PANACEAS.
IF one wants to find a real sceptic, one should attend a philanthropic or religious conference, and listen carefully to the panaceas there proposed. At the confer- ence of the Dissenting Pastors on the spiritual wants of London, last Wednesday, the Rev. Dr. Parker is reported to bave said, that nothing effectual would be done for the objects of that conference till every drink-shop in London had been put down, Evidently, in that gentleman's opinion. Bacchus has a great deal more power than God, though he surely believes Bacchus and every other idol to be, as St. Paul puts it, "nothing in the world," nothing but a false god, a physical agent, though more powerful for evil than the true God is powerful for good. Compared with this belief in the maleficent omnipotence of drink- shops, Berkeley's belief in tar-water as the universal agent for the cure of human bodies was a holy enthusiasm, for Berkeley only supposed it to be a physical panacea for good, and a physical panacea for good is perfectly con- sistent with a divine purpose behind it, while a physical panacea for ill, which stands obstinately in the way of every good work, certainly is not. If before you can rouse the higher enthusiasms of the heart, you must somehow manage to annihilate the evil magic of such a physical agent as alcohol, it is evident that the springs of spiritual faith must be far weaker than the springs of spirituous dissipation. Whenever we find, the imaginations of men haunted by the idea that a physical agent is all-powerful for mischief, we may be sure that they are victims of one of the most paralysing kinds of scepticism. They are allowing the shadow of the earth to eclipse the light of heaven. The mischief of drink-shops is, in Dr. Parker's imagination, more than a match for the attractive power of divine holiness. And that, no doubt, is the view of all the more superstitious of the advocates of the Veto Bill. And though, as we have said, there is no compari- son between the mischief done by the devotees of a negative doctrine like the virtual omnipotence of drink, and the devotees of a positive doctrine like the virtual omnipo- tence of some talisman for good, like tar-water, or scien- tific education, or sanitary reform, or Socialism, or the sacredness of humanity as compared with the sacredness of property, or the ballot,—the holy principle of secret voting,—or "the parliament of man, and the federation of the world," or "three acres and a cow," or the eight-hour day, or any other magic formula for the regeneration of the human race,—yet even this craving after panaceas of the beneficent or hypothetically beneficent sort, is a sign of weakness, as showing how unable the imagina- tion is to realise the true comprehensiveness and infinitude of the power for good which surrounds the life of man on every side, and attracts him now from one side now from another, but never narrows itself down to the grooves of a single formula, or the idolatry of a special panacea. The real mischief of a devotion to panaceas is that it so much narrows the horizon of every region in which the pursuit of panaceas is adequately organised. A politician, now, is seldom one whose mind ranges over the whole region of public life. He is usually a man whose mind is parcelled up into the service of various practical associations. He is either an Irish Home-ruler and an eight-hour man, and a Disestablishment man, and a Lords abolitionist man, and a "one man one vote" man, or he is a 'peace and arbitration" man, and a Veto Bill man, and a Working-man's club man, and a Friendly society man,— several of these being very wholesome and worthy classes of workers, but all of them tending too much to box up the mind into departments, and departments so strictly confined to very limited and perhaps rather depressing fields of energy, that politics as a field of thought and effort are quite lost in the multitude and ostentatiousness of the minute details which rivet the attention of the practical politician. How can either an Establishment man or a Disestablishment man, for instance, be expected to take any serious interest in Coleridge's speculations on Church and State, and his conception of a Clerisy which should provide moral nutriment for the nation at large without reference to shades of theological opinion ? He has been. taught to divide men into Establishment men and Disestablishment men, and. his mind is incapable of apprehending an attitude of thought about the Church which is entirely outside either formula. How can a man who has committed himself to " ending " the Lords be expected to take an interest in Mr. Bagelaot's "English Constitution," and. his discussion of the value of the orna- mental parts of that Constitution for fascinating the imaginations of a whole people, and giving them a sense of the great variety of elements which go to make up the complex field of political life P The mere habit of thinking a particular measure, like Local Option, or an Allotments Bill, or Home-rule, or Universal Arbitration, as all-essential, tends to give a certain squalor to politics, and to lower it from a great and fascinating study to the level which it always assumes in the hands of the agitator and the wire-puller. It is hardly possible, indeed, to draw such documents as the Newcastle programme without dwarfing the political mind. The moment you lay a great emphasis on some rather paltry practical measure, you are entering on the same track which leads to the political panacea, and you will be very lucky if you avoid the narrow- ness in which the advocacy of all panaceas ends. But even the politician who loses himself in this way is excusable as compared with the religious teacher who does the same, for it should be of the very essence of religious teaching to avoid the falsehoods and the blind-alleys of the agitator, and to teach that in religious faith we have a master-key to the highest side of the heart of man, and one which no mere physical passion is strong enough to override. It is one of the worst consequences of democracy that, in order to make politics a real subject to the masses of the people, it becomes all but essential to invent a number of petty practical proposals which the masses of the people can take in and concentrate their minds upon ; and that in order to bring these sufficiently before the atten- tion of the people, we have to exaggerate the importance and ignore the flaws in these proposals. The popular aspect of politics presents one mass of panaceas, almost all of which are of very minor importance, and tend to obscure principles of far greater moment. Politics as an art, therefore, disfigures politics as a science, and goes a great way towards robbing it of all its fascination. But when religious teachers allow themselves to be captivated by the ostentatious promises of these panaceas, and to speak of religion as powerless until alcohol, or any other external temptation, has been driven from the field, they do indeed play into the hands of those mechanical reformers who reduce the soul to an appendage of the body, and regard the Creator as in bondage to his own world.
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