Chapter IV: Religious Conformity (2)

The great object is to keep the minds of the young as open as possible in the matter of religion; to breed in them a certain simplicity and freedom from self-consciousness, in finding themselves without the religious beliefs and customs of those around them; to make them regard differences in these respects as very natural and ordinary matters, susceptible of an easy explanation. It is of course inevitable, unless they are brought up in cloistered seclusion, that they should hear much of the various articles of belief which we are anxious that they should not share. They will ask you whether the story of the creation of the universe is true; whether such and such miracles really happened; whether this person or that actually lived, and actually did all that he is said to have done. Plainly the right course is to tell them, without any agitation or excess or vehemence or too much elaboration, the simple truth in such matters exactly as it appears to one's own mind. There is no reason why they should not know the best parts of the Bible as well as they know the Iliad or Herodotus. There are many reasons why they should know them better. But one most important condition of this is constantly overlooked by people, who like to satisfy their intellectual vanity by scepticism, and at the same time to make their comfort safe by external conformity. If the Bible is to be taught only because it is a noble and most majestic monument of literature, it should be taught as that and no more. That a man who regards it solely us supreme literature, should impress it upon the young as the supernaturally inspired word of God and the accurate record of objective occurrences, is a piece of the plainest and most shocking dishonesty. Let a youth be trained in simple and straightforward recognition of the truth that we can know, and can conjecture, nothing with any assurance as to the ultimate mysteries of things. Let his imagination and his sense of awe be fed from those springs, which are none the less bounteous because they flow in natural rather than supernatural channels. Let him be taught the historic place and source of the religions which he is not bound to accept, unless the evidence for their authority by and by brings him to another mind. A boy or girl trained in this way has an infinitely better chance of growing up with the true spirit and leanings of religion implanted in the character, than if they had been educated in formulae which they could not understand, by people who do not believe them.

The most common illustration of a personal mistake being made the base of a general doctrine, is found in the case of those who, after committing themselves for life to the profession of a given creed, awake to the shocking discovery that the creed has ceased to be true for them. The action of a popular modern story, Mrs. Gaskell's _North and South_, turns upon the case of a clergyman whoso faith is overthrown, and who in consequence abandons his calling, to his own serious material detriment and under circumstances of severe suffering to his family. I am afraid that current opinion, especially among the cultivated class, would condemn such a sacrifice as a piece of misplaced scrupulosity. No man, it would be said, is called upon to proclaim his opinions, when to do so will cost him the means of subsistence. This will depend upon the value which he sets upon the opinions that be has to proclaim. If such a proposition is true, the world must efface its habit of admiration for the martyrs and heroes of the past, who embraced violent death rather than defile themselves by a lying confession. Or is present heroism ridiculous, and only past heroism admirable? However, nobody has a right to demand the heroic from all the world; and if to publish his dissent from the opinions which he nominally holds would reduce a man to beggary, human charity bids us say as little as may be. We may leave such men to their unfortunate destiny, hoping that they will make what good use of it may be possible. _Non ragioniam di lor_. These cases only show the essential and profound immorality of the priestly profession--in all its forms, and no matter in connection with what church or what dogma--which makes a man's living depend on his abstaining from using his mind, or concealing the conclusions to which use of his mind has brought him. The time will come when society will look back on the doctrine, that they who serve the altar should live by the altar, as a doctrine of barbarism and degradation.

But if one, by refusing to offer a pinch of incense to the elder gods, should thus strip himself of a marked opportunity of exerting an undoubtedly useful influence over public opinion, or over a certain section of society, is he not justified in compromising to the extent necessary to preserve this influence? Instead of answering this directly, we would make the following remarks. First, it can seldom be clear in times like our own that religious heterodoxy must involve the loss of influence in other than religious spheres. The apprehension that it will do so is due rather to timorousness and a desire to find a fair reason for the comforts of silence and reserve. If a teacher has anything to tell the world in science, philosophy, history, the world will not be deterred from listening to him by knowing that he does not walk in the paths of conventional theology. Second, what influence can a man exert, that should seem to him more useful than that of a protester against what he counts false opinions, in the most decisive and important of all regions of thought? Surely if any one is persuaded, whether rightly or wrongly, that his fellows are expending the best part of their imaginations and feelings on a dream and a delusion, and that by so doing moreover they are retarding to an indefinite degree the wider spread of light and happiness, then nothing that he can tell them about chemistry or psychology or history can in his eyes be comparable in importance to the duty of telling them this. There is no advantage nor honest delight in influence, if it is only to be exerted in the sphere of secondary objects, and at the cost of the objects which ought to be foremost in the eyes of serious people. In truth the men who have done most for the world have taken very little heed of influence. They have sought light, and left their influence to fare as it might list. Can we not imagine the mingled mystification and disdain with which a Spinosa or a Descartes, a Luther or a Pascal, would have listened to an exhortation in our persuasive modern manner on the niceties of the politic and the social obligation of pious fraud? It is not given to many to perform the achievements of such giants as these, but every one may help to keep the standard of intellectual honesty at a lofty pitch, and what better service can a man render than to furnish the world with an example of faithful dealing with his own conscience and with his fellows? This at least is the one talent that is placed in the hands of the obscurest of us all.[26]

And what is this smile of the world, to win which we are bidden to sacrifice our moral manhood; this frown of the world, whose terrors are more awful than the withering up of truth and the slow going out of light within the souls of us? Consider the triviality of life and conversation and purpose, in the bulk of those whose approval is held out for our prize and the mark of our high calling. Measure, if you can, the empire over them of prejudice unadulterated by a single element of rationality, and weigh, if you can, the huge burden of custom, unrelieved by a single leavening particle of fresh thought. Ponder the share which selfishness and love of ease have in the vitality and the maintenance of the opinions that we are forbidden to dispute. Then how pitiful a thing seems the approval or disapproval of these creatures of the conventions of the hour, as one figures the merciless vastness of the universe of matter sweeping us headlong through viewless space; as one hears the wail of misery that is for ever ascending to the deaf gods; as one counts the little tale of the years that separate us from eternal silence. In the light of these things, a man should surely dare to live his small span of life with little heed of the common speech upon him or his life, only caring that his days may be full of reality, and his conversation of truth-speaking and wholeness.

Those who think conformity in the matters of which we have been speaking harmless and unimportant, must do so either from indifference or else from despair. It is difficult to convince any one who is possessed by either one or other of these two evil spirits. Men who have once accepted them, do not easily relinquish philosophies that relieve their professors from disagreeable obligations of courage and endeavour. To the indifferent person one can say nothing. We can only acquiesce in that deep and terrible scripture, 'He that is filthy, let him be filthy still.' To those who despair of human improvement or the spread of light in the face of the huge mass of brute prejudice, we can only urge that the enormous weight and the firm hold of baseless prejudice and false commonplace are the very reasons which make it so important that those who are not of the night nor of the darkness should the more strenuously insist on living their own lives in the daylight. To those, finally, who do not despair, but think that the new faith will come so slowly that it is not worth while for the poor mortal of a day to make himself a martyr, we may suggest that the new faith when it comes will be of little worth, unless it has been shaped by generations of honest and fearless men, and unless it finds in those who are to receive it an honest and fearless temper. Our plea is not for a life of perverse disputings or busy proselytising, but only that we should learn to look at one another with a clear and steadfast eye, and march forward along the paths we choose with firm step and erect front. The first advance towards either the renovation of one faith or the growth of another, must be the abandonment of those habits of hypocritical conformity and compliance which have filled the air of the England of to-day with gross and obscuring mists.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 18: It may be said that Hume meant no more than this: that of two equally oppressed nations, the one which had been taught to assent to the doctrine of resistance would be more likely to practise 'the sacred duty of insurrection' than the other, from whom the doctrine had been concealed. Or, in other words, that the first would rise against oppression, when the oppression had reached a pitch which to the second would still seem bearable. The answer to Hume's proposition, interpreted in this way, would be that if the doctrine of resistance be presented to the populace in its true shape,--if it be 'truth,' as he admits,--then the application of it in practice should be as little likely to prove mischievous as that of any other truth. If the gist of the remark be that this is a truth which the populace is especially likely to apply wrongly, in consequence of its ignorance, passion, and heedlessness, we may answer by appealing to history, which is rather a record of excessive patience in the various nations of the earth than of excessive petulance.]

[Footnote 19: There is another ground for the distinction between the conditions of holding and those of expressing opinion. This depends upon the psychological proposition that belief is independent of the will. Though this or any other state of the understanding may be involuntary, the manifestation of such a state is not so, but is a voluntary act, and, 'being neutral in itself, may be commendable or reprehensible according to the circumstances in which it takes place.' (Bailey's _Essay on Formation of Opinion_, § 7).]

[Footnote 20: The following words, illustrating the continuity between the Christian and Jewish churches, are not without instruction to those who meditate on the possible continuity between the Christian church and that which is one day to grow into the place of it:--'Not only do forms and ordinances remain under the Gospel equally as before; but, what was in use before is not so much superseded by the Gospel ordinances as changed into them. What took place under the Law is a pattern, what was commanded is a rule, under the Gospel. The substance remains, the use, the meaning, the circumstances, the benefit is changed; grace is added, life is infused: "the body is of Christ;" but it is in great measure that same body which was in being before He came. The Gospel has not put aside, it has incorporated into itself the revelation which went before it. It avails itself of the Old Testament, as a great gift to Christian as well as to Jew. It does not dispense with it, but it dispenses it. Persons sometimes urge that there is no code of duty in the New Testament, no ceremonial, no rules for Church polity. Certainly not; they are unnecessary; they are already given in the Old. Why should the Old Testament remain in the Christian church but to be used? _There_ we are to look for our forms, our rites, our polity; only illustrated, tempered, spiritualised by the Gospel. The preempts remain, the observance of them is changed,'--Dr. J.H. Newman; _Sermon on Subjects of the Day_, p. 205.]

[Footnote 21: There is a set of most acute and searching criticisms on this matter in Mr. Leslie Stephen's _Essays on Free-Thinking and Plain-Speaking_ (Longmans, 1873). The last essay in the volume, _An Apology for Plain-Speaking_, is a decisive and remarkable exposition of the treacherous playing with words, which underlies even the most vigorous efforts to make the phrases and formula of the old creed hold the reality of new faith.]

[Footnote 22: Upon this sentence the following criticism has been made:--'Surely both of these so-called contradictions are deliberately affirmed by the vast majority of all thinkers upon the subject. What orthodox asserter of the omnipresence of a "Creator with intelligible attributes" ever maintained that these attributes could be "grasped by men"?'--The orthodox asserter, no doubt, _says_ that he does not maintain that the divine attributes can be grasped by men; but his habitual treatment of them as intelligible, and as the subjects of propositions made in languages that is designed to be intelligible, shows that his first reservation is merely nominal, as it is certainly inconsistent with his general position. Religious people who warn you most solemnly that man who is a worm and the son of a worm cannot possibly compass in his puny understanding the attributes of the Divine Being, will yet--as an eminent divine not in holy orders has truly said--tell you all about him, as if he were the man who lives in the next street.]

[Footnote 23: That able man, the late J.E. Cairnes, suggested the following objection to this paragraph. When two persons marry, there is a reasonable expectation, almost amounting to an understanding, that they will both of them adhere to their religion, just as both of them tacitly agree to follow the ways of the world in the host of minor social matters. If, therefore, either of them turns to some other creed, the person so turning has, so to speak, broken the contract. The utmost he or she can contend for is forbearance. If a woman embraces catholicism, she may seek tolerance, but she has no right to exact conformity. If the man becomes an unbeliever, he in like manner breaks the bargain, and may be justly asked not to flaunt his misdemeanour.

My answer to this would turn upon the absolute inexpediency of such silent bargains being assumed by public opinion. In the present state of opinion, where the whole air is alive with the spirit of change, nobody who takes his life or her life seriously, could allow an assumption which means reduction of one of the most important parts of character, the love of truth, to a nullity.]

[Footnote 24: The reader remembers how Wolmar, the atheistic husband of Julie in Rousseau's _New Heloïsa_, is distressed by the chagrin which his unbelief inflicts on the piety of his wife. 'He told me that he had been frequently tempted to make a feint of yielding to her arguments, and to pretend, for the sake of calming her sentiments that he did not really hold. But such baseness of soul is too far from him. Without for a moment imposing on Julie, such dissimulation would only have been a new torment to her. The good faith, the frankness, the union of heart, that console for so many troubles, would have been eclipsed between them. Was it by lessening his wife's esteem for him that he could reassure her? Instead of using any disguise, he tells her sincerely what he thinks, but he says it in so simple a tone, etc.--V. v. 126.]

[Footnote 25: The common reason alleged by freethinkers for having their children brought up in the orthodox ways is that, if they were not so brought up, they would be looked on as contaminating agents whom other parents would take care to keep away from the companionship of their children. This excuse may have had some force at another time. At the present day, when belief is so weak, we doubt whether the young would be excluded from the companionship of their equals in age, merely because they had not been trained in some of the conventional shibboleths. Even if it were so, there are certainly some ways of compensating for the disadvantages of exclusion from orthodox circles.

I have heard of a more interesting reason; namely, that the historic position of the young, relatively to the time in which they are placed, is in some sort falsified, unless they have gone through a training in the current beliefs of their age: unless they have undergone that, they miss, as it were, some of the normal antecedents. I do not think this plea will hold good. However desirable it may be that the young should know all sorts of erroneous beliefs and opinions as products of the past, it can hardly be in any degree desirable that they should take them for truths. If there were no other objection, there would be this, that the disturbance and waste of force involved in shaking off in their riper years the erroneous opinions which had been instilled into them in childhood, would more than counter-balance any advantages, whatever their precise nature may be, to be derived from having shared in their own proper persons the ungrounded notions of others.]

[Footnote 26: Miss Martineau has an excellent protest against 'the dereliction of principle shown in supposing that any "Cause" can be of so much importance as fidelity to truth, or can be important at all otherwise than in its relation to truth which wants vindicating. It reminds me of an incident which happened when I was in America, at the time of the severest trials of the Abolitionists. A pastor from the southern States lamented to a brother clergyman in the North the introduction of the Anti-slavery question, because the views of their sect were "getting on so well before!" "Getting on!" cried the northern minister. "What is the use of getting your vessel on when you have thrown both captain and cargo overboard?" Thus, what signifies the pursuit of any one reform, like those specified,--Anti-slavery and the Woman question,--when the freedom which is the very soul of the controversy, the very principle of the movement,--is mourned over in any other of its many manifestations? The only effectual advocates of such reforms as those are people who follow truth wherever it leads.'--_Autobiography_, ii. 442.]