SECULARISM :—(LETTER TO THE EDITOR). "Aunt alteram partem."

Sfa,—The spirit of true toleration, widely distinct from indifference, which marks your criticism of an article contained in the Westminster Review upon Secularism," induces me to hope that you will not refuse to consider certain explanations and qualifications which your statements cannot but suggest in the minds of the more educated and scientific Secularists, called Positivists.

Unquestionably, so far as Secularism stops at the half-way house of Scepticism, it is produced by weariness of some sort. To doubt is no longer to believe; to continue to doubt and remain a sceptic is to flag on the road to renewed faith of whatever kind. But the Posi- tivist is not in that condition. He is no longer the victim of doubt, for he has attained a profound faith of his own; a faith, it is true, essentially unpopular (" unlovely," to use your own expression) in the eyes of the many, but all the more rooted from resting, in his ap- prehension, exclusively upon scientific data. This unpopularity- " unloveliness"---is no argument to him against what he believes to be true. Everything new is "unlovely" to those who are in love with the old. There was no loveliness or comeliness in the Christian scheme to the unconverted heathen, it was a bleak, arid waste, substituting for the gorgeous and multifarious systems of paganism, the abstract monotheism of the desert. How different is it now, when all that is tender and lovely in human emotion has nestled round the feet of the crucified Saviour and the Holy Virgin; when art, poetry (I purposely except science), the home affections, the public virtues, have all been coloured (I do not say developed) by Chris- tianity through a period little short of a thousand years. No wonder if he, who though ever so fervent a lover of the beautiful, believes the Christian scheme to be inconsistent with abstract truth generally, and repugnant to no small part of morality in particular, should be pitied for his belief as one who has forsaken the great sanctuary of human loveliness for a howling wilderness of scientific laws. But although the Positivist can understand that pity, he does not stand in need of it. It is because the system winch he has adopted is more lovely to him, more just, and more true to his whole require- ments, that he believes in it. To him it is truth, which Christianity enjoins the faithful to follow, as in fact coextensive with its God; and whatever is truth to a man, is clearly that which actually fits his nature, which he cannot repudiate, without abdicating "himself," and in which he therefore finds most comfort. Nevertheless, "com- fort" is not the standard by which the Positivist tries his creed, but fact, and those inferences from fact which are convincing to him. 'When he is told that "a true idea—say 'two plus two is four'—is as much a fact as a steam-engine," he answers, that "two plus two is five" is also an idea, "but it is not a fact, and the question still re- mains, What is a true idea, and what is not ? A large class of ideas, he says, are accepted as true, both by you and by me; why will you force me beyond into an alleged spiritual world in which you believe, but which you cannot prove to me to exist, as you can any one of the ideas upon which we can both agree? Your pretended psycho-

logical inquiries and spiritual investigation's into the dreamland of your own mind, appear to me as wide of the mark (in the present day) as would be the efforts of a man who should try to deduce the properties of a steam-engine from the curling wreath of white mist and the rolling cloud of black smoke that dance in the summer sky. I prefer taking the engine to pieces, and you say I am blind to spiritual things, and morally diseased."

In a word, sir, it seems little more just to represent as he result of moral disease the Positivist's deliberate and rational rejection of other men's attempts to explain the First Cause by hypotheses un- convincing to him, and in his apprehension contrary to his existing knowledge, than it would be to ascribe the dynamical science of modern days, which refuses to enter into metaphysical disquisitions upon the essence of FORCE to a state of mathematical sickness. The mathematician wisely says, "so long as men attempted to ac- count for 'force' by a priori considerations and definitions, they lost themselves in impenetrable mists, nor was any progress made in dyna- mics until they limited themselves strictly to the study of 'outer fact?" Is the modern mathematician on that account in a state of mathematical disease and sceptical sickness, or is he not in far sounder health than the a priori Platonist and the Schoolman of former days ? And, may it not be asked, if it is not necessary for the mathematician to have any creed whatsoever concerning the essence of force, if such an essence exists, why is it more necessary for man in general that he should hold some creed or other (you do not restrict him to one in particular) concerning an assumed first cause, all the explanations of which are antagonistic to everything demonstrative, which he knows ?

But it is with your doctrines upon "morality," as connected with " the belief in a supernatural power and a life beyond the grave," that I find myself so deeply at issue. You do, indeed, admit' for a

moment that morality may exist upon a basis other than religious— but you admit it only for the sake of argument, and call it even then an enormous admission. And yet you are infinitely more tolerant, and probably as well read, as ninety-nine hundredths of your country- men. You test morality at large by the one "experinzentum crude" of suicide, and speaking of Atheism you affirm that "suicide is its logical conclusion, whenever the body is permanently afflicted." I am not here to defend Atheism, but remembering that you use the name as more or less convertible with Secularism, Positivism, and the absence of belief in a supernatural power or future state, may I not ask how it is possible for any one, with the history of ethics present to his mind, to maintain that the development of morality has been due to what, for the sake of brevity, I will call the religious element ?

The founder of the only perfect ethical system yet given to the world, called down morality from the clouds to earth, and fought her battles against the religious element of his day. Socrates, it is true, believed in immortality, but it would be hard to prove that his ethical doctrines were founded on that belief. And in all times and countries, the moral detritus, out of which every system of law and morality has been raised, has, either partially or totally, but invariably, operated by friction against, and in antagonism to, the spiritualism of those times and countries. So it was in Greece, so it was in Rome, where the ethical systems of the one, and the juris- prudence of the other, grew out of the earth, so to speak, in op- position to the dogmatic theology of the day, and were matured by the myriad intercourse of man with man, and not, moreover, under any supposed influence of a belief in a future state. And if we .turn to the Christian scheme of ethics, who, in the face of overwhelming historical evidence, with any respect for his own un- derstanding, can refuse to admit its gradual development out of a conflict of secular elements, partly Jewish, but much more Greek, Roman, and Northern. Mr. Stuart Mill, whose labours are an ho- nour to English thought, gravely wrote, only the other day, that the system of morality contained in the New Testament, is purely negative, and that he who would see the positive side of morality fully exemplified, must seek for examples among the ancient heathens. And no one has refuted him, apparently because no one who knows anything of ethics, would lower his pen or stake his reputation by doing so. Not only has Christianity added no new axiom to human morality, but the practice of morality in its general and gradual ex- tension throughout the mass of men (and this is a capital point), has been due precisely to the progress of civilization—that is, of scientific knowledge—that knowledge, namely, which facilitates the intercourse of man with man, and which has grown irresistibly against the spiritual beliefs, displacing them one by one.

Much is said of the sadness of certain creeds as compared with others. There seems to be more confusion than sound thought in the matter. If certain creeds have ministered undue comforts and enervated the mind by a continued system of spiritual dram instead of fostering the masculine self-command and noble virtues of the ancients, which, if we affect to despise, we are unworthy to emulate, those who in the single-eyed pursuit of truth have found themselves com- pelled to believe in more modest consolations and to rely more upon themselves, may, and no doubt must, feel for a time sadder and more solitary. But their sadness is due to their previous education and not to their present creed. History i shows that by degrees men get reconciled to any creed, and that their actual life s ultimately deter- mined, even against their creed, by the great resultant of the minute influ.elices which affect them day by day.

The illustration drawn from the Secularism of the Buddhist is plausible, but it will scarcely stand. The soaring Stoic drew the consequ nee of suicide from his sublimer doctrines just as easily as the so-cmJled Secularist Buddhist. And apart from Christianity, it is readily conceivable that a devout believer in divine goodness might argue when afflicted beyond hope, that his irremediable affliction was a divine token that he was called upon to leave this world for the other world in which he believes, and that he was in fact beckoned into the arms of infinite love. But in truth the conduct of the bulk of men is determined, not by logical conclusions drawn from their creeds, but by their animal tenacity of life and the average suffering which they are called upon to endure. And this average is not such in any part of the globe as to lead the majority of men to commit suicide. Consequently they live on, until they die naturally against their will.

I do not for a moment consider the possible objection, that all who

commit suicide are really Secularists in disguise. It would still re- main to be explained, why, if Secularism determines suicide, Secu- larists should commit suicide in a different ratio in the different months of the year. But, indeed, sir, the whole tone and candour of your article forbid me to suppose that you would support such an

i objection. Suicide, then, s not necessarily connected in fact with Secularism. It has existed in all times and countries, nor is Chris- tianity, or any other belief in a future state or higher power, any certain safeguard against it. If we are disposed to listen to medical testimony, we find that the worst cases of lunacy are directly trace- able to a distorted view of spiritual religion. And suicide is one of the many terminations of lunacy. If such is the case in point of

fact, the logic of the Buddhist is little to the purpose, or its occa- sional realization by an occasional Buddhist fanatic and his family. Such suicides are fairly countervailed by the anti-secularist and reli- gious suicides among ourselves. It is not the place to enter upon an historical disquisition into the causes of the stagnancy which you attribute to secular Buddhism. I will only say that practical historians mi„obt be little disposed to agree with you, however little they may care for Buddhism as a creed. Our Teutonic forefathers imagined a hunting, fighting, and drinking paradise, because they were fond of drinking, fighting, and hunting. They were not drunkards, warriors, and sportsmen, because they had first invented a Walhalla. And whether or not they believed in a Walhalla would have little affected the irresistible course of Western civilization.

Taking broader ground, it must be patent to every dispassionate

observer that, except in particular cases and moments of their lives, the great majority of persons are not influenced by the thought of a future life, however firmly they may hold to it as an article of faith. The most powerful, constant, and universal influence arises out of the medium in which a man lives—the degree of moral light by which he is surrounded—and this moral light is totally disconnected from a belief in a future state. Our bakers adulterate their bread, our butchers sell putrid meat, our chemists poison their drugs, our news- vendors puff their trash, without being in any sense Positivists or Secularists, but in reality suffering twinges of conscience perhaps all the time, and even against their will firmly believing in a future state. When they cease to adulterate their bread, to sell putrid meat, to poison their drugs, and puff their trash, they do so because they are overtaken by a scorching publicity, and morality, in and per se, vindicates her rights. I put it confidently to the candour of your readers to say, looking back upon their lives, how often the thought of a future state or higher power (the denial of which would heartily shock them) has prevented them from indulging in any particular sin against morality. Let them answer to their own consciences, and I will undertake to say the simple answer will be : "Very seldom." But they will probably add: "So much the more shame for us." To which I reply : "So be it, if you please. But the result is, that your average morality is not founded on spiritual considerations."

Consequently, it follows that the existence and growth of the average and daily morality, is not dependent upon the existing belief in a future state or a higher power.

Again, I repeat, I am not here to defend Atheism. But when you say that "Atheism, even if it were true, would still be the saddest of beliefs, inasmuch as it leaves man only the highest brute imprisoned in the grasp of a power which is as often malignant as it is kindly," may I not ask, sir, why more a brute in one case than in the other ? Man is man still, so he be but true to himself. The fabled ermine dies, if she but spot her dainty robe; and why need man, as mere man, be 'less jealous of his nature? Some men, it is true, prefer a moral dunghill to a bank of violets ; but as a rule, I pray you, are they confined to the ranks of Secularism ?

Nor is it easy to see why the Positivist, who prefers his own irre- sistible conviction to what he believes to be the mere figments and hypotheses of other men, is more a brute than they?

I know that your toleration (would it were universal) is so large that however deeply you may, as you unquestionably do, disagree with me, you will not only allow, but even suggest, the difference between the educated and scientific Positivist and the mere un- educated, and, as you call him, "hating," Secularist. I for one, sir, may lay my hand upon my heart and say, that far from hatred, I have the tenderest regard, let me say boldly, love, for the opposite, often beautiful, faith of other men. But if some poor Secularists harbour "hatred" and end in "mummery," what shall we say of so many excellent Christians ? The mummery of Comtism, if it be such, is at least preferable to the ranting, jumping Trappism, and other excrescences of a supernatural system. And if I sincerely be- lieve many things which 1 cannot understand, at least I escape the humiliation of believing what I understand to be false.—I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant, A Posravnvr.