. He says, in a very brief reference to our own criti- cism, " Of this critic, I will only say that he and I write different languages, so far as the fundamental terms employed are concerned,"— a fact of which the present writer suf- ficiently showed that he, too, was aware in his reviews of Mr. Stephen's books. And since the illustration which Mr. Stephen gives of this extraordinary difference between us in our fundamental conceptions of morals, religion, and their intellectual conditions, will introduce very well what we have to say of Mr. Stephen's form of creed, we will presently quote it. In the substance of his work Mr. Stephen had laid it down that all actions are free,' of which hope is the motive, and that all are done under compulsion or omitted under restraint, of which fear is the motive. It appeared and appears to us that a definition wider of the commonest and also the deepest meaning of the word free' could not possibly be given,—first, because fear and hope are often only different modes of describing the same motive. Mr. Stephen, for instance, says that if a woman marries " from the ordinary motives" she does it freely, but if she submits " in order to avoid a greater evil," she acts under compulsion, and not freely. But how are you to distinguish between the woman wbo marries from the hope of comfort or luxury, and from the fear of the poverty and discomfort she escapes? It is quite clear that the two motives are identical, though looked at from different points of view. We had spoken of an act as free' " if it proceeds from the deliberate and rational act of the mind itself," on which Mr. Stephen comments :—" So that if a man gives up his purse to a robber, he does it freely, provided only that the robber gives him time to consider deliberately the alternatives, ' Your money or your life ?' " We should answer that, as be- tween these two alternatives of death or surrender of the purse, the choice is free, on the condition stated, and that there is no paradox in saying so. Of course, you are not left free to retain both money and life. The robber puts that out of the question by his alternative, but within the range left to you, you are free, if you are left time to choose deliberately. To call a man free who
• Smith, Elder, and Co.
turns Queen's evidence on the promise of a pardon, and to say that he acts under compulsion if he turns Queen's evi- dence under the fear of death, seems to us to be playing with words, and not using them, as Mr. Stephen in one of his chapters finely says that all words on the highest subjects must be used as " signals " made by "spirits in prison" to each other, " with a world of things to think and to say which our signals cannot describe at all." We hold that the word ' free' is a sign of a great deal in the world of things " which our signals cannot describe at all," and that it becomes a mere false sign when it is made to stand for an act done under an impulse of hope, and not under one of fear. We fear for the loss of our hopes as we hope for the loss of our fears, so that the two motives are the same from differeqt points of view. 6 Freedom' and ' free' seem to us to be words as old as any civilised language, with a meaning far less open to juggling than this, and always to have had more or less reference to the exercise, or the opportunity for the exercise, of rational volition. A slave may, under con- ditions of martyrdom, prefer his own highest mind to his master's will. A free man has thousands of opportunities for the exercise of this voluntary energy, to every one of the slave's.
But this strange obtuseness of Mr. Stephen's to the higher and positive implications of the word 'liberty' seems to us characteristic of one of the most curious aspects of his creed, which condenses in itself a strong and manly, though wonderfully maimed religion,—a religion breaking down suddenly into the most unexpected and abrupt chasms, misshapen here, stunted there, and elsewhere again exhibiting the most massive and even pathetic grandeur. For instance, this blunt and, as it seems to us, almost super- cilious refusal to see any question at all in the freedom of the will, might be expected a priori to go with an equally con- temptuous view of the mystery of personality and personal identity. Certainly we should have said that if there is one experience more than another by which the "I" h4known, and known as something not to be explained by " a series of states of feeling," it is the sense of creative power connected with the feeling of effort, the consciousness that you can by a heave of the will alter your whole life, and that that heave of the will, or refusal to exert it, is not the mere resultant of the motives present to you, but is undetermined by the past,—is free. This view Mr. Stephen not merely rejects, but regards as unmeaning ; he quotes con- cerning it Locke's unintelligent remark that " the question whether the will is free, is as unintelligible and as insignificant as to ask whether a man's virtue is square." One might have thought, therefore, that he would go on with Locke as he began, and accept Locke's equally superficial judgment on "personal identity," which makes it to consist solely in the continuous series of conscious memories, and which would deny personal identity to two different parts of the same life, supposing the tie of memory between them was irrevocably dissolved. That, however, is clearly not Mr. Stephen's view at all. He has the deepest sense of the identity of the " I" as one of the inexplicable facts at the basis of the expectation of immortality. He reproaches Mr. Mill for not putting explicitly enough the fair inference from the sense of fixity belonging to the "I am." "All human language," says Mr. Stephen, "all human observation, implies that the mind, the 1I,' is a thing in itself, a fixed point in the midst of a world of change, of which world of change its own organs form a part. It is the same yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow. It was what it is, when its organs were of a different shape, and consisted of different matter from their present shape and matter. It will be what it is, when they have gone through other changes. I do not say that this proves, but surely it suggests, it renders probable, the belief that this ultimate fact, this starting-point of all know- ledge, thought, feeling, and language, this ' final inexplicability' (an emphatic, though a clumsy phrase,) is independent of its organs; that it may have existed before they were collected out of the elements, and may continue to exist after they are dissolved into the elements. The belief thus suggested by the most intimate, the most abiding, the most wide-spread of all experiences, not to say by universal experience, as recorded by nearly every word of every language in the world, is what I mean by a belief in a future state, if indeed it should not rather be called a past, present, and future state, all in one, a state which rises above and transcends time and change. I do not say that this is proved, but I do say that it is strongly suggested by the one item of knowledge which rises above logic, argument, language, sensation, and even dis- tinct thought, that one clear instance of direct consciousness in virtue of which we say ' I am.' Ehis belief is that there is in man, or rather that man is that which rises above words and above thoughts, which are but unuttered words ; that to each one of us, I' is the ultimate central fact which renders thought and language possible." Now that passage goes as far beyond Locke's thin and meagre view of personal identity, as our belief in the freedom of the will goes beyond either Locke's or Mr. Stephen's view of the will. And yet, while we heartily agree, and more than agree, with every word in that passage, we should have said that the one central fact which makes this sense of the I' so unequivocal, is the consciousness of being able to put out on occasions, or to refuse to put out, free, undetermined effort, and that it is in virtue of this fact that we recognise that self goes deep beneath, or rises high above, the world of determined change in which it lives. Mr. Stephen, however, characteristically as we think, has the most profound feeling of the depth and the mystery of the self, but not the least feeling of the one central and characteristic fact about it,—its qualified liberty.
Equally strong, vivid, and curiously stunted with Mr. Stephen's sense of the personal self, is also his view of human ethics. He holds that all men act, and must act with a view to their own happiness ; that rational considerations show bow closely different people's happinesses are bound up together ; that without any belief in a revealed law of God or in immortality, this com- munity of interests would only affect a man's own actions so far as his affections compelled him to rate others' happiness as part of his own, or again, so far as prudential considerations showed what he must concede to them, in order to get them to concede what he needed to him ; but that, with a belief in a revealed law of God and in immortality, men may find it their interest and there- fore their duty to do much that is not for their own happiness, though it is for other people's, and this during a whole life-time, with a view to forming a characterthat, in conformity with God's law, will much more conduce to their own happiness during the life to come. For all disinterested actions which are not in some remote sense interested, either as required by the personal affections for others, or as enjoined by God, who has power to reward and punish, Mr. Stephen has a great contempt ; and even for some which are required by what he deems a morbid and unhealthy affection for the human race in general, he expresses a very deep scorn. As far as any religion forbids, under pains and penal- ties, actions hurtful to others which we should otherwise like to do, Mr. Stephen thinks it not only right for those who hold such a religion to abstain, but,—and this it is that puzzles us,—he also admires those who abstain, for some strange reason, for their abstin- ence, apparently because he thinks the type of character which post- pones present to future enjoyments, stronger and manlier, than that which takes no heed to threats or promises affecting only a far-off future. He calls the constitution of mind which habitually has regard to these distant considerations " conscience," speaks of it as one of the most personal and deep-rooted of the mental faculties, and altogether holds it in high honour, though, failing any pre- sumptive belief in immortality and a personal God whose moral will is revealed, he hardly admits that such a faculty exists. Here, again, we regard with wonder not so much Mr. Stephen's negative views, which are common to him with the Benthamites, but his profound positive reverence for the "prudent, steady, hardy, enduring race of people, who are neither fools nor cowards, who have no particular love for those who are, who distinctly know what they want, and are determined to use all lawful means to get it,"—the type of character this form of creed tends, in his opinion, to perpetuate. What we find it diffi- cult to understand is the hearty warmth with which Mr. Stephen says that "the class of pleasures and pains which come from virtue and vice respectively, cannot be measured against those" of health and disease,—a statement which seems to us a rare paradox as coming from one who not only admits, but maintains, that the difference between the two classes is one which might totally disappear if we were all to die at twenty, instead of to be immortal. In that case, says fir. Stephen, health and disease and moderate wealth would be of in- finitely more importance than virtue and vice ; but if we are to be immortal, they are infinitely leas important; and if we were to live 1,000 years and no more, then, apparently, some means would have to be discovered between virtue as calculated for immortality, and the health and moderate wealth which is the most reasonable aim for men living a short life. We are struck with the strongest sense of incongruity at these statements. Sometimes Mr. Stephen speaks as if virtue, even as we know it, were an experience wholly different in kind and infinitely higher than any other human experience. In the next breath be speaks of it aa a pleasure which would vanish altogether if the belief in Immortal consequences of pleasure and pain were to disappear. Such views are not a morality, they are a sort of torso of morality, with some of the finest portions of the figure wanting.
And so of Mr. Stephen's conception of God. He speaks of him as a being above all moral attributes, to whom it is unmeaning to ascribe justice, for instance. " I think of him as conscious, and having will, as infinitely powerful, and as one who, whatever he be in his own nature, has so arranged the world or worlds in which I live as to let me know that virtue is the law which he has prescribed to me and to others. If still further asked, ' Can you love such a Being?'
I should answer, Love is not the word I should choose, but awe. The law under which we live is stern and, as far as we can judge, inflexible, but it is noble," [why noble?] "and excites a feeling of awful respect for its Author and for the constitution established in the world which it governs, and a sincere wish to act up to and carry it out as far as possible." Now we can't under- stand that. If the law-giver is incapable of moral attributes, and the only sense of virtue ' is the law which his will has established amongst us, why is there anything noble' in its sternness and inflexibility ? _ law of the Medea and Persians ' noble,' apart from its morality, simply for its sternness, because it altereth not ? Mr. Stephen's religion, like his morality and his moral psychology, consist of one or two fine, but rugged fragments. He believes in the I,' but not in its only striking characteristic ; he believes in the infinitely deeper joy of virtue than of any other mental experience, but thinks there would be no such distinction to a being of definitely limited hopes ; he believes in the nobility of God's law, but not in the righteousness of God. In fact, Mr. Stephen's creed consists of a few huge, almost Cyclopean, masses of moral conviction, impressive and striking enough, but broken off just at the most critical points, and as striking from their apparently almost wilful insufficiency and isola- tion, as from their solidity and strength.
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