THE

ENGLISH AND FOREIGN

PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY.

VOLUME IV.
 Skflantbne
BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
NATUEAL LAW,

ffissag in

EDITH SIMCOX.

LONDON:
TRUBNEE & CO., LUDGATE HILL.
1877.

[All rights reserved.]

IF truth be at all within the reach of human capacity, 'tis certain it must
lievery deep and abstruse ; and to hope we shall arrive at it without pains,
while the greatest geniuses have failed with the utmost pains, must

certainly be esteemed sufficiently vain and presumptuous. I pretend to no

such advantage in the philosophy I am going to unfold, and would esteem
ita strong presumption against it were it so very easy and obvious.
HUME'S Treatise of Human Nature.
 CONTENTS,

i.

NATURAL LAW.
PAOR
Query, Whether human acts and feelings are subject to law in the
same sense as the modifications of unconscious natural objects ? 3
Human feeling presumably so subject as itself a product of physical

Human will so subject unless human nature is essentially unknow-

........7
able . . . . . .
5
The nature of a thing = the laws of its manifestations . .
5
Definition of law 6
Accidental uniformities not to be called a law . .

True laws state the relations between things which are made con-
stant by otherwise fixed properties in the things related . 8
The laws imposed on the human will =
the dictates of the sum of
efficient motives . . . . . . .11
The laws of nature obeyed involuntarily and, unconsciously ; positive
law by deliberate acts of will N . . . . .12
Query, Whether positive law presupposes a lawgiver ? .
13
The essence of subjection to law consists in the general necessity of
voluntary obedience to certain commands . . 14
The real uniformities of human conduct
conditioned by the nature
of the agent, by his relations with other men, and by his rela-
tions to things in general . . . .
*5

II.

CUSTOMARY AND POSITIVE LAW.

Positive law deals with the constant relations of men to each other
following from their nature as men . . . 19
Query, Have these relations any common quality ? . 19
Most general natural law that society could not subsist without law,
i.c., if all volitions were incalculably unstable . . .20
viii CONTENTS.
PAGE
Customary law = a record of the habitual performance, by men of
the same kind, of actions of the same kind, similar causes
producing similar effects till some of the conditions vary . 21
Consciousness of constraint, the characteristic of positive law acts :

that "have to be done," without desire, in obedience to ex-

ternal pressure voluntarily submitted to . . .22
Custom passes into law when uniform practices cease to be instinc-
tive, and men become conscious of the generality of an usage
as a motive for conforming to it, or a deterrent from its breach 24
When customs have become divergent, the will of the community
expresses itself through a special official organ . .
25
Influence of political centralisation on legislation . . -27
Distinction between legislation and government . . .28
and subject
Differentiation of sovereign . . . 29
Law requires the co-operation of two natures, tendencies, or wills,

i.e., the subject's consent . . . .

-3
Natural history of primitive potentates, the patriarch and the chief 31
Law formulates the real relations inter se of the subjects of law .
37
Whence the feeling that natural constancies of relation
" "
to
ought
be maintained ? . . . . . .
38
Distinction between fact and law . . . . 41
Law only gives the rule of life for the normal man . .
-43
Distinction between jus and justa. We ask, both, What is justice ?

and What kind of actions are just ? .46

.......
. .

Natural selection of possibilities in the direction of equity . .

48
Littre' and Kant 51
Justice = the best general rule practically applicable . .
52
No standard of right or justice except the real tendency of the kind
to its own good . . . . . .
54
The only " natural right " of individuals what the common good
requires them to have . . . . .
-59
Metaphysical theories of the source of legal obligation . . 62

III.

MORALITY.
Sense of obligation
Habit not a motive
=
.......
consciousness of causation

Difficulty of separating the practical

.

and speculative side of moral

.
-75
77

problems . . . . . .
-78
Duty always conceived as relative to a person
owning the obligation 79

........
Human feelings conditioned by natural facts, and not conversely
Divergent theories of obligation, theistic, sentimental, and utili-
tarian

.....
Right being relative to the conscience, what is the good commonly
83

85

86
thought right or moral ?
 CONTENTS. ix

PAGE
Three kinds of good natural good, or full healthy life
: . .
87
Sensible good, or pleasure . . . . .
-9
Moral good, or the pursuit of natural good through obstacles which
make the pursuit self-conscious . . . .
.98
Such obstacles threefold . . . . .
-99
Utilitarianism fails to motive evolution, or to explain the cases in

Natural necessity of self-denial .....

which sensible and natural good do not coincide .

A morality of some kind or formula of obligation, imposed by the

. 101
107

nature of the agent in its fixed relations with the surrounding

medium exists necessarily, whatever the nature of its actual

injunctions .. . . . .
117
The tendencies commonly called moral, those which conduce to the
natural good of the kind . . . .
119
A kind could not subsist with essentially self-destructive tendencies 121
The sacrifice of the natural good of individuals only liable to become
moral because men are members of a social body, so that their
natural perfection includes the discharge of social functions, in
the manner most conducive to the natural perfection of the
whole 126

IV.

RELIGION.
The natural history of emotion . . .
133
. .

Comparative authority of feeling and reason .

135
.

All human knowledge, belief, and perception natural, because all re-
ceived through the natural faculties of man . . .136
Men find themselves affected by forces that are Not-man, and do not
at once conceive any of these to be unconscious . 139

.......
Ceremonial observances associated with religion . 141
. .

Religious feeling first a reaction under the apprehension of uncon-

trollable

on ........
power
Then under an apprehension
man
of the moral influences of the Not-self

Agnosticism and the Cultus of the Unknowable

The metaphysics of ignorance
. 147 . .
142

144

. . . 151 .

........
Personification of the imagined cause of a felt impression .154
Arbitrary grouping of events by each several centre of conscious-
ness
.

156

.......
Emotional vicissitudes explained in the same way as material inci-
.I5 8
........
dents . . . . .

Historical idolatries 165

Dualism 168
Pantheism . ,169
 CONTENTS.
PAGE
Mystical and natural love and worship . . .
171
Comte Humanity great, but not supreme
: . . . .178
The religious sentiment one of complete dynamic acquiescence . 182
" "

......
Religious conversion of the will to such acquiescence in the real

tendency of all that is . . . . .

.183
" Conviction of sin"
185
Naturalistic piety and its limits . . .190
. .

Whether the religious sentiment is equally reasonable in all ages 193 .

Piety most rational when human aspirations after the Best possible

.......
find themselves most nearly in harmony with the spontaneous
course of things . . . . . .
.196

.......
Atheistical religion 198
Rational faith only belief in the reality and trust in the power of
goodness 200
Discrepancy between, even, lawful wishes and powers . .
205

V.

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ALTRUISM.

Retrospect . . . . . . . .211
The moral conduct naturally identified with

......
"sufficient reason" for
the standard of morality . . . .
.215
The standard of Conscience 216
Of Utility
Of Perfection
Action instinctive or rational
.

..... .

Instinctive action disinterested as often as not

. . .

.
.

.
.218

.221
217

220

.......
Power of acting develops more freely than power of enjoying .
223
Power of acting with or upon other men craves exercise as it
develops
The natural history of Altruism
Social discords accidental
.....
......
226
228
232
wisdom and

......
Social virtue consist mainly in harmonising the tenden-
cies that exist, not in bringing them all into conformity with
some outer standard 234
The general law of social duty enforced by penal sanctions, the force
of which upon the human will is due to the same tendencies
which caused the law to be proclaimed .... 239

VI.

THE NATURAL SANCTIONS OF MORALITY.

Causes and effects inseparable, so the dislike felt for the natural

consequences of an immoral act, otherwise attractive, acts as a

sanction of the law against it . . . . .
245
 CONTENTS. xi

....
.......
The natural law against murder and
PACK

.......
theft 246
Against inconstancy
Against suicide
The
The
.....
.......
natural history of charity
pleasures of vice
247
252
254
258
Waste of moral force in the exercises of false religion . . 260
Doctrine of remission of sins an immoral evasion of the stringency
of the natural sanction that no accomplished act can be undone 261
Remorse, the consciousness of having acted against the true nature 265
Human will gives voice and effect to human nature .
.271 .

VII.

SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION.

The best possible attainment, at any given period, a question of fact 275

....
Various types of specific excellence only comparable when tried by
the standard of social serviceableness 278

........
Mutual dependence of the ruling few and the subservient many . 280
Alternative vocations :
politics, industrialism, art, science, philan-
thropy 280
Political ideals :

....
postulates ; that progress is normal and privilege
unjust: definition of social progress
Danger of social disorganisation comes not from the fact of social
282

development, but from its partial and unequal extent . .

283
Popular and providential theories of the function of government

.....
.
284
Differentiation of social functions; self-willed service honourable
and compulsory obedience base 288
Natural ability privileged to render the most honourable services .
289
But beneficial services must be accepted as well as proffered, and so
far the leaders of society are at the mercy of their followers 292

....
.

Growing complexity of the social ideal which makes the obligations

and notorious

......
of individuals less clear 295
The ideal in legislation neither more nor less attainable than the
ideal in government 300
Legal rights of property subject to the common interest . .
302
Effect on proprietary rights of an absolute physical limitation of
supply in the case of any commodity in demand, e.g., land .
304
The waiving of anti-social rights a step towards the formation of

Organisation of public services .....

improved social custom which may in time rank as law .
307
308

.......
Theory of the production and distribution of wealth 309
. .

Natural versus competitive value cost and utility the

: essential
elements 310
Third element in the price of labour : the Wille zum Lcben of the
vendor . . . . . . .
311
xii CONTENTS.
PAGE
Personal motives not always forthcoming to urge every one to the
end generally most desirable . . . .
315
Inexpedient to interfere with the accidental consequences of un-
equal natural ability

...... 317
. r
. , . . .

Desirable to substitute a rational estimate of value for the fluctuating

competitive price 318
Partition of the " unearned increment " of social wealth

.......
Natural value not diminished by increased production, nor real pur-
chasing power
Honorary services the natural price of unearned wealth
The ideal state on all points practically unattainable query, Whether
.

.
.318

.
323
325
;

the best possible be an approach to the unattainable ? . .

326
Demand that ethical theories shall carry with them their application

.......
to the practical emergencies which concern us . . .
327
The duty of individuals traced out by the social and the personal
ideal conjointly 328

thropic reformer
^Esthetic emotion
Positive truth
.......
Temporary, reluctant and conditional exaltation of the philan-

.......
. . . . . .
331
335
337
Moral diffidence of a
The ....
critical introspective age . . .
339

......
asceticism of secular fastidiousness 341
No real antagonism possible between the claims of social duty and
individual perfection 3/14
Specialisation of function among individuals usually a gain, but
increasing differentiation of classes a loss, if it extends beyond

.......
an external division of labour to a radical contrast of nature .
346
Personal completeness a condition of the best action, however highly
specialised 347

VIII.

CONCLUSIONS.
Pro and Con ........ 352

CORRIGENDA.
Page 65, 6 from bottom, for " things in themselves," read
line

"things bad in themselves."

"
Page 187, line 14 from top, for inconsistence," read "inconsistent."
 I.

NATURAL LAW.

"Pleriqne qui de affectibus et hominum vivendi rafcione scripserunt,

videntur non de rebus naturalibus, quse communes naturse leges sequuntur,
sed de rebus, qua? extra naturam sunt agere." SPINOZA.
Query, whether human acts and feelings are subject to law in the same
sense as the modifications of unconscious natural objects? Human feeling
presumably so subject asitself a product of physical laws Human will
BO subject unless human nature is essentially unknowable The nature
of a thing equals the laws of its manifestations Definition of law
Accidental uniformities not to be called a law True laws state the rela-
tions between things which are made constant by otherwise fixed pro-

perties in the things related Two things acting on each other modify
each other in a given fixed way, but one does not impose the necessary
modification on the other, it follows necessarily from the nature of
both The laws imposed on the human will equal the dictates of the
sum The laws of nature obeyed involuntarily and
of efficient motives

unconsciously ; positive
law by deliberate acts of will Query, whether
law presupposes a lawgiver? The essentials of a law generality and
obeyableness The general rules which men find it natural and necessary
to obey, regulate their actions and feelings towards each other, and their
feelings towards the fixed immaterial conditions of their moral and intel-
lectual life.
 I.

NATURAL LAW.
ANY inquiry into the conditions of human existence takes
for granted that something exists.

By the existence of a thing we understand only a real

power of producing and undergoing modification and as, ;

by human consciousness of existence, we understand only

the power of perceiving modifications produced or suffered
by the conscious subject and other real things, it is evident
that speculation concerning human existence can only be
concerned with the perceivable modifications suffered or
produced by human beings.
The shortest
way of stating a case is always the most
abstract. No simple word, to which we attach clear and
ready images, will serve to describe both sides of the
phenomena of life. "We may speak of modifications, or
change and the consciousness of change but, saving a few
;

metaphysicians, every one will object that change presup-

poses the existence of things that change; and there is
no easily intelligible formula for the fact that it is only
by changes in ourselves that we discern the existence of
change, or changing things, beyond ourselves.
The provinces of natural science and moral philosophy
touch in the problem Whether the modifications of which
:

human beings are conscious in themselves are subject to

law in the same sense in which the modifications of
unconscious natural objects are so subject, and whether
they may become in the same way matter for positive,
exact knowledge ?
If consciousness is to be trusted or in other words, if
4 NATURAL LAW.
the changes of which we are conscious in ourselves are
in any way a faithful reflection or counterpart of the

changing relations among other objective existences one-

half of ourlife, that of passive perception, will be as com-

pletely and knowably subject to law as the orderly natural

phenomena we perceive. If, further, the human mind

that
is made, as the human body is made, of that which it

feeds on and assimilates, its long course of orderly per-

ception will grow must have grown long since into an
organic habit of knowledge, a set of mental predisposi-
tions,answering to the most general set of outward im-
pressions.
As the animal eye is made by the action of the light
which it perceives upon specially organised matter, so
the animal mind is made by the perceptions it registers
through a still higher development of the vital mechanism.
This natural continuity, or congruity between thought and
things, fixes the objective place of man, the knowing and
feeling, in the order of nature, the knowable and sensi-
ble. But man is not merely a passive register of natural
phenomena. No natural force is more active and prolific
than the human will, and we cannot venture, as yet, to
take for granted that the actions and mental passions of
men stand in as constant relations to their nature and
circumstances as their physical feelings and mental per-
ceptions.
Human consciousness is beyond doubt a something dis-
tinctand unique, but it is still an open question whether
we are to class mental processes on one side and every
other natural phenomenon on the other, or whether we
should look on man as only the chief and most interesting
among the many marvellous products of natural evolution.
The question is one of vital importance, because all the
other objects of natural knowledge have points of contact
amongst themselves; the history of most is in a sense
continuous, and each object of knowledge stands in de-
finite, knowable relations to other objects. If man were
 NATURAL LAW. 5

tlieonly exception to this universal rule, either his own

nature must be essentially unknowable, or his life must be
subject to determination by some extra-natural, unknow-
able force: But before resorting to such an hypothesis
we should satisfy ourselves that the simple view which
regards man as a part of the natural order
wherein he lives
is unsustainable.

By the nature of a thing we understand the classes of

actions (or sufferances) constantly characteristic of it under

given circumstances, i.e., the laws it follows;

and our
knowledge of everything, from men to molecules, is co-
extensive with our knowledge of the rules, or laws, accord-
ing to which they suffer and act, or cause and undergo
modification. It would appear, therefore, that unless
human acts and sufferances are subject to law in the same
sense as the regular modifications of natural objects, they
cannot become matter of knowledge. In other words,
knowledge is orderly, and unless human life is orderly,

mankind is doomed to self-ignorance.

The difficulty is to frame a definition of law which shall
include the laws of nature, as conceived by men of science ;

the laws of human nature, as conceived by philosophers

"
and moralists ;
and laws properly so called," or the laws
of human society, as conceived by jurists and politicians.
It is not by accident that common speech uses but one
and the same word to characterise the methods of gravi-
tating bodies, of scrupulous consciences, and of suitors in
a civil court. But common speech is inexact, and its
rough and ready classifications need to be tested. Spe-
cialists at one extreme call every recurring fact that they
observe a law, and specialists at the other extreme deny
the name to the most elaborate statement of fixed deriva-
tive relations, unless the fixity is secured by the fiat of a

personal lawgiver; and both these schools err on the

if

side of restriction, the broader customary use of the word

is too vague and fluctuating for scientific purposes.
Of all the classical definitions which have been hazarded
6 NATURAL LAW.
of the idea of law, perhaps that of Montesquieu approaches
most nearly to the desired comprehensiveness and it has ;

the additional merit of taking nothing for granted save

the assumption implied in all reasoning, that the data for
reasoning exist that things have definite, knowable
i.e.,
" "
natures. loix," says the French philosopher,
Les sont
les rapports necessaires qui derivent de la nature des
choses." That is to say, two things acting on each other,
modify each other in a given fixed way, but one does not
impose the necessary modification on the other, it follows
necessarily from the nature of both, as thus related. The
definition may be faulty, as well as the arguments in
which the conception recurs; but the first step towards
clear thinking is to know what we mean by the chief terms

used, and in the following pages the reader is requested

"
always to understand by the term law a statement of
constant relations posited by the nature of things!'
That there may be constant or apparently constant rela-
tions, the statement of which is not properly called a law,
most scientific observers admit. The statement of abso-
lute stability or absolute change in a single thing out of
relation to every other, if it could be formulated, would
not constitute a law, unless the changes repeated them-
selves in a fixed order, and even then the statement of
the constant relations observed amongst the changes would
not be held to constitute a true, or necessary only an em-
pirical law. An empirical law (or generalisation) states
an observed order in the modifications produced or suffered
by a given thing, which order, after repeated observations,
is provisionally assumed to be constant; but the con-

stancy not considered to be demonstrated, or the possi-

is

bility of exceptions to thelaw excluded, until that one

constant relation has been connected with, or explained
by, or deduced from, those other known constancies of
relation which form, taken together, what we know as the
nature of the thing under investigation or until unbroken
;

experience of the recurring constancy causes it to be in-

 NATURAL LAW. 7

eluded in the simple definition, or description of the nature

of the thing itself.

Coexistences, however uniform, do not make a law

unless the coexisting phenomena are traceable to a com-
mon cause ; for it is not a part of the nature of one thing
that other quite different things should exist in such and
such proportions in the same universe with it. A
body of
laws declaring the relations between contemporary effects
of independent causes would only be conceivable if the
firstelements of all things had been arranged in cosmio
regularity preparatory to the evolution of an absolutely
orderly system. A
true law of nature enables us to pre-
dict with certainty what will happen under given circum-
stances to any specimen of the class of substances to which
the law applies. Mere averages which give a general
summary of results, without distinguishing the causes that

produce them, do not give a true law, because it is impos-

sible to predict from them, except approximately and in
the gross.
It would be scarcely a caricature of the way in which
" "
some so-called statistical and historical laws are ascer-
tained, if we were to mark the rate of motion of a number
of glaciers in different parts of the world, and then strike
an average and call the result the " law of glacial motion ;"
or if we noted the order and rapidity with which places
"
with a " season fill and empty, and then supposed our-
"
selves to have discovered a law" of fashionable migration.
When there is no permanent connection in nature between
the various sources of the conditions necessary to the
observed result, the result itself is, properly speaking,
accidental or contingent, and predictions respecting its
recurrence or reproduction must be conditional on the
incalculable persistence of stable relations amongst those
causes which we call ultimate because we do not know
their constant antecedents, or whether they have any.
The only scientific laws to which we can easily ascribe
a logical or metaphysical necessity, comparable to that of
8 NATURAL LAW.
the truths of geometry, are those which presuppose certain
other fixities of relation. Thus an observed regularity in
the movement of light or sound is rationally called a law
of optics or acoustics when it has been connected with a
broader physical law of motion in general. Given such a
law, each new observation concerning the motion of bodies
must be either an example of the law, or an exception
toit, and the original law, though itself only empirical,

acquires new when it has been found that new cases

force

always and
illustrate confirm its truth, and that the assump-
tion that it will be found true in each case that arises is
never found to mislead in practice. The laws, then, which
we think of as necessary, that
is to say, of actual universal

cogency, are either such as state a constancy of relations

amongst relations, or those which state a simple relation
from which it has been found possible to draw inferences

respecting other facts and relations that admit and receive

subsequent verification.
In no other way can we be assured that the constancy
of relations is not accidental, but really posited by the
nature of the things of which we wish to know the laws :

or, if the distinction between the nature of a thing and the

laws of its nature appears trivial, in no other way can we

have experience of the existence of different kinds of things.

But if we take from science the tolerably elementary fact
that distinguishable kinds of things do exist, we soon find
a point of contact with the jurists ; for, as is generally
allowed, we do not know things in themselves, and when
we distinguish an object as being of a certain kind, we do
not predicate anything concerning its essence, only con-
cerning what may be called its actions, its manifestations,
the modifications which it is capable of producing or suf-
fering.
Now the orthodox lawyer's definition of a law is "a
command binding to actions of a class;" and it would
therefore seem that the only difference between a true
positive law and a law of nature is that the latter declares,
 NATURAL LAW. 9

instead of commanding, what class of actions will, under

given conditions, certainly be performed (or suffered) by
the subject of the law. But the wisdom of our ancestors,
as evidenced in etymology, does not favour the modern

assumption that it was essential to a law to be imposed,

.

or laid down, by word of mouth or writing, by a personal

" "
legislator it was enough for it to be imposed or
; put ;

and the observed relations of the natural world may, with

" "
perfect propriety, be spoken of as posited by the nature
of the things which are, as a fact, related thus and not
otherwise, and which would, we take for granted, be dif-
ferently related if they themselves were different, since
difference and resemblance are but words by which we

express the real or apparent relations of things.

"
The by Austin upon Ulpian's law of
ridicule cast
nature" may be explained by the strong and perfectly
well-founded feeling of lawyers, that consciousness of con-
straint or recognition of authority is an essential element
in the obedience paid to human law as such. The concep-
tion of Nature, as a lawgiver, instructing all the members
of the animal world in their respective rights and duties,
is sufficiently fantastical ; but it is not certain, though the

words will bear that interpretation, that the jus quod natura
omnia animalia docuit was regarded by the later Koman
jurists in the light in which no naturalist would regard it
now, as a law imposed upon things by the will of a meta-
physical providence, called Nature, exterior to themselves.
And if the Nature that imposes the law is only the nature
of the beings subject to it, Ulpian and Montesquieu are at
one ; and so far from being self-evidently in the wrong,
against those who recognise no other source of law than
external arbitrary will associated with power they may be
credited with penetration in advance of their age, for hav-

ing made their conception of the animal life of men and

beasts serve as a connecting link between their knowledge
of the inanimate world and their conception of the purely
human, rational life of man.
to NATURAL LAW.
If we regard the laws observed by natural objects as the
record of their specific nature as manifested under given
known conditions, it is evident that the presence of the
conditions is essential both to our knowledge of the law
and to its actual observance by the thing. All sugar will
dissolve in tea, but as long as it is dry it does not dissolve :

the liquid in which it may be immersed does not bestow

upon it the property of solubility, but if we could suppose
a lump of sugar to be conscious, it would not unnaturally
conclude the necessity, under which it found itself, of dis-
solving, to be imposed upon it by the first cup of tea in
which it was The inference is sound, with one
placed.
important qualification, which the sugar is scarcely in a
position to make. The tea dissolves it on condition of its
being sugar, and not, for instance, rock-crystal; but to
effect the result of dissolution to the sugar and sweeten-

ing to the tea it is not enough for the sugar to be sugar,

unless the tea is tea, and not, for instance, frozen mercury ;

one of these substances cannot be said to impose upon

the other the law which regulates their relations, yet the
existence and nature of each is the sine qud non of a parti-
cular compulsion exercised upon the other.
Now, though the consciousness of constraint exercised
by an external power is a part of the idea of laws properly

so called, we do
not find that their binding force depends

upon their being set, or laid down as expressions of the

lawgiver's will, as human or divine "commands." It

belongs at least as much to the idea of a law that it shall

be generally obeyed as that it shall be authoritatively
imposed, and it is misleading to insist on one of these
elements to the exclusion of the other.
Supposing that human conduct follows knowable laws,
it is still an
or exhibits perceptible constancies of relation,

open question whether the necessary constancy is imposed

from without or from within, or whether it arises, as in the
case of natural law, from the juxtaposition of certain
influences and certain susceptibilities. Or, to state the
 NATURAL LAW. II

problem in another form, it is still an open question, how

far it is possible to compare the unconscious regularity of
nature with the conscious uniformities of human conduct
produced by the presence of permanent motives and vir-
tuallypermanent susceptibility to motives.
The conditions of life are so multiform and human char-
acter so various that we do not easily discern the laws of
human lifein society. The individual does not survey
the circumstances of his own and others' life from a
ground which might enable him to see the
-
vantage
method according to which he and they act and forbear
under the inevitable pressure. The limited experience
attainable only suffices to make it seem desirable that
certain classes of action should be regularly performed,
and others omitted, and to secure this needful measure of
regularity, the law commands and enforces its commands
with penalties. But we cannot conclude from this that
the law, or its organ, is the ultimate source of the actual
constancy of human conduct in social relations.
Men are compelled by circumstances to desire a more

orderly life than they attain spontaneously ; they are beset

by dangers, moral and physical, against which they spon-
taneously s^rwe to protect themselves by rule; and it is for
us to choose whether we shall say that the necessity for
the rule imposed by the circumstances which make men
is

desireit, by those qualities of their nature which make

or
them desire it under the given circumstances. The new
element of consciousness gives rise to the idea of the law
(or objective regularity of things) as addressed to the will,
which is moved by the real action of external forces in

favour of uniformity. But, at any given moment, the

only true lawgiver, in Austin's sense, the only source of
the compulsion to which the will submits, is to be found
in the impersonal sum of efficient motives ; though in prac-
tice we may on the rule which men in general,
also look
on the whole, have enforced, as compelling the
desire to
conduct of the few who wish to break it, either from
12 NATURAL LAW.
native perversity of will or peculiar temptation of circum-
stances.
The law, in so far as it is the creation of human will
and choice, expresses the permanent, average will of the
generality, but their will is determined by natural condi-
tions of possibility as well as of inclination. It is the
formula for the most desirable or the most desired
conduct attainable. Positive law, then, is a command
binding to actions of a class, necessarily performed, or
sought to be performed, by the community under actual
conditions while natural law is the formula for the classes
:

of modifications made necessary to natural objects by

their own nature and the other fixed conditions of real
existence. In the case of natural law the compulsion and
the obedience are of the same involuntary kind ; in the
case of positive law both compulsion and obedience are of
the same voluntary, deliberate kind. The debateable land
of confusion and controversy therefore extends no further
than the area of questions relating to the normal subjec-
tion of man, as a voluntary, conscious, responsible agent,
to the natural forces, which we do not believe to be con-
scious, voluntary, or responsible agents.
Much thinking, theological and otherwise, starts- with
the assumption that no such intelligible relation of con-
straint as belongs to the human feeling of lawful govern-
ment can subsist between man that wills and the impassive
tendencies of nature. The most popular explanation of
the order of the natural world, and man's place therein,
ascribes the existence and nature of everything that is to
an act of will on the part of a personal First Cause and ;

it is supposed that man can only feel bound to obey the

laws which express a personal will the will of some con-
scious subject like himself, i.e. t in practice man is only
bound by the laws of nature in so far as they express the
will of God.
The adherents of this view would think it little short of

blasphemous to seek materials for a clear and adequate

 NATURAL LAW. 13

conception of how the will of a person can cause anything

to come into existence out of nothing. We
are supposed
to know by moral and intellectual assurance that God is,
and the name by which He is acknowledged bears with
it the association of a great What unknowable by finite
faculties. And it is no harder to imagine a will creating
the properties of acts and relations than it is to imagine
the same will creating real substances.
The theological faith and feeling in its entirety com-
mands so much respect and sympathy that we may consider
ourselves fortunate in not having to take sacred names in
vain in discussing this conception of law, which postulates
a personal first cause outside the law and its subject of
the obligatoriness of the law. Hobbes, who regards the
Sovereign as a miniature Deity, and Austin, who regards
the Deity as a magnified legislator, both apply to purely
human relations a similar theory of personal will as the
source of legal compulsion, and it will be sufficient if we
can show its inadequacy to explain even the superficial
uniformities of conduct enforced by the rods and axes of

political authority.
Any one can " call spiritsfrom the vasty deep," but to
constitute an act of sovereignty over the spirits, they must
be prepared to come " when you do call for them." The
intention of a ruler, his mere will that such an act be
done or forborne, does not of itself control, or even mate-
rially influence, the will of the person to whom the com-
mand is addressed. The will of another person may be
accepted as a rule of conduct either from affection, or
because it is deliberately judged to be wiser and better
than the subject will, or because it is conceived to possess
an irresistible strength, the thought of which paralyses, so
to speak, the power or the will to disobey. But for either
of these conditions to be fulfilled, it is not enough that the

legislator be good, wise, or strong, unless the subject is also

and comparatively weak.
affectionate, reasonably modest,
Austin and his school are therefore driven to the pditio
14 NATURAL LAW.
principii involved in defining law as the command of a
"
political superior/' meaning by simply
political superior
some one whose commands are de facto binding. All
attempts to analyse the origin, source, or nature of political
superiority are obliged to represent it as relative to the poli-
tical inferiorson whom the laws are imposed, and whose
nature is therefore an indispensable condition to the bind-

ing force of the law. We can only escape from this circle

by admitting that two parties are concerned in the mak-

ing of every law, or rather that law is made when, and
only when, the wills of the two parties consent and meet
in one.
The two essentials of a law are that the relation which
it formulates should be constant, and
that it should
be the result of constant qualities in the things related.
Everything that exists is, in a certain sense, a lawgiver,
imposing fixed and necessary modifications upon every
other thing which comes in contact with it. The bodily
lifeof man is subject to the despotic sway of fixed natural
conditions, formulated in the laws of nutrition, respiration,
and general hygiene. But though it is the peculiarity of
human consciousness to bring, as it were, into a focus

many far-fetched rays of influence, these general facts are

not felt to control the particular volitions of a man, or
thought of as addressed to his whole personality. He
lives his own life as he chooses subject to the natural laws
of life in general. Pantheists, for instance, do not conceive
the universe as playing the legislator to its inmates and ;

one of the many points of variance between theologians

and naturalists is that the latter do not enter into the
ideal synthesis of human egotism, which imagines all the

rays of influence, that meet in the focus of consciousness,

to have this convergence for their final cause, and to
spring from some remote invisible centre of will, resolved
to bring them all to bear at last upon the subject centre
of consciousness. Men are certainly subject to the law of
gravitation, but they do not look on weight as one of the
 NATURAL LAW. 15

forces by which their lives are ruled; it concerns their

existence as bodies, not their consciousness as men ; and
we may add to the definition of the laws of human life

that the relation formulated must make itself felt by the

conscious subject as affecting his volitions.
Law, according to our definition, supposes a personal
subject of the law, whether it supposes a personal law-
giver or not ;
and it is open to us to investigate the neces-
sary relations of man to society and the natural world,
in so far as their nature and his are knowable, without

prejudice to the metaphysical question, by what right or

power the relations became necessary, i.e., whether or no
natural laws are of supernatural imposition.
In other words, we may have a theory of the subjective
necessities of man, of the influences which he feels to act

irresistiblyand steadily upon his moral and intellectual

nature, without personifying the influences, or conceiving
them to be the expression of a will as personal as his own.
We may, however, and we naturally do, classify the laws
to which men are subject, or the permanent conditions
under which they will, according to the various objects
whose constant relations to man are stated in the laws.
Law, morality, and religion, as generally conceived, state
the constant necessities, or stable modifications of human
conduct, imposed on man by his various objective rela-
tions. Law states the compulsion exercised on his will
by human wills; morality states the compulsion
other
exercised on him by his own nature in relation (mainly)
to these other wills; and religion deals with the com-

pulsion exercised on man by the strongest general influ-

ences of the universe, what Mr. Arnold calls the Not-
Ourselves. Positive law gives a rule for the overt acts
of men moral law
; gives a rule for the will, and includes
the intention as well as the act ;
and religion, or the law
of spiritual liberty, gives a rule for the inclinations, and
includes the feelings and wishes as well as the will and
deed. All these laws, without forfeiting their scientific
16 NATURAL LAW.
character as "a statement of constant relations posited
by the nature of things," may be variously conceived,
according as the subject of the law apprehends the rule
imposed upon and accepted by its will as primarily im-
posed by its own nature, or by the nature of something
else ;
the necessity really arises from the relation between
the two natures, but as man is only directly conscious of
his own side of the relation, he naturally, and not untruly,
classifies his obligations according to the manner in which
he is affected by them, and the degree to which he is con-
scious of the affection.
If the objective pressure resulting in these uniformities
is real,natural, and constant, human life is not lawless,
and the nature and working of the pressure exercised
upon the human will from all these points will be know-
able. If there is no such real, natural, and knowable

pressure, it is time that we cleared our minds from the

haze of antique prejudice, and enjoyed the melancholy
satisfaction of knowing universal licentiousness to be the
natural lot of men. Eo
positive construction is possible
until we have got rid of the confused ideas and phrase-

ology of credulous scepticism and half-hearted faith. In

any case let us have the courage of our convictions, and
distrust most of all the formulse which promise to reward
our quest for truth by stranding us at a secure halting-
place between two opinions.
 II.

CUSTOMARY AND POSITIVE LAW.

" Dans ces clioses, voulez-vous savoir si les desirs de cliacun sontlegitimes?

Examinez les desirs de tous." MONTESQUIEU.

" Si 1'unite de
composition a sa cause primitive dans la limitation des sub-

stances mate'rielles qui portent la vie, 1'unite de plan a sa cause dans leg

predeterminations ou lois qui reglent cette meme vie. Avec des material; x
identiques et des lois imperieuses de manifestation, il est impossible
qu'il n'y ait pas unite* de composition et unite de plan ou de plans."
LlTTRE.
Positive law deals with the constant relations of men to each other follow-
ing from their nature as men Query, Have these relations any common
quality ? Most general natural law that society could not subsist without
law, i. e. ,
if all volitions were incalculably unstable Customary law equals
the performance by men of the same kind of actions of the same kind,
similar causes producing similar effects till some of the conditions vary
Consciousness of constraint the characteristic of positive law : acts that
"have to be done" without desire, in obedience to external constraint
voluntarily submitted to passes into law wheu uniform prac-
Custom
and men become conscious of the generality
tices cease to be instinctive
of a usage as a motive for conforming to it, or a deterrent from its
breach When customs have become divergent, the will of the com
munity expresses itself through a special organ or authorised exponent
of law Distinction between legislation and government Differentiation
of sovereign and subject Law requires the co-operation of two nature?,
tendencies, or wills, i.e., at some stage the subject's consent. The effi-
ciency of sanctions depends on the disposition of the subject towards
the evil threatened Natural history of primitive potentates, the patri-
arch and the chief Law formulates the real relations inter se of the
subjects of law Whence the feeling that natural constancies of relation
"ought" We ask ourselves not only What is jus-
to be maintained?
tice? but also What
kind of actions are just? Justice the best general
rule practically applicable Natural selection of possibilities in the direc-
tion of equity No standard of right or justice except the real tendency
of the kind to what it conceives as its good (the only "natural right" of
:

individuals what the common good requires them to have) Metaphysical

theories of the source of legal obligation.
 II.

CUSTOMAR Y AND POSITIVE LA W.

THE passage from the abstract to the concrete
is the pons

asinorum of speculation. We
have put forward a theory
of the nature and force of natural laws which ought to
correspond to the facts of contemporary observation and
history. The theory is symmetrical remains to be seen
;

if it is true.

To begin at the beginning Are the fixed rules concern-

:

ing the relations of men to each other, observed in real

communities, such as follow from the nature of men, or
are they arbitrary inventions ? Is the distinction between

customary and positive law in any way inconsistent with

the substantial naturalness of both ? Can we trace the
evolution of civil and criminal laws, of historical reality,
from the play of intelligible human qualities in the neces-
sary relations of. civil society ? Can we instance any of
the constant relations between man and man which follow
from the nature of men associated in communities ? And,
finally,granting that the provisions of custom or civil
law are in the main natural, can we explain the peculiar
sentiment which, in this case, recognises the natural as
obligatory, and yet persists in imagining some other test
or condition of true obligatoriness than the bare fact of
natural reality ?
Perhaps the most general statement possible of a rela-
tion following necessarily from the real nature of man is
this, that human
society cannot subsist without law, not
necessarily present to consciousness as such, but still
generally observed. The grounds of this necessity are
20 NATURAL LAW.
easily seen. After the automatic regularity with which
men, like other animals, provide for the satisfaction of
their bodily needs and appetites, conscious intelligence
conies into play. The first condition of rational life is
the stability of nature ; for the scope of reason lies in the
adjustment of means to ends, and action with a view to
ends would be impossible if its calculated effects were
always liable to be disturbed or frustrated by incalculable
foreign influences. And what is true of the dealings of
men with the natural world, applies equally to men in
social relation with those of their own kind.
''

The first condition of society is mutual confidence, and

unless there is such a thing as human nature, unless, that

is to say, man possesses certain substantially fixed class

characteristics, individual men would be unable to shape
for themselves any course of conduct in which they might
have to depend on the assistance or neutrality of beings
acting without law even if we could suppose it possible
for lawless impulse to conceive a rational and orderly

plan. As a fact, of course, we know that man has a

specific character as clearly marked as that of any other
organism, animal or vegetable. Certain kinds of action
are natural to men, and nearly the first use to which
they
put their intelligence is to conceive the ends of such
actions as their own cause, the motive force or impulse
that causes them to be done. Granted, then, that men
act from motives, if their action is in any way regular
or calculable, thismust proceed from persistency in the
determining conditions, the force of the motives must be
in the main stable, not varying at random either in the
same man at different times or amongst different men
under the same circumstances.
A natural constancy in the instinctive, customary actions
of men is a preliminary step towards the resolved con-
stancy (called law) of their actions in relation to each
other. Other things being equal, the same actions will
be natural to the different members of a simple, primitive
 CUSTOMARY AND POSITIVE LA W. 21

community, in which, probably, even diversity of race is

unknown but if the same action is naturally performed
;

together by different persons, that circumstance alone

modifies its nature. Joint action suggests the possibility
of concerted action, and discourages or discredits isolated
action. The habit is formed, not only of doing certain
things, but of seeing every one else do them, and one
person who does differently jars on the established sense
of fitness in the rest. Originally, men act together in
certain ways, led by common sympathies and interests, but
their union brings fresh necessities with it: established
social relations, by making life slightly more complicated,

suggest, while they restrain, fresh personal impulses; the

nature of an indifferent action is modified by its joint
performance becoming customary, as that of an indifferent
omission is modified when it comes to appear as a departure
from established usage.
"
As Sir Henry Maine says It is of the very essence of
:

custom, and this indeed chiefly explains its strength, that

men do not clearly distinguish between their actions and
their duties what they ought to do is what they always
" "
have done, and they do it not, however, distinctly be-
;
"
cause they always have, but rather for the same reason,
so long as it continues to apply, that they did before.

Among savages "ce qui ne se fait pas" includes the

illegal, the wrong, and the ridiculous, and to this day we
are not much nearer a reason why we should not do what
is illegal, wrong, or absurd, than the intuition that we had

better not.
Primitive custom, which exists before either law or
morality, consists in doing what every one else does but ;

so far as every one readily and naturally does the same

things, it is not by conscious voluntary submission to an
external rule, but from a common internal impulse, which

may be called necessary, since it is effective as well as

natural. Law does not originate in a conspiracy of the
community to coerce the individual, any more than in a
22 NATURAL LAW.
conspiracy of the individual to coerce the community;
and while the association is wholly voluntary, that is,
based on common, identical inclination, there is no need
for positive legislation to enjoin practices which are fol-
lowed as of course.
The consciousness of law as a constraining power fixing
the classes of action to be performed by the subject is not
primitive, nor indeed would it be possible for it to arise
before the constraint referred to had become present to
consciousness. The habit, however, of doing thus or thus
(like everybody else) creates a secondary, subjective dis-
position to go on doing so, which is, of course, in its nature
conscious, and felt as a restraint upon the natural liberty
of absolute indifference. Primitive morality, or the idea
that certain things must be done (those, namely, which
are done by the tribe or family), is the offspring partly of
deficient imagination, partly of the fact that the original
action has become habitual as well as natural, whence a

secondary, artificial difficulty is felt in substituting any

other kind of action, till motives of a new class have come
fully into force. The majority, after feeling the same kind
of original impulse, experience the same kind of difficulty
in ceasing to act upon it in particular cases while its
and the same necessity for ceasing
general' force subsists,
if a change in the conditions makes the old act uneasy or

undesirable. The mere cessation of an old motive does

not give a feeling of obligation unless a habit formed
under its influence survives the change of circumstances
which makes its maintenance useless or inconvenient but ;

if a present motive for acting in one way comes into colli-

sion with the formed habit of acting in another, obedience
to the habit, if it proves the strongest, is attended by a
consciousness of necessity, legal, moral, or religious, that
may be quite independent of reason or expediency, as we
find, in fact, that meaningless ceremonial observances are
among the first to be associated with the idea of moral
obligation or duty. And when this first kind of constraint
 CUSTOMARY AND POSITIVE LA W. 23

becomes present to consciousness, all who feel themselves

bound by it, agree spontaneously in saying, " We " (not yet
"/") "must do thus and thus:" in other words, custom
and morality are identified, and made to sanction each
other's ordinances.
We are, however, at present less concerned with the foun-
dations of morality than with the foundations of positive
law, with duty than with obligation. The history of
society is the history of relations, between individuals and
groups, whose conduct and attitude towards each other is
liable to be modified by the fact that they are conscious of
the relation, and liable to affections of pleasure and pain
in connection with that consciousness, which supply new
motives for the maintenance or modification of the rela-
tion. The stability of the relations between the various
members of a community is proportioned to its simplicity.
These relations, considered objectively, while it occurs to
no one to modify them, or to conceive them as modifiable,
form the status of individuals, who are classified naturally
by their own acquiescence in the position allotted to them
by circumstances. Early law, as is now generally ad-
mitted, rests on status, not contract it begins by conse-
;

crating or affirming that which already is, for facts precede

reasoning, even from immediate self-interest.
The explanation of this apparently irrational, impulsive
" "
origin of the Social Compact becomes clear, if we con-
sider that contract a deliberate engagement to do or to
forbear on certain conditions or for certain considerations

implies the distinct conception of two independent,

voluntary actions, and the possibility of performing either,
neither, or both; conceptions which, it need hardly be
said, will not be formed until experience, that is, previous
The only social
action, has furnished material for them.
law which seems to be laid down without appeal by the
nature of man is the necessity for some law; but the
addition of new facts, the growth of impulses or appetites
not absolutely essential to the nature of man as such,
24 NATURAL LAW.
produces new, still stable relations, forming the matter of
more particular legislation. But relations must be real,
must exist, before their regularity can be observed and

accepted as imperative. Law, as the record of facts, is

posterior to the facts themselves ; which may be illustrated
by the rather singular suggestion of Comte, that society
must constitute itself somehow, unscientifically, tant lien
gue mal, before social science can exist can have a sub-
ject,a patient, to treat.
This peculiarity must be allowed to mark a natural dis-
tinction between the laws of physical science and human

legislation. Human law proclaims not only a conditioned

uniformity, but a self-conscious uniformity, and a true law
might be defined as the passing into consciousness of a
fixed natural relation or effective tendency. The transi-
tion from a society based on status and ruled by unbroken
custom, to one based on contract and ruled by positive
law, is that from relations de facto or of practically un-

questioned validity to relations de, jure or of validity

that affirmed against questioners ; and it is made by the
is

growing consciousness of the relation as Holding as well as

existing. Custom, in becoming conscious, adds a legal
necessity to itself, but the new necessity is only subjective,
and adds nothing to the antecedent uniformity.
Law, properly so called, doesnot innovate or create, and
this natural limitation to the power of making quite ran-
dom experiments in legislation applies as much to a single
sovereign or lawgiver as to an autonomous community.
It is at this point that the Naturalistic theory of law (as
it may be called) diverges from the political or arbitrary
theory represented by Hobbes and Austin. The dictates of
custom, as we have seen, may come to be associated with
feelings of compulsion to all appearance like those which
secure obedience to laws properly so called, and if a body
of customary law happens to be written down, or fixed in
a sacred metrical tradition, its text has a force indistin-

guishable from that of any imperial code. But it is a fact,

 CUSTOMARY AND POSITIVE LA W. 25

apparently in favour of the other side of the argument,

that most ancient codes of law profess to have been made,
or proclaimed by some one mythical sage, king or priest ;
and though we cannot, on the faith of such traditions,
altogether accept the personal theory of legislation, we
may at least admit that law differs from custom in pos-
sessing, and requiring, always some definite, authorised
organ.
The need for an authoritative exposition of the law of
the land arises at nearly the same stage of social progress
as the centralisation of political power, and one of the
earliest functions of government is the administration of
law. But, as Sir Henry Maine has pointed out, there are
many absolute political rulers who never legislate, and
whose edicts, even though enjoining actions of a class, can-
not be mistaken for laws. Austin held that generality in
a command was enough to constitute it a law, while we
should distinguish, even in cases where the sovereign is
his own legislator, between laws, or the regulation of exist-

ing relations, and simple precepts or general commands.

We know as a fact that customary law was in many
instances full grown before political organisation had

passed infancy, while the political organisation of a

its

military despot has never resulted in the establishment

of a system of law where the subject population had no
fixed civil relations to perpetuate; but the simultaneous

crystallisation of legal and political authority led not

unnaturally to the mistake of treating the narrower pheno-
menon as naturally subsidiary to the wider. Every in-
dependent community had a government which enforced
and as anarchy was a synonym for lawlessness,
its laws,

legislationwas made a synonym for government.

In speaking of the rise of- law, we are after all general-
ising from a comparatively small number of historical cases,
and the illustration that lies nearest us will serve as well
as any other to show how far the growth of a central

authority may further the growth of a body of national

26 NATURAL LAW.
law upon the foundation of popular custom. The outlines
of the real supply the best boundary against the hypotheti-
cal, and the parallel development of English Common Law
and the power of the Crown under our early kings supplies
more intelligible and authentic grounds for speculation
than the legends of Deiokes, Lykurgus, or Euma.
" "
Consuetude," says Lord Coke, is one of the main tri-
angles of the lawes of England those lawes being divided
;

into common law, statute law, and custom." The common

law is or rather in those days of its departed glory was
the general custom of the kingdom, as distinguished
from that of single cities or manors and its authority only
;

ceased to be sufficient as well as supreme, as the mass of

the inhabitants of the kingdom ceased, from a variety of
causes, to live habitually in such a way that the same,
custom could serve to regulate all their civil and social
relations or, in other words, when social and civil distinc-
;

tions and relations became too numerous for all the mem-
bers of the community to know familiarly and remember
the rules and precedents according to which their inter-
course with each other was to be carried on, under all the
conditions actually liable to arise.
The chief difference between a custom and a law is that
the followers of a custom consciously make their actual
practice the standard of right or obligation, while positive
law is the utterance of an embodied authority enjoining
something which the subject does not know or imagine
that he would have done without the injunction. Law is
ideally the expression of what would be the general
will if the self-consciousness of the community could be

suddenly sublimated and intensified, so as to become at

once aware of all its own strongest impulses, and of the
adjustments and limitations necessary for reconciling and
harmonising their indulgence. Only, as the organ by
which the community expresses this will is itself subject

to concrete human infirmities of timidity, self-interest,

or stupidity statutes are no more infallible than custom
 CUSTOMARY AND POSITIVE LA W. 27

isomniscient, and to secure a tolerable practical approach

towards the ideal, the intelligence of the community
needs to be consciously turned towards the consideration
of its own real organic needs and wishes, which the

legislature may otherwise ignore, for want of a suffici-

ently present sense of their material force. Good customs,

when they exist, are patent to sense good laws, when
;

they are possible, demand a higher intellectual intuition,

discerning not merely facts but relations.
The Norman Conquest helped to precipitate the transi-
tion from the regime of custom to that of law in England,

by multiplying class interests and usages. Political inequa-

lities are one source of social differentiation, and it is the
development of social differences that causes relations to
multiply, and with the multiplication of cross relations
the chance of collision between distinct, if not necessarily

opposing interests. Local or national custom may be strong

enough to control the erratic or rebellious impulses of indi-

viduals, but a class having common interests not identical

with those of the rest of the community may form a custom
of its own, incompatible with older customary rights and

privileges.If the appetites or interests of individuals

come into collision, they either fight out their quarrel or

compromise it, as it were instinctively; but when the con-

between the interests or usages of sets of persons,
flict is

instead of individuals, the power of automatic adjustment

or adaptation breaks down, and the scattered motives to
mutual concession existing in nature have to be summed
up and brought home to the consciousness of all alike in
the official sanction of a law. The growing want of some
central authority such as the king and his officers of
justice to decide between "bad customs" and those
that were good, lawful, and binding, contributed as much
as any directly political cause to the strengthening of
the royal prerogative that went on under the "English
"
Justinian and his immediate followers and predecessors ;

the lawful power of the Crown and Legislature increased

28 NATURAL LAW.
the more because there was no avowable class interests
concerned in resisting it, while every dawning custom that
could claim to be innocent or advantageous was eager to
receive its sanction.
In the same way, in most historical nations, the making
of good laws became an important part of government, and
a necessary step towards the welding into one of an arti-
ficially large and heterogeneous community. But cases
also abound of sovereigns who have been content with the
exercise of purely political authority, and have not at-

tempted to regulate the relations of their subjects among

themselves. Perhaps it is too much to say that such sove-
reigns do not legislate at all, since their general commands
define the duties of the subject to the prince ; at the same
time, however, it is clear that they do not specify the per-
manent relations between the two, or the gift of a " consti-
"
tution would not be
so long coveted and so reluctantly
accorded they decree from time to time what taxes the
:

subject shall pay, and what military service he shall

render, and they may restrict his private liberty to an
indefinite extent to suit the prince's pleasure or whim.
These enactments are even less general than our statutes,
and these, though included under the general head of laws,
have ever had less sanctity, to the true legal mind, than
the ancientcommon law, since one statute may be repealed
by another, and many are avowedly of only temporary
force and interest.
The distinction, then, by no means unreal or formal
is

between laws that state permanent natural relations and

develop their logical corollaries, and other enactments of

political authority. In an absolute government the only

true law that which affirms the despotic constitution of
is

the state, and this is as far as any other law from being of
purely arbitrary imposition; it formulates the necessary
relations between an arbitrary sovereign and a servile
population, but the law does not make the population
servile it must find them so.
 CUSTOMAR Y AND POSITIVE LA W. 29

The differentiation of a primitive community into tyrants

and slaves is just as double-sided as any other social de-
velopment, and the historical steps in the process refuse
to be summed up in the simple generalisation which
makes all law and government alike the mere expression
of force majeure, the will of the strongest. The most
obvious difficulty in the way of supposing law to be made
by the arbitrary will of individuals, is that no merely
natural difference between the powers of men living in
patriarchal or barbarian simplicity is sufficient to enable
individuals to terrorise, or control, the wills of the com-
munity; while an artificial or conventional superiority, that
is to say,one based on wealth, or popularity, or family
has to be built up gradually, and with the con-
prestige,
sent or assistance of those whose subsequent obedience
to the power they have helped to found, is assumed by
the arbitrary theory to be naturally reluctant and only
extorted by force.
It will scarcely be maintained that human societies
subsist without law till such time as they have succeeded
in educating a tyrant (benevolent or otherwise), and in

providing him with friends, ministers, and servants in

such force as to make the mere announcement of his will
an imposing motive and it is in this gradual process, of
;

the consolidation of political authority, that we shall find

the real antecedent of the phenomenon called sovereignty
and not in a generic difference between the one and
the many. The one will be obeyed if his subjects believe
in his power of compelling obedience, but even so their
obedience is determined by their opinion about his autho-
rity, as the real extent of that authority is determined by
their readiness to acquiesce or not in its exercise.
Of course at this point the doctrine of sanctions is intro-
duced. It is not the will or opinion of the subject, we are

told,but the power of the ruler to inflict punishment, that

gives the commands of the latter their binding and
con-

straining force. This, however, does not diminish the

30 NATURAL LAW.
original difficulty. A
simple expression of will by one
man to another is a motive, though a slight one, for com-

pliance, when the act enjoined is either indifferent or

agreeable; other things being equal, children and adults
generally do unthinkingly as they are told, either because
they do not care to disoblige a fellow- creature without
motive, or because, when personal desires are in equili-
brium, the slightest touch from without suffices to turn
the scale ;
but other things are not equal, and com-
if

pliance is thoroughly repugnant to the will of the person

upon whom a command is laid, the effective force of any
sanction, even capital punishment or eternal damnation,
depends not on the intrinsic gravity of the threatened
evil, but upon the disposition of the subject ; his private

opinion or judgment respecting the comparative disadvan-

tages of obedience and the consequences of rebellion. If
the alternative is to fall down and worship the golden
image which. Nebuchadnezzar the king has set up, or to
be cast into the burning fiery furnace, there is no true
compulsion, even though the obstinate monotheist should
not be saved from death by a miracle. An irksome law
enforced by sanctions will only be generally obeyed if
the punishment attached to its non-observance is one
which a majority of the subject population thinks a more
serious evil than the original evil of obedience; but the

lawgiver, as such, has no influence upon the opinion to

which his laws owe their force. To complete the idea of
command, we must have that of obedience, which, how-
ever reached or produced, implies consent.
In point of fact, however, neither law nor government
depend mainly on the penalties which they proclaim for
offences ;
obedience is the rule, and rebellion the excep-
tion, or it would cease tobe rebellion, and succeed to the
vacant seat of power. The earliest examples of quasi-
political authority that we meet with in the domain of
factmay be reduced to two
the power of the patriarch
:

over his household, and the power of the chief over his
 CUSTOMAR Y AND POSITIVE LAW. 31

tribe. This power is sustained in both cases alike by the

possession of wealth by the political superior; but this
wealth is not, as in later times, received by the chief or

father as tribute from his inferiors ; his power is coexten-

sive with his will and ability to feed dependants ;
and at
the earliest possible moment at which we find social
inequalities beginning, we find the difference between
man and man to consist only in slightly greater or less

power of accumulating wealth, associated with greater or

less disposition to call the accumulation "mine" even if

the only use of it is to be given away.

The earliest road to possessionis, no doubt, by the
"
primitive process of taking," and the power of taking is
the first to inspire general respect; but it is sometimes
argued that property has originally to be defended, as well
as acquired by force, and that, unless he is prepared to do
so, the early chief, or strong man, will be despoiled of his
gains by his fellow-tribesmen. There is some confusion
of the natural order in this view, for the tribe has made
no step towards unity,
political if it does not even
respect its and, except as a unit, it cannot act
chief,

together, while, by the hypothesis, no single individual

"
within it has greater power of " taking than the chief. It
is felt to be more profitable to let him take as he can and
share as he chooses than to scramble once for his takings ;
and the weakest members of the community have most
inducement to let the partition of the lion's share be made
on some other principle than that of a free fight among the
jackals.
But in this discussion of possible alternatives, we take
too little account of the profoundly unimaginative temper
of primitive man. When he has but lately, by a mental
effort, raised himself to the conception of a right of pro-

perty in things extending beyond their momentary use,

he cannot all at once contradict himself. The invention
of a possessive case has a meaning or not ; if a horse or
cow is thought of as " belonging to A," it is ex vi termini
32 NATURAL LAW.
thought of as not available to B for annexation by the
same natural process as unappropriated goods. The con-
ception is not easy, and in some of the Pacific islands it is
only reached by the help of a metaphysical or religious
artifice; to appropriate a thing, it must be proclaimed
" "
taboo to the rest of the world and in Tonga especially,
;

the system issaid to serve all the purposes of police,

apparently because the idea "we must not touch this,"

finds easier acceptance than any statement of the reason

why namely, that somebody else has claimed or captured

it first.In any case, we find together with the first exist-
ence of private property, a spontaneous recognition of its
existence by others than the owner at once the condition
and guarantee of the ownership, as the obedience of the
subject is the condition and guarantee of the more imma-
terial possession, political power.
Taking the possession of wealth whether measured in
food, shells, skins, wives, slaves, or other live stock as
the firstsource of social inequality, we have to consider
how this possession tends to found or strengthen the

authority, within either the family or the tribe, of the

owner of the wealth. In the least advanced, polygamous
societies,where wives are the chief article of property, the
man who has most wives is also best able to maintain
those he has, because he has most command of labour, but
his authority in the tribe is not increased in proportion
to the increase of his social dignity ; he has still no hold

upon his fellow-tribesmen or adult sons, except by his

personal qualities and a larger supply of exchangeable

daughters. If his wealth takes the form of implements,
and his stores cf food are in excess of his own require-
ments, a tacit understanding generally exists as to the
mode in which they are to be got rid of. Wealth is the
source of dignity, but the proof of wealth is its distribu-
tion, and the candidate for popularity and honour must
reduce himself periodically to poverty, by giving feasts
to his neighbours, with the assurance that his credit
 CUSTOMARY AND POSITIVE LA W. 33

will be lost as soon as lie becomes unable to repeat the

process.
This primitive exploitation of the strong by the weak
is sufficiently illustrated by the experience of European
travellers in Africa. Livingstone in one of his earlier
journeys expressly complains of the hardship of having,
after a day's march, to go in search of game, while his
followers rested, and when he had shot anything, having
to return to the camp to summon them to bring it home,
he being ex officio the bread (or rather meat) winner of the
band. His influence was strictly proportioned to his use-
fulness, and though, by using all the authority his previous
usefulness had won, he could, on an emergency, secure
obedience to his recommendations for a time, unless their
utility became promptly apparent, a passive mutiny, against
which there was no remedy, became inevitable. The
savage chief, like the patriarch, first acquires ascendency
and then thinks of utilising it for his own advantage the ;

subject class, on the contrary consisting of those who, by

accepting passively a present benefit, begin to contract the
habit of letting their fate be determined for them, by other
forces than their own will and energy by the time the
habit has become fully formed have become ready in their
turn for exploitation, of which the fruit is longer in coming
back to their descendants in the shape of a general social

gain.
In communities dependent on human labour only, if the
division of classesis carried further than the simple dis-

tinction of master and servant, the next source of social

subordination seems to be afforded by the ascendency of
one class or profession practically, of course, that of the
warrior class over the rest. In all these societies the
chief is not a political authority unless there are already
existing social grades, of which his authority is
not the
source. The explanation seems to be, that the accumula-
tion of wealth on a scale to give one person authority over
the whole community, in virtue of his wealth alone is in>

K UNIVERSITY
34 NATURAL LAW.
possible without domestic animals ; and that among com-
munities in which the accumulation of wealth by the royal
road of pasturage isexcluded, difference of skill or employ-
ment i.e., caste is the source of more real and important

distinctions than inequality of wealth. Political authority,

of the most tyrannous kind, may exist in such commu-
nities, but the habit of submission to it is formed gradually,
at least records of its existence in very different stages of
itsformation may be met with among kindred populations,
and as all these social processes are substantially rational,
under the given conditions, we are not likely to be far
wrong in ascribing ordinary human motives for each tran-
sition.
war supply a servile class, as soon as the
Slaves taken in
custom abandoned of marrying the women, adopting the
is

children, and putting the warriors of the vanquished to

death. Slaves have little to do in the absence of arts and
industries, but as soon as a choice exists, the slaves will be
habitually employed, and their children after them, in the
least honourableand remunerative of needful pursuits. Cer-
tain skilled arts may become hereditary in free families, but
war continues to be par excellence the honourable art. In all

these cases the authority of the chief seems to depend upon

a more or less strictly hereditary precedence in a dominant
class or caste. The chief is followed in battle because of
his ability to lead ; and in time of peace he can command,
within variable limits, the services of the lower classes,
who believe in the superior dignity of the pursuit which

they do not follow. The habit of joint tribal action for

purposes of common interest is easily extended, and rude
palaces and other public works are erected at the summons
of the chief (who thus acquires a nucleus of immoveable

property) as readily as communal huts and fishing-dams.

Primitive despotic monarchies, of all sizes and dates, have
more in common with bodies of this type than with the
patriarchal family, and in fact we find that the power of
the chieftain, if it exists at all, develops apart from the
 CUSTOMARY AND POSITIVE LA W. 35

organisation of the family, whenever it is impossible for

one family alone to represent, or collect, enough wealth to
give political authority over the community at large to its
chiefmember.
The organisation of the patriarchal family, after a pat-
tern of solid durability fit for imitation on a large scale
in the state, seems to have begun with the power and will
of the patriarch to assert the substantially identical nature
of his dominion over all that was his, wife, children, slaves,
and domestic animals, as well as chattels, acquired, manu-
factured, or inherited. The tie was still property rather
than descent if a man owned several wives as slaves, their
;

children were his by ownership more certainly than by

paternity. If he had dwelling around him and under his

protection, in virtually the same position as his own sons,

both slaves and clients, or voluntary dependants, the chil-
dren of these two classes would cease to be distinguished,
the only exception being made in favour of the eldest son,
or son of the favourite wife, who would inherit unimpaired
the whole burden and privilege of paternal power. If the

patriarch is rich enough to have many children, they make

him powerful as well, by multiplying his dependants, so
that poor men froma distance are glad to be received
amongst them, and render the same services in exchange
for the same protection. And it is observable that in
proportion as the utility of these followers increases, the
responsibility of the head diminishes, for the burden of
rearing children for his service is thrown upon the actual
parent, while the gain is reserved for the patriarch who
nominally represents the community, and really represents
its sacrifices and docility.
the fruit of
Communities in which families are organised on the
patriarchal pattern may be subdivided into those consisting
of fathers who are equal landowners (i.e., where the "village

system" is developed), and those in which great inequalities

of wealth are made possible by the possession of cattle.
36 NATURAL LAW.
The chief develops into the despot, or military leader and
king; the father into the aristocrat or free citizen as
Plato makes the laws consist of various sets of family
first

custom, harmonised by heads of houses. In all early com-

munities customary law has the same kind of history, and
only varies in its matter according to the nature of the
interests it is chiefly called on to regulate, e.g., the condi-
tions of land-tenure, of pasturage, or of marketing and
commerce and mechanical industries.
But the political circumstances of the community what
we may call its international relations react on the form
of government, and frequently serve as a motive with the
subject class, to strengthen the hands of the central autho-
rity,even though such accession of strength is likely to
be used against themselves. The dramatic scene between
the prophet Samuel and the children of Israel asking for a
king, is true in the spirit if not in the letter, and if a free
people can be plausibly represented as desiring a king like
the other nations, a fortiori may the nations where kings
grew up spontaneously be supposed to obey them, on the
whole, voluntarily. But when the state has acquired a
central organ of power, capable of legislating as well as
governing, the natural limitations on arbitrary law-making
already referred to, begin to apply. The art of government
lies in determining which, out of several courses that the
subject can be induced to take, shall be taken, in matters
concerning the interests of the state as a whole or the ruler
as an individual. That of legislation consists in determin-
ing which, out of a similar variety of alternative courses,
shall be habitually adopted by the subjects in matters

mainly concerning their private, non-political interests.

The sovereign, once installed as such, may govern as he
pleases, provided he does not command anything radically
inconsistent with the true nature of the subject population ;

and he may legislate as he pleases, subject to the same

limitation but as, in practice, more human interests are
;
 CUSTOMARY AND POSITIVE LA W. 37

concerned in the laws of a civilised country than in its

government, bad laws betray themselves more easily than
bad government, and as the selfish gain of the prince is
less direct, the administration of law is more often neglected
than perverted under evil rulers. The bad laws which a
bad sovereign might wish to make, in nine cases out of ten
would simply fall wide of the national practice and have
no effect at all, and it is to this fact, rather than to the
essential wisdomof sovereigns by the divine right of estab-

lishment, that the substantial disinterestedness of all con-

siderable systems of law is owing. The few exceptional
cases in which a well-meaning ruler attempts to introduce
positive reforms by way of legislation, rather confirm than
invalidate the rule of the natural separation between the
functions of law and government, for the success of such
attempts has always been conditional on the presence of
real progressive tendencies among the people, only needing
to be developed and directed.
Every digression into the precincts of history confirms
our original thesis, that law cannot be made by arbitrary
will without reference to the subject of law and we must
;

add to the definition of a law, besides generality in the

command, that the command be one which, in the nature
of things, can and will be generally obeyed. The substance
or provisions of any law are therefore necessarily limited

by the nature of the subject, the real relations of which

natural, social, moral, or political it is in fact the function

of law to enumerate. Law may state the necessary rela-

tions of sovereign and subject, posited by the nature of
both, when they have differentiated themselves ; or it may
describe the normal relations of men in their various other
characters, as equal citizens, as proprietors, acquiring,
using,and inheriting wealth, as master and servant, hus-
band and wife, or as entering together into free contracts
not extending to the general status.
But the question whether, in the dealings of men with
38 NATURAL LAW.
each other, there are any perceivable constancies of rela-
tion which can be traced to permanent qualities of their
nature, even supposing it to be answered in the affirmative,
still leaves half of the problem untouched ;
for we have
further to account for the fact that the mere statement of
these constant relations (supposing them to exist and to be
formulated in positive law) acquires a kind of sacredness,
a binding force, so that men do not see in law the record of
what is done, but variously, a statement of what ought to

be done, and a precept as to what must be done. The mere

existence of such constancies of relation is not a reason,
much less a motive constraining the will to submit to the
restrictions they impose yet in positive law we see, as it
;

were, the constancy reflected upon, and its maintenance

resolved and we distinctly do not find that this feeling
:

depends upon associations of pain or disgrace consequent

on breach of the law, since it is only when the law cor-
responds to the set of popular will and feeling that its

breach can be permanently so visited.

It is true of law, as Adam Smith says of morality, that
it teaches men
to try particular actions by general rules

expressive of their permanent disposition with regard to

acts ; but he does not explain why people think they

ought to feel merely what they usually do. No doubt they

verify their sentiments by an unconscious reference to the
" "
natural sentiments of an ideal impartial spectator or
their own unimpassioned judgment ; but the fact that a
is of general application does not seem by itself to
precept
add in any metaphysical way to its inherent force or obli-
gatoriness. The dictates of positive morality or custom
are felt to have the force of law whenever the moral or
customary motive is recognised as properly dominant as a
rule. To obey a law is to act in accordance with it, and
" actions "
of a class are not performed without some con-
stant cause or motive. The vera causa of regularity in the
action is regularity in the motive,and the regularity with
 CUSTOMARY AND POSITIVE LA W. 39

which men seek to reduce their actions to rule has its

cause in the constant pressure of an orderly system of
things in favour of systematic adjustment, concert, and
co-operation amongst persons.
The cause or reason why human societies are governed
by law is, that beings of the same kind in the same cir-
cumstances act in substantially the same way ;
this is true
of gases, earths, and vegetables, and the conduct of men
may be expected, in the same way, to have ascertainable
common qualities or tendencies, all the more so from its
being rational, that is to say, deliberately planned with a
view to attaining the end of the spontaneous tendency.
Natural causes might thus explain the origin of law and
social order, but the secondary, self-conscious desire for the
observance of law and the maintenance of order finds its
motive or explanation neither directly in nature nor in
reason, but in the special feeling of subjection to a con-
stant pressure of motive in certain fixed directions ; the
motive is not only felt, but
as always there, lay-
it is felt

ing injunctions on the will, and acquiescence in its

its

power grows into a habit. Volitions are regular because

and in so far as the constant conditions under which men
will are regular ; but consciousness of voluntary regularity
is virtual obedience to law, and the conscious love of regu-

kind of piety or loyalty towards the con-

larity implies a
ditionswhich secure it, so that in practice respect for law
always means respect for the laws that are.
The readiness of society to put all its available resources
at the service of the law, to enforce or sanction its obser-
vance, springs from more obvious grounds of self-interest,
and is connected with the natural impulse of men towards
i.e., action in pursuit of ends, which implies
rational action,
the adjustment of means to anticipated effects, or, in other
words, calculation. Eegulated volitions can be calculated
upon, and therefore, by an elementary necessity, the indi-
vidual will desires for itself, and all kindred wills, the re-
40 NATURAL LAW.
cognition and acceptance of whatever fixed conditions are
necessary for the free indulgence of its impulses.
This conclusion coincides substantially with Kant's con-
ception of jus, or law in general, as the sum of conditions
under which a general law of freedom can harmonise the
arbitrary will of one man with the arbitrary will of all, or,
in other words, a statement of the conditions under which
social life, as men
actually desire to lead it, is possible.
Law, or jus, or the existence of
binding rules of conduct,
"
depends then upon the fact that human life is condi-
tioned," and this is so truly natural a necessity that men
are not conscious of a legal or moral obligation to have
laws ;
on the contrary, the necessity is often spoken of as
a sign of depravity " Law is not made for the righteous
:

"
man, but for the lawless and disobedient or, in the words
;

"
of a writer of the last century, Society is made by our

needs, and government by our wickedness." The positive

laws, which men do feel bound to obey, state the particular
necessities imposed by social life, not what they could by
no means enforce the duty of association in general, or
the necessity for a law-abiding habit of mind. Similarly
we cannot deduce the various moral obligations of men
from a general law in favour of the existence of duties, or
their religious emotions from the abstract desirableness of

having feelings towards the Not-self. We can only enu-

merate the obligations actually felt, classify them according
to their apparent source, and then, by a counter-synthesis,

bring out the common quality of all the different kinds of

obligation owned by the human will.
The question, which naturally comes into existence first,
law or morality, happily not of much importance, since
is

it is certain that both exist, either together or separately,

before the distinction between them is reflected upon. A
vague sense of obligation and acted upon before the
is felt

source or the authority of the constraining power is even

analysed, much less disputed ;

but the fact that human
 CUSTOMARY AND POSITIVE LA W. 41

laws can be disputed, or, as we

say, disobeyed, seems to
point to a real difference in kind between them and the
few true scientific laws which we conceive to be altogether
infallible and inevitable. To know the nature of an inani-
" "
mate object is to know all the classes of actions which

things of the kind certainly perform under all discoverable

conditions. To say, therefore, that man can disobey the
laws of his own nature is to deny that he has a nature; not

merely to doubt the possibility of discovering constancies

of relation among his multifarious powers and appetites,
but to deny that such constancies are real. Marcus Au-
"
relius says, Only to the rational animal is it given to
follow voluntarily what happens, but simply to follow is a
necessity imposed on all." Is it, on the contrary, given to
the rational animal alone voluntarily not to follow what
happens ?

Stated in this way, the question answers itself; there

must be some ambiguity about any use of the word law
that can lead logically to the supposition that the only
being that ever acts consciously by rule is the only being
naturally incapable of acting by fixed and certain rules.
The ambiguity would perhaps disappear if we could import
into science the lawyer's distinction between the law and
the facts of a case, or at least what one legal authority dis-
tinguishes as the rational and the historical element in law.
Men must stand in some constant relations to each other,
but what the relations shall be is not a matter for reason
or law, but of fact and observation only, when certain;

relations are an established fact, other secondary, derivative

laws, or statements of relation, are necessarily limited to
consistency with the broad first principles already laid
down.
All positive law has the same practical authority, as in
the natural world all occurrences are in one sense equally
necessary but there is a difference between the necessity
;

of a rule established by an historical exercise of the legis-

lative will and one reached by deduction from conclusions
42 NATURAL LAW.
previously admitted; the latter necessity is logical, and
the only one that gives universal juridical truths, or laws
that satisfy Bentham's requirement of executing them-
selves, and cannot be disobeyed. The laws of nature are

only the records of natural facts, but it does not conduce

to clearness or accuracy of thinking to call every unifor-

mity in nature a law, because the real uniformities ob-

served in nature are distinguished, or distinguishable, in
thought, according to what we find to be the cause, or
constant conditions, of their occurrence. Such distinctions,
no doubt, are mental, and have more to do with the sub-
ject than the object of knowledge; they may even be
treated as empty and metaphysical, yet they have their
importance in thought. The material cause of any natural
uniformity is the cause or set of conditions, whatever they
may have been, of the facts in which the uniformity is
observed, but it is frequently possible for a rational ex-
planation to connect this or that particular relation of
uniformity with other sets of constant relations, and when
this is so, it may be convenient to call it a law ;
but a
simple statement of facts, standing by themselves and

throwing no light upon any other class of facts, fails in the

chief purpose of a law, which is the subsumption of fresh
cases as they arise, it is at best a private bill, or the by-
law of some natural vestry.
That these considerations are not altogether foreign to
"
the matter of laws properly so called" appears both from
"
Bacon's weighty aphorism, Ratio prolifica consuetudo sterilis
est, nee generat casus" and from the magnificent
maxim which
meets us in every highly-developed system of jurispru-
"
dence : What is not reason, is not law ;" from which it
would appear that the only laws which man must be con-
ceived incapable of breaking, in order to vindicate his right
to be considered as a possible object of scientific knowledge,
are those laws which are intrinsically reasonable, or those,
the precepts of which follow, by the logic of facts, from
the most elementary axioms and postulates of social life
 CUSTOMARY AND POSITIVE LA W. 43

As man is generally defined as a rational animal, this con-

clusion seems to bring us hopefully near to the necessary

certitude of identical propositions, but we have still to dis-

tinguish between the law and the fact. There are a few
very simple general laws to which we know of no excep-
tions all matter gravitates, and all human societies
; obey
some law, but when we come to classes of bodies of at all
a composite character, the law which is found to hold good
of the class, and of every individual belonging to the class
in so far as it is a normal specimen of its kind or species,
does not of itself furnish us with any security that any or
every specimen shall be normal. Eational law cannot
pretend to do more than state the rules of conduct nor-
mally followed by the normal or rational man.
The normal citizen obeys the laws of his country,
because these laws on the whole represent the permanent
will of himself and his contemporaries concerning the con-
ditions of relationship amongst themselves ; in ninety-nine
cases out of a hundred it is the spontaneous wish of every
civilised man that property should change hands by con-
sent and not by compulsion without equivalent, i.e., that
trade should be allowed and theft forbidden, that no one
should die except from disease, accident, or judicial sen-
tence, that the customary constitution of the family should
be sustained, and so forth ; and in matters of more detail,
the average citizen willingly commits himself to the guid-
ance of specialists, whose trade it is to apply the general
principles oflaw spontaneously agreed upon to the innu-
merable cases, hardly any exactly alike, which arise from
time to time. It might seem, no doubt, absurd to say that
any special law of inheritance follows by physical neces-
sity from the nature of man as such but given one or two
;

leading principles, such as the equal inheritance of all

children, as at Eome, inheritance of the oldest male in the
direct line, as in feudal law, or primogeniture without dis-
tinction of sex, as in the Basque country, a number of
other regulations follow naturally from the application of
44 JVA TURAL LA W.
the rule under the actual conditions of relationship and the
chances of life. A
child can understand the first principle,
as a child can understand the axioms of the first book of
Euclid, but ittakes a lawyer or a mathematician to de-
velop all the logical consequences which follow in our
world from such premises.
Systems of positive law, as has been said, enumerate the
necessitiesimposed on men by each other's wills, and a
philosophy of law, in the narrower sense, deals with the
question Have these necessities any common quality, and
how is it to be recognised ? as ethical philosophy deals
with the common quality (if any) of moral precepts, and
the philosophy of religion with the common element (if
any) in the various manifestations of pious feeling.
Hitherto we have only found two unmistakable signs
of a true law, generality, and what, if the barbarism may
be excused, we should call obeydbleness. But this latter
quality throws as little light as the alternative note of
authoritativeness on the nature or substance of natural
human law the natural characteristics of the normal
working of social relations. A
law must be obeyed as
well as imposed, but what are the conditions of obedience ?
The habitual will of every one including myself gives
laws to the community and the habitual will of the rest
;

of the community, gives laws to me the reason that I

;

and they nevertheless obey the same laws is that we have

all, most commonly, motives for doing (or forbearing) what
we have motives, most commonly, for wishing others to
do or forbear ; and law only becomes burdensome in the
exceptional cases when the individual will wishes to break
out of bounds and emancipate itself from the normal suc-
cession of causeand effect, by taking to itself some uncon-
ditioned good. The true lawgiver is the sum of effective
motives, but the character of the accepted law depends on
the sum of present susceptibilities to motive. Looking
upon every will as at once active and passive, ruling and

obeying, we want to know what are the classes of actions

 CUSTOMARY AND POSITIVE LA W. 45

that it will agree, in both capacities, in calling lawful and

necessary for men ?
The morality of laws is often alleged as the condition of
their trueand permanent force, but this view cannot be
accepted without question while a rival school holds that
the precepts of morality themselves are only binding as
expressions of an omnipotent lawgiver's will. The qua-
lity we know as justice may be by nature equally charac-
teristic of the objective rules of conduct called law and
the subjective rules of conduct called morality; and the
explanation of this fact, if a satisfactory one could be
found, would show us the common element essential to all
conscious constancies of relation in the intellectual life of
man. But if the development of real relations necessarily
precedes the discovery of a correct theory or formula for
the relation, law must have exhibited a spontaneous
tendency towards justice, before justice could have been
accepted as the natural standard of the ideal in law.
Substances of the same kind, acting under similar cir-
cumstances according to the same laws, do not habitually
produce entirely heterogeneous results, and we may there-
fore expect to find a degree of family likeness amongst the

simple acts and forbearances habitually prescribed by law

or opinion as just. But definitions of the point of resem-
blance are themselves so many and various that it may
well seem hopeless to give a satisfactory account of it.
The easiest theory, that those things are just and lawful
which are actually enjoined by law, even if it were other-
wise adequate, would still be open to the objection that it
only shifts the point of uncertainty, for we should still ask,
what kinds of acts are generally enjoined by law? To
define the just by the useful is to substitute two uncer-
tainties for one, unless it is explained to whom the just act
is useful,and even then the further question, what is use ?
would be found as difficult as the one for which it is sub-
stituted. Theories in which the conception of moral right
is blended with and colours that of natural justice are
46 NATURAL LAW.
more properly considered under the head of morality than
that of law, and a perfectly self-supporting metaphysical

theory of the foundations of natural justice has scarcely

yet been invented.
The idea of justice, according to the ordinary English
use of the terms, is more abstract than that of law, so
thatit is convenient to borrow the word jus for the some-

what intermediate conception, reached in the same way as

other abstract ideas, of the common quality possessed by
some actions of " having to be done," without desire, in
obedience to external constraint, voluntarily submitted to.

Having seen how this idea in its most general acceptation

might and probably did arise, we have to inquire into the
steps by which, historically, the notion ofjusta, things just,
rather than lawful, or things according to law as it ought
to be, whether it was
so or not, detached itself from the

simpler, more positive experience of ages in which fact

was law, not merely, as we endeavour to show is still the
case, by a hidden philosophical necessity, but plainly and

notoriously. In other words, we want to know what are

the general characteristics of the relations of men in their
conduct to each other, which are made necessary (or real)
by their nature as men not, What is justice ? but, What
1
:

kind of actions are just ?

The proof of law is observance, and the

the fact of its
" "
philosophy of precedents simply the assumption that
is

whatever has been habitually done heretofore was done for

good reason, and will therefore continue to be done until
cause positive be shown for its omission, when, such cause
not having existed in the preceding case, the precedent
ceases to be binding. Early laws are rather declaratory of
existing usage than imperative as to future practice, an^
there is much to be said in behalf of the probable reason-
ableness of this kind of customary law; for, in the absence
of disturbing forces of religious or aristocratic prejudice,
of an overbearing particular interest, or a petrifaction of
the judicial faculty it may plausibly be concluded that
 CUSTOMARY AND POSITIVE LA W. 47

only those customs will permanently prevail amongst a

people which that people freely chooses to observe, that is,
such as the common interest and inclination approves;
and if the function of reason in practical life is to show
how all possible be given to all real
satisfaction may
desires, evidently the most reasonable laws will be those
which state the formula that includes all the recorded
cases, or gives the soundest generalisation of real practice.
But in primitive states of society cases are rare, and the
declaration of the law has to be postponed until it has
been empirically made, in all cases that cannot be referred
to an intelligible standard of natural absolute right or
reason. "We need not stop to inquire whether such a
standard is ever applicable; but when points that are
naturally indifferent require to be fixed by law before
there is a real consensus of usage respecting them, even
acute lawyers in historical times are reduced to strange
perplexity in seeking for the law which does not yet exist.
Custom itself is not felt as binding until the consensus
which established it is beginning to give way, upon which
it becomes law or obsolete. But when a real tendency
towards customary usage is struggling into objective exist-
ence, a community that has already formed, from experi-
ence, the idea of jus in general, hastens to conclude that
there must be latent somewhere, either in the clouds or in
the wisdom of their ancestors, or in the eternal nature of
things, a law applicable to the present exigency, if only

they knew what it was.

In nearly all the countries of Europe the law of succes-
sion to the throne passed through such a phase ; it was

really uncertain not habitually violated during all the

time that usage was as various as the supply of possible

pretenders and the acquisition of general proprietary

;

rights, by inheritance or contract, has usually been regu-

lated in the same gradual, tentative way by the consecra-
tion as legal of the power proved to be strongest in the

greatest number of leading cases. The general principle,

43 NATURAL LAW.
hardly perhaps precise enough to "be called a law, accord-
ing to which all such vexed questions tended finally to
decide themselves, was the desirability in human affairs of
leaving as little as possible to the disposal of arbitrary
accident. The aim of all civilised legislation is to mini-
mise (by distribution or otherwise) the action of chance,
and to make it more and more difficult for the merely
natural accidents of life to carry with them serious modifi-
cations of legal and social status. And side by side with
this tendency, a kind of natural selection among quasi-

prescriptive rights goes on, till the claims which can

oftenest point to prescription in their favour come to be
systematically recognised as legal, and the description of
such claims serves to supply a rule to which others as they
arise are referred.
" "
It is a familiar historical fact that case
usually pre-
cedes "statute" law, or, what comes to the same thing,
that the office of judge is more ancient than that of legis-
lator.
"
Law " is supposed to be there, and is, of course,
in nature certain, but doubt as to what is law cannot
its

always be guarded against. The first step towards a

settled state of society is to proclaim the sacredness of
what is, and this is done by the legislator as richtend, not
as gesetzgebend, as judging, not as ruling. The division
corresponds roughly to the distinction met with almost
everywhere between written and unwritten law, the latter
of which is naturally preferred until cases become over-
whelmingly numerous, just as written laws are allowed to
remain undigested till the extreme limits of legal libraries
and memories have been reached. Unwritten law has the
advantage of a reasonable elasticity, for until lawyers and
others begin to theorise about the beauty and fixity of the
law, it is always as far from fixed as daily convenience
may require. The last truth that men are willing to

recognise in theory is the instability of their own tastes,

habits, and even principles; but in practice, when their
natural forgetfulness is not interfered with by statute or
 CUSTOMAR Y AND POSITIVE LA W. 49

record, they have no scruple about allowing that what was

law once may cease to be so, and that be law now which
of old was not a maxim of course to be admitted and
applied with judicial caution. But the power given to
judges of deciding in the same sentence what rules are
actually in force, as well as to which of these rules a parti-
cular case must be referred, is so discretionary as to be

only tolerable while the judge acts really as mouthpiece

to the common mind, and when the mind of society comes
to be divided, by class prejudices or class interests, judge-
made law cannot be expected to give universal, or even

general satisfaction.
The primitive judge was a personage of great import-
ance, because the task of formulating the just and accept-
able generalisations concerning the custom to be followed
by the community required a combination of rare intel-
lectual and moral force. Law is virtually made by the
causes that lead to its being obeyed as soon as it has been
promulgated, but it is not known, and therefore not obeyed
as law until it is promulgated, and accordingly the autho-
rised legislative power, whatever it be, which declares the

law, is, as we have seen, credited with the supposed higher

function of making it down.
or laying In primitive com-
munities, judgments and laws possess the like semi-sacred

authority, and the question of the justice or wisdom of

customary law really does not arise as long as it is really
customary, i.e., as long as its binding force is undisputed.
It might even be said, as one of the many paradoxes with
which the subject abounds, that the idea of justice, as a
quality that ought to be possessed by judgments, is not
formed until judgments become uncertain or of disputable
justice, and cease to be necessarily satisfactory and bind-
ing. It is scarcely possible to think of a just judgment
except by comparison or contrast with judgments that are
not just, and as such criticism as this presupposes some
other standard of justice than what lies in the breast of the
sovereign judge, whenever it becomes articulate, we may
50 NATURAL LAW.
expect to find general rules or laws ready thenceforward to
supersede the discretionary resolution of cases. Somewhat
as the primitive ruler is able to give wise judgments before
he or his people feel theneed of laws, the people intuitively
estimate the wisdom of his sentences before they have
reached the point of distinguishing any kind of general
rule as necessary, and a fortiori before they can distin-

guish general rules into those that are essentially obey-

able and those which are not so. In point of fact, the
just judgment was the one which corresponded to the
existing social opinion, and gave effect to the latent
will of the community concerning the righting of wrongs
as they arose. Criminal law, which develops before
civil law, generalises these judgments upon anticipated
offences, and the formula for avoiding offence, given at
the same time, contains the rudiments of positive law.
But we are nearer having a direct intuition of the just, or
what constitutesan acceptable judgment in particular
cases, than of the naturally lawful, or what constitutes
an obeyable rule for all known or imaginable cases. The
just may turn out to be, in judgments and laws alike,
nothing more than the naturally selected practical Best,
but its identity is more easily recognised in the concrete
form, and for the same reasons, its nature is more easily
detected and its qualities described. It is easier to com-

pare things than conceptions, and acts or forbearances than

the relations of acts, and our only hope of solving such a
problem as What constitutes the practical Best in human
relations must lie in reducing it to its simplest terms.
?

The most recent independent attempt to approach the

subject from a positive standing-point is that of M. Littre,
which should perhaps be welcomed as a step in the right
direction. According to him, justice is to give to every
one that which belongs to him, what that is having to
be ascertained by the help of the axiom A=A. The ap-
plication of this principle, or rather the practical discovery
that moral equivalents exist, is no doubt a real step in the
 CUSTOMAR Y AND POSITIVE LAW. 51

evolution of a sense of justice, the Pythagorean doctrine on

the subject being, perhaps, its earliest expression. It only
misses the root of the difficulty because it presupposes the
man who is to be dealt justly with to be already possessed

of something which or an equivalent whereof justice is

to secure him in the use of for the future ; but it does no
more than the familiar suum cuique tribuere to account for
the justice of the original possession.
On this point Kant is more nearly satisfactory, and if
we take leave to omit a good deal of scholastic a-prioritat,
his view states, if it does not explain, the facts of the case
fairly and clearly. In this system that which belongs to
a person is that which he normally has, i.e., what the
general rules of conduct followed in the society of which
he is a member, allow such members to acquire or to keep.
The rules themselves are only generalised statements of the
common practice, so that in proclaiming the general sacred-
ness of what law really only affirms its own existence
is, :

it declares what
to be in the main conformable to law.
is

At this rate it would seem that we cannot, without argu-

ing in a circle, regard justice as an intrinsic quality of
acts :
yet our feeling rebels against the inference that if we
were all habitually to act unjustly, acts which we now call
just would change their character and become worse than
blunders, crimes, or violation of the natural law. dis- We
tinguish instinctively between various kinds of real ten-
dencies and relations, and call some of the things which are
"
just," and others evil and indifferent ; what we feel most
set upon doing is what we think best to have done, and
we have no ideal standard underived from reality ; yet we
cannot feel that the tastes and judgments of men are gene-
rically superior, in the matter of reasonableness and per-
sistence, to their actions, since our thoughts and feelings
seem to be for the most part developments of sensibility
consequent on prior developments of energy. Our idea
of justice is not coextensive with either the real or tho

good ;
it is a name for our estimate of acts as they affect
52 NATURAL LAW.
men among themselves ; and this estimate, we find upon
analysis, depends upon the measure of permanent reality
or goodness in the tendencies exemplified. The sentiment
in our minds which makes the just a name to conjure
with, is quite distinct from the objective qualities of the
acts which have come to inspire the feeling, and we must
not expect to find any metaphysical counterpart to it in
them. We do not consider certain lines of conduct just
because they represent the practical Best ; certain aspects
of the practical Best are distinguished as just, because they
are distinct, to the mind and feeling, from other aspects ;
and it is not necessary to import any sentiment at all into
the question of what we naturally and reasonably judge
to be the practical Best for men in their mutual rela-
tions.
It is not exactly true that (as Bentham said) society is
"
held together only by the sacrifices that men can be in-
"
duced to make of the gratifications they demand at:

w orst
T
would be held together by the purpose, whatever
it

that was, for which the sacrifices were made. But it is pro-
bable that, at a comparatively early date, men, who usually
act first from impulse and then try to attach a meaning to
their action, began to look for a rationalistic explanation of
the social compact into which they had been led by an un-
conscious, disinterested gregariousness. As desires multi-
plied with the advance of society, it became easy to find
such an explanation in the help which men could give each
other in gratifying their desires ; but when the additional
power which resulted from co-operation began to seek
fresh objects for itself, society had, so to speak, outgrown its
members. Instead of a simple consensus of inclination, the
same in every part, a complex whole, with which indivi-
duals could scarcely sympathise, and which they soon gave
up the attempt to understand, was built up by a number
of heterogeneous impulses, standing in no obvious natural
relations to each other, and always liable to come dis-

astrously into collision until the deliberate reason of the

 CUSTOMARY AND POSITIVE LA W. 53

community succeeds in overtaking and controlling the

members.
wills of its

Pending such a development of practical philosophy as

would make laws unnecessary, it is their function to deter-
mine the point at which the action of various natural im-
pulses must be restricted or arrested so as to allow pro-
portionate scope to opposing or incompatible impulses.
In this way it is that early law comes to be chiefly penal

or repressive, and in reference to penal justice, M. Littre'

is no doubt right in thinking that the discovery of the
equivalence of equals was important. As he says, it was
1

an intellectual rather than a moral advance to contemplate

the two forms of delayed defence, retribution and compen-
sation, as alternative possibilities but the idea of com-
;

pensation, when it had once been reached, admitted of

various moral developments, while retribution was in its

nature as barren as revenge, of which indeed it is only a
generalisation. Those classes of acts are naturally re-
garded as criminal which society in general wishes not to
have committed, but for the community in general to
sympathise so far with the anger of an injured person as
to interfere to punish the offenders when the injury is
irreparable, shows (like the practice of war) that the
destructive passions are the first to become altruistic.
It is a description rather than a definition of primitive

judicial sentences to say that they consisted in giving

every man the equivalent of his deserts, and the descrip-
tion does not explain how, side by side with the earliest

conception of jus (as the restraints imposed on human

action by human grew up the further
authority), there
classification of restraints, actual and possible,
not as
desirable or mischievous, but as just and unjust. If law is

only the general rehearsal and enforcement of usage, what

is there in the bare fact of actual use to make it the stan-
dard of anything so sacred as justice ? In the face of the
common and flagrant separation between the right and the
1
La Science au point de vue philosopliique.
54 NATURAL LAW.
fact in societies, how can it be maintained that
human
there no higher or other rule of right than a general
is

practice much open to exceptions ?

According to Grotius (who, it is to be feared, is even
more metaphysical than Montesquieu), voluntary obliga-
tion, or natural law, is the mother of civil law, and the
child of nature and if we are referred to nature, as the
;

last court of appeal,how is nature to pass sentence upon

herself Consciously or otherwise, we do in fact judge
?

everything in terms of itself, and the significance of the

judgment simply owing to the lack of absolute unifor-
is

mity, the more or less of typical completeness which

characterises real existences of every kind. If men were

perfect, law and justice would not so much coincide as

disappear together across the threshold of consciousness ;

the name might be kept to denote the automatic harmony

of social actions, but there would be no corresponding im-

pression in the mind. Opposition or strife is the condi-

tion of phenomenal as harmony is the condition of real
existence. We know thingsby what they are not rather
than by what they are, and by what they are chiefly in
contrast to the things that they are not. Nevertheless,
things must be, somehow or other, if they are to make
themselves the object of thought and when they are, our
;

only knowledge of what they are, or what they normally

tend to be, is derived from themselves.
In pronouncing anything to be just or unjust, society or
an individual simply assumes the office of the primitive
judge, and classifies a case not provided for (or provided
for inadequately) by positive law, in accordance with prin-

ciples embodying the general practice of the time or place.

An appeal to the inconceivableness of the contrary opinion
is always an unsatisfactory form of argument, but consider-
ing the difficulty of an historical treatment of processes
that are half completed before the dawn of history, it may
per] laps be allowable to re-enforce this view by the sugges-
tion that it would be a very singular kind of society in-
 CUSTOMA R Y AND POSITIVE LAW. 55

deed in which the normal practice of every individual were

something entirely different from what was currently
believed to be good and desirable. Of course there are
pessimists who will say that England in the nineteenth

century the definition of such a society on all

satisfies

points ;
on the one hand, the merely formal beliefs
but,
which do not influence the conduct only inspire lip-judg-
ments, not real opinions concerning things just and unjust ;

and on the other hand, the lively belief of the pessimist

himself much
requires to be accounted for, since, in saying
that the world is bad, we seem to take for granted that
there are, or have been, or might have been, worlds that
were good ; only as we have never visited any other world
than to see whence, except from this
this, it is difficult
one (granted by an exceedingly eclectic process), we can
have derived the idea of goodness as a quality of worlds.
In order that law, or natural justice, should be able to
consist substantially in maintaining the status quo, the
forces by which society organised itself must not have
been in the first instance mutually destructive or antago-

nistic, otherwise society would be consecrating its own

lingering suicide but things do not come into existence
;

by committing suicide, and human societies do exist, and

what they aim at consecrating tinder the conception of
law and justice are exactly those tendencies and accom-
plished facts which make the life, such as it is, of the
society. Everything which contributes to make the
society what it is, and what it is content to be, is just
in
the eyes of that society and nothing can be permanently
;

regarded as just which does not on the whole contribute

to the lasting good of the community as that is under-
stoodby its members.
The natural right which most generally recognised at
is

the present day is that of every one to do as he pleases, so

long as no one else is injured by his pleasure,
and it is
evident, from what has been said, without attaching any
metaphysical sanctity to the independence of individuals.
56 NATURAL LAW.
that the interest, or rather the existence of society, is

more intimately concerned in the maintenance of this

than of any other right or faculty. The majority of human
impulses are not anti-social, or society would never con-
stitute itself at all, and for its complete organisation so

many impulses have to co-operate that arbitrary restric-

tions upon any considerable number of them would defeat
the purpose (which can only be the interest of the organi-
sation) for which they were imposed. It is found in prac-
tice that as men cannot behave systematically better than
they naturally will to do, they are best left to the free
play of their best, or naturally strongest, impulses. Still
it is only by degrees that this
generalisation comes to be
accepted in all its breadth, and it may perhaps be ob-
jected that if there is a certain normal type of humanity
toward which individual men tend more or less to approxi-
mate, and which it would be their perfection to realise,
law, speaking in the name of the general good, might

enjoin whatever sacrifices of private inclination appeared

to the legislative mind conducive to that end, and insist

upon the community behaving better than its own nature

prompts. Such a confusion of the spheres of law and
morality is not uncommonly met with at a certain stage
of civilisation, and the contrary principle does not find
general acceptance until a tolerably wide experience of
various regimes, from the inquisitorial to the anarchic, has
shown the practical convenience and expediency of the
liberalmaxim, and proved a posteriori the impossibility of
securing profitable obedience to laws which the subject
population either generally averse to obeying, or alto-
is

gether incapable of obeying with the indispensable mini-

mum of intelligence.
If law is the formula of natural tendency, we can under-
stand that the most elementary natural right of individual
men should be to exist as they naturally do but the just,
;

or the practical best, as regards the relations of men among

themselves, is not to be confounded with the ideal best, or

 CUSTOMARY AND POSITIVE LA W. 57

good ;
it is simply the best result possible from the actual
balance of real, more or less incompatible tendencies.
The chief good of every existing thing is to exist as fully
or perfectly after its kind as it can. If we put ourselves
in the place of any existing unit, those things are good, for
the unit, which promote its natural tendency to exist as
much and as perfectly as it can ; the unit is good in
relation to other units, in so far as it furthers their several
tendencies towards perfect existence, and it is bad, for
them, in so far as it impedes the same. In ruling human
societies, the practical best is the course which entails
leastpermanent sacrifice of natural human power and will.
The judgments which common sense spontaneously up-
holds as just are those which secure individuals in the
possession and exercise of their own natural powers of
doing and enjoying, subject to a due regard for the similar
liberty of their neighbours. Just laws, or statements of
real human relations at their best, are those which secure

every class in the possession of its natural right to be its

bestself, that is to say, a self as much alive as possible,
and related by as many good offices as possible to as many
as possible of its coevals. Natural right or justice does
not secure to individuals or classes the indulgence of all
their wishes, either at their own or at the public expense,
but it demands for them full exercise and development for
all their permanent tastes and all their serviceable facul-
ties.

Assuming the natural good or interest of the social

organism to consist in the normal and harmonious develop-

ment of the greatest possible number of natural faculties
in the fullest possible perfection amongst its members, it
is evident that the last relics of a belief in the natural
"
rights of man," apart from use or law, must be given up,
as completely as Austin himself could desire. Eight and
justice are not arbitrary creations, they have a natural
and necessary being in every human society, but they do
not exist absolutely in vacuous eternity, out of all relation
$8 NATURAL LAW.
to the acts and sufferances of sensible beings. It is of
course possible, and sometimes useful, to classify rights
in order of generality, and as the correlative of jus, or

obligation in its widest sense, we may understand by the

natural rights of individuals, their claim to all the advan-
tages which the general good requires them to enjoy. But
the individual's property in such advantages is not abso-
lute (though it might possibly be argued that a jural right
is the only true and inalienable property), and it should be

remembered, in asserting any claim to them, that it is the

public, not private, interest that weighs in favour of its
recognition.
is fitly represented with a balance, for the just
Justice
is always half on one side and half on the other. One
man's right is another man's obligation, and men's obliga-
tions to each other are reciprocal. Justice consists in the
perfect proportioning of these obligations, and gives effect
to the natural claims men make upon each other, in order
of their inward strength and outward usefulness. The
right of the strongest claim to be attended to first does
not lie in the bare fact of its strength, or power to compel
attention, but in its strength as compared with other
claims, that would be as good if they were as strong, that
are as good if they are supported and re-enforced by ex-
ternal sympathetic tendencies which make the balance of

power on their side. Justice consecrates the perma-

lie

nently dominant tendencies of men, and the special, almost

religious feeling with which the decisions of justice are
received, is a spontaneous evidence that the permanent
realities of tendency in the relations of men have moral
qualities over and above the bare fact of common reality.
When our natural feeling, and our thought and feeling about
the feeling, point one way, the tendency is normal as well
as natural, that is to say, it harmonises with all the fixed
conditions under which the kind exists, as well as with a
portion of its instincts. Our respect for the just comes, not
,from its being what the majority do, but from its being
 CUSTOMARY AND POSITIVE LA W. 59

what the majority wish to have done. The treacherous

element of self-will is eliminated, and the practical best
isestimated dispassionately by the common reason after
weighing and balancing the common impulses.
To wish for a thing, or to find it useful, does not give a
natural right to its possession or enjoyment; possession
itself may be nine parts of the law, but it is not even one

part of justice ; only, as it happens, for the actual posses-

sion of anything to have become firmly established, such
possession must have been originally fairly compatible
with or conducive to the general interest, which is then
concerned in protecting its security. It is a part of that

imperfection of human already ob-

affairs, to which, as

served, we owethe existence of law and the conception

of justice, that even the most elementary natural rights
can lapse into disuse. There are whole classes, sometimes
amounting to the majority of a community, who do not

possess or exercise faculties which it would be eminently

conducive to the general good for them both to possess
and exercise to which, therefore, they have the most
indefeasible right ;
but this right, in the successful asser-
tion of which the common good is deeply interested, is not
vested in them as individuals, as classes, nor even as the

majority, and the common good requires that the members

of any oppressed section of the community should have
the magnanimity to demand the emancipation to which
they are entitled as right, not as their right. Neither the
capitalist nor the sans-culotte have abstract rights against
society ;
there is a social right, if we knew what it was
a just practical Best and both have a right to what it is
best for the commonwealth that they should have and to
nothing more, less, or different but they themselves,
;
un-
fortunately, are likely to be the last people to help us in
" "
ascertaining what that true natural right is.

The of local or class usages is an inter-

legalisation
mediate step between the practice of societies where all
customs are generally binding, and those in which the law
 60 NATURAL LAW.
is chiefly occupied in
protecting the free initiative of indi-
"
viduals. The saying acted on from ancient times, Cuilibet
in sua arte credendum est" tacitly admits that there is (for
instance) no typically just "law merchant" existing antece-
dently to the establishment of usages amongst merchants ;

and law and justice would have no further concern than to

sanction and enforce such usages, were it not that political
wisdom is not a part of any one's special " art," so that no
" "
class is be believed on the question what is just 01
to
otherwise from its members in their unprofessional rela-
tions to each other or to a different class. The precepts of
class morality afford a fairly sufficient rule of conduct
while classes are as homogeneous as primitive society, and
individuals are satisfied with the simple routine existence
of their order ; and when this ceases to be the case, the

precepts of personal morality in social matters are still

regulated by those of class or customary morality. Most
"
of the dangerous vagueness attendant on ideas of natural
"
right comes from a confusion between the dictates of
public and private morality, or rather from the optimistic
assumption that the two will always spontaneously coin-
cide. People assume themselves to have a natural right
against society to do, at least, whatever they do not them-
selves feel to be morally wrong, and certainly no duly en-

lightened conscience would affirm an act of extreme social

inexpediency to be morally right; but then few con-
sciences are so enlightened as to be capable of estimating
> the social tendency of private acts, and therefore, though
it may be practically impossible to improve upon the

principle of respect for the free initiative of individuals,

it cannot be maintained that all the results reached in

accordance with that principle are absolutely just or right.

In considering what classes of actions are regarded as
naturally lawful or just, we have rather lost sight of the
question, how law comes to possess a binding and con-
straining power, though the answer has already been partly
taken for granted. It is necessary for the maintenance of
 CUSTOMARY AND POSITIVE LA W. 61

society that men should make certain sacrifices of their

own inclinations in their dealings with each other. The
law ordains that these sacrifices shall be made, but men
do not feel obliged to make the sacrifices because the law
commands, the law commands because men feel obliged
to make them. And there is nothing very wonderful or
mysterious in this feeling of necessity it is no news that
;

human life is determined by other conditions than human

desire, and consciousness of these conditions is conscious-
ness of constraint, whether the constraint be direct or
alternative. It might be surprising that men should

acquiesce in these conditions if they had the choice of

" "
an unchartered freedom in their reach, but, if freedom
must be unchartered, that is a fresh, and to man as he is,

an unacceptable condition.
Fromthe earliest to the latest speculation on the sub-
ject, the question concerning law and justice has been
whether they are based upon nature or are of human
meaning personal and arbitrary institution. We say
human institutions are based upon human nature, are its
voluntary and necessary expression and manifestation, or,
in other words, that law is the organised liberty of all
the members of a society, and obedience to law merely the
Wille zum Leben ! of the social organism. The obedience
becomes conscious in man as all his other actions do:
"
rational action arises out of instinctive action when this
2 The mul-
grows too complex to be perfectly automatic."
titude of actual observances leads men to classify their
conduct, or reduce it to rule; the multitude of rules
leads to the substitution of the general conception of rules

necessarily obeyed, for the thought of innumerable special

conditions of necessary action, and it is not till this point
has been reached, after long and hereditary experience,
that the existence of a positive law, enjoining or forbid-

1
Perhaps "vital self-will" is the best equivalent for this untranslat-
able phrase of Schopenhauer's.
8
Herbert Spencer's Principles of Psychology.
62 NATURAL LAW.
ding actions of a class, can be said to serve as a motive for
their performance or omission.
Most writers on the philosophy of law, having begun
the treatment of their subject at a time when positive
legislation was already complicated enough for obedience
to it to be an act of faith rather than reason, naturally

began by trying to account for the faith; and though

their method was scarcely sufficiently historical for their
attempts in this direction to be perfectly successful, the
list of alternative explanations logically possible or con-

ceivable was almost exhaustively discussed. In Greek

philosophy generally, the nature of justice in itself was
the object of inquiry but the Romans were brought, by
;

the practical experience of which the jus gentium was the

result, to the notion of a more comparative treatment, and

seeking the common element in real systems of law, natu-

rallypostponed their researches into the origin of law in
general; for classification seems of itself a step towards
explanation: when several things of a class exist, one
seems partly to account for the other, so far as the mere
is concerned, and what seems
existence chiefly to need
explanation, is the being of the class as an ideal entity, or
the common properties by which it is constituted. To the
later Latin jurists, and to most modern publicists, what
seemed to want explaining was not the existence of this
or that law, or of law in general, but the agreement of all,
or most law ; why laws tended to be just, and for what
reason they were generally obeyed. Merely logical ex-
planation, however, though the only sort satisfactory to
some minds, adds nothing to real knowledge, and can at
most connect one phenomenon with a wider phenomenon
of the same kind. Thus the civil law is referred to, or
included under a natural law, as by the Romans; this
natural law is in its turn explained, as by the schoolmen,
from a natural reason, which comes everywhere to the
same conclusions, or by a natural morality, as in most
writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, expres-
 CUSTOMAR Y AND POSITIVE LA W. 63

sive either of the divine nature or the divine will. The

genealogy was inspired partly by
itself the common wish
to arrive at something more ultimate than a fact, and

partly by the more reasonable hope of finding, as it were,

"
a " source for the law, which is felt, and truly, to be not
altogether self-imposed. But we do not find that there
are any real historical processes corresponding to the steps
in this genealogy, for the relief of law by equity does not
represent any permanent distinction in principle, as if
there were two kinds of justice for suitors to take their
choice between, one a degree more general, abstract, and
stable than the other.
who admits that equity can be thought of as
Voigt,
1

agreeing with law as well as at variance with it, vir-

" "
tually reduces the idea of the just or the fair to a

commentary on the variable relation between the law

and morality of each period. Equity, when established
law is supposed to be just, may serve to determine the
application of the law to cases; otherwise it is simply
an artifice for keeping the administration of law on some

points of general interest more nearly abreast with the

latest popular notions of justice than the text of the statutes

administered; and not a convenient artifice, because as

soon as courts of equity are established, their practice tends
to stiffen into a system, and has in its turn to be relieved

by courts of appeal deciding merely on the merits of the

case ;
while it is plainly not for the interests of either law
or justice to perpetuate a state of uncertainty amongst

litigants, as to whether their causes will be tried according

to rules of law, equity, or common sense.
Another recent German writer 2 ends his investigation
of the philosophical element in Eoman jurisprudence by
declaring that the binding force of the jus gentium rests

1 Die Lehre vom jus naturale, soquum et bonum und jus gentium der
Romer.
Hildenbrand, Geschichte und System der Kechts- und Staatsphilo-
2

sopliie.
64 NATURAL LAW.
on the consensus of the human species, that of jus civile on
the consensus of the state, and that of jus naturale in the
subjection of man to the laws of nature considered in
relation to God ;
in lieu of which last clause, by which the
symmetry of the statement is somewhat impaired, we
should propose to read that the force of the laws of nature
rests on the wide natural consensus of existing beings to
exist as they do.
The source, from this point of view, of the external
constraint which comes into the consciousness of the
narrowing subject class as law, is always the fixity of
relations amongst things natural and real, and the readi-
ness of the will to acquiesce in restrictions which it
perceives to be natural and unavoidable, certainly does
not require more explanation than the reality of the re-
strictions themselves. As the judicious Hooker observes,
"
Let Reason teach impossibility in anything, and the Will
of man doth let it go." And though such letting go may
be altogether against the inclination of the will, which
would gladly have had the thing possible, there is at least
an intellectualrelief in perceiving the order and relations
of the impossibility. Coleridge, in speaking of the satis-
faction found in accounting for a pain, says, "There is

always a consolatory feeling that accompanies the sense

of a proportion between antecedents and consequents. It
is eternity revealing itself in the form of time." And
this is only a transcendental expression of the gospel of
necessarianism. To see two events as cause and effect is
to see them in an inseparable relation, as, in a sense, one
to the mind, after which it becomes impossible to separate
them in serious practical speculation ;
to know that things,
being what they are, could not in any single particular
have been other, or therefore better, is to see in this the
best of all possible worlds, because any fictitious possi-
bility which the play of thought or fancy may suggest is
unreal or it would be realised is not really possible.
It is curious to observe how all theories of the origin
 CUSTOMARY AND POSITIVE LAW. 65

of law, -whether metaphysical or political, whether, that

is, they refer to nature or to will as the ultimate source

of its authority, gradually gravitate towards the recogni-

tion of a power felt to be supreme of fact and of right,
as the only logical base of legal obedience. The power
must be supreme of fact, or there is no true compulsion ;

it must be allowed supreme of right, or the will itself is

not compelled, and when both conditions are satisfied in

the voluntary obedience to an irresistible force, or the
complete identification of the weaker with the stronger
tendency (we cannot here say will without anthropo-
morphism), the reign of law is established.
When the individual is first becoming conscious of his
own personality as distinguished from that of others, he
seems naturally to personify all the necessities he en-
counters, as a preliminary towards complying with them.
But this uncritical docility does not easily survive the
same authority these
multiplication of laws resting on the ;

supply a standard for themselves to be tried by, and un-

less they are all such as the subject will can and does

spontaneously accept, the law and the lawgiver lose their

authority together. Within the range of modern history
we can trace three main phases of feeling about or towards
the nature and conduct of this Supreme power, with three
corresponding forms of doctrine concerning the ground and
extent of man's subjection to it. Scholastic philosophy,
taking for granted the foundation of a sincere theological
an ex parte statement of the posi-
faith, confines itself to
tive elements in the divine law. The expositor recognises
a real distinction between things mala in se and things
mala quia prohibita, but it does not occur to him to criti-
cise the existence of things in themselves when he is prais-

ing the excellence of the divine appointments which cause

such natural evil to be condemned by the common law of
nature. The precepts of revelation are not conceived as
possessing the same elementary kind of philosophical neces-
sity. Obedience to them is only necessary to man because
66 NA TURAL LA W.
God has willed the command, and it is an act of faith to
believe that whatever God commands is both naturally and
supernaturally good. From the twelfth to the sixteenth
century philosophy was spontaneously on the side of
authority; the laws of God and man were better than
anarchy, and the time had not yet come for trying all
ordinances, whencesoever derived, by some common ideal
standard other than their objective authority. Kevela-
tion made a duty of loyalty to political superiors, so
that positive law might be conceived as in effect de-
claratory of the divine law, while the ;ransgressions of
political potentates failed to compromise the divine
authority, since they might always be condemned by a
stillhigher organ of the divine will the authorised spiri-
tual power. Suarez, one of the latest and most circum-
stantial exponents of this philosophy of law, explicitly as-
" "
serts a natural right of sovereignty in the people over
whom the prince rules by divine sufferance and human
consent, and with this concession we come to the end of
the period during which goodness is praised as conform-
able to the divine will, while the divine will is never
summoned to prove its conformity to its own creation
natural goodness.
In the theological period, it may be observed that law
is conceived more dynamically, and as it were construc-

tively, than is usual, as enjoining what men are to do,

rather than as stating the conditions subject to which they
may do as they feel inclined, and it is in this way parallel
to the precepts of customary morality, which are of abso-
lute force for a time, but have not the logical necessity be-

longing to relations deduced from other relations. It was

reserved for the civilians to stultify the premises which
they borrowed partly from theology, by inquiries in which
Puffendorf especially is much entangled, whether God has "a
right" to command the obedience of His creatures. The arid
abstractions of scholasticism are at least precise and inter-

nally coherent, and Suarez keeps clear of the absurdity of

 CUSTOMARY AND POSITIVE LA W. 67

proffering a reason for the ultimate fact, which explains

itself to every lona fide believer in a Deity, since religious
belief is simply being bound by the will, so far as known
or conjectured, of the deity believed in. In his own
"
dialect, lex participata supponit legem per essentiam sed
"
lex per essentiam eterna est and boldly confronting the
:

difficulty of a free will in a fixed nature, he concludes that

God Himself acts by the rules of His own right reason,
while the laws He has appointed for man are, as a fact,

just and according to reason, as well as efficacious to

oblige, the two tilings required in the idea of law.

A sincere belief that the divine ordinance is the sole
source of lawful obligation naturally affects the resolution
of the question much debated by casuists, Whether by human
"
laws the conscience be obliged or no for if conscience be
;

"
not," says Jeremy Taylor, then nothing is concerned but
prudence, and care that a man be safe from the rods and
"
axes but then" (he was not alone in thinking) the world
;

would quickly find that fear would be but a weak defence to

her laws ;
which force or wit or custom or riches would so
much enervate or so often evacuate." The will of God as
conceived by any one generation binds those of that gene-
ration who recognise nothing in His will that their will
does not fully identify itself with. But men make
gods after their own image, and the image frequently sur-
vives the maker, whose descendants may, for a space, be
bound by belief in the existence of sanctions of such
cogency as to compel an obedience that has become reluc-
tant only as the force of sanctions is relative and depen-
;

dent on the disposition of the subject will, should that

become increasingly reluctant to obey, the law, if it is so
far from necessary that it can be habitually broken, is

ipso facto abrogated, shown not to state necessary rela-

tions following from the nature of things real.
The last question for the advocates of the political
theory of law, or its origin by institution, is thus seen to
be Can the divine will be resisted and the divine law
:
68 NATURAL LAW.
be disobeyed ? And the answer to this belongs to theo-
logy, not tomoral or political philosophy, though it can-
not fairly be evaded by theists, whose systems depend
upon the answer that can be given to it. We need only
observe that Calvinism, the only theology since that of
mediaeval Catholicism with any pretensions to scientific
completeness and insight, honestly allows that an omni-
potent ruler, creating, ordering, and sustaining everything
that exists, neither is nor can be conceived as having His
purposes frustrated by the creatures of His own will, and
that therefore the law of God ordains the condemnation ol
sinners in a sense which makes an expression of ordinary
moral disapprobation for sin inappropriate. Modern theo-
logy virtually has to make its choice between this opinion
what God does is right in some supernatural sense,
that
even when it seems and is humanly speaking bad (as in

the election of sinners to damnation) and that of ration-

alistic optimism, according to which everything however

really or apparently bad will somehow come to good in the

long run. But neither of these hypotheses exhibit such a
necessary relation between the will of God and man as to
enable us to deduce the uniformities of human conduct
from the nature and being of the two. A legislator who
makes his subjects as well as his laws has failed in one or
other of his functions if the laws are habitually broken,
whether the reason of the breach be that the will of the
subject rejects them as bad, or that the nature of the sub-
ject is bad, i.e., imperfect or abnormal and irregular in
its manifestations. And since the laws which we have
best grounds for calling divine are seen empirically to be
but imperfectly binding on man, we conclude the rela-
tion between man and God if there be a God not to be
the relation of omnipotent sovereign and lawful subject ;
and accordingly a secular theory of law must seek else-
where for the seat of supreme power and the source of real
obligation.
The second stage of feeling and speculation had, as
 CUSTOMARY AND POSITIVE LA W. 69

already implied, less internal consistency than the theo-

logical theory in its purity. Criticism did not go so far as
to question the morality of the divine law, but the schism
which agitated Christendom seemed to leave every portion
of so-called divine law open to discussion, in which the
claim to authority had to be justified by an appeal to the
merits of the law ; and, in fact, the civilian founders of the
Utilitarian philosophy virtually took their own estimate of
natural right as the expression of that law of nature which
they could, on the one hand, invoke as an authority with
secularists, and, on the other, praise to the religious as a

precious gift of all- wise Providence. Bentham and Austin

have little to add to Puffendorf's assertion that God pre-
scribes to men the duties calculated to give them the hap-
piness they so earnestly desire; and Bishop Cumberland
(who describes moral obligation as an act of the legislator
showing the particular conduct enjoined to be necessary
for the person who is to follow it) concludes that, given the

knowledge of a necessary dependence between the pursuit

of thecommon good and the happiness of each individual,
each individual is certainly obliged to seek that good,
which proves the law of nature to be duly and truly " pro-
mulgated." Writers, on the other hand, who attribute a
metaphysical sanctity to the chief moral conceptions actu-
ally entertained by mankind, either derive those concep-
tions from the Essence of the Deity conceived as absolutely

good, which Cumberland not unfairly objects to, as virtu-

ally defining a thing by itself or else confine themselves
;

to arguing that the sanctity in question cannot be ex-

"
plained by an arbitrary act of will. When things exist,"
"
says Cudworth, they are what they are, not by will or
arbitrary command, but by the necessity of their own
"
nature ;
so that, given things with ultimate moral quali-

ties,the moral qualities of their mutual relations would

follow by a logical necessity. Leibnitz is at the pains to
in obe-
protest against Puffendorf for making duty consist
dience to law, and law consist in the will of a superior that
70 NATURAL LAW.
such and such acts shall be done, when the very schoolmen
"
declare voluntas non est regula," and no one is content
to rest his claim to authority on a law of his own making

commanding obedience. To which Barbeyrac retorts that

" "
the nature of things cannot impose an obligation on us,
which, with lawyers of his school, includes the idea of
"right" in the person imposing it, a right, according to
them, which no one but a recognised superior possesses :

but this, as we observed an ambiguous quali-

at starting, is

fication, and the one word "recognised" virtually concedes

Cudworth's position, that "it is not the mere will and
pleasure of him that commandeth that obligeth to do posi-
tive things commanded, but the intellectual nature of him
that is commanded." Eeal as is the difference involved in
the two shades of opinion, it has had no influence on the
theory of law itself, for the only practical question between
the disputants was whether the precepts of a naturally
binding law should be strengthened by the discovery of a
pre-established harmony between them and the divine will,
or whether the perfection of the divine nature should be
demonstrated by the excellence of the precepts appointed
for the regulation of the natural world.
The third period of criticism is that into which we have
drifted since conceptions of natural perfection and ideal
order have begun to form themselves, in comparison with
which the "laws of nature," at their best, are harsh and
ruthless; and while we conceive these ideals themselves
to be altogether of natural growth, now that they are formed,

they serve to condemn, not the laws of their own forma-

tion, but the facts which retarded it, and still retard their
realisation. These conceptions do not owe their virtue
toany belief in the sacredness of their source we know ;

their power consists only in the strength of conviction

with which they are cherished, but no one questions their
" "
right to adhesion should they happen to receive it, the
only question is whether the inevitable tendency of natural
fact will procure it them. The consciousness of obligation
 CUSTOMAR Y AND POSITIVE LAW. 71

is in the subject, but the reality of obligation, or compul-

sion so exercised as to control and alter the direction of
the subject will, must exist in nature ifthe obligation is to
be felt
permanently as binding. The great law of nature
which no man can break or annul, is the existence of all
natural objects after their kind and this law has no other
;

standard of right than the facts it proclaims, for, though

the general good consists in the orderly existence of kinds
in their perfection, it is only because real existence is

orderly that we regard what is abnormal as imperfect of

itskind and so contrary to the general good, of which the
observance of law is the chief condition. No one but a
madman would ask if fire has " a right " to burn us it ;
"
cannot help doing so, and the " right of human societies
to make laws regulating the intercourse of their members,
and the right of moral causes to produce effects after their
kind, are of the same natural hyper-rational sufficiency.
The few frail or diseased wills that cannot accept and
identify themselves with the supreme tendency of the
universe to exist as it does or as it best can cease before
their time out of the land of the living sharers in the ten-

dency; but the immense majority of men submit peace-

ably to the laws imposed on them by the force which they
feel tobe irresistible the tendency of contemporary being ;

and this for reasons substantially identical with those

acknowledged by the most intelligent advocates of the
theory which ascribes the force of law to its imposition by
a superior will. Sincere theists who believe all things to
follow the laws divinely appointed for their guidance, obey
the laws they feel to be binding on themselves as a reli-
gious duty, because their will is one with the will of the
God they believe in. Consistent naturalists see in the
fixed relations of the natural world the norm of natural
human and in the fact that nature is thus and thus
life,

become conscious of an efficient though not of a final

cause for living according to nature.
 III.

MORALITY.

" Constat
itaque ex his omnibus, nihil nos conari, velle, appetere, neque
cupere, quia id bonum esse judicamus, sed contra nos propterea aliquid
bonum esse judicare, quia id conamur, volumus, appetimus, atque cup-
"
imus. SPINOZA.
" Die Abhangigkeit eines nicht schlechterdings guten "Willens, vom Princip
der Autonomie (die moralische Nothigung) ist Verbindlichkeit. Die objec-
tive Nothwendigkeit einer Handlung aus Verbindlichkeit heisst Pflicht."
KANT.
"
Subject to himself which were not subjection, but freedom." HOBBES.
"
Motives are symptoms of weakness and supplements for the deficient
energy of the living principle, the law within us." COLERIDGE.
Feeling of obligation merely consciousness of causation Habit not a cause
Difficulty of separating the practical and speculative side of moral pro-
blems Duty always conceived in relation to a person bound by the duty
and conscious of the bond Divergent theories of obligation, theistic,
sentimental, and utilitarian Eight being relative to the conscience, what
is the good commonly thought right or moral ? Three kinds of good :

natural good, the perfection of a thing after itskind, ascertained not a

priori but by eclectic experience ;
sensible good or pleasure, included in,
but not coextensive with natural good moral good the pursuit of natural
;

good through natural obstacles which make the pursuit self-conscious

Such obstacles threefold i. The imperfection of the world, including
:

human society, which may make the natural exercise of normal faculties
difficult or painful.2. Imperfection of the organism after its kind ; con-

the indulgence of some of which is incompatible with

flicting appetites,
complete natural perfection. 3. The instability of the specific type, the
goal of natural perfection receding with the evolution of fresh faculties
Utilitarianism wrong because the pursuit of natural and that of sen-
sible good do not always coincide, and because it fails to include evolu-
tion, or development of the moral ideal A morality of some kind, or
formula of obligation imposed by the nature of the agent in its fixed
relations with the surrounding medium, exists necessarily, supposing
men to have a specific nature, with certain tendencies that are liable to
be impeded, but do not therefore cease to be real, only become present
to consciousness, if upon the equally natu-
so it chances, as a constraint
ral (but not morally necessary) inclination towards a sensible good The
tendencies commonly called moral, those which conduce to the natural
good of the kind A kind could not subsist with essentially self-destruc-
tive tendencies Practically, morality begins with the discovery that it
is not always possible to do as we like, that some sacrifices are unavoid-

able the sacrifices which it is called moral to make are those which men
:

are conscious of a real natural tendency to make or to desire to make,

those, namely, which conduce most, not to the sensible good of the indi-
vidual which, by the hypothesis was unavoidably sacrificed, but to its
natural good or perfection The sacrifice of the natural good (e.g., life) of
the organism only liable to become moral because the individual man is
member of a social body, so that his natural perfection includes the dis-

charge of social functions, after their kind, i.e., in the manner most con-
ducive to the natural good or perfection of the social body.
 Ill

MORALITY.
IN the foregoing section we endeavoured to assimilate
human laws "properly so called" to the scientific laws
of nature, by suggesting that consciousness and causation
are not incompatible, and that the sense of constraint
which undoubtedly belongs to human law is most in-
telligible and explicable if conceived as the mere addition
of consciousness to a real causal, or fixed order of relations,
as, in fact, the consciousness of causation; not the mere

perception that a fixed order exists, but a direct conscious-

ness of the steps in such an order as succeeding each other,
without, perhaps against, the desire of the conscious subject.
A
real tendency or impulse in the subject towards the

effecting of any particular result, becomes present to con-

sciousness as a desire for that result. Such a desire may
be felt as an additional force or motive for following the

impulse or tendency of which it is the consciousness, but

conscious volition is not consciousness of constraint, and
to produce this, we must conceive a second force, inde-

pendent of the first and brought into relation with it.

Men become conscious of law as a check on desire;
yet their desires are in the main normal (or the abortive
race would perish), and they on the whole desire to be

governed by the laws which they feel to be at times a

restraint, at times a protection, and for the rest a just
and reasonable custom. The feeling of voluntary action
tinder constraint, or in other words of free human action

subject to law, is given when the subject is conscious

of a present, spontaneous impulse to act in a given way,
which impulse is impeded or diverted by the existence
76 NATURAL LAW.
of other present, persistent forces, towards which the
subject stands already in a necessary relation of co-
existence; the permanent outer influence overrules the
ephemeral inner desire, and we gradually come to class
together as lawful those desires which habitually conform
to the objective pressure.
In distinguishing the laws of human conduct as political,
moral, or religious, according to their presumed source, and
the sphere of their apparent jurisdiction, we only follow
a classification too general to be quite baseless or unsound.
When external constraint is absent, there must still be
law wherever there is intelligible life, and we suppose
that even if men did not naturally associate with each
other, every human organism would still possess certain
fixed properties or dispositions, by which its conduct
under various conditions would be regulated, and which,
consequently, would be, at least to some extent, a possible
object of knowledge. Even when the power of custom is
strongest, and men have so few unshared impulses that
an impulse to do something of itself indifferent, may be
disapproved of as abnormal, merely because it is not
shared, there is still always a part, and as civilisation
advances, and custom makes way for law, an increasing
part of the daily existence of each several member of the
community left at his own disposal, subject to no other
restrictions than such as his own nature and the general
constitution of the universe may impose. Unlike law,
and like custom, which
is a fusion of both, morality has

as many positive as negative rules ; for though a man's

neighbours are not always concerned as they in time
discover in prescribing to him exactly in what way he
he himself finds it natural and necessary to act
is to act,

always in some way, and all ways are hedged in by fixed

conditions and to go on acting consciously and regularly
;

in any way whatever, without the immediate instigation

of personal desire, is to act from habit, calculation, or

duty.
 MORALITY. 77

The effect of habit is generally seen in the repetition of

acts not themselves productive either of pleasure or pain,
nor yet regarded as means to a more remote, probably
pleasurable, end. Custom is only the habit of a number,
and both owe their strength, partly to the original cause,
whatever it was, which led to the formation of the habit
or custom, partly to the peculiarity of human or animal
nature (much conducive to the fixity of types and species),
that other things being equal, any action is more easily
performed a second time than the first, or that, of actions
of equal natural difficulty, the one that has already been

performed once, will be easier than the one which has not.
But the difficulty of breaking a habit, and even of altering
a custom, rather physical or material than moral ; the
is

existence of a habit is not felt to be a motive to the will

for perseverance in it it is not recognised to be a duty to
;

keep the specific type unaltered; in fact, to be con-

scious that habit is the disposing cause of an action
is distinctly not to feel the action as obligatory, and
if morality consists in the consciousness of a subjective
necessity, as law in the consciousness of a necessity
imposed from without, it is obvious that the idea of
" "
right, or of things that in common parlance ought
to be done, cannot be derived from usage. Habit is only
a real motive through its effect on the organism, and
Aristotle's dictum that no law of nature can be altered by
habit is explained when we remember that a true law im-
plies more than one set of constant relations, and that the
conditions of the relations, on one side at least, cannot be
directly affected by a mere act of will ; and since, as the
same authority observes, all habits are formed by acts of
like nature, the habit does not explain the action : a habit
universal enough to modify the specific type must have
been natural to begin with.
The
chief difficulty of this part of the subject is in-

separable from its nature. We

cannot separate the in-
tellectual and the practical aspects of the problem. Our
78 NATURAL LAW.
daily conduct must be influenced by our moral theories ;

and our theories are based on history and reason without

reference to expediency. But, in morals alone, the credi-
bility of a view is associated with its practical merits, and
the best judges do not feel as if a theory were true unless
the statement of it inspires something more than assent.
We take for granted that the true ethical system upholds all
moral obligations, and therefore it seems that every moral
philosopher is ipso facto a preacher or teacher of morals,
and his philosophy is faulty if it can be believed without
being acted upon. An intellectual truth ought to be con-
vincing to every sane mind, but many persons of sane
mind are morally perverse, and the apprehension of an
abstract truth does not necessarily affect the will. To
know whence the majority of mankind derive such moral
virtue as they, have, is not necessarily to feel moved
towards the acquisition, in one's own person, of more virtue
than before. And yet, if the argument is given in its
logical simplicityand aloofness from personal feeling, it
seems incomplete, because the feeling of the majority is
the minor premise which we have no right to ignore.
On the other hand, the argument has no right to assume
that any given reader is one of the majority, whose feeling

supplies the base of our general conclusions. The science

of morals is on a par with the science of medicine. It
treats indifferently of the conditions of health and disease,
and has no power to alter concrete matters of fact, or save
the heir of diseased appetites from the natural con-
sequences of their indulgence or repression. It proclaims
the sanctions of the law of nature, and leaves men to obey
or defy the law as they please. But the law is there,
and those who are not inclined to defy it, have a right to
treat the substance of the law and its natural mode of
administration, as part of the same subject, and to take its
working for granted in the exposition of its principles.
Voluntary spontaneous action, while unchecked, does
not give the idea of necessity or constraint, and whatever
 MORALITY. 79

theory be adopted concerning the nature or source of the

common notions of duty, morality, or moral obligation, it
will scarcely be denied either that such notions really exist
and are of force, or that their force in particular cases is
felt as binding. Moral actions are actions done because the
doer of them believes it right that they should be done, and

right is seldom more clearly denned than as that which

"
some one " ought to do. When men at a certain stage
" "
in the development of moral ideas, say we or I ought
" "
to do so and so, and are asked Why ? they sometimes
give as the reason that quality in the act by which they
have recognised it as incumbent. They knew that it was
what had to be done by the token that it was good, fit,
admirable, useful, or the like but the further question,
;

why what is good, fit, admirable, or useful has to be done,

is apt to elicit the most conclusive, and, saving the pre-
"
judice of logicians, the most logical of answers : Because
it has." But if we examine further into the nature of that
which has, or ought to be done, we find nothing anterior
to the speaker's conviction that he must and will do it if
he can.
If we consider the current ideas of duty, we shall find
that they all include the conception of relation to the
person on whom the duty is incumbent. The verb ex-
pressive of right doing is irregular, and though the cate-

gorical imperative is not a "shalt" but a "must," it is

only in the first person singular that we read always
" " "
ought," which is practically a must acquiesced in by
" "
the will I ought has a meaning for everybody, and
"we" or "you ought" only extends the obligation to other
men in the name of a common humanity. But we have
no conception of duty, our own or other people's, apart
from the inward conviction or subjective sense of moral
obligation. We may say, it is the duty of this or that man
or woman to act thus and thus, but the judgment always
rests on the preliminary assumption that the person in
as our-
question has the same sense of right and wrong
8o NATURAL LAW.
selves. The further assumption of the existence of some
uniform, objective rule of right conduct exterior to the con-
sciences of mankind does not interfere with our belief that

people in general ought to do what they themselves think

and feel to be right; and we involuntarily form a quite dif-
ferentjudgment of persons who, we think, have mistaken
their duty, and of persons who knowingly fail in the
performance of the duties they recognise. In the attempt
to determine our neighbour's duties,we are always divided
between a conviction that the right is one and unalterable,
and an impression, based on personal experience and the
natural meaning of words, that it cannot be morally right
for any one to do what he believes to be wrong.
The inference is obvious the class of actions enjoined
:

by the moral law may be determined conjointly by the

nature of the individual man, and that of the real world
in which he is circumstanced thus or thus but if consent
;

isnecessary to all law, the sanction of morality, the source

of the inward feeling of obligation which we have to

explain, must be sought "within the breast." The ex-

istence of morality as a something binding the will is

purely and necessarily subjective we have the data for

;

passing moral judgments on ourselves, but on no one else ;

though, in practice, it may reasonably be assumed that
beings of the same kind will experience the same natural
necessities, and will follow in their conduct the same laws,
moral as well as physical. But the real and satisfactory
explanation of the phenomenon would certainly be a full
and intelligible account of the growth and limitations of
this subjective sense of obligation, as attached under cer-
tain circumstances to certain kinds of action.
Positive law regulates the overt acts of man in society ;

the moral law regulates the disposition of the will in

accordance with which men act. Positive law, it is ad-
mi" ^ed, should be moral, and certain moral duties may be

fiVy enforced by legal sanctions. But the fact that the

two systems of regulation coincide for a part of their
 MORALITY. 81

extent, does not make them mutually dependent, the

external power or source of obligation is not the same,
and the inward consent of the will which gives effect to
the outer pressure has, in each case, a different set of
antecedents and a different history of growth.
In speaking of positive or customary morality as an
early phase of social law, we did not find that the generality
of a practice explained its existence, though it might help
for a time to perpetuate it. An observance that is only
kept up because it has been customary is sure, sooner or
later, to pass into disuse, for individuals do not feel bound
in conscience of their neighbours any more
by the habits
than by their own. There must be a cause or motive in
present operation to affect the will with the sense of
necessity or constraint which is as essential a part of
morality as of law. The present opinion of the majority
of mankind does not give such a cause or motive, because
mankind is made up of individuals, and it is the opinion of
individual men that we want to have explained. Morality
is a matter of personal opinion or sentiment, and con-
formity to the opinions or sentiments of the majority is
not felt to. be in itself a moral duty. There is nothing
intrinsically immoral in the position of Athanasius contra
mundum, and the general similarity between the moral
judgments which we all naturally pass, the substantial
consensus of human opinion as to what is right and wrong,
what ought, and ought not to be done, is sufficiently ac-
counted for by the judgments and opinions being formed
under the same general conditions by beings of the same
kind or nature. But the existence and the tenor of the
opinions on those points separately reached by individuals
is as far from explanation as ever.

The opinions that men have entertained about their own

moral ideas differ more than the ideas themselves, and the

only objection to an eclectic theory, taken entirely from

known and accredited works on ethics, is that in each one,
there
amongst nine points of agreement with the rest, is
82 NATURAL LAW.
always one point of difference, so that, whether the one or
the manyare right in any particular case, it is evident
that the many are never right in all. When possible
points of divergence are practically innumerable, and yet
so far from essential, controversy is apt to be lengthy in

proportion to the number of common premises, which,

unaccountably, fail to lead disputants to the same results.
Every system has a different reason to give for dissenting
from each of its rivals, and each reason involves some
assumption to which rival systems would agree in demur-
ring, though, again, all for different reasons. The objec-
tions that can be urged against a merely naturalistic theory
of the origin of morality take a different form according to
the objectors' own opinions, and the answer that would
meet one statement of a real difficulty may fall, or seem
to fall, wide of, perhaps, the same difficulty stated in a
different way.
What has been already said of the theories which
ascribe the force of positive law in the last resort to the
will or act of a divine legislator, applies equally to the

cognate explanation of the existence and cogency of the

moral law. The many advocates of a pure and lofty

morality, who believe its precepts to be of divine institu-

tion, are conscious of no other ground than this belief for
the morality they practise, and are, therefore, sincerely per-
suaded that without religious theism the existence of
morality would be left to the accidents of natural tempera-
ment and hereditary disposition, and could not be expected,
as a rule, to survive exposure to the natural obstacles and
hindrances to virtuous life with which the world abounds.
They argue, like Voltaire, that if God did not exist, it
would be necessary to invent him, as the cheapest way of
strengthening the hands of the police and there are some
;

timid sceptics who so far agree with them as to half be-

lieve in the desirability of both respecting and preserving
the illusions of the majority, while the fulness of irre-
ligious truth is reserved for the few whose passions have
 MORALITY. 83

been chilled by a life of study, or who have learnt by

expe-
rience the reasonableness and prudence of self-control.
If, however, we suppose human ideas, feelings, and
beliefs to have been evolved by a continuation of the
natural process which fixed the nature of the things
thought, felt, or known about, and to correspond in essen-
tials to their material counterparts, we shall find it diffi-
cult to account for the rise of a general illusion or baseless

belief,and almost impossible to understand how such an

illusion should be an essential condition of the prosperity
and subsistence of the species entertaining it. Theolo-
gians and naturalists may join issue if they please on the
preliminary question whether a Deity exists, but nothing
save confusion can result from their going off into specu-
lations, not whether there is a God or no, but whether it
would be a good thing if there were, and further, sup-
posing that to be conceded, whether it would be a good
thing to believe there were, even if there really were not.
The objection which the various theories of morality
that may be classed as sentimental would lay most stress

upon, as against a theory of mere realism, is psychological.

Morality includes a sentiment about certain acts, as well
as a real tendency, desire, or intention to do them and if ;

moral acts are done by a simple natural necessity, it is

asked, and with reason, why we do not consider all acts
performed in accordance with natural laws as moral. The
objection admits of being retorted, for granting that the
moral sentiments of men were all alike, and sufficiently
strong to determine their conduct, there is nothing in the
habitual prevalence of certain sentiments to give the feel-
ing of obligation, to make men think it their duty to have
the same sentiments as their neighbours, or to have always
the same sentiments themselves. And as simple feeling
in our own persons does not give the idea of morality,
a fortiori, it is not to be expected that reflected emotion or
feeling for others should do so and accordingly no further
;

light is cast on the question by the half-and-half form of

84 NATURAL LAW.
utilitarianism, which supposes men to feel bound to do as
they like, but premises that many of their likings are
sympathetic, that is to say, mainly determined by the
selfish desires of one another.
The so-called selfish systems fail in that they obliterate
the distinction, which it is desired to explain, between

of actions, by tracing them all to the

different classes
same motive, as if additional strength were all that was
wanted to make a tendency sanction its own persistence.
All voluntary actions are in a sense selfish, done, that is,
because we would on the whole rather do them than not,
and if they were all equally selfish, and self-interest were

the root of virtue, they would all be equally virtuous.

Utilitarianism only escapes the reproach of sanctioning
egotism to an extent which utilitarians themselves allow
to be immoral, by assuming that the conduct which con-
duces to the greatest happiness of the greatest number,
so generally conduces to the greatest happiness of each
individual as agent, as to have become indissolubly asso-
ciated with ideas or sentiments of approbation, which in
the course of time have transformed themselves into moral
judgments. This optimistic explanation of virtue by a
pre-established harmony between its dictates and those of
general and particular utility, which is accounted for, in
the .decadence of theology, by the beneficence of the Creator,
might perhaps be satisfactory if the coincidence were abso-

lute ;
but reasoners of Paley's school only address them-
selves to common sense, and it is impossible to explain to
common sense what a good utilitarian God can want with
punishments, temporal or eternal, to make his creatures do
as they like best while it is evident that there is nothing
;

in a theory which rests morality on association to account

for the belief that the association on which it rests ought
to be kept up unbroken.
The fact that men have moral sentiments, and perform
acts dictated of moral obligation or duty, has
by a sense
thus been variously accounted for, by the fact that they
 MORALITY. 85

naturally have feelings, interested or disinterested, about

acts and by the assumption that there is an external rule
;

or standard of right, which is the source of a unique senti-

ment enjoining conformity to itself. This rule again may
be conceived as abstract, and lying in the nature of things,
in which case the private conscience of the individual
must be held to declare the law which it obeys ; or concrete,
that the expression of a personal will, more or less
is,

directly revealed to its subjects, in which case the con-

science is not held bound to pronounce upon the law, only
to declare the application of the law to the cases that may
arise.
All these formulse no doubt contain a measure of truth,
but they do not seem to carry us to the root of the matter.
Our moral conceptions are too complex to be referred to a
single ultimate instinct or propensity with a corresponding
definite development of the organism. A
number of feel-
ings go to make up the state of consciousness which we
call sense of duty, and many of these feelings are them-
selves compounds of physical temperament and moral
experience, personal as well as inherited. We
are born
with a certain number of moral feelings, inherited through
our immediate ancestors from the long series of men and
women who have lived under conditions favourable to their
growth and transmission; each one of these feelings has
a history of its own, and the children of the present day
" "
are born with a rudimentary disposition to say I ought
in particular cases, as they are born, variously, with a
disposition to draw or sing, kiss or quarrel, as well as
with a disposition to walk and eat. The disposition or
aptitude is of the most rudimentary kind, but it is
not

really more difficult to understand how experience, con-

tinued through ages, of the constant relation between
causes and effects should have tuned the minds of men to
the perception of the relations, than it is to understand
how the sensibility of the human ear to musical intervals
has developed into a capacity for composing and retaining
86 NATURAL LAW.
long and highly elaborate melodies. Just as some people
are born without a musical ear, so others are insensible to
the force of moral considerations; but the average man
can tell one tune from another, and is more or less shocked

by a discord, and in like manner the average man feels

the pressure upon his own individual will of all the un-
known natural sequence of motive in the past which
caused his ancestors to do on the whole more often the
right thing than the wrong. "Ought" is what I feel
obliged to do, because for ages and ages the stream of
human tendency has set in favour of such doing, and my
present inclinations have been moulded by the stream ; if
completely, I do easily and willingly what I ought, if not,
I may leave it undone and repent, or do it grudgingly and
with pain, or I may set myself against the stream and
deny the obligation but in the ordinary use of words, I
;

am a " good " or " bad " man in proportion to the complete-
ness and spontaneity of my obedience.
But it is not merely true that we have for the most part,
by inheritance and choice, a formed habit of not stealing
or murdering, of working, if needs must, for our living, and
of cherishing parents and children. These habits might
be formed, as the Tartars ride and the Fijians swim,
by inherited aptitude and acquired proficiency without

giving room for a science of morals. The peculiarity of

the sense of moral obligation is that the obligation felt is
towards a precise action or abstention, while the source
of the obligation is unknown or unfelt, and its nature
altogether abstract; the reasons for doing or leaving un-
done lie not in the deed itself, but in some quality of the
"
deed which makes it right," and in some quality of our-
" "
selves which makes us mean by right what ought to
be done.
"
the question remains, "What do we mean by right?"
Still
and what classes of action are enjoined by the moral law ?
The just in positive law is the practical best for the com-
munity i.e., whatever course conduces most to the perfect
 MORALITY. 87

nnd satisfactory development of its members, in which

ideal the greatest happiness of the greatest number is
included. The right in morals is also the practical best for
the individual subject to do, such bestness being estimated
by a special feeling in the subject towards the nature of
the act, quite apart from its consequences and what we ;

have to do is to discover what descriptions of act inspire

this feeling.
If we say that it is right to do good, we do not at

first seem to have made much progress, for the ques-

tion, What is good ? has been as much debated and solved,
or not solved, in as many different ways as the question
"What is right?" But either the idea of good was

originally lesscomplex than that of right, or more pro-

gress has been made towards a sound analysis of it, for
it is a more satisfactory substitute for an answer about

the nature of good, than those generally offered by

moralists about the nature of right, to say that there are
three kinds of good viz., natural, sensible, and moral

good.
By natural good we mean, as will probably be allowed,
the perfection of anything after its kind, understanding by
such perfection only a statement or inference from experi-
ence, that there are certain types to which beings of
different species do actually tend to approximate, and this
so generally that, though the perfect type may never be
realised in one individual specimen of the class, still, every

particular partial divergence from it appears as an excep-

tion to the general rule. There is in this no reference to

any metaphysical ideal, or mystical archetype, though the

Platonic ideas, and the Aristotelian mean may be regarded
as forms of the same conception. The natural excellence
of the latter especially could by no means have been
ascertained deductively; to give any significance to praises
of the mean, we must suppose real extremities of excess
and defect to exist and to be felt as naturally faulty ; and
the only reason against making moderation the standard
88 NATURAL LAW.
of merit is that excess and defect are not estimated by
their relation to that degree of the quality in question
which lies half-way between them because it is half-way
but because it represents the normal development, in
the direction given, of beings of a particular kind, which it
isthe aim of science to characterise more completely than
by averages.
Imperfection, then, is only departure from the class
type a crystal may be faulty, a diamond clouded, a plant
;

stunted in its growth, an animal weakly or misshapen, a

man vicious or diseased ; but in all these cases the standard

by which we decide the existence and the degree of imper-

fection in a given specimen of the kind is only the kind
itself, or what we have learnt to regard as the normal

development of objects belonging to it. This is practically

the point from which intuitive theories of morality start.
They suppose the normal man to be virtuous, that vice is
a disease of the mind or will, and they only fail to explain
the source and nature of the peculiar disfavour and un-
easiness to which sufferers from that particular form of
disease are alone exposed, why divergence from the
class type should be felt to be "wrong" by those who
diverge, as well as by an impartial spectator. The stoical
morality also, admirable and fascinating in many ways as
it is, fails altogether to account for the impression under

which men labour, that they ought to be good of their

In fact though such
kind, or live according to its nature.
distinctionshave a fatiguing air of subtlety we must
submit to see in men's natural feelings about the moral
quality of acts a phase of their natural feeling about the
acts themselves. The so-called instinctive condemnation
of injustice, cruelty, or falsehood, is simply a generalisa-
tion from the feeling excited in practice by unjust, cruel
or faithless conduct, and the natural objection men have
to being wronged, hurt, or deceived, is not more mysterious
than their general preference for food over poison.
The practical best for things in general is, of course, the
 MORALITY. 89

maximum possible attainment of natural good throughout

the system, but the feeling with which we regard " good "
as the supreme end of desire comes from the fact that we

give the generic name of good to all those ends of desire

which can be permanently sought and attained without
undesirable consequences. Things are divided by nature
as good, bad, or indifferent, and those ends of desire are
called good par excellence which are naturally good all

through and in every relation; the verbal distinction

answers to a real distinction between classes of effects
and the feelings which answer to these classes. The good
qualified as "moral" or "sensible" is also an object of
desire but conditionally, not absolutely, generally, not
;

always. Everything that is fitted to be an object of human

desire is good in so far as so fitted and the objective con-
:

ditions of life gives rise to many degrees and varieties of

goodness.
The only things which are found good always and under
all circumstances are those which conduce to natural per-
fection, and not merely to the natural perfection of one
individual or class, but to the perfection of classes or indi-
viduals in so far as their perfection harmonises with the
perfect development of other kinds. The natural good
or perfection of man himself consists in the possession of
abundant faculties, active and passive, fully developed,
and in regular and equal exercise. The condition of
natural personal perfection may be summed up in one
"
word " ability ability to do, feel, and perceive as much *

and as well as possible. But for perfect accomplishment,

or the highest realisation of the possibilities of perfection,
the ability must find due scope for appropriate exercise,
and it depends upon other circumstances than the will
and power of the individual to determine whether he
shall be able to attain the highest degree, or live in the
fullest state of natural perfection physically within his
reach.
^Ye cannot pass at once from natural to moral good, but
90 NA TURAL LA W.
the connection between natural good and sensible good or
pleasure is comparatively simple. Sensible good is in-
cluded in natural good, but is not co-extensive with it,

and the confusion of the two, or still worse, the exaltation

of the former as the higher, more comprehensive term, can

only be the work of a shallow inaccurate psychology. We

see this at once in the case of physical perfection ; strong
and far-sighted eyes are physically better than weak ones,
yet a short-sighted, squinting artist may derive more plea-
sure from his imperfect powers of vision than a human
hawk with no sense
of beauty. Acute hearing is a
perfection, though Beethoven was deaf; muscular strength
is a perfection, though a champion pedestrian may get less

pleasure from his 1000 miles than a feeble cockney like

Charles Lamb out of strolls measurable by the yard.
Similarly the power of ruling men, the power of inspiring
love, the power of inventing and creating, the power of
seeing what is true and of being deeply moved by the
vision, these are all natural perfections, not necessarily
associated in practice with the keenest possible delight
in the exercise of the acknowledged power. smallA
domestic tyrant may have more carnal satisfaction in the
consciousness of his vexatious sway than the saviour of a
nation in the discharge of his beneficent mission.
Pleasure comes from the equilibrium between power
and desire, or correspondence between the inward impulse
to do,and the result of the thing done. But though it is
a perfection to maintain such an equilibrium, when the
power of achievement is ideally high, or exercised under
ideally favourable circumstances, it is not exactly a per-
fection to be content with powers or results that fall
below the average, or below a distinctly conceived ideal.
Such content sets the final seal of inferiority for discon-
;

tent with the worse may always be though it often is

not a prelude to improvement or change for the better.
Still, pleasure, though not an infallible sign of perfec-

tion, is undoubtedly a real element in natural good. It

 MORALITY. 91

would be futile to attempt to analyse the ultimate, irre-

ducible experience to which we give the name; we all
know what we mean by pleasure, though we find pleasure
in the most various and opposite pursuits and sensations.
The pleasure of the saint and of the sensualist, of the stu-
dent and of the athlete, are alike in the one indescribable
quality which makes the lien etre for each enjoying self.
Most rich languages, however, distinguish between " well-
being" and "being good;" the one phrase serves to
describe subjective contentment, the other objective per-
fection,and we have no more right to expect or assume the
existence of a pre-established harmony between the two,
than we have to assume a pre-established harmony be-
tween the demands of the palate and the digestion. Gene-
and the exercise of faculty
rally speaking, food is pleasant
enjoyable, but a man mayget his taste from one ancestor,
and his stomach from another, and the demands of the two
may be incompatible or, again, the promptings of taste
;

may be his own, a new product of the latter ages, while

his powers of assimilation are still at the ancient level.
It is not a paradox, but a commonplace, that the good and
the agreeable are disparate. All naturalists will agree that
pleasure is a natural good, and even that it has a wider

range than other concrete goods, but it has never yet

been found possible to develop a theory that combines
in a consistent system the recognition of pleasure, not

only as good, but as the true summum lonum, with the

recognition of the unexplained, undeniable excellence of
other spiritual ends.
The objective conditions of pleasure are still very im-
perfectly understood ; but so far as we are aware, it seems
always to be attendant upon the free and normal exercise
of some natural faculty, and pain, upon the disturbance or
arrest of such exercise. It is not, of course, true that

every natural act is distinctly pleasurable, nor that every

pleasure attends an act conducive to the natural good of
the organism as a whole but in general, allowing for the
;
92 NATURAL LAW.
complexity of organisation, which may make the simultane-
ous exercise of disparate faculties difficult or impossible, it
istrue that pleasure attends upon, or, perhaps, is actually
the sensation of, a normal activity of the natural powers ;

pain, of abnormal or impeded activity. Why

some normal
actions are attended with pleasure, while others are per-
formed unconsciously, with automatic regularity, and what
is the difference between the two classes, are points that
physiologists will doubtless in time determine. Mean-
while, it may be conjectured with some plausibility that
pleasure accompanies the exercise of natural powers, or
special organs, at a certain period in their evolutionary
history. Animals that only breathe and digest may be
supposed to find something dimly pleasurable, or analogous
which
to pleasure, in the consciousness of those processes,
in more highly organised animals are not conscious at all
so long as they go on with normal regularity. "We know
that ordinary human pleasures of a semi-artificial kind
are apt to lose their zest after constant indulgence and
and analogy would favour the supposition that
repetition,
powers which are in constant necessary exercise would at

length come to be exercised with indifference, if not with

absolute insensibility. There is nothing in this supposi-
tion at variance with the most general conclusion given
"
by Professor Bain, 1 that states of pleasure are connected
with an increase, and states of pain with an abatement,
" " "
of some or all of the vital functions ; for increase and
" "
abatement are terms of comparison, and the vital func-
tions which we suppose to become indifferent and uncon-
scious are only those of which the variations are imper-

ceptible; since every act of consciousness implies some

organic modification or change in its subject, the absence
of change, either in the intensity or in the mode of exer-

cising vital functions in constant operation, almost implies

the absence of sensibility, pleasurable or the reverse.
Pleasure, on this hypothesis, would be attendant on the
1
The Senses and the Intellect, p. 286.
 MORALITY. 93

exercise either of comparatively newly-acquired faculties,

or of faculties that only come into play occasionally, or

intermittently.
Supposing this to be correct, sensible good, though
always the same in reference to the conscious subject, i.e.,
always some kind of pleasure, varies in its objective con-
ditions or constitution with any variation of the specific

type which is the standard of natural good. Ifwe accept

the doctrine of evolution in its
general bearings, we may
suppose, as were, a belt of pleasurable consciousness of
it

power, bounded at one extremity by the high-water mark

of actual development, and not necessarily increasing in
width as that gradually rises to a fresh level in the scale
of creation. We can no more suppose sensible pleasures
to be habitually associated with acts destructive to the
sentient organism, than we could suppose societies natu-
rally to institute laws destructive of all society ; for we
know that the pleasurableness of an act is a strong motive
for its performance, that would in practice certainly over-
rule any abstract desire for the continuance of the species
in its purity.
Utilitarianismrests morality upon the coincidence,
which is certainly general, between natural and sensible
good, and the conditions of their common realisation. It
makes moral good practically a compound of the pleasure
naturally desired, and the perfection naturally admired or
preferred and it only breaks down when we try to apply
;

its test to the cases which are unfortunately also of very

general occurrence, in which pleasure and virtue lie along

divergent paths. Virtue, by which we understand the
deliberate pursuit of perfection, is only valuable on utili-
tarian principles for the pleasure which it gives, so that,
on these principles, if it ceases to give pleasure, or gives
less pleasure than something which is not virtue, it ceases
to be valuable or good. But, of two things one either ;

this never occurs, in which case it is inexplicable that

we should have two names for the natural appetites of
94 NATURAL LAW.
man alone, out of all the animals that spontaneously seek
the gratification of their natural wants or else, when it
:

occurs it is right, or at least not wrong, to prefer the

sensible pleasure to the natural good. In other words,
the theory has to choose between a somewhat extravagant
optimism, and what, without any appeal to vulgar pre-
judice, must be called a comparative laxity of moral
precepts. Children are told that to be good is the way
to be happy, and it would be strange that they should

always decline to accept the comfortable doctrine if the

sequence were really so simple and direct. But, if happi-
ness were attainable, and the highest wisdom and virtue
consisted in attaining as much happiness as possible, the
notion of morality would either disappear with the feeling
of constraint that is a part of it, and only arises when the
natural pursuit of pleasure is interrupted ;
or it would be
reduced, as it practically is by Bentham, to the art of

being happy under difficulties. Mark Tapley may be as

sound a philosopher as the Emperor Marcus Aurelius but ;

we do not believe that he, or any other follower of Ben-

tham, ever felt obliged in conscience to be happier than a
spontaneous inclination which is not duty made him.
In one sense, the existence of these two forms of con-
sciousness (obligation and pleasure) is explained when the

history of their growth and origin has been traced; but

why, when they are developed, each is what it is and not
something quite different or, indeed, nothing at all is a
question with which positive thinkers may decline to em-
barrass themselves. It is unphilosophical to ask for the

logical reason of matters of fact, as well as unscientific to

ignore the reinforcement of certitude belonging to matters

of fact so universal as to have become a premise for the
reason. The mental state which we enjoyment is not
call
the result of physically simple causes; we have not a
special organ for feeling happy, but we have a special
mental feeling which attends upon analogous states of
special organs. Similarly, we have not a special organ for
 MORALITY. 95

the apprehension of what is right, but we have a special

mental feeling towards analogous lines of conduct and we ;

shall scarcely be able to get nearer to an explanation of

the feeling than an analysis of those qualities of conduct
which seem to be its sine qua non.
For practical purposes, the utilitarian and the Perfec-
tionist theories of morality agree on all points except in
their estimate of the comparative power of pleasure as a
motive. If there is one psychological truth of axiomatic
evidence, it is that people find it pleasant to do as they
like, or rather, their liking and the pleasantness of the
action are correlative two aspects of a natural agreement
between the agent and the act. Something has already
been said of the character of those acts which are naturally
pleasant, and, subject to correction, we assume them to be
those in which the less hackneyed powers of the organism
find their appropriate exercise. An act is found pleasur-
able in proportion to its essential naturalness, i.e., to its
organs of action and impres-
fitness for exercising existing

sibility in a healthy manner. But such exercise may lead

to diminished as well as to heightened sensibility, for,

although a faculty is strengthened by its exercise in tak-

ing in different, numerically distinct impressions, the same
subjective feeling is apt to grow faint with repetition, and
may in time cease to be distinguished in consciousness at
all. A
pleasurable act, when (in the lapse of ages) it has
been repeated often enough for its periodical repetition to
have become, as it were, an organic function, continues to
be performed, if possible, with more inevitable regularity
than if it were voluntary, but with less and less sense of
pleasure, until, finally, its performance is a matter of indif-
ference to sense, but has become a part of the natural life
of the organism, and its unimpeded performance an ele-
ment in the natural good of the species.
Will is conscious tendency, and as there are states of con-

sciousness unattended by pleasure or pain, desire is distin-

guished as the will to follow a tendency which produces

96 NATURAL LAW.
pleasure. Now
it is possible that the hope or imagination

of the greatest possible pleasure may be irresistible, when it

exists, and it is further true that so many of our acts have
the hope of pleasure or the fear of pain for their motive,
thatwe readily assume these motives to be universal, to
lie latent in consciousness, when we fail to be aware of
them. Without this assumption, utilitarianism crumbles to
the ground for a formula is useless which leaves the inter-
;

mediate bulk of indifferent actions unaccounted for, besides

stumbling over the extremes of infelicific self-indulgence
or self-devotion. It is inaccurate to speak of motives ex-

cept in relation to consciousness, and not all acts of will

are preceded by conscious self-determination. Men will
and choose consciously, sometimes moved by a physical
impulse, sometimes by a present physical inducement, some-
times by a mental representation of inducements, real
or imaginary ; but consciousness includes only a part, not
the whole, of the organic life of man, and it cannot be too
clearly understood that the higher forms of consciousness
are not the cause but the product of lower processes of
animal life.

It is conceivable that a universe

might be so providen-
tially arranged that every natural tendency should be
normally felicific, and no natural tendency impeded in its
course. But this is not the case in the world we live in.
Many natural tendencies give little or no pleasure to the
subject of them. Many of them if freely followed would
become productive of pain either to the individual or to
other conscious subjects ;
and this fact, conjoined with the
influences of the natural human affections in developing a
sympathetic concern in man for man, hampers the will as
well as the conduct, and it is found not
merely physically
impossible to do all that we wish, but morally impossible
to will to do all that we wish to will. The notion of a
natural impulse, persisted in in defiance of external
obstacles, and passing into consciousness in a form slightly
modified by the opposition it has encountered,
brings us
 MORALITY. 97

some way towards a conception of moral necessity that

shall not err on the side of optimism, and that recognises
no duties of imperfect obligation, except as the correlative
of imperfect knowledge or undeveloped sensibility.
All the vital force of a man's individual nature tends
spontaneously to self-development, he feels impelled to be
himself, as fine a specimen of humanity as he can, to realise,
that is to say, all the capabilities of action and passion that

are in him, so far as fortune, favourable or adverse, will allow.

The appetite for happiness may be strong or weak, but as
pleasure found only in the gratification of secondary,
is

special appetites, it is obvious that a man's chance of gra-

tifying a general taste for gratification depends upon a
thousand circumstances besides the mere strength of his
wish, though that alone is a circumstance that may now
and then have power to turn the scale. But if a man's
strongest tendency is to be rather than to please himself,
his nature will still struggle to assert itself through every

check, though it will be compelled to many compromises.

To take real cases: a young man aims at self-culture,
but he only be able to secure leisure for intellectual
may
pursuits at the expense of the not less necessary discipline
of practical life he may resolve to whet his intellect upon
;

the grindstone of a bread-winning industry, or he may

hope to train his imagination to supply the place of expe-
rience ; but, in either case, he has to resolve, with more or
less painful effort, to be his best self under difficulties
upon spiritual short-commons. The same necessity may
be forced upon an individual by single accidents, the
will of another, or the merest chance, a birth, a death, loss
of fortune or loss of health, or the contre-coup of some

change in the circumstances of others, involving the mate-

rial interests of their connections. Many words, indeed,
are hardly needed to establish the simple position that even
when a man knows what life he is best fitted for, and wishes
to lead it in the best manner possible, he may not be able
to do so without sacrificing some of the pleasure or oome
G
98 NATURAL LAW.
of the efficiency which would be his but for adverse
circumstances.
Now, it is possible to define virtue, or moral good, as the
consciousness of a necessary (or actually existing) tendency,
of which the conditions are fixed and stable, towards the
natural good of the individual, as conditioned by the com-
mon life of the species, in all those cases when submission
to the tendency is neither pleasurable nor automatic. All
unimpeded tendencies we suppose to be one or the other,
and we do not expect to find the discharge of the functions
of natural life or the pursuit of natural pleasures attended

by the peculiar sense of constraint which we call moral

obligation. The actions that are so attended are of various
kinds. The greater part of the waking life of men is taken
up with conscious, more or less voluntary, actions, that is
to say, co-ordinated volitions directed towards the attain-
ment of ends thought or felt to be desirable. Those ends
which constitute the natural good of man as a rational
animal are not absolutely fixed, but at any given time
they may be inferred in the same way as we determine
what constitutes the perfection of a greyhound or a bull-
dog, by an intelligent eclecticism preferring out of all the
rudimentary possibilities existing in nature, the combina-
tion that harmonises the greatest number of the strongest
tendencies. A
world so ordered that none of the real ten-
dencies of which individuals were conscious ever came into
collision or conflictwith other tendencies of the same or
other individuals, would be perfect after its kind. If the
world had been so arranged that it was always easy to
know and pleasant to do what is right, we should not
perhaps regret, what we should no longer have or need, the
conception of right.
Theologians have found comfort in the thought that the
evil in the world might be, as it certainly is, a necessary
condition for the moral education of mankind ;
we cannot
know moral good without knowing natural and sensible
evil ;
but it is by no means evident that the knowledge of
 MORALITY. 99

moral good is a good in itself it can only be so regarded

;

in the metaphysical sense in which the Stoics made an end

of conformity to nature. The knowledge of moral good is
not a sensible good, it is not even a simple natural good,
it only becomes so conditionally upon other things being
as they are, that is to say, the world imperfect. have We
the conception of right or moral perfection because the
world is imperfect, and this conception is the condition of
indeed it be perfectible ; by which we
its perfectibility, if

mean that in the strength of this conception, man, the con-

scious register of the least material tendencies of nature,

may continue to approach more nearly to the goal of a per-

fection that still recedes, but least dishearteningly from
those who know the laws of mental perspective by which a

goal ceases to attract those who have reached or passed it-

To be more precise ;
we conceive moral good as the
pursuit of natural (not sensible) good under difficulties
without which the pursuit would not be self-conscious.
These difficulties may be of three kinds. The mate-
rial obstacles which external nature (including human
society) may and does oppose to the natural tendency of
each single man towards the realisation of as much perfec-
tion after his kind as his particular organisation is capable
of attaining ; the less palpable, but more insuperable ob-
stacles which certain tendencies of an organism that is not
perfect after its kind, oppose to the full and normal action
of other tendencies, the frustration of which constitutes
imperfection in any specimen of the kind ; and, lastly, a
difficultywhich Utilitarian morality seems incapable of
meeting or including in a consistent system of precepts ;

that namely which is presented by the facts of evolution

the instability of the type to which it is perfection to
conform.
Mr. Herbert Spencer observes that " survival of the
fittest cannot bring the inclinations and aversions into

harmony with unfelt conditions," and it is at least equally

clear that the inclinations and aversions have no power by
ioo NA TURAL LA W.
themselves to bring about their own extinction the desire
;

for one action that is at present pleasurable does not dis-

pose to another action that, at a future time, might be
pleasurable, nor to the same action in the event of its
ceasing to be pleasurable. Evolution is not primarily a
Utilitarian process, even though, as has been suggested,

pleasure were only to be met with as an accompaniment

to the exercise of faculties still engaged in the act of

evolving themselves for the process, while appearing as a

;

condition of pleasure in general, sets a fatal term to the

enjoyment of each real pleasure severally. The natural
good of any species may vary indefinitely, with whatever
modifications of the specific type actually take place, but
as there always is a type, the standard of natural good is
at least relatively fixed. Sensible pleasure, again, may be
conceived as fixed in relation to the conscious subject, or
individual member of the class, the type of which is sup-
posed to vary, but such variation necessarily brings with
ita partial disturbance of the agreement between natural
and sensible good. The physical interests of man are the
same as those of other animals, that is to say, self-preser-
vation, and, perhaps, though less directly, the preservation
of the species ; but the interests peculiar to him as rational
are relative, dependent that is upon the point of develop-
ment reached by the active impulses at any given period in
the history of the species, without reference to considera-
tions of utility or pleasure. Men wish for this or that, not
because they can get it, but because their antecedents have
determined them to wish and if morality consisted in the
;

systematic pursuit of pleasure, or the indulgence of wish,

it would be felt as a moral duty to resist the course of

evolution whenever it promised to

give birth to new
wishes, unless, which is hardly ever the case, means of in-
dulging the wish were provided first. But, as has been
said before, whatever other duties men may acknowledge,
they do not look upon it as a duty to preserve the species
in statu
 MORALITY. 101

There is no common measure of happiness to enable us

to say that the more perfect being enjoys more of it than
the less. An
animal can only be happy with all the
powers of and if an animal has the chance of
its being,

being happy after its kind, what inducement has it to be-

come a different animal if it can only be happy at best ?
In point of fact, no man is either as happy or as virtuous
as he would like, but the feeling towards those two kinds
of defect is quite different one is spontaneously named a
;

misfortune, the other a fault. The one makes the universe

so far the less cheerful, the other makes it the worse, in
the technical sense which itour business to analyse.
is

For that badness which is the converse of the good we can

still find no other paraphrase than imperfection, or depar-

ture from the type of specific excellence. Thus, though it

isnot in itself a crime to be unfortunate, it is a defect to
fail in making use of average opportunities for securing
success ; and though it is not a crime to be made melan-
choly by misfortune, we reckon as a defect the morbid
mood which finds no satisfaction in circumstances of ave-

rage felicity.
Utilitarianism might pass muster in a theory of Social
Statics, but it breaks down altogether if we seek its help
to construct a theory of Social Dynamics. Happiness is
relative to the desires of the organism as it is, and we
want a clue by which to make or keep desires what they
should be, through all the changes brought about in their
nature or chance of indulgence. A
change in the environ-
ment may alter the means by which a desired happiness
has to be attained, or may make it unattainable by any
means within the power of the organism as hitherto con-
stituted. Such a change may either cause the old desire
to atrophy for want of indulgence, or it may stimulate new
energy to overcome the obstacles in the way of indulgence ;

and this new development of energy may be attended by

a change of taste which may supersede the desire that
provoked the change. In other words, whenever the cir-
102 NA TURAL LA W.
cumstances of men change for the worse, without their
own co-operation, the strength of existing
desires resists
the threatened privation, and unless the change affects the
powers as well as the enjoyments of the unlucky genera-
tion, it defends itself by a real progress, the development
of new ability to cope with circumstances.
The migration of a progressive race from a region of ex-
treme to one of moderate fertility is an obvious example
of this kind of influence, but by far the commonest kind of

change brought about in the circumstances of men is that

effected by the course of history, which leaves each new
generation burdened with the debts and legacies of its pre-
decessors. Tor nations, as for men, successive experiences
modify the character, or the sum-total of impulses, abili-
ties, and inclinations which determine the action at any

given moment. The desires of the child are not those of

the youth, but the desires of the man are after all an inhe-
ritance from the past that he calls his. The successors of
an age of constructive faith possess by inheritance a taste
for the pleasures of performance, as well as, very often, an

acquired knowledge of the futility of special kinds of per-

formance. It is in such straits that the counsels of Utili-
"
tarianism might fairly be called " unprincipled not by
way of reproach, but as a simple statement of their intel-
lectual looseness. To take the present time which is
variously called an age of scepticism, analytic, critical,
indifferentist, and so forth if we ask how the members of

such a generation can attain the greatest possible happi-

ness, some will say by being less critical of the advantages
they enjoy, others by being less indifferent to the success
of the work they might do, but there is nothing in the

greatest happiness principle to enable men to decide whe-

ther they shall aim at attaining, say, the same amount of
happiness, by limiting their wants or by enlarging their
labours ; if content is the only thing to be aimed at, and
clods are less discontented than critics,
it should be a duty

not a pardonable weakness, but a positive duty to culti-

 MORALITY. 103

vate cloddishness, and tliis no one

seriously believes,
though many half admit the premises for inferences of kin-
dred absurdity.
The issue is not altogether between conservative plea-
sure and painful progress, but if progress is conceived as
the winding road that leads up the heights of perfection,
happiness may answer to the resting-place at every turn of
the zig-zag listless climbers hurried away from one seat
;

by cosmic or historic force have no higher ambition than

to reach the next turn and rest again in thankfulness, and
it is nothing to these whether they rest at a higher or a

lower level, so they do but rest. The theory of the perfec-

tionist on the other hand is, that man has nothing better
to do with himself than climb, and the proof alleged is
that the higher he climbs up this allegorical hill, the more
of a man he becomes he breathes quicker, he sees further,
;

he climbs faster, his ability is greater, even though he

should now and then forget, for a stage, to rest, or spend the
inevitable breathing space in impatient longings to be gone.
To each individual unit, no doubt, it is an urgent ques-
tion, What is the greatest happiness possible to me ? but

science, even ethical science, is essentially unsympathetic,

and speaking scientifically, the self-contained happiness
of a human no more account than the blossoming
unit is of
of a flower or the breaking of a wave it was and is not,
;

it came and went, and the rest of the world felt no change.

Human feeling is a kind of waste-pipe of the world's force,

and all the motive power that spends itself in unproduc-
tive feeling counts for nothing in the history of progress,
save in so far as the experience modifies the subject self.
It is not of great moment whether each individual soul-
chimney enjoys the flavour of the smoke it is engaged in
consuming, but intense and varied feeling is a product and
a symptom of rich and active life, or, in other words, of
human perfection, and it is an imperfection in the objec-

tive universe if fine and normal feeling habitually suffers

pain and privation.
104 NA TURAL LA W.
It may, perhaps, be objected that we seem to put for-
ward two standards of excellence, the perfection of the
type as it is, and an ideal standard of perfection in the
absolute abundance and variety of vital power and this ;

is true, but not necessarily inconsistent. The common

quality of all ideals is to be as full as they can, arid each

special ideal only has its possibilities determined by con-

ditions of time, place, and circumstance. The power of
growing or developing is a natural excellence, because we
look upon everything as naturally, so to speak physi-
cally, the better, the more of a tiling it is
if a vegetable
:

throws up a long leafy stalk at the expense of its root or

blossom we do not praise it, but the more flowers or
fruit it can succeed in bearing from the one stock, the
better every gardener and grammarian must call it. And
when organisms of a still higher kind include among their
specific qualities apower of self- adaptation and self-de-
velopment, the more of this power there is in each indi-
vidual the better specimen of his kind he will be, always
provided that the performance of the day is not sacrificed
to the promise of the morrow.
The highest form of virtue or moral excellence, accord-
ing to this view, would lie in the conscious tendency to-
wards conformity to the type as it is going to be, but as,
except in a few chosen specimens,it is not
yet discernible
to be. Experience, which gives no support to the view
that men feel a moral obligation to preserve the ideal of
their own generation unchanged, certainly warrants our

assumption that it is from a sense of moral

duty or con-
straint that some few men in most ages exhaust themselves
in endeavouring to raise the ideal of their contemporaries.
The natural action which has become easy, and not yet
too familiar, is pleasurable ;
the natural action which is

good, but has not yet become easy enough to be plea-

surable, is virtuous. Virtue accordingly is not pleasure,
nor a condition of present pleasure ;
it is the condition of
good, which includes pleasure to distant generations as
 MORALITY. 105

pleasure be the precursor of indifference. Without

may
evolution, virtuous action would, with habit, merge into
sensible pleasure, and vanish at last in unconscious natu-
ral goodand it is owing to the slow instability of an
;

imperfect world that virtue remains, while what is vir-

tuous changes, as some think all too slowly. Perhaps
the most conclusive proof that morality consists in con-
sciousness of constraint, not in any inherent property of
moral acts, is that persons in whom the inability not to do
a given moral act has become absolute, are absolutely
incapable of recognising their own action as virtuous.
There are some trifling acts commonly classed as virtuous
which every one feels that there is no merit in perform-
ing, though their omission is still felt to be wrong because
their performance, though easy, has not become absolutely
automatic. There are ages when no more virtue is com-
monly practised than has become comparatively easy and
natural, and at such times optimism nourishes, because
morality is stationary. Morality advances when the sense
of moral obligation is onerous and distressing, because the
necessity then experienced by the moral teachers of the
race is made by desires going forward after the unattained,

not by motives already present to sense.

We are not yet prepared to describe in detail the kinds
of action or forbearance to which men feel morally com-
pelled ;
but moral conduct may be denned in general as
conduct conducive to the natural good or perfection of the
agent and those persons affected by his action, and the
one morally right and dutiful way of adding to the happi-
ness, which is a part of the natural good of sentient beings,
is by ministering to their perfection, and removing objec-
tive obstacles in the way of their sane and profitable
enjoyments. The moral sense is a naturally conditioned
appetite for natural perfection, especially of certain kinds,
the natural (superable) impediments to which virtually
trace the outlines of special duties, social and self-regard-
ing.
106 NA TURAL LA W.
It will, however, not impossibly, be objected, on the one
hand, that virtue is degraded by being ranked as a simple
natural phenomenon, like hunger or sight and, on the ;

other, that virtue, if shorn of all her supernatural dignity

and beauty, will lose her power to control the very beings
whom we are supposing to be subject, by a natural neces-
sity, to her sway.
As the purpose of these pages is truth,
not edification when were men ever made virtuous by
it is perhaps unnecessary to do more than
argument?
allude to these probable objections; nevertheless, they
will be some extent when we come to consider the
met to

particular provisions of
the moral law as conceived from
the natural, realistic standing-point. At present we are
only concerned to show that a moral law of some kind,
that to say, a rule of conduct of strictly subjective
is

laid down for

necessity, is not only possible, but really
every rational being by its own nature, the free develop-
ment of which is conditioned by the equally natural, fixed
order of the universe ;
that this law, as it owes its force to
the consent of the subject, is only binding upon the indi-
vidual conscience, which is subject and legislator in one ;
and that law thus promulgated in every conscience
this
will be thesame for all men, in so far as they have a com-
mon nature, and an identical knowledge of the wider laws
to which all existence, their own included, is in common

subjection.
The force of this law is not derived from the incidents
which bring its existence home to the consciousness of
men but after they have attained to a sense of the reality
;

of the laws actually followed by themselves, they can trace

the historical course of their own enthralment without
incurring any risk of emancipation. There are some lines
of conduct which we feel naturally bound to follow these :

lines are such as have been naturally selected for approval,

as most conducive to the perfection of all those concerned :

if we
try to imagine any other general rule of conduct for
ourselves than the one so selected, we are brought into
 MORALITY. 107

collision with the spontaneous judgment of our fellows

that this pseudo-rule is bad or indifferent ; and there is
no conceivable bad or indifferent rule which we ourselves
could approve if proposed for his own guidance by some-
" "
body else. Our feeling is that other people ought to
be good good in themselves, and good to us but we do
not, except by a transparent fallacy of egotism, make the
goodness of others consist in their willingness to indulge
ourselves in pleasures that are not good. The self and the
community agree because both seek a general rule for the
right guidance of the other, and general rules refuse to
admit of one-sided application. But the real reason of
our subjection to a moral law is not the opinion of others
that we ought to submit to special rules, but our own
habits of feeling habits formed, however, under the same
objective conditions as the opinion with which they agree.
As has been said, no truth regarding human nature is

more general, or more generally admitted, than the fact

that men find it pleasant to do as they like ; but there is
another point upon which the experience of ages is no less
unanimous, and herein it is that we conceive the first

foundation of morality to be laid the condition of being

:

able to do as they like is practically unattainable by mortal

men. Pleasure consists in the complete and appropriate
satisfaction of each of our faculties or appetites. Happi-
ness would consist in the full and simultaneous satisfac-
tion of all the powers and desires of our nature, if such
satisfaction were not a moral and material impossibility.
Man is imperfect; he has unsatisfied instincts, or rather

he has the instinct of dissatisfaction, which omnipotence

itself would find it hard to satisfy. His best pleasures lie
in the exercise of faculties which have to develop before
he can use them, while he can conceive and desire the
pleasure which their exercise will afford before their

development is complete which, indeed, it never is, any

more than the bee's cell is a perfect hexagon, or the eye a
faultless optical instrument. The foundation of morality,
io8 NA TURAL LA W.
or the sense of constraint acting in favour of human ten-
dencies towards perfection, is not, of course, to be found
in man's imperfection, as such, but rather in the juxta-
position of his higher impulses with material
and spiritual
checks to the impulses. If man were morally perfect, the
imperfections of the world and the flesh would be power-
less to cause a moral struggle if the world were mate-
;

rially perfect, the devil

himself would have no temptations
wherewithal to seduce the weakest sinner. If men always
liked what was best they would do it without feelings of
constraint if what they liked always was best they would
;

have no feelings of approval or aspiration apart from

liking; but both the feeling of compulsion and the re-
solved submission to its force are facts of consciousness.
Moral perfection the deliberate pursuit of the elected
is

Best, through every obstacle within and without and the ;

objective abundance of obstacles to which we owe the

conception, by contrast, of a moral Best, also brings home

to our experience the reality of a moral Bad. Man is the
imperfect denizen of an imperfect world, and therefore,
though morality may be as natural as hunger and as
necessary as food, crime is as possible as starvation and
malice as real as indigestion. But the existence of moral
evil is only an historical fact, that of moral good is a logi-
cal necessity as eternal as pain and privation.
Children and adults with undeveloped faculties often
have their minds occupied for a time with a single, not
impracticable, desire, the gratification of which constitutes
their idea of happiness but the world is not so planned,
;

or the laws of nature so adjusted, as to give

every child
the sugar-plum or the toy which excites its appetite as
soon as it begins to cry for them ; and this is the beginning,
though as yet only the beginning, of the moral experi-
ence of the race. The toy and the sugar-plum are some-
times enjoyed, as well as often necessarily renounced, and
with the natural man the wish is father to the thought that
enjoyment is the natural rule, and deprivation the excep-
 MORALITY. 109

tion, an accident to be cried out at, or prayed against, or

warded off with such small prudence as a limited experi-
ence may But natural necessity is inexorable in
suggest.
The desired enjoyment has either to be
its alternatives.

gone without or purchased for a price, and the evolution

of moral principles takes place pari passu with the growth
of general feelings as to the price worth paying for each

indulgence as it offers. Ethical science sums up the

empirical estimates of the comparative value of various
natural goods, and shows them to be in accordance with
a perfectly natural and intelligible standard the supreme
natural good of general perfection. All our permanent
preferences are for things permanently and constitutionally
good, good in themselves all through and in every relation,
" "
and to these we naturally think or practically
it right
best that passing partial goods should be systematically
sacrificed. One after another the simpler, cruder, pleasures
of the child or the savage are found to be hardly worth
their natural price; they have to be worked or prayed
for too hard, competed for too fiercely for the
trifling
reward to be worth the cost, and reason advises voluntary
renunciation or quelling of desire in special cases long
before the suit and service of perfection comes to be pre-
scribed as the whole and sole duty of mankind.
But even then a fresh difficulty may arise; the taste
for sugar-plums outgrown, and men become curious in
is

toys. The problem to do as one likes is complicated by

uncertainty as to what on the whole one does like best.
Physical necessity introduces us to moral necessity by
bringing our appetites into collision with dispassionate
forces as ultimate and irreducible, and far more powerful
than themselves. The question then perforce arises with
respect to any course of conduct, not merely whether
we might have liked it if circumstances had left it alto-
gether easy and attractive, but whether we can and do ;

whether we are content to like it whether our judgment

;

goes with our taste or, whether its native pleasurableness

;
i io NATURAL LAW.
is disturbed by half-a-dozen conflicting and irreconcilable
wishes; for, if so, just because tastes are ultimate and
above reason, it is vain to try to restore the lost appetite.
Eeason by itself is not a motive for action, only real facts
and desires, and the compromise between reality and
desire, which reason recognises to be necessary and im-

poses even on the reluctant will, is what we call moral

duty, that which ought to be done. Till the need for the

compromise is felt, and the formula for it accepted, the

mind continues a prey to incompatible desires; no one
pleasure draws it with the old irresistible force; one
appetite has lost its edge with indulgence, another with
disuse, and over and above the limitations which the
capacities of our body and mind set to the pleasures they
can enjoy, there is still the whole indifferent machinery of
worldly circumstance, which now helps, now hinders our
endeavour, but certainly makes it impossible for us always
to have our will unless we can learn to let our will accom-
modate itself to the necessary limits of material possi-
bility.
The discovery that easy, unbroken happiness for the
mass of men is not amongst the results of existing natural
laws is an indispensable step in the evolution of morality ;

but the search after happiness which is only the pleasur-

able consciousness of natural good is still natural even

when it is found that the pursuit has to be carried on

under difficulties. The difficulties only stimulate fresh
faculties to assist in the search, and knowledge was, per-

haps, first valued as an auxiliary to pleasure. But as

every faculty that is exercised tends to assert its own
activity as an end in itself, the impulse to know continues
active even after knowledge has begun to disclose un-

pleasant truths. To seek knowledge is not the same

thing as to seek pleasure, and to find the knowledge
that pleasure cannot be found is not a pain, if it was
really knowledge and not pleasure that was sought. We
need not borrow the eloquent arguments which have gone
 MORALITY. in
to prove that life is an unmitigated evil it is enough for
;

our purpose that all agree in allowing it to be by no means

an unmitigated good. It is not within our power to secure
a constant succession of the natural innocent pleasures
proper to our organisation. In some races of men this
fact leads to the development of what we call higher
faculties and aspirations after nobler pleasures than those
of sense, and then the old conception of happiness, which

perhaps might have been realised by the help of the newly-

acquired knowledge and experience, is found to have lost
the power of satisfying the civilised or sophisticated taste.
Still the hope of happiness is not at once relinquished;
the higher, purer pleasures of art, intellect, and human
sympathy may yet, it is thought, give content. But the
experience of the nursery repeats itself in the schoolroom ;

disappointment without, disenchantment within, remind

the poet, the scholar, the lover, that the world is not
made for man, nor man for happiness. Men not only
want pleasures they cannot have, they want ampler, more
unwearied powers of enjoying the pleasures that are theirs;
and these inward and outward limitations, like all the
other fixed conditions of modify the human rule of
life,

men.
right, or the practical best for
Human nature, however, has one last protest to make
before the gospel of renunciation is accepted with all its
inevitable moral corollaries. As Utilitarians when hard
pressed will talk about the pleasures of virtue, Eudsemonists
turn with well-affected indifference from the thought of
vulgar enjoyment to the praise and worship of the ideal.
To live for art, for science, or for self-culture, that is, to
create beauty, to discover truth, to cherish and strengthen
the power of descrying every present beauty, of appre-
hending every latent truth, may well seem enough to
occupy our pitiful powers, to satisfy our greediest cravings
through the short span of a human life. Such an ideal
is better than pleasant, and the hope of approaching more

and more nearly to its perfect attainment may well carry

112 NATURAL LAW.
its votaries through, the seasons of physical exhaustion
and mental langour which await the strenuous artist, the
persevering amateur. But one thing is wanting to the
ideal life of aesthetic contemplation and intellectual per-

ception, and this one thing is Necessity. The lovers of

art, who are not as 'a rule famed for their science, count
it a praise that no moral sanction compels men to lead

their life. The elect will do so; the many are but as
swine before whom no pearls are to be cast. And yet it
is a flaw in this, the finest conception of human excellence
which has been reached by the consideration of man's
nature alone, out of relation to the universe, of which
the whole human race is but a dependent fraction, that
the mass of mankind cannot share it, and that it does, as
a fact, lose its hold even upon some of those who have felt
its charm, when experience shows that a life spent in

pursuit of the ideal is not itself ideal, but penetrated

with a thousand human, arbitrary, accidental imperfections.
Why, we ask, and ask in vain, should we toil to keep our
minds open and our senses clear to receive the impressions
of perfect truth and perfect beauty, when we know that so
far from finding them we shall learn to bear the frequent

pain of failure in their quest at the cost of apathy to rare

success ? We call it duty when the will is bent to any
action by other considerations than spontaneous natural
desire, and the will of man is not habitually bent, or con-
sciously self-compelled, towards a life of mere receptivity
or self-contained power however various of passive
perception. This is especially true of the present day,
when is no living national art
there unconsciously edu-
cating the tastes of individuals to healthy enjoyment of
contemporary production, for when the Hedonist and the
world are, so to speak, tete-a-tete, if the former wearies in
his task of well-feeling, there is no power behind to secure
his constancy, all his excellences are unconditioned, which
to us means accidental, and at the mercy of accident.
Action is a process, the tendency towards which may be
 MORALITY. 113

conscious, and consciously dictated by a rational anticipa-

tion of ends;
but feeling or passion is which the
a state to
transition from other states is inevitably unconscious and ;

though one passion may succeed another in a more or less

constant order, they have no vital productive force, and
their duration or pleasurableness is at the mercy of what-
ever contingent influences may be brought to bear upon
them from without. The impossibility of calling up at
will the mental affections which have been found pleasur-
able in the past, is reason enough by itself why it should
not be felt as a duty to revive either the affection or the

pleasure but, because they cannot be revived at will, the

;

happiness of those who follow art for its moments of rapt

delight is but insecurely placed.
The despair which follows upon discoveries of this kind
isapt to solace itself with irreligious complaints. Young
poets suffering from that combination of their own private
passions with sympathy for the wrongs of the universe
at large, which goes to form the disease called Welt-
sclimerz, are apt to acknowledge a God that they may have
somewhat and wherewithal to blaspheme. But
to curse
if we been done hitherto, that there is
assume, as has
neither God nor devil in rerum natura, resentment against
the order of the universe seems as absurd as the passion
of Xerxes lashing the waves, or of the baby that hurts
its knuckles by beating the ground it has fallen down
upon. Our ills are real, but it does not follow that they
have an author we are not happy, but it does not follow
:

that we have a jural right against things in general to

the materials for happy life. The thing is naturally im-
possible, and
spending a few years in convincing
after
ourselves of impossibility we cease to think of the fact
its

as more unreasonable than various other inconvenient

natural dispensations.
The moral tendency of this discovery (the impossibility
of happiness) has been
recognised in many religions,
notably in Christianity, and empirically formulated some-

UNIVERSITY
.
^\
Of /j
ii4 NA TURAL LA W.
what to the effect that "the happy may be good, the
melancholy must." But the logic of this inference is not
quite apparent so long as we consider the existence of
the acknowledged moral law, so to speak, from outside,
as the rulesby which people in general are objectively
bound to act, instead of from within, in relation to
the personal feeling that moves each man separately to
acquiesce in the necessity of certain acts and forbearances,
in view of other qualities than their pleasurableness.
To the natural man, whose impulses and likings are the
natural and necessary rule of his conduct, it appears mon-
strous, anomalous, that he should have to do what he does
not like, and he only does it under material compulsion.
Even when we are too wise quite to expect the laws of
nature to perturb themselves for our convenience, it still
does not seem to us quite reasonable that we should do
what we do not like unless we have something to gain by
it in this world or another.
The grand moral lesson, which brings with it the pros-
pect of release from the bondage of personal desire, is the
discovery that we must do what we do not like, if we are
to live at all ; first, because the world has so* determined,
and the world is stronger than we
and secondly,
are;
because, even if our will were
supreme upon earth,
there is nothing in life that seems to us quite worth liking
always and altogether. And this we must do without
reward, since the universe owes us no gratitude, though
we pay laws the compliment of not expecting stones
its

to fall up not -even though we

hill or ice to boil a kettle,
cease to wish that the moral law, of which we feel the
pressure, should be less inevitable than the laws of heat
or gravitation. This experience of involuntary, inevitable
endurance is the first step in the natural
discipline by
which men learn in case of need to prefer a natural to a
moral evil. The power of endurance itself becomes a
natural good, because in our imperfect world some evils
are absolutely unavoidable, and others have to be endured
 MORALITY. ii-

as the price of a counterbalancing good; and the same

power, after meeting us in such homely materialistic virtues

as temperance and honesty, furnishes the foundation for

every higher effort of zeal and devotion. do not freely We

choose the that offers us most pleasure and least pain
life ;

we necessarily accept the proportions of both determined

by outer circumstances, and the wide, far-fetched influences
which have given the bent to our choice.
If it were true that men lived only for pleasure, and that
as long as the slenderest rag of enjoyment fluttered before
their eyes they had no choice but to follow the bootless

quest, piety would be impossible, for the position of

the race would be one of chronic hopeless antagonism to
the laws of nature, which are not framed with a view to
their greatest happiness; and the fullest knowledge of
those laws, while enabling them to make the struggle as
little disastrous as possible, yet must aggravate their suffer-

ings by showing the inevitableness of final defeat. The

egotist's life is a losing battle. Except under the pressure
of necessity, physical or moral, no one would spend his

days in chasing a meteor, and there is no physical neces-

sity, no moral obligation upon us, to go on pursuing pleas-
ures that have lost their charm, and happiness, of which we
doubt the existence. If there is any course fully accept-
able to the disinterested judgment, anything right, neces-

sary, and duly to be done, it is not this.

If man were altogether a rational animal, it is impos-
sible to say what he would do after the discovery of these
and kindred truths. The most rational of writers, 1 indeed
affirms that action follows necessarily upon the full and
certain apprehension of a truth ;
but this sequence cannot
of itself be considered strictly logical. Action is only
rational considered in reference to an end; the function
of reason in practical life is to show what intentions
are compatible with fixed natural facts, but there is

1
Spiuoza, Ethic., iii. 1.
ii6 NATURAL LAW.
no absolutely reasonable conduct, unless we assign that
name to the broad rule of duty, the pursuit of perfection
conditioned by the general laws of the universe, of which
human reason is the highest exponent. No conduct can
be called reasonable which ignores facts essential to the
problem awaiting solution, and it is simply a fact of our
nature that action may be determined by other motives
than passion, or the suffering of a desire.
Loose thinkers, to whom the notion that every being is
ruled by the laws proper to its nature is naturally abhor-
rent, ask why the will accepts an unpleasant neces-
may
sity, why the intellect affirms a painful truth why not
:

deny the troublesome necessity and disbelieve the un-

welcome truth ? Certainly this is possible, since it is
done, perhaps by the majority of mankind, but it is not
done, because it cannot be done, by those who know of
their own knowledge and experience that the truth is

true and the necessity binding. Considerations of expedi-

ency are absolutely out of relation to such matters ; it is
a rhetorical exaggeration to say that men would believe
that two and two made five if the hallucination were
for their pecuniary advantage. No doubt they are most
anxious to discover truths that have a pleasant sound, but
it must be remembered that the facts of nature are not
always pleasant, and that facts have a of forcing them-
way
selves upon our knowledge to the destruction of all but
the one true theory of their nature and history. If we have
nothing else but the clear consciousness of our place in
the relations of the world, of that we cannot and need not
wish to be bereft the rather that forces which are too
strong for knowledge are not likely to yield to ignorance.
Morality begins with the consciousness of opposition
between the nature of the individual and its environment,
or rather with the reaction of the nature
against the ex-
ternal force which oppresses it. The material conditions
of life are the cause, human sentiments, such as
ambition,
sympathy, love, are the motives, which make moral con-
 MORALITY. n7
duct necessary, and if the sentiments themselves are trace-
able at last to natural physical causes, this is only a fresh
instance of the way in which every natural tendency re-
acts upon and reinforces itself.But, as the existence of
jus, or the conception of law in general, can be kept sepa-
rate from questions concerning the common qualities of
just and lawful acts, so the mere existence of a moral law,
or rule of right of some kind, is independent of the nature
of its injunctions. The fact that the normal man feels
obliged in conscience to acts and forbearances of a class
does not tell us to what classes of acts or forbearances he
will feel obliged and before coming to that further point,
;

it would be well to have the source and character of the

feeling of obligation itself, if possible, more clearly estab-

lished.
It willbe admitted that men's actions are determined
by their will,whatever opinion may be held concerning
that which determines the will, a vexed question that
we are not called upon to resolve. Jonathan Edwards,
perhaps, after Spinoza, the ablest of Necessarians, says that
"philosophical necessity is really nothing else than the
full and fixed connection between the things signified by
the subject and predicate of a proposition which affirms
"
something to be true i.e., is nothing but the formula of

natural fact: and again, "The will's beginning to act is

the very same thing as its beginning to choose or prefer."
It is allowed that the will does choose or prefer which is
;

the same thing as asserting the necessary freedom of the

will or active nature of man to be itself. Nothing is en-
tirely within the power of our own will but our actions ;
we can do as we will (indeed we cannot well do otherwise),
but whether what we do shall produce the effects we de-
produce may depend upon circumstances altogether
sire to

beyond our control. But the disposition of the will, i.e.,

the nature of the active impulses, is the only possible
source of that self-imposed and self-accepted rule of action
whcih we call moral, or duty the only source, that is,
n8 NATURAL LAW.
of the obligation, or of the consent, which gives to natural
necessity the force of law by ensuring its habitual,
con-
scious fulfilment for this subjective disposition alone is
;

permanent, and ready at any moment to become conscious,

whereas the existence of external motives or inducements
is accidental even when they are present, it is the choice
;

of the will that makes them effective; when they are

absent, the will generalises its own impulses and we call ;

the result acting upon principle. If the will were entirely

plastic, and followed unresistingly

the variable impulsion
of external motives, there would be no such thing as
morality, for there would be no consciousness of constraint ;
in matters held to be indifferent there is no such con-
sciousness, because the will is in itself equally ready to
adopt either of the indifferent alternatives before it, and
suffers nothing if one of them becomes accidentally im-
possible. In the same way, the sense of moral obligation
isin abeyance if an absolutely irresistible external force

impedes the natural action of the will where no choice

;

is possible, the reluctant will does not act, it is passive

or suffers. For the will to feel bound to do what it can-
not do is a contradiction in terms ;
the moral law has no
impossibilities, according to Kant is the proof
which
that morality cannot lie in the pursuit of anything so un-
attainable as happiness.
Moral choice is to adopt the one of two physically pos-
sible alternatives which that unalterable residuum of will,
commonly called conscience, adheres to as involving the
under the adverse circumstances,
least departure possible
from the general course of conduct which the organism
would follow instinctively if circumstances were propi-
tious. All the actions of a perfect man in a perfect world
would be subservient to his continued existence in a state
of perfection. Men, who are not perfect, find pleasure in
some which do not contribute to their general perfec-
acts

tion, and the world, which is not perfect, makes some acts

painful which do contribute to their general perfection

 MORALITY. 119

as men. Nevertheless, upon the whole, and especially

when the present seduction of an easy pleasure is re-

moved, the will takes counsel of reason, and resolves, not

quite unnaturally, though with a sense of moral effort, to
be itselfin such perfection as limited strength and intel-

ligence will allow.

At point the argument brings us very near to
this
Kant's categorical imperative, without, however, an exact
coincidence. His precept, "to act always according to
a maxim
that might serve for a universal rule," does not
indicate a motive for modest persons who feel no voca-
tion to legislate for the universe, while his own legisla-
tion depends upon theology for its sanctions ; but we find
it a posteriori, that that conduct only is thought
to be true,

right which those who think it right hold it would be good

to have universal. We do not eat our dinner 'because of
certain biological laws of which most probably we are

ignorant but the biological laws express one side of the

natural tendency of men to dine once a day if they can.
Similarly any one who endeavours to lead a virtuous life
does not do so because he thinks it right to realise the
highest possibilities of his nature; but the moral law
formulates the natural tendency of men towards such
realisation. There is no optimism in this ;
for we do not

deny that, tried by the general standard of what as we

say men
ought to be, the highest realisation truly pos-
sible to most men is discouragingly low while of those ;

by whom a higher ideal is conceivable, and therefore, in

one sense, attainable, but few have the superfluity of vir-
tuous strength required to overcome the material obstacles
which the world and the flesh offer to the leading of a
perfect life. We have
not undertaken to justify the ways
of the world to men
and though it is not for naturalists to
;

say that a better world than this was possible, we may

without blasphemy admit that this world is not very good.
Most of the obscurity in which the question of liberty
and necessity is involved may be traced to a confusion in
120 NATURAL LAW.
the use and meaning of the word possible. The will is free
to choose between possible alternatives, but the number of

possible alternatives may be rigorously limited limited,

;

a fatalist may add, to one but if the will voluntarily

adopts that one, the objection is scarcely significant. If
half a loafis put before a starving man, he does not eat

it the less voluntarily because he may wish that it were

whole, or buttered. If there are such things as moral
struggles, which the advocates of freewill certainly do not
question, the subject of such a struggle has to face a

difficulty from which there is no escape the necessity ;

either to yield to the difficulty or to overcome it is ab-

solute there is no ma media.
; Many of those who talk
most of liberty as something essential to the dignity of
humanity, seem not to understand the difference between
supposing men to be free to do as they choose, and sup-
posing them to be free to do as they would like to choose,
that is, perhaps, to adopt an alternative which does not
naturally exist, made on purpose to suit their fancy. Life
would be intolerable if the will were not free to adapt
itself, within moral limits, to the possible but life would
;

be impossible would not be at all if the will were free

in some inconceivable manner to alter the nature of things

by arbitrary ex post facto decrees.

To explain how the will should ever seem to be divided
against itself, we must remember that the real, conscious
man is not a pure spiritual unit, without parts or form, an
undivided, homogeneous whole, but the subject of im-
pressions and faculties as various and manifold as his
nerves and muscles ; yet, though he may feel in many
ways, he can only really act in one ; and these alternative
necessities, the necessity of choice when inclination is
divided, gives the moral sense of deliberate will, acting
freely, by or perhaps against inclination, and not only
free, but bound by the laws of its nature so to act.
"
To make a virtue of necessity " is one of those popular
phrases in which much deep philosophy lies hid. The
 MORALITY. 121

scientific explanation of the real process so described, lies

no doubt in the principle of accommodation, the way in
which every organism adapts itself to the milieu in which
it is placed ; but this is only restating the fact of
necessity
in fresh terms, for if the organism cannot adapt itself, it

perishes as an organism and its elements are absorbed

in fresh combinations. The human race could not subsist,
increase, and develop which are the natural tendencies
of every organism without virtue, that is, the disinterested
co-operation of individuals for the natural good of the kind ;

those who withhold their co-operation are eliminated by the

very fact, and count only as negative quantities, by which
the race is minus so much active progress. But wherever
there is positive vitality in a species, it is
impossible that
the vital impulses of the individuals of which it consists
should, as a rule, be antagonistic should not, as a rule,
be subservient to the preservation and vitality of the
species as a whole. It is the imperfection of real exist-
ence that makes the power of self-sacrifice a necessary
condition of organic, and still more of social life, but as
social life is a fact, the absence of the power would be
as inexplicable as its presence is necessary. "We call
virtue good, because we are animals of a species that
subsists after its kind thereby but when we say that
;

virtue isnecessary, we only mean that it is necessary to

man : there is no reason to suppose that man is necessary ;
he isas capable as morality of becoming extinct.

But, it will be said, if everything that occurs, occurs

by
an equal natural necessity, what is the significance of our
moral judgments ? Why do we condemn, or at least regret
and resist some things ? To which the only possible answer
is:
By nature, which reasserts itself after every accidental
disturbance of the normal order, and tends to restore the
broken harmony. Good and evil are words that mean
what we mean when we use them namely, results which
our whole mind and feeling deliberately admires and
approves, or condemns and rejects ;
and though liking the
122 NATURAL LAW.
pleasant and approving the good are not identical mental
operations, one is to the full as natural as the other. Our
moral judgments are compounded of a perception, that
such or such conduct is good or bad, sanctioned by a feel-
ing about goodness and badness, in the abstract and in the
concrete, which is as rational as any other normal reaction
under stimulus. The disposition of the will, as the ulti-
mate exponent of the individual nature, is the sole source
of moral obligation, but that does not interfere with the
fact that some natures are more fortunately organised than
others : and there are moments in the history of every in-
dividual when the tendencies of the true nature cannot
attain their full realisation without conscious effort and
sacrifice. The power to effect such sacrifices upon occa-
sion a part of the natural good or specific perfection of
is

men, and we call those natures fortunate in which it is

most pronounced. But if we are asked since it is only
a misfortune to be wicked by what right we blame
people who do wrong from
natural infirmity, the reply is,
certainly, that man is not to blame, any more than provi-
dence, for the misfortunes that afflict him. call a We
malicious man
bad, as we call a humpback deformed;
and, moral censures apart, we look upon it as evil fortune
to be infirm, whether morally or physically. It is not

exactly wrong to be humpbacked, but we would decid-

edly rather that our spines should not curve though, ;

indeed, if they manifest a tendency in that direction of

their own accord, it may be a question as it often is with
our moral deformities how much or how painful surgical
treatment we are prepared to undergo in the attempt to

straighten them.
Objectors of the same class sometimes put, as trying to
the practical efficiency of naturalistic morality, the case of
a man inclined to be moderately virtuous, who says, Why
should I take the trouble (if there is nothing to be gained
by it) of being more virtuous than I feel inclined ? which
again is an unanswerable question, the rather that no
 MORALITY. 123

one but the person most intimately concerned can tell

what his own inclinations are. But inclinations fluctuate
and compete, and it is hard to be certain that any given
disputant who, for the sake of argument, represents him-
self as a cross between La Eochefoucauld and Sardanapalus,

may not really be as much disinclined as the most austere

moralist for a of sensual indulgence and emotional
life

isolation. If actual vice is considered to be out of the

question (a large concession, which would not have been

made to free-thinkers a century or two ago), and the

degree of virtue to be practised is the only doubtful point,

the case for the naturalistic theory of morality is that
every inclination gains strength by indulgence, and that it

isa question of degree how much, rather than how little

virtue a well-natured person will find himself entrapped
into finding desirable. It is not pleasant to be as virtu-

ous, or as vicious, as we are naturally inclined to be in ;

other words, the world is not constituted so that we may

be happy by following our most natural inclinations.
But there is nothing paradoxical in maintaining that in
the case of any individual choosing between two courses,
one of which he sincerely believes to be right and the
other wrong, it does not on the whole conduce to his
happiness to give the preference to the supposed wrong
Other things being equal, a man will do what he thinks
right when
;
other things are so far from being equal
that the normal preference for virtue is overruled, the
victim of circumstances suffers, from the violence done
to his true nature, which it is happiness for the in-
dividual to be able to follow unimpeded. Cases are
abundant, however, in which the scale of decision is
turned, not by the objective pleasurableness of one
alternative as compared with the rest, but by the strength
of the man's inward bent towards noble, rather than easy

living. Every power we have limits our liberty to be

content without giving it and every power we
exercise,
exercise awakens sensibilities and tastes which make us
124 NATURAL LAW.
subject to all the conditions which regulate this indul-
"
gence. Mr. Spencer notices the existence of a connection
between progress in the impressibilities and progress in the
activities," and if man found no stimulus to fresh action,
in the necessities he recognises, it would not be true that
" "
the advance of either involves the advance of both ;

but the powers which bring us under the sway of new

rules are such as by their normal activity serve to enrich
our life and perfect our nature.
Dropping the ancient associations which bias the judg-
ment when we speak of virtue and vice, the simple fact is
that we have conflicting, incompatible impulses, and that
the sacrifice of some is necessary when the reconciliation
of all is impossible that the sacrifice of one class of im-
;

pulses is as painful as that of the other; but the one

sacrifice habitually appears, to those acquainted with all
the circumstances of the case, as good, eligible, and to be
accomplished, the other as, if inevitable, essentially deplor-
able. Every one is as good as he can be and though it ;

is a serious misfortune to all parties that men in general

have not been able hitherto to be better, there is no reason

in the nature of things why additional knowledge and
wider experience should not have the same effect upon the
mind of any particular sinner as the same influences may
be supposed to have had upon his self-elected censor. It
is true that we are most of us stupid or society could
never have got into its present lamentable entanglements
but we might all without much difficulty be just a little
wiser than we are, and the aggregate effect of a number of
such small improvements would be considerable. After
all, the human race is of one kind : fools are rudimentary
philosophers philosophers are developed fools ; and with
;

the development of philosophy we may learn that it is not

a law of nature for the lives of men to be made miserable
by man. Human conduct
determined by many fixed
is

conditions, but the conditions are not all discoverable, and

the problem of what it is fated that we shall do, cannot
 MORALITY. 125

be solved prophetically even by ourselves, much less by

any one else we learn our fate in fulfilling it, but we are
;

unfortunate if it is a part of our destiny to fulfil the most

melancholy of all the various destinies we can conceive
that of an evil liver there is no natural connection between
;

such a misfortune and necessaxianism.

It might still, however, be objected by a Utilitarian

critic, that to prove morality to be necessary does not

prove anything against its being conducive to the greatest

happiness of the greatest number, and that if it is so, this
fact, and not its necessity, will be the motive, as distinct
from the cause, that leads men to act morally. Granted
that not possible to live by inclination and be per-
it is

fectly happy, if we have seemed to maintain that the best

(of many bad) chances of happiness is
to indulge the
virtuous propensities at the expense of all others, is not
the theory utilitarianism in disguise ? And here it may
be admitted that we have no reason to suppose that per-
sons who are. born with, or who have acquired such a
temper as to find it habitually impossible to choose the
worse of two alternative courses, are, on the whole, less
happy than those with whom the possibilities are reversed
or vary intermittently. The surest way of escaping the
disappointment of self-regarding wishes is to have none,
and the power of sacrificing inclination to a disinterested
apprehension of what is good is attended, like the exercise
of every other natural faculty, with a slightly pleasurable
consciousness of vital force. Nevertheless, if the impulses
are only sacrificed as a matter of calculation, and to secure
a calm, passionless old age, the sacrifice may be regretted,
and the ancient egotist find himself of all men most miser-
able. To calculate upon the pleasures of virtue, the answer
of a good conscience, the relief of duty done, is neither
moral nor wise. It is not prudent to look forward to the
few and distant moments of comparative ease that may no
doubt be theirs who can say, after a lifetime of unprofit-
able service : We have done that which it was our duty
I 26 NATURAL LAW.
to do. The pleasure would not pay its cost. To do the
painful right because we might in time come to find it

pleasant, is like starving as a precaution against poverty ;

and if we once admit that men are capable of feeling a
moral necessity to sacrifice, not only happiness but life

good of humanity, the existence of

itself, to the natural
a stronger motive than the instinct of self-preservation
becomes apparent.
Self-preservation is the natural good, the necessary
motive, of every isolated organism, but men are members
of a social body, and we know by experience that the

preservation of a whole frequently involves the immola-

tion of its parts. Conscious acquiescence in this common
necessity the only peculiar prerogative of man, the only
is

distinguishing characteristic of his share or co-operation in

the eternal scheme of the universe, that which constitutes
him in an especial sense a moral agent.
Under favourable circumstances, the habit of well-doing
forms itself by exercises which cost nothing but a healthy
effort ;
but the moral bias, hereditary or acquired, ends by
becoming so strong, in a few chosen natures, that the
passion for perfection outgrows the natural love of life
and ease and fame, and rather than give his sanction to a
wrong, the righteous man will dare an unhonoured, pain-
"
ful, fruitless Skin for skin, yea, all that a man
death.
hath will he give for his life" but if it is a man's life to
do well and endure wisely, and the choice lies between
death and ill-doing, how can it be otherwise than naturally
easiest to him to die ? or, living still, to endure any other
natural ill rather than the moral death of hateful action
of action fraught with natural evil to the unoffending sons
of men ? But the mental attitude df the man who deliber-

ately resolves to follow his own highest impulses, at what-

ever personal cost, is altogether different from that of one
who resigns himself to paying the needful price for a
desired pleasure.
We are nearing the confines of the practical question.
 MORALITY. 127

Morality exists. What, then, is the conduct men praise

as moral ? we have
considered morality from
Hitherto
the subjective side, as the sense of duty or obligation
incumbent on the self. But most of our moral concep-
tions include the idea, not only of a duty binding on some
one, but of a duty towards some one else. The fact that
men have duties follows from the fact that their will acts
under conditions not of their own making. The fact that
most of these duties are imposed by consideration for
other interests than their own follows from the fact that
the life of menin society is mainly conditioned by the
acts and feelings of their associates in a word, that the

many weigh more than the one, and that each Self, in
proportion as its acts and desires involve it in relations
with other Selves, must act and wish in conscious reference
to their acts and wishes.
This is so much the case that the words altruism and
egoism are used without much straining to denote moral
desert and its opposite, as if self-indulgence were habitu-

ally bad, and the indulgence of any other self than the
agent habitually good. And we
this is really the case, if

emphasise the "habitually," because in the shorthand

of thought we understand by indulgence the giving of
pleasure without effort ;
and it is easier to give ourselves
noxious pleasures than to give noxious pleasures to
ib is

other people, at least we have more temptation to do so, not

only because in their case we may ourselves be the victims
o/ the noxiousness, but also because our judgment is less
biassed by private passion, so that we can estimate con-
sequences more exactly. Still the standard of right in

particular cases is no more to be found in the likings of

my wife or next-door neighbour than in own: it is my
simply an empirical generalisation that I am more likely
to be seduced into wrong-doing by my own inclinations
than by theirs, though the latter also is possible. Strictly
speaking,my duty towards them is the same as my duty
towards myself i.e., to minister to their wellbeing; but
123 NATURAL LAW.
without accepting the dictum of those social philosophers
who deny the existence of self-regarding duties, it is clear
that the peculiarly moral element of self-devotion is neces-
sarily least conspicuous in such acts, for by self-interest,
rightly understood, we mean the pursuit of natural, not
merely sensible good, and the attainment of a natural self-
regarding good never results in a predominance of sensible
evil in its consequences.
Hence the definition of moral conduct seems almost to
narrow itself to the satisfaction of claims for social services.
But remains a question whether this is the widest
it still

synthesis of motive attainable. Is Humanity the supreme

lawgiver, because our chief duties are to men ? Is there
any other God, and have we duties to Him ? or is our life
conditioned wholly by the natural forces, among which our
susceptibilities of passion, impulse, and reason are the chief?
And if our life is conditioned by nature, what is our duty
to and in this natural world ? and whence the feeling
which makes us accept with something more than resig-
nation the laws which bind our will. and is our obedience
;

to these laws if indeed we do

obey due after all to this
vague, unexplained sentiment of piety that makes us
imagine, before we know, obedience to be the better
?
part
 IV.

RELIGION.

" Sed humana

potentia admodum limitata est et a potentia causarum
externarum superatur ; atque adeo potestatem absolutam non
infinite

habemus res, quse eztra nos sunt, ad nostrum usum aptandi. Attamen ea
quse nobis eveniunt contra id, quod nostrse utilitatis ratio postulat, sequo
animo feremus, si conscii simusnos functos nostro officio fuisse, et potentiam,
quam habemus, non potuisse se eo usque extendere, ut eadem vitare pos-
semus. nosque partem totius natura esse, cujus ordinem sequimur. Quod
si clare et distincte intelligamus, pars ilia nostri, quse intelligentia definitur,

hoc est, pars melior nostri in eo plane acquiescet et in ea acquiescentia perse-

verare conabitur. Nam quatenus intelligimus, nihil appetere nisi id, quod
necessarium nee absolute, nisi in veris acquiescere possumus ; adeoque
est,

quatenus hsec recte intelligimus, eatenus conatus melioris partis nostri

cum ordine totius naturse convenit." SPINOZA.
"Look straight to this, to what nature leads thee, both the universal
nature through the things which happen to thee, and thy own nature
through the acts which must be done by thee." MARCUS AURELIUS.
"
Magna res est amor, magnum ommno bonum, quod solum leve facit
esse onerosum et fert aequaliter omne insequale ; nam onus sine onere
portat, et omne amarum dulce ac sapidum efficit. Amor Jesu nobilis ad
magna operanda impellit, et ad desideranda semper perfectiora
. excitat.

Amor vult esse sursum nee ullis infimis rebus retineri. Amor vult esse
liber et ab omni mundana affectione alienus ne internus ejus impediatur
aspectus, ne per aliquod commodum
temporale implicationes sustineat aut
per incommodum succumbat. Nil dulcius est amore, nil fortius, nil altius,
nil latius, nil jucundius, nil plenius, nil melius in cselo et in terra." DE

IMITATIONE CHRISTI.
The natural history of emotion All human knowledge, belief, and percep-
tion natural, because all received through the natural faculties of man
The existence of religion, if not otherwise explicable, might have to
be referred to an otherwise unknown principle, the existence of which
would, however, even then be known naturally, as that of an unseen
planet, by its action Men find themselves affected by forces that are
Not-man, and do not at once conceive any of the forces as unconscious
Natural religion, e.g., of savages, dread of uncontrollable power to injure.
Later stages, apprehension of uncontrollable power not irrationally
malicious, and personification of the moral influences of the Not-self in
man Agnosticism and the Cultus of the Unknown Personification of
the imagined cause of a felt impression Spiritual religion the senti-
ment called forth in the individual by the apprehension of the Not-self
in its most general aspect, as the one real, irresistible power in which
the self is included ;
or by the apprehension of as much of the moral
influences of the Not-self as can be personified or interpreted by personal
agency Dualism unspiritual because the sentiment towards the Not-self
is weakened by division Comte Humanity great, but not supreme
:
;

does not inspire the true religious devotion The religious sentiment one
of complete (yet dynamic) acquiescence in the tendencies of the whole
by which the tendencies of the part are now consciously conditioned ; the
two tendencies are identified, but without any sense of obligation or
effort in the weaker, for feeling ig naturally free, and supposing the
religious conversion of the will or nature to be complete, co-operation
with the " stream of tendency " becomes truly voluntary and spontane-
ousQuery, whether the religious sentiment is equally reasonable in
all ages Strong piety most rational when human aspirations after the
Best possible find themselves most nearly in harmony with the spon-
taneous course of things Rational faith only belief in the reality and
trust in the power of goodness Unequal strength of natural power and
natural aspiration Atheistical religion.
 IV.

RELIGION.
LAW sanctions what men are; morality sanctions what
men wish themselves and each other to be; religion, as
commonly understood, might be described as sanctioning
what God wishes men to be. Waiving theological con-
troversy, it will be apparent that law and morality, as
above described, account for all that part of men's conduct
which the discharge of personal and social
consists in
duties, or actions performed with a consciousness of con-
straint or obligation and that the sphere of religion, as a
;

binding force, is therefore restricted either to the actions

which men perform spontaneously, with a sense of freedom,
or to their emotions, which are not properly susceptible of
constraint at all in other words, we have here done with
:

law and enter upon the field of religious liberty.

The only way in which we can conceive a law to exist
without its being felt as constraining is for the constant
relations between different things formulated in the law
to pass into the consciousness of the one conceived as
more peculiarly subject to the law, not as a necessity
compelling to acts and forbearances of a class which would
not have been performed voluntarily, but as a necessary
release from other irksome, arbitrary, or accidental com-

pulsion. Such a release we have seen to be afforded to

men by law from the caprices of other men, and
positive
"
by morality from the bondage of " chance desires of their
own if their subjective emancipation is to be completed,
;

religion must release them at once from the sense of

bondage to the natural conditions and accidents of human
life, and from the sentiment of reluctance which may, and
1 32 NATURAL LAW.
of the
usually does, attend the deliberate submission
to law. But since religion does not affect the objective
validity of the other laws with which
we have been con-
cerned the laws of nature, of society, and of human
morality whatever change it effects in the conscious-
ness of the human subjects of such laws must plainly be
immaterial and emotional.
There are two parts in every rational action, the will
and the intention, or the act and the desire, and the
natural, normal agreement between these two may be
disturbed but any form of passion, suffering, or emotion
;

is in its nature simple, irrational, and where there is no

consciousness of division or antagonism, the first element

of law, or constraint, the juxtaposition of two natures in a

necessary relation, is wanting. No one feels bound to feel

otherwise than he does feel, any more than any one feels
bound to be something entirely different from what he is.
It is easy for a real, slight feeling as of gratitude or
affection towards a person plainly deserving of such regard
to be mistaken for, or concealed by, a non-natural,
second-hand remorse, produced by the impression that
other people, under the circumstances, would have a stronger
feeling of the same land. But though people may vaguely
wish that they were as good specimens of their kind as
somebody else, they do not really feel bound in conscience
to be other than they are, namely, the subject of moral

aspirations of such and such a degree of strength and

efficiency, though the aspirations may be regarded as an
incipient tendency towards advance to a higher stage of
moral development, at which fresh tendencies and aspira-
tions would become both possible and necessary. Still,
no criticism of the emotions in their actual development
atany given moment is possible if we attempt to judge
:

whether a feeling is wise or right, the feeling vanishes at

the very moment, at least until the critical mood is over.
The emotions begin and end with themselves, or rather
with their conscious subject there is no room for wisdom
;

in states of consciousness that can only exist in one way

 RELIGION. 133

as they are involuntarily felt to "be. Yet all the more

complex emotions are feelings towards or about some
other object, by the nature of which they must be in some
manner conditioned, if the relation is to be orderly and
observant of perceptible constant laws.
In the absence of precise knowledge concerning the
physical basis of consciousness and the different physical
conditions of sensation, emotion, and thought, conjecture in-
voluntarily takes the form of hypothesis, and we compose
our minds with the expectation of finding hereafter proof
of the opinions which now impress us as most likely to be
true, or if not exactly true themselves, yet most like what
the truth must be. There is not yet proof to go before a
jury upon, and yet it seems both credible and probable that
sensation is the subjective side of certain
objective molecu-
lar changes in the organism produced by outer, material
influences. Sensations by repetition accustom the organs
of sense to certain modes of vibration or molecular move-
ment, which, thenceforward, may be excited by the faintest
touch suggestive of similar movement, or may even con-
tinue automatically without stimulus. We
believe Mr.
Lewes is parent of the suggestion, that these normal sets,
or patterns, so to speak, of vibration, do as a fact fall into
other patterns or groups among themselves, and that
feeling or emotion is the consciousness of such more
elaborate groupings of set forms of nervous agitation.
This is not proved, but it is
eminently provable as well
as probable ; and it is only by some such explanation as
this that the growth of feeling can be made thoroughly

intelligible to the reason.

The character of normal human feeling, as of normal
human conduct, has been systematically explained as the
outcome of personal and inherited experience of pleasure
and pain; the emotions are supposed to be favourably
affected towards felicific influences, and unfavourably
towards whatever causes or is associated with pain. We
have already attempted to show that this is virtually
134 NA TURAL LA W.
trying to explain the whole by a part, for the very sense
of pleasure and pain must, on our view, be the con-
itself

sciousness of opposite kinds of relations, some jarring,

some concordant, between groups or patterns of moving
molecules. But this sense of discord and harmony is only
one of the secondary feelings about things which grow
from the repeated feeling of the things themselves. The
eye rises from the sensation of form and colour to the
perception of grace and beauty, but we have no a priori
notions of beauty which would guide our judgment towards
received canons of taste, even though all the present laws
of optics were reversed or confounded. Similarly with our
loves and hates we have no preconceived theory of what
;

should charm us, but we grow by degrees into a mental

habit of sympathy with every act and symbol of gracious
goodness and loving power, and these affections become a
part of ourselves, so that we interpret every new sensation
by their light. Thus the feelings, like the impulses, attain
to an independent life of their own, not at the mercy of

momentary inducements.
The origin of each mental feeling, its true antecedent
sine qua non, is seldom if ever another mental feeling, it
is the existence of a certain group of more elementary
sensations which become articulate in the consciousness
in that particular form by virtue of their combination.
We are not at present concerned with the development of

feeling into thought, which may be conceived as the appro-

priate consciousness of still more complex relations among
composite groups of sensation and feeling or a sense of the
grouping of groups but this would be the logical continua-
;

tion of the former process, and unless the whole of it has

been misapprehended, it would follow that, barring casual
fallacies, thought and feeling are alike based on rational

reality, so that knowledge and passion, instead of being

antagonistic, appear as both alike the creation of the objec-
tive fact which, when created,
they serve to reflect.
Thus it is that while single movements of feeling are
 RELIGION. 135

almost completely independent of the reason, human

feeling is on the whole rational and trustworthy, and
the habitual inclination of feeling as respectable as the
habitual inclination of the will. Enthusiasts for the re-
ligious emotions and the impulsive side of human nature
are not content with this admission, but wish to have

religion exalted above morality, and feeling more trusted

than thought. To find a partial justification for the com-
mon order of arrangement (which we have followed),
which treats the broadest facts of feeling as a kind of
climax, as possessing for mankind a higher, more inde-
feasible kind of authority than the judgments of pure

reason, we must remember the double character of all

human experience. If thought is a development of feel-

ing, feeling is not the higher product, but it is the deeper

root, and it is more possible for a concerted change of fact
and feeling to modify belief than for additional knowledge
to alter the spontaneous affection of the mind towards
the things known
about. The most general conclusions of
human any period are a degree more necessary
feeling at
and immutable than contemporary beliefs of the same
degree of generality, a degree less necessary than a theory
of which the special truth is conditioned by broader, more

elementary feeling.
The comparative authority of feeling and reason as a
guide for conduct depends, however, on another set of con-
siderations. A present feeling is or may be a direct motive,
thought only suggests action through the medium of an
associated feeling. Also feelings are in relation with
present, concrete realities ; thoughts only with generalisa-
tions about permanent qualities, which by themselves

suggest no action or wish ; hence the true or real motive

for present action may be more discernible to feeling than
reason. But, on the other hand, should a doubt arise as
to which motive simple feeling or feeling grown into
thought had better be allowed to prevail, the thought
which is conditioned by all the facts of the past is more
infallible than the feeling or desire which is conditioned
136 NATURAL LAW.
by those bearing on the individual at the present moment.
But the general disposition of human feeling towards outer
influences is, after all, the result of broad conditions, and
the conscious intellectual generalisation which grows out
of the unconscious emotional one would itself be worthless
unless this also were in normal correspondence with the
real relations of things.
The intensity of a passion depends upon and varies with
the susceptibility of the subject, or person by whom the
passion is felt ;
the occasion, or as in merely personal
relations, we should say, the recipient of the affection,
influences its character as compared with other affec-
tions of the same subject, but within limits that cannot
but be fixed by the nature of that subject. Eeligion,
as it does exist, or as it ever has existed, cannot be

regarded as anything supernatural while it deals only

with that which real men have actually felt or done under
the influence of feeling. The notion of early rationalists
that religion was invented by priests to serve their
private purposes may be considered as exploded; but
even at the present day it is not unusual to hear religious
or superstitious beliefs spoken of as if reason had no
concern with their existence as soon as they are proved to
be unfounded, which is not often a task of much difficulty.
But if the belief as it stands is entirely unfounded, while
the belief is nevertheless commonly held, the phenomenon
is one that most urgently for rational explanation.
calls
Most vulgar errors arise either from a natural and easy mis-
interpretation of real occurrences by a false analogy, or
from something peculiar in the phenomenon itself, which
makes familiar analogies
misleading and ordinary methods
of interpretation an unsafe guide in
dealing with it.
The common belief in the existence of supernatural
beings would be entirely inexplicable if there were no
real foundation in nature for -the impression which men
have (and to which religion is the answering sentiment),
that their lives are controlled by some irresistible, ini-
 RELIGION. 137

palpable, superhuman force or forces. More than this

general apprehension of a mighty Not-ourselves it would

be vain to seek as common to all mankind in its religious
moments, and if the more elaborate religions which have
prevailed in historical times were strictly accurate in
their doctrines, this fact would be as mysterious and un-
accountable as the existence of any religious sentiment at
all is on the principles of an intolerant, supercilious scepti-

cism. On the one hand the very common diffusion of the

religious sentiment, on the other its usual weakness, and
not infrequent absence have to be accounted for, and if
that general apprehension of the Not-self, which we have
supposed to be the basis of religion, takes place by means
of the ordinary human faculties, this result is exactly
parallel to the tentative progress towards approximate
agreement between consciousness and fact which charac-
teriseshuman science and morality. In spite of the pal-
pable errors of all systems of religion, the religious senti-
ment survives, because in all, or nearly all religions, it has
been possible for religious minds to ignore the false for-
mula, and only be really moved by the spontaneous feel-
ing of loving awe which makes obedience to the natural
laws both of life and society not only voluntary but easy

and contented.
One of thepoints in which primitive and scientific
thought agree a tendency to regard all the external
is

forces amidst which the individual moves as substantially

of kindred nature. In early society when law and
morality are undistinguished, religion unites with
still

both, and the general sentiment, of resigned acquiescence

in the will of a higher power, in which it consists, supplies
the place of whatever is wanting to the logical complete-
ness of the natural sanctions of customary morality.
Society, nature, and conscience are all dimly conceived
-

together as something different from the unit of conscious

will, which performs one simple action at a time at their
united bidding. When a distinction corresponding to that
I 38 NATURAL LAW.
analysed in the preceding chapters between law and
morality, or objective and subjective checks, has become
reality, the sphere of religion becomes
a either more
contracted and intense, or wider and less practically im-
or the tendency of
portant, according as natural forces,
natural forces, are personified and idolised in astrolatry,

fetichism,and anthropomorphic mythology or as the rela-

tions amongst natural forces, human and otherwise, are
viewed synthetically, and produce a particular sentiment
in the comparatively limited number of individuals capable
at once of the wide view and the emotional response.
There is ample room for religious error or misbelief in
religious developments of the first kind, but mistakes
that have a merely natural origin may be depended upon
sooner or later to die a natural death there is a limit to
;

human powers of believing the thing that is not, and

whenever that limit is reached, the system of false doc-
trine or imaginary facts either collapses at once at a

vigorous denial, or is tranquilly ignored by more and

more general consent.
We are only concerned with the historical phases of

religious development so far as is necessary to show that,

as soon as law and morality came to be distinctly con-
ceived apart from each other and from religion, the course
of all three became independent, though not necessarily

divergent, and that religion, so far from serving as a basis

to morality, can only attain to its fullest development when
the moral education of the race has reached a point that
makes religious reverence necessarily include sentiments
of moral regard and admiration for the object of worship.
Most recent writers agree in holding the religion of the
savage to consist of unintelligent, uncritical terror. Even
to the civilised man there is
something mysteriously im-
pressive in power of which the seat is altogether inacces-
sible, and there have been ages when the simplest natural
was reflected upon at
fact, if it all, would be unintelligible
enough to be awful.
 RELIGION. 139

Most of the apparently meaningless superstitions of

savages refer to the region of the unknown, the unverifi-
able, and the unreal ; but most of them are either rational
from the savage point of view, or the remains of custom
,

which had once some reasonable motive or suggestion;

that is to say, though their rise may have been (and pro-
bably was) irrational as a consequence of the given pre-
mise, still they did not arise in the first instance without
some cause or ground. And even these first aberrations
of the human imagination have a claim on our respect, if
we are content to recognise in them the first independent

workings of the subjective element in man, the first result

of the dawning human power to see things not only in
their sensible relations among each other, but in the new
light shed by human feeling on their ideal existence, as
having a distinct, peculiar relation to man. Now it is
certain that many natural objects have, in addition to their
sensible qualities, an influence of a purely immaterial kind

upon the lives of men, and though, except in a religious

reverence for fire, and the fantastical scruples which regu-
late his dealings with certain animals, the savage rarely
betrays any perception of the real influences to which he
is subject, yet the faculties which are capable of rising to

such a recognition may be used meanwhile to believe in

influences that are not real, and in causal chains every
link of which, except the first or last, may be imaginary.
Asubjective connection between two phenomena is
established merely by their being thought of together,
and unless we suppose all the impressions of the savage
to be literal reproductions of the facts of nature in their
historical order, the connection will sometimes be mis-
taken. 1 The most common source of error is perhaps the

1
What Mr. Tylor says of magic might be extended to most forms of
"
superstition that it is based on a delusive tendency arising out of the

association of ideas, namely, the tendency to believe that things which are
ideally connected in our minds must therefore be really connected in the
outer world."
I4o NATURAL LAW.
conjunction of a strong hope or fear with the thought of
some untried, or the memory of some effective means for
"
producing or averting the result anticipated. To see
how an effect may be produced is often to see possible
missings and checks but to see nothing but the desirable
;

cause, and close upon it the desirable effect, rids us of

doubt, and makes our minds strongly intuitive." This
way of establishing sequences, as a modern philosopher
has observed, is too common even at the present day to
be counted as a peculiar folly in those found guilty of it.
The desirable cause is, of course, the present possible act
that suggests itself to the mind; no sooner has it been

performed with full and earnest intention than expecta-

tion of the desired result begins; supposing the act, as

may be most often the case, to have no influence either

way, expectation will continue, if its gratification in the
course of nature is an even chance, until it is either grati-
fied or disappointed, but the habit of expectation leaves
so much profounder traces on the mind than the moment
of disappointment, that the strength of the subjective
connection may become thoroughly established as a super-
stition without even the crudest kind of inductive inference
for its support.
It may be doubted whether, without this power of
believing the thing that is not or rather of believing
something, till the thing that is can be known the human
mind would ever have taken courage to grapple with its

own ignorance, or would have contracted the habit of

believing in causal sequences at all, for those which are
clear and undeniable do not invite analysis, while those
which are longer and more remote escape notice altogether.
In this way religious speculation becomes of vast import-
ance to the early history of progressive races, while in
others it stops short at the establishment of arbitrary and

meaningless ceremonies. What has been said of the effect

of expectation might seem sufficient to account for the

practice of prayer, to fetiches or other unknown powers,

 RELIGION. 141

because prayer, or concentration of the mind upon a

desired end, both heightens expectation, and, if it appears
as an antecedent fact to the realisation of the desire,
would naturally, and even reasonably, be regarded as its
cause, while primitive man could in no case regard the
prayer as the cause of so unlike an effect as his dis-
appointment. In most cases, too, there is probably a little
half-unconscious self-deception, like that of the Mandan
rain-makers, whose surprising success in their art is ex-
plained by the statement that they always go on with
their incantations until the rain conies as it must soon
or late while the man who has once made rain with eclat
is careful not to risk his reputation by trying a second
time.
But beside prayers, which cost nothing (unless offered
by deputy), most savage religions, if they can be called by
so respectable a name, abound in prohibitions and com-
mands which are useless as natural means towards their
professed end, and yet continue to be observed disinter-
estedly, as well as observances of which the first and only
attraction seems to be their positive painfulness. The
explanation is partly mental and partly physical. An
unoccupied mind finds stimulating suggestion in a prohi-
bition,when natural impulses that really need ruling are
stilltoo few to engross the thoughts. The typical savage
looks upon the objects familiar to him in the same spirit
in which the writer overheard two civilised children call

upon each other to read the regulations printed outside

the gates of a suburban park. " We had better read this,"
said the elder, who was still young enough to find reading
"
a new and exciting enterprise, or perhaps we shall be

doing something that we oughtn't:" to a child or savage

" "
in this law- thirsty" mood even an injunction not to
"
walk upon the grass is welcome, and certain to be re-
peated with authority. Many rules of barbarous etiquette
are to be explained by this intellectual craving after

regulation for its own sake, and the craving assures the
142 NA TURAL LA W.
permanence of any other custom that has the semblance
of an independent foundation in reason. In the Chinese
classics morality and ritual are even comically indistin-

guishable, because both are made to rest upon the same

sentiment of material propriety and even in societies as
;

civilised as our own, most sincere, unintelligent religion

might be explained, or described, as inherited feeling

attached to an abridged formula of duty and ritual, which,
if once pulled to pieces, could certainly not be restored,

by any rational process, to its present form.

Religion might continue to consist of dim fear and fear-

born rites as long as fear of the unknown was a motive

habitually determining whatever part of the conduct was

neither rational nor automatic; but religion of this sort,
though as absolute as the power of a mad tyrant over a
barbarous people, is not capable of surviving the natural
tendency, which shares with most things earthly, to
it

develop leading characteristics with self- destructive

its

consistency and zeal. Early fetichism supposes every

action of natural force which affects the individual to be
in that final and composite form, the result of will; but
from this point of view the various necessities personified
become so numerous that it is impossible to class any as
invariable, and the human mind, which would be incapable
of acting at all in the chaos it has over-hastily imagined,
begins in self-defence to introduce order and measure into
its pantheon. As this process advances, the difference
between the religion of the few and of the many begins to
make itself felt. In religious cosmogonies, the attempt is
made to unify the conception of the Not-self, at least so
far as to allow of its history being told intelligibly to
man while in popular religions, when the number of gods
;

acknowledged has been brought within manageable limits,

separate divinities, each of whom we must suppose origin-
ally to have represented some one real aspect or influence
of the Not-self, engross all the limited
capacity for religious
feeling of which the average idolater is possessed.
 RELIGION. 143

Theosophies and mythologies preserve the tradition of a

relation between man and that which is not-man, but they
do not rationalise what is real in the relation, or spiritualise
the human sense of its existence. Gross misconceptions
of the nature of the Not- self in its relations to the self
will be corrected by prolonged experience of those rela-
tions as they really are; but if those relations are less
close, concrete, and immediate than they are generally con-
ceived to be in idolatrous religions, we need not be surprised
at finding, as in fact we do find, that religion, in shaking
itself clear of mythology and comes to occupy
superstition,
less space in proportion in the consciousness, and to exer-
cise less influence on the conduct of the generality of men.
An amount of intellectual power which is not common by
itself, and which is still less commonly combined with

highly developed emotional sensibility, is necessary to

make religion at once vital, rational, and spiritual; and
though a very beautiful development of the moral nature,
such as is sometimes to be met with in the uneducated
classes, or amongst women, may to some extent supply
the place of intelligence, it is generally true that religion
is spiritual in proportion as it is rational. Accordingly
spiritual religion is even more rare than rational thought,
indefinitely more rare than a simple obedience to the
dictates of law and morality.
We may assume every human thought or feeling to
have some cause, occasion, or counterpart in nature, with-
out supposing that the thought or feeling is necessarily
adjusted so as to correspond in all points with the thing
that suggested it. True wisdom and happiness (of which
religion has often been thought to have the secret) lie in
an effective coincidence between the power that is real
and the influence believed in and acknowledged that is,
between human feeling and the permanent conditions of
human life and the tendency of human development is
;

towards such real and conscious harmony, if only by

clearing away the confused ideas and factitious impres-
144 NATURAL LAW.
sions of which false religions are compounded. With the
advance of natural, or as it is now called, positive know-
ledge, religion becomes more entirely subjective, that is,
more concerned with the feelings of man towards the Not-
man, and less with the direct action of the Not-man upon
our race and while one source of error is thus diminished,
;

another opened by the possible misdirection of the re-

is

ligious feeling already in existence. A sentiment good

and natural in itself may fall wide of its supposed object,
and it would be easy to show that the only cases in which
religion has been clearly injurious to human progress are
those in which fine, unpractical emotion has been either
simply wasted or dangerously misapplied. Both of these
results may follow from the confusion which is not un-

frequent between religion, or matters of sentiment, and

morality, or matters of conduct. It is a psychological

impossibility to feel to order, but people may easily believe

that it is their duty to act as if they felt something which
they do not feel, and such a course is extremely likely to
react upon their real feelings, much to the detriment of
their perfect religious spontaneity. And if religious feel-

ing, which, for the reasons indicated, is much more variable

than the sense of moral obligation, should happen to be
amongst the motives by which conduct is determined, in
cases when the sentiment was itself mistaken, effects as
disastrous as any of the incidents in religious persecutions
may easily ensue.
It is difficult for criticism of the religious sentiment to

go into much detail without running the risk of arousing

the odium theologicum, which is the more unnecessary
in the present case because the theory of religion here

suggested is too far outside the current creeds to come

naturally into collision with them. As in the case of law
and morality, the existence of a constraining influence
must be distinguished from its nature or effects. Religion
exists because the life of man is conditioned by other than,
human forces ;
the operations of nature are independent of
 RELIGION. 145

human law and human morality, and human life is not

independent of the operations of nature nay more, even ;

human law and human morality, the steps by which man

rises to a height from which he surveys, as a critical

superior, the operations of natural law these steps are

themselves only the supreme expression, the last develop-
ment of the all-pervading, unbroken sequences of nature.
We have no reason to suppose that the elements of the
inanimate world are conscious of the influence which their
orderly persistence exercises upon the generations of men
who fall under it ;
and the loose mysticism which talks of
the universe attaining to consciousness of itself in man is
unscientific as well as unpractical, for it is but a fraction
cf the universe that so becomes conscious, and it is only
conscious and that but imperfectly of itself and such
other fractions as lie nearest to it. But the influence of
the universe upon man is not the less real for being un-
consciously exercised, and being real, man may become
conscious of it as affecting himself, which it does in two
ways first, by physical causation
: for it will be admitted
that the bodily nature of man is conditioned by the
material circumstances of the world in which only organ-
isms of a certain kind can lead the life for which they are

fitted and secondly, as an object of perception and more

;

or less adequate knowledge, and the occasion of such

feelings as arise in the human subject when it becomes
conscious of the impressions and thoughts thus received
from without.
As has been said, a confused apprehension of the first
kind of influence is the source of most gross religious
misbeliefs; men promptly become aware of effects pro-
duced upon themselves or their circumstances without
their own co-operation, but the identity of the natural
cause or causes which produce the effect and their modus
operandi are not distinguished till later, are not to this
day always distinguishable. Idols are made by premature
or inaccurate reasoning from effects to causes, and the re-
K
1 46 NA TURAL LA W.
ligious feeling which they, so to say, intercept,
can never
be as profound or lasting as that which is awakened by a
true sense of real power. More rational, spiritual religion
is not confined to the recognition only of such agencies as

immediately affect the subject, and anything that can be

perceived or known, but not produced or materially modi-
fied, may become the object of disinterested religious

regard, as a part or aspect of the Not-self. Periods of

theological controversy and perplexity are only to be ex-
pected when the apprehension of real facts and relations
in the Not-self is clear enough to call forth feelings of
religious strength in the self, while it is not yet understood
that the significance of the facts and the very existence of
the relations is itself altogether relative to the emotional
nature of the percipient man.
Laws, scientific, political, and moral, state the true rela-
tions of real things, but in so far as these relations are
conditioned by unconscious being, they cannot be supposed
to have any intentional bearing upon the individual per-
ceiving them ;
the effect upon his mind of the perception
is and remains subjective, and any attempt to account for
the impression produced except by the relations which
produce it, or for the existence of the relations except by
,the existence of the things related, by introducing an

imaginative, uncogitable element, favours the notion that

religion deals with things supernatural, not merely with
things superhuman. But things supernatural and un-
cogitable, of which the existence cannot be perceived nor
the efficiency calculated, are to reason non-existent. It is

only that which, at some point or other, comes in contact

with some sensibility or faculty of the human mind that
has any existence at all for the human mind ;
the contact
may be indefinitely slight or indirect, but without such
contact the existence is not even
thought of as possible,
except in the way that any arbitrary combination of terms
is possible.

The association between theological or theistic belief and

 RELIGION. 147

any kind of religious feeling is so close at present, that

to most people the question, Has religion a natural, neces-
sary, and reasonable existence ? virtually means, Is there
a God or no ? Positive convictions of all kinds are in-
tolerant, and to any one who has a definite theory of
how, or by what means, the moral order of the world is
secured, all the other hypotheses of theological science or
metaphysical nescience, are subject to the one common,
fataldrawback that they are not true. It is possible to
hold an opinion so confidently as to believe every other
opinion to be false, and yet to know, with at least equal
strength of conviction, that we ourselves are at least as
fallible as the rest ofthe world. We
believe in the pos-

sibility of our own view being mistaken, but meanwhile

it is our view that the mistake lies with those who differ
from us. And though, from some points of view, it may
be more useful to dwell on points of agreement than on
points of difference, as was said, every positive construc-
tion is intolerant, and the outline of our own convictions
forms a sharp line of exclusion against the opinions which
we hold to be false or confused.
The opinion which we feel impelled to exclude in this
way at the outset is that which rests on an unholy
alliance between ignorance and faith the compromise
which allows men to believe anything they like, provided
they know no reason to the contrary, and encourages them
in not knowing what they prefer to ignore, by treating

ignorance as a coequal ground of inference with know-

ledge. If there is a true scientific faith, agnosticism must
be heresy, and the term includes alike the quasi-orthodox
who appeal to the ignorance of opponents, and claim
licence to believe anything that the said opponents have
not wit or courage to disprove, as well as the half-fledged
rationalists who claim tolerance from dogmatists because

they are too modest to say anything worse of a dogma

than that it has not yet been proved to their satisfaction.
If we have a clear and adequate apprehension of any
I 48 NA TURAL LA W.
truth, its opposite is not conceivable to us as true, and
both religion and philosophy would gain if the issue be-
tween theism and natural philosophy were more clearly
denned, and the rival alternatives more courageously faced.
The real question is, Have we reason to believe in the
existence behind or above the Knowable Not-ourselves, of
a person, or power, to whom, or which, we can and must
stand in a spiritual relation ? Does philosophy prove the
existence of the (or an) Unknowable ? and does religion
prove the Unknowable to be God? It is
scarcely in-
telligible that those who answer this question in the
affirmative should be content without further illumination,
as if the modern race of men had attained to the Olym-
pian calm of Epicurean deities, and gods might be, and yet
men have no care for things divine. Those who answer
in the negative, at any rate, are concerned to show that
they do not thereby propose to sacrifice any positive result
of human development, only to give a different interpreta-
tion of real fact, and eliminate from the region of belief
doctrines to which no answering realities can be dis-
covered.
There is nothing known, felt, or imagined by man, ex-
cept that which human powers can know, feel, or imagine.
The counterparts or occasions of these human experiences
are real, sensible, conceivable, to be cognised for, if we :

consider, knowledge or perception of a cause is only know-

ledge or consciousness of an effect produced under condi-
tions which are also known or perceived, and the con-
sciousness of the relation between the effect and the
condition is itself only an affair of knowledge and per-
ception and we cannot distinguish one part of our know-
;

ledge as less essentially authentic than another part it is ;

all susceptible of the same kind of verification, and is dis-

tinguishable by the same lands of test from corresponding

varieties of human error. Before forming an opinion as to
the possibility of metempirical or supra-sensible know-
ledge, we should require to know precisely what is under-
 RELIGION. 149

stood by the terms. We may assume sensation, emotion,

and thought to be invariably attended (if not caused) by
certain modifications of nerve and brain matter; but, if
all our knowledge of things consists of inferences to the
effect that there is an objective reality answering to our

varying impressions, how can we infer the existence of

something to which we have not had, and are not sup-
posed to be capable of having, a corresponding impression ?
If some kind of physical affection attends every act of
consciousness, what kind of physical affection attends the
cognition of the supra-sensible ? Is it distinguished from
natural knowledge by having no physical conditions at all,
or by having no immediate objective condition beyond the
mind ?
state of the subject's
The two questions Does the Supernatural exist ? and,
:

Can it be known to exist ? are really different aspects of

the same, because an affirmation that the supernatural
may exist, or that it cannot, is in itself a profession of
knowledge respecting it, and that respecting which natural
knowledge is possible, is, by the very fact natural, as
natural in the wide sense in which Comte and Spinoza
use the word Nature as any single sensible intuition. If
we examine and compare the different conceptions of the
supernatural entertained by philosophers and the vulgar,
we shall find that all agree more or less clearly in regard-
ing as supernatural the existence of disembodied spirits
and the modification of human consciousness by purely
immaterial agencies. There is nothing else to which the
word supernatural would be certainly and unanimously
applied by believers in the supernatural. ]$"ow it is
evident that real modifications of consciousness, even
though produced by other than physical and intelligible
causes, must be felt or perceived if they exist their csse ;

is perdpi; if they are perceived to exist, the perception

itself must be natural or supernatural if the perception

;

is supposed to be supernatural, that is, unaccompanied by

normal physical modifications or nervous movement, most

150 NA TURAL LA W.
if the
physicists will simply deny its existence percep-
;

tion is natural and it is a simple fact of experience that

men have believed and do believe in the existence of
ghosts, of God, and of the Unknowable
the natural ante-
cedents or conditions of its production can be investigated.
The problem to be solved is : Do they believe for good
reasons natural or supernatural or for bad reasons
natural or supernatural? There may be a perfectly
natural and accountable state of mind consisting of false
belief in supernatural entities; this is admitted on all

hands, and only amounts to saying that the errors of the

imagination may include the nature or existence of things
as well as their relations and manifestations. Similarly
we can imagine a natural and accountable state of mind
consisting of true knowledge of God, as a moral governor
of the world, which might be attained by man if the world
really were perceptibly subject to such government, in the
way conceived by such writers as Butler and Paley. The
permanent and orderly production of a class of effects, with
no other assignable constant antecedent than the will of
a person otherwise unknown, is inferred with considerable
plausibility to follow from such a cause, if that and no
other appears naturally adequate. Such inferences may be
mistaken, like any other conclusion, but the method is not
self-evidently faulty. The hypothesis of a supernatural
ground of error, such as the deceptions of evil spirits, need
hardly be considered seriously; and the last remaining
alternative of a valid supernatural ground for human belief
in and feeling about things supernatural, is the one in
which most shades of confused thought have finally taken
sanctuary.
The reason that Spinoza's definition of passion, as a con-
fused or inadequate idea, has not been more generally
accepted, is probably that he has been understood as
meaning that emotion and thought are the same thing,
only one good and the other bad of their kind. The same
is a
dangerous phrase, but the real distinction between
 RELIGION. 151

thought and feeling would not be affected by the historical

identification of the final stage of the one with a transi-
tional or introductory passage in the growth of the other.
The thronging groups of impressions which are just upon
the verge of crystallising into the new and lucid form of an
intelligible proposition, fill the consciousness meanwhile
with an inarticulate murmur which the uncritical ear may
easily mistake for revelations of an unknown tongue. If
we take as the premise of reasoning the consciousness of
a man in whom the sense of such confusion is at its climax,
the objective reality answering to his impression may be
inferred to consist of Impenetrable Mystery, but this is

only a reproduction of the primitive blunder which infers

a numerically distinct original for every subjective im-
pression, whether it be a correct intuition or a fallacious
inference.
With
regard to the natural sense of mystery begotten
by Ignorance upon Curiosity the inference is certainly
premature. We
are assuming all states of consciousness
to be the product or accompaniment of definite physical
modifications, or conditions ;
and from this point of view,
ignorance, the being without a particular piece of know-
ledge, is not a mere negation. The nerves of a person, who
does not know this or that, exist as positively as the
person who does know or the person who erroneously
believes himself to know, they are only differently affected.
Before admitting that science can demonstrate the exist-
ence of an Unknowable, we should want to have it made
clear how the organs of perception are affected when the
mind is convinced of the existence of something imper-
ceptible. When, however, we pass from the unconscious
but perceivable conditions of thought to thought itself, we
cease to regard ignorance, or the want of knowledge, as

anything real the word only denotes the negation of

:

caused by the absence of some or all of

scientific belief
the elements essential to the constitution of positive
knowledge. But this negation is concerned
with thought
I5 2
NATURAL LAW.
not with existence. That we do not know whether a
chimera buzzing in vacua can devour second intentions
does not prove that chimeras and second intentions
are unknowable entities. The realism lurking at the
bottom of most thinking would make this a dangerous
way of expressing our sense that the problem is an amus-
ing absurdity.
To say that a thing is unknowable is to say less than

nothing about it, because unknowableness is not a property

of things in themselves, but of things in relation to a mind
with faculties subject to such and such limitations. To
say that something unknown is, may be true and signifi-
cant, if the word unknown is held to mean nothing more
than that existence is the only property which can at
present be ascribed to the thing in question. To say that
we have a knowledge of unknowable existence is a con-
tradiction in terms but we may have a tolerably clear
;

and adequate idea of the limits of our own positive know-

ledge, and beyond those limits it is certain that we know
nothing. We have valid reasons, physical and metaphy-
sical,for believing that the limits of thought are not
coextensive at any given moment with the limits of exist-
ence, and we therefore infer the existence outside our
knowledge of a more or less thinkable unknown. But
homogeneous with the rest of
this speculative inference is
our knowledge or thought; it presupposes no supernatural
factors either in the unknown or in the state of conscious-
ness in which existence of the unknown is conditionally
affirmed. The unknown
the conceivably knowable, not
is

something generically different from the known and only

conceived by contrast or opposition to it.
If all knowledge is transformed and organised sensation,
what sensation, we ask, can give the knowledge of some-
thing the essence of which is that sense cannot perceive
it, and that the organised conclusions of sense in thought

affirm nothing respecting its qualities or relations. The

fact that we have not had a sensation of an entirely new
 RELIGION. 153

order does not prove that something exists capable of pro-

ducing sensations that we have not had, and yet such an
inference is hardly more imaginative than the argument
that when we have come to the end or the beginning
of our knowledge, we necessarily assume in thought the
existence of an objective substratum or boundary, a per-
sonification, so to speak, of the idea of limitation, external
to the thought which, by the hypothesis, we had come to
the end of.

The mental state answering to the perception of an

unconditioned unknowable is one of simple, blank uncon-
sciousness, not a positive consciousness of the presence in
nature of a mysterious blank. No naturalist denies the
existence of mysteries in nature, but the sense of mystery,
the oppressive feeling of excited, unsatisfied curiosity, does
not carry us a step beyond the point of positive knowledge
previously attained ; it discloses no new property of things,
only the relative proportion of the mixed knowledge and
ignorance possessed concerning the things felt to be mys-
terious. The attendant sense of awe or perplexity is best

explained as the mental consciousness of imperfect or

confused knowledge; and this consciousness shows no
tendency to disappear with the progress of knowledge, of
which one chief result is the increased development of
curiosity,by the suggestion of new things that might be
and are not known. But rational inference proceeds from
knowledge to knowledge from the contemplation of our
;

ignorance we can learn nothing but its extent, and though

this study also may have its moral use as a discipline of

humility, we can hardly expect to learn what constitutes

moral perfection from experience of what constitutes
mental imperfection. Edification is even less to be looked
for than instruction from the philosophy which brandishes
the conception of a mighty a; as a sort of two-edged muzzle
for science and religion.
Hitherto we have only considered what may be called
the external evidences (real or supposed) for the existence
154 NA TURAL LA W.
of spiritual power in the Not-self; but as religion
some
gradually frees itself from accidental historical encum-
brances, and assumes its permanent emotional character,
we observe a not unnatural tendency to attribute mere
subjective changes, variations in the mood of the self, when
no other cause for thorn isknown, to the direct, immediate
action of the Not-self, making itself felt by the mind in
some altogether peculiar, supersensible manner. When
the extreme closeness of the connection between the
modifications of the mind and those of the body was less

apparent than it is now, there was nothing absurd in the

belief that one mind or will could directly influence

another, the only mistake lay in assuming that the pro-

cess, supposing it to be real, must be called supernatural,
because it was rare or peculiar. Even now, if we suppose
the physiology of thought to have made all the progress
it presumably will, it is perfectly conceivable that some
Force, not otherwise perceptible, should be found to have
the property of traversing or correcting the ordinary course
of mental processes by inducing fresh modifications in the
molecular composition of the brain. The existence of such
a force would be sufficiently proved by its action, and its
nature would be known and described by the effect it

produced, as there are chemical substances of which the

presence is inferred from some unexplained effect, before
they have declared themselves directly to either of the
senses or as the existence and position of an unseen planet
;

may be determined by perturbations in the orbit of those

already known and observed. Of course in scientific in-
vestigations every possible hypothesis is exhausted before
the presence of a new element or power is assumed, and
no attempt has ever, so far as we are aware, been made to
prove the existence of a deity in this mechanical, a 'posteriori
manner.
Inferences drawn merely from the emotional vicissitudes
of religious experience scarcely bear the test of impartial
reason, and are not, as a fact, chiefly relied upon by the
 RELIGION. 155

ablest religious doctors in ages of more faith than tlie

present. Common experience shows how feeling towards
or about an absent person, or about an action past or con-

templated, will vary from day to day, perhaps from hour

to hour, while the real circumstances are the same, even
in our thought, and the real qualities of the person or the
action do not, we know, fluctuate with our opinion. It is

only in religious experiences that such changes of mood

are supposed to have an immediate objective cause, so
that the intelligible effects of physical or pathological con-
ditions may be treated as ultimate facts of the spiritual
consciousness, serving as a foundation for inferences re-
specting antecedents of the same spiritual order.
It is generally admitted that the most vivid and seem-

ingly realistic temptations and consolations of men like

Bunyan, Luther, or Loyola are half-hallucination, the work
of an inward voice, the echo of the soul's own mood, and

every authoritative manual of devotion contemplates for

the believer periods of trial and desolation in which his
most sincere efforts may fail to recall the living sense
of spiritual communion with the powers invoked, failing
which he himself to be a castaway; no one bat
feels
the person concerned really believes that there is any
objective process going on outside the mind of the saint
corresponding to the (real) experience within, most de-
scribable in the phraseology of the penitential psalms.
Even pious Christians are willing to admit that the sense
of answered prayer, in regard to spiritual blessings, is vivid
in proportion to the strength of the desire felt for their

possession, and it is hard to convince a naturalist that

faith strong enough to believe in the answering of prayer
is too weak to be its own reply, when only spiritual or

subjective consequences are required.

Comparatively few persons are sustained in their re-
ligious by the higher, more intimate and
convictions
imaginative phases of religious experience but many who
:

believe, in a more or less perfunctory manner, that there

I 5 6 NATURAL LAW.
are gods (three in one) who concern themselves about
human affairs, do sincerely think that the most im-
portant incidents of their outer life (after they have hap-
were ordained to happen by a moral governor of
pened)
the universe. Every one instinctively and in a manner
necessarily regards the incidents which concern himself
as really grouped in the manner in which they pre-
sent themselves to his feeling as of course they really
are though not less really in a thousand different ways,
with equal clearness to other centres of conscious-
visible
ness while to the dispassionate eye of reason, each several
;

mode of stringing together the actual occurrences is true

from an arbitrarily narrowed point of view, but worthless
among all the things
as a formula for the general relations
concerned. We may
cover a sheet of paper with circles
described from equidistant centres, and then take every
point of intersection as a new centre with an indefinite
number of radii. Each spot may conceive itself as in the
midst of nearly any geometrical pattern it pleases to see or
to invent, but no description of these visionary stars or
rosettes will give us the key to the method by which the

confusing network was arranged and so it is also with the

;

network of natural chances in which men are entangled.

People as a rule are only vividly conscious of incidents
that concern themselves, and out of the whole number of
these incidents it is
practically certain that a considerable
number will not merely be naturally connected amongst
themselves, but will also admit of being classed together in
consciousness as tending the same way, or working to-
gether to produce the same effect. If a man has fully
formed plans and wishes, which one accident after an-
other prevents him from realising, he generalises his expe-
rience, and calls himself unlucky, as in the opposite case
he learns to have faith in his star. But supposing he has
had misgivings as to the moral rectitude of his purpose,
the checks he meets with may seem designed to warn
him from the path of error ;
and conversely, if his ruling
 RELIGION. 157

intention is to follow
the call of duty, not inclination,
every objective possibility or opportunity of doing the
" "
duty which he recognises, appears as a leading or direct
indication of the will of Providence concerning himself
and his conduct. To most people, however, the greater
part of life is no more taken up with the conscious deliber-
ate pursuit of duty than with that of happiness, and it is

only in the more serious crises of life, when one difficulty

more or less may turn the scale of failure and success,
when one more loss may turn courage to despair, or a
single act of help make effort hopeful and strong, it is

only then that trifling incidents become

so pregnant of con-

sequences that few men can resist the temptation to feel

that the mighty accident must have a cause proportioned
in power to the importance of its effect on themselves. If
they are theists by profession, they see without difficulty
the will of God concerning themselves if not, they ask in
;

perplexed wonder, what have they done to the universe

that it should deal thus and thus with them ? why should
they of all men have fate meddling with their affairs ?
whence the mysterious power of the Not-self over the sons
of men ?
The belief in God is kept alive much less by the belief
in actual miracles which must have a supernatural cause,
since, by the hypothesis, no natural cause is equal to their

production than by this other belief in what we may call

facts of the mind, arbitrary constructions built out of real

materials, but with a connection that is only subjectively

real. The bankruptcy of A
may be caused by the dis-
honesty of B, and cause C to emigrate instead of marrying
D, to whom he was engaged. D
calls her disappointment
" " "
a cross or a trial," and enters a sisterhood, and in the

placid middle age of religious women, with small amuse-

ments, small agitations, abundant routine, and complacent
conviction of having chosen the better part, she looks back
gratefully to the Providence which led her to this happier
state. But if this method of interpretation were consist-
I 58 NATURAL LAW.
ently followed and no theory is true that will not admit
of consistent application every motive, opportunity, or
desire might in the same way be ascribed to the working
of the Divine will, thus made a party to everything that
occurs, as in the purest extravagances of pantheism. It
is hardly necessary to fill in the outlines of an opposite

case to the last. A girl or boy has exalted dreams of self-

sacrifice and religious consecration ;

trivial accidents of
time and place favour the growth of relations that point
to another vocation, and it is quite within the limits of

probability for the sober father or mother of a Christian

household to thank God for having been providentially
saved from the ill-advised ambition of their youth after
saintliness or martyrdom.
It is evident that those in whom religious feeling and
faith are intense will have more abundant demonstration
of the existence of the powers they believe in than the

worldly. Those who have learned to see the hand of God

in the changes of their own mood, resulting from physical
or moral causes of the most personal nature, are sure also
to be quick at imagining the outer circumstances which
affect their spiritual life to be controlled in the same way
and towards the same ends as the vicissitudes of their
And since people are inwardly moved
spiritual life itself.
by the influences present to sense or imagination, a felt
influence becomes the stronger for being associated with
an imagined cause, all the effects of which are precon-
ceived as supremely potent and good. Those who have
made it their chief object to do the Divine will (as they
understand and have a general outline of belief as to
it),
what this willmust be, are more susceptible than others
to leadings or opportunities afforded from without for
more and more complete conformity to the same will. It
is difficult to uproot old associations, and we
may even go
so far as to say that for minds thoroughly impregnated
with theological ideas, the familiar formula really expresses
a larger portion of truth than a perfectly correct scientific
 RELIGION. 159
"
statement, say, about the stream of tendency," to which
they would attach no meaning at all, or a quite mistaken
one.
It is for the many who find the theological hypothesis

meaningless and incredible that we offer the above ac-

count of the facts innocently distorted by the undisci-

plined imaginations of virtuous persons, whose egotism,
banished from the heart, has taken refuge in the brain.
We do not say that the patterns in the diagram are unreal ;
they are real to the feeling of centre A
or centre B, who
are conscious of no influences except along just these con-

verging lines ; but the true statement of the relations in

space of all these points is infinitely more general, the
fullstatement infinitely more complicated than anything
we can get at, even by adding together the impressions of
the various centres. It would baffle a mathematician to
find terms for the number of positions which each centre
might occupy in the innumerable figures which may be
described from each of the rival centres, all constructions
being equally possible, from the single point of view
adopted, equally true in reference to the consciousness
which accepts them, and equally inadequate to a mind
accustomed to class its intuitions impartially in accord-
ance with the objective proportions of things.
If we agreed with those writers, religious and otherwise,
who hold religion to be of its nature supernatural, we
might perhaps be tempted to see nothing but super-
"
natural imbecility in the elaborate " exercises of the
heart and mind undergone by our pious forefathers. But
if we believe religious ideas and
feelings to be entirely
natural in their growth and origin, we shall expect to
learn much about the natural working of the human soul
in its emotional apprehension of things not human from
the great writers who have made such processes the study
and employment of their life. A
theory of what religion
is now, or be in the future, is hardly susceptible of
may
more precise verification than what may be afforded by its
160 NATURAL LAW.
adequacy as an account of what religion actually has been,
according to persons eminent for religious gifts and
entirely innocent of rationalistic bias :
though, at the
same time, it must be remembered that the foundation of

primitive theological conceptions depends on rather

dif-

ferent conditions from those which enable their applica-

tion to survive into a state of things in which they could
not possibly have been formed anew.
As soon as the stupid terror of the savage is spiritual-
ised into a reasonable awe of transcendent, superhuman
power, the mind rises to a confused intuition of the Not-
I as a moral force, which it then for the first time be-
comes, when and reasonable awe is found to
this natural
control the will and moderate the passions, partly by the
mere spectacle of a stern and lofty impassivity, partly by
the unconscious development of an intuition that the stars
in their courses do not fight the battle of evil and self-
indulgence. Consistent belief in divine intervention in
human was observed, practically to the
affairs conies, as

same conclusions as the courageous pantheism which

ascribes all that is done to the life and will of the one

living substance. And even though we refuse to personify

the All, we must admit that it is from the All, the real
universe in which we live, that all those influences pro-
ceed of which we become conscious as ruling our moral as
well as our bodily life. And if we, whose habitual mental
attitude towards the natural world is one rather of obser-
vant criticism than of reverence, are nevertheless con-
strained to such an admission, it cannot surprise us that
primitive religion should have instinctively recognised the
presence of some such authority. The vital consciousness
of a real omnipresent power which prompts the Psalmist's
" "
complaint, If I go down into hell, thou art there also
though it has disappeared, or nearly so, with the
elaborate anthropomorphism of modern Christianity, and
the partial, familiar explanations of scientific analysis,
may yet revive in a quiet literal way when the sceptic or
 RELIGION. 161

atheist, after mentally denouncing several of tlie laws of

human and material nature which hamper his wishes, sees
at last, in these or other laws, the necessary explanation
of his own discontent, and really and finally discerns that
his revolt, if he does revolt, is still a fatal submission to the
necessity which made him incapable of the wiser, earlier,
voluntary acquiescence.
But the fear of the Lord is only the beginning of wisdom,
and the mere recognition of an external supreme power is
scarcely of itself religious for it to become so habitually
;

or normally there must be some natural constancy of

sympathetic relation between the self and what it acknow-

ledges as its superior. The religious sentiment which
consists in the going out of the whole emotional nature of
the self towards that which is Not- self can only have a
natural and necessary existence in human experience if it
is possible for the whole being of man to become conscious

of itself as subject to the collective influences from without

by which it is really modified. We began by describing

religion as the sentiment which arises in the human self,
when it becomes conscious of its own relation towards the
apparently infinite Not-self. That relation is primarily
and chiefly one of dependence, but religion does not lie in
the sense of that dependence, but in the emotion, whatever
be its nature, which arises after a clear and adequate

apprehension of the relation has been attained. Such an

apprehension does not imply an exhaustive knowledge of
the Not-self considered absolutely, to which human facul-
ties are by the nature of the case inadequate, but the
relation of a conscious being, as such, is only real so far
as it is conscious, or potentially conscious, and the only
condition of the emotion is that the consciousness should
be complete.
It is through* the moral and intellectual powers of his

nature, as knowing and acting, that the individual man for

the most part becomes aware of the collective influences
from without in which his own native tendencies and
L
 162 NA TURAL LA W.
instincts are, as it were, swallowed up. The scientific

laws of nature (including human nature) and the moral

law of conduct determine between them the fashion in
which he will think and act, and the effect which his
actions will produce but we must remember
;
that these
laws, that is to say, the real relations amongst existing
things, only systematise our knowledge of those things by
formulating the methods of their existence they tell us how ;

things are, but they do not account for the fact that they
are. Of course this is one of the points at which a theo-
logical solution is frequently offered with great confidence,
but if it is offered to reason, it must be rejected for want
of terms in which it can be intelligibly expressed, for we
have had no experiences qualifying us to form any idea
corresponding to such a process as the creation of things
in themselves and if it is offered to faith and the religious
;

emotions, it is unnecessary, because they find no difficulty

in the existence of that which they themselves only exist
to acquiesce in. By knowing the laws of the nature of
perceptible things, the self is enabled to modify to its own
advantage some of the effects to be produced by the things
actually existing at any time, but the number of such
things and the laws of their manifestation are at any
given moment
capable of being apprehended as the really
supreme and controlling influence by which the being of
the self is conditioned.
The
intuitions of pure science produce an acquiescence
in truths or facts of relation which is scarcely religious,
because it is not concerned either with the causes or effects
of that which is known. To know a thing is to assent, to

acquiesce in its reality, and the exercise of the faculty of

knowing is attended with a natural pleasure that almost

overflows into enthusiasm for the truths known as real.

But in the pursuit of special sciences, the student, though
he sits with pious attention at the feet of Nature and
,
receives her instructions with docility, reserves the right
of interrogating her upon one subject rather than another,
 RELIGION. 163

and is guided in his choice more by the knowledge which

he himself wishes to possess than by the claims or influ-
ence of the Unknown as a whole.
The difference between science and the philosophy
which we maintain to be religious is parallel to that
between mere morality and the true, purely subjective
religion of the regenerate or "converted" the feeling
which, whether reasonable in its origin or not, comes into
being somewhence, and, we suppose, by no supernatural
means, but which, when it has come into existence, is only
feeling, perfectly disinterested, unpractical, uncritical, self-
contained emotion. Anyless massive power than this fails
to overcome the real difficulty in the way of conceiving as
an object of proper religious emotion a sum of forces which
are independent of any associations of sanctity, independent
of personality or consciousness, of purpose or intelligence,
of love or will in brief, of all those analogues of human
faculty which even pantheists and mystics implicitly attri-
bute to the divinities of their imagination. What at the
present day generally passes for religion, as the religious
themselves acknowledge and deplore, is a more or less
unintelligent acquiescence in a few theological formulae,
more or less infrequent paroxysms of sentimental remorse
or aspiration, and a more or less confused belief, very
seldom present as a controlling force, in the existence of
a higher power than the self with its small aims and
wishes. An edifice of this kind collapses when the rotten-
ness of its foundations is exposed, but there have been
men, very able thinkers, and by no means of hysterical
temperament, to whom religion has been the supreme
science, the mainspring of action, the guiding force of life,

and the essence of true natural religion, if it can be found

anywhere, must lie in a feeling, independent of creed,
common to all souls in whom the intelligence of the
affections has received its fullest development.

Eeligious feeling must be distinguished from religious

creeds, but creeds may be roughly classified by the impor-

or THf

UNIVERSITY 1
164 NATURAL LAW.
tance or propriety of the place they leave for feeling.
Monotheism, Dualism, Pantheism, and Mysticism are
names that serve to cover most of the hypotheses under
which men have conceived their relation to the supreme
forces outside themselves. When familiarity with the
action of natural forces has bred contempt for their un-
intelligent mechanical efficiency, and the vast intricacy
and variety of their interaction is not yet apprehended
by the intellect, and therefore cannot stir any emotional
enthusiasm, men begin to personify the moral influences
to which their lives are subject, in the same way that
fetish worshippers personify the physical action of material
nature. The religious errors to which this practice natur-
ally leads are less dangerous, because the divinities made
out of idealised natural forces are not usually more moral
in their supposed conduct than the forces themselves, of
which the best that can be said is that their influence is
altogether outside morality, since it is innocent of inten-
tion or consciousness. The moral influences, on the other
hand, of which men become conscious outside themselves,
can be tried by human standards, and only such of them
will be naturally selected for religious worship or idealisa-
tion as are really admirable according to prevailing moral
ideas. Law, for instance, or justice, are moral realities,
and if they are worshipped it is always in a state of ideal
perfection, but to worship an abstract idea, or a relation
in its native immateriality, is an achievement scarcely to
be expected from populations at once imaginative and
emotional enough to find some concrete object of worship
essential. The from deified virtues to virtuous
transition
and gradual as that from personified
deities is as natural
forces to persons whose will is supposed to be a force.
Both steps are intellectually retrograde, though the latter
at any rate seems to have accompanied a moral advance.
As the standard of human morality became clearer and
higher, men power of feeling religiously towards
lost the

imaginary beings that were not even equal to themselves

 RELIGION. 165

in some important points of reason and morality; and

since the religious feeling persisted, the inference took

shape if there are Gods, they must be good. The same

generations that seemed to be incapable of reverencing
truth, mercy, and justice, unless in the garb of gods of
that ilk, by dwelling upon these moral qualities as attri-
butes of real objects of affection, acquired a habit of
valuing them more. Men gathered moral courage to call
a bad god a devil, and renounce the worship of devils,
though their moral faith was not yet strong enough to
resist the second inference if there is goodness, there

must be Gods to make or exemplify it as if love could

not be real unless Eros were a person, or wisdom venerable
unless Pallas Athene and her owl embodied it, or justice
and holiness divine unless Jehovah was Lord of a heavenly
host of winged Seraphim and Cherubim.
As it is from the action of men upon each other, and
distinctly not from the action of nature upon men, that
human notions of goodness are derived, we find that all
attempts to define or describe the divine excellences, or
a perfect Not-self, begin by supposing human virtues
indefinitely magnified and exalted. An intellectual pre-
ference for the simplest statement of a proposition may
have had something to do with the advance from poly-
theism to monotheism, which, however, could hardly have
taken place without an accompanying desire to bring
together in one object absolutely every power or quality
felt to be adorable. The founder of an historical religion,
in offering to the adoration of his sectaries, what is in
practice only a magnified self, is not conscious of any

imposture, he simply yields to the necessities of the case,

which have made Bouddha an object of worship in spite
of the (traditional) resolution of Sakya-Mouni to preach
neither himself nor a god made in his own image. An
historical religion lives and exercises more or less control
over its votaries for as long as its prophet, or the God he
preached, continues to represent or symbolise such aspects
i66 NATURAL LAW.
of the Not-self as call forth all the power of religious
susceptibility in the age. The success of such religions
of objectivity which
isgenerally proportioned to the degree
has been given to the original revelation, or in other words,
to the extent to which its founder has made friends of
the mammon of unrighteousness of unspirituality and
brought the deity so near to the senses or imagination
of the worshippers that they find it easy to feel about him
as a person.
would seem paradoxical to say that religions based on
It

idolatry were more moral than those based on theosophical

theories, and yet, if we use idolatrous in this general sense
to indicate a mistaken concentration of feeling upon im-
aginary entities, it is true that the mistake may be morally
provided the feeling which it
beneficial, causes to be culti-
vated and developed was itself the outcome of a healthy
moral state. But each new step of normal development
results in the casting off of some fresh husk of natural
error, and as moral intuitions become more exact, after the
association of duty with religion, an instinctive sense of
the conditions of human virtue troubles the simple ideal
of divine perfection. Primitive man can imagine gods that
suffer through imperfection or defect ;
idealised Paganism
requires its gods to perfection of natural good
embody the
they must be perfect after their kind, whether that kind
be morally perfect or no and rejects as blasphemous the
conception reverted to by Christianity, of a suffering God,
which is the next and logical expression of the diffi-
culty, or rather the impossibility, of forming a clear,
and sympathetic conception of transcendent virtue
close,
combined with triumphant power and unbroken happi-
ness. Human virtue, we find, consists in the pursuit of
perfection under conditions which give a sense of difficulty,
constraint, and self-denial to the pursuit, and we cannot
form a clear and adequate conception of superhuman
virtue under superhuman conditions, that shall yet affect
us as human virtue, carried to an ideal infinity of perfec-
 RELIGION. 167

tion. Of course there are persons whose state of mind

allows them to think that they apprehend as possible the
existence of a Being who both is and is not potent to alter
the essential nature of things who might have made the
;

highest good attainable without effort or suffering, but has

not done so because no human good is so high as that which
is attained by painful virtuous effort. But Christianity
stands almost alone among religions in having tried to find
in theology the key to all that is mysterious in existence
after the mysteries had assumed dimensions that made

simple religious feeling unable to cope with them; and

when religious feeling has to call the intellect to its de-
fence, unless the foundations of the feeling are in all
respects rational, the result, as in most unequal alliances,
is fatal weaker of the two. And accordingly there
to the
arises a newgeneration of moral zealots to insist on a third
inference, there is no God or object of worship because
the works, which must be his if he existed, are not good
enough to make their author adorable. Idolatrous religions,
or those in which the leading feature is the worship of a
person, are naturally more exposed to this kind of assault
than more abstract schemes, in which such associated
religious feeling as exists is self-centred, and, instead of
going out towards an external object, grows by the intensi-
fication of its self-consciousness. Areligion based, so to
speak, on incident, is more easily believed in, and its
observances kept up, than one which is only speculative
and emotional, but it is also more easily believed in with
superficial conviction and emotional unconcern, which
really leaves it not religion at all, but common, matter-of-
fact error.
The natural classification of religions according to the

comparative prominence of the subjective element would

be of more importance but for the cross divisions which,
in every special age or country, arise from the variations
of personal temperament; men who are by nature born

mystics inherit narratives and dogma, and those whose

i6S NATURAL LAW.
natural taste is means of materialising
for the concrete find
the most hazy outlines of a national mysticism. Still the

religion of a people is a tolerably sure index of the set of

its strongest emotional tendencies, and in the days when

no national creed claims adhesion as of course, the form of
belief towhich individuals incline is an almost equally
trustworthy symptom of mental and moral character.
Dualism, express or implied, though it has a certain
plausibility as an explanation
of the imperfection and dis-
cord apparent in the universe, is not compatible with the
fullest development of the religious sentiment for, on the;

one hand, the tendency to glorify the good spirit, whose

victory over the principle of evil so obviously incom-
is

plete, leads into theological dilemmas of the same sort as

those just alluded to concerning the origin of evil, and on
the other hand, the spontaneous feeling of men towards
the Not-themselves is much weakened if this Not-self is

conceived as divided into hostile fractions. Even if hatred

were not a peculiarly irreligious sentiment, it would be
found impossible to love one object and hate another at
the same time with the same fervour as if all the powers
of the mind were united in one direction. It is true that
new religions always appear most thriving when in a
militant condition, while persecution has the power of
reviving a waning religious zeal, but the inference from
this will be not so much that true religion requires the
stimulus of opposition to keep up its vitality, as that the
convictions of creeds and congregations which are kept
alive by that stimulus do not constitute true religion.

Any form of saintliness that requires the existence of a

world of sinners to allow its full development or display,
wastes away and perishes when an external conformity
to the saintly type becomes the rule. But the relation
between man and that which is Not-man is unchanging,
and though man may not always be distinctly conscious
of the relation, and though he may even be conscious of
the relation without becoming conscious of any emotion
 RELIGION. 169

answering to it, the emotion, whenever it does make

its way into consciousness, is as unchanging as the rela-
tion, and as inaccessible to petty disturbance or casual

interruption.
Pantheism, considered merely in its negative form as

maintaining the great World-Machine to be the Supreme

Being because there is nothing beyond or greater than

it, is scarcely religious ; a vague sentiment of respect or
admiration, as for something very great or powerful, does
not control and subjugate the heart and will unless there
is some intimate and (on one side) personal relation

between the supreme power and the subject of religious

emotion. In practice pantheism either stops short with a
slight consecration of natural philosophy as a substitute
for religion, or else its scientific character disappears, and
the world as it is is deified and endowed with soul ; or
again, the rational element is sacrificed to the emotional,
and a result undistinguishable from that of mysticism is
arrived at.

Mysticism has at least one note of true religion, it is

entirely subjective. A number of definite impressions are

conveyed to the mind from without, from sources more or

less distinct and separable, and these, meeting in conscious-
ness, give rise to a special state of mind. Sometimes, and
this often when the mental state is one of great gravity
and earnestness, the subject may be more conscious of the
general effect of all these influences than of their origin or
of the natural and appropriate expression of the mood itself.
When we are agitated by the confused consciousness of
many things at once, we may either try to personify them,
so that they may come more easily into consciousness, or
we may try to lose ourselves in some larger percipient
power, to merge our own rational consciousness in an in-
articulate impressibility, an affectionate self-suppression,
which is virtually an appeal to the not- self to round and
complete by interpreting a relation so momentous as to
overwhelm the frail personality of the mystic.
1 70 NA TURAL LA W.
The intensity and character of a passion depends
certainly upon the power of the subject for feeling in-
tensely as well as upon the qualities of the object
felt about, but the character of religious feeling, as the
normal response of the human soul to the sum of non-
human influences, is conditioned by the general nature
of these influences, and furnishes in fact, as it were,
a reduced image, or echo of their tendency. From the
standpoint of pure naturalism, that which men have
worshipped as God appears either as the sum of natural
tendencies in favour of good 1 or, as Matthew Arnold calls

it,the Not-ourselves making for righteousness or else as

the ideal construction which Feuerbach describes as the
shadow of human feeling cast upon the universe. But
both these are attempts at a quasi-reconciliation between
theistic feeling and positive fact, and if speculation were

making a fresh start unbiassed by former hypotheses, we

should probably substitute for these formulse a double
statement concerning the influence of the whole of natural
existence upon man, and the feeling of man towards
natural existence.
In discussing the natural growth of human feelings of
moral obligation, we have already had to recognise the
existence of a kind of natural selection among the tenden-
cies of individuals, which allows, in preference, those to
survive which are conducive to the true good or perfection
of things in general, because these are sustained, objec-

tively by the tendency of other individuals towards their

own several goods, and subjectively by the sympathy of
kindred things with the same goal of natural good, while
evil propensities are resisted atonce by other evil, as well
as by all good. The means for any action, of which the
end is perfection, are normally subservient to the good or
perfection of other things than the agent, and accordingly
1 " Daher der Volker loblicher Gebrauch,
Daes jeglicher das Beste, was er kennt,
Er Gott, ja seinen Gott beneunt."
 RELIGION. 171

moral action develops, and moral temperament includes

a disposition to approve and sympathise with all the best
tendencies in the natural world. These tendencies are
not persons or entities, but they are perfectly natural
and legitimate objects of feeling, and in proportion to
the sensibility of men to those natural influences which
"make for righteousness" will be their affection for
the powers which have called and chosen them for
the service of the Best, i.e., their religious reverence
for the Supreme Not-self. The intensity of a passion

depends upon the power of the subject for feeling in-

tensely as well as upon the qualities of the object felt

about ; but human feeling is, as a rule, conditioned by the
permanent relations and qualities of things real, and it is
certain that men and women have had real and strong

feelings about and towards that which they call God. A

rationalist would deny that any one ever loved his God
more intensely than men and women have loved each
other, and it may at least be maintained without offence
that the strong and tender love of David and Jonathan is
more religious than the affection of a modern rationalist
for the Universum. We can fill in more or less clearly the

steps by which all the normal human affections were de-

veloped, and we can understand how, when developed and
become part and parcel of the nature of a well-born man,
they seek objects for themselves, and in case of need (sic
vos non vdbis) pour themselves out towards imaginary
constructions, spiritual entities or abstract conceptions.
We may argue that men have more power of reverenc-
ing than any living man can fairly call forth by his real
merits, that they have more power of loving than can be
reasonably exercised upon the general scheme of crea-
tion with its manifold unamiable imperfections ; still men
and nature have made each man what he is, and he
has no choice but to divide between man and nature all
the outflow of religious sentiment which he can rationally
entertain. Some natures have inherited through a fortu-
i; 3 NA TURAL LA W.
nate set of spiritual antecedents almost infinite capa-
bilitiesof tenderness and charm, but it does not follow
that their personal history will be correspondingly happy,
and that the material chances of life will bring the finest
feelings within reach of ideal objects of devotion. The
familiar forms of erotic mysticism, which are rightly con-
demned as morbid, owe their existence to this combina-
tion of a rationally conditioned lesoin d' aimer with mate-
rial restrictions on the reasonable indulgence of the want.
Men argue that there must be a perfect God because
they have feelings that suffer a painful check unless there
is : if they could love infinitely and without
they feel as
reserve, and they cannot accept without a sense of sacri-
fice the conditions under which alone this power of theirs

can be exercised with unmixedly good result. It is easier

to a loving nature to love, even though the object is

unworthy, than to check the pleasant self-abandonment

of affection by a just estimate of the moral qualities of
the beloved ; but here also the pleasant and the good are
not identical, and at the risk of appearing harsh, we
should maintain that to love an evil thing well is not con-
ducive to moral sanity. We
do not say that the universe
but there is evil in it, and without moral obtuse-
is evil,

ness or mental obliquity man cannot abandon himself to

the rapturous adoration of creative power which assumes
"
all its handiwork to be very good."
Eeligion, viewed from outside, might be described as
the control exercised over men by their affection for the

good viewed from within, it is the very affection for the

;

good which controls them. The only difference between

personal religion as the term is generally understood
and private saint and hero worship, or even a sufficiently
strong secular attachment, is that in the one case the
controlling power or superiority which is recognised by
affection, is a superiority to the subject in own kind
its ;

the object of regard is apprehended directly as a moral

agent, and is capable of exercising a direct moral influence
 RELIGION. 173

by ordinary human means; while in the other case of

mystical religion, the mind has to supply from, its own

associations all that is moral in the sentiment with which
itresponds to the harmonious impression that it receives
from the Not-self along a thousand unexplored channels.
"Why the response is may be in-
naturally affectionate
quired later if the pointseems to call for more explanation
than the naturally harmonious character of the conscious-
ness of harmony. The issue between religion, theistic
or otherwise, and positive irreligion or impiety, is vir-

tually, whether this response of natural affection towards

the sum of moral influences in the Not- man is rational or
not, whether the inward bent of feeling should be resisted
as well as the outer current of its direction controlled ?

and it is hardly worth while to set up a man of straw, like

the atheist of modern theologians, to argue in the face
of fact that there is no good, and in the face of reason
" "
that men ought to be indifferent or adverse in their

feelings towards what good there is.

The question why, in merely personal affection, there
should be a suggestion of religious infinitudes, belongs, how-
ever, to this stage of the discussion, the rather that a satis-
factory answer to it would almost amount to a verification
of the rest of the theory. Science proceeds from the near
to the remote, and the strongest feeling of men for a
if

known mistress is generically akin to their strongest feel-

ing for the unknown God, the explanation of the more
accessible phenomenon will go some way towards elucidat-

ing the other. It has often been observed, amongst others

by Rousseau, that the enthusiasm of devotion borrows the

language of love, as the enthusiasm of love borrows the
language of devotion and unless the language is out of
;

place in one or other context, there must be some real

similarity between the conditions which inspire its use.
It is easy to be cynical concerning the physical basis of
emotion, and every one of sound mind and sane morals
with a normal physical constitution will sometimes observe
I 74 NATURAL LAW.
in himself the working of an organic predisposition to feel,

quite distinct from, and perhaps

at variance with, the pre-
sent suggestion of appropriate external stimuli. The so-
called les&in d'aimer is an obvious illustration, but the
remark applies equally to every form of ambition, cupidity,
or attachment, in fact to every kind of relationship between
the emotional self and its surroundings. The thrill of
undefined, unmotived aspiration which is so common in
youth and so commonly starved to death in maturity
is an inheritance of the same kind ; there is the developed

desire and the latent ability to work towards ideal aims,

only the ends are hidden and the openings blocked, and
few have strength and insight to clear the path for them-
selves. But when the subjective predisposition coincides
with the external stimulus, there arises a vital sense of
wellbeing, which it is unreasonable to scorn because of its
composite antecedents. Those who are fortunate in their
natural the physical basis for the sake of its
life glorify

spiritual developments ; those

who are not fortunate depre-
ciate the development by dwelling on the baseness of its

origin;
while disinterested science places the goal of good
neither at the beginning nor at the end, but in the har-
mony of the whole process of development, whence the
succeeding joys of natural life are born.
And there are not two opinions in the human race as
to which is the most intense and rapturous of these joys.
The life and the life of the individual go on
of the world
side by but the supreme happiness of the individual
side,
is to feel his own life intensified, rounded, sustained, and

sweetened by the spontaneous favour of that which is

around and above him. It is not easy for ordinary minds
to recognise their own most cherished experiences under
the terms of an exact scientific description, and many who
might be disposed to ridicule, as chill pedantry, Spinoza's
definition of the divinest love, yet know no more intense
"
feeling than thatgladness attended with the idea of an
"
external cause which they are as little able as he was to
 RELIGION. 175

analyse further. Liking may be reasonable, reducible to

motive, just as obedience or resistance to the natural order
of the world may be motived, but love and worship include
too much to be themselves included in a phrase; the

strongest motives may fail to call them forth, and when

they have come into being they seem able to defy at least
an apparent absence of motive for their persistence. What
pleasure is to the senses or to the animal life, that love is
to the imagination and the emotional life an irreducible,
final contentment of natural taste with this difference how-
;

ever, whence perhaps our readiness to apply to the latter

feeling alone the epithet religious that human beings

delight in possessing the pleasures of their choice, and in

being possessed by the love of their choice.

The subjective element, which causes one person to be
affected by one type of physical or moral beauty and
another by a different or opposite type, leaves the bare
common fact of affection unexplained, and we need seek
no further motive for it than the acquired susceptibility of
mankind. The utmost we can do is to find a quasi-rational
basis for the inference which brings mind and will under
subjection to the passions, when these have outrun know-
ledge and experience in their intuition of the best. That
love is the answer of the soul to the touch of the Infinite
or something more poetical to that effect has been said
so often by poets and philosophers that poets and philoso-

phers in a critical and irreligious age begin to have a

scruple about repeating the time-honoured sentiment.
But if we suppose the mind to have acquired, in the course
of continuously varying contact with things external to
the power and even a correlative inclination to re-
itself,
ceive an indefinite number of heterogeneous impressions,
it isevident that the strongest impressions of an infinite
external existence to which the mind is likely to rise,
would be given by the miscellaneous revival of all past
harmonious impressions if it could be effected, rather than
by a new concrete impression, however rich or agreeable.
i;6 %
NATURAL LAW.
The conditions of the inward impression need not be re-

produced, provided some indirect suggestion brings the

consciousness round to a state answering to that which it
would have left behind if objectively associated with every
kind of welcome or exalted influence at once.
But we are much too far from understanding even the
ordinary relations between thought and feeling to have a
right to be surprised at the discovery that it is often in the
form of a human being, an Other-self, that the Not-self
acts most compendiously, forcibly, and suggestively upon
the consciousness of the self. From the remotest star dis-
closed by the telescope to the strangest depths of joy or
pain in human consciousness, whatever within the universe
is, is felt, known, done, or believed, has an influence within
the universe that may be gathered together with innumer-
able others alike and different into the focus of conscious-
ness of a single human brain. And if we suppose a mind,
incapable of rising to a direct intuition of the Not-self as
a moral force, to come in contact with another more richly
endowed, more highly organised than itself, with, in fact,
a human superior since new faculties can scarcely be im-
;

provised for the occasion, it is natural to suppose that the

influence of the superior mind or character will make itself
felt by stimulating and reviving pre-existing faculties and
susceptibilities. The self, seeing in the mirror of another
consciousness as much of the still larger Not-self as it is

capable of being moved towards, comprehends the mirror

and the reflection in one act of devout recognition, and
thrills, according to its extremely finite capacity, with an
AJinung of the Infinite.
Of course this account of the matter is slightly idealised;
it has more in common with Plato's inspired friendship or
"
Leopardi's Son of the Celestial Venus" than with the
loves of earthly men and women, but it explains the fact
for which an explanation has long been sought, that a rest-
less sense of liberated faculty and unappropriated emotion

commonly attends the growth of any strong personal

 RELIGION. 177

attachment, and that both, failing other channels of ex-

pression, exhaust themselves in representing the merits of
the beloved in terms of universal perfection. That love
and worship are practically indistinguishable when either
reaches a given degree of intensity, is a fact which can
only be taken as we find it, but the moral tendency of both
moods is unmistakable while the latter normally begins
;

with a recognition of superiority, the former presupposes

a community of feeling which is in itself a step towards
equality, and as the more complete the community, or
sympathy, the more intense the love, it follows that per-
fect equality between both lovers is the condition of

worship which assumes the superiority of one, or, if the

relation is absolutely ideal, of each at once to the other.
But when the ideal is exalted as well as loved, the lover
is drawn after in pursuit 1 of the purity or grandeur he

has, it may be, dreamt into the image of the beloved, and
analyse the process as cynically as we will, it remains
true that character and conduct are gainers by all such
"
visions of the eternal marriage of love and duty." Of
course the fraction of the Not-self which most people, even
with this kind of assistance, are capable of apprehending,
is humiliatingly small, but it is a further confirmation of
our view that imperfectly or unequally developed natures
naturally attach themselves to persons whose character is
supplementary as well as sympathetic to their own, and

1 So Petrarch to his love :

"
Sai quel che per seguirti ho gia sofferto :
E tu pur via di poggio in poggio sorgi
Di giorno in giorno e di me non t' accorgi,
;

Che son si stanco, e '1 sentir m' e tropp' erto.

Ben vegg'io di lontano il dolce lume
Ove per aspre vie mi sproni, e giri ;

Ma non ho come tu, da volar piume."

In this sonnet aspiration happens to break down into a touch of despair,
but more often love, like faith, works the desired miracles or causes tlieui
to be taken as worked.
M
178 NATURAL LAW.
can therefore interpret to them a part of existence that
would otherwise escape their vision altogether.
The attempt made in the present century by an emi-
nent mathematician and philosopher to invent a religion
without any supernatural assistance, has so much in com-
mon with other attempts of the same kind that claim a
higher origin, as to confirm the opinion that it is perman-
ently natural to men to have some kind or other of religious
faith and worship. Comte was much too positive a thinker
to be seduced into pantheism, too rational to confound
subject and object in mysticism. With an ardour for
intellectualsystem that in his works makes the organisa-
tion of knowledge seem almost more of an end than its

possession or use, the only entity superior to himself in the

power of assimilating and digesting real knowledge whom he
could recognise, was the human race, and for this being his
rare powers of abstraction allowed him to feel a genuine
sentiment of veneration, which rose to religious affection
when the human race became associated in his medita-
tions with the memory of a lady who had enriched his
intuition of the Not-self by striking a disused or silent
chord in his emotional nature. But there are two reasons
why the religion of humanity can hardly be expected to
take the place of the other dogmatic religions with which
it aims at competing. Positive thinkers would scarcely
wish it to be professed with the unintelligent formalism
with which the doctrines of older sects are held by the
immense majority of their adherents, and it cannot be
seriously expected that now, or for centuries to come, any
considerable number of men, to say nothing of women,
should have either the ideas or the instruction presupposed
in a vital, personal conception of humanity as an organic
whole, ageless and formless, with a life centred everywhere,
a consciousness centred nowhere, and a growth conditioned
the religion does not say by what. Without such a con-
ception the religion becomes an affair of empty phrases,
altogether powerless to influence the conduct in the way
 RELIGION. 179

desired by its founder. With such a conception, no doubt,

something of perhaps religious significance is added
fresh,
to the ordinary consciousness of life, as was done by the

early Christian doctrines of communion and membership

of the saints in Christ, while they rested upon the intui-
tions of brotherly charity, not on an ecclesiastical tradi-
tion. The Comtist calendar and the metaphysical doc-
" "
trine of subjective immortality are only ways of saying
that our affections are independent of time and space, and
that spiritual influences are undying in their effects. Most
people have had at one time or another some private
who has been the object, per-
patron saint, alive or dead,
haps all
unconsciously, of as much fervent adoration as
was ever directed towards canonised martyr, idol, or
supreme spiritual power. Some have felt as if it were, so
to speak, a personal favour to themselves that Socrates
was wise, that St. Francis was poor, that Bayard was
without fear and without reproach ; there is even some-
thing religious in the way that the heart of a weary
sceptic goes out towards Bruno, with affectionate envy to
think that a man could be burnt for anything so certain
as the Copernican system. A knowledge of the truth that
some heroes, saints, and sages being dead yet speak, does
naturally bring about a closer sense of the intellectual
solidarity of the race, and does stimulate those who are
yet alive in their turn to seek to say such words as they
may be content to have survive them. The religion of the
future, though dispense with a calendar and leave
it may
the celebration of centenaries to secular patriotism and
enterprise, will always have to acknowledge a debt to
Comte for having shown that the men of all times, as well
as of all places, are held together by a tie of intellectual
brotherhood which an element of intellectual strength
it is

for them to recognise.But the great Being, Humanity,

however great our small powers will allow of our con-
ceiving it to be, is still not supreme, and we do not find
in the past that men have been content knowingly to
i So NATURAL LAW.
"
worship "Ein Theil des Theils, der Anfangs alles war
a single product of evolution, instead of all its absolute,
infinite, irresponsible conditions. was objected to dual-
It
ism that the strength of the religious sentiment was much
impaired by the conception of an internecine division
between the powers of the Not-self, and the sentiment
would probably disappear altogether if its natural object
were that fraction of the Not-self which can scarcely be
conceived as most powerful. Even at the present day,
the former history of the race, though it may be one of
the chief forces, is infinitely far from being the only force
that moulds the life of a single man, and the arbitrary
preference of one force out of the many upon which
the individual consciously depends, is repugnant to the
religious instinct which is always feeling its way towards
a goal of absolute submission. Modern rationalists, like
who make religion consist in dependence upon
Strauss,
the Universum, modern mystics, like Schleiermacher,
who make it consist in the sense of dependence on
the Unknown, and orthodox theologians, who place its
essence in willing obedience to the Creator's will, all

represent the sentiment as possessing a kind of absolute,

inevitable adaptation to its object which is wanting to
the religion of humanity, unless it is allowed to borrow
cogency from merely moral considerations.
Perhaps truth is in some degree sacrificed to system
when we attempt to keep the boundary line between
morality and religion clearly marked but it holds true in
;

general that morality is concerned with the conduct, reli-

gion with the emotions; that morality consists in the con-
sciousness of voluntary bondage, religion in the conscious-
ness of a subjective release from all bondage. The moral
precepts, which are obeyed by many, are not deduced from
the religious sentiments, which are experienced by few ;

but the connection long assumed to exist between morality

and religion is not the less real because the order of it has
been inverted, for it is by the acceptance of the most ab-
 RELIGION. 181

stract conclusions of morality that the mind is prepared

to receive the intuitions of religion. The fruit of religious
culture is a disposition to do the good without compul-
sion, without inducement, by an instinct that does not
stop to choose or reason, and on that very account is able
to override the force of impeding motives. We act by
reason and rational necessity we feel by instinct ; and
;

our feeling will be sane if our habitual conduct is so ; and

ifour feeling is sane, all that we do under the influence of
feeling will be right and good, and sometimes better than
what could be suggested by any present reasonable motive.
But it by no means follows from this estimate of religious
feeling that feeling in general is the most trustworthy
guide for conduct; it is only the rarefied, disinterested
feeling which survives the discipline of moral life, with its
lessons of renunciation and detachment, that can and
indeed must be allowed supreme sway by those who
have had grace to become its subjects.
It was seen in the course of the preceding chapter how
the disposition of the individual (human) organism to seek
its own specific natural good is overruled by the fact that

it is placed in a world the natural good of which requires

sacrifices, on the part of some of its elements, akin to the
partial sacrifices of inclination within the individual
enjoined by its own moral nature. The problem of the
individual, how good of its kind, is modified and
to be

complicated, because its kind includes the property of

occupying such and such a place in the universe, for its
natural good is then, of course, to fill that place in the
best possible manner, which is the manner most conducive
to the good of the universe, or the human race after its
kind. We
must always be the first person in our own
action; but as human sensibilities develop, we feel as
well as know about things that do not directly concern
ourselves. If our personal conduct is sufficiently upright
to leave our judgment unbiassed in the appreciation of
natural good, all this disinterested feeling and intelligence
182 NATURAL LAW.
of the universal good gathers an amount of power which
endures even when, for the moment, the universal good
demands a special sacrifice and the habit of making such
;

without hesitation or regret

sacrifices is what we chiefly
understand by religious perfection.
It not be very rational that when we find it to be
may
practically impossible to arrange one life, our own, accord-
ing to our taste, we should turn to the wider, and, as it
might seem, more hopeless task of reforming the universe.
Yet when the utter impossibility of leading a life of pure
personal enjoyment has been empirically demonstrated,
what can the disinterested judgment do but direct the
will towards the realisation of what it holds to be the best
possible world ? The irrepressible optimism of humanity
comes back, though we drive it forth with the pitchfork
of logical dilemma and many a pious soul, without re-
;

pining or rebellious intention, seems virtually to say

within itself: Since G-od has not made the best of all
possible worlds, I will and the world is the better, as
!

much the better as material possibility allows, for the

resolve. Of course even disinterested zeal may outrun
discretion, and the passion for reforming creation, as long
as any personal gratification mingles with its indulgence,
is liable to be chilled by disappointment and the renewed

discovery that, though our actions are in our own power,

their consequences are not, so that even the good we would
do may miss aim.itsThe triumph of disinterestedness,
which moral and necessary, is to labour for the
also is

good of the world, even while believing that the labour is

in vain, palliative and not remedial, that the world is bad
at best, and that all our efforts can but save it from grow-

ing worse than it must.

This conception of duty as the active co-operation of the
individual will with all the real forces of the universe, in
proportion to their reality, may be objected to as visionary
and over-abstract, as imposing so vast an obligation that
a small human conscience will slip unbound through its
 RELIGION. 183

meshes which, indeed, is what generally happens, unless

the supreme religious influence of the general tendencies
of the Not-self is felt, as a clear and present reality, not
constraining or controlling the will, but absolutely trans-
forming it, moulding it into acquiescence and conformity
with all that exists.
At this point the sceptical reader will probably require
allthe patience and tolerance of which he may be capable.
"
Except a man be born again, he cannot enter into the
kingdom of God." Jonathan Edwards, and half Christen-
"
dom with him, repeats, Without a change of nature,
"
men's practice will not be thoroughly changed ; and the
philosophy of the change upon which the New England
divine insists, is expounded with great beauty and profun-
dity by a representative of the other half of Christendom,
St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa's contemporary and friend,
"
in two treatises of mystical theology, called The Ascent
" "
of Mount Carmel and The Obscure Night of the Soul,"

by the study of which the curious may convince them-

selves that the disagreement of Christian sects is less
radical than they themselves endeavour to believe. Not
to multiply examples, the conversion of Tauler by the
man Nicholas of Basle, the final awakening of Fraulein
von Klettenberg, recorded with Goethe's usual sympathetic
"
realism in Wilhelm Meister," the new birth of the Cal-
vinists, Mill's reconstruction of his hereditary creed, St.
"
John's Night of the Soul," are all phases of the same
natural and intelligible revolution in the feelings which
follows upon the apprehension of a new truth of vital

importance, or more commonly, upon some moral crisis

which causes an old belief suddenly to acquire fresh force
and 1
significance.

1 The suddenness of an illumination of this kind is no

argument for its
" Two mathematicians of
supernatural origin. good repute, both as"
stu-
" Con-
dents and teachers, were referring writes Mr. Todhunter in his
" " to the difficulties which
flict of the Studies perplex beginners in the
Differential Calculus ; they agreed in stating that, after groping in the
i84 NATURAL LAW.
If we suppose that the thoughts of men do not spring
uncaused into lawless activity, but are conditioned by
the orderly relations of real existence, it is intelligible
that the full effect of a number of connected external
influences should remain in abeyance so long as any of
them had failed to convey its appropriate impression,
but the co-ordination of the impressions follows of itself,
too instantaneously to be traced, when the last has been
received. A
new idea passes the threshold of conscious-
ness at a bound, but the unconscious preparation of the
brain for its reception must be reckoned among its pre-
mises. And in the same way the sudden revulsion of

feeling which may result in a permanent alteration of the

character, is itself gradually prepared by successive expe-
riences, not by any means necessarily suggestive, to the
judgment of common sense, of their actual emotional
contre-coup.
All our authorities agree as to the preliminary steps in
this spiritual revolution. The certainty that out of all the
personal desires entertained by the natural man, an un-
known, fixed, and probably large proportion .are inevitably
doomed to disappointment, does as a fact tend to produce
" "
a degree what Catholics call
of detachment from all,
even the most realisable personal aims. Merely morbid
asceticism might be compared to the sick distaste for food
of a man on the verge of starvation; those to whom

healthy pleasures are unknown may set themselves to

crush their natural appetites rather than endure the sense
of unsatisfied longing, and if they try to make their own

privation into a rule for others, the rule is false as well as

ungenial. But, taking the world as it is, no character is
complete that cannot survive the potential injuries of for-
tune and the power of doing without a valued good, if
;

kept alive without enforced exercise, is tribute enough to

dark for some time, light had suddenly appeared, and both regretted
that, in spite of many efforts made for the purpose, they could not recol-
lect more than this general outline."
 RELIGION. 185

the insecurity of human happiness. A

living sense of this
insecurity is the first step towards escape from the stupid
animal dependence, which is really irreligious, on the
natural gifts of fortune. Persons of much moral scrupu-
lousness,whose private desires have proved persistently
unrealisable, aretempted to expend the energy thus libe-
rated from the service of appetite in the discharge of all
the duties they can discover or invent ; but as their powers
of doing good are after all finite, and the evil in the world

practically infinite, the saint, while still under the law, is

oppressed by a deep and painful sense of shortcoming and
depravity, as nearly as may be proportionate to the real
excellence and purity of his moral disposition. The
"
conviction of sin." experienced by persons whose moral
virtues would stock a regiment of lay philosophers, may
be explained as the despair and self-abasement produced
by the discovery that even the virtuous impulses of the
natural man do not certainly lead their followers to perfect
content, or have not force enough to create anew the
world which, to natural virtue, seems painfully, intoler-
ably imperfect. Their general disposition was towards
what they regarded as good, but particular sacrifices or

discrepancies between the possible and the desired were

felt as vexatious,and the vexation appeared sinful, as it
was accompanied by a general impression that the will of
the individual ought to assent to whatever was ordered
by the supreme divine will. The attempt to reform the
world with the help of radically imperfect, finite, human
resources naturally fails, and a very vivid perception of
the extent of the failure serves as a Nemesis to chasten
the spiritual pride or egotism which could conceive such
an ambition.
St. John of the Cross, who treats the subject more intel-

lectually than the Calvinists, represents the obscure night

of the soul as a season of complete mental prostration,
when all the faculties have been tried and found wanting
"
to effect a perfect and permanent union in the substance
1 86 NA TURAL LA W.
of the soul and its powers." This union or presence of
God in the order of nature (we are still paraphrasing the

saint) subsists between him and all his creatures, but

there isa supernatural union which takes effect when two
wills the will of God and the will of the soul are con-
formed together, neither desiring aught repugnant to the
other. The soul not being naturally altogether one with
God, best attains to this union by being, except for a loving
disposition towards assent, altogether blank and colourless.
The assent itself (like the illumination of the mathemati-

cians) seldom
is or never produced by any one rational
consideration a mass of, as it were, cumulative evidence,
;

of cognate impressions, result at a particular moment in

producing the conviction which is complete and effectual

as soon as it exists at all. All previously received impres-
sions and beliefs remain the same, but coloured and inten-
sified by the sense of their connection and all-sufficiency.
Eeligious writers insist that there is a fundamental trans-
formation of the will and character, and it seems that the
only possible change we can suppose to have occurred,
when nothing changed in the man, and nothing at
else is
all in the perceivable universe, is a
change either in his
apprehension of the relation subsisting between the two,
or a change in the sentiment with which he is affected

by the relation as apprehended in practice the change

from a hostile to a friendly disposition towards the real
order of the universe. It is the birth of love, the sponta-
neous opening of the heart to a new affection of
loyal
devotion, and the affection is as real and irresistible as the
personality of its object may be dubious. The change of
heart by which the saints felt themselves released at once
from the bondage of natural iniquity and of the law of
natural morality, may be described as the
discovery by a
soul that had been out of harmony with its
surroundings,
that harmony, though not happiness, is at a
possible
price ;
that though the self cannot remodel the universe in
conformity to its own best impulses, all its own best im-
 RELIGION, 187

pulses can find scope and satisfaction in conformity with

true tendencies in the Not-self. Whichever way the change
is, the harmony between the soul and its
surrounding is

preceded, or perhaps rather effected, by a harmonious

consensus of all the faculties, which, as under the influence
of the Platonic love, become the more vigorous and active
for their agreement. Such an Aufkldrung may be gradual,
as in the case of Goethe, whose whole life was spent in
being savingly converted from the dominion of his strong
It is absent altogether from the lives of many
passions.
even able thinkers who have always been more possessed
by the positive aspect of their convictions than by diffi-
culties arising from the relation between them, or from the
coexistence of seemingly inconsistent convictions ; and
to some it isdisguised by association with some simple
step in their speculative education, with the first appre-
hension of a pregnant doctrine, or the final adhesion to an
impressive system, events that, of course, are only epoch-
making in a life chiefly spent in theorising.
Pure science and unreflective action never bring the
mind to the religious conviction of its own impotence,
which follows from the application of knowledge to conduct,
or the attempt to act by reason only, and to give a rational

explanation of the impulses followed instinctively. The

"
ascetic discipline which aims at suppressing desire, even
is based upon the experimental
though possession remain,"
discovery that particular attachments impair the general
freedom of the soul to follow what it apprehends as divine
perfection. The most trustworthy judgments are the most
dispassionate and disinterested, and so it is true, as St. John
says, that the perfect man first acquires
in this detachment
from creatures a clear comprehension of them. Eationalists
of course will say that the capacity or nature of the soul
fixes and limits that which it will apprehend as divine

perfection the Saint himself, for instance, apprehends an

All that is merely moral and intellectual, and not so sub-
ject to law as to be exactly cognoscible ;
but this does not
1 88 NATURAL LAW.
affect themain point, that general perfection and particular
"
appetites are distinct and frequently incompatible. When
thou dwellest upon anything, thou hast ceased to cast thy-
selfupon the All." Even a tyrannical desire to impose
upon the Universe conduct which the individual believes
good is irreligious, unless the ideal has
to be for its true
been received from the Not-self as expressive of its real
tendencies. Quite in the manner of Spinoza whom a
sound popular instinct has always refused to regard as
in any intelligible sense a theist St. John of the Cross

proceeds: "The end of meditation and reflection on the

of God is to elicit the knowledge and love of him.
things
Each time the soul elicits this, it is an act, and as acts,
often repeated, produce habits, so may acts of loving know-

ledge continuously elicited by the soul beget the habit

thereof in the course of time." It is remarkable that with
"
a large experience of professed religious," at a time of
religious revival, he repeatedly insists that there are very,
very few to whom it is given to reach the last stage of
spiritual perfection, in which the truths of religion are
conceived as the impression made by the All upon the
chastened receptive spirit. Such disinterested cognition,
if it were
possible, would doubtless impart the highest,
most abstract truth, even though we suppose it to be still
received by merely human faculties it is as natural and
;

conceivable for the mind to have a true intuition of the uni-

versal as of the particular, for both are in a way external to
consciousness, neither its merely arbitrary creation, though
reasoning may have to be suspended as well as sense and
passion,, because the subject is too wide for it until the
intuition is complete, when it represents the individual as

belonging not to itself to be made the best of for its own

sake, but to the world, to be made what use of it can, even
though, as the stern realism of the Calvinists saw some-
times befell, it be elected to serve the All by its perdition.
The order of the Universe does not appear to the natural
reason of man to be so good that we should co-operate in
 RELIGION. ,g 9

its "purposes" of our own accord, by choice, unless we

must. But of all necessities, this is the most indefeasible,
while we live we co-operate, when we die our salts and
phosphates go on co-operating, and the influence of our
actions is immortal. The human will cannot change the
past, but it is one of the natural forces that regulate the
future, and it does so according to its apprehension of the
present, which is coloured by the sympathies born of a hard
experience. The world is the saints', not to possess, but
to mend, or at least to alter, and in altering they still co-
"
operate with the stream of tendency" which has brought
to pass that just this generation affirms such and such
alterations to be good. The sense of a common misfortune,
if life is all calamity, of a common interest in one work, if

the race is on the whole not ill-content to go on discharg-

ing its natural functions in the scheme of the universe,
may no doubt contribute something of religious spontaneity
to the life of the social organism by leading men to spare
each other and themselves the gratuitous addition to their
troubles of destructive rivalry and internecine strife. There
were three Christian graces, " and the greatest of these is
Charity" whose existence has the guarantee of necessity,
though and hope, the pretty parasites of imperfect
faith

knowledge, were to vanish in the fuller light of science

from a world of realists who would rather see than imagine,
and rather be strong to bear what they see than dazzle
their eyes with looking into a visionary future. For our-
selves certainly, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,
which makes it probable that all the best energies of most
of us will no more than suffice to ensure that the world
shall not be the worse for our co-operation, that we have
not caused more suffering than we have eased, exacted
more service than we have rendered, devoured more of the
common patrimony than our labour has replaced. ISTo one
would willingly live, die,and leave no sign but a little
addition to the mass of human misery, and the danger
seems nearer to us than when we believed. The material
190 NA TURAL LA W.
evil in the world, which men are but little concerned iu
producing, may be the condition of human progress, and
the progress of the kind is its own good, but not Omnipo-
tence itself could cause that good should ever come out of
what we call moral evil, except always at the cost of greater
good lost. It is because moral evil exists that the Creator
of the Universe if a Universe could have a Creator
could not be esteemed a moral agent.
Piety towards the Universe is the result of a mighty syn-
thesis, towards which moral generalities take us but little
way. It is not a moral duty to feel an affection for the
solar and the stellar systems, to wax enthusiastic over the

properties of space or to admire the circuitous processes in

the evolution of life. The emotions are free ; but it is cer-
tainly a misfortune, and probably an imperfection, to have
so little sympathy with the natural order of which we form
a part as to take no pleasure in its comparatively success-
ful achievements, and
to feel only unhelpful concern when,
as but too often happens, evolution halts and limps, law is
burdensome, progress imperceptible, and though the poor
world may be doing her best, we yet can scarcely persuade
"
ourselves that her best is very good." But exactly at
this point we have a fellow-feeling that must end in cha-
ritable "the whole creation groaneth and
indulgence;
travaileth together,"and perhaps the solar system is as
near being good after its kind as mortal astronomers and
critics after theirs ; at least it bears its aberrations in digni-
fied silence, which the puling tribe of pessimists might do
well to imitate.
The natural relation of man to the Universe is one of
dependence, and the immense majority of men are so sim-
ply and unreflectingly a part of the general order in which
they live and move and have their being, that it does not
occur to them to cavil or rebel against it their co-opera- ;

tion spontaneous, but too unemotional to be called reli-

is

gious. It might be argued that such a healthy state of

nature was preferable to the state of grace which we have
 RELIGION. 191

been endeavouring to comprehend. Unintelligent co-opera-

tion has its drawbacks, but it may be doubted whether the
mind is really strengthened by anything so abstract as
considerations concerning the manner in which the sacri-
fices imposed by the co-operation are made necessary. But
when the necessity has once been questioned, since it does
not therefore cease to exist, the mind must follow its natural
course if the primitive consensus is ever to be restored upon
a surer foundation. When the attempt of the individual to
dominate the world, to make it and its inhabitants the tools
of private ends and objects, is given up as impracticable,
the antagonism between the self and the Not-self ceases,
and the will is reconciled. It becomes conscious of the
tendency, not its own, which has made it, and as will, to
our knowledge, is only conscious tendency, this is the very
identification of the single will with the tendency of the
All that is the note of true religion.
The emotion accompanying this acquiescence of the will is
one of not untender loyalty. Ancient prophets and modern
preachers have tried to enlist the same feeling by calling
on a generous congregation to come " to the help of the
Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty." But
the Lord of hosts, we feel, could fight his own battles.
The universe really needs our help to make itself as good
as it can, and it is to the influence of the universe that we
owe whatever power or will we have to co-operate in what
"
we judge to be its true tendencies. We are a part of its
involuntary, palpitating life," and if we are not with it, we
are against it. Those in whom these natural influences at
times call forth the emotional response which makes the
inevitable co-operation seem spontaneous and easy, do not
therefore live for ever after in a religious trance. The
attempt to reproduce an intense feeling of the solidarity
of all existence, when it does not naturally present itself,
is a waste of good volitional force. No doubt when the

religious emotion fails, the burden of moral duty

and the
192 NA TURAL LA W.
consciousness of moral and natural imperfection becomes
again oppressive but the universe does not exist for the
;

sake of satisfying the religious instincts of mankind, and

reason shows that the surest way of preserving the fading
sense of harmony between the soul and nature is to make
the harmony the more complete, to keep the soul at-
tuned to the tendencies of the Not-self by constant action
in obedience to its leadings.
Deus sive Natura as Spinoza calls the whole of real

Being is evil genius ; it is a vast system that lives

not an
and prospers in proportion as the strength of its various
elements can be brought into alliance, and form mutually
sustaining relations. There is good enough in the world
to stir the affections of those who see it all, and those
whose life spent in active self-identification with all
is

the powers of the universe for good, waste least time in

reflecting upon the evil which they are constantly, as it
were, leaving behind them. Even if we could persuade
ourselves that what is highest and best in man is not his
own, not our veritable nature, but a loan, a foreshadowing
of something quite outside ourself and our world, the good
in this world would still be neither more nor less and it ;

would in like manner be neither more nor less even though

theologians should discover that they had made mistakes
about that other world, concerning which they candidly
admit themselves to have no direct knowledge. Philo-
sophy can no more make morality easy than surgery can
make diseases wholesome, but it certainly does- nothing
to shake the religious affection of men for that which they

naturally believe to be the chief of all earthly goods, the

goodness of men and women tender strength, generous
:

forbearance, disinterested wisdom, and passionate love are

good no true believer in the unknown God, ignorantly
worshipped by divers names, will dare to doubt it and
no one who has known and felt for himself that they are
good can think that the world in which they are to be
 RELIGION. 193

found, enjoyed, and increased is quite a howling wilder-

ness, though it be only our world, and not an antechamber
to heaven or hell.
One point remains to be considered. Religion is natu-
ral, and in the main always the same, that is to say, a

spirit of devout and affectionate acquiescence in the will

of a superior power but we may ask, is the existence
;

and strength of this sentiment equally natural and equally

necessary to moral and natural perfection in all genera-
tions, or is there any natural excuse or justification for
the temper of an irreligious age ?Is the strength of the

religious sentiment an essential part of that natural per-

fection which we conceive to be the summum lonum ? Is
a Christian, with a strong sense of piety towards the un-
seen powers of the Not-self, humanly speaking, better than
an who judges the universe to be too imperfect
atheist,
after its kind to call forth feelings of religious devotion or
love ? In a word, is irreligion a moral defect in man ?
This is a practical question, which should offer little
difficulty if we were clear both as to our facts and our
principles. The natural good of man consists in the
abundance of active and perceptive powers moral good ;

consists in the deliberate and disinterested pursuit of

natural good, quand meme the pursuit is naturally hard ;

civilised religion is the loving worship of the strongest

power known as Not-self, when this power is exerted in

behalf of moral good, i.e., of man's pursuit of natural good

quand meme. Now it is a question of fact whether the

stream of natural tendency is always equally helpful to
the moral struggles of individuals in each generation,
and it is a further question of fact, whether men are at

alltimes equally well aware of the real extent of the help

thus given to them. In tracing the history of morality,
we found that morality was easy when ideals were sta-

tionary, and difficult when they were progressive. Of

course ease and difficulty are terms relating to human con-
sciousness, and to feel a difficulty more, even if it continues
N
I9 4 NATURAL LAW.
objectively of the same size, is really to be less helped, by
things in general, to overcome it, than is the case when
the difficulty is less felt. Therefore piety is more natural,
and on more reasonable grounds, in ages when the
rests

powers and desires are pretty accurately balanced, than

in periods of transition, when the aspirations have outrun
the faculties, or the faculties have fallen off from the stan-
dard which contented earlier aspirations. Now it cannot
be a part of man's perfection to cherish illusions concern-
ing his relations to the Not-self, and at times when the
course of nature does not make high virtue easy to any
one, unreserved piety towards the natural order or its
author argues a mind contented with less than the highest
virtue, i.e., naturally imperfect. The optimism of philoso-
phers and divines in the eighteenth century, when content
with low ideals was general, might serve as an illustration.
The religion of a critical, progressive age is more com-
plicated, intellectual, and disinterested, but it is less de-
vout and less personal than that of simpler, more primitive
times. We recognise the force of the moral obligations
which the whole past of mankind unites in causing us to
recognise, we share the ideas and aspirations correlative
to our feeling of obligation, and without any unpractical

fatalism, we see that the weakness as well as the strength

of what we hold to be best in our moral nature is the pro-
duct of natural causes, before which we were, literally,
helpless as the unborn babe, but this consciousness in no
way affects the fullydeveloped moral sentiments of our
maturity. In dispassionately recognising the responsi-
bility of the past for having lived so indifferently that we,
its heirs, are no better than we should be, we do not lose

sight of our inherited conviction that it is best to be as

good as we can ; and as the strength as well as the weak-
ness of our better natureis conditioned
by past and pre-
sent modifications of the Not-self, if on the whole our
"
strength is greater than our weakness, we feel that the
Lord is on our side," that the stream of tendency is with
 RELIGION. ,95

us, that we are with it, a part of it, and that the current

of human affairs sets the stronger

in the direction of pre-
destined progress for being reinforced by all the power of
our intelligent will. Thus to a thoroughly healthy and
energetic nature, impiety is an impossibility, a self-con-

tradiction, for ifmoral good consists in the struggle after

an attainable Better, the universe which has imparted
strength for the struggle, cannot be felt as bad.
To some minds with an irresistible craving after peace
and the mental rest of an absolute attachment, this will
seem enough to warrant positive thinkers in transferring
to the Universe the affection felt by Theists for the object
of their worship, and it is by no means needful to argue

away any spontaneous enthusiasm or tenderness with which

enthusiastic or tender souls may be affected towards the
natural order of the world if the feeling exists it is because
;

the elements proper to elicit it have a real existence also,

and it is not necessary (or possible) for every one to have
the feeling appropriate to the fullest knowledge of the con-
ditions of our natural and spiritual being. But, on the
other hand, it is neither necessary nor desirable for those
who have a clear and adequate idea of these conditions to
argue themselves into stronger feelings of devotion than
are spontaneous. The complete harmony between all the
powers of the mind which makes religious enthusiasm
possible is a good ;
and if we were content with a merely
subjective standard of good, such as happiness or content,
it might seem the supreme good, so that religious teachers

might agree with Utilitarians (as indeed they often have)

in urging men to restrain those unruly desires and impulses
which are not predestined to full present gratification, and
therefore perpetuate the irreligious temper of partial re-
bellion against that which is. But if our standard of
is progressive, and includes the maximum of
perfection
objective relations between the self, society, and nature,
the harmony of the moral energies, which gives religious
peace, will no more appear to be the supreme end of our
196 NA 7 URAL LA W.
being than the harmony of our natural powers, which gives
sensible pleasure. The harmony is a good, only attainable

by those who are, naturally or morally, good of their kind

but the discord of one generation may be richer than the
harmony of another, and the true test of comparison is to
judge whether the irreligious age has so much more of
other positive good in it as to compensate for the mis-
fortune of irregular, unequal development among its
various elements.
This is only one more variation on the familiar theme
that the possession of good and the enjoyment of good are
not naturally identical. The individual is not always
pleasurably conscious of the sympathy which exists between
himself and the outer world ; he may be most painfully
conscious of an imperfect sympathy, which is as different

from antipathy as a lovers' quarrel is from dislike. The

victim of this unfortunate state is objectively more nearly
at one with the external order than if he had narrower
sympathies and no wishes or ideas beyond them. Eeligious
blessedness consists in the pleasurable consciousness of the
maximum of real sympathy with the moral tendencies of
the Not-self, religious perfection in the maximum of such
sympathy quand meme it is not complete enough for en-
joyment; and if this be so, it is clear that men may
approach to religious excellence without possessing the
moral self-satisfaction called religious peace, as they may
approach to moral excellence without possessing the
physical self-satisfaction known as natural pleasure or

happiness.
Of course it is open to any one to say that they do not
mean by secular or religious happiness what we have here
offered as the definition of those words, but if so we have
a right to ask for an alternative definition which shall in-
clude a greater number of the marks which we know belong
to the things defined. It will be said that the essence of

religion is perfect faith and trust in God, that if there is

no God, there can be no religion, that there is a God, and

 RELIGION. 197

that therefore those who wrongly believe that there is none,

are by their own wrong-doing left without religion. We
do not attempt to argue with persons of strong religious
feeling, whose feeling is associated with an equally strong
conviction of the truth of some theistic dogma we address
;

ourselves rather to the many persons of undetermined

views, to whom the chief argument for the existence of a
deity is that men have generally believed in one or more,
and who rather believe themselves to have the same belief
" "
as their neighbours than possess any intimate saving
sense of its truth. To these we submit the following
considerations as a ground for transferring their languid
adhesion from one body of believers to another.
Men naturally have feelings answering to the sum of

impressions made on them by

the moral aspects of the
Not-self, i.e., by the Not-self in its relations to their moral
life ;
the impression produced by a cause only known
through this impression calls forth a feeling about or
towards the cause, and men do not naturally and at once
distinguish between simpleand multiple causes of simple
and multiple effects. The act of will of a given person
may have many consequences, and human feelings towards
the agent vary even more than is strictly reasonable in
accordance with the result of his act; because his act is
the sine qua non of the event, all the other conditions

which helped to determine its character are left out of

sight; and conversely, if a variety of acts and accidents
contribute equally to produce an effect that affects us as
one, we naturally feel as if all the co-operating forces were
somehow connected, made one, for its production ; they are
involuntarily, as it were instinctively, identified in the
mind ; by a kind of synthesis of the imagination, what is
felt as one is supposed to act as one, and is then felt
towards as acted with a real individuality, and were
if it

personally responsible to us for the feelings and the

emotions which it calls up in us.
Thus it is that men have come to have strong and in-
198 NA TURAL LA W.
tense feelings towards beings that are the creation of their
own imagination as entities, though there are realities to
which the feelings are due. But we have to distinguish
between the religion which consists mainly in sentiments
towards the Not- self, and the religious temper which is
wholly subjective, and consciously so. Atheistical religion
consists of religious faith, zeal, and love, without an object
of worship. We have not deliberately chosen a definition
of religion which should include the development of a
sentiment without external object but we cannot justify
;

the existence of the religious sentiment with a supposed

object, except by reasoning which serves equally well to
explain its existence when criticism has shown the sup-
posed object to be a thing of the mind.
Like all other sincere religion, atheistical religion has
two parts, the intense inward feeling and the outward
yearning or aspiration, both different phases of one mental
state, that is, of a state with identical past and indivisible
future. The inward feeling, which Spinoza calls acquies-

cence, is the consciousness of harmony in all the higher

powers of the soul, which is only attainable, at least with
fully developed consciousness, when the soul is in harmony
with its objective surroundings, and this is a state of pas-

sive, exalted beatitude; it is a grateful consciousness of

what the soul is in relation to the Not-self, i.e., a partici-

pator in its best and strongest tendencies; not if the

reader will have patience with such subtleties a con-

sciousness of the participation, but a general sense of peace
and wellbeing, which proves on examination to be the
result of thisharmonious participation.
The
spiritual reward of religious perfection may not
always be equally accessible, but the alternative, if it fails,
is not impiety, only a different manifestation of the re-
ligious spirit, active instead of contemplative. Supposing
the maximum of objective sympathy between the individual
and the natural tendencies of his age to be positively and

comparatively small, he may be painfully conscious of dis-

 RELIGION. 199

crepancy between the aspirations and the achievement of

himself and his best contemporaries, but the aspirations
after perfection are to the full as natural as the imperfect
achievement, and either way of approaching to the desired
sympathy is good. If circumstances trace a possible and
satisfying ideal, the religious duty of the soul will be
obedience, but if, on the contrary, the environment appears
in consciousness as a check, a hindrance to the perfection
of the soul, then obedience is time-serving and not religious ;
and though it may be said, with truth, that rebellion
against some existing realities may be an act of obedience
to the highest spiritual influences of the Not-self, which
are at least equally real, still it is naturally impossible for
acts ofan opposite kind to be performed in the same spirit,
even though they have the one element of dutifulness in
common and to feeling no two attitudes can be more
:

unlike than that of resisting and yielding to the nearest

external tendency.
The distinction which we should be inclined to draw
between the religious spirit of a critical or progressive age
and one contentedly stationary is only this. In what are
called the ages of faith, men live by sight, in sight of realised
ideals, satisfying objects of worship exist for them. In
what are called ages of unbelief, men must live, if they
are to have any spiritual life at all, by faith in unseen
ideals, and for them idolatry or the worship of anything
that isknown or clearly imaginable is a sin against the
spirit of perfection. The works of the spirit are always the
same, or at least always alike, but man's relation to the

spiritual influences of the natural world and his conscious

affection towards them may vary. Hence it is that religion
takes different forms, and those who look for it in the
costume of three or five centuries ago may fail to recognise
it in its contemporary garb. Nevertheless religious minds
at the present day are as far as ever from being content to
think that the truth is only a fiction agreed upon, and that
the future may agree upon a lie. Our premises do not
200 NATURAL LAW.
compel us to accept as a natural law, a necessity following
from the nature of things, the tendency which we observe
in human beliefs to oscillate from prejudice to denial, and
from the criticism of one error to the construction of
another. We may have a just sense of past compulsion
and present instigation without disguising our ignorance of
what lies in front of us or pretending to limit the future to

conformity with our theories ; and yet we want a theory

of theories to bind together every age and make our faith
reasonable. We have not to attain the ideal of a thousand
years hence, or of a thousand years ago we have ideals
;

now, though most of us are ashamed to own it, and it is the

ideal of to-day thatwe have to pursue with religious faith
and zeal. The summuni lonum is the best possible growth,
and the perfection to be sought in every age is the best
growth of human power and sensibility possible to that
age, and we know no formula that serves better than this
to justify the perpetual pursuit of a changing goal, which
seems to be the condition of healthy life.
But, it will perhaps be said, if there is nothing better in
rerum natura than the noblest of living men or women,
what have they to aspire after ? If there is no God hold-
ing an ideal in front of them, to which it is their duty to
be conformed, what sense is there in the passionate struggle
after ideals, which no one will go to hell for not reaching,
which no one can reach, which no one will go to heaven
for endeavouring to reach ? In this way the advocatus
diaboli describes the never-ending circle of objection what :

motives have we for acting in accordance with natural

causes ? what causes us to follow natural motives ? Why
meaning for what motive or inducement are we reason-
able, law-keeping creatures ? Why still meaning for what

motive are we moved by other inducements than the

promise of reward, temporal or eternal ? and again, when
reason good has been shown in the natural history of our
susceptibilities for the existence of disinterested emotions
and aspirations, Why meaning for what cause are we
 RELIGION. 201

led by this or that motive, which we are not conscious of

any reason for following except that we are spontaneously
moved to do so ?

In the ordinary transactions of life, the " why " of con-

duct and feeling admits of being indefinitely put off, one
reason after another may be alleged, while leaving us as
far as ever from the ultimate root of things. It is only
when we have forced ourselves to the highest generalisa-
tion of all that it becomes impossible to shirk the question
in its most trying form. Do we do I the thinker feel
at this present moment in my inmost soul that I have
sufficient reasons and irresistible motives for doing that
which the stream of natural causation, culminating in my
will and actual circumstances, has determined me to do ?
Put in this form the question answers itself, but in many
minds at the present day there is latent an uneasy doubt
as to whether not now for themselves, but in general for
everybody natural causes can be trusted to supply
motives for the choice of right action. One of
efficient
the many attractions of theism is that its adherents, when
they do not really feel as if they had sufficient reasons
or motives for being or doing their best, can nevertheless
turn the scale in theory by supposing real but inadequate
motives to be reinforced at need by contributions from the
vaguely imagined infinitudes of supernatural sanction. As
" An
Mephistopheles observes Worte lasst sich trefflich
:

"
glauben; and the mere name of a deliverer affords spiritual
consolation, if not practical help. But it is becoming
increasingly hard to believe in false gods, while the moral
and spiritual nature of many is craving for a believable
truth ;
and ifGod is only a name for " the Best we know,"
the sooner we learn not to trust in names, but to attach
ourselves to the Eeal Best, the better for our spiritual
welfare.
The natural history of morality accounts for the sense
of obligation in particular cases, for the fact that when
men have to choose between right and wrong, they feel
202 NA TURAL LA W.
more or less bound to prefer the right. But even those
who accept this naturalistic explanation of the simple
if some further
precepts of the moral law, often speak as
supernatural power were required to explain why men
should prefer an abstract right, so as to go out of their
way to imagine duties not sensibly imposed by circum-
stances;
w hy they should love the right for its own sake,
r

and instead of following the lead of circumstances, seek to

remodel circumstances into a form admitting of a better
right for themselves and those to come why the taste ;

becomes the accomplice of the will, and the edifice of

obligation is voluntarily extended beyond its necessary
foundations. But religion, as we understand it, is a matter
of natural feeling ; natural feeling is the product of con-
stant natural or necessary sequences, and to feel on all

points with the best and strongest tendencies of the Not-

self is to feel the sufficiency, as motive, of those natural
factswhich are the efficient cause or sine qua non of that
which is about to happen with the co-operation of the will.
In other words, a man who is at once moral and religious
does not ask what is the good of morality, or demand a
god to praise and recompense him; he acts virtuously
under a natural sense of obligation, and his habitual state
of feeling is favourable, not adverse, to the existence of

such obligations as he owns he does not wish for a

:

different kind of liberty from that which he possesses by

natural grace, the liberty to will nobly and well.
But, it will perhaps be said, this religion of ours is a
fair-weather creed that nature, in the form of the world,
:

the flesh, and the devil, is by no means always on the side

of man
in his struggles after what is Best. To many it

seems hard to believe in a truth which calls no Deus ex

machina to the rescue of human souls in trouble or

temptation. The powers

of darkness are as real, albeit as

impersonal, as the divine principles of truth, purity, and

loving-kindness, and man seems in evil case alone between
the conflict of superhuman tendencies, his deliverance hard
 RELIGION. 203

to believe in. But no Gospels have ever yet been

preached according to which it was easy to have a saving
faith and our faith has as much power as another to save
;

human souls in trouble and temptation; the difficulty

liesonly in attaining to the faith that man alone, for his
own sake and the sake of his fellows, freely desires and
necessarily labours to attain the measure of human ex-
cellence which has been granted him implicitly by his
antecedents. And by his own efforts, and by the help of
his fellows, this measure he may and does attain.
This is the simple history of the matter, and it is found
increasingly hard to make room for gods or devils at any
stage of the whole process. But it is also true that in
the recurring times of trouble and temptation which fall
to the lot of mortals without distinction of creed, mortal
weakness will send out sighs, not unlike a prayer, for the
help that will never come for wishing. The mind looks
round for succour because it is wanted, not because it is
to be had. So in bodily pain, if the will suppresses
every sound, of complaint and controls every muscular
contraction, the eyes still wander restlessly as if to seek
some way of escape, though the reason has submitted to
the knowledge that there is none. So it has been, and so
it will be there is nothing harder on earth than the agony
:

of a solitary soul in pain or temptation. And there is

no God to make the rough ways smooth. But, though the
struggle is hard, victory is always possible to the single-

minded lover of truth and rectitude; and what more is

needed, in the hour of trial, than faith in the possibility of
victory ? alone or helped by gods or men the struggle
is

hard, or this craving for some help ?

why But though it
ishard, none the
it is more hopeless, although there are
no

gods to help. A man has but to will, to resolve with an

undivided mind, and the past, from a master, becomes a
slave ;
all that has been done or suffered before him, served
to enable him to will thus, served to prevent his willing
otherwise than as he has chosen. We say the past is our
204. NATURAL LAW.
servant when we have done what we thought well to do it ;

is our tyrant when we have done ill, and life is on the one
side a struggle to escape from the tyranny of natural evil
which we on the other an aspiration after the posses-
hate,
sion of natural good, which we love and delight in the
more, the more we know and possess of it in ourselves.
To conclude briefly the sum of objective influences go
:

to make men wish to do and be the best they can. The

"
Not-ourselves makes for righteousness," not by holding
out rewards for good works, but by material incentives to
their performance, which in the long run, and as a rule,

prevail over carnal wilfulness or seductions. The virtue

of men is conditioned by motive forces behind them, not

by inducements before; but the strongest passions and

desires ofmen are either an echo or a prophecy of their
strongest tendencies, and nothing is more certain, taking
the experience of the race or of the individual as a whole,
than that the affections will become engaged on the side
of whatever conduct is habitual. Faithful, unswerving
performance will turn every duty into a labour of love.
And yet it is a common charge against atheistical
moralists that their doctrine is sad and comfortless ; they
show the life that now is with ruthless candour, and they
hold out no hope of compensation in a different future.
They are dreaded and distrusted as false prophets of evil,
because they avow that evil exists, and have no arts of
logical legerdemain to prove that its existence is a good
in disguise. Perhaps it is true that we have fallen upon
evil days, when the sympathy between man and the course
of things is exceptionally intermittent and incomplete, but

certainly not less sad than ours is the creed of those who
believe in a heaven to come for the few, but think and

preach that our generation is rushing steadily towards the

opposite goal of perdition. What can be more intensely
miserable and depressing a creed than to believe that there
is a right, that there is blessedness to come, and that our

fellows are wantonly and wilfully turning their backs upon

 RELIGION. 205

it ? Perhaps we ourselves have fallen upon evil days it :

islong since men have felt so severely critical as they do

now, not of each other, but of themselves ; for ages past
there has not been among us so much of that "divine
discontent" which lashes the strong to mastery, the weak
to despair. We crave after supreme good,we imagine that
if we could only see and know what was absolutely best
for us to-day, no sacrifice would be too great to buy the
salvation of its possession. But, alas we do not know, at
!

most we guess doubtfully, or if we know, the best for us

to-day may be an unlovely compromise, a sacrifice which
leaves us ashamed and disgusted with the order that has
no nobler, more fruitful duties to impose on us to-day.
But, granted all this, is the best that we can do to curse
our day and despair of the morrows of our race ? Is this
the duty to which we are most strongly impelled by our
natural, inborn appetite for the very Good ? Is the fact
that we find it hard to meet with duties to our mind a

proof that the Eight is not adorable ? hard or easy, it is our

doom to love the best, and seek it where it may be found ;
and if the search is harder than usual, now or at any
other time, in proportion to the difficulty of the quest
will be the delight and triumph of success for those who
live to reach it.
And we have nothing in common with those prophets
of evil who say
there can be no success, or that all the
roads by which men are seeking now are roads to no
result but ruin. In the words of an ancient " Deus est
:

mortali juvare mortalem et htec ad seternam gloriam

via;" the way is open, and the combined, concerted
efforts of mankind may yet make it the thoroughfare of

nations. We are not somuch in love with the past as to

think the victory is won if we
live our life no worse, after
its kind, than the ancestors
gone before us into everlast-
ing peace, lived theirs. But there is a victory to win it ;

is the great mystery which no

prophet has power to
reveal, the open impenetrable secret of the future whether,
206 NATURAL LAW.
man pitted against the powers of darkness, man will
triumph, or at last succumb, or must for ever linger on as
now, struggling, compromising, bartering old loss for new
gain, journeying leagues upon a treadmill that would
crush him in its cranks if he ceased to keep up the form
of progress which holds him rooted to the spot. People
cry out after an Unknown God, and reverence an unnamed
Unknowable, and thus much of piety we profess towards
the unsounded infinites of real Being we do not believe,
;

feel, or see them to contain the materials for a law of

stable imperfection. Evil there is, change there is, but
we see no inherent vitality in the maladjustment of
things dooming the real changes which shall take place
to preserve unbroken just this measure of mal-adjust-
ment which makes life to many of us an evil lot. The
success that we should praise, that we desire and some-
times almost believe in, is growth towards a more and
more harmonious social life, such an organisation of mate-
rial interests that it shall not seem to any one as if the

imperfection of a fellow could minister to his good, or the

suffering of a fellow to his happiness it is such a general
:

development of scrupulous intelligence that men shall live

in religious awe of consequences, and act as those who
must give account for their doings, even to the third

generation of effects :it is a life so lawful and orderly for

the masses that the leaders of thought need not despair of

finding a fulcrum in their hearers' feeling when they point
to a better that might be done if we willed it is agree-
:

ment, outspoken agreement, a friendship as brotherly as

in primitive religions, between all those who have one
faith, in human nature one hope, in human effort one
; ;

God, in the soul's vision of a perfect right and alas one

;
!

baptism of sin, sorrow, and privation, from which few of

us emerge without wounds, stain, or discouragement.
We cannot tell, for the experiment has never yet been
tried, what human life might be if all the faculties of

living men and women were spent in making it easy to

 RELIGION. 207

each other to live as human beings should. At present it

is difficult, and the few who are born with the power of

doing much to make the existence of the many less diffi-

cult are hampered in the exercise of their function by our
stupidity, and wait with patient compassion, scarcely
touched with scorn, for the time when great deeds may be
again possible to those who may again have a united mul-
titude to lead on what it shall have learned to be its own

way, and who, seeing the natural order ere it yet exists,
will once more dare to believe that the record of their
vision isprophetical. But if the heroes delay too long,
we need not wait their help to build up
"
The Being that we are ;

Thus deeply drinking in the soul of things,

We shall be wise perforce, and while inspired
By choice, and conscious that the Will is free,
Shall move unswerving, even as if impelled

By strict necessity, along the path

Of order and of good. Whate'er we see,
Or feel, shall tend to quicken and refine ;

Shall fix, in calmer seats of moral strength.

Earthly desires, and raise to loftier heights
Of divine love our intellectual soul."
 V.

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF

ALTRUISM.
" "Whoever was to be born at
all, was to be born a child, and to do before
he could understand, and be bred under laws to which he was always bound,
but which could not always be exacted ; and he was to choose when he could
not reason, and had passions most strong when he had his understanding
most weak, and was to ride a wild horse without a bridle, and the more need
he had of a curb, the less strength he had to use it; and this being the case
of all the world, what was every man's evil became all men's greater evil ;
and though alone it was very bad, yet when they came together it was made
much worse; like ships in a storm, every one alone hath enough to do to
outride it but when they meet, besides the evils of the storm, they find the
;

intolerable calamity of their mutual concussion, and every ship that is ready
to be oppressed with the tempest is a worse tempest to every vessel against
which it is violently dashed. So it is in mankind ; every man hath evil
enough of his own, and it is hard for a man to live soberly, temperately, and
religiously ; but when he hath parents and children, brothers and sisters,
friends and enemies, buyers and sellers, lawyers and physicians, a family
and a neighbourhood, a king over him or tenants under him, a bishop to rule
in matters of government spiritual, and a people to be ruled by him in the
affairs of their souls, then it is that every man dashes against another, and one
relation requires what another denies ; and when one speaks, another will
contradict him ; and that which is well spoken is sometimes innocently mis-
taker., and that upon a good cause produces an evil effect. And by these,
and ten thousand other concurrent causes, man is made more than most
miserable." JEREMY TAYLOR.
" That which hitherto hath been
spoken concerneth ratural agents con-
sidered in themselves. But we must further remember also (which thing to
touch in a word shall suffice), that as in this respect they have their law,
which law directeth them in the means whereby they tend to their own per-
fection, so likewise another law there is, which toucheth them as they ore
sociable parts united into one body ; a law which bindeth them each to serve
unto other's good, and all to prefer the good of the whole to whatsoever
their own particular ; as we plainly see they do, when things natural in that
regard forget their ordinary natural wont, that which is heavy mounting
sometime upwards of its own accord, and forsaking the centre of the earth,
which to itself is most natural, even as if it did hear itself commanded to let
go the good it privately wisheth, and to relieve the present distress of nature
in common." HOOKEB.
 " sufficient reason for moral conduct
"
Retrospect The naturally identified
with the standard of morality : Conscience, Utility, or Perfection
Action instinctive or rational; instinctive action disinterested Power
of acting (which generates wish to act) increases more rapidly than

power of enjoying Power of acting with or upon other men craves

exercise as it develops When sensible pleasures are too few to supply
ends for all men borrow enough of their neighbours'
the active energies,
consciousness to furnish new ends for rational pursuit The natural
history of altruism Social discords accidental Social wisdom and virtue
consist mainly in harmonising the tendencies that exist, not in bringing
them all into conformity with some outer standard The general law
of social duty enforced by penal sanctions, the force of which upon the
human will is due to those same natural tendencies which caused the
law to be proclaimed.
 V.

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ALTRUISM.

IN the foregoing argument, the critical reader will perhaps
be inclined to object, that we have travelled a long way in
search of a starting-point that we might as well have taken
for granted at once. We have thrown no new light on the
philosophy of legislation, or the nature of human duties,
or the propriety of religious observances. have only We
vindicated, by somewhat far-fetched processes, our right
to speak of law, morality, and religion in the tone of good,
common-sensible people, who do take for granted that the
law of the land and of conscience are to be obeyed and
reverenced, and the Best they know reverenced and loved.
Such a task may well seem unproductive. We have
added no stone to the sacred building of human duty and
aspiration our part has been rather that of the idle spec-
;

tator, who assures a frightened child that the building

will not tumble down, though the workmen are busy
knocking away the scaffolding that seemed to hold it up,
and really did support the builders whose work is over for
a season. When the last defacing plank is carried away,
we see the edifice erect, and ask what stone of it is want-
ing ? but we have not yet described the fabric. We have
tried to show that moral obligation may be recognised
without unreason, and that the natural feeling of man is
not hostile to the supreme forces which rule his will, but
we have avoided entering in any detail upon the substance
of the moral law till we could speak of its precepts as at
once supremely authoritative and yet enforced by purely
natural sanctions.
212 NATURAL LAW.
If our reasoning has been correct, the dictates of nature,
law, morality, and religion substantially coincide; they
are different phases of the same general tendency, varying

only in the intensity of their and in the

self- consciousness

number of phenomena presented by each one in orderly

relations. The existence of the universe is a physical, to
our apprehension, an ultimate fact but as soon as this fact
:

has been perceived or postulated, everything within the

universe is, at least in theory, equally explicable that is to ;

say, every real process may be observed if the human senses

are acute enough, or aided by sufficiently delicate instru-
ments, to record the phenomena as they occur ; and every
real relation amongst the different series of observed facts

may be known and classed with other real relations, if the

human intellect is comprehensive enough to take in and
co-ordinate ail the material furnished to
it by perception.

The simplest phenomena of life are to us as mysterious as

the refinements of the intellect and conscience, and the
" "
result which we call understanding in the one case is,

humanly speaking, equally attainable in all.

To make the existence of law, morality, and religion
appear reasonable, we must take account that it is also
natural and real. We do not suppose any transcendental
or metaphysical necessity at work to make men peaceable,
moral, or affectionate ; and if habits of order and virtue
could be proved to be unreasonable, that is to say, con-
ducive to ends not deliberately desired by sane men, we
do not doubt that the human race would very reasonably
put an end to its own existence by their disuse. But
reason does not operate in vacua; it presupposes some
data in nature and fact and if it is on the whole natural
;

to man to act generally in accordance with the rules of

law and justice, this fact gives an element of reasonable-
ness to the sentiment which survives the most rationalistic
criticism of moral obligation the sentiment of acquies-
cence in the force of those rules.
The difficulty experienced by a candid theist in con-
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ALTRUISM. 213

ceiving how disinterested virtue can survive if religious faith

from the fact that all his own disinterested
is lost, arises

feeling towards the Not-self is associated with his own parti-

cular beliefs about the Not-self and its nature. But where
those beliefs are entirely wanting, their place is taken, not
by the comparatively few natural impulses that, if uncon-
trolled, might lead to impiety or lawlessness, but by a still
disinterested apprehension of the real relations of the self
to the Not-self, which could scarcely be expected to contain
within it a motive for the impossible subversion of that
relation. The explanation of such harmony as there is
between the will of man and the laws of the world in
which he lives is that the evolution of human conscious-
ness took place, historically, under conditions of which
those laws are the record. Individual men are numbered
amongst the elements of which the whole, the universe, is
composed, and their life as parts includes cohesion to the
other parts with which their existence is bound up and ;

since the cohesion is real, the after-reflection which acqui-

esces in its reality cannot be called unreasonable.
It would be vain indeed to hope to persuade the mass
of mento co-operate disinterestedly with the universe in

perfecting the human species up to the highest point which

the constitution of the universe will allow if they would
really rather not. We
only suggest that most of them
have a slight natural tendency or inclination to do so
already, that is likely to grow stronger rather than weaker
by becoming increasingly self-conscious. have noWe
standard of humanperfection outside the suggestions of
human attainment, and there is no apparent source, ex-
cept the practice or aspirations of men, from whence the
"
moral ideal to which they themselves think they " ought
to approximate can have been derived but science can-
;

not ignore the fact that they have an ideal, and, fortu-
nately for our peace of mind, science does nothing to
destroy or lower whatever ideal they have. Naturalists
at least escape the mental trouble of religious doubts and
214 NATURAL LAW.
difficulties, which are so familiar a trial to those who,

consciously or otherwise, try to serve two masters, and

own two laws, of nature and super-nature.
The subjective aspect of morality, or the feeling of
obligation in general, is the product of a certain minimum
stability of type in the human species, conjoined with the
highly evolved consciousness peculiar to man, which adds
a peculiar sense of subjective necessity to the persistence
in certain classes of natural actions when they are in

any way impeded ;

this is the physical or natural explana-
tion of conscience, and if correct in fact, would be per-

fectly satisfactory to reason. The matter of morality, or

the nature of the moral ideal which their common human-
ity, soto speak, sets before the mind and will of indi-
vidual men, has not the same appearance of a logical or
natural necessity as that which ensures and demonstrates
the existence of a moral law of some sort. If men had
been,by nature or kind, something quite different from
what they are, they might still have had a morality, if
their consciousness and their relation to the medium of
their activityhad been of the same order as at present,
but its substance or precepts might have been altogether
out of relation to the life with which we are familiar.
Yet morality, to us, is so essentially a practical matter,
that our feeling does not recognise, as a motive for doing
what to us is right, this general fact of conditionedness,
which might conceivably have allowed us to become sub-
moral law from the one we actually own.
ject to a different
We do not say that the right is right because we have come
to feel it so it is
; right because we do feel it to be so,
though we acknowledge, as an intellectual possibility, that
a different species in a different medium might be bound
by quite different rules of feeling as well as of fact.
The existing difference of opinion as to the sufficient
reason for doing right is
really a form of the existing un-
" "
certainty as to what constitutes the Tightness of an
action. It is agreed that some things are right, and that
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ALTRUISM. 215

what isright ought to be done ; but we want a satisfac-

tory test, which shall at once guide and verify our judg-
ment and impulses, and itself receive verification from our
intuition that in every case the conduct which satisfies the
test is really and truly the very
right. Moral science can
have no existence unless such a test is to be found, for we
own no duties except such as are knowable and feasible,
we feel no obligation to stumble by guess work in the
dark, and the moral antinomies with which some writers
are pleased to darken the counsels of perfection are as re-

pugnant to sane feeling as to clear and adequate thought.

This demand for a test or standard of moral right sug-
gested itself at the beginning of the discussion, but in
repeating it here, we do not reopen the whole question ;
we have still, it is true, to choose between the lists of
obligations made out in conformity with rival tests, but
we are free to accept, without metaphysical scruples, the
force of whichever code our choice virtually accepts in its

entirety, by its acceptance of the appropriate standard.

Our will is reasonably and necessarily bound by some
moral law ;
we have only to agree upon its substance and
proclaim its sanctions.
If we leave out of account theories which include an
appeal to divine revelation, the competing standards may,
for practical purposes, be reduced to four the test of con-
:

science, or conformity to the moral feeling of the indi-

vidual; the test of Hedonism, or selfish Utilitarianism,
namely, conduciveness to the greatest happiness of the
agent that of Social Utilitarianism, i.e., conduciveness to
;

the greatest happiness of the greatest number and lastly, ;

the test of moral and religious idealism, conduciveness to

the greatest general perfection. Of course we cannot
attempt to decide a priori which of these classes of con-
" "
siderations ought to be preferred, or assume that one
standard is intrinsically more beautiful and exalted than
another ;
our business is only to ascertain, by analysis,
comparison, and inference, which class of considerations
216 NATURAL LAW.
most men are, or habitually wish to be, guided by, because
natural wish is
incipient tendency ; and though the order
of nature not so adjusted as to provide for the indul-
is

gence of every individual human wish, general tendencies,

or wishes common to a whole species, cannot, we suppose,
have arisen, and become even to some extent hereditary,
under conditions habitually adverse to their growth and
exercise. Even when the nature of the moral ideal gene-
rally accepted had been determined, we should not there-
" "
fore be entitled to say that each individual ought to
feel the pursuit of the same ideal binding on Ms con-
science. My belief or conviction that you ought to do
your duty (especially to me) is too much reinforced by
my obvious interest to be allowed any serious scientific
weight, and not the least among the practical advantages
of our theory is that it promises to relieve us from the
burdensome and unremunerative task of keeping our
neighbours' consciences for since consciences can honestly
;

disagree, while the moral beliefs of the individuals are an

essential condition of the obligations he feels, the subjec-
tive rule of right may differ for you and me, even though
we both believe that thereis only one true objective rule.

In order, then, to find the test of right in conscience, we

should either have to assume that most consciences agree,
and that the majority are right, which would leave the
decision of conscience in each particular case open to de-
bate, or we should have to take conscientiousness, a word
with a perfectly exact and intelligible meaning, as itself
the standard; assuming not only that most consciences
are right, but also that most decisions of the same con-
science are right too, so that the most conscientious persons,
i.e., those who most uniformly act in accordance with their

own belief as to what is right, are also the best or most

virtuous. The association of merit with the word " con-
"
scientious proves sufficiently that this is the general con-
clusion, but the double character of the process of infer-
ence makes the standard more than usually uncertain as a
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ALTRUISM. 217

practical guide. If, as previously maintained, what people

honestly believe to be right is the nearest approach pos-
sible (to them) to their own natural good or perfection,
conscientiousness must be called a good ;
it is the quality
most essential to the individual that aims at being good of
its kind. But the species man, we must remember, is
divided into many and the same, or nearly
sub-classes,
the same, degree of conscientiousness may be accompanied
by great inequality and divergence of tastes and faculties ;

to a certain extent even, in matters of morality, each

individual may be said to constitute a class apart, for the
natural aspiration of the individual is to attain its own
good, not a good as like as possible to that which its
neighbour thinks good; and if the attempt is successful,
since nature is her own standard of perfection, it is not

easy to see how we can rationally give the preference over

one well-developed nature to another nature, no better
developed, of a different kind, unless by reference to some
naturally existing objective standard. The naturally con-
ditioned aspirations of different individuals fix the out-
line ofwhat is good for each of them ; but the mere exist-
ence of a strong inward bias in favour of one class or
another of actions or abstentions gives little presumption
in favour of the wisdom or goodness of the acts deter-
mined by the bias. The bias of the majority is right in
the majority of cases, but such an empirical generalisation
as this gives us no help in the only cases where help is

needed, i.e., when the doubt arises whether we have to do

with an example of the general rule or an exception to it.
The standard of Utilitarianism is open to precisely the
same objection as the standard of conscience in the one ;

case moral, in the other, physical inclination supplies the

rule, and the ruling of inclination is not invariable. Con-
stancy in the subjective element is secured by taking spon-
taneity, in the first or the second degree, as the essential
part of lawfulness ; but the impulses of conscience and desire
do not always and necessarily lead to an objective good,
218 NATURAL LAW.
and we are loth to abandon the faith that evil results
must spring from some other root than good. We want
a rule that can never falter or mislead. The external
motives to the pressure of which men are exposed, and the
internal susceptibilities which determine the effect of the
motives, are in general innocent as well as natural in their
tendency, and in general men act as comes natural to
them without scrupulous self-questioning. Sometimes the
inner rule of conscience narrows the area of natural
choice, and forbids the will to choose a demoralising
pleasure or to follow a maleficent impulse. But there is
a still higher tribunal before which the conscience itself
may be arraigned, and found guilty of narrowness, preju-
dice, and short or oblique vision. Sensible good and moral

good are excellent things in their way, but they are each only
parts of the supreme natural good of Natural Perfection ;
and it is to this ultimate standard of natural good that we
must appeal before we can find a rule at once recognisable
and acceptable to the will, feeling, and intelligence of each
man as supreme for other men as well as for himself, and
for himself as well as for others. That which is praised
as good, semper) ubiqiie, db omnibus, is not man's changing
sense of pleasure, not Ms changing sense of duty, it is the
perfect life, made up of pleasure, duty, and energetic impulse,
with their unexplained substratum of natural force.
"We have before this met the anticipated objection that
the standard of natural perfection itself must vary, if
growth and evolution are among the facts of nature.
Moral obligation is always the same, as regards man, the
moral agent, however much the range of dutiful action
may be extended; and the perfection of the moment is
always the same, as regards the sum of things and persons
then naturally existing, though each succeeding age may
witness the development of fuller and more varied being
than its predecessors. The standard of natural good
varies with the multiplication or differentiation of natural
existence, but the standards are always alike in the form
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ALTRUISM. 219

of their exactingness, and there is only one standard at a

time to which conformity is right, while the relation in
which the men of each generation stand to their own
proper standard is unchanging.
Of course it is an effort to the mind, and still more,
perhaps, to the feelings, to recognise the permanence of
relations amid the flux of things, and the permanent

qualities of things amid their varying relations ;

but
we have no right to expect either the theory or the
application of ethical science to be easy, seeing that it
deals with the most complex relations of the most com-

plex of natural beings the relations of men amongst

themselves. But it is at all events needless to afflict our-
selves with difficulties that neutralise each other, and
combine speculative despair over the unintelligible pre-
judicemen feel in favour of right conduct with querulous
complaints over the absence of a sufficient reason for prac-
tical rectitude. It is impossible to find broad general

arguments to support the paradox that it would be better

for every one, everywhere and always, to have preferred
natural evil or imperfection to good. It may be said with
truth that many persons would get more sensible, personal
pleasure out of their lives by well-chosen lapses from vir-
tue than by conduct uniformly in accordance with the
counsels of perfection and any one wTho has the courage
;

of the opinion may add that the reasons available in such

cases are not sufficient to make self-sacrifice rational.
And we know in practice that they are not, unfortunately,
found sufficient by many persons of dull moral sensi-
bility. But this does not make it any more possible to
maintain, on abstract grounds, the paradox that dull moral
sensibility is a natural good or condition of good. law, A
to revert to our first definition, is a statement of con-
stant relations posited by the nature of things, and no
constant relations follow from the nature of things in so
far as they are abnormal, i.e., of irregular or imperfect de-

velopment after their kind.

220 NATURAL LAW.
Moral good lias no existence apart from human feelings
of obligation, but the law accepted and proclaimed by
conscience is not one of its own invention ; it formulates
necessities which owe at least half their being to external
influences, and these outward conditions of all the truft
provisions of natural law subsist independently of the
human sensibilities which they help to keep alive. It is
because the broad conditions of life and association are the
same for every one, everywhere and always, that we count
every one as subject to the same moral law, and blame
imperfect sensibility to moral considerations as a flaw in
the human character, and it is not a valid objection to the
natural generality of the law that it is sometimes broken
and sometimes obeyed with difficulty.
The history of morality, for any one capable of dealing
with so wide a subject, would consist mainly in an account
of the successive development of impulses, feelings, and
desires which resulted, under historical conditions, in

forming the human character into those habits and capa-

bilities of feeling and action which give their actual force
to natural and moral motives; and at each stage we
should now, the rival standards of utility, con-
find, as

science,and idealism (more or less obscurely expressed)

used to measure the distance between what was, and what,
" "
it was supposed, ought to be. The only part of this pro-
cess that immediately concerns us is the relative share of
moral and utilitarian considerations in determining con-
duct to tend towards the objective best, and the several
contributions of disinterested and self-regarding motives
to the composite system of needs and wishes out of which
a supreme ideal of good is to be selected as the aim of
aspiration rather than desire.
Grote, in his criticism of the Utilitarian philosophy, has
noticed the fallacy of neglecting the energetic principles of
human nature, and treating all action as if it were motived
by some form or other of sensibility. In point of fact,
the division of human motives into selfish and other-
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ALTRUISM. 221

1
selfish ones, needs to be supplemented by a distinction
between moral unselfishness, or disinterested action con-
ducive to the general good, and the objective material
altruism of acting for or upon other things, for the sake of
acting, not for the sake of any personal end involved in
the action between the moral unselfishness of feeling for
;

and with the pleasures of others and the constitutional

expansiveness which makes the individual depend even
for selfish pleasures on the acts and feelings of other

people. And in examining the normal motives for action,

we must not be misled by the double-entendre of Utilitari-
anism, which argues that in all cases alike we do as we
please, because ifwe didn't please, we might do something
else,and that therefore our pleasure is the ultimate
motive of all our acts. In all cases, no doubt, we do as we
choose, or will, but the preference is of a different kind,

and has different causes, and

arbitrary to assume that
it is

because the result is the same, i.e., some kind of act or

abstention, the motive must be the same, either physically
or to consciousness. The assumption begs the very
question at issue, whether all human motives can be
brought under the same head, or have any one common
quality besides efficiency.
To ascertain the kind of inducements that determine the
will to one action rather than another, we need to know
the kind of ends which the mind is naturally qualified,
which is nearly the same thing as predisposed, to follow.
The sensible good or evil of the organism, that is, pleasure
or pain, are motives to action or forbearance when circum-
stances bring them, directly or indirectly, before the mind,
but they are by no means coextensive with the possible
field of human action. Pleasure and pain are forms of
consciousness, but there are states of consciousness
that are indifferent without therefore being incapable of

1 Some purists object to " altruist" as barbarous, but we have no con-

venient English synonym.
222 NATURAL LAW.
determination to action. 1 Except so far as conscious-
ness is
Ding an sich, our own existence is phenomenal,
a series of phenomenal states of consciousness; if other
phenomena than those of our own natural life can find a
place in consciousness, it is obvious that such conscious-
ness may suggest fresh ends of action, and if such ends
come again to be adopted by the will, they may even take
the form of personal sensibility and compete with the
primary impulses and desires of sense. The only abso-
lutely undecomposable pleasures the enjoyment of which
can be proposed as an end are those connected with the
bodily senses, for the satisfaction arising from the con-
sciousness of faculty, the exercise of the power to do what

belongs to a man, as well as merely to enjoy, is scarcely

separated in consciousness from the rational motive or
instinctive impulse that has led to the exercise of the

faculty.
We are not in a position to explain why the pleasure of
different passive states of consciousness is much differen-
tiated (e.g.,
the enjoyment of the gourmand and of the
musical amateur), while the pleasurableness of all activity
is generically alike, though the localisation of perception

in special organs has probably something to do with the

fact. identity of an action that we think and speak
The
of as one built up of many elements, the connection
is

between which may be entirely ideal, and as conscious-

nessis certainly localised, there can be no bodily sense of

a complicated performance capable of developing into a

special pleasurable perception or state of consciousness.
All human action that is not determined to the gratifica-
tion of simple appetites is compounded of the blind dis-
interested impulse to act as we can, accompanied by a

1
"If action were strictly dependent on sensation and emotion, it would
be found to be always proportionate to those stimuli, but such propor-
tion palpably and notoriously fails to hold good. . Without this spon-
. .

taneity of our actions the growth of volition or of activity guided to ends,

is all but inexplicable." BAIN Senses and Intellect, p. 84.
:
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ALTRUISM. 223

faint general sense of pleasure in the consciousness of

action,which becomes stronger as the ideal integration
of the action proceeds; to which is added an
imaginary
foretaste of the pleasure or other good that is to be the
final effect of the action considered as a whole.
Passive states of consciousness, if they were equally
and indifferently pleasurable, would not furnish motives to
one variety of action rather than another, and as all action
is in itself indifferent, the coincidence of the inducements
of sense with the incitements of instinct appears to have
been the original condition of the varied life, which is
itself the condition of what we cal rational action. In-
creasingly various action among different sections of the
community results in the formation of new relations, which
suggest new interests, social as well as self-regarding, and
the pursuit of every fresh interest under conditions of grow-
ing complexity is pregnant with new possibilities of insti-
gation. But the pleasure found in the fulfilment of simple
tendencies becomes less clearly marked in actions which,
though still normal, are of so composite a character that
the intellectual element in the satisfaction accompanying
itswamps the sensible delight. In the contrast between
the incessant restless activity of the civilised man and the
dolce far niente existence of the savage in a favourable

climate, nothing is more remarkable than the disproportion

between the increase of the power to will and that of the
power to enjoy. The senses have not grown more numer-
ous or acute, and though susceptibility to their influences
may have been in some cases refined and heightened, their
solicitations probably suggest, absolutely as well as com-

paratively, fewer actions to the Western European than to

the South Sea islander. It would be paradoxical to say
that as life becomes more complicated and intellectual, it
becomes less rational, that is to say, made up of actions
where impulse counted proportionately for more and in-
ducements for less than with the savage but when we
;

find an increase in the number and difficulty of the

224 NATURAL LAW.
actions habitually performed, without any corresponding
increase in the number or strength of the sensible induce-
ments we are led to conclude, not
for their performance,
that the action but that it is still deliberately
is irrational,

directed towards the attainment of an end, only to some

other end than sensible enjoyment. We conclude that,
consciously or not, the sufficient reason which in practice
moves the mass of men to their habitual modicum of
innocent and meritorious activity is the force of their
own native tendency towards the chief natural good of
full specific life, not a narrower preference for the limited
number of ends accidentally made desirable for them-
selves.
We do not have to choose between Nature, Pleasure, and
Morality, as three rival masters with incompatible claims ;

life, joy, and virtue are all equally natural, but every

natural good is followed by the shadow of a corresponding

evil natural privation or strife and hence we come to
distinguish as good of a special kind the rarer, hardly- won
goal of pleasant or perfect life we distinguish between
;

natural good and evil; between natural perfection and

the want of force or want of harmony which makes life
painful or abnormal; between the measure of natural
imperfection which ends in sensible pain the injury of
one sufferer, and that which results in vital evil in the
self-perpetuating wrongness of action antagonistic to the
common natural good. And after contemplating the phe-
nomena of life from every side, we come to the result that
man is more essentially a moral agent than a self-pleasing
one ;
that is to say, the largest part of his existence is
actuallyand potentially determined by the tendencies ot
healthy within and around him, and consists in more
life

or less conscious service of and co-operation with those

tendencies ;
while only the lesser part is determined by a
craving for the personal sense of healthy life which con-
stitutes the good fortune of the happy. The more con-
scious and complete this service of nature at her best, tho
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ALTRUISM. 225

more morally excellent the agent; the more objectively

efficient the service, and the more easily and it is
gaily
rendered, the greater his natural perfection. But if

objective hindrances quite beyond the agent's control

make the service of nature's best from first to last a painful
toil, man is left with no natural good but the moral good
of self-devotion, and we are not justified in
imposing
the human standard on nature, and praising the virtue
of an order which teaches some few of us to attain what,
in a world where it is needed, we think the chief good, the

power of self-devotion to the common Best. We are only

tempted to exalt morality above nature as we unhesitat-

ingly exalt above pleasure, when we find
it human virtue
waging unequal war against natural evil, and more natur-
ally admirable in defeat than the most omnipotent of fiends
throned in a subject universe. We are the children of
nature, and self-respect, if not filial piety, should warn us
not to disparage our descent but our parent, with rever-
;

ence be it said, is of hybrid birth, and true piety should

make us faithful to the finest strain in our ancestry, and it
is on thisground that we venture to claim as truly natural
in ourselves all that is most in harmony with what we

call best in the works of the great genetrix.

The manifestations of innocent natural force in the
ordinary activities of life must be called disinterested but ;

with the development of intelligence, of which the chief

feature is the passing into consciousness of an increasing
number of natural tendencies, those forms of natural action
which have most nearly established themselves as habits
are acquiesced in by the will, and the ends which their
exercise tends to effect are proposed by reason as the goal
towards which other stray faculties and unoccupied im-
pulses are to be directed. In other words, will is sub-
stituted for desire as a motive, and the will is so nearly
arbitrary that it may almost be called free as well as dis-
interested; and it is only by tracing something like an
orderly sequence in its resolves that we can prove dis-
p
226 NATURAL LAW.
interested volitions to be not necessarily unreasonable, or

abnormally arbitrary. Granting that there is something

peculiarly rational in action which promises to procure the
enjoyment of some sensible good, which, under favourable
circumstances, is also the natural good of the active or-
ganism, some action must also be taken to employ the
facultieswhich are either unfitted for the quest of sensible
pleasure, or for any reason temporarily released from its
pursuit. When ideal ends of conduct are substituted for
material ones, since the substitution is entirely disin-
terested, the ends that will be proposed will be not such
as are useful or agreeable, but such as are possible, such
as the individual is naturally able to propose, and it does
not follow that his ability in this respect will be great, for
we do not allow that the imagination can do more than
rearrange the data of former experiences.
Experience seems to show that when men are ripe for
action, but have no motive of their own to act upon, they
borrow enough of their neighbour's consciousness to sug-
gest one or rather, perhaps, when the habit of acting or
;

feeling in certain ways has become deeply rooted in our

nature, sympathetic motives or the mere representation of
the circumstances are enough to rouse it into exercise. It
would be impossible to form, much less to indulge, the
complicated artificial desires of civilised life in a total soli-
tude. The actions in which we learn to take pleasure are
actions performed with, by, or upon our fellow-men, and
as the purpose which makes the action rational is some
ideal end not the material mechanical steps in its per-
formance, with which alone sensible pleasure could be
associated the elements of which the pleasure is made up
will be ideal also.The simplest form in which we see the
action of borrowed motives is in the observance of custom,
which always a shade more constant than a mere natural
is

agreement of inclination and circumstances would make it,

to which fact, indeed, its incipient legality is owing. But
the first new faculty, of a distinctly human kind, which we
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ALTRUISM. 227

must suppose to have been developed by the

practice of
social that of influencing and being influenced
life, is by
the thoughts and conduct of other individuals of the same
species. Besides the faint natural pleasure attendant on
the exercise of this, as of any other normal faculty (which
favours its development, as children learn to talk by chatter-
ing for the pleasure of making themselves heard), the mere
power of perceiving the thoughts and feelings of others
adds immensely to the number of received impressions, i.e.,
of possible motives. What other people think or feel
about us or about our conduct becomes a motive at a very
early stage, and when we have once begun to feel an
C
concern * n an y thing so remote from self as
i sv th t'

other people's feelings, it is an easy step to extend the con-

cern to their feelings about other topics than the sympathiser.
The power which men have of acting upon, or of enter-
ing into each other's feelings, is real, natural, and imper-
fectly developed we believe a tendency towards its further
;

development to be also natural and real, and the conscious-

ness of its existence as the most essential characteristic
of man as man
to be the source of all our moral ideas. A
few thousand years are not much in the history of a species,
and the power of sympathetic passion and moral action
or action towards a good made such by human feeling
are still, we hold, engaged in evolutionary throes. Men
wish to act and feel together, but they have not yet learned
how to do so, except imperfectly and with effort. Altru-
ism in some shape or other is so essential a part of civil-
ised social life that it does not occur to us to regard some
of its more ordinary manifestations as moral. Tyranny,
ambition, emulation, all the passions that are most active
in leading to the exploitation of man by man, are rudi-

mentary forms of altruism, expressions of the impulse that

drives every one to try to enlarge his own life by appro-

priating, dominating, or identifying himself with the lives

of those around him. The men who built the Pyramids
228 NA TURAL LA W.
were certainly not egotists and the submission of their
;

subjects, the consent which is the condition of all

dominion, is still more clearly altruistic; the great pro-
blem of history, how on the side of the oppressors there
was power to oppress the most mighty many is to be
solved, not by such a contradiction in terms as is involved in
the physical coercion of the many by the few, of the strong
by the weak, but by the habitual weakness of purely selfish
ambitions in the majority, and their willingness to identify
themselves with the aims and sympathise with the wishes
of any one whose wishes are strong enough to carry with
him the minds and wills of his tools and if men can thus
;

be carried captive by each other's baser cupidities, they may

in like manner be subjugated by the power of disinterested

aspirations.
The moral progress of society consists in a growing har-

mony between the feeling of different centres of conscious-

ness, or between the personal feeling of each ego and its
representation of external feelings. The tyrannical altruist
insists on effecting the harmony by modifying the attitude
of the subject mind, or controlling its tendencies ; the

sympathetic altruist desires the harmony of feeling as the

chief end, and rather than prolong the discord, submits to
take an uncongenial impression. The stronger will, if not
naturally bad, i.e., irreconcilable with the general tenden-
cies of society and nature (in which case resistance to it is

moral), compels the more imaginative, emotional, or affec-

tionate nature to follow its lead, rather than inflict the

pain of arrested power and impeded tendency on innocent

involuntary egotism. The rational altruist, on the other
hand, endeavours to give effect to the best will, whether
it be his own or another's if his own, not for that reason,
:

but for the sake of the good result ;

if another's, not from
the blind instinct of sympathy, but from enlightened
identity of purpose. The importance of sympathy as a
motive lies rather in its power to multiply the range of
inducement for acts naturally indifferent by the inter-
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ALTRUISM. 229

change of borrowed motive, than in the essential morality

of other-selfishnessbut at the same time, to have pre-
;

sent to the mind a strong

wish, of another person, that can
be gratified with no other sacrifice than that of a weaker
wish of our own, is to be conscious of a share in the moral,
life of the social organism and though the happiness of
;

one man is of no more account to nature than that of

another, the sum total of natural good is clearly greater if
disinterested energy and innocent enjoyment coexist by
favour of each other, than if energy is limited to self-
chosen ends, and enjoyment limited by self-possessed
powers. Just as in personal morality the ambitious im-
pulses may overrule the indolent aversion to labour, as

pride or vanity may control intemperance, so tenderness

towards the fond desire of a weaker friend, mere compas-
sion for another's pain, the will for a result that some one
else can reach if enough self-sacrificing industry is placed
at his command,are all motive forces as powerful within
the consciousness as if they were merely self-regarding in
their results, and they impose an obligation so irresistible
when it is felt at all, that we seem to escape a danger as
we reflect that such a force cannot, in the nature of things,
be brought habitually to bear against the common good.
The passion for living is too strong to be satisfied with
the actions or enjoyments physically possible to one indi-
vidual ; men do not think of the infinite as a possession
to be desired for its own sake, but their desires are infi-
nitely expansive, and, it may be, most vast and comprehen-
sive when least distinct and irresistible. Egotism calls
the imagination to help, its and enriches the single life
by representingas existing, magnified, embellished, or
it

at least repeated, in innumerable other consciousnesses.

"When people cannot add materially to their own powers,
pleasures, or possessions, they try to add to
them ideally
conscious of other apprehension of
by becoming persons'
and attractiveness and it is but a
their existence, extent, ;

step from taking pleasure in the thought that others share

23 o NATURAL LAW.
our consciousness of the advantages we really enjoy, to
trying to make their belief in
our enjoyment, especially of
of its real possession,
power, a substitute for consciousness
should that prove the more difficult of attainment. In
emulation, or the desire of "going beyond" other people,
the object is not primarily to do more than somebody else,
" "
only to do much, but much can only
be estimated by
"
a standard that seems to include another's little." There
is no object in doing more than other people of the same
kind, unless the kind of action is good: "excellence,"
etymologically a term of comparison, owes its complimen-
tary connotation to the fact that the unit, or standard, in
other people's practice is assumed to be positively good.
As Proudhon used to say, most social wrongs are based
upon an erreur de compte, and it isonly a miscalculation
that leads the ambitious egotist to substitute the shadow
for the reality as an object of pursuit, and to be content
with less of positive achievement than he might secure

himself, while hindering the achievement of others, to

maintain a perfectly unprofitable, comparative ascendency.
The beginning of egotism is the desire for sympathy, or
rather the desire for sympathy is a refinement of egotism :

the pleasure of being thought strong, or wise, or beautiful

adds something to the pleasure found in being so really ;
and an easy mistake to imagine that the second plea-
it is

sure be enjoyed without the first, and at less expense,

may
if we disguise ourselves, and cheat or plagiarise.

The imagination in general is neither more nor less

moral than the impulses in its suggestions; the real
motive for any action is what the whole mind, or as much
of as is brought to bear upon the matter, feels and judges
it

about it ; but this conclusion is affected not only by the

real strength ofcompeting inducements, but also by the
comparative ease with which their respective force can
be brought home to the imagination. Some independent
faculty, such as reason, has to be called in to arbitrate
when it is necessary to decide between such different in-
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ALTRUISM. 231

ducements as a present pleasure to be set against a future

pain, or a present pain to be followed by a future pleasure.
The imagination is sluggish even in reproducing past ex-
periences, and when really incommensurable motives are
brought before it as, for example, the pleasures of sin,
and the pains of everlasting damnation the result will
be arbitrarily determined by the susceptibility of the sub-
ject to one class of images rather than another. The
imagination furnishes motives for action when sensible
appetites or physical impulses are inadequate, but it is only
with culture and education that it becomes so realistic as
to make probable that all the inducements it holds forth
it

may have a real existence ; then it serves to give effect to

those inducements that are real, only not actually present
to sense, and these have a rudimentary or provisional
disinterestedness. Prudence, for instance, or the taking
thought for the morrow, is almost more truly the begin-
ning of altruism than vanity or affection our future self
;

is another than our present, and to be willing to make

sacrifices for its advantage proves that the representative
of intellect and emotion has begun
life to encroach upon
and control the presentations of sense. The reason that
so many of these natural developments of ego-altruism

appear at times unamiable, or practically mischievous, is

that, as aforesaid, men act as they can, not as they would,
and make up their ideas of the intention they seek to
realise as they go along, resolving while they act, and not

discovering till after the event, nor indeed always then,

what the consequences direct and remote of the action
may be.
The immense majority of the pleasures indulged in by
civilised adults are reducible to the satisfaction found in
following normal impulses, or exercising natural faculties
in the pursuit of ideal ends. The satisfaction of success
as such the same whatever the end proposed, and all
is

ideal ends are alike unselfish, whether the choice of

them is dictated by fancy, convention, or a moral con-
232 NATURAL LAW.
sciousness of the necessity for compromise between dif-
ferent natural impulses. The multiplication of human
faculties and the tendencies inciting to their exercise,
which accompanies the growing complexity of social life,
causes an ever larger proportion of civilised conduct to
fall under the direction of disinterested will, instead of

immediate personal desire, and we hope may even end by

of all for
substituting direct personal desires for the good
isolated, self-regarding aims.
Most of the troubles of society arise from a miscalcula-
tion which is commonly made at this point, owing to the
will having outgrown the reason, as well as the passions ;
or more exactly, as the willis properly the expression of

the whole nature, owing to the supremacy within the

nature of the active impulses over the intellect and the
affections. In the early years or centuries of a progres-
sive society, the ends which are sought by an increasing

variety of means, are still only the ends desired by the

natural man, namely, ease, enjoyment, and opportunity
for pleasurable action. Now, as all action is in itself indif-

ferent, and the actions performable by men practically

infinite,while they can learn to take a faint pleasure in
whichever they learn to perform successfully, it is evident
that had men known beforehand which actions each mem-
ber of the society would have to perform in order to
secure himself and every other member in the peaceable
exercise of as many natural faculties as possible, no selfish
interest was concerned to prevent the harmonious com-

pact. But they did not know. All began to follow natu-
ral innocent tendencies of their own, and the tendencies

shortly began to come into collision. When sensible

pleasures were concerned, there was a common ground, and

simple personal rights were easily established by law or
custom. The growth of the everyday virtues of temper-
ance, honesty, industry, and politeness is perfectly intelli-
gible as the result of growing social relations, which .could
only be made easy and permanent by their exercise the ;
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ALTRUISM. 233

general interest was not always present as a motive for

the good behaviour of the individual, whose
susceptibility,
in fact, was by no means always so developed as to have
made the conception of such interests a practical induce-
ment ;
but the general set of motive power was in favour
of the virtues being exercised, always, everywhere, and by

every one, even when personal reasons were wanting to

bribe the egotist to their exercise then and there.

Knowledge with its unvarying impartiality extends the

narrow range of feeling, and the law which a man wishes
to impose on his fellows, the constant formula of their

duty to him which he ventures to proclaim, imposes itself

on his own will as the natural and binding rule, unless
his imagination is of the erratic quality, able to conceive
the rest of the world as it really is, and himself as he is
not, i.e., independent of its general laws. But tendencies
not immediately and visibly injurious to a man's neigh-
bours, may, for that very reason, be followed unimpeded
tillthe power of following them has become pleasurable,
and the act of doing so a habit, painful to break. The
individual then becomes selfishly attached to the pursuit
of an intrinsically indifferent end, so that we may find tho
habit of a disinterested energy once formed and main-
tained without reference to rational inducements, simulat-
ing the appearance and producing the effects of an in-
conceivably insatiable egotism. To take a single, most
obvious illustration the pursuit of wealth is the principal
:

and most absorbing occupation in modern societies, and it

is a commonplace to observe that the pursuit becomes an

end in itself to most of those who engage in it, though

the enjoyment of possession is in the main symbolical.
Millionaires go on adding automatically to their wealth,
because their education has been too imperfect to suggest
tothem any useful or ornamental ways of diminishing it ;

and men who are so entirely at a loss for any intelligent

employment for their money, that they delegate the task
of throwing it away to their wives or sons, would yet
234 NA TURAL LA W.
resist with fervour any social changes that promised to
make their labour less superfluously lucrative.
We should have good reason to despair of the social
fabric ifit were necessary for its safety that we should

succeed in persuading the majority, or even a considerable

minority of men, to act habitually in a way opposed to
their own nature and desires. Such a task involves a
logical contradiction as well as a moral impossibility. But
nature can be educated, and desires are eminently variable ;
it is when one desire has grown into a monomania, as
only
the love of money with a miser, that reason has no hold
upon the mind to suggest limits and conditions to be
observed in its gratification. To most men the ruling
passion, however strong it may be, still does not stand

absolutely alone in the mind, other disinterested impulses

coexist with it, and only the mental habit of giving prece-
dence to one class of motives, not their greater natural
pleasurableness, is answerable for the blind persistency
with which men spend money for that which is not bread,
and their labour for that which satisfieth not. As M.
Littre observes, the chief use of education is to multiply
motives for action for to have many faculties is to have
;

many impulses, to have many impulses is to be accessible

to many motives, and to be accessible to many motives is
to be in'communication with many of the influences of the

Not-self, instead of being bound in unreasoning constancy

to one form of mechanical energising.
Most people are imperfect rather than bad, ignorant
rather than perverse, their will is not radically depraved,
but they do not see, or think, or feel, the whole real world
only touches upon stray corners of their minds they are ;

but fractions of men, and need a providence to protect

them, severally and conjointly, against the dangerous
energy of fractions, acting blindly as if they were wholes.
We are apt to take life too easily, forgetting for how many
centuries human hands and brains have been at work to
make it fruitfully hard; to rest satisfied with a narrow
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ALTRUISM. 235

automatic compliance with the machinery of the society in

which we live, forgetting that the machinery is all living
and plastic, that the parts have to find their own place, to
fit themselves together, to discover their own work, and

that the machine has to regulate itself. Something more

than disinterestedness is wanted here, for a society in
which every one spent his time in seeking the advantage
of somebody else might rival modern Europe in anarchy
unless it had more intelligence in its service, while with
sufficient intelligence it would probably come harmoni-

ously to a dead-lock, since no one would have any interest

of his own for the others to serve. As it has been ob-
served, however, selfishness, in the evil sense, consists not
"
in a man's love to his own happiness, but in placing that

happiness in things confined to himself;" and since no one

really does, or can place his happiness in things confined
to himself, it is evident that what society wants is not so
much benevolence as common sense, not so much devotion
as right reason, to lead its members to substitute, if neces-

sary, for one set of indifferent actions, or

one disinterested
end, another set not more indifferent or disinterested, but
more conducive to the common good.
The heightened sense of his own individuality which
comes with the first widening of his mental horizon, leads
the half-civilised man to conceive himself as the centre of
the universe, which he thinks is only there to minister to
his purposes. But as his knowledge extends and his sym-
pathies become more various, he discovers that he can be
affected by much that he cannot use, and act upon much
that he cannot enjoy. This glimpse of a wider existence
which it seems like a kind of suicide to renounce, co-oper-
ates with the other discovery which we have seen to be
equally natural, and perhaps still more inevitable,
that the
universe is by no means chiefly concerned in ministering to
the personal convenience or inclination of its inhabitants.
The pleasures of passion are found to be uncertain or un-
attainable, just as the pleasures of faculty are found
to be
236 NA TURAL LA IV.
infinitely various and rather more than coextensive with
the field for virtuous effort. The only source of pleasure
connected with the more complex, artificial faculties is the
pleasure of exercise, and all such exercises of faculty imply
a multiplied altruism concern with and subjection to
many things and persons beside the self. But at the pre-
sent stage in the world's history, in this nineteenth century,
the free exercise of natural faculties is fraught with so
many and distant consequences that to act much and yet
to act always reasonably, that is, so as not to defeat the
ends of any of the proposed actions by each other, has
become so difficult that, since action after all is natural, to
guide action by reason has become the supreme, almost the
one needful, virtue. Eeason has no power to invent mo-
tives, and no grounds upon in giving effect to one
to go
natural tendency rather than another, or to all rather than
a few, if the subject of the tendency has no will, that is, if
there no conscious tendency pre-existing for the reason
is

to direct. As a fact, however, men have a natural ten-

dency to exert whatever natural faculties they possess,
and reason has quite employment enough in guiding each
real faculty into the channel in which its exercise will
interfere least with other tendencies of equal strength and

authority. And
since the will is throughout disinterested,

enlightened reason draws no distinction between the ten-

dencies of the self and of other men for the casual attach-
;

ment of what we may call self-will to an end in no way

peculiarly suited to the nature of the whole man is emi-
nently ephemeral, its duration could not be calculated
upon even if it were desired. The reason then agrees with
the religiously disposed will in proposing to itself as an
end the realisation or fulfilment of all the tendencies it
discerns in nature in proportion to their strength or reality,
and while it has no bias in favour of distinctively altruistic
or benevolent impulses over egotistic or self-indulgent ones,
the fact thatall pleasures, except those of sense (which are

inadequate to motive more than the simplest acts of life),

 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ALTRUISM. 237

have an altruistic element, namely, the desire for sympathy,

and that some, as sympathy with the pleasures enjoyed by
others, are entirely altruistic, warrants the conclusion that
nature is at one with morality in the tendency to
merge
the particular in the universal good.
One life, our own, is too little for the least of us ;
we
seek to impart our consciousness, our thoughts as well as
our feelings, to others, and to receive back the impression
of their consciousness as a part of our own, a fresh element
in our personality, making us by so much the more alive.
But while, on the one hand, we try to enrich our life by
expansion and comprehension, by spreading it out in space
and making concern for ourselves in the doings of others,
of which it was not even necessary for us to know, on the
other hand, our consciousness seeks, as it were, to in-
tegrate itself in time and maintain the continuity of its
perceptions of yesterday and to-morrow. It is this in-
stinctive desire to make life an organic whole that revolts
against the glorification of pleasures that perish, as all
sensible pleasures do, in the moment of possession, over
the complex intellectual, and emotional states that pass,
perhaps in a moment of comparative indifference-; from

anticipation to memory, and are as enjoyable in one as in

the other shape. Knowledge by itself adds nothing to our

desires, except to our desire for more knowledge ;

fresh

powers ask no gratification except scope for their exercise,

and the appetites, which cannot help us in our main
aspiration, to make life rich, full, continuous, one, even
if their strength remains otherwise unimpaired, come to
occupy less of us in proportion. The power to enjoy
becomes weakened by use and deadened by exercise, which
makes enjoyment a habit, and as the habit of enjoyment
becomes inveterate, its indulgence becomes increasingly
difficult, and even laborious, and, labour for labour,
the
reason prefers a toil that is not spent in defeating its own
ends.
It must not, of course, be supposed that a rationalised
23 8 NATURAL LAW.
account of existing practices has any but the faintest
tendency to make practice more rational than it was
before. To know what we are doing, and why we began
to do it, is not a reason for ceasing from the deed, but
neither is it a reason for persisting in it with more ardour
than the original motive had inspired. The confusion
between the speculative and the hortatory elements in
most moral treatises is due, as before observed, to the fact
that every one really agreed in thinking morality good,
is

and that, therefore, theories of the nature of morality

expect to seem convincing in proportion to the success
with which they represent its excellence to the imagina-
tion. The correctness of a theory of virtue is not unrea-
sonably thought to be shown and proved by its practical
influence in making its adherents virtuous. But though
virtuous conduct is substantially the same with every one,
the motives that prevail with each individual in his moral
resolves will be as various as his opinions respecting the

comparative desirability of different ends. If nobody

could be good except the adherents of a sound ethical
system, virtue would perhaps not exist at all, or else it
would be the monopoly of a single sect. The manifest
absurdity of claiming such a monopoly for the small school
of scientific atheists obliges the theory to be content with

tracing the virtue of atheists and theists to a common

root, without pretending to furnish either class, much less
both, with one motive of universal application and unfail-

ing effect.

We only claim to have given a ground of common

sense and plain reason to a few ethical commonplaces,
which without such ground are open to suspicion as
edifying prejudices. Such brief and trite results had
need to be self-evident. The whole duty of man, we say, is
to live a sane and ample life in harmony with his fellows.
He does no wrong who lives sanely and innocently; he
does right who not only lives well himself but furthers the
efforts of others to live well likewise. It is not well to
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ALTRUISM. 239

live unhappily, but it is not wrong to prefer the happiness

of others to our own, and it is supremely right to prefer
the good of others, as well as our own good, to our own
happiness or enjoyment. This is the sum and substance
of the moral law, which suffers neither change nor diminu-
tion from the particular facts included in our moral expe-
riences.
Thosemen who are all incoherent impulse and ignorant
desire and every theory of morality must recognise the
existence of individuals possessing little moral strength or

stability are habitually overborne by the current of more

methodical energy, and leave few heirs to their infirmity
of will. Those who have coherent, if not altogether
intellectual desires, pursue in the main persistently the
course that promises to secure their gratification, and
adapt themselves almost unconsciously to the conditions
which their place in society imposes on the pursuit ; each

class, like each individual, works out a morality of its

own from some fixed starting-point of impulse growing
into use,and none of the impulses capable of being fol-
lowed with disinterested moral resolution are in them-
selves bad, only, as was observed of the legalisation of
class custom, no one impulse is a safe guide in its own

cause, and classes with a ruling impulse not much con-

trolled by intelligence are apt to act in a way that their

present sympathies would lead them to callimmoral

ifthey realised more clearly what it was. Moral remon-
strances cannot make humane impulses or sympathetic
emotions where they do not exist, and where they do
exist,morality exists implicitly, in premises that may
be

appealed to and built upon with confidence. Ignorance,

not disinterested malice, is the arch- foe to the wellbeing
of society, and without any addition to the purely social
virtues or to the conscientiousness of individuals, the
effect upon the will of fresh knowledge or a clearer percep-
tion of facts before but dimly apprehended, may be entirely
moral in result, though no other sanctions than the natural
 240 NATURAL LAW.
consequences of the action are present to enforce its per-
formance or omission.
But if we have succeeded in showing the origin of
human ideas respecting the just, the obligatory, and the
good to be entirely natural and their existence necessary
critics, who are not quite satisfied with the premises that
allow of such a conclusion being reached, will perhaps
retort, as sceptics are wont to do to the orthodox upholders
of established truth, by asking for an explanation, no

longer of the origin of good, but for that of evil, not how
virtue is possible, but why imperfection is real.
The human intellect is incapable of formulating or
understanding any other reason why a thing is thus or
thus, than a full, true, and particular account of Jioiu it is,
in itself and in relation to all the other things that are.
The origin of evil is the existence of things imperfect
after their kind, and each separate concrete case of imper-
fection has a long history which accounts to the reason for
.
the precise degree of imperfection observed to be a fact ;
but concerning anything antecedent to the beginning of the
history that is to say, any process or state generically alien
to whatever may be apprehended or represented by sense,

thought, or imagination rational thought and sane ima-

gination observe an absolute and unbroken silence ; not
that science has come to the end of the knowable, or that
existing forms of thought are final and inexpansive, but
that whatever we know and think has at least the one
quality in common, that it is known and thought by men,
and is therefore not antecedent to the real, historical con-

ditions of human knowledge and thought.

It is a fact that things of various degrees of perfection

exist, and the consciousness of his own existence, which

ismost strongly marked in man, takes in him the form of
an affirmation by the will of the precise degree of perfec-
tion actually attained at any moment. The will is not a
lawgiver imposing a constant course of action on some-
thing different from itself; an act of will is the declaration
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ALTRUISM. 241

"by the individual of that which it is natural to him to do

under the circumstances actually existing, and this decla-
ration is determined or conditioned by the nature of the
individual and the circumstances conjointly it states the
;

relation existing between them in a single case, such as, if

constantly recurring, would form a law. The most gene-

ral statement that we can easily make about the effect on
the human will and human affections of the objective
pressure of social motives is, to say that they determine a
moral liking or preference for those actions and feelings
which are best at the same time for the ego concerned and
for other human beings, best for the two parties in their
real relation, or in other words, those which establish be-
tween them the best of possible constant relations while ;

there is an incalculably stronger presumption in favour of

the best for both being realised if the immediate object of

pursuit is the good of others than if it is the personal good
of the agent. Duty speaks with the lawful authority of
many voices pleasure has no strength except in the long-
;

ing desire of the hungry unit, who, in the immense majo-

rity of cases, is capable of attaining to a direct perception
of the comparative weakness of the force embodied in
himself, when that force is not in harmony with the exter-
nal demands of surrounding facts and in all these cases
;

the rational and moral nature of the man puts itself, some-
times deliberately, sometimes automatically, on the side
" "
which in a superficial sense is certainly other than its
own.
The truly lawful conduct is motived, in the double
sense which that word will bear, by inducement as well
as instigation, because there is an affirmation by the feel-

ings of the effect produced, answering to the affirmation by

the will of the action taken, when both are in all respects
normal, i.e., when the natural tendencies of the agent and
of the environment coincide. And Nemesis, the only god
who indeed bears a hand, heavy and hard, in appointing
the lives of men Nemesis orders things so that, by acts
Q
242 NATURAL LAW.
which are contrary to the natural law of virtuous effort,
the doer of them is brought into painful collision with the
work of the saner tendencies around. Nemesis, indeed, is

but the name under which we

personify these recurring
of collision, whereby there forces itself upon
experiences
the transgressor, either as a timely warning or a late judg-
ment, the direct consciousness of real, constant, irresistible
power in nature a power of life and of death for men,
but most especially of life to those who have the will to
live lawfully, and of death, temporal and spiritual, to all
who set their hearts on disobedience. And every frag-
mentary glimpse we get of this supreme tendency of
nature towards self-assertion serves to sanction some

special law of human conduct or feeling.

 VI.

THE NATURAL SANCTIONS OF

MORALITY.

"Even the wise and good have a fear in them which is an instrument of

justice and religion; .it is a fear that is natural, a fear produced from the
. .

congenite notices of things, and the fear of doing a base thing ;

a fear to be a
fool and an evil person." JEREMY TAYLOR.
"Every hour," answered the princess, "confirms my prejudice in favour
by the mouth of Imlac
'
of the position so often uttered : That nature sets

her gifts on the right hand and on the left.' " JOHNSON.
Causes and effects inseparable; so the dislike felt for the natural conse-
quences of an immoral act, which in itself is pleasant or temptingly
easy, acts as a sanction to enforce the law against it The natural law
against murder, theft, inconstancy, and suicide Waste of moral force
in the exercises of false religions Doctrine of remission of sins an im-
moral evasion of the painful stringency of the natural sanction, that a
wrong cannot be undone, though atoned and amended Remorse the
consciousness of having acted against the true nature That human
nature is thus and thus is the efficient, not the final cause of the con-
scious tendency or moral will to live according to nature.
 VI.

THE NATURAL SANCTIONS OF MORALITY.

THE penal sanctions by which the injunctions of natural
morality are enforced are the objective counterpart to the
influence of natural motives or inducements, in strength-

ening the conscious tendency of will by the half-imagina-

tive, half-intellectual consciousness of desire. The causal
antecedents of a voluntary act are also the conditions of
the general mental disposition which makes the end or
natural effect of the action appear desirable, if it is re-
flectedupon at all but the reflection, if it occurs,
;
is a new
condition, which confirms to some extent the previous
tendency towards efficient action. There is a double
assurance for the performance of any given rational action
(or act implying the adjustment of means to an end) when
the individual is resolved upon the end as well as the
means, and there is a similar security against the perform-
ance of actions naturally uncongenial to the will, in the
power of reason to foresee that the consequences of such
actions will be even more distasteful to the whole nature
of the subject than the action itself. The effects of
any action follow certainly and necessarily upon it, and
human desire or wish is not a force by which the nature
of things or their property of producing given results
under given conditions can be modified or controlled.
There is a natural necessity upon men, if they will the
attainment of any particular end, to will the steps by
which it is naturally possible to reach it, and to refrain
from willing the means that lead naturally to results
246 NA TURAL LA W.
that they are seriously resolved or desirous not to pro-
duce.
The subjection of man, as a conscious and rational

agent, no than as a material organism, to the laws

less
of nature, consists in the fact that he is habitually bound

by other powers than his own will to certain classes of

actions; the sanctions which conspire with the regular
action of natural causes to make the actions of men more
constant than their desires are not themselves the most
important element in the law, because they only take
effect when a rule has been broken, or when as in most
cases contemplated by moralists it is supposed that the

will would break the rule it normally follows, but for a

rational expectation that the breach of the rule would
entail consequenceswhich the will is not prepared to face.
The sanctions have a practical, occasional value, but their
existenceis not the cause, even in the latter class of cases,

of the obedience habitually paid to the moral law, since

the compulsion they exercise is only alternative, and it
is the disposition of the will, or the whole nature of the
individual, that determines which motives will have an
attractive, and what sanctions an efficiently deterrent influ-
ence upon his mind and conduct.
The natural sanction of the natural law against murder
is the impossibility of
bringing the dead to life. A
momentary act of angry violence may cause the brother
who was only hated for a moment
to be lost for ever;
hence the necessity for controlling violent impulses be-
comes apparent to the will, which has no abstract delight
in violence, and, other things being equal, from the first
dawn of society, slightly prefer the life of other members
of the community to their death. The natural sanction of
the natural law against theft is the impossibility of two
people enjoying exclusive possession of the same object
at the same time, while some degree of security in the

possession of needful instruments is essential to any long

course of rational action towards ends, such as civilised
 THE NATURAL SANCTIONS OF MORALITY. 247

life isprincipally of. made up of The natural sanction

the natural law in favour of veracity is the impossibility
of sustained intercourse without reciprocal trust. The
natural sanctions enforcing personal sobriety are self-
evident. The natural sanction of the obligation of parents
to provide for their childrenis the simple fact that infants

perish not if
supplied with food and shelter; and when
the instinctive tendency of animals to nourish their young
(without which no brute species would live through two
generations) has been so far weakened amongst men that
the alternative of deliberately destroying children that it
is inconvenient to rear, can be entertained and adopted,

the sanction operates with respect to the children whom it

is determined to preserve. 1
It has been doubted by some secular moralists whether
there is any natural sanction enforcing the law by which
monogamy is prescribed, as we find, historically, that it
has been in most states possessing an advanced and
" "
balanced civilisation. Godwin, whose Political Justice
contains, under the head of "Inferences from the doc-
trine of necessity," much admirably humane and rational
morality, proposed to abolish marriage altogether, and as

society is almost unanimous in thinking Godwin ill-

advised on this point, one of the strongest of the argu-
menta ad hominem commonly used against free-thinking
refers to a supposed connection between theological and

conjugal infidelity. If as writers like Godwin were half

inclined to believe priests invented gods in order to
make the birth, death, and burial of their dupes the
occasion for elaborate ceremonies profitable to themselves,
they might be supposed to have invented marriage as
well as divers other sacraments, in order to make their
influence felt at every important juncture of life. But if

1
It is found in India that even female children, if not exposed at birth,
are never afterwards destroyed, being sufficiently protected, we may pre-
sume, by the ordinary reluctance of men to sacrifice a life that has become
to some extent, through habit, if not affection, a part of their own.
243 NATURAL LAW.
we take a less extreme view of the fertility of the human
imagination and its power of baseless invention, we may
suppose, as has been done in the preceding pages, that
the crudest religious belief has something answering to
it and fact, and shall infer that a contract of
in nature

marriage must have been an event of considerable natural

and secular importance before it could occur to religious
functionaries to treat it as sacramental.
Whenthe legal, moral, and religious aspects of cus-
tomary ordinances were confused and interchangeable,
only those ordinances were conceived as mainly and pri-
marily religious which were of such general application as
to rank almost with the real influences of the Not-self

upon the natural life of every member of the

community.
If we do not allow religion to be of supernatural origin or
power, it cannot have lent a supernatural sanctity to the
marriage tie ;
and if respect for that tie is almost as uni-
versal as religion, its existence must be almost as univer-

sally natural. The rationalists, who ignore this inference,

do so, no doubt, because early habit and the constant
assertions of the orthodox lead them to accept as logical
and inevitable the connection which has prevailed histori-
cally between the established religion of all countries and
their marriage laws, so that if the one is subverted the
other is supposed to share in its condemnation. But it
does not follow that, because monogamy ceases to be
regarded as a religious duty, some form of polygamy will
certainly be adopted in any society where naturalistic
views of morality and religion come to prevail. There
are reasons of general validity that would lead many per-
sons, whatever their theological views, to prefer if they
could secure it a freehold in the affections of their
nearest friend to a mere tenancy at will ;
and though the
passions are not sufficiently rational to be directly affected
by the knowledge of the consequences that follow natu-
rally from their unrestrained indulgence, any real emo-
tion, while it is real, is ipso facto a force tending to ex-
 THE NATURAL SANCTIONS OF MORALITY. 249

elude from the consciousness any fresh passion incom-

patible with itself. The emotions are natural, and their
real strength necessary and irresistible but since life is
;

not providentially adjusted so as to make the indulgence

of every natural tendency easy, or all coexisting tenden-
cies harmonious, it is impossible but that the necessity of

sacrificing one natural feeling to another should sometimes

arise. It is because such sacrifices cannot be effected by
a single deliberate act of will that, in spite of their occa-
sional necessity, they are felt to stand on a different foot-

ing from ordinary moral acts or efforts.

To love or hate unwisely is a moral imperfection of
the same innocent, incorrigible sort as to have and act
upon ideas of moral duty such as the mass of mankind
agree to think erroneous while the passion is felt, and
;

the conscientious belief entertained, it cannot, strictly

speaking, be called right for the individual to become false
to either, 1 in act or thought. Only as human perfection
does not consist in the supremacy of any one faculty or
class of impulses, but in the balanced and harmonious

development of all, it is not open to consistent rationalists

to proclaim the natural autocracy of any one passion, how-
ever universal or potent in its influence. If we consent,
as rationalists must, to judge humanity only by itself, we
must allow that it is an imperfection to fail in intelligence
or moral strength of character, as well as to fail in that
sensitiveness to moral impressions which is the source of
emotional affections. Neither defect can be remedied by
a simple act of will;, but supposing the individual to have
become conscious of the defect, and desirous for its re-
moval, there is a reaction of the whole nature upon the
is deficient, which stimulates its de-
single faculty that
velopment, and indirectly favours its exercise. Nothing
can make the affections in themselves rational though,
on the average, people are loved for amiable traits just
" The
1
A thesis dramatically illustrated in Mr. Browning's poem,
Statue and the Bust."
250 NATURAL LAW.
as nothing can turn abstract reasoning into a motive force
though efficient motives are, on the average, active in
the direction of deliberately chosen ends but the affec-
;

tions are the stronger for having their natural movements

confirmed by reason, just as thought is the more varied,
and impulse the more energetic, when the two unite to
supply one the matter, the other the form, of rational
action. Each single tendency is weak and short-lived by
itself; itrequires preserving, propping, continuing, and
reinforcing by finding itself at one with other harmo-
niously parallel tendencies. The will or reason cannot
argue away a real affection by practical or prudential con-
siderations, but they can and do show it to be, in the
natural and secular sense of the words, both wise and
right to take care, so to speak, of certain affections, to pro-
tect and cherish them, to let their indulgence borrow

strength from habit, and guarantee their durability by a

foregone conclusion that they ought to be permanent.
The natural sanction that visits all inconstancy, and

especially inconstancy in the most serious passion of life,

derives its deterrent force from the craving men have to
give continuity, organic completeness to their life, to affi-
make their best emotions fruitful
liate their sentiments, to
of hopes and memories. If the natural emotions of men
who look before and after could only repeat at stated in-
tervals the same short, absorbing, and monotonous story of

passion, satiety, and weary which after each

indifference,
repetition is shorter, less
absorbing, and more monotonous
than before, the rational will would perhaps adopt the
ascetic view, which treats all the natural passions as

intrinsically evil. But if no natural tendencies are in

themselves evil or naturally self-destructive, it must be
possible for the exclusive and passionate attachment con-
secrated in the ideal marriage to fit itself in amongst all the
other interests, engagements, and relations of life, as one
element amongst many, making up a coherent and com-
pletewhole and if this has once been accomplished, and
;
 THE NATURAL SANCTIONS OF MORALITY. 251

the accomplishment recorded in consciousness, no after-

incident of natural infirmity or external seduction can
make it appear altogether good to the individual will to
sacrifice a part of itself and its history to instincts that
have neither past nor future.
It will perhaps be objected that such general considera-
tions as these are too remote to influence the will to any

practical sacrifice of inclination, and in fact their effect

would naturally be felt rather in controlling inclination
than action, which is a further confirmation of the view
that the emotions have more in common with religion than
with morality. But the general belief referred to is the
source of the natural cogency in this case of what may be
called the social sanction, or the expression of opinion by
the community, which in all moral dilemmas gives weight
and additional efficacy to the promptings of the individual
conscience. It is scarcely reasonable to expect that any

legislation, however liberal, or any society, however toler-

ant, should have power to efface the natural difference

observable between persons who have and those who have
not made a serious mistake in one of the most important
affairs of life. Of course nearly all human mistakes may
be repaired, or made the best of, but the natural sanction
by which men are reminded to exercise all the moral fore-
thought that they can, is the fact from which there is no

escaping, that, though it is better to repair a mistake than

to persist in it, it is, humanly speaking, still better not
to make mistakes that need to be repaired. Positive
law has nothing to do with the natural, almost logical
impossibility that a couple married after ten or twenty
divorces by mutual consent should seem to themselves or
to society to be as indissolubly united at last as Philemon
and Baucis or John Anderson and his goodwife. Positive
law has nothing to do with the general belief that the per-
fection of the marriage unionis to be complete and abso-

lute while it lasts has nothing to do with the

and it

necessity by which a complete and absolute union appears

252 NATURAL LAW.
naturally indissoluble ; or rather, it has as much to do with
these as with any other natural practices and opinions its ;

function is to declare their regularity and necessity.

Any propensity, if indulged to excess, tends to cut off

itsown springs of enjoyment in the healthy power of the
whole organism; and the natural sanction which warns
every normal appetite to respect the demands of the rest,
is the experience that only the healthy, or evenly deve-
loped nature has life and freshness enough to return again
and again to its familiar pleasures, and find them always
the same, that is, always newly pleasant ; while the man
of one passion, or of one idea, needs to make that one ever
more intense or more fantastical to compensate for the

growing dulness of his sensibilities, arising from the atrophy

of every faculty but the one. And what is true of appetites

applies, mutatis mutandis, to impulses, which can only

survive if followed, with conscious or instinctive prudence,
in such wise as not to land their subject at a point beyond
which further action in the same direction is made physi-
cally impossible.
which it is scarcely possible to speak
There is one act to
of applying purely natural sanctions, while at the same
time its condemnation has generally been regarded as a
crucial test of the stringency of moral theories we mean
the practical slight upon the natural order of things in-
volved in the offence of suicide ; an offence which natural
morality is as well able as
any other theory to gratify
popular feeling by condemning. The popular illustration
which attempts to discredit suicide by the analogy of a
soldier deserting his post obviously requires a theological

background to give it aptness, for if the doctrine of the

conservation of force is applied, as it presumably may be,
to thought and sense as well as to unconscious motion, the
suicide does not defraud the universe of any profit it had
or might have had out of his being, he simply restores to
it the force it lent him, which has proved to be inadequate
to the maintenance of a human life. Suicide is a confes-
 THE NATURAL SANCTIONS OF MORALITY. 253

sioii of defective vitality, abnormal weakness, or excep-

tional ill-luck, and no man is in a position to say of another
that he "ought not" to have made away with himself,
because, when the act is done, it is evident that the im-

pulse to dowas irresistible, and natural morality does

it

not exactly condemn or blame the individual who is merely

proved to have suffered from extreme natural debility or
imperfection. But though the man who can do no good
by living may have a right to die, he should look on his
own death as the execution of a good-for-nothing unit
rather than as the excision of a good-for-nothing world
from a too fastidious consciousness. For those, however,
who have sufficient strength of will, that is, a sufficiently
distinct consciousness of vital force in their organisation,
to last as long as their natural, automatic, bodily life, there

may be room, when external circumstances are unpropi-

tious, for strictly moral considerations which forbid suicide
in the same way as any positive disservice to humanity.
Desertion is not a crime in a conscript pressed into the

service of a usurper and called to march, perhaps, against

his own coimtrymen ; but as we do not believe the universe
to be governed by an assailable evil spirit, any more than
by an adorable good one, we cannot make a duty of insurrec-
tion, or see any magnanimity in the suicide's futile pro-
test against things in general. As George Eliot has it:
*'
Noble rebellion lifts a common load;
But what is he who flings his own load off
"
And leaves his fellows toiling ?

Though human existence were a losing battle against

the Not-man, it might still be worth fighting out for
charity; for those combatants who have fewest illusions
about an impossible triumph are most at leisure for pos-
unnecessary disaster, and can do
sible precautions against

something, if they will, to save the discomfiture of the

doomed host from turning into a disorderly rout, and to
assure the panic-strifcken troops that they will not reach
254 NA TURAL LA W.
their last halting-place the sooner, or the later and which
were best ? for treading on each other's heels by the

way.
But such statements of the case are morbid and over-
strained. In point of fact, the natural, realistic way of
looking at the world and human affairs is as far removed
from pessimism as from uncritical adoration; and if
criticism of the universal order is carried
beyond a certain
point, satirebecomes as meaningless as panegyric, for in
an absolutely bad world, if such a thing could be, we
should not have, what we could no more use than in a
perfect universe, the ideas of good and evil, or language
wherewithal to criticise.
As to the most general of moral duties, the one which
includes all the the duty of Christian charity as we
rest,

may on
still call it, the principle of rendering to all their
due, and keeping our diction historical the natural sanc-
tion by which this duty is enforced is the impossibility of

excluding from a consciousness of even ordinary intellec-

tual and emotional sensibility the knowledge, or rather the

feeling, of the moral as well as the material effects following

from causes lying within the determination of the will.
Habits of united or concerted action have become so in-
tegral a part of our life that the sympathetic feeling which
has sprung from them passes now for an essential, primitive
quality of our nature, and indeed is so essential that an
entirely consistent egotist might be reckoned as one of the
"
perfect monsters that the world ne'er saw." It is become

impossible for us to be altogether indifferent to the feelings

we know to be entertained by those with whom we are in
relation. What we do or say takes effect, not merely by
direct action of its own, or by the action which it suggests
or provokes but the effects are such as can be felt by
;

some, whose feeling, if it is such as we cannot deliberately

will to cause, is the efficient motive for forbearing from the
act. It is not exactly from an overflowing charity that we
first entangle our life with other lives, and sacrifice a por-
 THE NATURAL SANCTIONS OF MORALITY. 255

tion of our natural liberty to act alone and unembarrassed ;

but the moral life of man is, as he labours to make it,

continuous, and his consciousness, at any given moment,

is as much controlled by the historical engagements con-
tracted his former self as by his natural disposition or
by
acquired moral development. The life that we bor-
rowed, meaning it to enrich and embellish our own, may
serve that purpose or not, but it grows into a part of our-
selves, and cannot be torn off without leaving a moral scar,
or wounded without causing an entirely personal pain,
which cannot be got rid of by wishing, even though the
rise of some fresh personal desire, irreconcilable with older

ties, may make it natural for a man to wish sometimes, for

the moment, that no one had any feelings but himself.
The physical force, as it may be called, of sympathy, is
not to be confounded either with the moral development
of sympathetic feeling which makes the good of others as
much an end as eur own good, or with the weight of the
social sanction properly so called, the naturally selected

feeling of the mass of men, for or against various actions

we share more or less completely our-
a feeling which
selves,but which acts upon us, by the mere force of its
existence, even when we deliberately defy it. Morality is
not only the rule which I think good for myself and
others ;
the rule which others agree in thinking good
it is

for me. In the immense majority of cases the feeling of

the majority is right, and the fear of its disapproval tends
to enforce a wholesome conformity but the inner and the
;

outer conscience are independent, so that if the one is

biassed by partial considerations, the other is ready to
check its verdict ;
and just because they are independent,
their decision, when they agree, has even more than
double authority ;
each speaks for the other in speaking
for itself,and when the two voices coincide, it is not in
virtue of a mere coincidence of opinion, it is because, as a
matter of fact, the particular and the universal good are
naturally concordant. The natural good of each individual
256 NATURAL LA W.
is bound up with the good of those of his kind, and thus
it isthat the natural impulse of each individual organism
to escape, if it can, from the pain of natural imperfection,

co-operates with the complicated, purely moral and de-

liberately disinterested tendency of the cultivated con-
science to find its good in the wellbeing of the whole,
in the rational co-operation of sympathetic desires and
resolute, compliant wills, working in conscious harmony
towards the multiform realisation of natural human per-
fection.

Supposing all the good and evil in the actual world to

be the result of a long natural process of evolution, which
has become conscious in its latest stages, the conscious-
ness of such stages is conditioned, not only by the preced-
ing steps in the process, but also by the various other real
surviving effects or consequences of them. Moral action
is therefore in no sense arbitrary or accidental, and the

practical bearings of a naturalistic theory of morality will

therefore depend, not upon the nature of the theory, but
on the way in which, we are ledto conclude, the objective
constitution of the universe compels a reasonable man

habitually to will. We
do not hold a brief for creation,
and it would sound
like an edifying paradox to maintain
that the natural order of things compels men to the prac-
tice of all the moral virtues. There is vice as well as
misery more than enough under the sun we only con-
;

tend that the quantum of virtue, such as it is, actually

to be met with upon earth, is not greater than can be
accounted for by purely natural causes, still in operation
and perhaps not incapable of by-and-by producing more
extensive results. The constitution of the universe is the
cause, the one real antecedent condition of the existence
of virtue in man, but the motive for any single virtuous
action is supplied by the virtuous disposition of the man

who proposes to perform it, not by the fact or by his

knowledge of the fact that his disposition is conditioned
by the orderly existences around him. Indeed if the
 THE NATURAL SANCTIONS OF MORALITY. 237

virtuous disposition is incomplete, reflections concerning

its origin are not by themselves
likely to strengthen it,
for duties towards the universe as a whole are the least
and weakest of the obligations spontaneously recognised
by contemporary consciences.
It is possible that as the intellectual horizon widens
with " the long result of time," men may become more
clearly conscious of the most general laws according to
which they lead their life, and to know the laws of life
is at least to have learned not to hope for happiness from

an impossible escape out of their control. But visions of

the future are veiled in a dim religious light, and for the
present the only motives that take effect with men,
women, and children, who are in doubt whether to do
as they think right or not, are reflections concerning other

points of principle or practice, concerning which they are

not then in doubt at all. All that we call "good" is

linked together in man, as the circumstances calling it

forth are in nature and if our theory is sound, it is as
;

impossible for any one at a given moment to be a worse

specimen of his kind than he as it is for him at the
is,

same moment But amongst the natural

to be a better.
sanctions enforcing the necessity of which men are con-
scious as binding them to the exercise of all the specific
virtue that is in them, not the least efficacious is the
natural incapacity under which they labour, of wishing,
at any given moment, to be worse, of their kind, than

they actually are. People always wish to remain them-

selves, even when they wish to do something tending

certainly to make them worse than they have been.

They wish to be able to do what they think agreeable
and wrong as often as their present self wishes, and they

may be restrained from the vain attempt to gratify that

wish by the discovery that a given amount of wrong-
doing will make them unable to refrain, on a future
occasion, from doing more wrong than they now wish
to do.
&
258 NA TURAL LA W.
Men of the world, who
take it on faith from the clergy
(of all denominations) that religion helps to keep the
canaille in order, and pious persons, who take it on faith
from the worldly that the pleasures of vice have a quite
peculiar zest and intensity, will probably agree in object-
ing to all the applications we can suggest for a theory of
natural morality that they are unpractical that the theory ;

is not disedifying in theory but that it will not work ;

that it do no harm to the few bloodless philoso-

may
phers, worn-out worldlings, and hybrid pedants who may
incline to adopt it, but that it will be powerless against
the strong passions and weak brains of the generality of
mankind. La Eochefoucauld has said it: "Si nous re-
sistons a nos passions, c'est plus par leur faiblesse que
"
par notre force
;
and it may be conceded to the motley
army of provisional pessimists, who will not easily im-
prove upon this sarcasm, that the theory we have pro-
pounded will have no effect upon the mind or morals of
persons who do not sincerely think it true, while it as
certainly cannot hope for the fate, which has never yet
fallen to the lot of a theory, of being thought true by

everybody. Criticism on this point, to be really damag-

ing,would have to establish that the practical inferences
which we have drawn from the theory would not follow
from it, if it can be rationally held.
By a curious reversal of the Utilitarian mistake, religious
moralists seem to assume that happiness is to be found
in this world if we only have the courage to be wicked

enough : were with the strongest desire to

this indeed so,
think well of human nature we not all turn wicked
should
to-morrow? But those who lay most stress on the as-
sumption have so evidently never tried the experiment
they speak of, that to them, at any rate, it is clearly
natural to be good. If the world were exactly as we

may suppose Saint Anthony believed it to be, if theft,

murder, adultery, and speaking were the natural

evil -

pleasures of the human race, if our best joys came through

 THE NATURAL SANCTIONS OF MORALITY. 259

the senses, without any reference to our knowledge of

their causes or the effects of their indulgence, morality
would be impossible instead of hard, unnatural instead of
necessary but the balance of inducement leans really to
;

the other side, though not so overwhelmingly as to pre-

clude the possibility of misleading oscillations. There is
no prince of darkness baiting cunning snares for our souls,
and the charm of forbidden fruit disappears when we see
beyond the prohibition to the reasons which dictated it.
The clown whose happiest moments are when he is a
quarter drunk, may wish to spend his life in drinking. A
youth of untaught mind and untrained character, turned
loose upon the Quartier Latin of a metropolis, may go
to the dogs in all innocence and good faith, believing
with the fervour of inexperience in absinthe, dice, and
courtesans, and the irreconcilability of marriage or pro-
fessional industry with the higher life of the genialiscli
soul. But the educated naturalist, with whose morality
we are concerned, must be supposed to have got beyond
such naive illusions as these. Eegard for his health and
his purse will keep him sober and moderately decorous in

life, as regard for his neck and his personal liberty will

prevent his murdering or stealing, the latter, indeed, as

Clough observes
"An empty feat
When 'tis so lucrative to cheat."

Without running such risks, it is open to him to lie and

swindle, to hate his neighbour and love his neighbour's
wife, to thrive upon the follies, the vices, the sufferings oi
his fellow-men, to trade upon their superstitions, to draw
his profit from their virtues. It is in his power to indulge
his appetites as long as he has any, to neglect his duties
till he has forgotten they existed, to check his sympathies

till they cease to interfere with his most mischievous plea-

sures. Neither God nor man can hinder we have assumed:

that there is no God to punish, and as to the opinion of

 2(fo NA TURAL LA W.
his equals, \i such a plan of life as this really seems the
most eligible to one sane man, who has studied the order
of the world and learned to view its facts in their true
proportions, doubtless the others, being of like passions
with himself, will in their secret hearts think him a clever
fellow for leading it successfully. If such a prospect does
not attract us and candidly, does it ? the reason must be
that this also is vanity and vexation of spirit; that the
pleasures of vice, like those of virtue, are an agreed-upon
fiction.
The chief advantage to practical morality from the
abandonment of the theistic hypothesis would consist in
the economy of moral force effected by substituting in all
cases the main purpose and immediate consequence pro-

posed for the side-issues and indirect motives, with their

attendants, the widening waste and misunderstanding pro-
duced by over-symbolical reasoning. The amount of force
in the world at a given moment is the same, whatever may
be thought about its origin or the possible effects to be
produced by it but the direction given to the force de-
;

termines its real productive efficacy. As motion can pass

into heat and back again into so much mechanical work,
conscious force may be suspended or arrested as passion or
pain, and when liberated, discharge itself in fresh intel-
lectual or moral action. Theistical morality regards the
real world as of secondary importance to the relations be-
tween the individual and an unknowable spiritual power ;

and it is only the fragments of energy remaining, after

all the best strength of the individual nature has been

expended in an intensity of religious emotion, that is avail-

able for purely human ends and interests. It is a remark-
.
able evidence of the general solidarity of existence and
the substantial justice of the popular conceptions respect-
ing the tendencies of the moral influence of the Not-self,
that an extraneous motive, regard for an ideal third power
outside man and nature, should so often and generally have
acted as the natural, direct, and present motive of regard
 THE NATURAL SANCTIONS OF MORALITY. 261

for the beings to be affected by our action would do ;

but
the parallelism may be accidentally disturbed, and then,
in place of the innocently circuitous argument of Jonathan
Edwards that since men cannot reward the Deity for his
" "
virtues, they should do good to their indigent brethren
for his sake people may learn to burn, or at least con-
scientiously to dislike each other, still for the love of God.
If, as will probably be admitted, it would conduce to the
natural good of society for men's sympathy with each
other's pains and pleasures, and their readiness to relieve
or promote the same, to be more lively and active than is
the case, it is evidently a misfortune to risk the loss of
such help or sympathy as may be had, by conducting
it to its natural object along an unnecessarily winding
channel.
Another way in which theism is unfavourable to

morality, or at least less favourable than simple realism,

is that it diminishes the sense of responsibility which

accompanies actions performed in accordance with fully

intelligible laws.Men with a finer sense of natural justice
than the ancient Hebrews, believe in a God too just to visit
the sins of the fathers upon the children, too just not,
sooner or later, somehow or other, to right whatever moral
wrongs men in ignorance or wilfulness may have done to
t

one another. In this way the most powerful of all the

natural sanctions of morality, the knowledge of the in-
evitable sequence of effects and causes, is robbed of half
its proper influence on the imagination. Many men who
would not scruple to sin against themselves or a Creator,
would hesitate to sin irreparably against a fellow-mortal,
ifthey did not half believe in a power Not-themselves, able
and willing to undo the natural effects of their work. To
understand that the will of every man is a moral power,
second to nothing except the united or compounded will of
many men, does not make men less, but rather more dis-
posed to value the type of human perfection which they
have no choice but to conceive as the supreme good ;
and
262 NATURAL LA W.
to understand that, if they wish this type to be realised,

they must realise it themselves, does not make them less,

but rather more disposed than before to take the practical
action which they suppose to be favourable to their desire.
If we want anything done, do not like doing it, and are

quite assured that if we do not do it ourselves, no one else

can or will do it for us, to say in pique at this ungenerous
behaviour of nature It shall go undone is perfectly
possible, but nature has the last word in the quarrel,
whether the object we had in view was happiness or virtue.
We may take or leave the small quantum of pleasure
offered to us by the natural order, but if we take it, we
take it on the prescribed terms, if we leave it, it is at the

price of our own natural loss. Similarly if the desired

end of undesirably difficult attainment is moral, i.e., such
as the judgment finds it impossible not to approve, the

approbation is not affected by the difficulty, and continues

to be a motive in its despite. A
person of ordinary moral
sensibility would feel it to be unjust to visit the cross-
grained arrangements of creation upon an otherwise deserv-
ing object, already, probably, a victim to some severe natural
ordinance and it is scarcely conceivable -that a person
;

bent on doing a good action from the disinterested love of

good, should be deterred from doing it by the discovery
that he will have no supernatural assistance in the process.
It may be a misfortune to mankind that there are no gods,
but the weak, wicked, and ignorant of the present genera-
tion, who are the natural objects of humane solicitude, are

obviously not to blame for a misfortune which, it may be

thought, falls most severely on themselves. Certainly it
does not prove that there are gods, that the maxim, "Every
man for himself, and God for us all," may prove extremely
comfortable to those who do not doubt their own ability
to take care of themselves without divine assistance, and
feel at liberty to exercise their natural powers of self-

protection the less scrupulously and considerately for

supposing such assistance to be at the service of their
 THE NATURAL SANCTIONS OF MORALITY. 263

weaker brethren, who to translate the secret thoughts of

some robust liberals are such fools as to want it.
In ascribing an empirical relational necessity to morality,
instead of a transcendental force or fitness of which the
working cannot be followed either by sense or reason, we
certainly do not weaken the practical efficacy of its pre-
cepts. If there is a specific type or standard of human
excellence, varying almost imperceptibly, and not seeming
to the members of the species in whom the tendency to

approximate to the type is conscious, to vary for the

worse, the natural tendency towards such approximation,
which exists more or less strongly in every sane human
being, exists equally whether we suppose a power to exist
outside consciousness that approves of the subjects of the
strongest tendency or not. To follow the tendency in
order to secure this approbation is a course that would
occur to no one who had not
previously discovered, or
imagined, points of intellectual agreement and moral
sympathy with the power by whom it is supposed to be
bestowed such a sense of harmony between the individual
;

and the Not-self regarded as a legislator is religious, and a

sincere and enlightened religious faith enforces tha moral
instincts by sanctions which are undoubtedly binding upon
the few with whom religious faith is a reality. But these
sanctions, which are efficient, though not universal in
their operation, are immaterial, emotional, and subjective.

Religion generalises the tendencies of the universal order,

and represents them collectively as binding upon those
who acquiesce in their isolated reality, in the same way
that morality generalises the impulses of the individual,
and represents his habitual disposition or will as a force
controlling partial and ephemeral inclinations. And as,
out of all the real tendencies of the universe, there is no
one more constantly influential on human life than the
self-assertion of human nature which we call morality,

none is more determining the religious

influential in

generalisation, which, being wider than

the moral gen-
264 NA TURA L LA W.
eralisation, seems to include, and even in a measure to
explain it, by standing between it and the irrational
finality of an ultimate fact.
It is a remnant of superstitious optimism to assume
that if is natural, moral
morality imperfection must be
impossible, and the objection that our theory takes no
account of the moral struggles of a divided will, cannot
on reflection be maintained. The fact that a person may
know and an act is certainly right, and yet
believe that
not do proves nothing for or against one system of
it,

morality rather than another. We

do not maintain that
any man, much less that
men, are absolutely perfect
all
after their kind kinds are always making, never made,
;

and the consensus of all the powers of the soul which

makes knowledge or belief practically effective, is rare and
seldom complete. Were it otherwise, the consciousness
of voluntary effort in men towards the realisation of their
own perfection, and the perfecting of all the other modifi-
able elements of the natural world after their kind, in
which we have seen morality to consist, would not need
the stimulus of religion, or of any other natural sanction,
to give it persistence. But when moral action has been
made difficult in proportion to the strength of the ten-
dency towards perfection of which the individual is con-
scious, or when
the consciousness of the real tendency is
imperfectly articulate, the secondary representative influ-
ence of the natural sanction is neither superfluous nor
ineffectual. The immediate motive for the performance of
any virtuous action is the judgment of the individual that
the act is good and ought to be done the sanction by :

which the doing of it is enforced is the knowledge of the

natural effects of the omission ;
the consciousness that every
single failure to act as human justice and charity demand
is irremediable in time or eternity ; that by the act which

we call wrong, we contribute in our measure to make the

world other than, seriously and deliberately, we would
have it to be to mar creation out of wantonness and im-
 THE NATURAL SANCTIONS OF MORALITY. 265

becility. This is the most general form of moral necessity.

The world suffers is the worse for every laches of every

individual, for every sin of omission and commission, in the

present ill, in the chance of unforeseeable consequences, and
in the future deterioration of the sinner. Of course there
are degrees, but this is the sufficient reason and real ex-

planation of the general rule, that the best possible ought

always to be done and while we tax any other moral stan-
;

dard than this with incompleteness, it cannot be said 'that

this is itself preternaturally high. We recognise no im-
possible ought, and the duty of each individual is really
limited by his powers as well as coextensive with them.
No one has done his duty who has done less than he
could, i.e., produced less than the good effect which his
particular giftsconscientiously employed to the best
advantage might have wrought. The responsibility of the
man as a whole is coextensive with his consciousness of
definite powers, and duties of imperfect obligation are only
so styled in reference to an imperfect susceptibility to the
force of a real claim. If from constitutional feebleness
these powers are not exerted, we call the man, not indeed
wicked, but weak, distinguishing, among various forms of

imperfection, simple defect of energy from its pernicious

malapplication.
Kemorse or repentance, the state of consciousness which
follows action done in opposition to the sense of duty or
moral obligation is the pain of discovering that an act
done with a divided will remains and binds our future
life to have done wrong is to have bound ourselves by
;

a will that was not truly our own, and not ourselves only,
but all those who may become sensible of the conse-
quences of our action. Devout theologians have questioned
whether it was within the power of God himself to cause
that what was should not have been certainly man has
;

no such power, and by his knowledge of this fact, his will

is bound to justice and consistency. The will is seldom
or never directly self-contradictory, and the explanation
266 NA TURAL LA IV.
of most wrong-doing is only that people fail to imagine all
the consequences of what they do, and reject or resist the
indirect results of what they would otherwise have willed.
But there are two offences which the canons of natural
morality might pronounce to be unpardonable, if it w ere
T

possible for them to be committed with a clear and ade-

quate apprehension of their tendency the direct inflic-

tion of unprofitable pain, and the forcing a fellow-mortal

into crime the ranking oneself among the brute obstacles
to the natural efforts of a human soul towards its own
proper perfection. To do less than the good we physically
might ourselves is imperfection, the other is sin; for
though of course it may be said that the root of all, even
the deadliest only imperfection, yet in the present
evil, is
state of our moral ideas, the
duty of being perfect our-
selves is generally felt to be of imperfect obligation on ;

the other hand, deliberately to interfere with the possible

perfection of another, is felt by every one in the court of
conscience to be wrong, and what every one agrees in feel-
ing as well as thinking to be wrong, may as well be called
sin for distinction, since the word is in our language and
practices answering to it in our lives. Indeed we should
have little faith in the power of any religion which should
banish from its liturgy the cry thrown up in all ages from
"
the depths of human hearts for mercy upon us, miserable
"
sinners !Side by side with an irrepressible aspiration
after the perfect good which we shall never see, or know,
or possess, there is also an ineffaceable conviction that
our life is nothing worth except in so far as it grants us
glimpses of the unattainable divine; and because these
glimpses are so few and dim, we cry out upon ourselves
for miserable sinners, perishing for need of mercy and

spiritual help. But

most sinners there is a place of
for

repentance, if earnestly and with tears the

they seek it :

unpardonable sin is to know what is permanently good

"
and to say deliberately I can get more pleasure for
:

myself by other conduct than the right I can overreach

 THE NATURAL SANCTIONS OF MORALITY. 267

creation I and my desires can get the better of the natural

;

law of virtue, of the rule that is good for all I will sin and
;

some one else may suffer." There is, we say it advisedly,

no power in nature to prevent this calculation being some-
times made and acted on with impunity. The ungodly do
flourish, even to their death full of years and honours
not always, but quite often enough to make Utilitarians of
little faith ask themselves in alarm, Where is now their

god ? and truly their

god is nowhere, but the spirit of
goodness is in the souls of men teaching them to despise
the wages of iniquity. These men are rebels, successful
thieves and usurpers, but not lor that do theft and dis-

loyalty become the law of life these men are the enemies
;

of each generation, and the end to which our labours point

is such an adjustment of social sanctions as shall strengthen

the hands of natural justice, and bring the ungodly even

to temporal judgment.
The Christian doctrine of the remission of sins is an
attempt to disguise what a growing acuteness of moral
sensibility caused to be felt as intolerable the appalling
stringency of the natural sanctions of morality a morality
:

based upon religion is always liable to relapse into anti-

nomian quietism, for it is felt that the supreme being can-
not be injured by our frailty; and though a genuine regard
for the powers of the Not-self is normally associated with
at least average strength of moral purpose or virtue, there
are no natural sanctions confirming or perpetuating merely
emotional states, and it is easier to weak,, impressionable
characters to profess a general submission to they do not
clearly know what, than to co-ordinate their impressions and
harmonise them with a course of energetic action. If the
practical sense of moral obligation is superseded by devo-
tional sentiments recognising no worse sin than their own
cessation, repentance is limited to ideal, so to speak con-
ventional wrongs, which may be excused at the option of
the person offended, but by the hypothesis not substan-
tially injured by them. But there is no such way of escape
268 NATURAL LAW.
from the consciousness of real material wrong done to living
sentient beings; Gods or men may forgive the sinner if
they please, and men at least, we argue, have 110 call to
resent each other's imperfections but of what avail is it
;

that others should acquiesce with religious resignation in

an act in which we cannot and will not acquiesce our-
selves ? Those who believe in an external tribunal com-
petent to call the guilty to account for what they have
done, thought, or neglected, may think it pertinent to plead
in excuse or justification that they did not know, or did not

mean, or could not help what they have done but of what
;

avail is any formal justification in the face of a real regret

that we could not help, that we did not know, that we have
done what we did not mean ? What consolation is it to
us to consider that the universe is neither angry nor vin-
dictive, if the act done with the will that was not truly
ours lives and glares at us in the consequences that we
hate ? Prayers and penances may distract attention from
the lamentable reality, we may forget our own natural,
righteous self-reproach by dreaming of imaginary conse-
quences which
for imaginary remedies are real enough, but
there is only one true remedy for human error, a remedy
that cannot be applied from without to undo the evil deed
and bury its memory by the acts of an atoning energy and;

here we mayobserve the restorative powers of nature, or

rather the simple fact that not all imperfection is mortal,
and that the natural tendencies of real beings, though they
may be arrested or impeded, are still the source or mani-
festation of whatever good or perfection is attainable in
nature. For an intense regret, like any other strong emo-
tion, is a potential force, painful
while suspended as pas-
sion,but convertible into active energy, and then serving
to heighten and animate the natural faculties, so that the
sinner that repenteth much more than undo his
may so

original ill- work world

as to give themore occasion for joy
than ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.
But the evil is evil all the same, and though it is well
 THE NATURAL SANCTIONS OF MORALITY. 269

for sin to be be com-

atoned for, it is better for it not to
mitted no unimaginable eventualities hatching under the
;

brooding wings of the Unknowable can turn its commission

into a good in disguise.
There are no natural sanctions that can permanently and
habitually affect, in favour of morality, the will of beings
with no moral impulses or sensibilities. If there are men
without a conscience, or with a conscience that allows them
habitually and contentedly to act in a manner called immoral
by general consent, they form a type of being that it is
perhaps a mistake to call imperfect, or morally bad, for it
be after its kind a kind materially mis-
may perfect
chievous, like rattlesnakes, cancers, or volcanoes, bad in
relation to the rest of the world. We may look upon it as
a fresh proof of the imperfection of the universe that it
includes some kinds of beings the existence of which is
naturally injurious to the perfection of other kinds, but
sound morality and rational religion alike protest against
the admixture of any personal animosity with our appre-
hension of the nature of things. With the spread of intel-
ligence, for which tolerance is another name, it becomes
possible to controvert an opinion or to resist a policy with-
out arrogating to ourselves the right of passing exactly
moral condemnation on its supporters. If they act, as we
think, wrongly, their mistake may be pitiable as well as
mischievous, for they may perhaps discover, and, as we
have seen, regret it while if they are acting against their
;

conscience, against the tendencies of a nature that is the

same as ours, they are still more certainly to be pitied,
since failure or success must be alike uneasy to them.
If there is no prospect of the
wrongs of earth being
righted in heaven, the secular judgment, which really, of
the two, prefers the right, becomes convinced of the idle-
ness of procrastination, and compelled by the irresistible

pressure of natural facts to efforts of rational beneficence.

Human carelessness, not divine providence or infernal
craft, is to blame for half the evils that surround us, and
270 NATURAL LAW.
since it is evident that no miracles will "be wrought for our

deliverance, we must bow

our necks to the yoke or
either
use what natural means of throwing off the same are
offered to us by the unconscious, unimpassioned order of
the world. But, in any case, it is impossible to trace a
logical connection between the abandonment of erroneous
theological or religious opinions and the adoption of anti-
'

social principles of morality. The negative opinion known

as atheism is not a chief, much less the only article of faith
with modern rationalists, realists, positivists, naturalists,
or however else they may finally agree to call themselves.
Atheism is not a creed, only a passing protest against those
portions of existing creeds which consist in affirming the
existence either of arbitrary and naturally incalculable
influences acting upon the minds or bodies of men, or of a
tract of human knowledge and experience which is natu-
rally and permanently confused and disconnected from our
ordinary perceptions of fact and relation. The reasons for
"
this protest are not all self-evident, and accordingly, riest

pas atJiee qui veut :" a little science may convert men from
"
Christianity to spiritualism," or to the dogmas of agnos-
ticism, or to an undogmatic reliance on the existence some-
where of mysteries explanatory of the essences of things ;

but this is only the substitution of one confused belief for

another, and certainly does nothing to make
morality more
intelligible, rational, and But men who wish
consistent.
to disbelieve in the existence of a Personal, more or less

righteous Deity, because they imagine that such an exist-

ence is the only obstacle to their finding happiness in un-
principled self-indulgence, have not even taken the first
step towards embracing the doctrines of scientific atheism ;
they conceive the Not- self as a fetish, and the self as
another, and if they were to develop their conceptions,
would be more likely to arrive at some form or other of
theistic superstition than at the recognition of the universe
as a system of phenomena bound together by laws, or
existing in constant intersecting relations.
 THE NATURAL SANCTIONS OF MORALITY. 271

The connection which we observe to be constant between

certain causes and effects is not a sign of any animus in
the connected phenomena either severally or collectively ;

the moral action of natural influences upon moral agents

demands consciousness in the subject of the influence, but
by no means necessarily in its source, and the sanctions
by which the voluntary submission of men to the influ-
ences of which they are conscious is enforced, do not take
the form of rewards or punishments, bestowed or inflicted
by some third Essence, distinct alike from the conscious
agent and the medium or conditions of his activity. There
is no watchful Providence or natural equity at work to

apportion human success to desert, to make the pleasur-

ableness of normal action proportionate to the moral effort
expended in its execution, and the crowd of disconnected
antecedents to any single composite state or volition is too
great for all their results to be spontaneously harmonious.
Merely to do habitually what is right is not enough to
secure habitual happiness, and we think, as long as we
think confusedly, that it is immoral of nature to insist,
for instance, 011 our beingprudent and far-sighted, and of
sound bodily organisation, as well as honestly good-inten-
tioned, if we wish to enjoy more than the minimum of
natural pleasure which attends the consciousness of normal
action. The reward of a virtuous action is its successful
efficiency, as the reward of self-indulgence is pleasurable
passion of uncertain duration and intensity. The reward
of virtue is not happiness, though the happiness of the
virtuous man lies in virtue as the happiness of the profli-
gate in vice. To ordinary men, in so far as they are vir-
tuous, happiness lies in following their disinterested
impulses towards good in so far as they are vicious, in
;

indulging propensities which do not conduce to the greatest

happiness or the greatest perfection of mankind.
The choice of Herakles may be a choice of evils; the
way of transgressors is hard, and the paths of virtue lead
less surely to pleasantness than peace : but for ages the
272 NATURAL LAW.
common mankind has been agreed as to how the
sense of
son of Zeus will choose. The problem is still the same,
though reduced to the unheroic proportions of modern daily
life,and we find small men and women choosing, equally
with the hero, virtues on a scale with their strength and
their temptations. The old serpent of Eternity, Time, has
kept the promise of that other mythological snake, and
man, as a god, knowing good and evil, chooses the good at
his will.
 VII.

SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL

PERFECTION.

" Da ist's denn wieder, wie die Sterne wollten :

Bediugung und Gesetz und aller "Wille

1st nur ein Wollen, weil wir eben sollten,

Und vor dem Willen schweigt die Willkiir stille ;

Das Liebste wird vom Herzen weggescholten,

Dem harten Muss bequemt sich Will' und Grille,
So sind wir scheinfrei denn, nach manchen Jahren,
Nur enger dann, als wir am Anfang waren."
GOKTHE.

"How were Friendship possible? In mutual devotedness to the Good

and True : otherwise impossible ; except as Armed Neutrality, or hollow
Commercial League. A man, be the Heavens ever praised, is sufficient for
himself yet were ten men, united in Love, capable of being and of doing
;

what ten thousand singly would fail in. Infinite is the help man can yield
"
to man ! CARLYLE.

"Look straight to this, to what nature leads thee, both the universal
nature through the things which happen to thee, and thy own nature
through the acts which must be done by thee." MARCUS AURELIUS.
The best possible attainment, at any given period, a question of fact Various
types of specific excellence only comparable when tried by the standard
of social serviceableness Mutual dependence of the ruling few and the
subservient many Alternative vocations Politics, Industrialism, Art,
:

Science, Philanthropy Political ideals postulates ; that progress is

:

normal and privilege unjust: definition of social progress Danger of

social disorganisation comes not from the fact of social development, but
from its partial and unequal extent Popular and providential theories
of the function of government Differentiation of social functions ;
self-

willed honourable and compulsory obedience base Natural

service
ability privileged to render the most honourable services But beneficial
services must be accepted as well as proffered, and so far the leaders of
society are at the mercy of their followers Growing complexity of the
social ideal which makes the obligations of individuals less clear and
notorious Theideal in legislation neither more nor less attainable than
the ideal in government Legal rights of property subject to the common
interest Effect on proprietary rights of an absolute physical limitation
of supply in the case of any commodity in demand: e.g., land The
waiving of anti-social rights a step towards the formation of improved
social custom which may in time rank as law Organisation of public
services Theory of the production and distribution of wealth Natural
versus competitive value cost and utility the essential elements Third
:

element in the price of labour the Wille zum Leben of the vendor
:

Personal motives not always forthcoming to urge every one to the end
generally most desirable Inexpedient to interfere with the accidental
consequences of unequal natural ability Desirable to substitute a
rational estimate of value for the fluctuating competitive price Par-
" unearned
tition of the increment" of social wealth Natural value not
diminished by increased production, nor real purchasing power Honorary
services the natural price of unearned wealth The ideal state on all
points practically unattainable Query, whether the best possible be an
approach to the unattainable Demand that ethical theories shall carry
with them their application to the practical emergencies which concern
us The duty of individuals traced out by the social and the personal
ideal conjointly Temporary reluctant and conditional exaltation of the
philanthropic reformer Esthetic emotion Positive truth Moral dif-
fidence of a critical introspective age The asceticism of secular fastidi-
ousness No real antagonism possible between the claims of social duty
and individual perfection Specialisation of function among individuals
usually a gain, but increasing differentiation of classes a loss, if it ex-
tends beyond an external division of labour to a radical contrast of
nature Personal completeness a condition of the best action however
highly specialised.
 VII
SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION.
THE natural, necessary, and real standard of moral good
lias been described as consisting in the greatest possible
perfection of individuals and society. While we give
our statements a degree of generality that allows them to
apply with equal truth to all times and places, we also
condemn ourselves to a rather empty formal accuracy.
For the question that interests the minds and passions of
every age is a practical one What is the greatest perfec-
:

tion possible to this present generation of ours, and by

what means may we attain it ? And in answering this

question we have no longer to depend on reasoning, but on

direct insight or appreciation at once of the powers and the
desires actually and potentially dominant in contemporary

society, for these are the factors of the sought-for result ;

and an abstract formula of perfection rather chills than
encourages the healthy working of enthusiasm for present
possibilities by the calm impartiality with which it surveys
possibilities in general and allows the praise of moral
excellence to the realisation of all alike.
And yet we also have our own special ideal, and a quite
special ambition to make our ideal the most complete and
attractive among its kind, as well as a special sensitiveness
to the chance of inadequacy in our conception and failure
in our attempt, which seems great in proportion to the
growing height and breadth I will not say of our ideal
but of our conception of what an ideal ought to be. He,
indeed, would be a bold man who should attempt to trace
276 NATURAL LAW.
for us all the sublime ideal possibly to be attained by the
sum harmonised and disci-
of personal aspirations, duly

plined in practical co-operation an ideal in which every

;

man's best should be included, while yet their zeal re-

mained uncrushed by the discovery that this best was not
the absolute good, because best as our good is to us it

will become better still when seen with its light

shining
undimmed in the full blaze of universal perfection, a per-
fect part of a perfect whole.
And scarcely less hopeless would be the attempt to
catalogue all the special ideals lawfully and naturally
cherished by men and women of varied gifts and ante-
cedents. The votary of one ideal can hardly do justice to
his neighbour's worship, and the writer, whose own ideal
is to do justice to that of every one else, is somehow a

degree further from the spontaneous sympathies of a pure

than another fanatic, whose range of vision offers
fanatic,
no arrogant appearance of superior breadth. Still, a be-
ginning must be made, and while the ideal sages and
inspired prophets of the future still linger in the womb of

time, we blunder on after a statement, a hair's-breadth

truer, fuller, juster, more livingly sympathetic than we

have yet attained, of what is common in all idealism and
of the relation of each man's good to the universal per-
fection which crowns it Best.
The problem is necessarily two-fold. We ask ourselves
not only what is the best life possible for this or that man,
with such and such passions and capabilities, but also
which lives is it best for society to see multiplied, or what
isthe best proportion for the divers elements that do and
must co-exist to bear to each other ? How much of each
ideal may modest men dream of making their own, and
what considerations may have weight with them at the
period which comes to many, when an aim and an ideal
have to be chosen with more or less conscious determination,
or the doom of aimlessness deliberately accepted. We
say that individual perfection consists in the union of the
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 277

greatest possible number and variety of energies and suscep-

tibilities, all reconcilable with, or conducive to, the objective

good of other human agents and patients. To be a perfect

instrument and to work perfectly is the sum of the best
possible human achievement but so broad a statement is
;

insignificant unless we have a distinct image of the various

functions which men have the choice of discharging, and
the various qualifications which extend or limit their range
of choice.
The great mass of mankind
and perhaps always
live,
will live,
mainly by by the tastes, sol aed
routine, occupied
by the pleasures provided ready-made by their circum-
stances for them, therefore, the social question includes
;

the personal, and their best development is conditional on

the ideal organisation of the community to which they
belong. They follow uncritically (but not, therefore, with-
out some moral sense of faithfulness to their surroundings)
one or other of the more or less mechanical industries
which produce together what we call our civilisation and ;

it is for their sakes, and mainly by the help of their native

docility, or leadableness, that substantial social progress

appears at once as supremely desirable and even possible.
There can be nothing good or bad in the whole except
what is in the parts, and we cannot alter the essential
nature of any element of society by direct action or per-
suasion ; but an infinitesimal improvement in the mass of
men, too slight to be of much account as an end for indi-
viduals, will, if common
enough, amount to an appreciable
change in the medium
of life for individuals, which in-
voluntarily and unconsciously modifies the whole future
of every unit in the mass, by making a better average of
existence easy and possible for all, including the minority
whose choice and resolves are more consciously deliberate,
ifnot more really independent of determining conditions.
The uncle in Goethe's Bckenntnisse einer sclionen Seele
expresses the conclusions of human morality when he says
that man's chief merit is to determine his circumstances as
278 NATURAL LAW.
much as lie can, and to be determined by them as little as

he can that the world lies before us as a quarry before

;

the architect, out of which we have to carve our own ideal

self, and that it rests with ourselves whether the resulting
be a fine work of art or a helpless failure.
edifice But
though it is certainly a weakness to be at the mercy of
every accidental motive and external impression as it
arises, though morality may consist mainly in the reaction
of the character against the dominion of isolated events
that interfere with its normal development, if that which
is now the normal development and proper nature of the
character has previously been determined or conditioned
by the collective action of forces in the Not-self, it can
scarcely be regarded as a weakness, it may even be the
truest strength to allow the nature and the conduct toge-
ther to be determined, not indeed by chance collisions with
fragments of the Not-self, but by the sum of its coherent,
harmonious influences. Still, if the best action of the natural
forces of the universe on the self depends on the nature of
the self, there cannot be one and the same universal ideal
for all the world, without reference to their special natural

aptitudes; and it is not strictly speaking reasonable to

express anything resembling a moral preference for one
kind of nature over another, except so far as one kind is
supposed to be more useful, or to contribute more to the na-
tural good of the species than another. Questions respect-
ing the comparative dignity or excellence of the active and
the speculative life, for instance, or of the industry of the
artist, the student, or the merchant, are altogether idle for
want of a common measure by which they could be gauged.
There may be shopkeepers, artisans, or maid-servants
more nearly perfect of their respective kinds than any
contemporary poet or statesman, and it is a vain conceit to
say that one variety of human kind is intrinsically better
than another, except in reference to a common (social)
standard.
A strong bias in favour of one class of actions or another
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 279

gives little presumption in favour of the wisdom or good-

ness of acts determined by the bias ; but some, bias is a con-
dition of natural force aod efficiency, since without it the
will must remain the tool or plaything of circumstances.
A disinterested preference or admiration may be felt for
human beings in whom all the most important and charac-
teristic of human faculties, intellect, imagination, energy,
and benevolence, are developed in the highest perfection
and most just proportions but this natural appreciation
;

of specific excellence does not take the form of moral

praise or admiration so long as the faculties in question are
misapplied, or which is seldom, altogether the case ap-
plied in merely self-contained, self-regarding accomplish-
ment. To praise great men for-the help they give humanity
to be its best self both by the direct addition of so much
human faculty and by the assistance its exercise affords to
the development of other organisms is as reasonable as
any other natural tendency, for humanity cannot well fail
to think its own best good. As Dr. Newman remarks in
"
speaking of the intellect as a moral influence Indivi- :

duals will occur to all of us who deservedly attract our

love and admiration, and whom the world almost worships
as the work of its hands. Religious principle, indeed
that is faith is to all appearance simply away ;
the work
is as certainly not supernatural as it is certainly noble and
beautiful." And we fail altogether to appreciate the criti-
cism that such words as noble and beautiful have no mean-
ing when used in an exclusively natural sense in connection
with the characters or actions of men. With the utmost
desire for impartiality we cannot promise to sever the na-
tural associations of those words from their appropriate use ;

nature, not the faint trace of half-forgotten religious pre-

judices, is to blame if we can never quite get
rid of the
notion that we are praising a thing when we call it good.
We cannot draw a hard and fast line between the nature
of the many and that of the few, but the aristocracy of
nature distinguishes itself mainly by the proportion of self-
280 NA TURAL LA W.
originating, self- determining power possessed by its mem-
bers. The social action of this aristocracy is dependent on
the power and will of the masses to be led this way or
that,but their individual development is in their own
hands just in so far as they can turn their surroundings
into its instrument ; while the social ideal, which must be
the same depends for its wealth upon the free ini-
for all,
tiative of those who have received as an unexplained
natural inheritance the power of giving more than they
receive in the course of their natural life. These aristocrats
differ from their humbler fellows in degree only, not in kind,
and the comparative strength of personal and altruistic
impulses and feelings is much the same among them as
among the masses, so that from this point of view again
we do not find moral inequalities always corresponding to
the inequality of natural power.
Now, if we attempt to classify the courses open to these
weightier personalities, each of whom is, in a manner, re-
presentative of the tendencies of a sequent class, we find
some pursuits primarily consisting in the action of the
self upon other men, some in action which is primarily

self-regarding, and even so far as in relation with the

outer world, not mainly in relation with its human
denizens while among actions or pursuits that are ob-
;

jectively altruistic, there is still the distinction between

classes of motives, or the purpose, personal or disin-

terested, of the altruistic course.

Practically the ambitions of educated intelligence take
one or other of the lines which we indicate vaguely by
the words, Politics, Industrialism, Art, Science, Philan-
thropy, Self-culture. Men aspire to rule the many some-
times for the pleasure of ruling, sometimes for the benefit
of the ruled they seek to produce, to multiply articles
:

of material utility or luxury, sometimes merely to gratify

the impulse of production, sometimes for the sake of
material reward, more rarely with the intention of minis-
tering to the material wants or convenience of the com-
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 281

munity ;
men devote themselves toart, the worship and
creation of the beautiful, partly from inward impulse,
partly for the delight of the worship, partly from a dis-
interested, almost religious reverence for those mysterious
qualities whereby the sounds and sights of nature stir the
feelings of men a piety not the less real because wholly
free from arrierc pensee, an involuntary, uncalculating, and
most profound sympathy between man and the natural
harmonies of the world to which he owes his birth. Men
devote themselves, again, to the acquisition of knowledge
and the discovery of natural facts, partly from natural
curiosity, partly in view of the use that the knowledge
may be, and partly from a purely intellectual sympathy
with the real relations of things, an affection for intel-
ligible statement not less strong and constant if less en-
thusiastic than the passion of the artist for the beautiful.
And besides all these pursuits, in which concern for the
common good may have a secondary place, there are some
who make the common good their end, and use and value
the methods of art, science, government and industry as
themselves means of secondary importance compared with
the all-embracing ideal.
It is not enough to enumerate the various goals of
human ambition considered from the point of view of
individual aspiration; we have also to consider the im-
personal best, the result which is naturally good for all,
provided the needful functionaries can be^met with for
its development because the realities of the common life
;

limit and condition the possibilities of individual attain-

ment, as well as, more remotely, of individual desire.
And we must therefore endeavour to give some precision
to our ideas of the best social state possibly attainable in
the approaching future, before trying to define the out-
lines of individual duty which follow by implication as

binding on all those who own the ideal.

" "
We speak of politics as a sphere offering interesting
and absorbing occupation to rational men, and the ques-
282 A' A TURAL LA W.
tion then presents itself: "What is the most acceptable

political ideal ? Is a paternal or democratic government

best for modern civilised communities ? and when the
form of government is settled, should its spirit be liberal
or conservative, and what is the precise significance of
those contrasted terms? The only foregone conclusions
to which the course of the argument has committed us on
this subject are two, that progress is normal and privilege

unjust in other words, that the ideal government must

;

be prepared to recognise and direct the progressive de-

velopment of its subjects, while it will reject the claim
of any class or individuals to be officially secured in the

possession of more enjoyments than their neighbours, at

the expense of the latter. The good of society, at any
given moment, as distinguished from the interest of in-

dividuals, may be held to consist in the attainment by

the greatest number of its members of the
possible
greatest possible amount of satisfaction of all their
conscious desires and impulses. Social progress consists
in the multiplication, among the greatest possible number
of the community, of impulses, faculties and desires with
their attendant possibilities of gratification. The doubts
of those who
question whether progress is in all cases
necessarily a good, rest upon the practical experience that
the multiplication of powers and sensibilities in some
members of society may outstrip the development of

general customs favourable to their habitually receiving

the appropriate satisfaction. In an ideal state of things
the function of Conservatism would be to protect, as far
as possible, every extant source of public good, while the
function of Liberalism would be to introduce as many
new sources as possible of future good. The antagonism
between the two tempers is due to the fact that, in a
state of things which is far from ideal, the pursuit of
new problematical good often entails the sacrifice of old
sources of certain satisfaction, while on the other hand,
an obstinate attachment to the latter may be powerless
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 283

to arrest the growth of tendencies which can only be

satisfied by innovation.

According to this definition of social and progressive

good, the ideal of society will be conceived as a continual
approach, not towards any definite state, but towards
the general diffusion among its members of increasingly
various active powers, and increasingly intense and re-
fined sensibility, such increase being further attended by
a growing harmony between the indulgence of individual
impulses and desires and the common good, present and
to come. The opponents of any special, local progress,
the purpose of which is to multiply the faculties and
develop the sensibilities of a backward race, class, or
sex, are committed to the pessimistic theory that per-
manent defect in some members of the species is the
condition of the utmost attainable perfection in the re-
siduum. The opinion is supported by the high authority
of Aristotle who makes it the ground of his defence of

slavery. But modern history and reason incline us to

the more cheerful view that the true cause, or sine qua
non, of such modest progress as has hitherto resulted from
human effort, has always been the possession of some
positive ability by the superior portion of the species, not
the inferior ability of another portion.
The danger of cultivating additional ability in a class of
ci devant inferiors not chimerical, because the ability of
is

existing superiors may not be equal spontaneously to the

additional strain of supporting, directing, or assisting the
new development towards ends of general social advantage.
At the same time it may be remembered that even
Aristotle, while arguing that it is a means of perfection
to the inferior to obey superior authority, does not ques-
tion the advantage to a superior of having as excellent
subordinates as possible ; and we have no reason to suppose
that those sections of society now supposed to be the seat
of natural authority and superior merit are in any way
naturally less progressive, less capable of improving upon
284 NATURAL LAW.
tlieir present condition, than those of their actual inferiors
whose emancipation from injurious disabilities is recom-
mended in the interests of the general progress of society
as a whole. In our own country the political emancipa-
tion of the masses has already gone so far that the im-

portance of such remaining steps as the enfranchisement

of women and agricultural labourers is mainly social, and
is debated on corresponding grounds rather than on the
strictbase of political equity and expediency but it will ;

perhaps conduce to clear and coherent thinking on these

questions, which seem the more difficult from their mixed
character, if each measure, as it becomes practically urgent,
were to be dispassionate] y referred to some intelligible
standard of desirability apart from the momentary inclina-
tions or prejudices of disputants. And many will admit
that the progressive good of society, as above denned,
affords who are by no means yet con-
such a standard,
vinced that universal suffrage or compulsory education
e.g.,

would appear desirable when tried by this standard.

Even when the progress of society has been accepted as
the final goal, there remain two rival schools of opinion as
to what is or should be the precise aim and function of

political government. This function may be either that of

ordaining what is to be done, at the choice of its own
plenary wisdom, or that of regulating in the most con-
venient manner the doing of those things on which the
will of the community is bent. An omniscient and
benevolent dictator is the ideal of one party ;
a competent
delegacy appointed to harmonise conflicting and enforce
wholesome customs is the ideal of the other. A sovereign
assembly virtually an elected monarch, who governs
is

less than the ideal dictator, because the knowledge and

good-will diffused through the many-organed body does

not readily come to a head in practical commands, and,
accordingly, enthusiasts for the principle of authority
are dissatisfied with governments in which the popular ele-
ment is as strong as in our own. One of the latest exponents
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 285

of this view seems to think that adequate powers of

direction might be developed in a few members of the com-

munity if the remainder of the mass were predisposed to

yield obedience to all beneficial commands, and that the
accidental seizure of administrative power by persons dis-

posed to use it for interested purposes might be remedied

by a quasi-royal right of veto, or the power of changing its
ministers, reserved to the community at large. 1 But
whatever might be most intrinsically desirable, it does not
seem to be the fact that the lapse of time tends to widen
the gulf between the wisdom and vigour of the many and
the few. The task of government conceived 'as wholly
initiativegrows more difficult every day from the greater
variety and complication of the forces which have to be
directed, and no proportionate development of mental
grasp appears in the actual body of contemporary rulers.
What does appear is a growing diffusion of political
and an increasing interest in the objects of
intelligence,
good government among all classes, down to those most
remote from any wish to direct the fortunes of the state as
a whole. And it is for this reason that the party which
chooses liberty rather than authority for its watchword,
seems to represent the strongest objective tendencies of
the day. The ideal of this school is the self-government
of the community, the legislative assembly and its ministers

having for their function to discern and record and give

effect to the will of their constituents. Its justification
lies, not in any optimistic faith in the all-wisdom of
majorities, but in the conviction that no administrative
manipulation can extract out of a nation more effective
virtue than is in it; and that no artificial machinery for

extracting the efficient virtue can be permanently relied

upon to serve its primary purpose, while no community
will refuse its consent to the best laws which its then state
of virtue will allow it to observe. The complaints of
modern anarchy appear to proceed from statesmen, amateur
lti
Order and Progress." By Frederick Harrison.
286 NA TURAL LA IV.
and professional, who feel their own powers to be equal to
the task of forming plans for the good of the community,
but not to the more difficult task of persuading the
voluntary co-operation of those who are to be benefited by
the execution of the plans. The heaven-born ruler knows
better than his subjects what it is best for them to do; and
rulers who are not heaven-born think that they might do

quite as well as the missing great one, if the community

would submit to the effort of seeing without the com-
pulsion of revelation what is really for their own good.
The liberal creed, on the contrary, is that those classes of
the community which are capable of seeing what is for the

general good, with the very moderate assistance afforded by

contemporary politicians, are capable of knowing better than
such politicians what is for their own
good, except in cases
where an obvious bias of egotistic inclination calls for
correction by the enlightened self-interest of the whole
community. The function of government, or the official
organ of the public will, is to find out which are the
strongest tendencies of the social body, and especially
which can be made so by discreet administration.
The use of a civilised government is to execute the
people's will, whether the people knows its own mind or
not, and certainly without looking to it for instructions,
which it is rarely or never able to give, as to the way in
which its will shall be carried out. For example, the
people clamour for education before they have education
enough to know what it is they are asking for but the ;

demand gives a golden opportunity for any administration

that has wit to offer the best education with a free hand,
and strengthen by turning the excited clamours
itself out-
side into denunciation of any less adequate provision. We
hold that a well-educated people is easier to govern
to the ends of civilisation than one possessing all the
of rustic ignorance; but there are rulers who
qualities
think differently, because in effect it is harder to govern
the growth of a civilised nation than to keep the peace
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 287

among a passively servile mass only for rulers who accept

;

the more ambitious task there can be no ma media, because

when the work of education is begun it must either be
directed towards an enlightened completion, or the masses
will be left to all the dangers of partial instruction self-

taught as to their inclinations and claimable rights, but

ignorant of the logical consequences of co-existent and
reciprocal social obligations. One chief characteristic of
a democratic age is the tendency to minimise the original

distinction between government and legislation;! the

administration of public affairs comes to be carried on on
the same principles and with the same self-effacement of
the rulers as are desirable in the case of civil legislation.
The administration of the public services takes up an
increasing part of the rulers' care, and tends increasingly
to outweigh the importance of government in the primitive
political sense, the commanding of the behaviour of differ-
ent classes towards each other, or the determination of the
external relations of the community. And a corresponding
change appears to be taking place in the popular estimate
of the rights and immunities of office-holders. The function
of government used to be coveted as the post of highest

dignity and power, but, until recently, it was assumed that

the ruler would give effect to his own will, and though he
was always praised if his was beneficent or judicious,
will
the specific excellence of a ruler was supposed to consist
more in the greatness of his power than in the wisdom or
benevolence of its exercise in fact, virtue of a kind was
;

recommended to rulers because certain forms of vice

threatened the stability of their power rather than from
any sense of moral responsibility on the part of the
sovereign to the subject.
The beginningof social organisation is made with the

discovery that human beings can be of use to each other ;

but this relation of service has two sides, and it is a
curious psychological question why some services are held
1
Vide supra, p. 36.
288 NA TURAL LA W.
to be honourable to the person by whom they are received
and others to the person by whom they are rendered.

Practically, the test applied seems to have been the action

of free choice, will, or liking in the agent : it is a mark of
inferiority to be compelled by force to do something dis-
tasteful, and admiration or gratitude are not spontaneously
felt, even for needful services, when these are not freely

rendered. But again, in primitive society, as well as

now, what is done voluntarily is assumed to have been
done for the agent's own satisfaction, and in this way
the intrinsically admirable element of ability to do as
one chooses becomes associated with the strength of
desires or passions which it would be harsh to call anti-

social, though their indulgence may become so as soon as

the struggle for existence has advanced a step, and there is
competition between many, who are able to enjoy, for the
means and ministers of enjoyment. The idea of rendering,
voluntarily, services to others for their good is of tardy
growth, and though there are always some qualities more
useful and edifying to society than others, it is not always
the same quality that bears away the palm of natural
excellence or entitles its possessors to the strictly moral
admiration which is reserved for voluntary serviceableness.
Social organisation, or the multiplication of functions
and exchangeable offices of service, begins, historically,
with the want or wish of the strongest natures to be served,
not with a magnanimous desire to serve, and indeed it
would be a psychological impossibility for those who had
had no experience of the convenience of service received
to enter with sympathy into the natural desire of others to
obtain the same advantage. By one of those pregnant co-
incidences which lend a false air of rationality to the course
of history, it was also historically true that the natural
aristocrats who were best able in the first instance to serve
themselves (and incidentally their inferiors, since indiffe-
rent rulemay be better than anarchy), were also best able
to imagine means of exacting the less honourable kind of
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 289

service in return. Considered in the abstract, the aptitude

to issue commands andthe aptitude to yield compliance
are morally void and intellectually worthless ; everything

depends upon the character of the commands issued, and

the purpose and character of the compliance yielded. The
improvident wilfulness of an oriental despot is as unrea-
soning as the canine submissiveness of modern low-life
Griseldas. The exercise of the former quality makes most
immediate and undisguised addition to the suffering of
sentient beings ; at the same time it is the caricature of a

power, the reductio ad absurdum of a principle which may

be thought to have contributed more to the general progress
and benefit of humanity than the opposite habit of non-
resistance. But again, the habit of commanding a tort ct
a travers can only be kept up by the help of a proportion-
ate readiness to obey uncritically, and if social advance
must in all cases be purchased by the juxtaposition of the
two dispositions, it is impossible to localise the merit and
responsibility for the joint result in either one of the con-
tracting parties. Authority has no moral weight, as such,
only we find, on the whole, that persons able to command
obedience are, as a rule, able to invent services which are
both agreeable to themselves, and also remotely serviceable
to social growth and civilisation. And this observation
serves retrospectively to justify the natural tendency of
mankind to admire ability for its own sake.
There isalways some element of natural reason in a
widespread, instinctive feeling, and we do feel that loyalty,
like the best forms of religion, implies reverence for that
which is above, not compassion for that which is below.
To serve a superior be a proud privilege, it is anyway
may
an honourable obligation, but to serve the many-headed,
the leather-sellers and sausage-makers of our modern
demos is that, we
ask, the highest function of our best
men ? or are our best men to leave their natural trade of

shepherding to hirelings ? Are our heaven-born guardians

to content themselves with dilletante criticism while
T
290 NA TURAL LA W.
" "
politics "become a paid trade like cotton-spinning ? The
latent disposition to acquiesce in such a result forms one
of our nearest social difficulties and dangers and yet it ;

seems as if only a slight change of mental attitude were

needed to set our feeling free to follow its natural bent,
to honour power most in its most efficient and influential
manifestations.
After all said and done, where
is the great glory of hav-

ing wants that can be made to supply ? True

inferiors

greatness consists in having better, larger wants than other

men, and the ideal ruler at any rate, according to our pre-
sent ideas, is the- man whose strongest personal desire is for
the righteous and felicitous organisation of the subject-
classes. We
despise equally the demagogue who makes
himself the slave of the lower passions of the many, and
the despot who makes the many slaves to the lower pas-
sions of the one. The truest service that man can render
to man is to make human life the better, and this is a ser-
vice which the greater renders to the less but we associate
;

the idea of service with subjection, and the subjection of

the better to the worse is a moral contradiction. In times
past this difficulty has been evaded
by a phrase the Ee- ;

deemer of men made Himself their servant, to teach them

to serve each other for His sake. But we may ask, for
whose sake did Christ serve ? And if the Christian model
is divine, should it be denaturalised by giving every
why
Christian a different motive from that which moved his
Lord ? Men have imagined and believed in a God ready
to endure all things for the salvation of men leaving all ;

legendary incongruities on one not thereby appa-

side, is it
rent that men are willing to give their best reverence when
the higher consents to serve the lower, if thereby the ser-
vice of the immaterial highest is to be advanced ? There
is no touch of metaphysical mystery or sentimental asceti-

cism in such a faith. The choice of the many may be

determined or confirmed by the urgency of the few and ;

in this God-forsaken world it is well for human voices to

 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 291

ring divinely. There is nothing unreasonable or unintel-

ligible in our craving for a hero whose transcendent power
shall be serviceable, and the would-be heroes of the day
only miss the glories they would aim at for want of courage
or discernment or, perhaps, native heroism enough to
render the services on a sublimely ample scale. The right
line is the shortestway between the two points of useful
action and solid fame, and there is no abnormal severance

of the natural connection between the two ends. It is true

that we see signs of a growing indifference, not to say con-

tempt, among the intellectual classes for what are called

"
politics," or the practical exercise of the power of ruling,
which extends nearly indifferently to all shades of opinion,
except advanced and militant radicalism. But this may
be explained by the bent of aristocratic prejudice, which,
having been brought to waive its claim to anti-social pri-
vileges, still resists the democratic pressure of social obliga-
tion. The formula " to every one according to his wants"
has been applied in complete disregard of the aristocrats'
hereditary want to dominate and the aristocrats accord-
;

ingly feel inclination to accept the remaining clause,

little
"
from every one according to his powers," which would
have re-established their superiority on a fresh basis. At
the same time, disinterested ambition naturally proposes
to itself attainable ends, and whatever kind of superiority
a community is ready to recognise will be cultivated by
those whose most selfish desire is for recognition of their
own merit, such as
it may be. And the more reasonable
popular demands can be made, the more prospect there is
of inducing the natural leaders of society to accept the con-
ditions on which their old ascendancy may be enjoyed.
Here, however, we are met with another difficulty which
hampers the development of political ideals with a com-
manding charm. We concede that in the perfect life,
action, feeling, and intelligence must go the same way,
and not only personal but also sympathetic feelings and
impulses have to be brought into harmony with each other
292 NA TURAL LA W.
and with the objective medium before the whole man can
hope to accomplish the best destiny physically within his
reach. But a reformer, by the nature of the case, lives
and moves among the abuses he is labouring to remove,
and unless he buries himself in the ranks of a small re-
forming sect, seeing no prospect beyond the destruction of
their own pet grievance, the reformer is indeed a kind of
outcaste, a parasite of social ill, in whom the normal self-
assertion of the Wille zum Leben would be an inconsistency.
We protest on behalf of our leaders against their being
called on to serve stupidity, and then, as a crowning com-
pliment, we expect them, to serve vice, and both services are
a war of extermination. The practical difficulty is that an
energetic and sensitive nature needs to feel the stream of
tendency to be with it in its best efforts, or else lives a life
of martyrdom, or rather, the half life of a mutilated soul.
Hundreds of thousands among us are ready and willing to
take their part in the orderly discharge of social duties,
but they cannot feel it to be a duty to scramble for a
function and vindicate their right to it in debate, and so
they stand on one side and some say, What is the use
;

of living when there is nothing useful to do ? and others,

What is the use of doing anything useful if people would
as soon have it left undone ? and others roundly, that life

is tiresome, and we might as well be dead because there is

"
nothing to do," and no sufficient reason for doing that.
Saints and sinners are agreed upon the one need of living
"
somehow, and those who are embarrassed about the how,"
find their difficulty increased by the very fact that society
seems to have no fixed principles and intelligible rules, by
respecting which a man can certainly put himself en rapport
with the feeling of his neighbours. Society takes its mem-
bers at their own valuation, and is slow to find fault with
those who find no fault either with themselves or with
their place in the world and yet society is too far from
;

perfection to be able to afford itself the luxury of un-

broken self-satisfaction, and it is neither right nor reason-
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 293

o,ble for us to be permanently discontented with a

necessity
which we, on the whole, feel bound to accept.
At the same time, the needful reforms would be already
accomplished, and, therefore, no longer needed, if every one
had a sufficiently lively sense of the need to take part in
supplying it; and we might seem to be entangled in a
vicious circle of conservatism, if it were not for the disin-
terested way in which the spiritual nature even of the tin-

spiritual masses shoots ahead of their grosser propensities.

Long before we have either the knowledge or the resolution
needed for living an ideal life ourselves, we may feel the
attraction of a high ideal and be ready to applaud and
follow leaders of the highest ambition. The many must
always depend upon the few for their best gifts and in-
struction, but the few depend upon the good- will of the
many for the crowning perfection as well as for the effi-
ciency of their work, just because it is a part of the highest
ability to be sensitive to external stimulus and external

discouragement. It depends upon the many whether the

best energy of the few shall spend itself in unavailing

protests, in stern endurance, or in fortunate and fruitful

action. We depend on ourselves (or on our antecedents)
for our possibilities; we depend on our contemporaries
and our surroundings for their realisation and, humiliat-
;

ing as from some points of view the confession may seem,

it does not rest altogether in our own hands to make the

best of ourselves morally, a man is free from blame, nay,

;

is deserving of the highest praise and admiration, if he has

done his best under difficulties, but if we are to judge with
the dispassionateness of science we may have to recog-
nize the natural imperfection of the result that we are
thus bound to praise; and the martyr of circumstances
shares our feeling to an extent which is a part of the
martyrdom, for there is no more bitter grief, short of

remorse, to be known by men, than regret for the better

things they might have done under a happier fate. But
this discord between the verdict cf spontaneous feeling and
294 NA TURAL LA W.
deliberate judgment is not naturally or necessarily per-
manent. It is not reasonable for us to judge our chiefs
by a standard which we do not allow them to reach, and
it isnot reasonable to withhold our sympathy from those
who make it their business to pursue the very objects that
our judgment approves.
In point of fact, the mass of public feeling and opinion
only wants concentrating, clarifying, and pouring forth, to
prove itself, as it should be, at one with the best and
strongest individual aspirations, which are now half-
starved for want of such support. There have been times
before now when the whole community accepted the same
ideal, and had but one feeling towards those who spent
their lives in its pursuit; and though our ideal cannot
well revert to mediaeval simplicity, there is no reason why
the reformers of the future should not be sustained by the
same speculative appreciation of their work as that which
made the miracles of monasticism possible in ages of even
less moral culture than the present. Creeds may be
believed in with personal fervour of conviction, or taken
for granted as incuriously asmost of us take for granted
the revolution of the earth on its axis; but the path of
social progress would be cleared of half
its stumbling-

blocks if we believed fervently, or else took for

all either

granted as an unassailable axiom of social faith

That man's perfection is the crowning flower
Toward which the urgent sap in life's great tree
Is pressing seen in puny blossoms now,
But in the world's great morrows to expand
With broadest petal and with deepest glow.

Now, new step in advance must be taken

as always, each
with through opposition, but there is no reason why
effort
all those to whose share the burden of the effort falls
should not find help in their need from the sense of a
common faith giving promise of agreement, soon or late,
between all who own it. And the promise will be kept
when the creed is so deeply rooted in the hearts and
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 295

minds of the majority that they only need to be assured

of what it really commands in order to sacrifice their own
interests or prejudices at its bidding. This is the true
religion of humanity so to honour and love the manifesta-
tions of human strength, wisdom, and loving-kindness as
to feel that in them the best is realised, and that for them
the utmost of pain and labour may be dared and done.
But living religions are congregational, and we want it to
be a household word amongst the many, as well as a
speculative conviction among the few, that the sufficient
reason of human life is to be found in the lives of men
and nowhere else, and that our collective stupidity is to
blame if we do not feel, and let each other feel, that the
forces which stir our souls have a right to stir them, and
that not we, but those who remain callous to influences
whose rightful power we confess, are the heretics and infidels.
The elements of harmony or natural human good are in
our reach, if we could only agree to seek them ; it is
partly because we are not agreed upon a formula for the
desired end that so many moderns dispense themselves
from effort, saying that there is no end in view. We con-
tend that social opinion is more nearly agreed upon an end
than upon a formula, and that the true stumbling-block in
our way is not the want of worthy and adequate employ-
ment, but the objective difficulty of the task before us. In
fact, the end which we desire most, an ideal organisation
of civilised society, is so difficult that single efforts can

go little way towards it; and the difficulty of the task

placed before individuals is increased by the fact that each

reformer has not only to see what he himself can do, but
must include in his plan the fitting in of his efforts to this
or that work of others. It is more reasonable to complain
of such a mission being oppressively or impracticably hard
"
than of an absolute nothing to do," and we have no right
to criticise the natural order for leaving us without a
function if we decline the work naturally traced out for
us, on the ground that it is too hard.
296 NA TURAL LA W.
The reason that the educated and leisurely classes suffer
more from ennui than the hard-working poor, is that the
habitual actions are done from weaker motives, and the
problem of the day is to find and bring home to the will
sufficiently strong motives for performing, if not the
actions now habitual, some others in their stead. The shop-

keeper or the manual labourer is entangled in a petty

round of duties, not one of which can be omitted with
impunity, and an equally irresistible pressure would be
brought to bear upon every intelligent conscience if the
workings of the social mechanism could be so vividly
realised as to supply motives for larger doings and for-
bearances, since the correspondingly large needs are an
objective fact. At present it is given to very few to find
mental and moral stay in a routine congenial to their
rest
mental and moral cravings, but if we take a general
tastes

survey of the whole field of human life and action, it

can scarcely be said that, apart from the common human
temptation to prefer the pleasant to the good, there is a
general discrepancy between the tendency of existing
motive forces and the latent willingness of men to move
in this or that direction there is only an accidental and
;

temporary divorce between the two conditions of con-

tented and efficient action, which it is the object of an
improved social organisation to terminate.
There is one real objective good which we can never go
wrong in taking as the goal of effort, the development of
faculty and the arrangement of facilities for its exercise,
and it may be urged that the good which is built up side
by side with other goods even though the latter may
impose sacrifices is still better, richer than an isolated
final unprogressive attainment. But the chances of fric-
tion are increased with every addition to the complexity
of the social machine, and to minimise such friction we
want every member of the community to be ready, not
only to work well in his own place but to help his
neighbours into the place or function for which they
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 297

are naturally most fit ;

not because they are most useful
or least troublesome in such a place, but disinterestedly,
because it is best for themselves, and when they have been
got into the place that is objectively best for them, they

should be helped with praise, sympathy, or compassion, to

feel themselves at least comparatively well off in it.
In the highest moral and religious sense, each member
of a community depends upon the virtues of his neigh-
bour to develop his own, so that the best good of all is
bound up with that of each one, with a closeness that
can never be attained by purely utilitarian calculations.
The showiest virtues are perhaps those which stand out
in relief against a dark background of opposing crime,
as the veriest schoolboy is tempted by the fame of a

martyred sage or patriot; but perfect virtue must be

able to dispense with either foils or victims, and we
must either renounce our faith in the perfectibility of
mankind or find our way towards the acceptance of an
altogether positive ideal.
But if this way of looking at the common problem were
generally accepted as generally as the main dogmas of
Catholicism five centuries ago we should only have the
intellectual and the practical difficulties of the position
left to Strength and knowledge would not
contend with.
be left idle for want of good-will on the part of their
owner, nor expended in vain for want of good-will
amongst those interested in their exercise. Our wishes
would be guides instead of tempters, an aid instead of a
distraction in the serious work of life, and human action
would again have a chance of approaching to the aesthetic
perfection, which, in this case as in that of all other
natural phenomena, belongs only to work done with an
undivided soul, or by virtue of some natural harmony,
recognisable after the event, though not perhaps to be
analysed or deliberately invented beforehand.
The value of a political formula and the significance of
a political programme varies so widely with the change
298 NATURAL LAW.
of circumstances, that it is hardly useful to dwell in
detail on the purely political measures which seem now
to be demanded as corollaries of our ethical creed. We
agree with Utilitarian liberals in deprecating legal inter-
ference with the self-regarding action of individuals, but
we look upon it as the duty of the community as the
natural function of its collective wisdom to provide the
individual members
of the social body with every possible

facility forcomplete and healthy self-development. All

are interested in the well-being of each, and even on
Utilitarian grounds it may be argued that they have
therefore a right to legislate for the personal advantage
of individuals, but there is a vast difference between
the claim of individuals to legislate all at once for their
own good, and the resolution of the authorised govern-
ment to promote the well-being of every fraction of the
subject group all the difference, indeed, which we associ-

ate with the contrasted terms of blind instinct and en-

lightened reason. We
should not get an exhaustive
account of the phenomena of human life by merely
adding together the vital motions of all the bodily
organs; and, in like manner, it is only natural for the
intelligent action of the social body to have a degree of
organic unity and coherence, which would be wanting to
a mere aggregation of individual wills.
The matters of common interest which the state may
be expected to care for with increasing efficiency with the
increase of intelligence and unity of purpose among its
members may be briefly summed up as the provision of
good laws, good administration of the public services, a
sound system of social and industrial economy, and a sound
system of national education. The machinery of govern-
ment is a point of secondary consideration, and the inter-
national relations of the model state must inevitably be
modified by the temper of the other civilised communities
with which it is in relation. The duty, however, of such a
state towards barbarous but improveable populations is
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 299

more clearly uniform, and we should perhaps include

among the functions of the state the direction of inde-
pendent colonists in their dealings with aboriginal inhabi-
tants, and perhaps even the organisation of some secular

counterpart to Christian "missions" in those districts

where the spontaneous relations of two races of unequal
development are not likely to be altogether conducive to
the best interests of both.
With regard to laws, it will be remembered that we
have not been able to lay down any absolute rule or
standard of equity; now, as always, the best laws for a
community are the best that it can be induced to obey
faithfully and intelligently, and in the case of any special
reform, it is a practical question how near an approach to
the best possible rule the actual state of the community will
admit. Mr. Herbert Spencer has almost exalted into the
dignity of a natural law the observation that men in guard-
ing against one evil are apt to find that their remedy itself
has made room for another perhaps as bad. But there is

no metaphysical necessity at work to perpetuate this simple

result of human short-sight. Very often the reform carried
out not exactly the one proposed on the merits of the
is

case, and the practically successful apcuprh has undesired

consequences; but very often also the exact remedy, if

proposed in time, might succeed as well and have no ill
result at all, while in any case it is quite within the com-

petence of human reason to foresee and guard against new

opportunities for abuse incidentally provided by a measure
in the main beneficial.
It faithlessness, verging on impiety, for one man to
is

profess himself possessed of a remedy for social evil and to

proclaim in the same breath that his wisdom is of no use
because none of his fellows have the wit to see with him.
What one man has seen all men may come to see or
believe in, and we may even go so far as to question the
value of a vision which can find no second seer. It is a
300 NA TURAL LA W.
self-destructive caution which attempts nothing because it

may not be able to accomplish all it would attempt, and

we have not much tolerance for the weakness which lets
"
we cannot " wait upon " I would " in cases where power
is optional and will contagious. We have a right to
assume in theory that whatever is desirable is possible,
and to act as if it were so, even though we know that our
approach to the most desirable of all results whatever
that may be will be infinitely gradual, and the date of
its completion, therefore, practically out of reach. But the
pursuit of perfection is independent of time and the con-
tinuous life of nations or sects exists only in the continuity

of effort towards one purpose, and thus to every genera-

tion the sufficient reason for present effort is always the
next step practically possible towards the supreme result,
always present to the eye of faith, though never brought
within the grasp of material possession.
At any rate
there can be no excuse for adjourning needful

legislative reform based. on the best contemporary practice

carried out to all its logically consistent developments.
What men can do, men can certainly describe systemati-
cally, and a code is simply a systematic description of the
different doings of men in their constant relations to each
other. It is not necessary for any one to know by heart
the innumerable varieties of fact upon which litigious
issues may be raised, but it is eminently necessary for a
civilised community to be in possession of a coherent set of

principles, in accordance with which any possible number

of cases may be uniformly decided, and it would be well if

lawyers as well as moralists and politicians could gather

together enough faith in human reason and courageous
reliance on human energy not to despair of the heroically
what is now, and for the next
difficult task of ascertaining
few centuries likely to be, the best practical rule for every
kind of leading case. There always is a practical best, one
course which appears more perfectly and unexceptionally
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 501

suitable than any other, and with candour and diligence

this coursecan be defined beforehand in outline fully pre-
cise enough for popular needs.
Thus we want a consistent and intelligible criminal law,
which shall apportion the penalty for every offence to the
heinousness of the offence estimated in view at once of the
present injury actually inflicted on society by the crime,
and the chronic injury, so to speak, inflicted on it by the
moral perversity of the criminal. If the criminal is incor-
the sole aim of legislation will be to protect society
rigible,
against his misdeeds, otherwise reform rather than retri-
bution will be the aim of judicial sentences, and in a per-
fectly ideal scheme, the old system of fines and the modern
system of damages will probably be blent into an equitable
method of compensation for wrongs as an alternative for
the merely personal expiation of a penal sentence. All
offences, old and new, from obsolete crimes of violence to
the most recent developments of fraud, should be classed
afresh upon an uniform plan, and the mere act of impartial
enumeration would give rise spontaneously to a beginning
of re- arrangement. Each act would be judged according
to its actual character, and the anomalies arising from
historical survivals of penalties which have changed their

significance for actswhich have changed theirs would be

at once removed from cumbering the path of justice. The
theory of legal wrong is, we know, much simpler than the
theory of rights, but even this is not essentially unknow-
able or inexplicable. Some laws we must have, bad laws
we have had, good laws we might have, by virtue of the
self-same facilities which enable us to have laws at all,

only we are too idle to make them.

The reasonable rights of persons over and against each
other are perfectly assignable: sane adults are free to
pledge themselves by contract to each other, and those
contracts, which are customary in the community, and
which the community is interested in having faithfully
observed, may be reasonably enforced by law upon either
302 NA TURAL LA W.
of the parties who had voluntarily entered upon the same.
Contracts of marriage, of partnership, of hired service, are
binding as the provisions of a positive law are binding, if
the contract fulfils the conditions laid down for normal
agreements of that particular kind ; but we want to be rid
of all the archaic curiosities of legislation, which make
one agreement involve another, that it has nothing to do
with now, because six or seven centuries ago the two were
customarily associated ;
and we want still more urgently
to be relieved from the incubus of archaic forms of con-
tract which bind, perhaps to their mutual amazement,
parties who omit themselves out of the obliga-
to contract
tion. In relations that are assumed to be permanent the
legislature should provide a typical form of contract,
available for all those who do not deliberately modify it,
or who modify it in a direction which the law refuses to
sanction (as if a servant sells himself for a slave), and this
typical form should embody the last word of contemporary
practical reason, which many of our present laws, concern-
ing marriage, bankruptcy, legal procedure, and a variety
of other topics, are far enough from doing as yet.
The proprietary rights of persons offer a wider field for
discussion, because there is not an absolute consensus of
opinion as to their normal extent. All rights of perma-
nent property in things are the creation of positive law,
which makes itself the guardian of every man's posses-
sions during the time when he is not in actual occupation.
The metaphysical jurisprudence of the seventeenth cen-

tury, finding proprietary rights established, assumed that

they had an abstract and eternal right to State recognition,
in virtue of some native inherent sanctity of their own ;

and the early Utilitarians were equally peremptory in vin-

dicating them to their fullest extent, in the name of the
unmistakable personal interest of owners. Of ]ate years,
however, the wilder forms of socialism have shown a ten-
dency to settle down into sober criticism of the history of

special rights, with a view to the abrogation of those de-

 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 303

monstrably injurious to the public welfare. It is argued

that what the law gave the law may take away, and the
appeal is virtually from law to morality when the oppo-
nents of change in the proprietary rights of individuals
cry out about the injustice of a policy of confiscation,
while the advocates of change are equally vehement about
the iniquity of the existing partition. The best way of
bringing the controversy to a manageable issue is to insist

upon the distinction between the justice of rules and the

expedience of facts, for Government, in those wider func-
tions which include legislation, has to take account of
both, and is legally, as well as morally, within the sphere
of its competence in decreeing the gradual extinction of
an obnoxious class of facts.
The title of a Eussian noble to the possession of his
serfs was legally good, but it was the creation of historical
enactment and in England, at any rate, we should find
;

few theorists prepared to characterise the emancipation as

illegal. We should, however, find a good many who would
justify that interference with the rights of ownership on
" "
the ground that one man has no right to own another,
and that, in fact, positive law cannot give an indefeasible
right to any power or privilege which is morally wrong.
And this is the very contention of the qualified socialism
of writers like Mill or Laveleye. It becomes then a ques-
tion of fact, not of principle, whether any rights, of persons
over things, now consecrated by law are morally unjust,
generically
i.e., mischievous to society, with its various co-

equal and counterbalancing claims ;

and if this be the
case, of two things one, either the legal rights must be
allowed to lapse into desuetude as English landlords
escaped the tax of compulsory emancipation by allowing
their villeins to drift gradually into prescriptive liberty
or they must be authoritatively limited to the measure of

general practical expediency. The question whether it is

just for the law to sanction every possible development of
proprietary rights only arises in practice when the actual
304 NATURAL LAW.
development of those rights has resulted in an extremely
unequal distribution of the national wealth. Such ine-
quality is a social evil, and we deny the perfect equity of
law which sanctions the development of social evils. A
right conferred by the community should be regarded as a
trust, for which the holder is responsible to the sovereign

power by whom it was conferred but if the exercise of

;

legal rights and liberties is to be avowedly independent of

moral restrictions, the law, which is never bound to sanc-
tion immorality, may at any time withdraw the liberty
which has been abused in practice.
Let us suppose that at the date of the emancipation of
the serfs, all Eussia had been the property of the nobles,
and that the traditional hold of the villagers on the soil had
been ignored suppose further that the nobles had been
;

bribed to consent to the emancipation by the promise of

salaried under the Government, and that the
offices

whole had with one consent "begun to live upon its

class
salaries in St. Petersburg and Moscow, leaving the rural
districts waste for shooting-grounds. In a few years from
such a beginning, the condition of the peasantry would have
become such that the country would have had to choose
between civil war and an agrarian law. We deny that
there can be wrongs without an equitable remedy, and we
assert the right of the State in such a case to ordain a re-
distribution of proprietary rights in a manner more con-
ducive to the common good or the interest of the nation
as a whole. This is an extreme, or rather an imaginary
case, but minor grievancesmay be rectified in accordance
with the same principle, subject only to the general con-
sideration which is at the bottom of all reasonable dread
of revolutionary reform. The foundation of social stabi-
lity and well-being is the security of life and property
afforded by association. The assurance of this stability lies,
we hold, in the natural regularity of men's desires and im-
pulses taken in the mass, but those who look upon mankind
as by nature lawless and only kept in order with difficulty
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 305

by heaven-sent pastors and masters, are naturally staggered

by the proposal to make the self- estimated good of the
community the standard of justice and the rule of law.
We contend that all laws and contracts
may be safely
submitted for revision they are found to work unsatis-
if

factorily in practice, provided the test applied is taken

from the general interest, in its most liberal sense, not
from the personal interest of either party to the quarrel ;

and we cannot doubt that this test of general utility will

enforce the needful degree of stability and discourage any
tendency to apply larger remedies than are desirable to
small and temporary inconvenience.
The only kind of proprietary rights that have been

seriously called in question in this country are those

touching the possession of land and though we are far
;

from saying that the present state of things is so bad as

to call for exceptional legislation, we unhesitatingly assert
in principle the right of the community to dispossess the
whole body of landowners of any part of their present
privileges which they may be found on investigation to
abuse habitually. Practically, it would be most unfortu-
nate for the need of exercising such a right to arise, and it
is more desirable, and even more probable, that landowners

should become increasingly scrupulous in exercising their

present legal rights than that the rights should be forcibly
curtailed. The danger, however, of provoking exceptional

legislation to deal with special inconveniences that would

be better dealt with by voluntary self-denial, is increased
by the maintenance of special legislation surviving from
the times when
exceptional privileges were fearlessly and
openly secured to certain sections of the community. If
land circulated as easily and descended as equitably as
personal property, there would be less need and less desire
to insist on the natural difference which there is between
a kind of property of which the supply is limited bj
natural causes and kinds that can be indefinitely multi-
plied by human industry. It is one of the results of civi-
u
3o6 NA TURA L LA IV.
lisation make the personal possession of land less
to
and lessof a necessary of life; but certain uses of the
land, as to dwell on it, to cross it, to be provided with its
perishable fruits, and to be able to rest at intervals in
sight of its uncontaminated verdure, are necessary to so
rapidly increasing a population as to menace the theore-
tical right of dukes and millionaires to appropriate whole
counties to serve as sites for picturesque private hermi-

tages, or as happy hunting-grounds for a select group of

well-born barbarians.
Suppose seemed not improbable in the first half of
as
the century by commerce and
that the wealth acquired
manufactures were to get habitually concentrated in as few
hands in proportion as the landed estates of the country,
while the labouring millions continued on the verge of
pauperism we should then apply to existing methods of
:

production and distribution the same standard of criticism

as is invoked in the case of land laws. There is some-
thing wrong either in the laws or manners of a people in
which such extremes of wealth and poverty are the rule ;

and though the corruption of manners cannot be directly

remedied by law, the law is at no time bound to sanction
consequences adverse to its own spirit.

Suppose an industrial population so ignorant and inert

as to be incapable of making reasonably equitable terms
with the employers of labour, while the latter were de-
terred by no scruples of prudence or humanity from

driving the hardest bargain they could get it would be ;

then within the competence of the legislature to fix a

minimum rate of wages, and maximum hours for work, in
order to give the servile population a chance of developing
the power of self-protection as in times past a maximum
price has been fixed for commodities, in the hope of pro-
tecting consumers against the arts of monopoly. This is
practically how a civilised government acts towards two
classes, of oppressors and oppressed, both belonging to an
inferior subject race ;
but the case is imaginary, because
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 307

the government in modern states is naturally recruited

from the propertied classes, and it is scarcely likely that
a class whose members were individually so unscrupulous
as to need a government check on their exactions should
be willing, collectively, to impose such a check on them-
selves. We only give the extreme case, in order to assert
the general principle in regard to all kinds of property,
that the claim to State protection for extant legal rights is
conditional upon their being exercised in conformity with
civic duty, as recognised by the official conscience of the
community. And law may in this way interfere to rec-
if

tify the tendencies of bad customs and low morality, much

more may it hereafter come to sanction and enforce the
observance of better customs than those now prevailing,
as soon as they have spontaneously established themselves.
When the majority of rich men look upon themselves as
functionaries charged with a special debt towards society,
and hold it a part of their privilege to discharge the debt,
many rights which are now unquestioned will then be
classed with such antiquarian curiosities of semi- civilisa-
tion as the droit de seigneur, or the sale of feudal wards.
We must not venture to pursue in detail the discussion
which invites us, of special measures of legal reform, a?
tried by the test of universal practical expediency and

morality. Nor need we dwell in detail on the develop-

ment of various branches of the public service, when
governments apply themselves undividedly to the task of
ministering to the common good. In spite of manifold
practical imperfections, it would be dishonest and ungrate-
ful to deny that within the last quarter of a century real
and permanent advances have been made in this direction.
We have seen with our own eyes the beginnings of an
application of science to the regulation of matters of com-
mon interest, which must inevitably expand until the
whole physical police of the country is brought methodi-
cally under the control of its organised common sense,
not of a scientific hierarchy, entrenched behind a veil of
3o3 NATURAL LAW.
esoteric mysteries, or a parasitic army of Chinese func-
tionaries and salaried examinees, but a body of public
servants, whose business it should be to keep the country
healthily habitable, and to facilitate the maximum develop-
ment of its material resources. Even now we have func-
tionaries to whom a place in the public service means an

opportunity for productive work, and not either a sinecure

or a share in the mechanical routine of administrative
circumlocution. This the sane and living side of our
is

civilisation, mosteasily undervalued by those who shut

their eyes to its existence. The demand for such intelli-
gent and conscientious service will go on increasing with
growing intelligence -of the needs of the community and ;

as in all cases a want is more easily felt than supplied, no

conceivable improvement in the standard of popular and
academical instruction is likely to keep pace with the de-
mand thorough and versatile ability in the Civil Ser-
for

vice; andif the State is thus exacting, private under-

takings, we may be sure, will not put up with inferior

administration. And as half the force and knowledge
that are wanted to reach ends which we
already see to be
desirable would suffice to disclose fresh ends, vast and
remote enough to provide arduous work for generations of
our grandchildren, it is clear that local accidents and per-
sonal ill-luck are more in fault than the natural order of
things in general, if so many of us find wholesome action
impossible for want of a clear and cogent end.
Meanwhile the obvious function, for those who have no
other, is to criticise their more fortunate neighbours and ;

it must be admitted that the different grades of our in-

dustrial population, who are probably on the whole better
satisfied with themselves and with the harmony of their
own mode of life with the " spirit of the times," than any
other equally considerable section of the community, are
from having attained to an ideal organisation of
still far

their own pursuits. In touching on the law of property,

we were reminded of the social and economical difficulties
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 309

attendant on the acquisition and distribution of wealth ;

but we have no wish to disallow the claims of political

economy to rank as a separate science with laws of its own
quite independent of positive institution, and facts which
fall into special relations
among themselves. Many defi-
nitions of the subject-matter of the science have been
offered, but for our present purpose, as we consider the
phenomena of production and distribution in relation to the
nett social result, not to the several motives which lead
individuals to contribute to it, we may describe the science
as dealing with the remuneration of services and the ex-

change of commodities. Most professional writers on this

subject are anxious to exclude any importation of ethical
considerations,and to describe only the natural, not the
right way of paying for services and estimating values or ;

the way in which people do, rather than that in which

they ideally should transact their bargains. And in this
they are certainly right commerce may be moral, just as
:

science, art, or religion may be moral, but morality is not

a part of its essence ; only, as all normal pursuits alike
tend to constitute themselves in the only way in which
they can permanently survive as parts of our natural life,
commerce as well as all the rest tends slowly and pain-
fully towards an organisation which shall be altogether
acceptable to the whole of our nature, or, in other words,
to a state of natural morality in its methods and processes.
We do not ourselves believe in the existence of any such
antagonism as some economists accept, between the natural
and the right, and it is in the interests of speculative truth
rather than of practical morality that we should wish the
foundations of economical theories to be widened. Poli-
ticaleconomy, as at present understood, affirms the natural
value of everything to be just what it will fetch, i.e., what
somebody is willing to give for it. The unknown is to be
measured by the uncertain, and the only possible inference
isthat nothing has any natural value at all, only an always

varying competition price. But supposing this chronic

310 NATURAL LAW.
uncertainty as to the normal rule of exchange for services
or commodities to be a source of economical inconvenience,
we cannot think that there is any such metaphysical sanc-
tity in the principle of competition as to preclude tradesmen
from making use of some other test. In practice, indeed, a
certain mean value for most common articles of commerce
is, by the help of all naturally relevant
in fact, established

considerations, and the fluctuations of the market are in the

main conditioned by accidents, which really do for the mo-
ment alter the proportion of supply and demand, and so cause
a natural rivalry of competition on one or other side. But

misleading to speak of competition as par excellence the

it is

economical motive, to the exclusion of still more indispen-

sable elements in the estimation of price or value. The
two primary elements in the value of services or commo-
dities on the one hand, cost, on the other utility
are, :

scarcity or abundance in proportion to demand may mo-

dify the natural value fixed by those two considerations,
but it cannot 'fix a value by itself. What costs nothing or
is of no use (real or conventional) can have no market

value, whether it be as common as moonshine or as rare

as the transit of Venus. The competition price of things,
in fact, varies between limits which are fixed by their
natural value. An article of absolute necessity, such as
food, may be worth to the man who wants it the whole
of his other possessions which are of less use to him
than the life they might buy but men cannot give more
;

than they have got, and even the competition price of

bread in a famine is limited, first by the total sum of
wealth available for its purchase, and secondly, by the
depreciation of all other kinds of wealth except food, when
all the community is ready to give everything it has for
that alone.
Similarly with regard to the price of services, a man
will pay for labour which is necessary to his life as for
any other commodity, but he will not buy work that he is
able to do for himself if the price is more than his personal
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION-. 311

ease and leisure are worth to him ;

and on the other hand,
men who the sale of their labour will rather fight
live by
or starve than labour continuously without prospect of

earning what they regard as the necessaries of life in

return. Just as there is a natural limit namely, the
extent of our possessions, to the highest possible price
of necessaries, there is also a natural limit namely, the
extent of our wants, to the lowest possible price of the
labour by which necessaries are produced. slave can A
be made to work himself to death in an average period
of five or ten years free labourers can be brought
;
have
been brought to labour under conditions which give a
scarcely higher average length for the term of able-bodied
industry. But slaves and labourers rise in insurrection at
the point whenever it may come at which the image of
their own death comes so near to them as to overshadow
the prospect of living miserably for a few days more if
they don't risk instant death in a struggle for liberty and
life. The love of life is the most elementary of economical
facts, for our first utilities is derived from
conception of
what we and the wish to procure these
call its necessaries,
necessaries is the first motive that urges men to industrial

production and commercial exchange.

The double fallacy of economical writers is to lose sight
of this starting-point ignoring the elements of cost and
;

utility, they take the proportion of supply and demand as

the sole guide to the price of commodities, and then pro-
ceed to treat human labour as an inanimate commodity,
subject to the same unlimited depreciation of price under
variations of demand as air and water. No scarcity of
demand natural or artificial will cause a commodity to
be continuously brought to market at less than its cost,
and the strict cost of labour is the maintenance of the
labouring population. If the maintenance
is murderously

inadequate, we havepeasant wars and bread riots unless

indeed the latter are claimed by economical enthusiasts as
only an extreme form of the "higgling of the market,"
312 NA TURAL LA W.
which bread as well as the rate of wages.
fixes the price of
There however, this difference between labour and other
is,

commodities. If the labourer can live as he pleases with-

out selling his labour, no urgency of demand will bring
him into the market, but if he can only live by the pro-
ceeds of his labour, no slackness of demand can modify
his desire to sell. The demand may fall so much short
of the supply that the natural competition price of the
labour if it were not alive might be brought down
below the minimum cost or what is known as a subsistence
wage. But even when this minimum has been reached,
the supply of labour may still be in excess of the demand,
and as it is not possible to stimulate demand by yet further
reduction of price, we may have a minimum of absolutely
unsaleable labour.
Economists of the strictest school, i.e., the Malthusian,
will say on hand till they rot,
unsaleable commodities lie

and when some of them have rotted away and others are
worn out by use, the demand revives for a season. What
the economists do not see that this decomposition of a
is

live portion of the community is not a simple economical

process, but on the contrary a grave political act, charged

with political risks and entailing serious responsibility on
the timocracy which may the police force aiding cause
"
it be peaceably accomplished. " Unsaleable is not a
to

simple epithet describing some quality of the labour it ;

refers to the accidental proportion existing between the

desire of the propertied classes to be worked for in this or
that way, and the need of the class without property to
dispose of its labour, somehow to somebody, for a main-
tenance. If we imagine an immense accumulation of
manufactures, and a sudden arrest of enterprise and
imaginative cupidity, the capitalist class might, for a
generation, dispense with nearly all labour but that of
personal servants; in this case all the labour of the
operative class would become unsaleable at once; and
the principles of utilitarian morality would be invoked
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 313

in vain to prove it to be the duty of the majority to

prefer the alternative of collective suicide to civil war.
There is no such sanctity about the commercial gospel
as to give it a right to State protection when it has landed
its professors in a political dilemma. There is no reason
why all classes should not buy in the cheapest and sell in
the dearest market if it suits their convenience, but if the
cheapest market is a pest-house, and the dearest a hell,
the care for life, of body and soul, may take precedence of
zeal for a per-centage. And because buyers and sellers
alike have to live a human life as members of the same
human community, we deny that it is in any peculiar or
" "
permanent sense natural for the master of the situation
whether he be buyer or seller to push his economical
advantages to the limits beyond which civil war begins.
It is economically possible for him to do so, just as Man-
chester merchants may shut themselves out from the
markets of China by the immoderate adulteration of their
goods but though both courses may be forms of com-
;

petition, and, therefore, of an economical nature, they

may be ill-judged economically as well as socially and
politically and in the interests of economical science we
;

must protest against the notion that miscalculations are

"economical" if they are made by persons desirous of
driving a good bargain, while sound estimates of price
and value are not economical unless direct personal interest
has served as a guide for their formation.
Already, even within the commercial camp itself, voices
are beginning to raise themselves in honest practical un-

certainty as to the lawful extension of this idea of cheap-

ness in the market. It is not lawful to buy stolen goods
however cheap, but is it lawful to buy the goods of an
insolvent debtor when he offers them as cheap as if his

object were and is it our business to know whether it

is to steal away as much of his assets as he can before

going into liquidation ? Political economists of the old

school would say it is no affair of one tradesman whether
3H NATURAL LAW.
his neighbour is honest or no; the thing is to make a
profitable bargain while there is a chance. But how if a
form of enterprise grows up which consists in buying up
the stock-in-trade of bankrupts just before they fail, and
selling them at prices with which honest tradesmen can in
no way compete ? We have here goods sold a miracle of
cheapness, but does political economy forbid our discern-
ing that by such transactions the rogues and the receivers
derive a profit, earned in no sense by their own industry,
but purloined by their astuteness from the honest credi-
tors of one rogue and the honest competitors of the other ?
It will be said, perhaps, that sales with intent to defraud
are already illegal, but if we once admit that a purchaser
is bound to satisfy himself that the other party to the
contract has a right to sell and is only the more bound
to do so if the proffered goods are suspiciously cheap, the
thin end of the wedge of moral responsibility is inserted,
and every kind of fraudulent cheapness may be condemned
alike, whether it be the fruit of stolen or half-paid labour,
or of stolen or half-withheld workmanship, or of sharp
practice in the actual market.
It is practically impossible that every one, in making a

special bargain for immediate profit should look forward

to all the consequences of his own decisions and the con-

sequent actions of others. An average mind would give

way under the strain, and political economists generally
sanction the disposition of the average trader to leave de-
liberately out of account everything but the clearly visible
personal advantage. But the pursuit of a clear, present,
personal advantage, ifuncontrolled by general considera-
tions, may entail unnecessary loss to other persons or
classes ;
that is might be able to do
to say, the individual
as well by himself, and better by other people, if he recog-
nised positive duties to the latter, instead of seeking the
shortest road to doing well by himself alone. Experience
fails to bear out the optimistic assumption of utilitarian-

ism, which has its stronghold in political economy ;

that
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 315

the whole sumof lawful motives will certainly and always

press in the way of personal inducement upon each indi-

vidual agent, so that each several centre of consciousness
will always feel, by direct experience, the force of all those
manifold converging lines of tendency which in the long
run, their joint action, certainly do lead the majority of
by
men to act in conformity with the general good. If the
calculations of self-interest were always so providentially

inspired, we do not see why economists should need to

distinguish as they do between economical and moral
propriety. But if the economical as well as the moral
interest of the whole community is liable to demand
sometimes, from some individuals, conduct not exactly
coincident with the promptings of personal inclination,
then it seems certain that economical science, instead of
contenting itself with the empirical d pen pres of competi-
tors bargaining, will lay down some general principles or
rules in accordance with which the general welfare may
be most economically secured.
The destruction of forests by the first settlers in a new
country is a typical example of discrepancy between the
counsels of private and public prudence. Such settlers
may not, perhaps, live to see the price of timber rise to a
remunerative point, but the settlement, if it survives them,
will infallibly before long regret the idle waste of a long
inheritance of natural growth, which, as often as not, is of
no real service, even for the moment, to its perpetrator. The
1
history of the American oil-wells, gives a still more compen-
dious illustration of the inadequacy of selfish calculations
to protect a most obvious public interest. When the oil-

springs were tapped, the oil was so accessible and so

first

incredibly abundant, that its commercial value fell almost

to zero on the spot ; hence reckless waste and the actual
destruction of large quantities of a valuable natural com-
modity. The means of lighting cheaply some millions of
houses were squandered because the first owners were con-
"
1
Professor Owen on Petroleum and Oil Wells," in Frascr, for Oct. 1875.
316 NATURAL LA IV.
scions of no personal inducement not if the trite proverb

may be allowed to kill the goose with the golden eggs if

the contents of her ovary at death were sufficient to provide
themselves with a fortune on which to retire luxuriously.
The was first depreciated by its abundance, and then
oil

had itscommercial value increased by the waste, which

made it again, by comparison, prematurely scarce. The
common interest suffered by the needless destruction of an
article of natural utility, and out of the crowd of specula-
tors making haste to be rich, the success of some entailed
the failure of others, so that unless we think gamblers pru-
dent, because every gambler hopes he will be the one to
break the bank, it cannot even be said that the individual
speculators understood their own interest better than if
they had sought to make the best of the natural store for
all concerned. In commerce, as in personal morality, fore-
thought is the beginning of altruism, and if the individual
were but immortal, he would live to expiate every dis-
regard for the interest of his neighbour or posterity but as ;

one age as near to science as another, the general rule

is

which is to provide a check for the anti-social vagaries of

speculation, and alleviate the natural calamities of dearth,

must fix the standard for the normal value of services and
commodities in reference to their permanent utility to the
many, not their occasional saleableness by the owners.
In the often-quoted case of a shipwrecked crew, the
scanty stores of food are not put up at auction to the
highest bidder, but dealt round by common consent as far
as they will go the demand for food is far in excess of
;

the supply, and every member of the group would be glad

to diminish the supply of hungry mouths, but no one
dares to say to the other, as a Malthusian millowner to
the mob at his gates Get a few of you starved or
hung, and then come back and bargain. And the true
nature of social problems is not altered, only disguised, by
their additional magnitude and complexity. The poorest
country of modern times has never been so poor that its
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 317

whole wealth would fail to find its population in bread

and cheese and fustian, and yet capitalists once and again
have told the swarming millions to make themselves
scarce, because there is not wherewithal to pay their
labour, meaning that there is not enough to pay their
labour out of the surplus left after the supply of every
other want of those in whose hands the wealth of the
country is accumulated.
"
The fact is that we find it best, as a rule, that they
should take who have the power, and they should keep
who can," because there is no sufficiently independent and
capable human tribunal to revise the spontaneous adjust-
ment of natural recompense for natural ability. But when
the organisation of society has advanced so far that many
social prizes are awarded by a concatenation of chances,
in which ability plays no part at all, society has a right
to revise deliberately the result of its involuntary awards,
and to lay down the conditions under which individuals
shall be allowed to enjoy the "unearned increment" of
natural advantages which the social compact bestows on
the favourites of fortune. We
do not assert the right of
the many to confiscate periodically the accumulated heri-
tage of the few. The momentary benefit derived by the
lesswealthy from such a redistribution of existing pro-
perty would be much more than compensated by the dis-
couragement of industry in all classes, and the substitu-
one kind of anti-social exploitation of man
tion, at best, of

by man for another, privileging, in fact, the improvidence

of Esau instead of the wiliness of Jacob. But as the one
indefeasible natural right (and duty) of society is to con-
sult the greatest possible advantage of all its members, it
is clear that we are justified in regulating the distribution

of those gifts of fortune which are not the reward of per-

sonal merit, so far as can be done without discouraging
the development of such merit. Merit is discouraged by
legislation which robs it of its comparatively near and
natural, though incidental, advantages ;
but it is also dis-
318 NATURAL LAW.
couraged by legislation, or legislative inertia, which allows
the incidental rewards of merit to be paid, like prize-
money, to the heirs-at-law of long-departed valour, instead
of to those still engaged in the battle of life ; and if too

large a share of the good things of life, available for the

living generation, is reserved for the descendants of those

who lived well or wisely before it, society is pauperised
and left without wages to recompense the living services
rendered to itself.

It would not be possible, even if it were desirable, to

induce any class or classes to acquiesce permanently in a
rate of exchange for services or commodities which was

deliberately unjust to one party to the contract, that is to

say, deliberately out of relation to their natural equiva-
lence as spontaneously estimated by our present feelings
and judgment. But it is eminently desirable, if it can be
shown to be possible, for all sections of the community to

agree upon a common measure of social value, and to be

guided in their particular bargains by a general opinion as
to the comparative merit or use of proffered services ;
and
supposing the common conscience and common sense to
be intent on promoting the common welfare, the commu-
nity might, as it were, insure itself against the risk of
those local disturbances of the natural equity of exchange
which distress society when the ordinary course of peace-
ful competition is embittered by positive scarcity or un-
satisfied want. The natural value using the words in
their highest sense of any service or commodity is com-
mensurate with its fitness to contribute to the natural

good or perfection of the community making use of it.

Supposing such a by no means inconceivable degree

of enlightenment to be reached by an industrial commu-

nity as that both the giver and the receiver of any cus-
tomary service should be aware of its social importance or
insignificance, and accept, as a matter of course, the remu-
neration proportioned to the estimation in which it was
held on both sides, the accidental scarcity or abundance
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 319

of one commodity as compared with another would be

accepted as a common loss or a common gain, instead of
the whole profit or loss being allowed to lie where it falls,

at the unguarded cast of hazard.

One of the most pressing and difficult questions of the
day is this concerning the natural rights and natural
duties if we allow both to have a rationally recognisable
existence of the labouring classes. Is it, we are com-

pelled to ask, is it their duty, i.e., is it for the common

good, that they should acquiesce voluntarily in the work-
ing of a system of competition which may end by pointing
out to them the last resource of self-destruction? Are
they, in fact, bound to make their work as much like a
"
brute commodity," and as little like a reasonable service,
as they can ? The way in which the question presents
itself to the different sections of a commercial and indus-

trial community like our own is practically this :

When,
from a variety of circumstances, which no one has planned,
and of which no one clearly understands the history, there
is a present discrepancy between the demand for labour

on the part of those who have the means of paying for it,
and the supply of labour seeking to be paid for, is it the
capital or the labour that should suffer diminution in its
share of the gross profits of the national industry, or is

the loss to be divided between them ? and if so, who is to

determine in what proportions ?
Trade unions, the great instrument for fixing wages by
other considerations than simple competition, do not in
practice accept the theory of a "wages fund" of fixed
amount; they take the whole wealth of the country as
the source from which the remuneration of labour and
capital must be derived, and they do not see why the
division of the national inheritance should take place to
borrow a significant technicality per stirpes rather than
per capita; i.e., by proportioned division between two
stocks (whether of different race or different class) with-
out regard to their numerical strength. Of course, it is
3^o NATURAL LAW.
not to be expected that men of scanty education, and
opinions formed under the immediate pressure of personal
feeling, should be able to correct the plausible generalisa-
tions of the class above their own, in which opinions are
formed in accordance with fixed habits of feeling, them-
selves formed at leisure by the general tendency of in-
terested motives. At the same time, it is clear that unless
these habits of feeling have been formed under healthy
conditions, the ideas answering to them will be no better
guides than the passion or inclination of the moment,
though they may have an impressive air of calm fixity
which, unluckily, is attainable by prejudice as well as
reason.
The crude notion of the trade unionist is, that a combi-
nation of workmen to limit the quantity of work turned
out by the vendors of labour will result in raising the
price by diminishing the supply of the article on sale, so
that, while less work is being done, the mechanical action
of supply and demand will make the workman's share of
the gross wealth of the country larger. Malthus proposed,
as an economy, that men should die, or never see the light ;
these too docile followers propose, as an economy less jar-
ring to some of our prejudices, that those who live should
copy the unproductiveness of the dead, as a means to the
same happy result of causing the fruits or wages of indus-

try to circulate more freely. The crude notion of the

economists, on the other hand, is that society can some-

how make a good thing out of the necessities of its mem-
bers, and get more work out of them for the same or less
equivalent the more urgent their need to receive the equi-
valent. Most economists regard the unionist's view as
rank heresy an uneconomical limitation of supply but
we fail to see it is more of an economical heresy for
why
the labourers to hold back their superfluous industry from
an overstocked market than for a manufacturer to do the
same with his goods for as long as he can afford. There
is a short-lived profit to the consumer if the manufacturer
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 321

sells his stock at a loss rather than not sell at all ;

and
there a profit to the manufacturer if the labourer, rather
is

than not sell his labour, sells it for starvation wages. But
social science would be another name for pessimism if men
were debarred from the calculation of any but immediate
consequences, and labourer and manufacturer alike have a
right to consider the social tendencies of bargains that
they both have to spend a lifetime in carrying out.
The real lies elsewhere, for the restricted
difficulty
employment of labour certainly diminishes the capital
fund out of which labour, as well as everything else, has to
be paid and if the will of the labourer is once allowed to
;

count as an economical force, it is as much within his option

to refuse to give his work for less share than he thinks

equitable in the capital fund, as it is to aim indirectly at

compelling the employers of labour to offer better terms
by limiting the number of available labourers. The way
the case practically presents itself is this : in a particular
trade, or for a special season, the number of labourers is

slightly in excess of the demand, i.e., there is more work

wanted than is to be had. Economists expect the labourers
to bid against each other for the first chance of earning

wages ; while trade societies look upon the competition of

workmen against each other for the coveted work as an
evil to the class, and a doubtful gain even to the indi-
vidual. If the wages fund were for the moment rigor-
ously limited, say to the equivalent of a day for every
is.

adult labourer throughout the country, trade unions would

urge each man to take his is. a day in peace, instead of
bidding against his neighbours for the privilege of selling
2s. worth of work for is. 6d. and they believe that the
;

result of unregulated competition among labourers, who

treat their industry as a commodity subject to unlimited

depreciation, will be to tempt those who are deprived of

their chance of is. a day, by the competitor who does a

day's work for pd., to undersell the first bidder and take
In such cases as we are supposing, the hypothetical
322 NA TURAL LA W.
73. a week need not represent any reduction in the current
" '
scale ofwages it may be only the result of slackness
;

of demand, or such a scarcity of work as will only keep

the labourers employed for half or a quarter of their time.
If this is the fact, it may often suit the employer's in-
terest to keep a few hands in full employ, and turn off the
rest ;
and then the union again interferes with the course
of individual competition by causing those workmen who
are in full employment to subscribe to secure a bare main-
tenance for their possible rivals, lest the latter be driven
to the kind of competition already referred to, the begin-

ning of the operative's race to ruin and this is regarded

;

as being nearly as grave an economical heresy as the modi-

fied Malthusianism above noticed, for the ideal theory of

bargaining imagines all members of the same class to be

rivals, whose hostility lays them open to exploitation by
the members of other classes, to the greater glory of the

principle of self-interest.
To put these rival views in their true proportions, we
have to take a position outside the natural feeling of both
buyers and sellers. The interest of society at large is to
have as much efficient and serviceable work done as pos-
sible, and to have the fruit or reward of the work enjoyed

by as many members of society as possible. The final

cause of work is to be of use, not to fetch a price, and
though, now-a-days, people live mainly by bartering ser-
vices and commodities, we need not confuse the act with
the end, or exalt the transactions of commerce above the
results of civilised life. There must be some confusion
about the premises of a theory that lands us in antino-
mies, such as the popular bugbear of over-production, as if
a country could be impoverished or its wealth diminished
by its producing too much \vealth. A country may pro-
duce more, in the way of food or manufactures, than it can
find a lucrative market for outside its own borders but ;

whatever may be the condition of its foreign trade, a

country is materially the better off the more abundant all
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 323

useful and agreeable commodities are within it, and the

more general and equitable their distribution. Bales of
calico unsold in thewarehouses and barns of grain reserved
by the farmer are not elements of national wealth while
the cotton-spinner is half clad and the farm-labourer half
fed, and yet the more of their respective manufactures the
industrial population hurls into the market in its distress,
the less and less their means of acquiring any portion for
themselves, for the lower the money value or competition
price set by commerce on the work.
The mental bewilderment into which we are thrown by
this apparently suicidal fate of industry disappears if we re-
member that in practice what is called " over-production," or
production in excess of the demands of an external market,
usually extends to all branches of production alike, so that
if the employers of labour made themselves the channel of
communication between the different classes of producers,
the home trade of an industrious population might maintain
itself without any very elaborate methods of exchange. Any
increased economy of production that enables a commodity
to be supplied more abundantly than before may lower the

price of that commodity as compared with others, but the

positive value of these others, or of the circulating medium,
is increased when this purchasing power, in that one direc-

tion, is enlarged for while the positive value of things is

;

not increased by making them scarce, the positive value of

life is raised by whatever tends to make the goods of lifr

plentiful and accessible to all.

The real difficulty is concerned not with production, but
with distribution. As wealth multiplies, society has to
determine whether the increase is to go to him that hath
that he shall have more abundantly, whatever the present
value of his services, or whether the " unearned increment"
of social inheritance isbe enjoyed under conditions.
to
Our civilisation rests
upon an inheritance of accumulated
materials, tools, traditions, and commodities, the fruit of
past industry and saving; but it is not quite certain that
324 NA TURAL LA IV.
now involved in a rich man's living on his
the self-denial
income instead of on his capital can be regarded exactly
as an act of merit for which society owes him material
reward. Wealth increased through the able direction of
labour by the great "captains of industry" belongs to them
by the same title as to their employees as the fruit of work ;

but we do not accept as normal or permanent the current

practice which limits the share of each individual in the
inheritance of preceding generations to the particular lot
of lands, debts, or halfpence which he receives as his
portion from the next of kin. The wages fund is limited
after all to that which the skill and industry of each

generation can produce out of its capital, and if we are to

encourage the most useful forms of industry, we must be
prepared to distribute the rewards of labour in proportion
to its usefulness. Given a perfectly free circulation of
natural ability, the incapables of all classes would sink
gradually and gently to the lowest level, the social "re-
"
siduum would deserve its name, and the problem to make
existence tolerable for even the residuum would receive
more careful attention from rulers who felt that their own
flesh and blood were likely to swell the numbers of the
class.
The raison d'Stre of the capitalist in a moral and intelli-
gent community lies in his use, not in his merits, for
wealth will be piled up in an industrial age, even though
no father dreams of enriching his children's children. The
privilege of dispensing unearned wealth is not a reward
given to the son for the father's economy, for unless the
wealth is to be well or wisely dispensed, society owes the
father no thanks for the hoard withdrawn into private
hands out of the common fund. The service by which the
rich man earns the wealth entrusted to him is exactly that
of distribution. Those engaged in the details of production
who have no surplus wealth of their own cannot afford
to render unsaleable services, or services which, by their

very generality, fail to command a price from individuals.

 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 325

Services rendered to no one in particular, but to all who

need or accept them, are the best acknowledgment of
rewards earned by no one in particular and paid no one
exactly knows how or whence; the rewards are concen-
trated by chance, and though they might almost as well
be scattered by chance, so far as any personal desert is
concerned, yet if society is ever to attain to an orderly
distribution of functions among men, seeing and owning a

supreme duty to each other severally and collectively, it

will certainly have no need to abolish the class of unpaid
servants of the commonwealth whose mission it is to give
freely what they have freely received, in accordance with
other canons of fitness than the quotations of the Stock
Exchange. Sumptuary laws to prevent the accumulation
of riches in the hands of a minority will lose their charm
even for the most doctrinaire socialist if the accumulation
is only a step towards more orderly and intelligent distri-

bution and though it may seem Utopian to look forward

;

to such a result, it is not really contrary to nature, reason,

or possibility, for the habitual exchange of services and
commodities to be organised as a means of providing all
classes with the necessaries of life, those who wish for
them enougli to work for them with the material luxuries
of life, and those who are able to use and value them with
its spiritual luxuries and graces ; in a word to furnish
wholesome life for all, pleasant life for the energetic or

the amiable, and life the most varied and intense for those
whose varied powers and intense resolves spend them-
selves in perfected subservience to the common good.
"We do not undervalue competition as a spur to industry
and inventive enterprise but the community as a whole
;

would be better served if traders, producers, and con-

sumers agreed to seek their common interest with one
consent, instead of trusting with a queerly-placed piety,
in the beneficent result of the uncompromising commercial
struggle for existence. If we get on so fast and so har-

moniously when every man spends, say, three- fourths of

326 NA TURAL LA W.
his energies on his proper work, and one-fourth in shoving
his work to the fore at his neighbour's expense, how
much further and faster should we go if the results of
the struggle were taken for granted, and services were
amicably grouped in order of merit without the friction
of a preliminary trial of strength ? Economists will not
question the prudence of buying social order and felicity
in the cheapest market, but no true economy in the social
service can be effected by merely nominal reductions in

price affecting all services at once, still less by a real

partial reduction serving only to intensify existing ine-
qualities. If we measure services against each other, not

by their competition price in some common standard,

social progress and profit will consist in the multiplication
of exchangeable equivalents, so as to make a day's work
more valuable because it produces more, and a day's wages
more valuable likewise because it will buy more services
in return. This, and not the pauperisation of an over-
productive race, seems to be the natural goal of industrial
aspiration and though it may seem Utopian to dream of
;

a land where wealth shall not exclude cheapness, the

dream seems more in keeping with the logic of com-
mon sense than the waking realities with which we are
familiar.
The general aim of political action and social reforms is,
we assume, to assure to every one every possible facility
for living the best life they can, and to continue developing
the possibilities of every one, so that the realised best may
" "
be progressive ;
and under this short name of best we
include the healthy discharge of every natural function
efficient action, competent understanding, and satisfied
affection for each individual. But it is as certain as the

divinity of truth and holiness, that none of us will live to

see this perfect state except in the momentary glimpses
of some twilight revelation and some may regard it as an
;

open question whether, in the face of this knowledge, the

present practical best for living men can be the cultus of
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 327

the unattainable, "We contend that the best attainable is

a step on the road towards the absolutely good, but this is

one of the cases in which judgments are formed, neither
by reasoning nor conscious choice, but by the intuition of
feeling and pre-established affinities of taste.
The main interest of ethical science lies in its bearing
on the most intimate personal concerns of individuals. We
may call it egotism if we please, but this question How :

am /, I myself, and not another, to live my own life, now,

to-morrow, and through the fated years to come ? is, and
inevitably always will be, the most urgent of questions
to men and women whose first need is to live, and whose
first desire is to live pleasantly or well. The inexhaustible
fascination possessed by the problems of morality comes
from the fact that in them alone man sees his own needs
in relation to the general facts of existence, and imagines
it possible to derive from them instruction and direction

for his own personal course. The cravings after help and
guidance to which religious systems owe their power can
find no more rational satisfaction than in the apprehension
of eternal truth as it affects the life of every man. The
truth is the same for all, but its practical application is as
various as individual circumstances ;
each individual has
impulses and aspirations which it is his wish to rationalise
and bring into harmony with the general rules that he is
prepared to accept, provided always that the rules can be
made to apply to his own case. Men may be honestly
unable to discern what their duty is, but the obscurity
comes from their defective insight, not from any objective
uncertainty, and we acknowledge our grasp of a supposed
truth to be incomplete and feeble, unless we are able to
verify its power, in the case of any concrete problem, by
pointing to the postulate or proposition in which the de-
sired solution is implicitly contained; and we feel that
when once a clear and adequate apprehension of the natural
end and the reasonable means had been attained, the pre-
sent outlines of our moral convictions might be filled in
328 NA TURAL LA W.
at the indefinite leisure of the race as minutely as the
most scrupulous conscience could desire.
But the outline is not filled in yet, and consequently the
intellectual problem, what is best for things in general, is

complicated by, and helps to complicate, the moral problem,

what is the best possible for the agent. The best for each
individual to aim at is the best of which he and not
another has a clear and adequate vision, giving birth to
desire. It is idle to urge one man towards a vocation that
he has not the gift to follow, though for a better man the
choice might be good. The crowning reason for devotion
to the general rather than the particular good is, that each
man's best possible self can only live in the best possible
world and we have a right to keep hold of this abstract
;

certainty, even when we are unable to trace the connection

between the two, or even when, as may sometimes occur,
there is no present personal motive for the conduct that
we see to be abstractedly best. At rare intervals we are
overtaken by a ghastly sense that the strength of right
motives is not irresistible, and we feel for the godless world
in which our lot is cast something of the horror that has
been felt for the atheist's creed ; but though the painful
impression is not to be forgotten, rational faith can survive
this momentary shock in the strength of two considera-
tions: that the pain of the shock comes from its
first,

rarity, whence it follows that, as a rule, the powers of light

are in the ascendant and, secondly, that the divine is not
;

lost,even in the darkest moments, when there is a human

soul ready to revile the world for having nothing more
divine to show it than its own unbought appetite after the
truly right. And though it is not possible to determine
a priori what contribution each individual is to make to
the general wellbeing of the social group, we have gene-
rally an image of the most admirable character existing
parallel to our conception of the general best, and the
nature of the character that is cultivated, together with
that of the ideal that is proposed, define between them
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 329

the special course to be adopted by individuals under

whatever circumstances may arise in practice.
Society has a right to control the conduct of its mem-
bers,and the habitual conduct reacts upon the character,
though the conduct is the result of the original nature as
well as of the controlling circumstances. What we call
"
the " formed character is, in fact, the second nature be-
gotten by social conditions out of the first, in which capa-

reappear as ability, or, to borrow the more exact

bilities
German idiom, in which Fdhigkeiten are transformed into
Fertigkeiten ; and the course of life, on which it becomes
possible to pass judgment, is the virtually spontaneous
fruit of the second nature. Very few talents are abso-
lutely irresistible, and nearly every choice power that
ripens into choice performance has been deliberately
cherished and developed by careful nourishment and ex-
ercise. at the same time, it may be noted that
And,
nearly the
all possessors of exceptional power in any one
special direction also possess more than the average of
miscellaneous ability, so that it really lies within their
own power to elect their own social role. But if such a
special ability is once allowed to enter on the course of
production, the impetus becomes uncontrollable, and the
future of the whole man becomes immediately dependent
on the fortunes of his genius. And in processes that are
partly deliberate and partly the necessary consequences
of voluntary acts, the moment to which responsibility
attaches is that of self-committal to a line which, once
taken, can never be altogether abandoned.
The born painter cannot but draw, the born musician
cannot but compose, the born mechanic invents, the born
mathematician works problems but men of genius, at
;

least, have a choice between the role of artist and of

amateur, and it is a question open for discussion whether

they are morally bound to prefer the former. object The
in view is to attain the maximum
specialisation of active
ability without narrowing the range of personal conscious-
3 30 NA TURAL LA W.
ness. We have no sense of incompleteness in the life of
Socrates or Spinoza, or of Sir James Brooke or Garibaldi,
because the discharge of the predestined function seems
to include a provision for all the personal impulses and
moral inclinations. On the other hand, in the case of
such men as Goethe or Humboldt, we have an almost
oppressive sense of personal completeness, mixed with a
vague impression of something wanting, as if their very
completeness isolated them from complete contact on any
one side with the ordinary world and to measure their
;

objective eminence we have to regard Humboldt as the

successful explorer and geognostic, and Goethe as the
"
friend of Schiller and the author of Faust," or both as
types and models of the possible range of human accom-
plishment sinking the relations in which they could
effect no more than ordinary men, or even less than ordi-

nary men with narrower faculties but more intense power

of self-abandonment to the exercise of faculty.

Apart from such exceptional cases as that of universal

genius, or of a talent as minutely denned as that of a
grammarian or a decipherer of hieroglyphics, human apti-
tudes class themselves generally in the same lines as the
various .leading objects of ambition and aspiration. A
special susceptibility to one form or another of natural
good inspires the work of a Mozart, a Newton, a Titian,
or a Keats; and hardly less special, in its way, is the
vocation to seek not this good or that, but every possible
good for all the world or since that ambition is really
;

too high for human powers, to seek every possible means

for facilitating the life and development of all possible
good. And for those who understand by morality the
conscientious pursuit of the rationally chosen Best, it is
an interesting practical question whether the philanthro-
lifeis essentially better than that of other spe-
pist's
cialists, and whether every form of natural good ought to
(i.e.,
had better) be cultivated in conscious subordination
to a more comprehensive ideal, or whether, to realise the
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 331

most comprehensive ideal possible, we require the maxi-

mum of self-assertion in every special normal tendency ?
The case might be stated in this way are all normal pur-
:

suits good in themselves, or only good for the sake of the

abstract goodness made up by their combination? Or
again is it a higher function to organise and arrange the
:

contributions of natural force than to contribute fresh

force to thedevelopment of social life ?
To may be replied, that natural morality con-
this it
ceives every special form of natural good as indispensable
to the whole result of perfection, and that there are not

degrees of indispensableness, and, generally speaking, we

have no moral ground for exalting one form of natural
good, one phase of social service, above another, or one
above all the rest. It is only when the imperfections of
our actual systems, social, religious, and political, obtrude
on our consciousness, that we feel as if the one thing need-
ful to all of us were right guidance towards a better state,
and that the best leaders of men are those who can supply
this, our chief and most urgent want. We are not blind
to the sublimity of mathematical truth, or callous to the
emotions vibrating in the voice of poetic passion, only
while men and women are starving round us in brutal
misery, or battening in brutal ease, the problem and the
poem seem far away from half our life, and we become
unwilling accomplices in the indifference of our age to
some of the noblest works of man. We
are called away
from the peaceful of intellectual perception, and many
life

of us are fain to turn reformers in despair, not because

we have the reformer's talent or the reformer's taste, but
because the world needs so much reform, that it has failed
to give us any narrower task more in keeping with our
modest powers and private inclinations.
Still there is a distinction, of which we may as well

recognise the full significance, between action which has

its motive in the agent's personal impulse to do that act

rather than another, and action which has its motive iu

332 NATURAL LAW.
the agent's desire that such a thing be done, whatever the
doing may cost him, and however little personal concern
he may have in the result accomplished. Tor the reason
just suggested, we are more ready to give the name of
moral effort to the latter class of doing ; but at the same
time we may admit that, in an ideal state of things, with
the social mechanism duly adjusted, and only needing to
be kept in repair, the distinction would disappear, and the
professional curators of the machine, rinding their task no
harder or more painful than that of other craftsmen, would
cease to receive additional regard, or perhaps rather, the
class would disappear altogether, like armies from a

Quaker continent, when every special form of energy

had learnt to exercise itself in conscious subjection to
the claims of other forms, and in conscious devotion to
the best general result.
We are inconsistent because the world is inconsistent,
and at one moment cry out for the help of moral virtue
and disinterested self-sacrifice, while at the next we grow
impatient of the imperfection that makes the sacrifices
needed, and we challenge the saints to complete their
work by giving us a world where there shall be no place
for saintliness. It is not absolutely good that the best men
and the best deeds should be swallowed up in the painful
resistance of evil only now, and as far in front as we can
;

see, there is evil enough to occupy whole armies of re-

formers, though we may dream if we please of a millenium
when the armies shall disband because all the world has
joined them, and the reformers find their occupation gone
because at last every man has found a work to do and has
learnt to do it faithfully. And, partly for the sake of that
distant day, it behoves us not to lose sight of the fact that
natural good is older than human crime or folly, and may
be young yet when many of our virtues, like many of our

pleasures, are shelved in the museum of unconsciousness.

There is something abnormal in a life all spent in
pleasureless resistance to what is. To do good by whole-
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 333

sale is the hardest of arts ;

it requires a talent that is rare,
and only those who possess it feel bound in conscience to
the self-denial required for its exercise. But it is inaccu-
rate to say that a perfectly virtuous man likes (or ought to

like) doing good to his unfortunate fellow-mortals, or that

he does what is right because he finds it pleasant, and

that it is a part of virtue to like doing whatever it is best

to do ;
because to like a thing, to find it pleasant, is to
accept its existence as a whole unreservedly, to have no
fault to find with it;
and no one has this feeling in right-
ing a wrong, at least no clear-headed person who would
unfeignedly rather not have had it to right. There may
be a transient satisfaction when the remedy applied is
found complete and effectual, but with the true philan-
thropist this half personal feeling is almost merged in
sympathy with the relief of those who are benefited, and
promptly superseded by compassion for those still unsuc-
coured. looks to add to the happi-
It is not so easy as it

ness of mankind good-will goes but a little way, and the

;

modern stoic has no sooner accommodated himself with

resignation to his own share of the objective ills of life,
than the harder, or at least more interminable task con-
fronts him
of acquiescing in all the present irremediable

suffering of others. He is the servant of the servants of

men, and his task is to guide and harmonise the action
of allwho work without thinking for all who enjoy with-
out thinking; to teach them how to compass the ends
they desire when they have not learnt to will the means
that lead to them. Even in the work of reform there can
be no self-assertion, for the world, as it is, is made and
animated by wills that it is the altruist's endeavour to
enlighten and content, not to alter by constraint there is :

much suffering in the world, and the reason of the suffering

of those who suffer remediably is that they do not at this
present moment will the first step towards the improve-
ment of their condition. There is no one so badly off
that perfect wisdom would not mend his case, but with
334 NA TURAL LA IV.
the best will in the world, perfect wisdom cannot be
imparted wholesale, only by degrees and as the patient is
able to bear it ; people cannot be helped to their own good
by force, and it is only when
good-will is wanting, when
men are content that others should suffer for their profit,
or at least by their connivance, that altruism becomes for
the moment militant, but it has no satisfaction in the fray,
for cruelty is the summum mahim, an absolute evil, the

perception of which is unmitigatedly painful, even though

we do not suppose all who have the misfortune to be
criminal to be condemned an eternity of remorse.
to

Certainly no one is virtuous for amusement but if the ;

altruists' concern for the misfortunes of others prevents

their life from being happier than the egotists', it is also
certain that they would not consent to wish away the

power of sympathy, which, though a source of suffering to

themselves, is the condition of their practical usefulness.

They must endure the consciousness of evil, moral and
material, as a step toward amending it, just as a man
must be tormented with ambitious desires before he can
imagine happiness to consist in moulding other men to
his will. The few fine souls called to this tragic fate do
not ask or need our pity the vocation is irresistible and
; ;

as experience abundantly proves that society does not

subsist by a series of equitable exchanges, it is to the

superogatory virtue of these lovers of their kind that the

human race must look for its redemption from the curse
of natural imperfection. Certainly exchanges should be
may be maintained by law;
equitable, and objective rights
but the moral, the religious attitude of mind, recognises
only duties, and those in whom it is most perfect argue,
with sweet unreasonableness, that the less the past and
the present have done for them, the more must they needs
do for the present and the future. We poor sinners, who
are far from that holy state, can at least almost understand

why the will of those who can lead such a life is good to do
it, and how a peace which passeth understanding follows
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 335

from the perfect unity of will and deed only attainable by

those who have known and conquered every human pain,
and turned their knowledge and their victory into a force
working for the good of all mankind.
We are not all born saints, and the counsels of perfect
self-devotion must be left for those who can receive them ;

but in a world of saints there would be no room for that

saintly grace, and in the world that now is there are many
whose natural appetites make no damaging or unreason-
able demands upon their fellows. The arts and sciences
are naturally good and morally innocent, and we can more
easily imagine a society got beyond the need for reform
than one able to dispense with the cultus of truth and
beauty. The chief moral good is perhaps to have learnt
from nature to know, and feel, and desire the truth and
beauty of the world that might be, but it is something to
possess the best of that which is, to perceive and represent
even if we cannot create. We
have an impersonal ideal of
beauty and truth, which we venerate as something outside
ourselves, and a life spent in such worship has an ideal
end, though that end is not the happiness of other sentient
beings. Artists and men of science are the high-priests of
this worship, and it is for them to throw open its temples
to the many but no true worshipper believes himself to
;

be the final cause of his God; if such a connection is

dreamt of at all, it must lie the other way, and we count
men to be of worth as they struggle into an apprehension
of the divine.
The difference between this conception and the view of
art as ministering to enjoyment, and of culture as serving

only to quicken and stimulate the taste, is, that, in the one
case, the man aspires to master his inspiration, to possess
the vision, to enjoy the revelation, in a word, to subordi-
nate art to the artist and that, in the other, the whole
;

consciousness abandoned to the impression that is given,

is

desire is swallowed up in disinterested apprehension, even

the will is suspended, and the personal exercise of a faculty
336 NATURAL LAW.
by which the vision is embodied and the revelation de-
clared, seems only present to the individual as an act of
more complete self-identification with the influences that
are his inspiration. This is doubtless what is meant by
the often-repeated phrase that all true art must be re-
ligious, which sounds like a paradox when religion is
confounded with belief in the established theology of the
age. During the last three hundred years there have been
painters who were good Christians enough, but no sacred
picture has been produced to compare for devout religious
insight into the glories of natural form with the turn of a
horse's head in the Elgin Marbles, carved by men who,
whether they believed in the divine lineage of Athene and
said their prayers to Poseidon or not, had seen in their
own Attica blue skies, grey olive boughs, curling waves,
and prancing war-horses, and had absorbed all the lessons

of divine truth lurking in such sights for the sons of men.

It ishard to formulate all the difference between the true
artistand the mechanician, but perhaps it lies chiefly in
the refinement of spiritual candour that is able to receive

general intellectual, as well as merely sensible impressions

from external forms if Turner was a true painter, it was
:

because he knew how to paraphrase sight in shapes and

colours that are emotional.
But to see, or to feel what is seen, is not everything.
To make a fine art of passion or attachment to the beauti-
ful in nature, art, or human life requires the abandonment
of all the faculties, and is so absorbing as to leave the
mind no leisure for other claims; pleasurable emotions,
however rich and variously modulated, do not occupy the
whole of man, and life becomes one-sided if exclusive im-

portance is attributed to their cultivation. Of course, any

one with a rooted habit of referring every point of conduct
to a supposed external rule of right will say, Why should
we not, if it pleases us, take the part, the side of life that
we like best, and let the remainder go ? But if it is ad-
mitted that there can be no reason for anything except the
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 337

nature of things and of men, it is a simple answer that the

whole is
larger than its parts, and that, even if we believe
ourselves to be naturally one-sided, we may acknowledge
the quality to be a defect, though the acknowledgment
might prove our nature less one-sided than we thought.
If the object is to make life rich and full, each individual
must have wealth and variety in himself, not merely by
contrast to a too monotonous level in the men around him ;

it is a parasitic originality that only becomes conscious of

itself in opposition, for it takes little wisdom to differ from

a fool, while much learning is needed to agree with some
of the wise. The truest intuitions are detached, and though
the creations of art are immortal, and each moment of
aesthetic consciousness complete in itself, they add nothing
to each other, they do not weave themselves into a con-

tinuous, progressive, organic whole.

Emotions spend themselves and leave a fading memory,
but all true knowledge, which is the perception of constant
relationsand necessary fact, hangs together, as the world
does, so thatnone of it can quite cease out of being. The
enjoyment that comes to us from without is ours for a
moment and ends the force that we expend is ours and
;

remains, but only on condition that we give away its fruits ;

but knowledge both lasts and grows and stays with us we ;

possess it even to that last refinement upon the rights of

property, it is ours to bequeath ;
of all our best spiritual
treasures, that alone can be left behind us unimpaired. Our
happiness dies with us, or rather, it dies daily, if it is born
so often our actions live in their fruit, which might set
;

our teeth on edge if we lived to taste it ; only the truths

we knew, the scraps of scientific certitude which we rescued
from the dark abysses of unknown existence, are altogether
ours, with a possession the more absolute that it can be
shared, ours and our children's after us, as long as we and
they live in a world more constant than man. It is an old
complaint against Providence that virtue is monotonous,
that there are many ways of sinning, and that men are
Y
338 NA TURAL LA W.
fond of novelty ;
but science at least is as various as vice,
and if we
consider that knowledge grows by being shared,
that the interest of all who seek knowledge is one, that the
end which many conspire to seek will be reached in part,
and that to reach a desired end is pleasant, and chiefly that
the pleasure of success in a pursuit only disappoints us
when we fail to gratify the one desire that is
stronger for
a sympathy to multiply the pleasure to infinity then
without any unphilosophical optimism it may perhaps be
hoped that even if the world were peopled, as we hardly
think it ever will be, exclusively with scientific atheists,
a considerable proportion of them might still find it pos-
sible to rise above the resignation to their earthly condi-
tion which is enjoined by morality to the contentment
which is a counsel of religious perfection.
But although a special interest attaches to the problems
of morality, in consequence of their bearing on the con-
cerns of human life and the responsibilities of choice, this
very fact lends a degree of embarrassment to their discus-
sion, and tempts us to rank them amongst matters of too

deep and intimate concern for it to be exactly decorous

to speak freely of them in public. The feeling may be
called either spiritual modesty or mauvaise honte as we
please, but there certainly is a general disposition to feel

that conscience a thing about which the less said the

is

better in civilised society certain forms of ignorance or

:

vice are spontaneously condemned as radically unattrac-

tive and in bad taste, but the worst taste of all is to plead

guilty to the inheritance of a worse and a better nature,

with the attendant doom of struggle, failure, and aspira-
tion. We are impatient of many of the coarser necessities
of our being, and since the religious formula has ceased to
be generally received, popular philosophy has given no
reason why men should be cursed with a divided will, and
they try to hide the infirmity as they would hide an here-
ditary malformation of body. And it is in this way only
that the relaxation of religious faith can fairly be said to
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 339

threaten the foundations of morality for men who have

;

strength and rectitude enough to make a sacrifice of incli-

nation which their judgment enjoins, will follow inclina-
tion on the easier road if their judgment speaks only to
condemn the feebleness of a divided purpose. Since we
have ceased to lay the blame of our own shortcomings on
the devil, our self-respect impels us rather to profess that
we don't care about being any better than we are, than to
resolve against continuing so much worse than in our
secret hearts we should like to be.

Closely connected with this mixture of pride and cow-

ardice,which paralyses more human effort than we perhaps
suspect, is an intellectual fastidiousness that forbids the
mind to supplement the irresolution of the will. We are
"
on our guard against the solemn folly of taking ourselves
too seriously;" and because we have critical acumen

enough to know that the most fortunate result of our best

efforts will be objectively insignificant, we try despairingly
to escape from the limitations of incompetence by the self-

imposed limitation of indolence which, unluckily for

our sagacity, turns out, of course, to be objectively narrower
even than the one by which we scorned to be confined. And
yet there is a ground of reasonableness in our dread of
overstrained pretensions and moral priggishness. If we
are in the habit of feeling as strongly as we can feel about
small interests, without noting their comparative smallness,
itbecomes easy to infer circuitously that they cannot be
so small after all, since they excite the same feelings as

objects of unimpeachable grandeur, which is as false as the

first impressions of Cheselden's patient, that all objects

were the size they appeared on the plane of vision.

The ironical modesty of the present day is, in part at

least, a reaction from the rather boisterous insistence of

the "broad" or "muscular" school of twenty or thirty
"
years ago, on the doctrine that life is real, life is earnest,"
and earnest souls a commodity over which heaven and
earth can hardly make too much ado. And it might even
340 NA TURAL LA W.
be said that the critics, who make no moral effort at all,
because they think the best efforts in their power would
fall disgustingly short of the sublime, may yet retain a

clearer sense of what constitutes moral sublimity than

worthy and conscientious people whose vision of the ideal

is obscured by too near and absorbing contemplation of the

duty of the moment. Of course there is no necessary

connection between fastidiousness and inertia, or between
good intentions and a defective sense of moral proportion,
but this happens to be the present relation between the
defects and qualities of actually opposing schools, and to
each school the defect of the other is in a way a sign of
the quality most needed by itself. A degree of ease and

spontaneity in well-doing is fairly included in our ideal of

character, and what we object to as priggishness is not
really overweening ambition or exaggerated idealism, but
in practice always some real fault of taste or obtuseness
to the effects of mental perspective invoking motives
on too large a scale in proportion to the end proposed,
or magnifying the end to correspond to the subjective
magnitude of the considerations which led to its pro-
posal. It is the duty of the poorest creatures amongst
us, no less than of saints and heroes, to strive after the
realisation of theirown best self, but we object instinc-
tively to a confusion of the tone proper to struggles in
which the interests of humanity are concerned with that
appropriated to merely private vicissitudes. Ingenuous
boys and intelligent girls by the half million may think
quite as much and as conscientiously about the duty of
self-culture and the ways and means of self-development
as Goethe, but outside sympathy with their mental history
will be proportioned, not to the depth and sincerity of their

feeling, but to the value of the objective result.

Nor is this all we have a right to demand, as a part of
:

the many-sided ideal of human culture, that though the

will continues rigidly faithful to the line of action accepted
as the best possible, it shall do so without prejudice to the
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 341

right and duty of the mind to prefer a conceivable better.

As in the Platonic allegory, the steeds and the charioteer
are both included in the same spiritual being, and the
steeds have to bear the lash and goad of their own better
half; while, on the other hand, the charioteer must have
steeds and a roadway a will to guide subject to real con-
ditions or there isno entering upon the arena at all. The
triumph of spiritual discipline is to keep the relation
between the soul and the ideal unalterably close through
all the varied functions of life, of which perhaps a material

majority have .by rights no conscious bearing on the ideal.

As a matter of judgment, we admire those persons who
keep a firm and constant hold on the duties that are
accepted, but, as a matter of taste, we require the hold to
be light and flexible, for even our judgment rejects the
idea of a wooden fixity about the human copy of the
illimitable divine idea. It is one of the points of sympathy
between art and religion that both are haunted by an
"
impression that the fashion of this world passeth away,"
and that, therefore, the becoming temper for man who
passes away still more surely and swiftly is in all things
to live as one not bound to the life he leads, to " weep as

though he wept not, to rejoice as though he rejoiced not, to

"
buy as though he possessed not ;
but this " detachment,"
which is carried by asceticism so far as to bid those who live
be as though they lived not, branches off also into a kind
of secular antinomianism which it is curious to compare
with the more orthodox sentiment. The life of unrestrained
passion shares with the life of absolute self-repression an
impatience, which natural morality is obliged to condemn,
of the real conditions of human existence. The attempt
to avoid sin by avoiding action, and pain by crushing sen-
sibility, is near akin to the attempt to avoid failure by
abstaining from effort, and self-denial by abstaining from
moral relations. And just as Christians and Buddhists
have sought to renounce all bondage to the objective
world, the ideal of aesthetic lawlessness requires its votaries
342 NA TURAL LA W.
to refuse obedience to the subjective constraint of con-
science or principle.
" "
One theoretical attraction of the Vie de Boheme is

that just because it is not approved by the reason, criticism

and enjoyment of it are more absolutely free, that is to
say, the enjoyment is tempered by self-criticism, and the
criticism is not exposed to mortification by practical tests.
Like sectarian religions, its popularity depends on the
supposed antagonism of an unenlightened world; hence
a comfortable sense of latent rationalism and potential

superiority is fostered in the minds of those who seem

bent on travestying the work of conscience by their almost
comic efforts not to fall by accident into the practice of
any of the prosaic virtues that might frequently be of
use in their case. The situation lends itself to epigram,
and to carry off its inconsistency, the professional child of

impulse exhausts himself in ironical contempt for the state

of things in which he is entangled. But satire becomes
wearisome at last, when the satirist is always his own
butt, and the listener learns to distrust the reality of
impulses that give themselves up to ridicule so easily, or
the sincerity of the ridicule poured on impulses that have
so little self-assertion,and yet are allowed to rule. It
is impossible for those who abandon themselves to the
"
habitual performance of " actions of a class good or bad
to regard all actions with the disengaged indifference of
the critic, who makes a rule of universal abstention, and
in spite of his more or less witty protestations that the
world's work is vanity and its pleasures vexation, the
votary of pleasure, as of any other kind of toil, finds
himself at last acting with the regular constancy of a
Philistine as if he believed that his own special form
of vanity and vexation were the only one to be desired
or endured. Only a few, of the more intellectual sort of
libertine, attain to a quasi religious detachment and do
really solve the problem of desiring as not desiring, enjoy-
ing as not enjoying, and, in fact, starting from a scruple
of
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 343

taste or understanding, end by emancipating themselves

from the thraldom of passion as completely as other men
do at the prudence or moral sympathies. Christi-
call of

anity in prime was prompt to welcome such repentant

its

sinners, who had learnt in the world the asceticism they

came to practise in the cloister when their last personal
illusion had given way; and it is perhaps a sectarian

prejudice that leads moral philosophers of the present day

to look askance at such allies. All roads lead to Eome,
and the cultivation of every normal faculty to conclusions
inharmony with human nature and human fate. But to
make the adoption of the true scientific faith easy to these
devotees of carnal perfection, and for the sake of those
natural truths to which they remain faithful through all
it is especially necessary for the
their indolent fallacies,

morality of the future to be on its guard against aesthetic

stupidity and intellectual exaggeration, as well as against

moral blemishes of a deeper dye. The Encyclopedist's
"
charge against Eobespierre Avec ton Etre Supreme
"
tu commences a m'embeter would be really damaging
to the votaries of natural perfection, because their cultus is

self-contradictory, i.e., naturally imperfect, if it is preached

with an insistence that becomes tiresome. The object of
their worship is infinite, but human powers of adoration
are limited, and it is not a religious duty to chafe against
immovable restraints, but, on the contrary, to submit to
them freely, so that no natural force may be wasted by a
gratuitous collision with their reality. If the reverential

impulse is intermittent, that too is the work of nature,

and man may not be wise above what is given him.
We come back, then, to our starting-point, that no
rational rule of life isto be found for individuals out of re-
lation to their real place in a faulty but improvable society.
At the same time, we cannot agree with those moralists
who deny the existence of self-regarding duties, because the

greater part of our obligations are to society and owe their

recognition to the force of social feelings. It is true that
344 NATURAL LAW.
the opposition between duty and interest is, in their case,
less apparent, for self-interest, rightly understood, means
good, and self-regarding good is never painful in its results
(as a personal contribution towards social good may be),
but it is often difficult in performance, so as to be attended
with the same inward sense of constraint and moral pres-
sure as other duties. Indeed there are some characters
who seem to own no obligation except to their own opinion,
and find the decisive motive for self-devoted action rather
in the impulse to be what they think right themselves
than to do what they imagine to be beneficial to others.
But this distinction is only psychological; there is no
objective antagonism between the claims of personal per-
fection and social duty, because the rejection of a real and
valid external claim is one of those misdeeds which injure
the character, even though it may be a misfortune to the
character that the claim should exist. But under any
conceivable circumstances one course of conduct will be
the most right, and the course which is right from one
point of view is right from all. We can imagine, say, a
politician or a writer of genius compelled to choose between
the duty of providing for his family and the duty of giving
his best and least saleable work to the world noblesse
;

oblige, and the great man owes himself to the larger claim ;

but if he does the best he can for his own household, he

does it no wrong, even though he may have sons or
daughters for whom the best life would have been one
of ease and luxury. No man is bound to impossibili-
ties, and the sacrifices that are imposed by circumstances
cannot be laid to the charge of individual consciences.
But according to the strict unbending rule of perfect
morals, the only personal sacrifices that men have always
a moral right to refuse are those which would detract
from their efficiency as a social instrument, or foster im-
perfection in the person for whom the sacrifice is to be
made. The loyalty of chivalrous nobles to a bad king,
of faithful servants to selfish masters, of good women to
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 345

brutal men, are examples of the latter kind for though ;

devotion rising to the most complete self-sacrifice is a fine

and beautiful thing if the cause or the person is worthy, if

they are not worthy, the devotion may be even worse than
thrown away. The devotion of the good to the bad may,
really or apparently, serve to make the best of things for
the moment, but even so the devotion is only morally, not
naturally or aesthetically, beautiful and if we look beyond
;

the special case to its place in the general stream of ten-

dency, we see that its only final justification must lie in
the conversion of its recipient to a temper less exacting of
sacrifice. Even then it would have been better if the

occasion for the first self-devotion had not arisen, for the
same amount of virtue, instead of neutralising vice or
maleficent weakness, would have been left available for
the positive service of mankind against unavoidable im-
personal evils.

The very extension which we are prepared to give to the

range of social claims makes it the more necessary to insist
" "
on the fact that " otherness or " not-selfishness by itself
does not make a claim valid, any more than egotism or self-
regardingness by itself makes a desire wrong. No moral
problem is harder than that of holding the balance even
between the just claim of the self and its surroundings ;

and as there is something radically unamiable in juridical

quibbling about personal rights in moral relations, we feel
the more need of cultivated and responsive consciences,
whose intuitions may sum up at once the tacit pleadings
on both sides, and carry conviction with their verdict, un-
embittered by dispute. But it is neither natural nor
healthy to conceive the welfare of society as depending,
like the stability of a child's house of cards, upon the
mutual support given to each other by units who have no
power of standing erect by themselves. Ends that a man
does not value enough to seek for his own sake will not
seem better worth seeking for the sake of some one else,
and ends that he feels to be worth attaining will be sought
346 NA TURAL LA W.
on their own merits, and not because others may share his
opinion of their desirability.
The self-regarding duty of cultivating all the natural
powers and sensibilities cannot be derived from the social
duty of exercising all the acquired ability in conscious de-
ference to the coequal rights and duties of other members
of the community but we are certainly bound to consider
;

the relation between the two ideals of natural morality, the

personal completeness of the individual, and his complete
adaptation to the discharge of given social functions. In
the present state of things, specialisation of function may
seem more valuable than versatility of power, because the
greater part of the life of individuals is taken up with
various social relations ; they cannot aim merely at being
it becomes a part
good specimens of their kind, or rather,
of specific excellence to fulfil the demands of given rela-
tions with ideal completeness, even if, in so doing, some

possibilities of personalaccomplishment remain unrealised.

For the individual not an end to act, or to feel, or to
it is

know, the inner life craves breadth, while the outer action
gains in force by circumscription, and the ideal combina-
tion or compromise is to feel and understand in the

midst of serviceable action, or to act and feel sanely while

making a business of rational apprehension.
There can hardly be a more dangerous mistake made
in good faith than that of assuming that the division of
labour, which is socially convenient, must be mimicked by
a subdivision or scattering of mental and moral qualities
among different individuals or classes, restricting intelli-

gence to an aristocracy of birth or wealth, making industry

the prerogative of a proletariate, sensibility the speciality
of women, and full human life the affair of no one, except

perhaps a few doctrinaire Hedonists. This is one of the

weakest points of the positivist ideal, which, even if in
itself desirable, is too much at variance with psychological

possibilities to be thought of as attainable. Just as in

society the complete and highest development of every
 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL PERFECTION. 347

class presupposes equal proportionate development of the

others, so in individuals it is impossible to separate the

healthy growth of energy, affection, and intelligence, since
feeling is the echo of action, and thought the summary of
feeling. The seclusion of a class, a sex, or a profession
from all active interests, that it may devote itself without
distraction to the cultivation of the emotions, would defeat
its own purpose, for the emotions must have de guoi vivre,
they cannot stir without stimulus in an artificial vacuum,

and their natural food is drawn from the conditions under

which personal impulses and desires assert their instinctive
vitality. It is not necessary to force the character into a
narrow and mechanical formalism passions controlled but
;

not repressed may be trusted to break out with all desir-

able strength when the fitting occasion offers itself, unless
such occasions are deliberately shunned and passion for
;

its own sake, indulged coute qui coute under the least ideal

conditions, is not a product to be seriously desired or cul-

tivated upon principle. And though action and passion
seem to culminate in the perceptions of reason, we cannot
make even rationality stand for the whole of manly excel-
lence. The reason is the last word of the achieved ;
but
the man who reason has done his do, there is no fur-
is all

ther spring of original power in his soul, he has come to

the end of himself and his possibilities, and is but, as it
were, a register or commentary on the outer world, a
knowing machine, adding nothing to the sum of being.
"
Hence we cannot take the " man of science for the ideal
hero of the future, nor find the key to our difficulties in
the spread of devotion to positive knowledge. We are
little the better for knowing about things not worth doing

or experiencing and that which is still being done or felt

;

is a contribution to the stores of consciousness, which may

be digested by and bye into new forms of doctrine, such as

present knowledge is unable to forestall, and yet cannot
afford to exclude. Human beings contribute to society
such material services as they can, and receive in return
348 NA TURAL LA W.
the suggestive impressions without which further action
would be unmotived, and continued life a blank. And
the condition of the harmony between man and nature, of
which the moral law isthe formula, is only the existence
of such a real congruity between the inner and the outer

tendency as makes the human best compatible with the

mixed realities of the world which is not human, and still
less divine.
 VIII.

CONCLUSIONS.

"And I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness, and folly: for
what can the man do that cometh after the king? even that which hath been

already done.
"Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth dark-
ness." ECCLESIASTES.
 If science is an art of naming, every name is a generalisation, and to call
Nature names implies a reference to more than- one experience, however
real, intimate, and infelicitous ; the appropriate name will characterise the
universal experience, which is mixed.
 VIII.

CONCL USIONS.
IT is a common mistake, born of the close and normal

connection between thought and feeling, to suppose that

every one who takes the trouble to state a proposition
must be personally attached to the facts he formulates.
Yet we may apprehend a truth without being in love
with it, and we may be in love with truth without being
in love with all the facts which we learn to know for true.
If the outline of belief sketched in the preceding pages
is approximately in accordance with facts, it is of little

moment whether writer or reader is glad or sorry that the

facts are thus, and not otherwise. "We have endeavoured
to reproduce faithfully the best and the worst of the truth
as it is, leaving as it must be left to personal moods
and feelings to pronounce sentence of love or aversion for
the final result. On the whole, we believe broad possi-
bilities ofgood to stretch beyond the narrow certainties of
private ill but it is a question for each man's conscience,
;

judgment, or taste, whether the one is a sufficient compen-

sation or atonement for the other.
The best we can say is, that the world does not appear
to be under the government of a bad God. The natural
laws which the mind recognises as irresistible are not such
as the soul need refuse to obey. Speaking in the first
it cannot be said that we feel a compulsion which
person,
our inmost conscience rejects. When men bring an in-
dictment against Providence, it is because they see that
the allotment of natural good and evil in the world is not
352 NATURAL LAW.
proportioned to the moral deserts of individuals and the/ ;

say in their haste, The ruler of the world is unjust. And if

we reply that, on the contrary, the world has no ruler, and
that its vicissitudes follow each other in a fixed course,
determined by the natures of co-existing things, they re-
peat the charge with a difference, and say, Then the laws
of the world are unjust. The above pages have been
written in vain unless we have shown that just laws do
not exclude unequal fortunes; that the constancies of
relation prevailing among the heterogeneous facts of
nature are the condition not only of natural stability, but
of all natural life, growth and enjoyment that the law ;

"
may be holy and just and good," while the imperfection
of the things subject to the law may by virtue of the
general laws, which it were a loss to repeal work pain
and evil, not only to the imperfect thing itself, but to its
unoffending fellow-creatures. The laws of human life are
not unjust to individual men, though the administration
of the law in an imperfect world may bear with unequal

severity upon some and though nature, as a whole, does

;

not acknowledge a responsibility towards the human

species in the matter of rewards and punishments, it
cannot be said that man, in his merely human relations,
is the subject of unjust laws because obedience to the just
laws to which he is subject is not always for his temporal

advantage. We are no more subject to unjust laws than

to an unjust lawgiver ;
we are free to do or be the best we
can, for anything the universe cares to the contrary ; all
the natural laws of which we own the sway are on the
side of reason, justice, progress, and perfection, and we
distinctly do not feel a permanent pressure from the
nature of things urging us to dishonesty, cruelty, or mis-
conception our will is not irreconcilable to the strongest
;

tendencies of nature, which we feel to be towards natural

and spiritual good ; they leave us free to see
and tell the
truth, to love peace, and follow after righteousness
whether we do so or not is another matter, but the char-
 CONCLUSIONS. 353

ter under which we hold our life from the universe secures
us in these good and sufficient liberties.
But here, mayhap, some gloomy young agnostic inter-
rupts Out on all these canting, conceited sycophants of
:

creation! Have we not read the sober Mill, the cynic

Schopenhauer, the refined Kenan? What of the suf-

ferings of man and beast, rampant brutality, abject

fear, remorseless crime, and incurable pain ? Shall we
praise a natural law which brings forth all these fruits of
hell ? forbid
Humanity We had no thought of praising
!

nature, though few of these miseries are the work of her

laws they come from the natural imperfection of things,
;

which is such that if we had the choice of being unborn,

not a few of us, perhaps, might be glad to seize it. But
what, pray you, brothers malcontent, does it prove against
the morality of the laws by which moral agents live, that
you or I or the raw-boned donkey of an ill-conditioned
costermonger, are not providentially supplied with the
means of gratifying our most lawful appetites, nor even
with opportunities for displaying our specific excellences
and developing our specific gifts ? Is the good of life less
good because it is unequally distributed ? Do those plea-
sures cease to be desirable which you or I desire in vain,
or those powers cease to be admirable which we find no

pretext for admiring in ourselves ?

Shall I blaspheme reason because I am no Spinoza, art
because I cannot draw, music because I have no ear for
it, the beauties of nature because I am shortsighted, the

charms of society because I stammer, athletic sports if

" "
like Hamlet I am scant of breath ? Shall I disparage

political liberty because I have no vote, political power

because constituents preferred the local brewer, the
my
delights of friendship because he thinks me a bore, the
sweetness of love because she married somebody else, the
glory of success because you do not read my book ? Though
I am poor and dyspeptic, shall there not be cakes and ale
for the well-to-do with an appetite ? The law of love is
z
354 NA TURAL LA W.
good and joy-giving, yet I may waste my life in mad de-
pendence on a Delilah's face truth is good, yet there are ;

scientific bats who, in the name of truth, banish love and

beauty from their lives because they cannot be prepared

for the microscope strength is good, though when we set
;

the wheel of action rolling, it may break from our grasp or

drag us with it whither we did not mean to go. But it is
not law, only awkward fact that determines our concrete
ill-luck the laws are good laws to live by, and we owe
;

them no grudge because you or I may fail to live fortu-

nately. The strongest forces in nature are those which

struggle towards unseen heights of natural good, and I may

own as much, though own short life be irretrievably
my
spoilt because I have not found a place to suit in the me
service of the forces ; there were round holes and square
on the board, but if I was born a scalene triangle, what
does it prove against the rules of the game ?
Say I have set my ambition too high, sought a field for

potent action and to act worthily of the field, and fell

back into heartbroken discontent because the field itself
had to be fought for through ignoble chicane, and by the
time it was almost won, the power if I ever had it to
act effectively was lost what then ? If the field is cleared,
:

some one else will have a better chance than I, and some
of those who have a better chance may be better able to
use their chance. I have failed, and that is ill, so far as it
goes ;
others may succeed, and that will be well, by compa-
4t
rison ;
and in the name of all that's relative," why should
we torment ourselves because there is no place for terms
of absolute eulogium in the
history of our experience?
After all, it is almost
law, a very wide generalisation
.a

indeed, that we
on the whole and in the long run,
all get,
whatever we want most, for if we only want hard enough,
circumstances give in to us at last. If I wanted truth
more than happiness and innocence more than enjoyment,
nature and her laws have done me no
wrong they that :

seek find, and to him that knocketh shall be opened at

 CONCLUSIONS. 355

least the gate of content and resignation, if that is what

he wants most.
This is the best and worst of it as regards the single
soul: righteousness possible, and so is misfortune,
is

spiritual as well as temporal. But for that immaterial

body that we call society, there is no worse evil than the
misfortune of its members, and the best that we can say is,
that such misfortune may be brought to a minimum by
the intelligent action of society in all its parts. Natural
evil will probably last as long as natural life ; when men
have done their best for themselves and for each other,
pain and loss and benefits out of place will still keep
human hearts versed in the art of aching. There is little
to choose in the matter of happiness between the pain of
bereavement and of unsatisfied craving; but though the
object of our effort is to make possession the rule, and either
kind of painful exception as rare as possible, while human
life continues as we know it, so long happiness will be, as
it were, the narrow line as hard to tread as Mahomet's

bridge separating the two boundless deserts of want and

misery. But still men find their way across the desert

now, with all the chances of ill-luck, iH-will, and stupidity

against them, and the aim of society is to put the chances
on their side. It has been said: The dice of God are
always loaded and it rests with men to load the dice in
;

their ownfavour, to multiply the influences tending in

favour of good fortune, so as to allow the possibilities of
good to encroach upon the region of blind, impartial
chance, and cause an increasing part of human life to
be determined by conscious will, and less and less by the
mechanical sequences of unfeeling, unintelligent nature.
The supreme power, named by Spinoza Deus sive Natura,
owns no duties to the human race, and though man has
owned Supreme and why not if their dis-
duties to the

charge be natural and good? our concern is with

the
duties of men to each other, and it is still a new and some-
what startling conception that the claims
from this quarter
356 NATURAL LAW.
may be as infinite as the demands of any imaginary creator.
On the one hand, we seek for a sufficient reason for the
incessant exercise of each and all of our vital powers on ;

the other, we are half afraid of acknowledging the force of

the one omnipotent and omnipresent motive which pre-
sents itself. We own a duty to our neighbours, and the
good Samaritan still stands high in our esteem, but popular
ethics avowedly shrink from the admission, which would
stamp our living practice with condemnation, that our
duty to our neighbour is we hardly dare to write it to
do all that in us lies to enable those with whom we are in
constant relationship to live the best life they can, and to
live meanwhile the best life we can, as a luty, first indeed
to ourselves, but then also to those with whom we are in

contact, and lastly to society in general, or the unknown

members of its mass whom our actions and being may in-
directly influence. It is a tremendous proposition that we
are bound to do all the good that we conceivably can, that

every misfortune which we can in any way alleviate has

a claim on us for help, and that the life of every man is
to be held under conditions imposed by the needs of his

fellows, that, in fact, there are no degrees of obligation,

and that the same reasons which would seem now suffi-
cient to make it right to render a cheap and easy service
to a friend, also make it right in case of need to render
arduous and self-denying services to the stranger that is
within our gates ; that duty is co- extensive with ability ;

and that, while the distinction may be maintained between

sins of omission and sins of commission, all deliberate omis-
sion of a possible act clearly seen and believed to be good
is tobe classed, and reprobated, and avoided as a sin.
It has been said that this is too hard for flesh and blood,
and that we are dishonest in continuing to accept the tra-
dition of an obligation which we do not
seriously think of
satisfying. Secular morality, it is urged, must moderate
its demands to suit the moderate limits of human virtue

and capacity; and since there is no dens ex machina to

 CONCLUSIONS. 357

enforce devotion to a divine ideal, men must be left to the

sway of personal human motives, which only exact a finite

and tolerable measure of
self-denial. But, on the other
hand, though say that the God in whose name men
we
have clung to an ideal of perfection is but a dream of
the mind, a shadow of the will, giving them no real help
in their endeavour, the fact remains that men have owned
the infinity of duty, not as a dream or shadow, but in
living truth, and if men have sought perfection before now
without receiving superhuman help in their search, shall
they in these latter days turn with open eyes to a less
worthy goal ? To say they must, is indeed a godless say
rather a soulless creed; to say they will, is false and faithless.
And when it is accepted, the tremendous burden of social
obligation lightens itself at once, for it is borne in common.
If, indeed, the duty of every man and woman be as full

and searching as we tremble to think it, the future before

them may be happier than we ever dared to hope ;
for the
law that is binding on one is binding on all ; every small
service that rendered, every small obligation that is
is

fulfilled, be repaid a thousand-fold.

may While the
one owns duty and service to the many, the many can
give still more potent help and guidance to the one, not
only lightening the objective difficulty of his tasks,
but reconciling the spirit to his obligations by the flow
of unselKsh sympathy. The one renders to society such
small services as he can, and all society in return is at
the bidding of his wants and in truth, society has less to
;

gain by the perfect life of its several members than they

have to gain by a social order which would let them live

perfectly, for human opinion is the atmosphere breathed

by human agents, and as the air they breathe, so their
health and strength of limb. Perhaps, .ifter all, society
asks no more from its members than to make a wholesome
atmosphere for each other not one breeding agues of in-
decision, fevers of envious discontent, and epidemics of
quarrelsome greed. No one doubts his own power to live
358 NA TURAL LA W.
innocently and wisely, if all his neighbours would show
him how, and a sanitary reform in the region of thought
and feeling modifies conduct for the better, even without
consciousness of effort.
But though the discharge of social services may profit
alike the givers and receivers, the services on both sides
must be a gift, and not a matter of sale and purchase for a;

rigid counting of the cost is fatal to

the moral life, as the
lack of intellectual daring and generosity is fatal to all
natural energy. It is true, though the fact proves nothing

against the supreme naturalness of virtue, that there is no

certain assurance that he who does most for his kind will
receive most help from them in his need only a general
that the harvest is according to the seed, and
certainty
that each addition to the number of those who have done
what they can lessens the gross weight of evil and mishap
which prevents even the best of men from doing all that
they would.
But there is one last objection to be met: If earth is
turned to heaven by the reciprocal good offices of mankind,
who will be content to leave it ? and is it not a cruel mercy
to reconcile men to a life they must quit so soon ? We are
no optimists, and our wildest dreams do not go beyond a
hope of making untimely death once more the worst enemy
of the living. Persons who have only lived out half their
natural life on earth look to another world for compen-
sation, but it may be that those who, while it was time,
have filled their consciousness to overflowing with the
experiences of a sympathetic energy, satiate themselves
with existence so, and have no desire left for immortality.
Those whose energy has been productive, who have 'lived
much, and over-lived much, who have tested the limits of
their powers, and see to the end of the work which it is

possible forthem to do, they, in the fulness of years and

attainment, sing, we may conjecture, their Nunc Dimittis to
the Universum with at least as much feeling of relief as of
reluctance.
 CONCLUSIONS. 359

If people could think of themselves as immortal with

the immaterial eternity of geometrical truths, they would
have no reason either to desire or to dread a posthumous
existence. But, in fact, of our acquired tastes, the taste
all

for living for ever is the one which will be found least
deeply rooted amongst men, if for no other reason, because
it has never been strengthened by indulgence. No mortal
knows whether a resurrection to eternal life would answer
his expectation or not, but many good people are at pains
to explain that they could not take their own souls au
serieux, unless they believed them to be immortal, and we
have no wish to cavil at the means by which so necessary
a result may be obtained only, looking at things dispas-
;

sionately from without, the misgiving arises, whether our

own respect for the human soul would stand the strain of

seeing our good neighbours produced to infinity. If man's

duration were not as finite as his good qualities, he would
need infinite tolerance to endure his own presence through
the ages.
The kind of immortality that may be certainly antici-
pated, and that influences the present action of living men,
is not personal but material. The desire for fame, subjec-
tive immortality, is reasoned away as easily as that half of
ambition which consists in the desire to be thought of as
great, powerful, or in any way illustrious no one on re-
;

be admired by fools, and the admiration of

flection cares to
the few competent judges whom a candidate for greatness
finds among his contemporaries is exactly proportioned to
his real merits ;
but though it follows from the nature of
the case that good work is appreciated by those who know
what is good, the least part of the motive that actuates
those who are able to do good work is the knowledge that
itwill be appraised at its true value by a few. The suffi-
cient reason for any act is a clear and adequate apprehen-
sion of the act as good to do, which makes the doing of it
appear as an end in itself, whether the deed is applauded
and the doer remembered or not, for these are accidents
360 NA TURAL LA W.
individual will to control,
lying beyond the power of the
and wise men do not place their happiness at the mercy
of contingencies. To be remembered is not an end. We
are not the better now for what generations still unborn
will think of us, if we have the power to make them think
at all it is they who will be the better for our thought of
;

them. Our present desire is not for an idle fame, but for
the triumph of the truths and tendencies which have been
the guides of our action not the less so because the
triumph of a cause is followed by the dawn of new truths
and tendencies, whose champions will then have more right
than our ghosts or tombstones to honour and praise among
the living. It is enough for us to know that what we have

done, be it less or more, will in any case live in its natural

effects, and that, whether it knows the fact or not, the

future will be, within approximately calculable limits, as

much the better as we may have chosen to make it for our
action on the present.
Life and death are equally natural, and neither is a pure

good, neither an unmixed evil. The Stoics asked, " What

is it to it holds together, and what
the bubble while
good
"
harm when it is and we can only answer, that to
burst ?

live according to nature, and to die a natural death, is the

sum of all the natural good we know or can think of as
"
attainable by man. Things without life, and things with-
out reason, and things that have rambled and know not the
way," have less of natural excellence in them than the man
of strenuous and temperate virtue, who is constantly faithful
to his true self and to the impressions of the Not-self by
which his inner life and being are conditioned. More than
this the resources of thought and language do not allow us
to maintain or suppose. If it is asked what healthy, vigor-

ously-minded men, with plenty of desires of their own,

riding rough-shod over weaker tendencies, have to do with
the doctrine of natural necessity and the praises of univer-
sal perfection, the answer is easy, for they have not much.
Men who are swayed by simple personal desires, untroubled
 CONCLUSIONS. 361

by religious doubts and moral perplexities, live almost

automatically the less complex, we do not presume to say
the lower, perhaps the happier life of irrational nature,
of roses, brambles, turtle-doves, or tigers, as the case
may
be ; they are under the law of the land and of opinion,
but they have naturally little concern with the gospel of
religious morality. If they, too, are moderately good of
their kind, it is not from the vague hope they sometimes
believe themselves to entertain of being by and bye trans-
formed, by a power not themselves, into beings of another
(how can we say a better ?) kind. Such hope is not, in
most cases, lively enough to be efficient as a motive, but if
it were so, then certainly the fact that men can live well

and cheerfully by the help of anything so immaterial as

hope deferred, proves that not much immaterial help is
needed to carry the majority of them through the material
troubles of life. Of its immaterial troubles, two of the
most intolerable, fear and disappointment, have no power
over the enlightened reason and the chastened will. We
do not fear what is certain we succumb or endure. Dis-
;

appointment only comes to those whose hopes have been

unreasonably high or unreasonably confident, and to lose a
false hope of the future does not make men less able to
face a present reality.
Heaven and hell are names or visions ;
the earth is ours
here a hell of sensuality and hardened cruelty, there a
heaven of love and beauty and wisdom, with a tender smile
upon her gracious lips, and yearning prophecy in the melt-

ing depths of her unfathomable eyes.

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