T WO books dealing with religion and morals written by M.
Guyau have lately made a great stir in the intellectual circles of Paris ; indeed, among the cultivated all the world over. The first, published in 1903, is called " Esquisse d'une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction " (Felix Alcan, 5fr.) The second, dated a year later, is entitled " L'Irreligion de l'Avenir " (same publisher, Ifr. 50c.) "The moralist," says M. Guyau, "is tempted to invoke a law superior to life itself (suporieure a la vie Mme), a law intel- ligible, eternal, supernatural." In so doing M. Guyau believes the ordinary moralist to be wrong, and his books are concerned with the laying of a new moral foundation, a foundation without any supernatural sanction at all. M. Guyau regards the religious idea as played out, or at any rate as a thing which becomes daily more vague, shadowy, and attenuated, less and less capable of supporting the great social safeguard of the moral code, which he proceeds diligently to underpin by the exposition of a new and ingenious theory. We propose in the present article first to put before our readers, as nearly as we can in his own words, M. Guyau's views as to the birth and decadence of religion ; secondly, to explain as shortly as we may his theory as to the true basis of morality; and thirdly, to point out what would seem to the ordinary reader without metaphysical training the weak points in M. Guyau's arguments.
The greater part of religion, he tells us, is simply a medita- tion on death. Had there been no such thing as death, we should have had probably a few disjointed superstitions to deal with, but no systematic religion. What primitive people have sought in imagining the different religions was an explanation : the least astonishing explanation possible, the most conformable to their simple intelligence, indeed the rational explanation—for them. All religions correspond to that invincible tendency which makes a man, and sometimes even an animal, desire to account for everything he sees, to translate the world to himself as it were. They may there- fore all be considered as branches of primitive science. When he comes to particularise about religion M. Guyau deals almost exclusively with Christianity, as being the highest form which the religious idea has taken, though his allusions to Buddhism are many and highly respectful. Protestantism he prefers to Roman Catholicism in the abstract, as being the less obscurantist of the two systems, each system relying upon authority, or, rather, upon two respective authorities, the Church and the Bible. Of Broad Churchism (le Protestantism Liberal) he has a good deal to say. He regards it as a half- way house between religion and scepticism which sensible men must shortly vacate. All forms of mysticism alienate his sympathy. A mystic, he says, is a person who, feeling vaguely the insufficiency of positive religion, seeks to com- pensate for the narrowness and poorness of his dogmatic belief by a superabundance of sentiment (sentiment). One becomes an idealist when one begins to believe no more. After having rejected all the pretended realities one consoles oneself by adoring one's own dreams. In the two store- houses of authority are preserved, he believes, dogmas which a rational man of to-day cannot accept unless be sacrifices his judgment. His point of view, though sceptical, bears the indelible impress of Roman Catholic teaching. Every rebellion against authority is, in his eyes, a step towards disbelief. He thus sums up his position': "The independence of individual judgment is a force on which we may count to bring about, with the gradual decay of dogmatic belief, the disappearance of religion." Refraining for the moment from all comment, we turn to the question of duty.
For an ultimate basis of morality he looks to the very beginning of things,—to the physical instinct which forbids that the race should die out. Physical life can only be main- tained upon the earth on condition of diffusing itself. Absolute selfishness is self-mutilation. This, he assures us, is true of the mind no less than of the body. It is as impossible to shut the intelligence up in itself as to shut up a flame. It is made for diffusion. The same force of expansion exists in the sensi- bilities; we must share our joys, we must share our pain. The very nature of life permits a union to a certain extent between egoism and altruism, a union which is the philosopher's stone of all moralists. This is what may be called moral fecundity. Individual life must be diffused amongst others and for others, and if necessary must sacrifice itself to others. Life is not only nutrition, it is production. Duty and moral obligation constitute a force inseparable from life, a force which demands an outlet. To feel within oneself that one is capable of doing something great is to become conscious that it is one's duty to do it. Instead of saying " I ought, there- fore I can," it would be truer to say "I can, therefore I ought." All things come back with M. Gupta to the social ideal. In teaching the young he exhorts : " Beware of religion "; trust to the moral spur of "good citizenship."
In counting on the force of individual judgment to bring about the extinction of religion surely M. Guyau is reckoning without his host. It is to the exercise of private judgment that almost every new impetus to religious faith is traceable. To take one instance among many. What authority sustained the faith of Isaiah or the Psalmists P Did Jewish law, traditional or inscribed, or however they knew it, confine their thoughts ? Did they not spiritualise, and what would now be called explain away, the dogmas of their creed ? Did they believe in sacrifice P Certainly not as it was taught to them,—not in the power of burnt-offerings and oblations to corrupt the justice of Jehovah. The sacrifice of God, they said, is a broken spirit. In so saying they explained away a dogma of their creed; but did they injure the religion they transformed ? Surely not. They released it from the trammels of a mere transitory and tribal worship, and lifted it into the region of an eternal monotheism. Abject submission to authority in religion means, we believe, religious deadness, and is the best preparation, as the religious condition of Roman Catholic countries shows, for scepticism. Religion is in its essence a thing between the individual soul and God, and cannot be supplied by adhesion to any Society nor bound between the covers of any book. It is essentially a matter of private judgment. Liberal Protestants have no need to fear the superciliousness of the sceptic,—" so persecuted they the prophets which were before you."
It is impossible not to admit that M. Guyau's theory of the origin of morality is ingenious ; but is it not rather far-fetched ?
We have before us in the sense of duty a phenomenon for
which the world has found a simple, plausible, and, as M. Guyau admits, attractive explanation in a law which comes
from without. Is it rational to put that explanation aside in
favour of a new one which requires at least one step in the dark ? The hypothesis that there is a complete analogy between the physical world and the world of thought has to be accepted on M. Guyam's word. The same instinct which keeps the human race from becoming extinct prevents the animal, reptile, and insect worlds from becoming extinct also, only in their case it does not produce altruism. How can we, therefore, be sure that the altruism which seems to belong exclusively to our race is produced by it P If we come to consider the practical point, and ask whether the ideal of good citizenship will ever prove an inducement to morality comparable to that of an inspired law, we should think there can be but one answer. Most men and women will make sacrifices for their own children, but only the few will make sacrifices for what is to them a mere word,—some- thing quite intangible called the majority. To get up any enthusiasm of citizenship, especially among women, would be, we believe, the next thing to impossible. Duty reduced by reason to a refinement of the higher selfishness would not long keep its potency. The divine folly of heroism would go first, and then all morality would become a matter of calculation. Of course it may be argued that many men who have no dogmatic faith cling firmly to the idea of duty. Certainly they do ; but we think that for the most part they regard the difference between right and wrong as an inspired difference, a sense which comes from outside themselves.
" When Duty murmurs, Lo, thou must,' The youth replies, can,'"
not because it is bad for the race to be selfish, but because, consciously or unconsciously, he feels that he is listening to the " stern Daughter of the Voice of God?' The mass of people, not excepting such as would hardly be prepared to declare their belief even in Isaiah's slender creed, yet acknowledge that he alluded to a spiritual reality when he said : " Thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left." Dogma, after all, is but the theoretical expression of the religious sentiment. Duty is its practical effect. This point of view was strikingly illustrated by Si .James FitzJames Stephen long ago in an article which appeared in the Pall Mall. The gist of the article was condensed by Mr. Leslie Stephen in his Life of his brother. We will quote it in illustration of our point :— "I dreamt, after Bunyan's fashion, that I was in the cabin of a ship handsomely furnished and lighted. A number of people were expounding the objects of the voyage and the principles of navigation. They wero contradicting each other eagerly, but each maintained that the success of the voyage depended absolutely upon the adoption of his own plan. The charts to which they appealed were in many places confused and contradictory. They said they wore proclaiming the best of news, but the substance of it was that when we reached port most of us would be thrown into a dungeon and put to death by lingering torments. Some, indeed, would receive different treatment; but they could not say why, though all agreed in extolling the wisdom and mercy of the sovereign of the country. Saddened and confused, I escaped to the deck, and found myself somehow enrolled in the crew. The prospect was unlike the accounts given in the cabin. There was no sun, we had but a faint starlight, and there were occasional glimpses of land, and of what might be lights on the shore, which yet were pronounced by some of the crew to be mere illusions. They held that the best thing to be done was to let the ship drive as she would, without trying to keep her on what was understood to be her course. For the strangest thing on that strange ship was the fact that there was such a course. Many theories were offered about this, none quite satis- factory ; but it was understood that the ship was to be steered due north. The best and bravest and wisest of the crew would dare the most terrible dangers, even from their comrades, to keep her on her course. Putting these things together, and noting that the ship was obviously framed and equipped for the voyage, I could not help feeling that there was a port somewhere, though I doubted the wisdom of those who professed to know all about it. I resolved to do my duty, in the hope that it would turn out to have been my duty, and then I felt that there was something bracing in the mystery by which we were surrounded, and that at all events ignorance honestly admitted and courageously faced, and rough duty vigorously done, was better far than the sham knowledge and bitter quarrels of the sickly cabin and glaring lamplight from which I had escaped."
M. Guyau himself, though at times he too, after the manner of religious and scientific dogmatists, professes to " know all about it," and having dissected religion under the glaring false light of the ship's cabin, declares that man has " invented a heart in the infinite " to satisfy his insatiable power of love, yet emerges at the end of his book into the mysterious starlight. He apologises to his reader for offering so little to support his soul in the hour of death, but with a strange mixture of
arrogance and humility, he reminds him that nothing is proved, and that after all he may be mistaken. " La mort a son secret, son enigme, et on garde le vague espoir qu'elle vous en dira le mot par une derniere ironie en vous broyant, que les mourants suivant la croyance antique devinent, et que leurs yeux ne se ferment que sous l'eblouisse- ment d'un eclair. Notre derniere douleur mate aussi notre derniere curiosite."
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