if our happiness becomes more intense, so does our misery become more intolerable. I refer not merely to physical conditions, though here the contrast is most apparent. An intelligent traveller who recently circled the world, surveying mankind with a keen and impartial eye ‘from China to Peru,’ says, as the result of his experience, ‘The traveller will not see in all his wanderings so much abject repulsive misery among human beings in the most heathen lands, as that which startles him in his civilised Christian home, for nowhere are the extremes of wealth and poverty so painfully presented.’ This is perfectly true; but it would be a rash conclusion to infer that civilised and Christian countries are worse than heathen lands, or that those who march in the van of progress and succeed in the struggle for life, have a larger dose of original sin than the laggards and those who fail.
Accumulations of population and accumulations of capital are alike causes and effects of progress in an industrial age. But you can no more have a north without a south pole, than you can have this progress without its counterpart of suffering. When an educated gentleman was, like the good vicar,
how many struggles and how many heart-aches were avoided. When ‘merry England’ dwelt in rural hamlets and villages, the ‘bitter cry’ of East London could scarcely have been written. Turn it as you like, increase of population means increase of poverty. Say that only five per cent. fail in the battle of life, from their own or inherited faults; from bad luck, ill-health, weakness of mind, adverse surroundings; five per cent. on thirty millions is a larger figure than five per cent. on ten millions. And the lot of those who fail is aggravated by the success of those who succeed. The scale of living rises, and the cost of living increases, while competition becomes keener. Increase of population in a limited area means increased difficulty of finding employment; and the complex relations of international commerce send panics and crises vibrating throughout the world, which throw millions out of work, or reduce them to starvation wages. In simple forms of society every one accepts the condition in which he finds himself as a matter of course, while in a more complex civilisation the fiend Envy steps in, and teaches the baser natures who are failures, to regard every success as an insult and every successful man as an enemy. Hence Labour rises in mad revolt against Capital; Socialists attack society with dynamite; and Utopian theorists preach a millennium to be attained by abolishing private property and individual liberty.
If we turn to the moral aspects of the question, it is still more clear that evolution does not tend solely to the side of virtue. There is doubtless less ferocious savagery, less rude and unconscious or half-conscious crime, in civilised societies, but there is far more deliberate and diabolical wickedness. The very temptations and opportunities which, if resisted, lead to higher virtues, if succumbed to, lead to greater vice. Even the intellectual advance, if perverted, becomes the instrument of greater crimes. A chemist discovers nitro-glycerine, and dynamite becomes a resource of civilisation. There is a saying that there is ‘no blackguard so bad as a Scotch blackguard,’ which, as a patriotic Scotchman, I take to be a tribute to the generally high intellectual and moral character of my countrymen. A powerful polarity is powerful, as the case may be, either for good or evil. Why then should we believe that evolution, which, carried thus far, has developed more strongly the contrast between good and evil, will, if carried a little farther, extinguish it by annihilating the evil?
In fact, the good and evil resulting from the higher evolution of society are so equally balanced that it depends very much on place, time, and temperament whether we are optimists or pessimists. If my liver acts properly I am an optimist; if it is out of order, a pessimist. Personally I incline to optimism—that is, I think that this world, if not exactly ‘the best of all possible worlds,’ is yet on the whole a very tolerable world, and that life to the majority, and on the average, is worth living. I think also that progress is certainly towards higher, and very probably towards happier, conditions. It seems to me that in the most advanced English-speaking communities, the condition of at least one half—viz. the female half—of the population is distinctly better, and that the working class, who form the majority of the male half, though many are worse off than formerly, are, on the whole, better fed, better clothed, better educated, and better behaved.
This, however, is perhaps very much a matter of temperament. Greater minds than mine have seen things differently and inclined to pessimism. Buddhism, and almost all Oriental religions and philosophies, are based upon it, and look to Nirvana or annihilation of personal identity as the supreme bliss. Pauline Christianity assumes that all mankind, except a few chosen vessels, are so hopelessly bad as to be predestined to eternal damnation. And even more remarkable, Shakespeare, the universal genius, who one would say had as happy a temperament and led as successful a life as any man, had his moods of despondency in which he could say:—
Or declare with Hamlet that no one would bear the ills of life if
With instances like these, and the disgust of life manifested in so many modern societies by the increase of suicides, and the spread of pessimistic theories like those of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, who can deny that the great magnet of modern civilisation has a south as well as a north pole, and that progress is not all towards perfection?
The attempts of theologians to reconcile the existence of evil with the goodness of an almighty Creator, by relegating the adjustment to a future life, only make the fact of this fundamental polarity more apparent, for their conceptions of a heaven and a hell obviously do not reconcile, but only intensify, the opposite polarities. The good are better, the bad worse, the happy happier, and the wretched more miserable, in all these attempts to define the undefinable and to reconcile divine justice with divine mercy. All that remains really clear to each individual is that by his efforts in this life he can do something to keep the balance of polarities somewhat more on the side of good, both in his own individual existence, and in that of the aggregate of units, of which he is one, which is called society or humanity.
The great advantage of this form of religious hypothesis, which for want of a better name I call Zoroastrianism, is that, in the first place, it gets rid of the antagonism between religion and science, for there is no possible discovery of science which is irreconcilable with the fact that there is a necessary and inevitable polarity of good and evil, and in the background a great unknown, which may be regarded with those feelings and aspirations which are inseparable from human nature. And secondly, there is the still greater advantage that we can devote ourselves with a whole heart and sincere mind to the worship of the good principle, without paltering with our moral nature by professing to love and adore a Being who is the author of all the evil and misery in the world as well as of the good. If it were really true that there were such a Being as theologians describe, who created the immense majority of the human race vessels of wrath doomed to eternal punishment, either from pure caprice or to avenge the slight offered to Him by the disobedience of a remote ancestor, what would be the attitude of every healthy human soul towards such a Being? Rather that of Prometheus or Satan, than of Gabriel or Michael; of heroic defiance than of abject submission. We may gloss this over in words, but the fact remains, and it is difficult to overestimate the amount of evil which has resulted in the world from this confusion of moral sentiments which has made good men do devil’s work in the belief that it had divine sanction.
The horrors of demonology and witchcraft had their origin in texts of the Old Testament; religious wars and persecutions arose out of the fundamental error that intellectual acceptance of doubtful dogmas was the one thing necessary for salvation; and ruthless cruelty was justified by an appeal to God’s anger with Saul for refusing to hew in pieces the captive Amalekites. A follower of Zoroaster would see at once that these were works of Ahriman and not of Ormuzd, and that in taking part in them he was deserting the standard under which he had enlisted, and doing deeds of darkness while pretending to serve the Prince of Light. This idea of being a soldier enlisted in the army of light seems to me to afford one of the strongest practical inducements to hate what is evil and cleave to what is good. A bad deed or foul thought is felt to be not only wrong but dishonourable: a disloyal going over to the enemy and abandonment of the chief under whom we had enlisted, and of the comrades with whom we had served. This is a very strong motive, and even in the humble ranks of the Salvation Army we can see how powerfully it operates to make men true to their banner.
Indeed a great deal of what is best in genuine Christianity seems to me to resolve itself very much into the worship of Jesus as the Ormuzd or personification of the good principle, and determination to try to follow his example and do his work. It happens to me to receive a good many circulars from the devoted men and women who are doing so much charitable work to assist the poor and fallen, and I observe that the appeals are almost constantly made in the name of Jesus. When the Salvation Army made an appeal the other day to its members for funds to prosecute their campaign, it was touching to read the replies and see men parting with an overcoat or giving up their beer, and women going without a new bonnet or cup of tea, to contribute their mite. But always for the ‘love of Jesus,’ for the ‘Saviour’s sake,’ as an offering to the ‘dear Redeemer.’ Theological Christianity says that the one thing needful is to believe in the Catholic Faith as defined by the Athanasian Creed, without which we shall ‘without doubt perish everlastingly.’ Practical Christianity has completely dropped the Holy Ghost as a sort of fifth wheel to the coach, and relegated the Father into ever vaguer and greater distance; while it has fastened more and more on the figure of Jesus of Nazareth as the practical living embodiment of the good principle of the universe. In a word, Christianity, as it has become more reasonable, more charitable, more pure, and more elevated, has approximated more and more to Zoroastrianism, and for practical purposes modern Christians are, to a great extent, without knowing it, worshippers of Ormuzd, with Christ for their Ormuzd.
To this I see no sort of objection. The tendency to personify abstract principles in something which is warmer, dearer, nearer to ourselves, is ineradicable in human nature; and especially among the great masses of mankind who cannot rise to the height of philosophical speculations. It is impossible in the present age to invent new personifications, or to revive old ones. Jesus has the immense advantage of being in possession of the field, with all the accumulated love and reverence of nineteen centuries of followers. It would be difficult to invent a better ideal or a more perfect example. No doubt the ideal, like all human conceptions, is not absolutely perfect; it is subject to the law of polarity, and its excellences, if pushed to the ‘falsehood of extremes,’ in many cases become faults. It would not do in practice if smitten on one cheek to turn the other, or to take no thought for the morrow and live like the sparrows. The opposition between the flesh and the spirit is also stated so absolutely, that it is apt to lead to a barren and ignoble asceticism. But those are elements which, practically, are not likely to be pushed to excess, and which serve rather to mitigate the tendencies of modern civilisation to an undue preponderance of the opposite polarities of selfishness, worldliness, and sensuality. Courage, hardihood, self-reliance, foresight, a love of progress, and a desire to attain independence, will always remain prominent virtues, especially of the stronger races, and the gentler teachings of Christianity will long be wanted as an influence to soften, to elevate, and to purify. By all means, therefore, let Christians remain Christians, and see in Christ their Ormuzd, or personification of the good principle. Only let them remember that there are two sides to every question, and cease to entertain hard and bitter thoughts towards those who follow the truth after a different fashion. Let them delight rather to discover unity in the spirit than differences in the letter, and instead of anathematising with Athanasius those who dissent by one hair’s breadth from the Catholic faith, strive with St. Paul after that charity which ‘suffereth long and is kind: beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.’
This will be easier if they recollect that love and reverence for Jesus, as the personification of the good principle, is in no way connected with the supernatural dogmas and legends which have come down from superstitious ages, and which are seen every day, more and more clearly, to stand in direct contradiction to the real facts and real laws of the universe. He is the bright example of the highest ideal of human virtue, not on account of miracles, but in spite of them; not because he was a transcendental abstraction with attributes altogether outside of human experience or conception; but because he was a man whom other men can love and other men can strive to imitate. The dogmas and miracles may quietly fade out of sight, as so many articles of the Athanasian Creed have already done, like mists before the rising rays of larger knowledge and purer morality, and yet the essence of Christianity will remain, as a worship of the good and beautiful, personified in the brightest example which has been afforded—that of Jesus, the son of the carpenter of Nazareth.