The hopes of the human race, hereafter and here : essays on the life after death, with an introduction having special reference to Mr. Mill's essay on religion

THE

HOPES OF THE HUMAN RACE

HEREAFTER AND HERE :

0n fbc £tfc after Death.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION HAVING SPECIAL REFERENCE TO
MR. MILL'S ESSAY ON RELIGION.

BY

FRANCES POWER COBBE,

SECOND KD1T1UN.

WILLIAMS AND NORGATI

n. IIKNKII.I i \ -i 1:1 i .1. 001 D r •: \UM:Y KI\I.O\
AND .:>, -ui ill n;i;i>i:i:n K -u;r.i.!, I.IUM.I i-.fi

1880.

LONDON :
PRINTKI) I5Y C. ORKKN ANI> SON, 178, STRANP.

CONTEXTS.

PAGE

INTRODUCTION (HAVING SPECIAL REFERENCE TO MR.

MILL'S ESSAY ON RELIGION) 1

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH. PART 1 ....... 61

Reprinted from tht Theological Rniew, October, 1872.

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH. PART II ....... 106

Reprinted from the Theological Review, July, i$73-

DOOMED TO BE SAVED ........... 151

An Address read at Clerkenu'cll i'nitariat: < \tobcr 5,

Tin-: EvOLUTIOK OF THE SOCIAL SE.NTIMI.M .... 170

Rtprintfd from the 1'hcoL^ical Rc-cicw, Jan:

INTRODUCTION.

(HAVING SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE ESSAYS ON RELIGION
BY JOHN STUART MILL.)

THE principal Essay in this book addresses itself to
a small class of readers. For those who believe that a
Life after death has been guaranteed to mankind by
a supernatural Revelation, it is superfluous ; and for
those who believe that the experiences of the bodily
senses and the inductions thence derived mark th.-
limits of human knowledge, it is useless. There yet
remain some minds to whom I hope the speculations
and observations which it contains may not be unin
teresting or unserviceable ; who, having lost faith in the
apocalyptic side of Christianity, find no basis therein
for their immortal hopes, but who are yet able to trust
the spiritual instincts of their own and other men's
hearts, provided they can recognize the direction in
which they harmoniously point. 1 indulge no div:un
of discovering new Around for faith in immortality, still
less of proving that \u: ;iiv immortal l,y lo-ir,tl

B

INTRODUCTION.

stration. But something will be gained if I succeed in
warning off a few inquirers from false paths which lead
only to disappointment, and point out to them, if not
the true argument, yet the true method of argument,
whereby such satisfaction as lies within our reach may
be obtained. Perhaps I may have the greater advantage
in speaking of the belief in a future life because for
many years of my own earlier life, while slowly regaining
faith in God after the collapse of supernaturalism, I
failed to discover any sufficient reason for such trust, and
in the desire to be loyal to truth deliberately thrust it
away even under the pressure of a great sorrow. It is
possible, therefore, that I may understand better than
most believers in the doctrine why many honest, and
not irreligious, minds are at this moment mournfully
shutting out that gleam of a brighter world which should
cheer and glorify the present ; and perhaps I may also
have learned from experience how some of their difficul
ties may be met.

It is needless to discuss the importance of the belief
of mankind in a Life beyond the grave. Whether, with
a recent distinguished writer, we look on the threatened
loss of it as the most perilous of our " Eocks Ahead," on
which the whole order of society may make shipwreck,
or whether (as I am more disposed to think) the danger
lies in the gradual carnalization of our nature which
would follow the extinction of those ennobling hopes
which have lifted men above mere animalism and given
to Duty and to Love an infinite extension, — in either

INTRODUCTION.

case it is hard to speak too gravely of the imperilraent
of that which has been, since the beginning of history,
perhaps the most precious of the mental heirlooms of
our race. To conjure up a picture of the desolation
which such a loss must bring to the hearts of the
bereaved, and the dreary hopelessness of the dying and
the aged, would be to give ourselves superfluous pain.
Nor must it be forgotten that it does not ask a great
deal, if not to kill such a faith (which is perhaps impos
sible), yet to maim and paralyze it, so that it shall
become practically powerless to comfort or to elevate.
The great majority of mankind rather catch belief and
disbelief from those around them than originate them
on their own account ; and the disbelief of even a few
of their neighbours is often sufficient to take away all
confidence in the affirmative verdict even of the wisest
and best. Dr. Johnson said he was " injured by knowing
there was one man who did not believe in Christianity ;"
the knowledge was just so far a deduction from tin-
universality of consent in which even that intellectual
giant found repose. It would probably need only that
five per cent, of the population should publish their
conviction that there is no Future State, to make the
greater part of the remainder so far lose reliance upon
it, as to become quite insensible to its moral influences.
But while thoughtful persons are generally agreed on
the great importance of the doctrine in question, it has
perhaps scarcely been noticed how it is inevitably des-
tnie.l tn form tin- timiinx-pnint «»f the future reli<_:inu>

B 2

INTRODUCTION.

history of our race. The dogma of a Future Life differs
from other articles of faith notably in being indissoluble
in the alembic of interpretation wherein so many of our
more solid beliefs have of recent years been rarefied
into thin air. " To be, or Not to be," is very literally
the question of questions, to which must needs be given
a categorical response. Either we, ourselves, in inner
most identity, shall exist after the mortal hour, or we
shall not so exist ; there is no third contingency. With
respect to our faith in God, there are immeasurable
shades between the definite and fervent conviction of
the existence of a true Father in Heaven, and the admis
sion that there lies behind Nature some " Unknown
and Unknowable" Mind, Will, or, perchance, blind and
unintelligent Force, which we choose to call by the
same sacred name. Owing to the voluntary and invo
luntary obscurities of human language, and the dimness
of human thought, there will always exist a misty ter
ritory between the confines of Theism and Atheism ;
and it may be only too easy to slip down imperceptibly,
range after range, from one to the other, only discover
ing at last how far we have descended when the sunlight
which shone on the mountain -tops has faded away
utterly among the dark shadows of the abyss. But
there is scarcely any such danger of thus playing fast
and loose with our beliefs as regards Immortality. It
is true that among those alchemists of creeds of whom
I have already spoken, many of whom can find the pure
gold of moral truth in every base and heavy supersti-

INTRODUCTION.

tion, while others concoct an Elixir of Life out of the
hellebore and the nightshade of denial and despair, there
have not failed to be some who have taught that man,
if mortal in the concrete, and doomed individually to
perish in the dust, may yet call himself an Immortal
Being ; immortal, that is, in his abstract Humanity, in
the Grand-etre of which he forms a part, and which will
survive the falling off of such a mere fraction of it as
himself; or (if this consolation be not amply sufficient)
that he will yet live in his posterity, in his works of
beneficence, in the books wherewith he may have in
structed mankind. But even to very sanguine souls it
must (I should suppose) be nearly hopeless thus to
attempt to give the change to our personal hopes and
desires concerning a Life after Death, by reminding us
of hopes for other people, which, far from being a novel
equivalent l'«ir our own, have always hitherto been taken
as concurrent therewith and additional thereto ; and
which actually bring with them, when the doctrine of
individual Immortality is denied, only the mournful
ijiu-stion of how far it may remain an object of hope at
all that a Race should prolong its existence when every
soul which composes it is destined to perish incomplete,
unfinished, a iailuro like the ill-turned vase which the
potter casts aside on the heap to be broken up as worth
less. There can be truly, then, only the response of Aye
or No to the question, " When a man dieth, shall he
live again \" and on the decision whether most men
say "Aye," or Vf " N<>," will depend, in yet undreamed
of measure, the moral condition of coming generations.

INTRODUCTION.

In the following Essay I have stated to the best of
my ability the grounds on which I think an affirmative
answer to the great enigma may be given by all those
who believe in a Righteous as well as an Intelligent
Euler of the world. I have no desire to blink the fact
that it is on the moral attributes of God that the whole
question appears to me to hinge ; and that, without the
help of Religion, (of a real religion, which takes for its
corner-stone that God is good and just, not a philosophy
which merely admits the hypothesis of an intelligent
Force behind Nature,) the reasons for denial seem to me
to preponderate altogether over those in favour of affir
mation.

But here is the great, the tremendous difficulty. How
is that belief in the Righteousness and Benevolence of
God to be established so as that we may build thereon
securely our hopes of a Life to come ? Nay, how is it in
these days of earthquake to be kept firm enough for the
purpose — higher even than of affording us immortal hope
— of giving us now a Father in Heaven to adore, and in
allegiance to whose holy will we may be content to live
and die ? It is impossible to hide from ourselves that
the obstacles in the way of a clear faith in the absolute
Goodness of God have grievously multiplied upon us in
our generation. Perhaps genuine fidelity should call on
us to rejoice that they have also at last found a most
lucid and coherent expression in the mournful legacy
left us by the great philosopher lately departed, wherein
the yet formless questionings, the "ghastliest doubts" of
thousands of souls have taken shape, and will stand

INTRODUCTION.

revealed to themselves like the Afreet out of the smoke.
Of this book I must speak presently. Let it be remarked
in passing that Mr. Mill has not unnaturally read all
the religious history of mankind in the peculiar light of
his own exceptional mental experience, and has taken it
for granted that men have in all ages constructed a God
by the method of the inductive philosophy. I venture
to think that an entirely opposite rationale of religious
development is the true one, and that by recognizing it
we may exactly perceive how it happens that we have
arrived at our present pass.

Mankind, I believe, from the hour when Humanity
arose out of its purely animal urigin, has felt some vague
stirrings of aspiration and awe — some infant-like lil't-
ings-up of the hands for help and pity to something
greater, stronger, \visrr than itself — some dim consci
ousness (enough at least to guide its funeral rites) that
it is not all of a man which perishes in the grave. Long
ages and millenniums doubtless passed away during
•which the06 vague sentiments i'a>tcned on some fetich,
or on the orbs of heft-Yen, at first without ascribing any
definite individuality or personality to the object, and
then again without attrilmt ing to it any moral character.
In the " ages before morality" the gods were necessarily
unmoral ; for man could no more hm-nt morality to
give his god, than he could invent for him a bodily
sense which ho did not himself possess. But with tin;
dawnin-s of the- ethical sentiment in man came simul
taneously the conviction, — nay, rather, the consciou

8 INTRODUCTION.

—that the Unseen Power was also Just (so far as the
man yet apprehended justice). Thenceforward the moral
ideal of God continued to rise, century after century, in
exact proportion to the moral development of mankind ;
and the "Lord" was a pillar of cloud and fire, moving
before the moving nations, guiding them towards the
Holy Land. It mattered little that it was, for the
masses, in the shape of the intuitions of dead prophets
and apostles, which were called Divine inspirations (and
were so in truth, albeit mixed with endless fables), that
Jews and Zoroastrians, Christians and Moslems, accepted
this inward idea of God, and only a few of the "strongest
souls" received (as the old Chaldsean oracle has it) "light
through themselves." Practically, mankind at large held,
more or less imperfectly, the notion of Deity reflected
from the highest consciousness yet developed at each
stage; and poor as it often was, it was the brightest
which could filter through the dim windows of their
souls. The work of correcting this ideal by reference to
the phenomena of nature, instead of being the normal
process, hardly seems to have occurred to any one save
Lucretius. When these phenomena were beneficent and
beautiful, men sung psalms and proclaimed that the
Heavens declared the glory of God, and the earth was
full of His goodness. When plague and earthquake,
flood and famine, ravaged the world, they attributed the
evil to the wrath of the higher Powers, brought down by
the offences of mankind, of which there never was an
insufficient store to serve for such explanation. It is

INTRODUCTION. 9

even surprising in our day to note how very remote it
from the spirit of old philosophers or theologians to
put aside a priori doctrines about the gods, and learn
from Nature herself concerning Nature's Authorship.
Even down to the days of Paley and the Bridgewater
Treatises, it is clear that, when they applied to Nature
at all, it was as a French judge sometimes interrogates
a prisoner, to compel her to corroborate their foregone
conclusions respecting a series of "Attributes" either
apprehended by the religious sentiment or logically
deduced by the a, priori arguments of the Schoolmen.
There were doubtless abundant reasons for this state of
things. The poets, the artists, the sages of old, cared
comparatively little about Nature, and centred all their
interest in man. As it has been wittily said, " Nature
only discovered in our generation." It followed
obviously, then, that the theologians of former times
should concern themselves almost exclusively with the
human aspects of Keligion and the notions of dead
thinkers, and that only now and then some great teacher
arose to rebuke the servile repetition of what was "said
by them of old time," and to point to the lilies of tin- lield
and the birds of the air as evidence of the Father's love.
But our age witnesses a new tendency of thought
altogether — the genuine application of the Inductive
Philosophy to Theology. With the vast and sudden
influx of knowledge concerning the outer world, has
come a greatly enhanced sense of the importance <>l the
iuici ,ruwn therefrom regard in- the character

10 INTRODUCTION.

of its Author and the purpose of His work. Some of us
are now at the stage of seeking in Nature the corrobora-
tion of our intuitive faith ; others, of painfully balancing
the two revelations ; and others, yet again, have gone so
far as to look exclusively to astronomy and geology and
chemistry and physiology to afford them indications of
who or what the Originator of the universe may be, and
have come to regard with mistrust, as wholly unreliable
bases of argument, those moral and religious phenomena
of their own and other men's souls, which may, after all,
they hold, be only the results of the "set of the brain"
determined by the accidents of their ancestors' condition ;
" psychical habits" conveyed by hereditary transmission,
but having no validity whatever as indicators of any
external reality.

Now, even in the first of these stages, where we only
interrogate Nature to confirm the yet undimmed faith
of our hearts, there comes undoubtedly to us a chill when
she returns her stammering reply, instead of the loud
and glad response which we had been taught by the
shallow old Natural Theology to expect with confidence.
Instead of the "one chorus" which "all being" should,
as we trusted, raise to the Maker of all, we hear an
inarticulate mingling of psalms of joy with funeral
dirges ; the morning song of the bird with the death-cry
of the hunted brute ; the merry hum of the bee in the
rose with the shrivelling of the moth in its "fruitless
fire." Nature's incense rises one hour in balm and per
fume to the skies, and the next steals along the ground,
foul with the srnell of blood and corruption.

INTRODUCTION. 11

We cannot shut out these things from our thought by
any effort. We climb the mountains, where the " empty
sky, the world of heather" seem all full of God, and we
find beside the warbling brook a harmless sheep dying
in misery, and its little lamb plaining and starving
le it. We wander through the holy cloisters of the
woods till we have forgotten the world's sin and toil, and
the scattered feathers and mangled breast of some sweet
bird lie in our path, desecrating all the forest. We turn
to the books which in former years used to expound to
us the marvellous and beneficent mechanism of the
Almighty Anatomist, and we grow sick as we read of
the worse than devilish cruelties whereby Science has
purchased her evermore unholy secrets. Further on,
when we seek to reconcile the responses of the religious
sentiment with those of the Nature " red in tooth and
claw," who shrieks against our creed that Love is " crea
tion's final law," and treat them as two equally valid
sources of knowledge, the riddle grows yet more terrible,
till at last, when we discard the inward testimony to the
Maker's ch;ir;icter as unreliable. and Innk to the external
world alone to tell us what lie may be, we obtain the
heart-chilling reply which Mr. Mill lias left us as his
last sad word : " A Mind whose power over the materials
was not absolute, whoM- \an for his creatures was n..t
his sole actuating imlurenient, but who neverth*

red their -.mil."* " Tin; scheme of Nature, iv-ardrd

Krli._:i«ii, \>.

12 INTRODUCTION.

in its whole extent, cannot have had for its sole or even
principal object the good of human or other sentient
beings."* What is most disheartening is the reflection
that to all appearance this contradiction (real or appa
rent) between the inward voice of the soul and the voice
of Nature must not only continue, but become continu
ally more clearly pronounced. There seems no chance
at all that we shall ever find a better solution of any
one of the "riddles of the painful earth" than we pos
sessed before Science set them in array; and, on the
other hand, there is every reason to believe that year by
year, as the human conscience grows more enlightened,
and sympathy with every form of suffering becomes
stronger and more universal, the pain conveyed to us by
the sight of pain will become more acute, and our revolt
at the seeming injustices of Providence consequently
more agonizing.

In the second Essay in this little book I have en
deavoured to shew that historically we may trace an
enormous and hitherto little suspected development in
the Social Sentiment of man, and that, to judge from
irresistible analogy, every future generation will have
a livelier sympathy with the joys and sorrows of all
sentient beings, such as scarcely in their tenderest hours
the most loving souls of former ages experienced. This
is, I conceive, the great Hope for the future of humanity
on earth, as the Immortal Life of Love is, I believe, that

* Essays on Religion, p. 65.

INTRODUCTION. 13

of each human soul after passing through the portals of
the grave. But with this fresh growth of sympathy has
already come upon us quite a new sense of the vast
extent and the terrible depth of the sufferings and wrongs
existing around us; and the easy complacency where
with our fathers regarded many of them, and the thanks
givings they returned for being " given more " than
others while conscious they did not deserve it, are well-
nigh disgusting to us. Especially the sufferings of
animals torture us, seen in the light of our new know
ledge of their kindred sensibilities ; and we stand
aghast before the long panorama of misery unrolled
before us by the theory of the Struggle for Existence
and the Survival of the Fittest at the expense of the
unfit.

Much of the scepticism of the present day — so grave,
so regretful, combined so often with the noblest philan
thropy — is beyond a doubt the result of nothing else
than the rapid growth of tenderer sentiments of com
passion for unmerited suffering, and livelier indignation
at suspected injustice. And if this be so, future genera-
ti«»iis, us they become more just and more merciful, will
also become more sceptical — nay, more Atheistic—
unless some different method be found for treating
the dread dilliculty than any of those which have been
tried and h;i\-e broken down. Kven for us now there is
nothing more futile and »lisaMr<»us than the attempt
either to treat Ihniht as "devil-born," in>tead of .-sj.rinM-
ii\'< from that which is most divine in us, ur to silence

14 INTRODUCTION.

it, like the Dog of Hell, with a few handfuls of dry dust
of commonplace. The man to whom the fact of the evil
of the world first comes home in the hour of trial, and
to whom are presented as explanations the platitudes in
ordinary use by divines, is like one of those hapless
persons of whom we heard not long ago, who stood
waiting at the upper window of a burning house for
means of escape, and when the ladder was lifted, the
brittle toy collapsed and shivered in fragments on the
pavement, and with a never-to-be-forgotten cry of despair
the victims fell back into the fiery gulf behind them,
and were seen no more.

How, then, ought the dread mystery of the existence
of Evil in creation to be treated ? Historically, since
men were far enough advanced to find that it is a
problem, and to feel the incongruity in the alternate
beneficence and severity of the unseen Powers, which
they had before contentedly supposed to be wayward
and passionate as themselves, it has been explained in
many different ways: — 1st, by the Judaic, Greek and
Christian doctrine of a Fall, succeeding to a Golden or
Saturnian Age of Innocence and Happiness ; 2nd, by
the Zoroastrian, Egyptian and Manichaean hypotheses
of an Ahriman or Typhon, Evil Principles the rival of
Ormuzd and Osiris ; and the Hebrew doctrine of a Satan
subordinate to Jehovah, but permitted to work mischief
in His creation ; 3rd, by the Gnostic hypothesis of the
intractable properties of Kyle* (Matter), wherewith the
Demiurge often contends ineffectually ; 4th, by the

INTRODUCTION. 1 .",

orthodox Catholic doctrine which, in addition to the
Fall and Satan, refers Evil to the necessity for the pre
sence of pain in a world intended to be one of trial ;
5th, by the doctrine of Leibnitz (and substantially also
that of Archbishop King), that the world is as good ;is
it was possible to make it, — every contingency other
than those which it actually presents involving either
greater evils or insuperable contradictions; Oth, by the
doctrine of Theodore Parker, which is simply the vehe
ment affirmation on d priori grounds that, in the creation
of a God all-good and omnipotent, Evil must be illusory,
and a mere needful step to the highest good for every
creature ; lastly, by the doctrine, often timidly approached
by previous thinkers, but for the first time, I believe,
frankly stated by Mr. Mill, that supposing God to be,
in any sense, Good, His character and dealing
explicable only on the hypothesis that He is possessed
of very limited power and wisdom.

Such are the largest waves of human thought which

for countless ages have dashed themselves against this

cloud-capped rock. For us, in our day, few of them

bear much significance ; none can be said to be wholly

factory.

To explain natural evil and injustice by postulating
tin- enormous injustice of punishinx [],e yvlmle human
and animal creation fur the sin of Adam, would be held
absurd, even had not superabundantly demon

strated the existence of the greatest natural evils helm.-
Man. 01 even !•«•!'.. n- the order of Mammalia, came into

being.

16 INTRODUCTION.

The hypothesis of a Great Bad God, whose opposition
mars perpetually the work of the Good Creator, though
even yet accepted by a few minds of high philosophic
cast, seems to the majority of us only to darken the
dark mystery. The God who could create a Satan
would be himself a Satan ; and an uncreated Ahrimanes,
issuing out of "Time without Bounds," would be in
Morals what a Circular Triangle would be in Mathe
matics — a self-contradiction. When we have postulated
eternal Existence, Wisdom and Power, we have by our
definition excluded Malevolence, Cruelty and Injustice.*

The " intractable properties of Matter" may possibly
indicate a class of causes which may stand for much
in the solution of the riddle of Evil ; but till we have
arrived at some conception of how the law of Evolution
is worked by the Lawgiver, and find the equivalent in
modern scientific terminology for the earlier "Creation"
and the later " Contrivance," it is little better than
cheating ourselves with words to speak of Matter as
either " intractable" or otherwise in the hands of God.
When all is said, we are not far, yet, beyond the philo
sophy which taught that

"All are but parts of one stupendous Whole,
Whose Body Nature is, and God the Soul;"

* " The notion of an absolutely Evil Principle is an express
contradiction. For as the Principle resists the Good One, it nl>»
must be independent and infinite. But the notion of a Being
infinitely evil, is of one infinitely imperfect ; its knowledge and
power therefore must he absolute ignorance and impotence." -
Law's Notes to King's Origin of Evil.

INTRODUCTION. 17

and till we have learned something of the relation of
our own bodies to our souls, of the "flesh" to the "spirit"
against which it so often wars, it is hopeless to speculate
on that of the material universe to its directing Mind.
Certainly there is nothing in the visible world corrobo
rating the notion of yet incomplete conquests of the
Demiurge over Matter. No discoverer has found an
outlying tract of Chaos, any more than the "print of
Satan's hoof in the Old Red Sandstone," the marks ..f
the handiwork of any second or opposing Intelligence.
If Nature explains herself to us,

thus at the roaring loom of Time I ply,
And weave for God the garb thou seest Him by,"

that "garb" we behold is neither unfinished in the
minutest hem, nor yet torn or spotted anywhere as by
an enemy's hand. The red threads which run through
it are woven into its very texture ; nor is it possible to
guess how some of them can ever be eliminated. Only
the poet looks for the day when the " lion shall eat straw
like the ox." The zoologist knows that by the law of
his bfinjr the lion must prey on the lamb, while the
lamb and lie inhabit together the earth. The "Holy
Mountain," whereon they shall not "kill nor destroy,"
and where man and brute and l.ird and insect may live
in peace and love, is, like Heaven itself, unmarked in
the chart of any geographer.

A iin, tli«. orthodox Catholic doctrine— that Evil H
necessary to afford scope for the moral freedom of man
—is, I believe, valid u the explanation of a vt'1-y h,

c

18 INTRODUCTION.

class of phenomena wherein Man is principally con
cerned ; but it is obvious that it leaves untouched the
still harder problem of the misery of the brutes, since
morals and geology have alike advanced too far to accept
the theory which formerly supplemented it, that the
"whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain" for
Adam's offence.

Again, the doctrine of Leibnitz — that it is the best
of all worlds which could have been created — though
perhaps nearer the truth than any other, must rather be
deemed a statement of the problem than its solution,
since he offers no suggestion as to the nature of that
necessity for not making it letter, which he is everywhere
forced to assume as paramount to the Divine Benevolent
Will*

The unhesitating faith of Theodore Parker is one which
few of us can regard without envy, and the mighty
force of conviction with which he gave it utterance has
served to warm and cheer a thousand hearts. God had

* Archbishop King, at the conclusion of his celebrated Treatise
— containing some valuable observations and some singularly naif
examples of the circular mode of argument — sums up his conclu
sions with much complacency thus : " The difficult question then,
'Whence came evil?' is not unanswerable. It arises from the
very nature and constitution of created beings, and could not l>e
avoided without a contradiction. Though we are not able to api >ly
these principles to all cases, we are sure they may be so applied"
(Treatise on the Origin of Evil, 4th edit. p. 145). I wish I could
share the Archbishop's plenary satisfaction in the results of his
labours.

INTRODUCTION.

revealed His absolute goodness in the very core of that
large and loving heart, and in the blaze of that Divine
light he ceased to discern the darkness around. The
result is, that he has contributed more than perhaps any
other man of our age to kindle amongst us a fervent
and fearless love towards God, which may help us, as it
helped him, to say, " though He slay me "—aye, and far
worse, slay in my sight those who have never sinned as
I have done— yet even so, "yet I will trust in Him."
But he has only provoked from the scientific side a
somewhat contemptuous rejection of his dogmatic optim
ism, as making no real attempt to grapple with the
difficulty of Evil, or recognize its extent*

Lastly, there remains the door of escape which Mr.
Mill has set ajar— the hypothesis that God, though
benevolent, may be weak and ignorant, unable to do
better than He has done for His creatures, albeit that
is bad enough.f This theory I must here dwell upon
for a few moments, both because it will no doubt for
some time to come hold considerable place in men's

It i«-vi.l.Mit from his l.io-rai.lii,- that in his earlier years

Fheodon Parker wu V,TV .l.-.-j.iv in,],,-,,,,,! i,v n,, M.fi,,-;,,^ of

annuals ;l,,,l much ,li-turl..-,l thereby, What was tin- k.-y l,v

which he eactped oat of Doubting Owtle I bare never been tble

to ascertain.

'!"• •Mftka ..f all hi, power to m.-ik.- it M lini-
unperfed a* poeriUe, IMOTM it no better than it it, they oannol
bul regard thai power, though nuty beyond human estimate x,-i

* '" Mil not merely linit,.. l.m «frwM% /*,„,/,,/. "-Essays 'on

. 'ii. ).. -M.

c 2

20 INTRODUCTION.

thoughts, and also because it very importantly touches
the chief purport of this book — our hopes of the Life
after Death. If God be really so feeble a Being as
Mr. Mill suggests, if His contrivances be so "clumsy"
(p. 30), and even His own immortality open to doubt
(p. 243), it is idle to argue any further concerning His
goodness, for He may be sincerely desirous of giving to
us eternal joy hereafter, and yet fail to do so as com
pletely as He has failed to give us perfect happiness
' here. This world being the bungle it is reported to be, it
is hopeless to count on what the sequel of it may prove.
If God's wisdom be really "limited/' and His con
trivances " clumsy," there is in nature a very singular
anomaly, for it appears that He has made a being more
clever than Himself, and able to point out where He
has failed, if not exactly how to do better. The intel
ligence of man is the highest work of God with which
we are acquainted (though nothing hinders us from
supposing He may have made indefinitely nobler intel
ligent inhabitants of other worlds) ; but to suppose that
this chef d'ceuvre of the human brain is endowed with
such similar but superior powers to its Maker as to be
qualified to criticise and discriminate the clever from
the clumsy among them, would be astonishing indeed.
I do not mean this remark in the sense of the " brow
beating" of the human intellect to which divines are so
prone. There can be no audacity in exercising any
faculties with which we are gifted. I only desire to
observe that there is, on the face of the matter, something

INTRODUCTION. 21

very like absurdity in supposing that we, who, on the
hypothesis, are, ourselves, God's handiwork, could find
the end of His knowledge or wisdom. Practically, when
we reflect on any one branch of the Divine Art, on the
architecture of the starry heavens, on the chemistry of
the ever-shifting gases and fluids and solids in which
creation every hour is born and dies, on the mechanism
of the frame of an animalcule, or of our own bodies — say,
of the Hand alone, as exemplified in Sir Charles Bell's
splendid treatise — it scums indeed monstrous for us to
open our lips regarding the Wisdom of the Creator.

Where the limits of His Power may lie, is another
question, of which it seems impossible we should ever
- the answer. Undoubtedly Christian theologians
have written much folly about "Omnipotence," having
first invented a purely metaphysical term, and then
argued back from it to facts, as if it were a specific
chitum within our measurement, like the horse-power of
a steam-engine or an hydraulic-press. A more sober
and reverent mode of regarding the stupendous Power
above us, may, as I have long hoped and argued, become
a "Note" of Theism; and in the full admission that
there must be some limits even to supreme Might (limits
existing in the very nature of things, which cannot at
once be and not be, or unite contradictory properties,
such as those of a circle and a triangle), we may find
some hrlp in rontcni]il;ain- such evils as those which
seem to follow in«-\ ital.ly on the -rant of moral freedom
to a finite beiiu; such as man.

22 INTRODUCTION.

But such limitations of the Divine Power as Mr. Mill
seems to contemplate, would narrow it (if I understand
him rightly) far beyond this mere negation of contradic
tions ; and if we are to admit them into our philosophy,
it ought surely to be on the ground that there are
marks of such limits in nature ; places where the crea
tive energy seems to have fallen short, or the obvious
design has aborted. Now it is possible that some evils
in nature — some forms of disease, for example — may
seem to possess this character ; but unquestionably the
greater mass of evil bears no such marks. It is, as I
have just said, woven into the very tissue of life on the
planet, and seems just as much a part of the great plan
as all the rest. All the terrible things in the world —
the ruthless beak, the poisoned fang, the rending claw —
are as much an integral part of the work as the downy
breast of the bird or the milk of the mother-brute.
Further, there is a very curious parallel, which I do
not think has received sufficient attention, between the
exceptional ugliness in a Beautiful world and the excep
tional evil in a Good one, which apparently alike demand
some other solution than that of a limitation of the
Maker's Power. The Creator has covered the earth and
filled the waters with beauty. Almost every animal
and shell, every tree and flower and sea- weed, the
mountains, the rivers, the oceans, every phase of day
and night, summer and winter, — is essentially beautiful.
Our sense of Beauty seems to be, not so much a bene
ficent adaptation to our dwelling-place (like our sense

INTRODUCTION. 23

of taste for our food), but rather u iilial sympathy with
our Great Father's pleasure in His own lovely creation ;
a pleasure which He must have enjoyed millions of
years before our race existed, when all the exquisite
forms of animal and vegetable life filled the ancient
lands and seas of the earliest geologic epochs. Nothing
but a preference for beauty, for grace of form and varied
and harmonious colouring, inherent in the Author of
the Cosmos, can explain how it comes to pass that
Nature is on the whole so refulgent with loveliness.
r.ut even here there are exceptions. Putting aside all
man's monstrosities (and the beings who could create
the Ittack Country might be counted by a dweller in
the planet Mars as the brood of Ahrimanes), there are
in the animal and the vegetable kingdom objects which
are, strictly speaking, as ugly as the vast majority are
beautiful The same principle which authorizes us to
]>ionounee an antelope or a Himalayan pheasant grace
ful and beautiful, requires us to admit that the form of
a rhinoceros is clumsy and the colours of a macaw
harsh and Crating. If the song of the nightingale to its
mate be musical, that of a peacock is frightful; and if
a (iivlly rimjjn^ anion^ the roses of a southern ni^ht be
a dream of beauty, a hairy and bloated tarantula spider
hanging on the tree beside it causes us to shudder at its
Lideousness. Even amidst the flowers which seem li ki
lo ve-gifts from heaven to man, there are now and then
to be found some evil-looking, crawling, blotched and
sickly-smelling things, — not to speak of those cruel and

24 INTRODUCTION.

gluttonous Dionrea, which, by the irony of fate, have
been brought so specially to our notice at this moment,
as if even in the study of the lilies of the field we
could no more be sure of finding comfort and rest of
heart. Now all these uglinesses in Nature are, I submit,
real analogies to the sufferings of sentient creatures.
They are few enough to be distinctly exceptional, but
yet great and many enough, and bound up so completely
in the chain of things, as to leave us no choice but to
accept them as holding the same relation to the Author
of Nature as all the rest.

What view can we take, then, of this mystery of
Ugliness, since it would seem that any hypothesis which
may account for it may very possibly fit that yet greater
and more dreadful mystery of Suffering ? Putting it
thus before us, it seems absurd to say that perhaps the
Divine Power was not equal to the task of harmonizing
the macaw's colour or the peacock's voice, or of reducing
to proportion and grace the unwieldy rhinoceros or the
revolting spider. That His power should act freely
in constructing the lion and the horse, the eagle and
the ibis, the lark and the butterfly, and yet should be
unaccountably thwarted and trammelled when He made
the animals so strangely contrasted with them, is almost
ridiculous to suppose. It seems, then, as impossible
to frame an hypothesis which shall fit this aesthetic
anomaly of nature, as one which shall meet the moral
anomaly of Pain.

Thus, in short, it appears that every one of the theories

INTRODUCTION. 25

on the origin of Evil which have been put forth from
the days of the Pentateuch to the appearance of these
Essays on Religion, are more or less unsatisfactory and
incomplete; and we may, with only too great probability,
resign the hope that we shall ever hear of a better, or
that any (Edipus will arise in the ages to come to resolve
" the riddle of the painful earth," and relieve us from its
direful pressure.

Two things only, I conceive, remain for us to do in
the matter. The first is, to define somewhat more
closely than, while oppressed by the declamations of
pessimists, we are generally able to do, what it is in
Nature which the human moral sense recognizes as
Evil. Secondly, to convince ourselves what is the tes
timony to the goodness of the Creator to be set over
against it, which may enable us — not by any means to
honour Him on the balance, but — to give Him our
heart-whole love and allegiance, and treat the mystery
of Evil as we should treat the inexplicable conduct of a
revered Father.

Of course no attempt to accomplish adequately either
n( these purposes can be made in these pages. I shall
only shortly indicate the character of the conclusions to
which, in each case, I have myself arrived.

The first thing to be done, if we desire to define what
we mean by Evil, is to determine \\hat we are justified
in expecting as Good, and then ask, what is there la< -k-
iiiL.r of such Good in the universe as we actually belmld
it '. There is a principle \vlii.-h has been often laid duwn

26 INTRODUCTION.

by sceptics as if it were a self-evident axiom, but which
appears to me to be nothing short of a monstrous mis-
statement. They affirm that the existence of evil for an
hour in the realm of a beneficent Deity is just as inex
plicable as the final triumph of evil to all eternity ; and
consequently that where we find so much evil as prevails
on earth, it is wholly impossible to say what extent and
duration, even to infinity, may not be permitted to evil
in other worlds present or future.

This argument, I contend, is wholly fallacious. It
turns on two false assumptions — first, the perverse
ascription to God of an omnipotence involving contra
dictions (e.g. that a creature could be made virtuous in
a world devoid of trials) ; and secondly, the application
of the limitations of time, proper to a weak and ignorant
being such as man, to a Being who is in certain posses
sion of the power to carry out His purposes whenever
He sees fit. The justice and goodness of God must,
indeed, be the same as the justice and goodness of man
— such is the cardinal postulate of all sound theology.
But it does not follow that because man is bound to do
justice and mercy at once, when the opportunity is pre
sented to him (since he never knows whether it may
come again), that God is similarly morally bound to
rectify immediately every wrong and relieve every pang.
On the contrary, it seems clear that, to an eternal and
all-foreseeing Being, this principle of human ethics has
no application, and that He rightly says to man,

" Tu n'as qu'un jour pour etre juste
J'ai 1'eternite (levant Moi."

INTRODUCTION. 27

Even human parents are authorized to inflict pain,
surgical or penal, which they reasonably believe to be
calculated to benefit their children; and it is obvious
that the rights of the Divine Father, whose resources of
compensation are infinite, must extend in this direction
far beyond the bounds of the earthly horizon. All this
line of argument, then, as against the Divine Justice, I
consider to be wholly invalid. The point at which the
human sense of justice as regards the relations of the
Creator to the creature (a sense which I humbly believe
God himself has planted in us and authorized us to
exercise) actually pronounces itself, is far different. We
feel that it would be unjust to create a being the sum
of whose existence slwuld be evil, who endured on the
whole more misery than he enjoyed happiness. And
this, I maintain, holds good even if the moral ill-deserts
of that being should appear to merit overwhelming
ivtributive punishment. The cruellest of all injustices
would be to create a being, so constituted and placed in
such conditions, as that it should in a//// i''ay come
about that ho should sink, not only into such misery,
but such sin as should finally turn the scale and make
his whole existence a curse. Evil cannot be fitly predi
cated of any amount of suffering within these bounds,
as if it were inconsistent with the Divine Justice ; and
all that the Goodness of God leads us to expect is, that
no suffering, small or great, should ever be rneanin
and anneoeMUy, but that it should either have ITCH
inevitable as the condition of larger L^oml, and in the

28 INTRODUCTION.

maintenance of that eternal order in whose fixed warp
the woof of our freedom alone can play ; or else correc
tive and purgatorial, at once Just and in the highest
sense Merciful.

Taking our stand at this point, what is there that
we must define as Evil in the world ? The outlook is
threefold, and the answers correspondingly various. Has
God been just and good to us ? Has He been so to
other men ? Has He been so to the brutes ? Most
frequently men confound all these questions; and the
answer which they find for the first determines that
which they adopt for the second and the third, and thus
the optimism of the prosperous and the pessimism of
the disappointed may be readily explained. But though
the dealings of God with each of us as known to our
selves alone may, and indeed do, serve us as presumptive
evidence of the character of His dealings with others, it
is plain it can be only on condition that we read them
in their true moral significance. Mr. Morley has ex
pressed somewhere his unmitigated disgust at those who
are ready to proclaim that God is very good because
their lot happens to be a fortunate one, regardless of the
misery of their fellows. But it is surely no less dis
gusting to find others denounce Him as cruel and
unjust because (albeit He has treated them with infi
nite forbearance) He has left them to suffer some of the
consequences of their errors ; or because, in bestowing
ninety-nine precious gifts, He has withheld the hun
dredth for which they crave. Here we come to one of

INTRODUCTION. 29

many illustrations of the fact that the spiritual element
in us alone enables us to judge truly of spiritual things.
Spiritual men without exception testify that to their
experience God has been tenfold better than their
deserts — more kind, more long-suffering, more infinitely
Father-like and merciful. Enduring every kind of loss,
pain or disappointment, their testimony is always the
same ; and, however much their faith is tortured by the
evils they witness around them, it has never so much
as occurred to them to think that God might have been
better to themselves personally than He has actually
been. It is reserved for quite another order of minds to
express indignation and a sense of injustice as regards
their own destinies, and to argue that God has not (as
Marcus Aurelius said) " done well for me and for the
world;" that He ought to have given them their heart's
desire — health, wealth or success ; and that they have a
right to complain of His dealings. What is the secret
of this difference ? It is, very simply, that the spiritual
man has learned somewhat of what God is, and, corre
spondingly, of what he is himself; the One so good ami
holy, that the very thought of Injustice cannot be din-,
towards Him after the experience of His forgiving love ;
the other so sinful, so vacillating, so ungrateful, that his
never-ending woinln- is lm\\ (i.-.l continues to him the
least of His mercies. Very possibly among the chief of
God's kindnesses he may reckon some acute suflerin
l.n.ly <>r iniii'l which has driven him back from the ways
of worldliness and sin, an<l restored him t<> his U-itn-

30 INTRODUCTION.

self. Thus, then, to the question, " Has God been good
and just to us individually ?" it will be found, I think,
that different answers will generally be given by religious
and irreligious men. The first never think themselves
to have deserved so much good as they have received ;
the second rarely think themselves to have deserved so
much evil.

On first noticing this fact, the natural corollary seems
to be that, in the life of every man, could we read it
similarly from the inside, we should likewise trace the
same contrast. But the rule cannot hold good as regards
the tens of thousands who have never known any
thing deserving the name of a religion ; whose natures
have been crushed, warped, stunted from childhood, or
trampled down in manhood or womanhood into the
mire of vice and shame, instead of being lifted into
spirituality ; nor yet of the millions of innocent children
who have suffered and died in infancy. Some difference
will appear in the incidence of the preponderance of evil
in the moral or in the physical life, according as we
regard Happiness as the end and aim of existence, or
believe that end to consist in Virtue and eternal union
with God. But in either case (as I have argued at
length in the succeeding Essay) it is certain that the
mass of mankind neither attain to such degree of Hap
piness nor of Virtue as that we can pronounce it to be
positively " good," or to any which excludes very con
siderable evil.

Even here, however, regarding this great amount of

INTRODUCTION. 31

evil in human life, we must guard ourselves against
exaggeration, and especially against the fallacy of treat
ing it as if it ever, or anywhere, outbalanced good.
Where evil passions should actually preponderate over
innocent or virtuous propensities, society must fall asun
der, and human affairs come to a standstill. And where
Want and Pain should prevail over satisfied appetite
and ease, mortal life must terminate. In these days
we need to be reminded again of the once familial-
observation, that "it is a happy world after all;" that
all our senses normally convey pleasure, not pain ; and
that the exercise of the faculties of heart and brain and
limbs are all (under their proper conditions) delight
ful. We remark on a case of destitution, or on a friend's
bodily suffering or bereavement; but we could not find
tongue to tell of all those around us who have sufficient
food and clothing, who are free from pain, and who
enjoy the sweet happiness of home affections. Many
of us live for months and years without pain ; but
few live a day without pleasure, if it be only tin-
pleasure of food and sleep and of intercourse with their
kind

And, aurain, it ou.u'ht to be borne in mind, as setting
limits to our notions of Evil, that it has diminished in
a perceptible degree in sucn ivHiaps this

lessening is not so great as \\v once fondly imagined,
and that tin- progress of mankind is far from l.cin-

a< lii''\rd without dra\\lia<-i<> ; still it would appear there
are decidedly more, and hi-ln-r, pleasures now enjoyed,

32 INTRODUCTION.

and fewer, and lesser, pains now suffered, by mankind,
than in any preceding age of the world.

Here, then, rest our conclusions regarding Evil in
human existence. It is vast, and much of it is wholly
inexplicable by any of the hypotheses which have passed
current as its explanation. But, great as it is, the good
in human life is greater still, and shews a constant
tendency to gain ground upon it.

Eegarding the suffering of animals, it seems that if
our fathers treated it much too lightly in their sublime
contempt for the brutes, we are not exempt from the
danger of taking too dark a view of it. Mr. Mill says,
for example,* that " if a tenth part of the pains which
have been expended in finding beneficent adaptations
in all nature Had been employed in collecting evidence
to blacken the character of the Creator, what scope
for comment would not have been found in the entire
existence of the lower animals, divided with scarcely an
exception into devourers and devoured, and a prey to a
thousand ills from which they are denied the faculties
necessary to protect themselves." I cannot but protest
against words like these, as quite equally misleading
with the easy-going optimism of Paley and his conge
ners. The lives of the lower animals, so far as we can
understand their consciousness, are not, on the whole,
a pain, but a pleasure. When undisturbed by human
cruelty, they suffer but little or rarely till the closing

* Nature, p. 58.

INTRODUCTION. 33

scene ; and though that is, alas ! too often one of anguish,
it scarcely occupies in any case a hundredth or a thou
sandth part of their existence. In the interval of days,
months or years, between birth and death, they have
evidently much ease and not a little delight. They
enjoy the gambols of youth, undimmed by the pains of
human education ; the passion of love, unchecked by
shame or disappointment ; the perpetually -recurring
pleasures of food, rest and exercise ; and (in the case of
the female birds and brutes) the exquisite enjoyments
of their tender motherhood. The sum and substance of
their lives under all normal conditions is surely beyond
question happy, and the anxieties and cares which in
their position would be ours, and which we are apt to
lend them in imagination, are by them as totally unfelt
as are our miserable vanities, our sorrowful memories,
and our bitter remorse. The scene which the woods
and pastures present to a thoughtful eye of a summer
morning is not one to " blacken " the character of the
Creator, but to lift up the soul in rapture, and prompt
us to add a human voice of thanksgiving to the chirp
of the happy birds, the bleating of the playful lambs,
and the hum of the IK-US in the cowslips and the clover.
Tin- law by which the death of (»ie animal is needful
to the life of another, is undoubtedly <>ne whose working
it is impossible I'nr us to contemplate without pain.
The process of killing and devouring, if on the whole
less productive of suiU-ring than tin- slow death of age
•'i i i<l wan! in millions of cases accompanied by

D

34 INTRODUCTION.

circumstances horrible to think of; nor is it at all
evident why natural death should not itself have been
made painless, rather than that recourse should have
been had to such an alternative. Obviously if creatures
had not been made to devour one another, scarcely a
hundredth part of those which now throng the earth
and waters could have existed, and each individual may
be said to hold his life on the tenure of relinquishing it
when summoned for another's support.* Still the law
is undoubtedly, to our sense, a harsh one; and when
we add to its action the sufferings of animals from
disease, from noxious insects and parasites, from cold,
from hunger, and, above all, from the cruelty of man, we
have undoubtedly accumulated a mass of evil very awful
to contemplate.-)- But it is wrong to exaggerate even
here, or speak as if the lives of the brutes were on the
whole a curse, and not a blessing. ' Even we who in our
cruelty so often seek them only to hurt and destroy, yet
see them — bird, beast and insect — ninety-nine times out
of a hundred, happy and enjoying themselves, for once
we notice them in any kind of pain. The same rule

* Archbishop King says : " God could have created an inani
mate machine which should have supplied animals with food.
But a being that has life is preferable to one that has not. God
therefore animated that machine which furnishes out provision for
the more perfect animals." — Origin of Evil, c. iii. § 5.

t It is probable that every harmless little calf killed by the vile
old process for producing white veal, suffers as much as a crucified
man.

INTRODUCTION. 35

applies to our impressions as in the case of human
suffering. We are so much more struck by the sight of
pain than of ordinary pleasure and well-being, that we
carry away a vivid impression of the former, and forget
the latter.

Brought to its actual limits, then, I conceive the
problem of Evil stands before us as a vast, but not an
immense exception, in a rule of Good. A certain large
share of it we can recognize as having great moral pur
poses fully justifying its existence, and even elevating
it into the rank of beneficence ; such are the sufferings
(of rational beings) which punish and repress sin, and
those through whose fires the noblest and the purest
virtues have ever passed to perfection. That there is
some wondrous power in Suffering thus to bring out of
human souls qualities immeasurably nobler than are
ever developed without its aid, is a fact equally plain to
those who have watched the almost divine transformation
it sometimes effects upon characters hitherto hard, selfish
or commonplace ; and to those who have noted how thin-
natured and unsympathetic, if not selfish, are at the best
those men and women who have lived from youth to
age in tin- unbroken sunshine of prosperity. Even
among very ordinary characters, and win -re the lesson
of suffering has not been deep, there are very few of us, I
believe, who utter the. lapse of a little; while would wish
that we could unlcani it, or return to be the slighter,
feebler, shallower-hearted lu-in^ W€ vrm before it came,
liathcr do we recn-iu/c the, truth of the poet's words:

D 2

36 INTRODUCTION.

" The energies too stern for mirth,
The reach of thought, the strength of will,
'Mid cloud and tempest have their birth,
Through blight and blast their course fulfil."

Another share of evil may be attributed to — though
not altogether explained by — the beneficent purpose of
securing preponderating physical advantage to the suf
ferer ; as, for example, the pains which guard the
integrity of the bodies of animals. But beyond all
these, we are compelled mournfully to conclude that
there exists, both in human life and in the life of the
brutes, a large mass of evil, which can by no such
hypotheses be accounted for consistently with the bene
volence of the Creator ; and which utterly baffles now,
and will probably for ever baffle, the ingenuity of mortal
man so to explain.

What is it that shall help us to look this great re
siduum of inexplicable evil in the face ? Where shall
we find ground of faith whereon we may take our stand
and confront it with unshaken hearts ?

Strange it is indeed to say, that I have hopes that
the publication of the Essays on Nature, the Utility
of Religion and Theism, which will give such bitter pain
to all believing hearts, such double sadness to those
who, like myself, regard their author with undying
honour and gratitude, may even prove the turning-point
of this controversy — may set us at last on the right
track for the solution of the problem. For what have
we in these powerful, limpidly clear, bravely outspoken

INTRODUCTION. 37

words ? We have, for the first time perhaps in human
history, revealed sharply and distinctly what that ele
ment in human nature must be which to the majority
of mankind is the origin and organ of Religion, and
which it is so transparently evident that Mr. Mill had
not* Hitherto we have seen it in its highest develop
ment in the saints, and had opportunity to learn what
it positively is. But so natural does it seem to man, so
much does it, in ordinary men and women, harmonize
with and shade off into the moral, affectional and ratio-

* Let it be understood that, in speaking of the Religious Senti
ment as deficient in Mr. Mill's nature, I use the term expressly in
the sense of that spiritual organ whereby man obtains direct percep
tion of the Living God. In the broader meaning of the word,
implying general reverence and tenderness towards all things
nol.le and h..ly,— a sense of tin: mystery surrounding human life,
and a ft -rvent devotion to the ideal of Duty, — Mr. Mill was assur
edly an eminently ivligintis man. How it came to j>a-s that such
a soul could by any mortal hand he debarred IV. MM the happiness
of direct recognition of (',«•{, ia one of the riddles wherewith the
spiritual as well as tin- physical world is full. A- he him.-elf says,
" it is ].os,jl,]t. to starve an instinct ;" and, as Mr. Upton has well
explained in his profound papi-r on the •• Kxperieiice Philosophy
and K.-li:_<ious l',,-li.-f," beside all other conditions on whi.-h
spiritual kno\vh-d-.- is ol.tain.d, it [| Heedful "that the und.-r-
htandiug slinuld In- lVi-i-d from all t viannoiis mi>,-,,n,-«-pt ions which
pnclude or distort the intrll.-, tual cognizance of 8i>iritual truth.''
Not!. !i a Divine blow as smote St. Paul would have

I'l-fii >tioi|._' riiiMigli to overthrow the " tyrannous iiiisci.ncrptions"
whr-i. -with Mr. Mill's .-du.-ation mu>t hav.- f.-nr.-d his mind. 1
lv add that, in my vii-\v, the al.-ncc of conscious recog-
of the rrlati'His 1.,-twn-n < iod and the <«.ul is very far indeed
from implyiiiL,' the n«in-r\i~t,-n.v of -u.-h relations, or the loss of

iiich they bestow.

38 INTRODUCTION.

cinative faculties, that it was easy to mistake their action
for its own. Now it seems possible to learn more of it
by the aid of the complete self-revelation of a very noble
mind, wherein, owing to almost unique circumstances,
the whole element has been eliminated ; and we are left
to mark what are the tracts of human nature which it
normally covers, and which are found to lie bare like
the sea-shore when that mighty tide has flowed away
back to its bed. We behold one of the keenest intel
lects of this or any century, and, on the human side, one
of the tenderest and most capacious of hearts — a man
whose moral sense (whatever were his theories of its
nature) quivered with intensest life, and was true as
needle to the pole of the loftiest justice to man, to
woman and to brute, who yet, great philosopher as he
was, when he comes to deal with a subject on which the
rude tinker of Bedford has instructed the world, writes
like a blind man discoursing of colours, or a deaf man
criticising the contortions of a violinist wasted on the
delusion of music. When he speaks of the Utility of
Eeligion, he confounds, as if they were identical, those
realms of human nature which public opinion or human
authority may sway; and those which, in the solemn
hours of visitation from the Divine Spirit, fall under the
inner law of Conscience and of Love. And when he
writes of the Consciousness of God, all he has to say of
it, is to refer to the metaphysical subtleties of Cousin
about the laws of perception, and to add contemptu
ously :

INTRODUCTION. 39

"It would be a waste of time to examine any of these
theories in drtnil. While each has its particular logical falla
cies, they labour under the common infirmity that one man
cannot, by proclaiming with ever so much confidence that ?te
perceives an object, convince other people that they see it

too When no claim is set up to any peculiar gift, but

we are told that all of us are as capable as the prophet of
seeing what he sees, feeling what he feels — nay, that we
actually do so — and when the utmost effort of which we are
capable fails to make us aware of what we are told we per
ceive, this supposed universality of intuition is but

' The dark lantern of the spirit
Which none see by but those who bear it ;'

ami ilio hearers may be asked to consider whether it is not
more likely that they are mistaken as to the origin of an
impression on their minds, than that others are ignorant of
tin \ nee of an impression on theirs."*

The friends who can have told Mr. Mill that he saw,
or was capable of seeing, religious truth as a Tauler or
a Fenelon saw it, or of feeling on the subject as even
much less religious men are accustomed to feel, were
bold indeed. It may have been a ban I task to say that
such was not the case. Nobody could have ventured
upon it during his life or even after his death, had he
not thrown down the challenge, and elaborately ex
plained to us the way in which his religious instincts
were destroyed by his ruthless father. But now the
matter stands plain ; and I confess I look with some

40 INTRODUCTION.

confidence to the results of the act of the elder Mill in
extirpating the organ of religion from his child's heart,
as serving to reveal to us the place it naturally takes
among human faculties. Even at the cost of all the
desolation the book will spread around, it is perhaps
well that this dreadful experiment should once for all
have been tried, and not in any " vile body " of fool or
egotist, but in the person of one of the ablest, and, in all
things beside, one of the very noblest of men.

That lesson, then, is this: that, as we did not first
gain our knowledge of God from the external world, so
we shall never obtain our truest and most reliable idea
of Him from the inductions which Science may help us
to draw from it. Spiritual things must be spiritually
discerned, or we must be content never to discern them
truly at all. In man's soul alone, so far as we may yet
discover, is the moral nature of his Maker revealed, as
the sun is mirrored in a mountain lake. While all the
woods and moors and pastures are quivering in its heat,
we only behold the great orb reflected in the breast of
that deep, solitary pool. If (as we must needs hold for
truth) there be a moral purpose running through all the
physical creation, its scope is too enormous, its intricacy
too deep, the cycle of its revolution, like that of some
great sidereal Period, too immense for our brief and
blind observation. It must be enougli for us to learn
what God bids us to be of just and merciful and loving,
and then judge what must be His justice, His mercy
and His love. That Being whom the sinful soul meets

INTRODUCTION. 41

in the hour of its penitence — and the grateful heart in
its plenitude of thanksgiving — and every man who
really prays in the moments of supreme communion —
tliat God is One concerning whom the very attempt to
prove that He is infinitely good seems almost sacrilege.
It is as Goodness, as Holiness, Love and Pity ineffable,
that He has revealed Himself. Shall we treat all that
we have so learned on our knees as idle self-delusions,
and barricade with iron shutters the windows of the
soul which look out heavenward, and this in the name
of sense and reason ? Nay, but let us fling those windows
wide open, and again and yet again seek to renew the
celestial vision. These sacred faculties of our nature
have a right to their exercise, as well as those which
trll us of the properties of solids, fluids and gases, of
li.uht and electricity. Their reports may be false? So
may be everything we call knowledge, every report of
the senses, every conclusion of the logical intellect. A
persistent and widely recognized fact of human consci
ousness may be illusory ; but there is no better proof to
be had even of the existence of an external world.*

* An c\« cllnit illustration of this subject, expressing very
closely my own vi»-w ..f it, i> in }<>• I'.. mid in the following letter,
published in tin . S.-jit. 5, 1874:

"Will you -ivc in. -pace for an illustration in support of that
which, :i|.arl I'mm iw.-lat inn, i> >im-ly tin- l..-t |,r«.,,r ..fall of the
d,— the exUni'-.-. vis., of that ivli-ii.us instinct in
man \vhii-h. «.n l'mft —or Tyndall'.- and Mr. H. S|.rn«rr'> own
s.-ii-ntifir principles, hhould IK- tin- -ul>jrrtivr iv<]><>nse to some
iv.iliiy, thr adaptation of tin- avatuiv man to hi* 'i-nvi-

42 INTRODUCTION.

The great root passion of normally constituted hu
manity, the craving to find some One to whom to look
up with absolute moral reverence, a passion which even

ronment.' The dog has a religion, and his deity is man. Previous
to tlie introduction of man upon the scene, the dog must have been
simply dog, minus this quasi -religious faculty. But man appears,
and makes his appeal to the dog-nature ; in response, a capacity
for human fellowship is developed in the dog, and is inherited, so
that a craving for such fellowship becomes, thenceforth, part of his
nature.

" Now if we imagine some being, some detached intelligence,
with power to observe the dog in his development through the
ages, but to whom the man, on his introduction, is invisible, what
a strange problem would present itself for his solution ! Would
not the higher development of the dog, as now observed by him,
be analogous to the calling forth of the religious instinct in the
creature man? The observer would now see with wonder the
frequent reference to a seemingly higher will, not always cheer
fully yielded to. He would note the upward look, the overcoming
of mere animal impulses, the occasional wilful outbreak of the
lower nature, bringing with it a sense of guilt, to be followed by
shame, penitence and meek submission to chastisement ; strangest
thing of all, he would see this chastisement seemingly accepted as
a medium of reconciliation with some invisible being, whereby
peace and contentment are restored to the canine mind.

" Which would be the soundest conclusion for such an observer
as I have supposed to come to? That these phenomena of dog-
consciousness were self-evolved, mere subjective illusions ; or that,
outside the range of his vision, there was some real object to call
them forth? To the obvious criticism that, as a matter of fact,
the dog does apprehend man, his deity, by his senses, while man
does not thus apprehend God, the reply is that, though in many
cases it may be latent, there is in man a higher sense whereby,
and that with an intense reality, the invisible God has been and
is apprehended by countless thousands.

" Supposing the evolution theory to be true, the question arises,

INTRODUCTION. 43

within the last few months the greatest thinkers on the
agnostic side have one after another admitted to be a
fundamental and ineradicable element in our nature, —
that exalted aspiration can never find the smallest satis
faction in the notion of a Probable God, who is probably
more Benevolent than otherwise. Mr. Mill arrives at
the conclusion that such lights as we possess " afford no
more than a preponderance of probability of the exist
ence of a Creator; of his benevolence a considerably less
preponderance ; that there is some reason to think that
he cares for the pleasure of his creatures, but by no
means that this is his sole care, or that other purposes
do not often take precedence of it."*

Further on, he grants that the " ideally perfect cha
racter .... may have a real existence in a Being to
whom we owe all such good as we enjoy."f But such
an hypothesis can only be admitted on condition of
supposing that "his power over his materials was not
absolute ;" that " his love for his creatures was not his
sole actuating inducement ;"J and, finally, that even of
his " continued existence" we have not a thoroughly
satisfactory " guarantee."§ But as such a Being as this
is no God at all to the needs either of the conscience or

when did man, tin- thinking animal, liecome mnu tin- religious
' May not thi- example of a -oniewhat parallel jilii-noim-non
in a lower lii-1'1 .-uj.ply an an.swer, viz. \vh.-n his nature, bowevei
I>ivviuu~ly o!.-v. ]..[„ ,1, \vu- fir.-t i-on.-.'i.uisly acted upon by a In
Natun •'. -I an. .Sir. HINKV F. I'.ATHER."

* P.! -I : P. r.

44 INTRODUCTION.

of the heart, we are consequently not surprised to find
Mr. Mill setting Him aside in favour of that " standard
of excellence," Jesus Christ. Here is another wonderful
exemplification of the eminent presence of the Moral
and the total absence of the Spiritual element in this
great thinker. He perfectly recognized the moral beauty
of Christ's character as transcribed by history, but his
inward eye was closed to that supreme Loveliness which
is spiritually revealed to every soul which enters into
communion with God ; and which, shining full into the
heart of Christ, made him the mirror wherein humanity
has ever since seen it reflected.

The fact that we want a Perfect God does not of course
prove that any such Being exists, but it leaves such a
Deity as Mr. Mill has propounded for our quasi-belief
altogether outside the religious question. If the Intellect
or the Fancy may be contented with a Probable God,
provisionally accepted as Benevolent, it is certain that
the Eeligious Sentiment can no more attach itself to
such a Deity than a man can embrace a cloud. A
balance of probabilities may properly determine our
choice of an investment for a sum of money ; but when
it comes to the gift of our heart's allegiance, we need
a different kind of assurance. No man can stand by
patiently while arguments pro and con. are carefully
weighed, and begin to love when the scale turns by a
hair on the side of Benevolence, and drop on his knees
in reverence as Justice begins to preponderate, and adore
when the balance of Good appears finally by some

INTRODUCTION. 4."

degrees heavier than that of Evil. If this be so, then it
follows that the Inductive Method is for ever inappli
cable to the solution of the greater problems of theol
because under the most favourable circumstances it can
only give us a balance of more or less probability — a
General, not an Universal proposition. We are com
pelled to seek in some other modes of thought an assur
ance of quite another kind.

I am far from conceding that no more decisive witness
to the Divine Existence and Goodness than ]\Ir. Mill
has found in the external world is to be drawn therefrom
strictly by the Inductive Method. Kespecting God's
existence, it seems to me the summary of arguments
in Mr. Thornton's recent admirable treatise* leaves the
scientific atheist a standing-room so infinitesimally small,
that nothing short of one of those angels of whom the
Rabbins taught that a legion may rest on the point of a
needle could support himself thereon. And regard in.^
the Divine Moral Character, I must protest against the
unaccountable manner in which, when the Experience
philosophy holds its court, the most important of the
witnesses is rarely or ever put in the box. Why is it, I
ask, that while every minute fact of organic and inor
ganic nature- is freely cited as bearing testimony more
or less important to tin- character of the Creator — \\liy
is the supreme fact — tin •••.i-tence of Man, of a being

* olil-1'Vlii..m-il Ktlii. . ftc, Bee the chapter on "R»
Phases i>l' S. it-untie Atlu-i-m."

46 INTRODUCTION.

who loves and who prays, who has, deep set within him,
the ideas of Justice and of Duty, a being capable of
becoming a hero, a martyr, a saint, — why is this greatest
of all the facts of Nature which our globe presents,
passed over by the experimentalist with no notice at all
so far as it bears on the Theistic argument? Let us
waive for a moment all question of personal intuitive or
spiritual knowledge. Let us suppose that we, indivi
dually, have no such transcendental moral or religious
knowledge, and that we are regarding the human race
altogether ab extra. Even so, such " facts of experience"
as an Isaiah, a Christ, a Buddha, a Plato, a Marcus
Aurelius, certainly claim attention as much as any of
the facts from which the Creator's indifference to His
creatures' welfare, or incapacity to make them happy,
has been inductively inferred. After all which has been
said of recent years regarding the way in which our
moral natures may be supposed to have been developed
out of the instincts of the ape, there is nothing so won
derful in all the wide circuit of science as that it should
happen that in a world teeming with injustice, and in
which Nature's "recklessness" is her prevailing charac
teristic,* there should exist a being whose brain has
acquired such a "set" of passionate love for justice as
that for its sake he is often ready to sacrifice happiness
and life.

And, again, I think even the Experience philosophy,

* Essays on Religion, p. 28.

INTRODUCTION. 47

when its conclusions are reduced to logical coherency,
points to the perfection of the moral attributes of the
Supreme Being. Such a Being either has, or has not,
a moral nature. If He have one, then He cannot be
partially good or partially just — half God, half devil —
with a fickle or a chequered character. So much as this
is involved in the hypothesis of a Creator transcending
all the wants, pains, weaknesses, ignorances and passions
of the creature. If any preponderance of evidence in
Nature, then, appears to shew that God has moral pur
poses, and that those purposes are, in the majority of
cases, benevolent, we are compelled, for mere coherency
sake, to arrive per saltum at the conclusion that, ii II-1
be good so far, He must be good altogether. On these
grounds, then, even such a small residuum of the sub
lime idea of God as is left us by the rigid application of
the Experimental philosophy to theology, may be made
to harmonize with and corroborate the faith derived
from a higher source of knowledge, and the Atheistic
and Kakot heist ic creeds stand condemned even in tin;
court of Nature.

But I repeat that such arguments have in my eyes
but little worth save as intellectual satisfactions, and I
would as lief, for my own part, forego all such conclu
sions of my uii(l«-r>t;unlinur rc^ardiu^ the Great Power
who dwells In-hind the veil of Nature, if I could not
find in my heart the Lord of Li IV and Love, our all-holy,
all-merciful Father and God.

48 INTRODUCTION.

A few words must be added, in conclusion, respecting
Mr. Mill's remarks on the doctrine with which this
little book is directly concerned — that of the Immor
tality of the Soul. After having described the reasons
which he conceives have acted as powerful causes of the
'belief, not as rational grounds for it, and then stated
the arguments deduced from the Goodness of God, he
observes:

" These might be arguments in a world the constitution of
which made it possible, without contradiction, to hold it for
the work of a Being at once omnipotent and benevolent.
But they are not arguments in a world like that in which we

live With regard to the supposed improbability of his

having given the wish without its gratification, the same
answer may be made. The scheme which either limitation of
power or conflict of purposes compelled him to adopt may
have required that we should have the wish, although it were
not destined to be gratified There is, therefore, no assur
ance whatever of a life after death on grounds of natural
religion. But to any one who feels it conducive, either to
his satisfaction or his usefulness, to hope for a future state as
a possibility, there is no hindrance to his indulging that hope.
Appearances point to the existence of a Being who lias great
power over us — all the power implied in the creation of the
Kosmos, or of its organized being, at least — and of whose
goodness we have evidence, though not of its being his predo
minant attribute ; and as we do not know the limits of either
his power or his goodness, there is room to hope that both
the one and the other may extend to granting us this gift,
provided that it would be really beneficial to us."*

Essays on Religion, pp. 209, 210.

IXTItODUCTION. 49

After having held before us this even balance of pro
babilities that we shall, or shall not, live again after
death, Mr. Mill further discusses how far the indulgence
of hope in a region of mere imagination ought to be
encouraged, or discouraged as a "departure from the
rational principle of regulating our feelings as well as
opinions strictly by evidence," and gives his verdict in
favour of " making the most of any even small proba
bilities on this subject which furnish imagination with
any footing to support itself upon/'* This observation,
again, is followed up by many pertinent remarks on the
benefits derivable from looking habitually to the brighter
and nobler side of things ; and with regard to the pro
spect of immortality, he adds that the benefit of the
doctrine " consists less in any specific hope than in the
enlargement of the general scale of the feelings/'f and
that it is "legitimate and philosophically defensible
while we recognize as a clear truth that we have no
ground for more than a hope."

Now to those amongst us who do not believe that
great benefits are ever derived from crediting delusions,
and who do not feel in themselves the inclination to
cultivate and water a Hope which they know to be a
flower stuck rootless by a child in the ground, this kind
of exhortation is as strange as that which follows it on
the ••iiifiiiit.-ly precious familiarity of the imagination
with the conception of a morally perfect Being ;" the

•ji "H Religion, p, 4 r> 250.

i:

50 INTRODUCTION.

same idealization of our standard of excellence in a
Person " being quite possible, even when that Person is
conceived as merely imaginary."* Meditating upon
imaginary gods, and cherishing hopes which are known
to depend on an even balance of probabilities, seems
to most of us very like the mournful preservation of a
casket when the jewel is stolen, of a cage when the bird
is flown ; for ever reminding us of an irreparable loss.
Far better, to our apprehensions, would it be to gather
courage from our despair, and face as best we may the
facts (if facts they be) that we have either no Father
above, or that He is weak and unwise, and that our
hopes beyond the grave hang on a straw, than mock
these solemn trusts of the human soul in God and
Immortality by " making believe," like children, that we
possess them when they are ours no more. " Si Dieu
n'existait pas il faudrait Finventer," is an epigram which
has now been paralleled : " If we are not immortal,
we had better think ourselves so." Yet there seems
some contradiction in Mr. Mill's view of the advan
tages of the Hope altogether. In the preceding essay
on the Utility of Keligion, he makes very light of it.
He says :

" When mankind cease to need a future life as a con
solation for the sufferings of the present, it will have lost
its chief value to them for themselves. I am now speaking
of the unselfish. Those who are so wrapped up in self that

* Essays on Religion, p. -2'>(\

INTRODUCTION. 51

they are unable to identify their feelings with anything which
will survive th-m, iv.piirc the notion of another selfish life
beyond the grave to keep up any interest in existence."*

Here, again, surely we meet the singular train of
misapprehensions which seem to crowd upon the writer
from his incapacity to understand the religious senti
ments of other men. It is precisely the selfish man
who has had a comfortable life here below, who may
inscribe on his tombstone that he

' From Nature's temperate feast rose satisfied,
Thanked Heaven that he had lived and that he died;"

and made no demand for further existence for himself
or anybody else. But the unselfish man who has looked
abroad with aching heart upon a sinful and a suffering
world, cannot thus be content to rise with a sancti
monious grace from the feast of life (so richly sj,
for him), and to leave Lazarus starving at his doors.
That his own life on earth should have been so happy,
so replete with the joys of the senses, the intellect n.,,1
the affections,— that he should have been kept from
sinking into the slough of vice, and permitted to taste
some of the unutterable joys of a loving and religious
ife,— all this makes it only the more inexplicable and
the more a-.a.i/i,,^ to him to behold his brothers an.l
-no worse, he is well assured, and often I-,,
better, than himself-. j Out lives of misery an.l

privation of all hi^lu-r joy, and dyin- j^rhaps at last so

52 INTRODUCTION.

far as their own consciousness goes, in final alienation
and revolt from God and goodness. It is for these that
he demands another and a better life at the hands of the
Divine Justice and Love; and in as far as he loves both
God and man, so far is he incapable of renouncing that
demand, and resting satisfied because he has had a plea
sant mortal existence, and because younger men will
enjoy the like after him, and, when he is gone, help to
" carry on the progressive movement of human affairs."
The prayer of his soul, " Thy kingdom come," includes
indefinitely more than this.

Further, the writer's lack of the religious sense is once
more revealed by the absence of any reference in the
summary of the reasons why men hope for another life,
of that which must always be to religious persons the
supreme Hope of all. Mr. Mill expresses, in a few most
touching words (what he, of all men, could not have
failed to know), how the sceptic loses one most valuable
consolation — " the hope of re-union with those dear to
him who have ended their earthly life before him."
" That loss," he adds, " is neither to be denied nor ex
tenuated. In many cases it must be beyond the reach
of comparison or estimate, and will always suffice to
keep alive in the more sensitive natures the imaginative
hope of a futurity which, if there is nothing to prove,
there is as little in our knowledge or experience to con
tradict." These words will find an echo in every heart.
There is no " extenuation" of the immeasurable loss of
the hope of meeting once more with the beloved dead ;

INTRODUCTION. 53

and when M. Comte sets forth the satisfaction of being
buried by their side — that we may perish instead of
living together — it would seem as if he meant to mock
at the anguish of mortal bereavement as some grim
tyrant who has promised to release a captive, and fulfils
liis word by giving back his corpse. But has Mr. Mill,
who so deeply understands what the longing for the
re- union of human love may mean, never known the
aspiration of every religious man for the communion of
Divine Love in a world where we shall sin against it no
more, and where it may be more perfectly unbroken
than is possible while we stand behind the veil of the
flesh ? This longing desire, which lies at the very core
of every God-loving heart, is surely worth mention
among the reasons for hoping for Immortality, even if
it cannot be accepted, according to the principle of
Experimental philosophy, as ground for the faith tlmt
every son of God who has felt it is, even in right thereof,
immortal.

But I quit the ungracious, and, in my case, most
ungrateful, task of oili;riiig my feeble protest against
the last words iriven to us of a man so good and great,
that even his mistake nnd deficiencies (as I needs must
deem them) are more instructive to us than a million
platitudes and truisms of teachers whom his transcen
dent intellectual honesty should put to the blush, and
whose souls never kindled with a spark <>f tin- > nerous
ardour for tin- welfare ol which ilaincd in hi;

noble heart and animated his enU:<

54 INTRODUCTION.

In conclusion, while commending to the reader's con
sideration what appears to me the true method of solving
the problem of a Life after Death, I have but to point
out the fact that on the answer to that great question
must hang the alternative, not only of the hope or
despair of the human race, but of the glory or the failure
of the whole Kosmos, so far as our uttermost vision can
extend. Lions and eagles, oaks and roses, may be good
after their kind; but if the summit and crown of the
whole work, the being in whose consciousness it is all
mirrored, be worse than incomplete and imperfect, an
undeveloped monster, an acorn mouldered in its shell, a
bud blighted by the frost, then must the entire world be
deemed a failure also. Now Man can only be reckoned
on any ground as a provisionally successful work — suc
cessful, that is, provided we regard him as in transitu,
on his way to another and far more perfect stage of
development. We are content that the egg, the larva,
the bud, the half-painted canvas, the rough scaffolding,
should only faintly indicate what will be the future bird
and butterfly and flower and picture and temple. And
thus to look on man (as by some deep insight he has
almost universally regarded himself) as a " sojourner
upon earth," upon his way to " another country, even a
heavenly/' destined to complete his pilgrimage and make
up for all his shortcomings elsewhere, is to leave a
margin for believing him to be even now a Divine work
in its embryonic stage. But if we close out this view
of the future, and assure ourselves that nothing more is

INTRODUCTION.

ever to be expected of him than what we knew him to
be during the last days of his mortal life ; if we are to
believe we have seen the best development which his
intellect and heart, his powers of knowing, feeling,
enjoying, loving, blessing and being blessed, will ever
ol»t;iin while the heavens endure, — then, indeed is the
conclusion inevitable and final. Man is a Failure, the
consummate failure of creation. Everything else — star,
ocean, mountain, forest, bird, beast and insect — has a
sort of completeness and perfection. It is fitting in its
own place, and it gives no hint that it ought to be other
than it is. " Every lion," as Parker has said, "is a type
of all lionhood ; but there is no man who is a type of
all manhood." Even the best and greatest of men have
only been imperfect types of a single phase of manhood
— of the saint, the hero, the sage, the philanthropist, the
poet, the friend — never of the full-orbed man who should
be all these together. If each perish at death, then, as
the seeds of all these varied forms of good are in each,
every one is cut off prematurely, blighted, spoiled. Nor
i> this criterion of success or failure solely applicable to
our small planet — a mere spark thrown off the wheel
whereon a million suns are turned into space. It is
easy to believe that much loftier beings, possessed of far
greater mental and nmral powers than our own, inhabit
other realms of immensity. I'.ut Thought and Ix)ve are,
after all, the grandest things which any world can shew,
and it' a whole race endowed with thorn prows such a
failure as death-extinguished mankind would uudouhl-

56 INTRODUCTION.

edly be, then there remains no reason why all the spheres
of the universe should not be similar scenes of dis
appointment and frustration, and creation itself one
huge blunder and mishap. In vain may the President
of the British Congress of Science dazzle us with the
splendid panorama of the material universe unrolling
itself "from out of the primeval nebula's fiery cloud."
Suns and planets swarming through the abysses of space
are but whirling sepulchres after all, if, while no grain
of dust is shaken from off their rolling sides, the
conscious souls of whom they have been the palaces
are all for ever lost. Spreading continents and flowing
seas, soaring Alps and fertile plains, are worse than
failures if we, even we, poor, feeble, sinful, dim-eyed
creatures that we are, shall ever " vanish like the streak
of morning cloud in the infinite azure of the past."

For the concluding Essay in this book, wherein I
have endeavoured to explain what I deem to be the
best Hope of the Human Eace here on earth, I have to
crave the readers' forgiveness for two defects of which
I am thoroughly sensible. One is that I have attempted
to compress the statement of a large and somewhat
revolutionary theory of human development into a com
pass far too small to do justice to whatever claims it may
have upon acceptance. Should the psychological fact,
which I imagine myself to have for the first time brought

INTRODUCTION. 57

to notice, provoke any discussion, I could readily double
again and again the illustrations of it given in these
brief pages ; and even since they were written I may
boast that they have received singular confirmation (so
far as the story of the Aryan race is concerned) in the
profound work of the Rev. George Cox.* It would,
however, no doubt require a somewhat voluminous
treatise dedicated to the purpose to establish thoroughly
the principle for which I contend.

Secondly, I must ask (albeit I scarcely expect to
receive) condonation for the presumption of offering a
new word (ffetcropathy) to define the hitherto unnoticed
sentiment to which I wish to direct attention. Between
the inevitable result of causing every critic to make
merry with the word instead of seriously discussing the
tiling it signifies, and the opposite danger of leaving my
argument logically floundering among terms none of
which express accurately what I mean, I have chosen
the former alternative, and must of course suffer the
consequences, against which, however, I now put forth
this plea in mitigation. Persons who feel any genuii it-
interest in a somewhat curious, if not really a novel or
valuable, psychological inquiry, may pn-haps, if they
should cnim; to the conclusiun that they have -ained a
new idea, be willing to accept alum; with it a compen
dious term, having a score of analogies in the language,
to afford it definite expression.

* ![i-t..rv of Greece, VoL I. di. ii.

58 INTRODUCTION.

Finally, if the sketch I have attempted to draw of
the Evolution of the Social Sentiment appear to possess
historical truth, it remains only to remark — that the
long progress upward of mankind which I have traced
from the primeval reign of violence and antagonism to
that of sympathy and mutual help, has not supplied us
with the slightest clue to the mystery of how, at each
successive stage and as the higher sentiment dawns,
there is a corresponding overruling inward command
to follow the higher and disregard the lower impulse.
Nothing in the progress of the emotion explains either
the existence or progress of the moral sense of obligation;
any more than the anatomy of a horse explains how he
is found with bit and bridle. Other things grow, nay,
everything in our nature grows, as well as these emo
tions ; every taste alters, every sentiment develops. But
nothing within us corresponding to the Moral Sense
develops simultaneously along side of them, setting the
seal of approval on the tastes and feelings of adult life,
and of disapprobation on those of childhood. If, then,
this Eegulative Principle or Intuition of a Duty to
follow the higher Emotion and renounce the lower stand
out no less inexplicable when we have traced the long
history of one of the chief emotions to be regulated, we
have surely obtained at least a negative reply to the
desolating doctrine recently introduced, that the Moral
Sense in man is only the social instinct of the brute
modified under the conditions of human existence ?
These cultivated instincts, rising into humane emotions,

INTRODUCTION. 59

are not the Moral Sense itself, but only that which the
Moral Sense works upon, — not that which, in any way,
explains the ethical choice of good and rejection of evil,
but merely the good and evil things regarding which the
choice is exercised. Wlience, we derive the solemn sense
of Duty to give place to the higher emotion rather than
to the lower (a sense which undoubtedly grows simul
taneously with the growth of the emotions which it
controls), is another problem whose solution cannot here
be attempted. One remark only need be made to fore
stall a commonplace of the new phase of Utilitarianism.
We are told that our personal Intuitions of Duty are
the inherited prejudices of our ancestors in favour of
the kind of actions which have proved on experience to
be most conducive to the general welfare of the com
munity, or, as Mr. Martineau well calls them, "the
capitalized experiences of utility and social coercion ;
the record of ancestral fears and satisfactions stored
in the brain and re-appearing with divine pretensions
only because their animal origin is forgotten." If this
be the case, how does it happen that we have all acquired
in these days a very clear Intuition that it is our duty
to preserve the lives of the aged, of sufferers by disease,
and of deformed children ? The howl of indignation
which followed the publication of a humanely-intended
scheme of Kiithaiiu-i;i for shortening the existence of
such persons for their mm benefit, may afford us a
ure of what tli- of modern Christendom

would be uuv sonic nu\\ us t<> propose to

INTRODUCTION.

tinguish them for the good of the commonwealth. Yet
what, in truth, is this ever-growing sense of the infinite
sacredness of human life but a sentiment tending directly
to counteract the interest of the community at large ?
Mr. Greg has clearly expounded that our compassion for
the feeble and the sickly defeats, as regards the human
race, the beneficent natural law of the " Survival of the
Fittest ;"* and Mr. Galton considers it to involve nothing
short of a menace to the civilization whence it has
sprung. Nature kills off such superfluous lives among
the brutes ; and savages and Chinese follow Nature, to
their great advantage and convenience. Yet even the
Chinese do not profess to have any sense of moral obliga
tion to drown their superfluous babies; and we, who
ruthlessly entail on our nation all the evils resulting
from allowing diseased and deformed people to live and
multiply, have actually a "set of the brain" in favour
of our own practice, and decidedly against that of the
natives of the Flowery Land ! Till this enigma be satis
factorily explained, I think we are justified in assuming
that, whencesoever the awful and Divine idea of Moral
Duty may have descended to us, it has, at all events,
not been derived from the inherited prejudices of our
ancestors in favour of the kind of actions which are
"most conducive to the general welfare of the com
munity;" and have even been recognized so to be for
thousands of years.

* See the whole remarkable chapter, Enigmas, iii.

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH,

i.

EARTHLY minds, no less than heavenly bodies, seem
constrained to pursue their walk by a compromise be
tween opposing forces. Our orbits lie half-way betwn-n
the tracks which we should follow did we obey exclu
sively centripetal Selfishness or centrifugal Love, the
gravitation of the senses or the upward attractions of
the soul Especially is this compromise observable in
the case of our anticipation of prolonged existence after
death. Not one man in a thousand lives either as if he
relied on these hopes, or renounced them ; as if he ex
pected immortality, or resigned himself to annihilation.
The average human being never gives entire loose to
his passions on the principle, " Let us eat and drink, for
to-nniiT«»\v we die;'' but he constantly attaches to the
transient concerns of earth an important •<• which, if death
be a prelude to a nobler existence, is not merely di -pro
portionate, hut absurd. The sentiments lie entertains
towanh ilnd are not such as might bulk an n

62 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

towards him who is preparing to crush it ; but neither
are they those of a son to a Father, into whose home on
high he is assured ere long of a welcome. He mourns
his departed friends not altogether witli despair, but
with very little of the confident " hope of a joyful resur
rection" which his clergyman officially expresses while
he commits their bodies to the ground. He awaits his
own demise with regret or resignation nearly always
measured by his happiness or misery in the world he
quits, rather than by his expectations of one or the
other in that which he is about to enter ; but he rarely
contemplates the possibility of final loss of consciousness,
or fails to project himself eagerly into interests with
which, in such contingency, he can have no concern
whatever. In a word, he lives and dies so as to secure
for himself pretty nearly the maximum of care and
sorrow, and the minimum of peace and hope.

It is in a certain degree inevitable that some such
indecision should pertain to our feelings regarding the
Life after Death. Our belief that such a life awaits us
is derived (as I hope presently to shew), not from any
definite demonstration such as is furnished to us by the
logical understanding, but from the testimony of our
moral and spiritual faculties, which varies in force with
the more or less perfect working condition of those facul
ties at all times. Yet there can be few thoughtful men
or women amongst us who do not desire some more
equable tenure of the priceless " Hope full of Immor
tality." If, during the years of multifold youthful enthu-

Til?: LIFE AFTER DEATH. 63

siasms or of world-engrossed middle age, the threat of
death seemed dream-like — so full was our life ! — and
the further Hope beyond, a dream within a dream too
faint and filmy for thought to seize upon it, such capacity
for indifference inevitably passes away with the shock
of a bereavement, an illness, or the symptoms of failing
strength, and we marvel how it has been possible for us
to forget that interests so near and so stupendous yet
hang for us all undetermined in the balance. Or if in
the vivid ecstasy of early religion it happened to us to
think that the joy of once beholding the face of God was
enough, and that we were content to die for ever the
next hour, even this experience after a time makes anni
hilation seem doubly impossible, and prompts the ques
tion, which has but one answer, —

" Can a finite thing, created in the bounds of time and space,
Can it live, and grow, and love Thee, catch the glory of Thy
Fade an. I .lie, be gone for ever, know no being, have no place?"*

And as the wrong and injustice of the world by degrees
force themselves on our awakening consciousness, we
learn to appeal with confidence to God, if not on our own
behalf, yet for all the miserable and the vice-abandoned,
that He should open to them the door of a happier and
holier world than they have known below.

And for mankind at large, the solution of the problem
of Immortality which will be generally received in the
future reconstruction of opinion must prove of incalcu-

* Vr; .. li. llrli. . :.d"ll.

64 THE LIFE AFTEll DEATH.

lable importance. Should the belief in a life after death
still remain an article of popular faith after the fall of
supernaturalism, then (freed, as it must be, of its dead
weight of the dread of Hell) the religion of succeeding
generations will possess more than all the influence of
the creeds of old, for it will meet human nature on all
its noblest sides at once, and insult it on none. On the
other hand, if the present well-nigh exclusive devotion
to physico-scientific thought end in throwing the spi
ritual faculties of our nature so far into disuse and
discredit as to leave the faith in Immortality perma
nently under a cloud,* then it is inevitable that religion
will lose half the power it has wielded over human
hearts. The God with whom our relations are so insig
nificant that He has condemned them to terminate at
the end of a few short years, — the God whose world
contains so many cruel wrongs destined to remain unrec-
tified for ever, — the God who cares so little for man's
devotion that He will " suffer his Holy One to see cor
ruption," — that God may receive our distant homage as
the Arbiter of the universe, but it is quite impossible
that He should obtain our love. Nor will the results of
the general retention, or loss, of the faith in a future
life on the Morals of mankind, be less significant than
those affecting their Eeligion. They will not, I believe,
be of the kind vulgarly apprehended. The fear of Hell

* See the remarks on this subject in " Christ in Modern Life,"
by the Rev. Stoyford Brooke, p. 194.

THK LIFE AFTER DEATH. 65

has been vastly over-estimated as an engine of police ;
for the natures which are capable of receiving a prac
tical check to strong passion from anticipations only
to be realized in a distant world, are (by the hypo
thesis) constituted with singularly blended elements of
imagination and prudence, the furthest possible from the
criminal temperament. And the hope of Heaven has
been probably even less valuable as a moral agent,
having spoiled the pure disinterestedness of virtue for
thousands by degrading Duty into that " Other-worldli-
ness" which is only harder and more selfish than world-
liness pure and simple. But though the loss of the
bribes and threats of the life to come would tend little
to lower the standard of human virtue, it would be quite
otherwise as regards the final closing of all out-look
beyond this world, and the shutting up of morality
within the narrow sphere of mortal life. We need an
infinite horizon to enable us to form any conception of
the grandeur and sanctity of moral distinctions ; nor is
it possible we should continue to attach to Virtue and
Vice the same profound significance, could we believe
their scope to reach no further than our brief span.
Theon-tii ally, Right and Wrong would come to he
regarded as of coin]'; natively small importance. Practi
cally, the virtue which must shortly come to an end for
ever would seem t<> tin- tempted soul scarcely deserving
of effort; and the vice \vhieh must lie down harmless in
the sinner's grave, too mere a trifle to waste mi it remorse
or indignation. Liie, in ^h<.r we h;id j

i

66 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

meridian, would become in our eyes more and more like
an autumn garden, wherein it would be vain to plant
seeds of good which could never bloom before the frosts
of death; and useless to eradicate weeds which must
needs be killed ere long without our labour. Needless to
say that of that dismal spot it might surely soon be said,

" Between the time of the wind and the snow
All loathsome things began to grow ;"

and that when winter came at last, none would regret
the white shroud it threw over corruption and decay.

Nor ought we to hide from ourselves that, under such
loss of hope in Immortality, the highest forms of human
heroism must needs disappear and cease to glorify the
world. The old martyrs of the stake and the rack, and
modern martyrs of many a wreck and battle-field and
hospital, have not braved torture and death for the sake
of the rewards of Paradise, but they have at least believed
that their supreme act of virtue and piety did not involve
the renunciation on their part of all further moral pro
gress and of all communion with God throughout eter
nity. It is not easy to see how any virtue is to help a
man to renounce virtue, nor even how the love of God
is to make him ready to renounce the joy of His love
for ever. Deprived, then, of its boundless scope, human
morality must necessarily be dwarfed more and more in
each successive generation, till in comparison of the
mere animal life (which would inevitably come to the
front) the nobler part in us would dwindle to a vanish
ing point, and the man return to the ape.

THi: LIKE AFTER DEATH. 67

What are the probabilities that the faith in Immor
tality may escape the wreck of the supernatural creeds,
and what are the spars and rafts, if any such there be,
to which individually we may most safely cling ? To
answer these questions it is necessary to cast a glance
around us on the present attitude of thinking men on
the matter. A few books and articles — among which I
would specially direct the reader's attention to four of
]\Ir. Stopford Brooke's admirable Discourses — give some
hint of the currents of thought now passing over us ;
but there is little doubt that before long a much larger
share of attention will be given to the subject, and that
it will form in truth the battle-ground for one of the
most decisive struggles in the history of the mental
progress of our race.* Our standpoint at this moment
is somewhat peculiar. We are losing the old ground,
and have not yet found footing on the new.

The delusion which has prevailed so long in England,"^
that we acquire such truths as the existence of God and C
our own immortality by means of logical demonstration, (
appears to be slowly passing away. We hardly imagine
now, as English divines from Paley to Whately habi
tually took for granted, that if we convince (or " van
quish") a man in argument concerning them, his next
step must infallibly be to embrace them heartily, as the

* A miserable pseudo-s< i< ntilir tiv.-iti.-te, Le Lendemain de la
Mortj by Louis Figuier, has already run tlmMijjh four or li\v
editions in a*, many month-. Simple readers ask for bivail, and
the Fivii'-hm.m drop- into th.-ir mouths a

I U

68 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

Arabs did Islam, at the point of the sword. Especially
we begin to perceive that we have been on a wrong track
in dealing with the belief in a Future Life ; nay, that we
have been twice misled in the matter. The old popular
creed having presented the doctrine to us as a matter
of historical revelation, we were first trained to think of
it as a fact guaranteed by a Book, and, accordingly, of
course to be ascertained by the criticism of that Book.
Our eternal life was secure if we could demonstrate
the authenticity and canonicity of certain Greek manu
scripts; but, were the Bible to prove untrustworthy,
our only valid ground of hope would be lost, and the
Immortality (which, in the face of Egypt and India, we
were complacently assured had been only "brought to
light through the gospel") would be re-consigned to the
blackness of darkness. From this primary mistake those
who think freely in our day are pretty nearly emanci
pated. The " apocalyptic side of Christianity" has ceased
to satisfy even those religious liberals who still take its
moral and spiritual part as absolutely divine ; and the
halting logic which argued from the supposed corporeal
resurrection of the Second Person of the Trinity, to the
spiritual survival of the mass of mankind, has been so
often exposed, that it can scarcely again be produced in
serious controversy.*

* That the Death of Christ — not his supposed Resurrection —
furnishes a strong argument in favour of Immortality, will !>«•.
i-ln-wii liv and l>y. Is it not probable that the great myth of his
li.xlilv revival OWea its origin simply to the overwhelming impres-

THK I, IFF. AFTKR DEATH. 69

While we have escaped, however, from the error of
supernaturalism, a second and no less fatal mistake has
risen in our way. The prevalent passion of the age for
physical science has brought the relation of Physiology
to the problem of a Future Life altogether into the fore
ground of our attention, as if it formed the only impor
tant consideration; and of course on this side there was
never any hope of a successful solution. Apologists of

sion which the scene of the Passion must have made on tin- di%-
rij.Ii-s, tran.-forming their hitherto passive Pharisaic or K
h«-li.-f in a future life, into the vivid personal faith thatsiich a soul
<•<>„/,/ nnt have become extinct? In a lesser way the grave of a
Mov.-d friend has been to many a man the birthplace of his t'aiili,
an.l it is ohvious that in the case of Christ every condition was
fulfilled which would raise such sudden conviction to the height
of passionate fervour. The first words of the disciples to one
another on that Easter morn may well have been: "He is n-.t
• li-a.l. Hi> >pirit is this day in Paradise amon- the sons of God."
It \va- tin- Hm].l.->t consequence of their veneration for him thai
they should t.,-1 nidi assurance and give it utterance with \>n>-
1-hetir liiv. In that age of belief in mira.-l.-s this new-born faith
in tin- immortality of a righteous soul wa,s in.-vitaMy doth.-d
almost imm.-diatrly in mat»-riali>tir, shaji.-. an.l l.y the time the
Gospels w.-n- written it had heroine stcr.-otyi.i-d in traditions whi.-h
we can dan only a- .It-wish ghost-stories.

If thi-.-onj,-, -ture !„• admiu.-d, we we absolved equally from the
accej.i iftorica] of tin- monster-miracle of th.- New Testa

ment, and from th.- iiiMiir.-ral.h- alt.-niat iv<- of recourse to some
hypothi'-i^ of IVau. 1, <:..|lu-ioM or mi^takr. It rannot liave been
on any ^ii.-h ha^.- or hapha/ard in.-id,.nt that th.- ivliatn-r «.f Chris-
l.-iid..Tii h.i^ mtod for cii:litr..ii r.-nturi.-s Kv.-n with its l.h-nd.-d
DOte of h'nn.in 6TTOT, it i^ aft.-r all tin- r.-vi 1,,-rat ion of that i-arth-
qU&ke whirh n-nt th«- h«-arts..f tho,,. \vho\val.-li.-d on Calvai
the v.-il of mortality from th.-ir eyet, u hi, h
i down thf a-. -.-; and .-^till .-mind- in our

70 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

vivisectors made it indeed their excuse that those modern
Sworn Tormentors were "seeking the Religion of the
Future" in the brains of tortured dogs ; but no one, I
presume, ever seriously expected any other result than
that which we behold. No ossicidum luz, no " infrangible
bone" such as the llabbins averred was the germ of the
resurrection-body, no "indestructible monad" such as
Leibnitz dreamed, has come to light; and no "grey
matter," or " hippocampus," or multiplied convolutions
of the human brain, are found to afford the faintest
suggestion of a life beyond mortality. The only verdict
which can be wrung from Science is, that the cessation
of all conscious being at death is " Not proven." She
recognizes a mysterious somewhat termed " Life," whose
nature she has yet failed to ascertain, and concerning
whose possible changes she is therefore silent. And
further, having proved that no force is ever destroyed,
she admits that it is open to conjecture that the force of
the human Will may have its " conservation" in some
mode whereby conscious agency may indefinitely be
prolonged. But beyond this point, Science refuses to
say one word to encourage the hope of Immortality.
She remains neutral even when she forbears to utter
oracles of despair. Nay, rather is she no prophetess at
all, but may better be likened to some gaunt sign-post
beside the highway of life, pointing with one wooden
arm to the desolate waste, and with the other to fair
fields and fresh pastures, but giving no response to our
cry of anguish, Whither have our beloved ones gone ?

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH. 71

Nor will the analogies of Nature help us better than
the physiological analysis of our own frames. The
« fifty" — nay, rather the five thousand — seeds, of which
" she scarcely brings but one to bear," and the wrecks
of the myriad forms of animal life which lie embedded
in the rocks under our feet, reveal the lavishness of her
waste. All the sweet old similes in which our fore
fathers found comfort — the reviving grain "sown in
corruption and raised in power" — the crawling larva
endued with wings as Psyche's butterfly — fail, when
•criously criticised, to afford any parallel with the hoped-
for resurrection of the human soul. Nay, Nature seems
constantly to mock us by reviving in preference her
humblest products, and bringing up year after year to
the sunshine of spring the clover and the crocus and the
daisy, while manly strength and womanly beauty lie
perishing beneath the flowers ; hid for ever in the hope
less ruin of the grave.

And, lastly, there are certain arguments which may
be classed as Metaphysical, which were once generally
relied on as affording demonstration of a future life.
The value of these arguments, from Plato's downwards,
— that the idea of a dead soul is absurd ; that the soul
being "simple" and "one" cannot be "dissolved;" that
being "inmiiit* liul'' it cannot die, &c., — is extremely
difficult to estimate. It is possible they may point to
great truths ; but it is manifest that they all hinge on
tin assumptions COUP riling the nature <»i' the soul
and the supposed antithesis between mind and mutter,

THE LTFE AFTER DEATH.

which we are learning each day to regard with more
distrust ; in fact, to treat as insoluble problems. In this
direction also, then, it is not too much to conclude, we
cannot hope to find a satisfactory answer to our inquiry.

When we have dismissed the expectation of obtaining
the desired solution either from a supernatural revelation
or from physics or metaphysics, where do we stand?
We are left to face, on one hand, a number of very heavy
presumptions against the survival of consciousness after
death ; and, on the other hand, the sole class of con
siderations which remain to be opposed to them.

The presumptions against survival are so plain and
numerous, that none of us can fail to be impressed with
^ their force. I There is, first, the obvious fact that every
thing we have seen of a man perishes, to our certain
knowledge, in his grave, and passes into other organic
and inorganic forms. The assumption is physiologically
baseless that something — and that something his con
scious self — lives elsewhere. And starting from this
baseless assumption, we find no foothold for even a con
jecture of how he is transferred to his new abode, where
in the astronomical universe that abode can be, and
what can be the conditions of existence and conscious
ness without a brain or a single one of our organs of the
senses. The fact that injuries to the brain in this life
are capable of clouding a man's mind and distorting his
will in frenzy or idiotcy, presses severely against the
assumption that the entire dissolution of that brain will
leave intellect and volition perfect and free. Nor do

THi: LIFE AFTER DEATH. 73

even these enormous difficulties exhaust the obstacles
in the way. If man be immortal, he must have become
an immortal being at some point in his development
after the first beginning of physical life. But to name
even a plausible date for so stupendous a change in his
destiny is utterly impossible ; and the new theory of
Kvnlution saddles us yet witli another analogous diffi
culty, namely, to designate the links in the chain of
generations between the Ascidiau and the Sage, when
tin- mortal creature gave birth to an heir of immortality.
It is almost impossible to overstate the weight of these
and other presumptions of a similar kind against the
belief in a Life after Death. Let it be granted that they
are as heavy as they could be without absolutely dis
proving the point in question and making the belief
logically absurd. They render at all events the fact of
immortality so improbable, that to restore the balance
and make it probable an immense equiponderant con
sideration becomes indispensable.

Where is that counterweight to be found ? What can
we cast into the scale which shall outweigh these pre
sumptions ? Certainly nothing in the way of direct
answers tu them, nur uf plausible hypotheses to explain
how the conditions of future being may possibly be
carried on. ( 'unlimited by the challenge to produce
such hypotheses, we can but say, with one of the
greatest men of science of the age, that*' the further we
advance iii tin- path of science, the more the infinite
.i>iliiie.s of Nature arc revealed to us;" and aiii<>n-

74 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

\ those possibilities there must needs be the possibility
S of another life for man. | Beyond this, we cannot proffer
a word; and it must be some consideration altogether
of another character which can afford anything like a
positive reason for believing in immortality in opposition
to the terrible array of presumptions on the other side.
That consideration, so sorely needed, is, I believe, to be
found — nay, is found already by the great mass of man
kind — in FAITH — faith in its true sense of TRUST in
Goodness and Justice and Fidelity and Love, and in all
these things impersonated in the Lord of Life and Death.
Not the Supernatural argument, nor yet the Physical,
nor the Metaphysical, but the Moral, is the real counter
poise to all the difficulties in the way of belief in a life
beyond the grave.

That this is the true ground of whatever confidence
we can rationally entertain on the subject, is, I think,
clear on very short reflection. It has been but partially
recognized, indeed, that such is the case; and the teachers
who have undertaken to demonstrate immortality on
natural grounds, have very commonly presented their
moral arguments as if they were purely inductive, and
belonged to the same class of logical proofs as we have
sought for in vain in physics and metaphysics. But
their syllogisms, when carefully examined, will invari
ably be found to involve a major term which is not a
fact of knowledge, but only a dogma of faith. They
conduct us half-way across the gulf by means of
stepping-stones of facts and inductions, and then invite

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH. 75

us to complete our transit by swimming. They open
our cause in the court of the Intellect, and then move it
for decision to the equity-chamber of the Heart. A few
pages hence I shall hope to give this assertion full illus
tration. For the present it will be sufficient to remind
the reader that the arguments usually drawn from the
general consciousness of mankind, from the many injus
tices of the world, from the incompleteness of moral
progress in this life, &c. &c., all involve, at the crucial
point, the assumption that we possess some guarantee
that mankind will not be deceived, that justice will
triumph eventually, and that human progress is the
concern of a Power whose purposes cannot fail. Were
the faith which supplies such warrants to prove irre
sponsive to the call, the whole elaborate argument which
preceded the appeal would be seen at once to fall to
the ground. If, then, the strength of a chain must be
measured by that of its most fragile link, it is clear that
the value in sum-total of all such arguments, however
multiplied or ingeniously stated, is neither more nor less
than that which we may be disposed to assign to simple
Faith. It is a value precisely tantamount to that of our
moral and religious intuitions — to the value (as I hope
presently to shew) of all such intuitions culminating in
one point I Jut beyond this, it is nothing.

This conclusion, however distasteful it may be to us,
is one which eminently harmonizes with all we can
learn respecting the method of the Divine tuition of
souls. There i.s «>ne kind of knowledge winch the

76 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

Creator has appointed shall be acquired by the busy
Intellect, and which, when so acquired, is held in
inalienable possession. There is another kind of know
ledge which He gives to faithful and obedient hearts,
and which even the truest of them hold on the precari
ous tenure of sustained faith and unrelaxing obedience.
The future world assuredly belongs to this latter class
of knowledge. It is, as one of the greatest of living
teachers has said, " a part of our religion, not a branch
of our geography." Why it is so, and why our passionate
longings for more sense-satisfying information cannot be
indulged, we can even partially see ; for we may perceive
that it would instantaneously destroy the perspective of
this life, and nullify the whole present system of moral
tuition by earthly joys and chastisements. The mental
chaos into which those persons obviously fall who in
our day imagine that they have obtained tangible, audible
and visible proofs of another life, supplies evidence of
the ruinous results which would follow were any such
corporeal access to the other world actually opened to
mankind.

Let us then courageously face the conclusion which
we seem to have reached. The key which must open
the door of Hope beyond the grave will never be found
by fumbling among the heterogeneous stores of the logi
cal understanding. Like the one with which the Pilgrim
unlocked the dungeon of Giant Despair's Castle, it is
hidden in our own breasts — given to us long ago by the
Lord of the Way.

THE LIFE AFTi.K I • MATH. 77

This essay is not the place, even were I possessed of
the needful ability, to determine the true " Grammar of
Assent " as regards such Faith as is now in question. I
must limit myself to addressing those readers who are
prepared to concede that spiritual things are " spiritually
discerned," and moral things morally; and that the
human moral sense and religious sentiment are some
thing more than untrustworthy delusions. To those who
doubt all this, who believe in food and houses and rail
ways and stocks and gravitation and electricity, but not
in self-sacrificing Love or Justice or God, I can say
nothing. The argument has been shewn to have no
standpoint on any grounds they will admit. That they
should disbelieve in immortality, is the perfectly logical
outcome of their other disbeliefs. It would be entiivly
inconsequent and irrational for them to believe in it.

Assuming, then, that I address men and women who
believe in God and Justice and Love, I proceed to en
deavour to shew how — even should they stand appalled
by the ditti'-nlties of belief in Immortality — they may
yet oppose to those difficulties moral arguments so
numerous and irrefragable, that the scale may well turn
on the side of In -lief. I hope to shew that, by many
different but converging lines, Faith uniformly points to
a Life after Death, ami that if we follow her ^ui<lain-(>
in any one direction implicitly, we are invariably led to
the same conclusion. Nay, more: I think it may be
demonstrated that we ran not Mo], -hoi! of this eul in i na
tion ami afterward- retain inia<-L our faith in anything

78 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

beyond matters of sense and experience. Every idea we
can form of Justice, Love, Duty, is truncated and imper
fect if we deny them the extension of eternity ; and as
for our conception of God, I see not how any one who
has realized the "riddle of the painful earth," can thence
forth call Him " good," unless he believe that the solution
is yet to be given to that dark problem hereafter.

The following are some of the channels in which
Faith flows towards Immortality.

I. There is one unendurable thought. It is, that
Justice may fail to be done in time or in eternity. This
thought makes the human soul writhe like a trampled
worm. Other ideas are sad, even agonizing, but this one
cannot be borne. No courage, no virtue, no unselfishness,
will help us to bear it. The better we are, the more
insufferable it is. To receive it into the soul is madness.
On the other hand, every threat besides, however sorrow
ful or terrible, if it be but overshadowed by the sense,
" It will be just," becomes endurable — nay, is followed by
a sort of awful calm. Could we even feel certain that
our guilt merited eternal perdition, then the doom of
Hell would bring to us only dumb despair. Something
greater than ourselves within us would say to the wail-
ings of our self-pity, " Peace ! be still." But let us only
doubt that there is any Justice here or hereafter, let us
think that Wrong and Tyranny may be finally triumph
ant, and Goodness and Heroism ultimately defeated,
punished and derided, and lo ! there surges up from the
very depths of our souls a high and stern Kemonstrance,

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH. 79

an appeal which should make the hollow heavens resound
with our indignation and our rebellion.

The religions of the world, well nigh in the proportion
in which they deserved to be called religions and not
mere dreams of awe and wonder, are the expressions of
the universal human aspiration after Justice. Even the
Buddhist creed (whose acceptance by the myriads of
Eastern Asia for two millenniums gives the lie to so
nmiiy of our theories, and seems to shew human nature
diligent under another sky)— even this abnormal creed
in-i-ts that Righteousness rules everywhere and for ever,
even when it teaches there is no righteous Ruler on hi-li ;
or " peradventure he sleepeth" in the eternal slumber of
Nirvana. The doctrine of " Karma,"— that every good
and every evil action inexorably brings forth fruit of
reward or fruit of punishment in this life or some other
life to come,— is the confession of three hundred million
souls that, if they can endure to live without God, they
yet cannot live without Justice. Nay, it is more. It is
evidence that human Reason can accept such a blank
absurdity as the idea that the unintelligent elements
may bring about moral order, sooner than the human
Spirit ( M: ;isfiitl that such moral order is nowhere

to be found. Gravitation and electricity may weigh self-
sacrifice and purity in their balances, and the winds and
waves may inmMire out the punishment of cruelty and
falsehood ; but Virtue cannot be without reward, nor can
tin; crimes \vlii< h huiuuu tribunals fail to reach, i
retribution fur ever,

80 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

The shapes which this desire of Justice assumes in
the earlier stages of human thought are, of course, rude
and materialistic in the extreme. Men cannot expect
from Nemesis, or Karma, or Jehovah, higher justice than
they have begun to apprehend as the law of their own
dealings. But everywhere throughout mythology, history
and poetry, we may trace the parallel lines of the moral
growth of each nation, and the corresponding develop
ment of its belief that over and above human justice
there is a Justice- working Power, personal or impersonal,
controlling all events, and making war and plague and
famine, the earthquake and the storm, the punishments
of crime ; and health and victory, length of days, abun
dant wealth and numerous progeny, the rewards of
virtue.

The obvious failure of the exhibition of any such
overruling Justice in multitudes of instances, has com
monly driven the bewildered observers to devise expla
nations more or less ingenious of each particular case, but
rarely, if ever, to the much more logical course of aban
doning the expectation of such Justice. Half the myths
of the elder nations are nothing more than hypotheses
invented to justify Providence and explain consistently
with equity some striking inequality in the distribution
of prosperity and adversity. As Negroes and Canaanites
underwent more cruel oppressions than other races, their
supposed progenitor Ham must have incurred some
special curse. As women endured peculiar sufferings,
and are, in early times, altogether enslaved by men, so

THK LIFE AFTER DEATH. 81

Eve must have merited the punishment of bringing
forth children in sorrow, and being "ruled over" by
her husband. As the cities of the Plain were over
whelmed by a terrific convulsion, so it was certain
Sodom and Gomorrah were more wicked than Memphis
or Thebes. In Grecian fable, the calamities which befel
the house of (Edipus presupposed

" The ill-advised transgression of old Laius ;"

and even such trivial matters as the blackness of the
crow and the chatter of the magpie might be traced to
the punishment of a human offender transformed into
the bird whose whole race thenceforward, like that of
A < lam, was destined to bear the penalty of " original sin."
Nor do the monuments of the graver thoughts of
mankind bear less emphatic testimony than mythology
to the universal desire to " see Justice done." Beginning
with the Vedas and Genesis, Homer and Herodotus, we
may trace the straining effort of every writer to " point
a moral" of reward and punishment, even when the
facts to be dealt with lent but faint colour to the lesson
that perfidious chiefs will always be defeated, and good
kind's ( TO \vm-< 1 with victory and prosperity. The story
of rniiu-d cities is always told in the same spirit:

"They rose whiK- all th«: depths of guilt tli.-ir vain en

They 1'rll because on I'raud and force thrir curner-.st

banded."

In every age and nation. Opios, dramas and popular
G

82 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

legends, wherever they may be found, either directly
aim to represent what we have significantly learned to
name "Poetic Justice," or pay the idea still deeper
homage by founding the tragedy of the piece on the
failure of Justice. Never is the notion absent, either
from the ethical poets, such as the author of "Job,"
Euripides, Dante or Milton, or from those who have
followed the principle of Art for Art's sake — ^Eschylus,
Shakespeare and Goethe. Each of us in the course of
life exemplifies the cycle of human thought in the
matter. In childhood we read History with impatient
longing for the triumph of patriots and heroes and the
overthrow of their oppressors, and we prefer ancient
history to modern because it seems to offer a clearer
field for the vindication of ethical ideas. In youth we
find delight in the romances which exhibit Virtue as
crowned with success and wickedness defeated ; and it
is invariably with a mingled sense of surprise and indig
nation that we fling down the first tale which leaves us
at its conclusion with our legitimate anticipations of such
a denouement unsatisfied. To this hour the play-going
public, which represents the youthful-mindedness of
the community, refuses to sanction any picture of life
wherein, ere the curtain falls, the hero is not vindicated
from all aspersion and the villain punished and exposed.
Only far on in life and in literary culture do we begin,
with many misgivings, mournfully to recognize the supe
rior verisimilitude of tales which depict Virtue as receiv
ing no reward, and Guilt no punishment, in this world.

TIN- un-: AI-TKI: DEATH. 83

The question, " How mankind has come to possess
this confidence in Nemesis ?" will of course be answered
differently according to our various theories of the origin
of all moral sentiments. Dr. Johnson ascribes our pas
sion for justice to the simple source of Fear lest we
should personally suffer from injustice, — an hypothesis
which would be highly satisfactory, provided, in the first
place, we were all so good that we had everything to
hope and nothing to dread from justice ; and, secondly,
provided our interest injustice never extended backward
in time and far off into distance, immeasurably beyond
the circle of events in which we can ever have personal
concern. The theory which would accord with the
general neo-utilitarian doctrine now in fashion would
be a little more philosophic than this. Our modern
teachers would probably tell us that our expectation of
justice is the result of the "set" of the human brain,
fixed by experience through countless generations. As
our sense of Duty is, on their showing, derived from the
repeated observation of the utility of virtuous actions, so,
on the same principle, our expectation of Justice must
come from numberless observations of instances wherein
justice has been illustriously manifested. It is, indeed,
earner to see how the constant association of the ideas of
guilt and punishment, virtue and reward, formed by such
observations, should produce the expectation to see one
always follow the other, than it is to understand how
the observation of the Utility of Virtue should impress
upon us the solemn categoric imperative, "Be virtuous."

84 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

The expectation of Justice might be merely an intel
lectual presumption of the same character as our antici
pation of the recurrence of day and night, or any other
phenomena associated in unbroken sequence. The sense
of Duty is a practical spur to action, whose relation to
its supposed origin of long-observed utility remains,
when all is said, a "mystic extension" of that prosaic
idea altogether unaccountable.

But there is unfortunately a difficulty in the way of
availing ourselves of this easy solution of the origin of
the universal expectation of Justice. It is hard to see
how the "set of our brains" towards such expectation
could have been formed by experience, considering that
no generation seems to have been favoured by any such
experience at all. To produce such a " set," it would (by
the hypothesis) be necessary that the instances wherein
Justice was plainly exhibited should be so common as
to constitute the rule, and those wherein it failed excep
tions too rare to hinder the solid mass of conviction
from settling in the given direction. Like a sand-bar
formed by the action of the tides and currents, our " set
of brain" can only come from uniform impressions, and
were the angle of pressure to shift continually, it is clear
it could take no permanent shape whatever. Now, does
any one imagine that such uniform and perspicuous
vindication of Justice in the course of events, has been
witnessed by mankind at any age of the world's history?
Is there anything like it impressed upon our own minds
as we read day after day of public affairs, or reflect on

THK LIFE AFTER DEATH. 85

the occurrences of private life ? Are we accustomed to
see well-meant actions always followed by reward, and
evil ones infallibly productive of failure or disgrace ?
Even at the present stage of moral advance in public
opinion and in righteous legislation, can we flatter our
selves that things are so arranged as to secure the
unvarying triumph of probity, veracity, modesty, and
all the other virtues, and the exemplary overthrow of
fraud, impudence and selfishness ? Suppose a cynic
to hold the opposite thesis, and maintain that we are
continually punished for our generosity and simplicity,
and rewarded for cunning and hypocrisy. Should we
be able to overwhelm him with a mass of instances to
the contrary, ready at a moment's notice in our memory ?
Can we imagine (as a single illustration of the subject)
that the thousands of adulterating tradesmen and fraudu
lent merchants in England at this moment would pursue
their evil courses so consistently, did daily experience
really warn those sagacious persons that " Honesty is the
best policy"? Of course, as we recede towards times
when laws were far less just than they are now, and
oppression and violence were far more common, the
scene becomes darker and less hopeful. Looking back
through tin; vista of the historic and pre-historic ages,
the probability of finding a reign of Astraa when Right
always triuinpln-tl over Mi-lit, becomes necessarily "fine
by degrees and Ix'uutifully less," till we are driven to
tli.- conclusion, tliut, if we n\\c tin- set of our brains
towards .Justice to the experience of our ancestors, that

86 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

" set" must have been given when Justice was rarely
manifest at all, " and the earth was full of violence and
cruel habitations." The share which the purely physical
laws have had in punishing moral offences has doubtless
been always what it is now, and that share, to all our
knowledge, is extremely obscure. If health and longe
vity are the frequent accompaniment of one class of
virtues, disease and death are equally often incurred by
another ; nor is there any sort of token that abundant
harvests or blighted fields, prosperous voyages or tempest-
driven wrecks, have any relation to the moral character
of the mariner or the agriculturist; or that from the
observation of such events for sixty centuries, a theory
of morals could possibly have been evolved. Practically,
it is obvious that men do not see wickedness and infer
punishment, but rather when they see punishment they
infer wickedness. A thousand tyrants had been more
cruel than Herod, and yet had never been " smitten by
God" with the portentous disease of which the Idumsean
died. A hundred invaders before Xerxes had trampled
on the necks of conquered nations, but no Nemesis had
deserved a temple for rebuking their pride ; no Hel-
lespontine waves had risen in tempest to destroy their
fleets.

It is not Experience, then, it never could be experience
gained in such a world as ours, which has impressed on
the brain of man its "set" towards the expectation of
Justice, or inspired its string of accordant aphorisms,
that "the wicked will come to a fearful end," that

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH. 87

"murder will out," that "honesty is the best policy/'
and that "the righteous" man is never forsaken, nor his
seed destined to " beg their bread." From some other
source remote from experience we must have derived an
impression which we persistently maintain, and endea
vour to verify in defiance of ever-recurring failure and
disappointment. What that source may be, it does
not vitally concern the present argument to determine.
Probably the expectation may most safely be treated as
the imperfect intellectual expression of a great moral
intuition, forming an ultimate fact of our moral consti
tution. All such deep but dim intuitions, when rendered
into definite ideas, are necessarily imperfect and liable
to error. We err both as to the time and the form in
which they are to be fulfilled. We feel that Justice
ought to be supreme ; but when we translate that senti
ment into an idea, we fondly picture the great scheme
of the universe developed within the sphere of our
vision. Like children possessed of a magnet, we imagine
the pole to which it points may be found in the neigh
bouring field. Our magnet is true enough ; but

" the far-off Divine Event

Towards which the whole creation moves,"

is beyond our horizon. And, similarly, we give to our
spiritual intuitions materialistic forms which are far
from rendering them veraciously. The concrete, the
visible, the tangible, are inevitably the earliest expres
sions even of our Inchest sentiments. We feel the
Majesty of God, and picture Him seated on a throne.

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

We feel His Justice, and the myth of a Day of Judgment
rises before us. In like manner, our intuitive expecta
tion that virtue will be rewarded, clothes itself in all
manner of carnal shapes of crowns and riches ; and our
expectation that vice will be punished, in similar shapes
of pain and infamy. At a further stage of human
thought, when the anticipation of physical reward and
punishment in this life has been of necessity postponed
to, or supplemented by, those of another world, we
substitute the almost equally materialistic rewards of
Elysium and Paradise, or penalties of Jehanum and Hell.
It needs a long course of progress to get beyond such
ideas, and learn to render spiritual sentiments spirit
ually, and moral ones morally only. It militates nothing
against the veracity of the original profound intuition
of Justice, that hitherto men have thus mistranslated
it into the promise of a speedy settlement of the Great
Account in the gross earthly coin of physical good or
evil, here or hereafter. That intuition will doubtless
be far more perfectly fulfilled in the grander scope of
eternity, and by means of the transcendent joys and
sorrows of the spiritual life. When we have advanced
far enough to feel that all other good and evil are as
nothing in comparison of these, it will be easy to see
how the Supreme Justice may use those tremendous
instruments in its ultimate dealings with merit and
demerit; and reward Virtue — not with the dross of
earthly health or wealth, or of celestial crowns and
harps — but with the only boon the true saint desires,

THE I.IFK AFTER DEATH. 89

even the sense of union with God ; and punish Vice-
not with disease and disgrace, nor with the fire and
worms of hell — but with the most awful of all penalties,
the severance of the soul from Divine light and love.
No one who has obtained even a glimmering of the
meaning of these spiritual realities can hesitate to con
fess that his soul's most passionate craving after Justice
may be superabundantly fulfilled in such ways ; even in
worlds not necessarily divided into distinct realms of
reward and punishment, but where, as in another school
and higher stage of being, our spiritual part shall have
freer scope and leave the carnal in the shade.

AVe now proceed to the next step of the argument,
which, as yet, makes no appeal beyond experience. We
assume that mankind at large anticipates and desires
that Justice may be done. Is it done in this world?
\V.- have seen that it is not outwardly or perspicuously
vindicated, — is there, nevertheless, room left to suppose
that it pussiMy may have been fulfilled in ways hidden
from us, sm-li as the satisfaction of a metis conscia recti,
or the misery of secret remorse ?

The answer to this question has been commonly
evaded, or the question h-elf 1 .linked, under what I
conceive to be a most mistaken sense of reverence to
God. Sometimes W€ an told it is not for us to say what
is Justice; and sometimes we arc reminded how little
we can guess tin- hidden joys and jumgs of our fellow-
creatures, and how easily these, may emmterlialanee all
external conditions. 1 do not think the case is so obscure

90 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

as is alleged, and I arn quite sure that reverence for God
never requires us to close our eyes to facts. What is in
question is not any abstract or occulta Justitia, but pre
cisely our idea of Justice — that expectation which, by
some means or other, has been raised in the hearts of
men from the beginning of history till now. Is that
fulfilled, or room left for its fulfilment, in this world?
I do not hesitate to affirm that it is not fulfilled — and
that in thousands of cases there is no room left wherein
it can possibly be fulfilled up to the hour of death. No
retribution which could satisfy it has had space to be
exhibited. The tyrant with his last breath has crowned
the pyramid of his crimes and died with the smile of
gratified cruelty on his lips. The martyr has expired
in tortures of body and of mind. Nothing that can
be imagined to have been experienced of remorse in
the one soul, or of joy in the other, would rectify the
balance.

Two classes of readers will demur to what I have to
say on this topic. One will take the injustice of the
world to be so notorious a fact as to need no elaborate
proof, and will resent as superfluous any attempt to
establish it. The other will be shocked by the naked
statement, and may even contradict it with impatience.
Let us clear up our position a little. What a well-
developed sense of Justice requires for its satisfaction
is, that no one being shall suffer more than he has
deserved, or undergo the penalty of another's guilt.
It is nothing to the satisfaction of such Justice that

T1IF. LIFE AFTER DEATH. 91

nine hundred and ninety-nine persons are treated with
exactest equity, if the humblest and meanest bears suffer
ings disproportioned to his deserts ; nor if the punish
ment which A has merited falls upon B, and the reward
of the virtue of C be enjoyed by D. A single instance
of positive injustice done to a single individual would
suffice to decide the point. Justice is not fulfilled on
earth if there has been one such case since creation.

Now will any one dispute that such cases have
occurred, not singly, but by hundreds and thousands?
Of course there are innumerable instances, seemingly of
crying injustice, in which, could we see behind the scenes
and know all the bearings of the matter, we should find
no injustice at all. But there are also other instances
in which, rationally speaking, it is certain there was
injustice, and no further knowledge conceivable could
alter our judgment. With all reverence I will endeavour
to state one such case, about which there can be little
obscurity.

Jesus Christ was assuredly one of the holiest of mea
He died in undeserved tortures, and at the supreme hour
of his agony he cried out in despair, " My God, why hast
thou forsaken me?" Instead of flooding his departing
soul with the rapturous vision which might have neutral
ized all the horrors of the cross, it pleased the Father,
whom he loved as no man had loved Him before, to
withdraw all consciousness of His presence, and to leave
him to expire in darkness and doubt. That ancient
story, stripped of all its misleading siipfniatiirulisin,

92 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

seems to me the sufficient evidence that God reserves
His justice for eternity.

It is not only the crimes and merits of the death-hour
to which Justice fails to mete due measure upon earth.
Nothing is more obvious than that men are continually
doomed to suffer for the evil-doing of others, and that
the good which one has sown another reaps. Health
and disease, honour and ignominy, wealth and poverty,
everything we can name in the way of external good
and evil, come to us more often by the virtue and vice
of our parents and neighbours than by any merit or
demerit of our own.

Again, the enormous inequality in the distribution of
penalties for similar offences, leaves a huge mass of
injustice which it is impossible to suppose is often
providentially rectified in this life. For myself, I do
not hesitate to say that the intolerable cruelty with
which sins of unchastity in women are visited all over
the world, in comparison of the immunity from dis
grace enjoyed by profligate men, decides for me the
question. Could we realize the reflections of many a
poor wretch banished from her home for her first trans
gression, and driven on helplessly, scourged by hunger
and infamy, deeper and deeper into ruin, till she lies
wrecked in body and soul, — could we understand her
feelings as she compares her lot with that of the man
who first tempted her to sin, and whose fault has never
stood in the way of his prosperity or reputation, — we
should then learn somewhat of how the supposed Justice

THK LIFE AFTER DEATH. 93

of the world appears from another side from that on
which the happy behold it.

In a world where such things happen every day, is it
possible to maintain that Providence trims the bal
of Justice on this side the grave, or that the inner life's
history, if revealed to us, would rectify any apparent
outward inequality ? The horror of such cases lies pre
cisely in this: that the hideously excessive punishment
of the one sinner consists in the fact that she is forced
helplessly into the deepest moral pollution; while the
light penalty of the other leaves him life-long space for
restoration to self-respect and virtue.

When we go back from our own age of comparative
equity to darker times, or pass to the contemplation
of the wrongs suffered in semi-barbarous countries, the
impressions of injustice multiply and deepen. We think
of the huiidivd thousand helpless creatures burnt to
death for the impossible crime <>I witeheraft ; the victims
of bigotry or statecraft who have languished out their
lives in the dungeons of the Inquisition, of the Bastille,
of every castle which frowned over the plains of media val
Europe ; of the myriads who suffered by that huge
mockery of justice, the question by torture ; of the un
told mi>erirs of the slaves and serfs of classic and modem
times; and, finally, of the crowning mystery of all. the
woful snlleii n;_:> <.I innocent little habes and harmless
brutes ; — and as these things pass before us, instead
of doubting whether . Justice sometimes fails, we 1
to doubt whether all history he not the record of its

94 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

failure, and, like Shelley, we are ready to talk of " this
wrong world."

What does Faith say now? Surely she stakes her
whole authority on the assertion that there is another
life where such failures of justice will be rectified ? The
moral argument for Immortality drawn from the con
sideration of its necessity to give ethical completion to
the order of Providence, is quite irrefragable. Either
moral arguments have no practical validity, or in this
case, at all events, we may rely upon the conclusion to
which they point. Man's noblest and most disinterested
passion — a passion which may well be deemed the
supreme manifestation of the Divine element in his
nature — will, if death be the end of existence, have
proved a miserable delusion; while God Himself will
prove to have created us, children of the dust, to love
and hope for Justice ; but Himself to disregard Justice
on the scale of a disappointed world.

I have devoted so large a space to this particular line
of considerations in favour of a Life after Death, because
I conceive that it has hardly received all the attention
it deserves, or been generally stated as broadly as is
requisite to exhibit its enormous force. We are not
unfrequently reminded that our personal sense of Justice
is unsatisfied in this world; but it is rarely set forth
that it is the sacred thirst of the whole human race for
Justice which is defrauded if there be no world beyond.
We are often exhorted to hope that the Lord of Con
science will not prove Himself less just towards us than

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH. 95

II requires us mortals to be to one another. But we
are not bidden resolutely and with filial confidence to
say — the more boldly so much the more reverently—
Either Man is Immortal or God is not Just.

II. Another line of thought leading to the same con
clusion lies parallel with the above, but can here be only
briefly indicated. Creation, as we behold it, presents a
scene in which not only Justice fails to be completed,
but no single purpose, such as we can attribute for a
moment to a good and wise Creator, is thoroughly worked
out or fulfilled. If we take the lowest hypothesis, and
say He meant us merely to be happy — to have just such
a preponderance of pleasure over pain as should make
existence on the whole a boon and not a curse — then it
is clear that there are multitudes with regard to whom
His purpose fails; as, for example, the poor babes who
come into the world diseased, and who die after WL« ks
or months of pain, without enjoyment of any kind. Ami
if we take a more worthy view of the purpose of creation,
and suppose that God has made us and placed us in this
world of trial to attain the highest end of finite beings
namely, virtue and union with His own Divine spirit,
then still more obviously, for thousands of men and
women, thN blessed purpose is abortive ; for their mortal
life has ended in sin and utter alienation from God and
goodness. If God be wise, He cannot have made His
cre;ttures for ends He knew they would never iv;u -li ;
nor if He be good, can He have made them only tm
su tic riii-, <»r only fur sin. There is no escape from the

96 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

conclusion to which Faith points unhesitatingly, namely,
to a world wherein the beneficent designs of God will
finally be carried out.

As the preceding argument appealed to the Justice
of God, so this one hinges on His Goodness and His
Wisdom. It is essentially a Theistic argument, as dis
tinguished from the Pantheistic glorification of intellec
tual greatness. The Pantheist says that a philosopher
ought to be immortal, for he is the crown of things. The
Tlieist says that a tortured slave, a degraded woman,
must be immortal, for God's creature could not have been
made for torture and pollution. To minds which have
been wont to ponder on the theme of the meaning and
purpose of creation, this ground of faith in Immortality
is perhaps the most broadly satisfactory of any. Having
once learned to think of God as the Almighty Guide
who is leading every soul He has made to the joy of
eternal union with Himself, it becomes simply impos
sible to lower that conception, and think of Him as
content to " let him that is unjust be unjust still," and
permit His rebellious child to perish for ever with a
blasphemy on his lips.

III. Again, the incompleteness and imperfection of
the noblest part of man, compared to the finished work
which creation elsewhere presents, affords ground for
the presumption that that noblest part has not yet
reached the development it is intended to attain. The
green leaf gives no promise of becoming anything but a
leaf, and in due time it withers and drops to the ground

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH. 97

without exciting in the beholder any sense of disappoint
ment. But the flower-bud holds out a different prospect.
If the canker-worm devour it ere it bloom into a rose,
we are sensible of grievous failure; and a garden in
which all the buds should so perish would be more
hideous than any desert. The body of a man grows to
its full stature and complete development ; but no man
has ever yet reached his loftiest mental stature, or the
plenitude of moral strength and beauty of which he is
capable. If the simile be just which compares the phy
sical nature to a scaffolding, and the spiritual to the
temple built up within it, then we behold the strange
anomaly of a mere framework made so perfect that it
could gain nothing were it preserved to the fabulous
age of the patriarchs, while the temple within is never
finished, and is often an unsightly heap. The " City of
God " cannot be built of piles never to be completed,
nor His Garden of Souls filled with flowers destined all
to canker ere they bloom.

IV. Human love also urges on us an appeal to Faith
which has probably been to millions of hearts the most
conclusive of all. We are fond of quoting the assertion,
that

" Ti- lx tier to have loved and lost
Than IM-VIT to have loved at all."

But its truth may very much be questioned, unless we
can trust that the "many waters" of the Dark River
" cannot quench love," and that we shall surely rejoice
still in that light of life upon the further slmiv. hn,

H

98 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

love becomes torture if we believe it to be a transient
joy, the "meteor gleam of a starless night/' and fear
that it must soon go out in unfathomable gloom. To
think of the one whose innermost self is to us the world's
chief treasure, the most beautiful and blessed thing God
ever made, and believe that at any moment that mind
and heart may cease to le, and become only a memory,
every noble gift and grace extinct, and all the fond love
for ourselves forgotten for ever, — this is such agony, that
having once known it we should never dare again to
open our hearts to affection, unless some ray of hope
should dawn for us beyond the grave. Love would be
the curse of mortality were it to bring always with it
such unutterable pain of anxiety, and the knowledge
that every hour which knitted our heart more closely to
our friend also brought us nearer to an eternal separa
tion. Better never to have ascended to that high Vita
Nuova where self-love is lost in another's weal, better
to have lived like the cattle which browse and sleep
while they wait the butcher's knife, than to endure such
despair.

But is there nothing in us which refuses to believe all
this nightmare of the final sundering of loving hearts ?
Love itself seems to announce itself as an eternal thing.
It has such an element of infinity in its tenderness, that
it never fails to seek for itself an expression beyond the
limits of time, and we talk, even when we know not
what we mean, of "undying affection," "immortal love."
It is the only passion which in the nature of things we

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH. 99

can cany with us into another world, and it is fit to be
prolonged, intensified, glorified for ever. It is not so
much a joy we may take with us, as the only joy which
can make any world a heaven when the affections of
earth shall be perfected in the supreme love of God.
It is the sentiment which we share with God, and by
which we live in Him and He in us. All its beautiful
tenderness, its noble self-forgetfulness, its pure and
ineffable delight, are the rays of God's Sun of Love
reflected in our souls.

Is all this to end in two poor heaps of silent dust
decaying slowly in their coffins side by side in the vault ?
If so, let us have done with prating of any Faith in
heaven or earth. We are mocked by a fiend. Mephis-
topheles is on the throne of the universe.

V. Another and very remarkable moral argument for
Immortality was put forth some years ago by Prof.
Newman, and has never (to my knowledge) attracted
the attention it deserves. It cannot be stated more
succinctly than in his own volume of "Theism" (p. 75).
After describing our pain at the loss of a friend, he
continues :

" But if Virtue grieve thus for lost virtue justly,
How tln'ii inu-t (!..<!, the Fountain .,f Virtu,-', feel?
If our highest feelings, and the feelings of all the holy,
Guide rightly to tin- 1 >i\ in,- heart, then it would grieve'likewise,
And grieve eternally, if Goodness perish eternal lv.
Nay, and as a man who shuuM li\v ten thousand years,
Sustained miraculously amid perishing generations,
Would sorrow jMTj^tuallv in th- ]>, rprtiul \m ..f fn.-nds,
H 2

100 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

Even so, some might judge the Divine heart likewise

Would stint its affections towards the creatures of a day

Would it not be a yawning gulf of ever-increasing sorrow
Losing every loved one, just when virtue was ripening,
And foreseeing perpetual loss, friend after friend, for ever,
So that all training perishes and has to be begun anew,
Winning new souls to virtue, to be lost as soon as won?
If then we must not doubt that the Highest has deep love for

the holy,

Such love as man has for man in pure and sacred friendship,
We seem justly to infer that those whom God loves are death
less ;

Else would the Divine blessedness be imperfect and impaired.
Nor avails it to reply by resting on God's infinitude,
Which easily supports sorrows which would weigh us down ;
For if to promote Virtue be the highest end with the Creator,
Then to lose His own work, not casually and by exception,
But necessarily and always, agrees not with his Infinitude
More than with his Wisdom, nor more than with his Blessed
ness.

In short, close friendship between the Eternal and the Perishing
Appears unseemly to the nature of the Eternal,
Whom it befits to keep his beloved, or not to love at all.
But to say God loveth no man, is to make religion vain ;
Hence it is judged that ' whatsoever God loveth, liveth with
God.'"

In the five ways now specified, the moral arguments
drawn from the phenomena of human life and sentiment,
and from all that we may conjecture of the Divine
purposes, lead up indirectly to the conclusion that there
must be another act of the drama after that on which
the curtain falls at death.

There remain some other lines of thought converging
towards tlie same end which cannot now be followed

Tin- I.IFK AFTER DKATII. 101

out; as, for example, the ennobling influence of the
belief in Immortality ; which Faith refuses to trace to a
delusion. Space only can be reserved to touch briefly
on the two forms in which mankind possesses something
like a direct consciousness of a Life after Death, and in
which Faith therefore speaks immediately and without
any preliminary argument. These two forms are : 1st,
the general dim consciousness of the mass of mankind
that the soul of a man never dies ; 2nd, the specific vivid
consciousness of devout men that their spiritual union
with God is eternal

VI. The first of these forms of direct faith is too
familiar a topic to need much elucidation. The extreme
variability of its manifestations in nations and indivi
duals makes it difficult to estimate its just value, and to
decide whether we have a right to treat it as a mere
tradition, or as the ^ost-universal testimony of the soul
to its own natural superiority to death. It may be
remarked, however, that the belief, when examined
carefully (e.g. as in Alger's admirable History of the
I Jin-trim- of a Future Life), bears very much the charac
teristics we should attribute to a real and spontaneous
instinct, and not to any common tradition, — such as that
of a Deluge, — disseminated by the various branches of
the human family in their migrations. 1st. The belief
begins early, tlnmjji probably not in the very earliest
stage of human development. 2nd. It attains its maxi
mum among the highest races of mankind in the great
primary forms uf civilization (e.g. the Egyptian, Vedic

102 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

Aryan and Persian). 3rd. It projects such various, and
even contrasted ideals of the future world (e.g. Valhalla
and Nirvana), that it must be supposed to have sprung
up indigenously in each race, and by no means to have
been borrowed by one from the other. 4th. Finally, the
instinct begins to falter at a later stage of civilization,
when self-consciousness is more developed, and the
practice of arguing about our beliefs takes the place of
more simple habits of mind, — a stage which we may
perhaps exactly mark in Koman history when, as Cicero
tells us, " there were some in his day who had begun
to doubt of Immortality." All these characters would
certainly form " notes " of an original instinct in the
human soul testifying to its own undyingness, and are
not easily accounted for on any other hypothesis.

It will be observed that this Consciousness of Immor
tality, and the Expectation of Justice, spoken of above,
are entirely distinct things. Though confluent at last,
they have remote sources. It is at a comparatively late
stage of history that the Expectation of Justice projects
itself beyond the horizon of this world, and at an equally
late one when the Consciousness of Immortality crys
tallizes into a definite idea of a state of Kewards and
Punishments.

Direct reliance on this Consciousness of Immortality,
when it happens to be strongly developed in the indi
vidual, is probably the origin of that robust faith which
we still find, not rarely, among persons of warm and
simple natures. Those amongst us who lack such vivid

THK LIFE AFTER DEATH. 103

instinct may yet obtain, indirectly, a ground of confi
dence from the observation of its almost universal pre
valence, implying its Divine origin and consequent
veracity. That the Creator of the human race should
have so formed our mental constitution as that such a
belief should have sprung up and prevailed over the
whole globe, and yet that it should be from first to last
a mistake, is an hypothesis which Faith cannot endure.
The God of Truth will have deceived the human race if
the soul of a man dies with his body.

VII. Lastly: the most perfect and direct faith in
Immortality is assuredly that which is vouchsafed to
the happy souls who personally feel that they have
entered into a relation with God which can never end.
It is hard to speak on this sacred theme without appear
ing to some irreverent, to others fanatical. I can but
say that there are men and women who have given their
testimony in this matter whom I think we do well to
trust, even as prophets who have stood on Pisgah
" Faith in God and in our eternal union with Him," said
one of them, " are not two dogmas of our creed, but one."
That inner experience which is the living knowledge of
the one truth, brings home also the other. At a certain
stage of religious progress, we cannot doubt that the
man learns by direct perception that God loves him, and
that "hi; is in (iod and God in him," in a sense which
conveys the warrant of rtrnial life. As humbler souls
find their last \v«ml nf faith to U- that of Marcus Auiv-
lius, "Thou wilt do well for me and for the world," —

104 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

such a man has the loftier right to say with assurance :
"Thou wilt guide me by Thy counsel and afterwards
receive me to glory. Thou wilt not leave my soul in
hell, nor suffer Thine holy one to see corruption."

Perhaps the knowledge of his immortality has come
to the saint in some supreme hour of adoring happiness.
Perhaps it has come when the clouds of death seemed to
close round him, and, instead of darkness, lo ! there was
a great light, and a sense of Life flowing fresh and strong
against the ebbing tide of mortality ; a life which is the
same as love, the same as infinite joy and trust. It
matters not whence or how it came. Thenceforth there
is for him no more doubt. The next world is as sure as
the present, and God is shining over all.

Such, for a few blessed souls, seems to be the perfect
" evidence of things not seen." But can their full faith
supply our lack ? Can we see with their eyes and believe
on their report ? It is only possible in a very inferior
measure. Yet if our own spiritual life have received
even some faint gleams of the " light which never came
from sun or star," then, once more, will our faith point
the way to Immortality; for we shall know in what
manner such truths come to the soul, and be able to
trust that what is dawn to us may be sunrise to those
who have journeyed nearer to the East than we ; who
have surmounted Duty more perfectly, or passed through
rivers of affliction into which our feet have never dipped.
God cannot have deluded them in their sacred hope of
His eternal love. If their experience be a dream, all

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH. 105

prayer and all communion may likewise be dreams. In
so far as we have faith in such prayer and communion,
we can believe in the high experience of the saints ; and
so in the immortal life to which it witnesses.

106 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

II.

THE immense growth which has taken place in the
moral consciousness of mankind within historical times
may be estimated by a simple observation. The Future
Life, which was once altogether uncoloured by moral
hues, has for ages been painted as if it were a Moral
Life only ; all its happiness Keward, and all its suffer
ing either Ketribution or Purification. In the preceding
paper, it was remarked in passing that the consciousness
of Immortality and the expectation of Justice are totally
distinct things, and, though confluent at last, arise in
remote sources. It is at a comparatively late historical
era that the expectation of Justice projects itself beyond
the horizon of this world ; and equally late when the
consciousness of Immortality takes shape as an ideal
state of rewards and punishments beyond the grave. But
having once passed into this phase, it is astonishing how
rapidly the moral aspect of the future world begins to
occupy the minds of men, almost to the exclusion of
every other. The analogies of our present existence
(if they might be accounted in any measure as guides)
would lead us to infer that hereafter, as here, the moral
life will be only one of the elements of existence ; and

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH. 107

though the most important of all (and therefore more
discernible at a higher elevation), yet never absolutely
bare and alone, but rather, like the granite foundations
of the eternal hills, clothed with forests of usefulness
and flowery meads of beauty and affection. Instead of
this, the popular idea for millenniums has been, that the
moment a man dies, he goes, not into a higher School
with its lessons and its play (often the most instructive
of lessons), but into a Divine Police-court, where the
presiding Magistrate, — Minos or Osiris, or He who
frowns behind the altar of the Sistine, — is always sit
ting in readiness to send him to the dread prison on one
hand, or to dole him out the arrears of pay for his faith
and virtues on the other. When that sentence has been
passed, all that follows throughout eternity is (according
to the same conception) merely a sequel thereof— either
punishment or reward under different forms of suffering
or enjoyment.

Of course among persons accustomed to think freely
for themselves, such views as these carry no authority ;
but it would be well if, before turning our attention to
a study of the problems connected with the possible
conditions of a future life, we could shake ourselves alto
gether free of them and start afresh. That which the
past has n .illy bequeathed to us is an immense consensus
of the human race in favour of the two opinions, " that
the Soul of a man never dies," ami that "Justice will
be done hereafter, if not here." The value of this almost
universal testimony i* (ud 1 have endeavoured to shew

108 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

in the preceding part of this essay) very great indeed.
But beyond these two great general affirmations, the
voice of the ages can say nothing to us of the smallest
weight concerning either the details of the life to come,
or of the special form in which justice is to be fulfilled.
The soul may have consciousness of its own immortality,
and the moral sense may point to the final triumph of
justice as the needle points to the magnetic pole. But
the details of how, when and where, the future life is to
be spent, or how justice is to be fulfilled, are matters
regarding which it is impossible that we can have any
consciousness ; and such ideas as we inherit concerning
them must needs have come to us through the exercise
of the mythopceic faculty of men of old, elevated as
time went on to the rank of Divine revelations. And it
is to be remarked that as these ideas (e. g. that of a New
Jerusalem) were evolved in accordance with the psycho
logy, politics, aesthetics, and all other conditions of the
community which gave them birth, so they inevitably
bear the stamp of their age, and we entangle ourselves
in endless anachronisms by retaining them now, even
with widest latitude of Swedenborgian type-making.
Few readers of Gibbon will forget the scorn wherewith
that

" Lord of irony, the master-spell
Which stung his foes to hate which grew from fear,"

describes the origin of the Apocalyptic vision. In the
state of society in the Eoman empire in the first and
second centuries, a town was the centre of all delights,

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH. 109

and the country was considered a place of banishment.
" A City," he says, " was accordingly constructed in the
skies of gold and jewels." Now, in England, on the
contrary, in the nineteenth century, nothing can be
further from our notions of peace and repose than a
walled town, even if provided with gates of the sin
gularly incongruous material of pearls. Rather, when
Martin some years ago desired to paint the " Plains of
Heaven," he innocently sketched a handsome English
pleasure-ground, with a distant view— let us say of the
Weald of Kent, or of the Shropshire woodlands with the
Welsh mountains in the horizon. Had he attempted to
depict the Blessed walking up and down on the trottoirs
of a gold-paved street, his critics would have treated
him as a caricaturist of the legend of Whittington, rather
than as an illustrator of the Vision of the Seer of Patmos.
And yet it may be questioned whether, in the minds of
thousands amongst us, orthodox and heterodox, some
dim idea of the Apocalyptic City does not even yet arise
whenever we think of another life; an idea perhaps
more directly derived in our case from Bunyan than
from St. John. It would be superfluous to remark
further, how the doctrine of the Resurrection of the
Body, which accommodated itself to the pneumatology
of the Egyptians and Jewish Pharisees, still colours the
notions of persons who have (so far as they are conscious)
entirely renounced any such belief, and who are quite.
aware of the insolubility of the problems concerning
Spirit and Matter, of which the ancients cut the knot

110 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

with so much decision. If we would avoid following
in the wake of perfectly unseaworthy speculations, we
must needs let all these notions drift away from us at
once and for ever.

Another order of errors from which it is also very
desirable we should clear our minds are those which
arise from the old view of the Creator as a Deus ex
Macliina, always ready miraculously to interfere with
the order of things, and bring His moral will suddenly
to bear upon, and snap the chain of physical events. If
the soul does, as we believe, survive the dissolution of
the body, then that survival is assuredly a natural event,
prepared for even from the first beginnings of our phy
sical existence, and taking place normally as the new
born child enters the world. The child comes into the
light out of 'darkness, and we seem to pass into darkness
out of light, but the one transition must be as natural
as the other. It is among the " infinite possibilities of
Nature" — Nature, whose Laws are the changeless Habits
of God — that the Immortality of the human soul must
be henceforth anticipated ; not among the beneficent
freaks of an erratic Omnipotence.

Excluding these ancient misleadings, and endeavour
ing to stand face to face with the bare fact that the Self
of man must be disembodied if it survive death, what
are the conditions of existence conceivable under such
severance ? It is a truism all too familiar, that an un
born babe might prophesy of the flowers and stars which
are shortly to meet its eyes, as well as a living man tell

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH. Ill

of the tilings which lie beyond the tomb. But I appre
hend that the utter, unilluminable darkness which con
ceals the whole outer environment of the future life (a
darkness which no apocalypse could lighten), does not
close quite so impenetrably as has been generally sup
posed over the conditions of the inner world which we
must needs carry with us. Our position is in a measure
like that of a blind man who should be told that on a
<x- 1 tain day he should both receive his sight and suffer
amputation of his arms. What receiving his sight may
be, he cannot in the remotest degree guess or understand,
but he may form some, not wholly false, conception of
what it will be to lose his limbs. At death, a portcullis
falls on the senses, the appetites are cut off at their
roots, and the affections are subjected to a strain of
changed conditions hitherto untried. Perhaps still more
intimate changes may be involved, and with the loss of
its brain-tablet, Memory may alter its character. In
any case, our whole past world is gone, whatever new
one may, either immediately or at a remoter future, take
its place and supply us with fresh sensations and ideas.
Like creatures which have hitherto inhabited the waters,
we quit the element in which we have lived and m<
and had our being; and whatever we have henceforth
to experience must come from another. Yet we carry
cwnclvcs into the new element, — selves which must be
affected most importantly by the transition, but which
cannot, in the nature of things, lose their in«livi<lu;i]itvt
or change instantaneously their ethical status. In tlu

112 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

following pages regard will be paid exclusively to those
problems which arise on contemplating the simple fact
of disembodiment and its consequences ; and no attempt
whatever will be made to construct any theory of the
outward conditions of the surviving Self or its possible
environment. Further, it must be understood that it
is rather with the hope of stating such problems with
some fresh clearness, and leaving the reader to choose
between the dilemmas which arise, than with the bolder
ambition of offering a solution of them, that I have
engaged in this task. Only in a few cases has it seemed
to me that there are indications sufficiently obvious to
enable us to decide with some degree of confidence
regarding the true answers to the eager questions of our
hearts. To avoid perpetual circumlocutions, I shall
speak generally of the disembodied Self as the " Soul,'*
without thereby intending to commit myself to any par
ticular theory associated with the word, either as distin
guished from Matter or (according to the ancient pneu-
matology) from that much-misleading term, "Spirit."*

* It may perhaps aid a little to bring reader and writer to
mutual comprehension in these obscure researches, if I say that
such idea as I have been able to form of the rationale of Immor
tality is, that Life, vegetative, animated, conscious and self-con
scious, forms a series of evolutions, not merely in the sense of a
higher and more elaborate organization, but of a subtler essence, —
a series of sheaths out of which finer and finer shoots grow succes
sively, till at last comes the Flower of full Consciousness, into
whose heart the Divine Sun pours His beams directly, and wherein
is formed a Seed which does not perish when the petals fall in the

TIIK LIFE AFTER DEATH. 113

I. With regard to the Intellectual part of us which
may survive dissolution, the difficulties seem even more
abstruse and insoluble than those which concern the
love which may be renewed, or the Justice which may
fulfilled hereafter. Is Knowledge, such as we gain
earth, an everlasting treasure ? Can we lose it any
lore than we can lose the food which we have swal
lowed, and which has gone to make up the tissue of our
frames? Or, on the other hand, can we keep it a.,,1
carry it with us, entering the higher state, one of '„
i philosopher, and the other as a boor? If this last
hypothec be the nearest to the truth, then we ask
Whether all kinds of knowledge, or only the kaowled.<e
Which deals with Nature or eternal things, have value
m the other world ? Thus we find ourselves conducted
the practical query, Whether the education of eartli
glit not to be carried on with reference to the proba-
B value of mental acquirements beyond the sphere of

otln -'" °fubeing *' Wh!ch """*«»& "If-conscious or

•tl.cn> Ve8 the di88Oiution of thg ^

,n>,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,, ,a,ertaili,v ;||W<me .

ru -

'"''" '"""™ ''"'""""lily a|,|,lv ,„ the immortality -of

'"«''" ";""'•:• ..... '• ...... • "'"'-ortuKty beiny as, *

fact, «,,.| „ ,„,„,,. ,,,, ,.,. man ,„. ; ^ .....

' '"" uii""

tak.- ,,U, „, ,„„.

man, of whom posses i,u, Hi,,,,,, ,„„,
xl ..... -|"'l'"»;-ini,.,:

toffl-«ed«d innocent bayrt, wither.

ilumtosumlurlyill-n,,,!:,,,,,,,,,, ..... . |, „ ,,il!v

s«r-

114 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

human concerns ? The common and orthodox notion
of Immortality seems to be, that the silliest or most
ignorant person admitted into heaven instantly becomes
wiser than Plato, and far better acquainted with science
than Humboldt. But even new organs, new capacities,
new revelations, can scarcely convey such knowledge
and wisdom instantaneously. The philosopher who has
eagerly sought some hidden truth, may find the light
immediately break on his soul ; the man of science who
has thoroughly understood and ardently endeavoured to
untie the knots of creation's mysteries, may be enabled
to loosen them by the help of fresh faculties and wider
vision. But it seems well-nigh nonsense to talk of a
clown who has no notion that there are hidden truths
or mysteries waiting explanation, to receive the whole
flood of quasi-omniscieucQ into the narrow mill-dam of his
soul. " To him that hath shall be given." For him that
hath not, some rudiments and dawning rays of know
ledge seem all that he is capable of receiving. The
Hottentot who died in his kraal an hour before Sir John
Herschel, did he learn in that hour more about the laws
and motions of the heavenly bodies than Herschel knew ?
Or were Herschel's illumined eyes able to take in at a
glance what the Hottentot will take years to learn,
when, as the old Greek epitaph on Thales has it, " he
was removed on high because his eyes, dimmed by age,
could no longer from afar behold the stars " ?

The difficulty of conceiving how any mental act is
hereafter to be performed without a brain, which hither-

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH. 115

to has been performed — if not " by," yet invariably
" with " and " through " the brain — has been undoubtedly
immeasurably heightened by recent physiological dis
coveries which have tended more and more at each step
to connect both Thought and Memory with changes in
cerebral matter. Dr. Carpenter's very remarkable paper
in the Contemporary Review for May, 1873, " On the
Hereditary Transmission of acquired Psychical Habits,"
goes very far indeed towards identifying alike the con
sciousness of present sensorial impressions and the me
mory of past ones, with physical changes in the brain ;
and, however willing we may be to retain the notion
that there is a Soul in all cases (except perhaps those
of unconscious or involuntary cerebration), present and
active, using the brain as its instrument, and no more
identifiable therewith than the organist with his organ,
we still find ourselves face to face with an appalling
problem when we try to imagine any way in which a
Brainless Soul can Think or Remember. The two hypo
theses open to us in the matter are, to suppose either,
first, that the thing which we speak of as the Soul has
many powers undisclosed now, while it is wrapped in
the sheath of the body — powers to Perceive (as magnet
ized persons have been supposed to do) without use of
eyes or ears, and corresponding powers to Remember
without a Note-book Brain ; or, second, that (as Leibnitz
insisted with re-ard to every finite intelligence) the Soul
is necessarily always clothed with ;i material body more
or less rarefied, and that it finds in its future ".spiritual

1 '2

116 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

body " of the old Pauline type, fresh organs of conscious
ness. Of these abysses of speculation the present writer
has no intention to do more than skirt the edge, merely
refusing to cover them up, as is too often done, with
cut -and -dried phrases, like traps awaiting us in the
hours of doubt and darkness. The strain on moral and
religious Faith caused by the difficulties attendant on
every theory of a Life after Death is simply enormous ;
and the more plainly we recognize that it is so, the safer
we are. He is a foolish engineer who refuses to test — •
lest it should break down under the strain — the strength
of the bridge over which ere long everything dear to
him must pass. One point, however, regarding these
solemn problems may, I think, here be justly noted,
having in effect come out into much clearer light than
heretofore in consequence of the. physiological discove
ries above mentioned. The hypothesis of a re-clothing
of the disembodied Soul with a new body is now the
less tenable of the two, unless we are prepared to antici
pate an obliteration of Memory. It will not suffice to
believe that fresh senses may be developed in a future
frame. Such senses might properly reveal to us our
future surroundings, as our present ones reveal those
which are now present. But it is not conceivable that
they should reveal the Past ; and if the memorial tablet
of the brain be lost, it would appear that we must needs
find our new organ of thought a tabula rasa. Thus we
are shut up in the dilemma that either the Soul carries
its own Memory with it (in which case it would seem

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH. 117

as if it may as naturally retain all other faculties, and
so need no fresh body) ; or that it does not carry its
Memory, and so, when re-embodied, lives beyond Lethe,
utterly unaware of what has passed in this state of
existence. I am not disposed to insist that there could
be absolutely no fulfilment of Justice, no satisfaction of
the unquenched thirst of Love, in a world between which
and our own had fallen a veil of Oblivion. The conse
quences of our acts (as I shall by-and-by attempt to shew)
may bring about sure retribution by working themselves
into the very tissue of our souls ; and Love may draw
once more together and perfect the friendship of spirits
whose affinity first proclaimed itself here below. But,
undoubtedly, so far as we can yet grasp such thoughts,
the retention or restoration of Memory is almost, if not
absolutely, a sine qua non among the conditions of such
a Life after Death as shall altogether fulfil those aspira
tions which (God-given as we believe them to be) are
our chief pledge that such a Life awaits us.

II. Very interesting, though less important, are the
speculations r< •urar«lin^ another world which refer to that
side of our intellectual nature which we call the ^Esthe
tic. Ho\v will the beauty of our new habitations touch
us ? Or will it be the yet unexplored loveliness of our
own planet whirh \vu shall behold at last, and no longer
with care-worn hearts or tear-dimmed eyes? To how
many of the sick and sud'crin^, the narrow-fortuned, the
toil-enslaved, have the scenes of Alps and And

118 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

isles and Yosemite valleys, been dreams of longing never
appeased ere death closed their unsatisfied eyes ? What
bliss might be given to many of the purest of souls, who
have passed whole years imprisoned in sordid streets, or
amid all the ugliness of a sick chamber, by merely per
mitting them "to see those things which we see," of
woods and hills and waters, the sunrise and the moon
walking in glory amid the clouds ? We dare not say it
is a debt owing to such souls that they should one day
behold God's beautiful world ; but assuredly it would be
no improbable display of His love to shew it to them.

All these questions, however, and all which concern
the mental faculties in another life, are (as I said a few
pages back) even more rebuffing to our poor thoughts
and speculations than those which concern the future of
the Affections and the Conscience ; and to these I hasten,
as also infinitely the most interesting.

III. If there be a Life after Death, it can scarcely be
but that Love will assume therein a much higher place
than it holds here. What gifts of tongues and prophecy
may cease, what wit and learning and science may
"vanish away," we cannot define. But that Love
" never faileth " is no less sure than that we ourselves
shall continue to be. God cannot — it is reverence itself
that makes us say it — God cannot have made our human
hearts as if expressly to contain and feed that light of a
world else so dark, and yet permit the gleam to be
extinguished like the toy-lamps launched on the Ganges,

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH. IT.*

leaving them to go down the stream of eternity in the
blackness of night. If He can and does so ordain it,
He is not the God who has given us the law of justice
and fidelity, nor the adored, all-merciful One whom we
have found in life's supremest hours in the Holy of
Holies of Prayer. He is not our God ; and even if He
(or It ?) be a " Stream of Tendency," an " Universum,"
or the " Deity of the Religion of Inhumanity," which
our various new teachers would have us recognize, Reli
gion is evermore closed to us, for we cannot love Him,
and the hope of Immortality vanishes as a dream. As
Florence Nightingale recently wrote, "Our ground for
believing in a future life is simply Because God is." His
character is the pledge of our Immortality, and it is
quite as much the pledge that the Love which is the
most godlike thing in us shall be immortal too. Our
divines are so jealous of what they have deemed to be
God's " glory " as the Judge of all the earth, that they
have supposed Judging to be altogether His chief con
cern, and that He calls us from the grave expressly to
punish us or to reward. But beside these royal func
tions of Deity (if we may so express it), there must
remain the cares of the tender Father, the divine Friend ;
and it would be strange indeed if these should not be
vindicated by that Good One quite as surely and per
fectly as the others.

One of tli<: many questions which crowd on us when
we attempt to construct any theory of what the future
of the Affections may be, has doubtless made the lu-ui ts

120 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

of the bereaved ache whenever it has occurred to them.
What warrant have we that, dying long years after our
lost ones, perchance in wholly different spiritual and
moral conditions, we shall ever meet or overtake them,
and not rather remain "evermore a life behind," "through
all the secular to be"? Even granting that they live
and we live, who has told us that our paths, which hap
pened to approach, like those of a comet and a planet,
for the mere moment of earthly existence, will ever
touch again throughout the cycles of eternity ? In view
of these agonizing questions, we can scarcely wonder at
those who have killed themselves with their beloved
ones, rather than allow them to go out alone into the
darkness, striving thus to secure a natural proximity,
even while they madly placed the moral distance of a
great crime between them. The supreme kindness of
Providence would seem to be shewn when it suffers two
loving spirits to pass linked in inseparable embrace
through the awful portals of the unknown world. Could
we anticipate such a lot with certainty, Death would
lose half its terrors and all its sadness.

And again, another painful doubt is, How shall we
recognize our friends in a disembodied or re-embodied
state ? Suppose that we both live again and meet again,
how shall we be sure that, in some strange glorified
form which passes us by all unwittingly and unrecog
nized, we shall not miss the being whom we would
traverse half eternity to find ? These are the anxious,
but after all somewhat childish, questions which the

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH. 121

restlessness of severed affection naturally suggests. But
in truth we are quite as sure of re-union with our be
loved ones, and of mutual recognition, as of the immortal
life itself. As we have just observed, the ground of our
belief in that Life is the same which guarantees the
restoration of Love, and therefore, implicitly, some sure
method of re-union. How it is to be brought about is
the concern of Him who will lead us into that unseen
Land partly for that very purpose. Perhaps we may
most readily conceive of it by supposing (what is for all
other reasons most probable) that in another life we
shall be indefinitely more free than we are now, more
able to move and to communicate through space, and
1 mving perhaps no physical wants, being at length dis
enthralled from the endless Liliputian cords which bind
u * here and often keep apart the tenderest friends. And
again, as to the mutual recognition of departed spirits,
the question really is not, How should we know— but,
How should we not know — the one who has been soul
of our soul, in any form, or in formless spiritual exist
ence ? Even through the thick veil of the flesh we are
always dimly conscious of the presence of Love. One
sympathizing heart amid a crowd of enemies makes
itself felt and gives strength unspeakable. To suppose
that we could ever at any time !>»• 1 nought into contact
with the spirit which has 1'ccn nearest to our own, and
not recognize it under any disguise, is wholly gratui
tously to doubt our instincts. But why should we even
postulate Unit a disguise of any kind is to lie antu i-

122 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

pated ? If the spirit wear any frame, however ethereal,
it must bear some resemblance to the first, since both
were the fitting shell of the same soul. Such a portrait
as Titian made of a man may well stand for ever at
once for the glorified image of what he was on earth,
and the faint and imperfect adumbration of what he is
in heaven. Our pitiful grief for

" — the garments by the soul laid by,"

which we have placed folded upon the narrow shelves
of the tomb, the agony with which we have thought of
the grave-damp marring what was so beautiful and so
dear, will be soothed perchance at last when we behold
the yet lovelier raiment of the same beloved soul, alike
in all that we loved so fondly, unlike inasmuch as every
token of weakness and pain and age and care will for
ever have disappeared.

Again, there are problems of another kind which some
times cloud the hopes of renewed affection in another
world. How, for example, are we to reconcile the con
flicting claims of relatives and friends whom we have
loved, each supremely in his turn, but who now await
us together in the "land of the leal"? Supposing there
has been no failure of fidelity, but only that, as the years
flowed on, the love of the parent, over whose grave the
grass has many times sprung and withered, has been
replaced (so far as one affection ever replaces another,
which is but little) by the love of a child ; and as friends
have drifted away, new attachments have caught the

TTIE LIFE AFTER DEATH. 12,°,

tendrils of our hearts ; and when the wife or husband of
youth has long left the earth, we have formed new ties
no less sacred and near ? It is a part of the beneficent
order of things that such transitions should take place ;
and looking back over life, it is impossible, without ruth
less violence to ourselves, to give the preference to one
over the other, or to be willing to renounce one for the
other. If the love of youth were more vehement, that
of middle life is more strong ; sweet as were the affections
of early years, still more tender and grave and noble are
the friendships of age. But how is it possible for us
to renew simultaneously these relations, which followed
each other successively ? This is the old Sadducean
question under a more refined form, and the answer,
that " in heaven there is neither marrying nor giving in
marriage," is as little satisfactory a solution to us as it
can have been to the disciples of Antigonus. The later
doubt as well as the earlier seems to have sprung out of
the same inveterate propensity for transferring the limi
tations and negations as well as the affirmations of this
life to a higher sphere. Why is it we cannot love now
many friends with equal intensity ? It is only became
we are so limited, our time and tin nights are so bounded
and (wliut is far worse) our hearts are so cold and narrow,
that even when we recognize that A, B and C, are all
deserving of our uik-nnost love, we must needs make
one supreme, and give the others only the residue of our
t. n.lernessand ivim-mbriince. This i- th. true rationale
Of the limits Of loi ih; and t!n»si- who tiv.it tin-in

124 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

as if they were in themselves good and desirable things,
and who would prefer to give or receive only a narrow
and exclusive affection, have hardly yet learned the real
sense of unselfish attachment.

" That love for one, from which there doth not spring
True love for all, is but a worthless thing."*

But in a state of existence in which we should be
altogether nobler, larger, wider-hearted, and pressed on
no longer by the endless claims which break up our
present time into fragments, could we not also love more
than we do now? Eelieved from fears of wretched
jealousies, with the cycles of immortality before us, and
with the whole scope of our natures widened, what
should hinder but that we should be able in the same
happy hearts to hold at once the love of all whom we
have ever loved truly on earth — aye, and of new friends
found in heaven? Even conjugal love, fitting and inevi
table as it is that there should be exclusiveness in it
now, may be as tender hereafter, though no longer pas
sionate, when the wife meets again the husband whom
in dying she prayed should find another to love him as
well. She will not be less generous there than here;
nor will the bitter thought that affection given to another
is robbed from ourselves, prevail more in such connec
tions hereafter than it does now in happy households
where the children love the parents the more because
they love each and all, and where the father's and

* Mrs. Browning's Sonnets.

THK LIFE AFTER DEATH. 125

mother's hearts have widened with every child bom
to their arms.

Yet no one can seriously believe on reflection (what
many assume without it) that the next life will be occu
pied by a continual return upon the present. It cannot
be that all our earthly friendships and acquaintances
will be renewed, or that every one with whom we have
had a few moments' intercourse in the course of our
threescore years and ten will certainly meet u< apt in
hereafter. Such re-unions would be in thousands of
cases wholly purposeless, and only the old narrow
Heaven could be imagined to secure such an end.
Where will the line be drawn if we are sure to meet
some and by no means sure to meet others? The answer
is hard to find ; yet I think two obvious principles must
prevail. One is, the liberty, of which we have spoken,
the freedom of the disembodied soul to seek out its mvn
affinities in the spiritual world; and the other is, the
moral necessity which will be laid on us to redeem tin-
unatoned offences and shortcomings of earth tow; ml*;
those from whom we have parted in anything short of
riu'ht relations. It could be no realm of peace to many
of us if we could not at last say those words, " Forgive
me," which have been on our lips ever since the hour
when we learned that the doors of the grave had closed
between us and one whom we had wronged, miscon
strued, failed to love as he deserved.

"Tli.- ri-ht far whirl, i., f,ll,.,l with ilu.-,t
II. MIS littl-- ul' tin- inn- ••!•

126 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

But if we could not hope to speak hereafter, " spirit to
spirit, ghost to ghost," and let the dead know all our
repentance, Immortality would cease to represent the
completion of the web of existence. Some of the threads
which we most desire to take up would remain for ever
ravelled. And we, too, for our share, must receive the
atonements of love and regret for the pangs which un-
kindness, mistrust, moroseness, and perchance cruelty,
have given us, from the unjust severity and repression
which crushed the joy of childhood, to the last neglect
of tedious age. Not necessarily or even probably need
there be any revision of special acts, only (what we need
so sorely) the admission that the wrongs done to us are
felt to have been wrongs indeed, and the establishment
evermore of truer and more just relations. These reflec
tions belong more properly to the succeeding portion of
this paper, wherein the moral state of departed souls will
be considered ; but I cannot but add one word here of
the overwhelming impressiveness of the view opened to
us through such a conception of Justice as this. Not by
the arbitrary sentence of an Omnipotent Judge, dismiss
ing the persecutor to the dungeons of hell and seating
the martyr on the thrones of Paradise, would our highest
thought be fulfilled, while the Damned one should for
ever curse and hate, and the Glorified know that he had
an enemy even in the nethermost vaults of death. Only
by the subduing of the heart of the wrong- doer, the
vanquishing not of him, but of his hate, and the melting
of his spirit in remorse and penitence at the feet of his

Till: I.IFK AFTER DEATH. 127

victim, can we conceive of the fitting close of the awful
drama. The penitence of an enemy which shall be his
salvation as well as his atonement to us, that we may
accept with solemn joy even when risen a hundred-fold
nearer to God than we are now. But his physical torture,
" where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched,"
that we could not endure even were we to remain poor
and imperfect human creatures still All the glory of
the skies would be blackened by the smoke of the Pit,
and through the anthems of the archangels our ears
would catch the discord of the wail of the lost.

In brief, then, the persons with whom we may con
fidently expect to have relationships in the world to
come are —

1. Those whom we have loved.

2. Those whom we have hated.

3. Those who have hated us.

I leave the reader to draw the very obvious conclu
sions regarding the influence which such expectations
ought to have upon our present feelings. To look on
those whom we love as ours for ever — ours in a pmvr
sphere than this — is to ennoble and sanctify our love.
To look on those whom we hate, or on those who hate
us, as beings with whom some day or other we must be
reconciled, is to deprive hatred of its sting, and almost
to transform it into love.

But, admitting that our hearts in another life may be
wide enough to gather into them (-very affection <>f tlni
past at Onoe, it would .-till bet-in hard li«.\v the,

128 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

natural ties of our human nature will bind us hereafter.
There are friendships which seem obviously made for
an eternal world, which have had their roots in religious
sympathies or the interchange of moral help, and which
would scarcely need any modification to be transferred
to the spiritual realms. They have been a part of our
heaven, always. But, on the other hand, there are affec
tions, if not more tender, yet more human than these,
which when they are severed by death seem almost
irreparably snapped asunder. We and the departed may
meet again as Spirits in a world of spirits, but never
more (so our hearts moan in their despair) — never more
as mother and child, son and father, husband and wife.
All the infinite sweetness of those purely human ties
seems as if it must exhale and be lost when the last act
of mortal companionship has been accomplished, and the
kindred dust has been laid side by side. And yet need
we be so sure it is so ? Are not our thoughts of these
temples of flesh wherein God has caused us to dwell, far
too little reverent, and too much tinged even yet with
the old Gnostic notions of the impurity of matter, the
unholiness of Nature, which have pervaded all post-
Pauline Christianity ? I cannot but think that it is in
a true direction modern sentiment is growing, while it
tends continually to dignify and hallow the body, and
to find infinite beauty and sacredness in the relations
which spring out of its mysterious laws. So long as
men and women deemed themselves holier as celibates
than as husbands and wives, aiid that the laws of nature

THE LIFE AITKR DEATH. 1 L)(.>

were supposed to have been set aside to give Christ an
immaculate Mother (as if natural Motherhood were not
the divinest thing God has made), — so long as this was
the case it was inevitable that the bonds of consan
guinity should be supposed to be linally unloosed by
death. But with other thoughts of our sacred human
lights, of all the depth of meaning which lies (rarely
half-fathomed here) in the names of Father and Motlm-,
Brother and Sister, Husband and Wife, Son and Daughter,
shall we have no hope that when our spirits meet ag;iin,
it will be in such sort as that the old beloved ties shall
never be forgotten, but rather that what fell short in our
comprehension and enjoyment of them will yet be made
up ? It seems to me almost to follow from the very
statement of the problem that it must be so.

But Sin ? What can we hope or think of future re
union when heinous guilt has been incurred on one side
or the other ? How are relations and friends, once dear
to each other, to meet after the revelation of this gulf
between their feet ?

I confess that it has been with great surprise that I
have read the eloquent words on this subject of a dis
tinguished living writer, with whose scheme of theology
ill general I have almost entire sympathy, and for whose
manly honesty and [.own-fill grasp of thought I enter
tain sincere admiration. In speculating on the awful
probabilities <•!' "Ebewhert," Mr (iiv-rJays it down, as
if it were an obvious truth, th;it li»\v must retreat from
the discovery of Uu- sini'uliip-.s •>!' the person hitlu rin

130 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

beloved, and that both saint and sinner will accept as
inevitable an eternal separation.* Further, Mr. Greg
thinks it possible that at the highest summit of finite
existence, the souls which have ascended together,
through all the shining ranks for half an eternity of
angelic friendship, will part company at last ; Thought
for ever superseding Love. " Farewell, we lose ourselves
in light." It would, perhaps, be wrong to say that the
two views hang logically together, and that the mind
which (with all its capacity to understand and express
the tenderest feelings) yet holds that there may even
possibly be something more divine than Love, may well
also imagine that Love cannot conquer Sin. But is it
not only by a strange transposition in the true table of
precedence of human faculties that either doctrine can
be accepted ? Let us suppose two persons loving each
other genuinely and tenderly in this life (so much is
granted in the hypothesis). The very power of the
worse to love the better truly and unselfishly, is ipso
facto evidence of his being love-worthy, of his having in
him, in the depth of his nature, the kernel of all good
ness, the seed out of which all moral beauty springs, and
which whosoever sees and recognizes in his brother's
soul cannot choose but love. " Spirit," says the Bhagvat
Ghita in one of its deepest utterances, — " Spirit is always
lovely." There is something at the very root of our
being which, when revealed to any other spirit, calls

* Enigmas, 1st edition, p. 263.

TUB LIFE AFTER DEATH. 131

forth spontaneously sympathy and affection. It is
because we do not commonly see this innermost core of
our fellow-men, because it is hidden under a mass of
fleshly lusts and worldly ambitions, or because they
cover it up carefully in a thousand folds of artificial and
secondhand sentiments, that they are so little interesting
to us. But let chance blow aside the mantle for an
instant, let us see a human heart in the moment of its
supreme joy or agony, remorse or victory, and, hard us
the nether mill-stone as our own hearts may be, they
will vibrate like the Lia-Fail when the true king stood
on it to be crowned. When we conceive of a holy God
loving such creatures as ourselves, it is only by the help
of the faith that His eye can see this "lovely spirit"
beneath all its coverings and concealments. Whether
there exists, or has ever existed, a rational creature of
God in whom there was no such germ of goodness and
innermost core of loveliness, it is impossible to say.
Hideous tales there are of men, with the hearts of tigers
and the brains of murderers, who have passed through
childhood and youth without once displaying a trait of
infant tenderness or boyish affection, and who seem
utterly incapable of understanding what self-sacrificing
love may mean. The dog which dies to save his master
is a million-fold more human than they. What may be
the key to the horrible mystery of such lives of moral
idiotcy, whether, indeed, they ever really exist in all the
deformity which has been painted, and if so, \vlu-tln-r
f'-iriul physiologic, il in.iirnnn.it i«»ns of brain and tho

K -2

132 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

negation of every good influence in childhood are not to
be held accountable for the monsters' growth, I cannot
now argue. But one thing is certain from the very
statement of the case : a man who has ever once truly
loved anybody is no such creature. The poor self-con
demned soul whom Mr. Greg images as turning away
in an agony of shame and hopelessness from the virtuous
friend he loved on earth, and loves still at an immeasur
able distance, — such a soul is not outside the pale of
love, divine or human. Nay, is he not, even assuming
his guilt to be black as night, only in a similar relation
to the purest of created souls, which that purest soul
holds to the All-holy One above ? If God can love us,
is it not the acme of moral presumption to think of a
human soul being too pure to love any sinner, so long
as in him there remains any vestige of affection ? The
whole problem is unreal and impossible. In the first
place, there is a potential moral equality between all
souls capable of equal love, and the one can never reach
a height whence it may justly despise the other. And
in the second place, the higher the virtuous soul may
have risen in the spiritual world, the more it must have
acquired the godlike Insight which beholds the good
under the evil, and not less the godlike Love which
embraces the repentant Prodigal.'

tr

*

* It is with sincere pleasure that I add, on the re-publication
of this paper, the following generous admission and candid revision
of his judgment which Mr. Greg has appended to the last (7th)

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH. 133

But if such a dream of future separation for loving
souls be wholly baseless, what can we imagine of the

edition of his Enigmas of Life. After quoting some observations
of the Rev. J. Hamilton Thorn and the above, he says :

" The force of these objections to my delineation cannot be
gainsaid, and ought not to have been overlooked. No doubt, a
soul that can so love and so feel its separation from the objects of
it- l<»ve, cannot be wholly lost. It must still retain elements
of recovery and redemption, and qualities to win and to merit
answering affection. The lovingness of a nature — its capacity for
strong and deep attachment — must constitute, there as here, the
m»-t hopeful characteristic out of which to elicit and foster all
other good. No doubt, again, if the sinful continue to love in
spite <>f their sin fill ness, the blessed will not cease to love in con-
s.-'j iience of their blessedness. If so, it is natural, and indeed
inevitable, to infer that a chief portion of their occupation in the
spiritual world will consist in comforting the misery, ami as-i-ting
in the restoration of the lost whom they have loved. We shall
pursue this work with all the aid which our augmented powers on
tin- one side, and their purged perceptions on the other, will com
bine to gather round the task, — and in the success and completion
of that ta-k, and in that alone, must lie the consummation ot the
Mi--; of 1 |.-a\ i-n.

"But this is not the only, nor perhaps the most irresistible
inference forced upon us by the above considerations. If so vast
an ingredient in the misery of the condemned consist in the
severance imm tln-i- they ln\v, this same severance must forma
terrible drawback from the felicity ••!' the redeemed. How, indeed,
can they enjoy am thin- to 1..- called happiness hereafter, if the
bad — their bad, not .-tranters, hut their dearest intimates, those
who have shan-d their inmost rontidi-m •« -s, and made up the
intenseat interests of their earthly life are groaning and writhing
in hopeless anguish ,•!,,,»• at hand { -'for everything will be close to
us in that << <-\\<- win-re darkne» and distance are no more). Ol-vi-
oudv i.nly in OH« \\.iy. /-</ OMffclf t» /••*•• : that is, by ivnoun.-inu',
ing, or crushing the l.e-t and pmv-t part of their natu:

134 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

real relation which may subsist hereafter between souls
attached in faithful friendship, but of which one is of far
higher moral standing than the other ? It is a very hard
thing to conceive how the guilt of a beloved soul would

abjuring the most specific teaching of Christ, by turning away from
the worship and imitation of that God who is Love. Or, to put it
in still terser and bolder language, How, given a Hell of torment
and despair for millions of our friends and fellow-men, can the good
enjoy Heaven except by becoming bad? without becoming trans
formed, miraculously changed, and changed deplorably for the worse?
without, in a word, putting on, along with the white garments of
the Redeemed, a coldness and hardness of heart, a stony, super
cilious egotism, which on earth would have justly forfeited all
claim to regard, endurance, or esteem? Our affections are probably
the best things about us — the attributes through which we most
approach and resemble the Divine nature ; yet, assuming the Hell
of Theologians, those affections must be foregone or trampled down
in Heaven, or else Heaven will itself become a Hell. As a condi
tion, or a consequence, of being admitted to the presence of God,
we should have to forswear the little that is Godlike in our com
position. Do not these simple reflections suffice to disperse into
thin air the current notions of a world of everlasting pain ?

" One further corollary may be briefly indicated. Hell, if there
be such a place or state, though a scene of merited and awful
suffering, must be full of the mighty mitigations which Hope
always brings, and can scarcely be devoid of an element of sweet
ness which might almost seem like joy, if the consciousness be
permitted and ever present to its denizens, that 'elsewhere'
Guardian Angels — parents who have ( entered into glory/ wives
who cluster round the Throne, sisters and friends who have
' emerged from the ruins of the tomb, and the deeper ruins of the
Fall' — are for ever at work, with untiring faithfulness and the sure
instincts of a perfected intelligence, for the purification of the
stained, the strengthening of the weak, the softening of the fierce
and hard, and the final rescue of them all." — Postscriptum, p. 311.

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH. 135

look from the regions of celestial purity; but I think
something may be done to help ourselves if we endeavour
to fix our attention steadily on what would probably
hold an analogous position in our eyes, namely, the sins
of our own long past years. Passing over the mere
faults of childhood, many of us can unhappily remember
committing very serious errors at a period of youth when
we had attained to full responsibility. Looking back to
one of these sins, say after twenty or forty years, how
does it strike us ? We do not, I apprehend, feel much
of the indignation against ourselves which in a certain
measure warps our judgment of offences still recent, the
disgust of sloughs into which even now we do not feel
safe but that our foot again may slip. We can think of
the old faults, long lived over or conquered, calmly as of
the faults of another person. But it is of another whose
inmost mind and all whose antecedents are intimately
known to us. Very commonly we feel that we deserved
the heaviest punishment for our misdeeds, that what
did befal us of evil was perfectly merited, and that
much heavier chastisement would not have exceeded our
deserts. Yet we never feel that we were deserving of
'/TI, of being finally abandoned by God or man.
\V.- say to ourselves, " I was odious at that age. How
heartless, self-engrossed, false, sensual, ungenerous I
was ! Truly there was hardly a spark of good in me,
and I wonder my frit-mis lime mi; any affection." But
even while \\v thu< t:.m«lrmM mil .-Iv.-s. thuv is a lah-nt.
comprehension of how it all came about; how we had

136 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

slipped into this fault, or been led into that one ; found
ourselves entangled by a preceding act and driven into
the third ; and how, all through, there was, at bottom,
the possibility of becoming better, the seed of somewhat
which God's kind Hand has since planted in a happier
soil. Probably few of us turn from such memories save
with the thanksgiving of the Psalmist to Him who has
taken our feet out of the net, out of the mire and clay,
and set them on a rock and ordered our goings. But
while we bless God for His mercy to our sinfulness, that
mercy only seems to us the natural act of a Divine
Creator who penetrates all the depths of His creature's
soul, and, with a compassion all-forgiving because all-
knowing, pities and helps our helplessness. The creeds
which have taught men that God first gives over His
children to a reprobate mind and then consigns them to
a world of reprobation, find nothing to countenance them
in the experience of the heart. They teach, strictly
speaking, an unnatural God. The natural Father-God
is a very different Person. Now, in a certain faint and
far-off way, we can imagine (not presumptuously, I
think) the sympathy of God for the struggling soul to
be like that which we should feel for a beloved child
whose faults we understood better than any earthly
parent, and even better than we understand the faults
of our own youth. There is no abatement needful of the
full measure of condemnation for the sin. There is only
the reservation (never forgotten in our own case) that
the sinner was something else besides a sinner, that

Tin: LIFE AFTER DEATH. l.°»7

there were outlying tracts of his nature over which the
blight never wholly prevailed; — that he was, after all,
worth saving. And like this sympathy of God for us in
our worst and darkest hours, must surely be the sym
pathy of a glorified soul for its sinful brother. Like
Him, he must hate the sin which stands revealed in the
Maze of heaven in blacker hues than moral realities ever
wear in the dim twilight of earth. But, like Him, he
must feel ineffable tenderness and pity for the spirit
wearing that foul stain, and a godlike will to help him
to perfect purification. It would not be too much, indeed,
to imagine the very converse of the eternal parting of
" Elsewhere," even the self-losing of the purer soul in its
infinite longing for the pardon of the sinful one, and its
flight through all the worlds of space, locked in an em
brace, not, — like Paolo and Francesca's, — of a common
guilt, but of a common prayer.

And, aizain, at the summit of existence, far up above
the clouds and storms of sin and peniteiice, in the hi^h
realm of everlasting Peace, will Love have no more
place ? Then the greatness of man must consist in
somewhat else than the greatness of God ! God has not
been content to "lose Him^lf in light," and live alone
in His ineffable radiance throughout eternity. He has
fill.-'l the universe with life and love, and His own awful
joy, so far as we may catc,h tin- -liiti-r of its sheen, must
consist in Love — in loving tho-c whom He blesses, and
biasing those whom He loves. Whatever other mys-
of joy are hidden in Him, what dt-light He may

138 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

take in the beauty of His glorious works or the rhythmic
dance of the clusters of suns, or yet in sources of happi
ness utterly inconceivable and unknown to us, there
must remain even for Him one joy greater than these,
the joy of infinite love and eternal benediction. As we
climb up, age after age, the steps of the interminable
ascent, nearer and more like to Him,

" Aloft, aloft, from terrace to broad terrace evermore,"

we must share that joy ; and if we could " lose ourselves"
at all, it would rather be in the ocean of Love than in
the unbreathable ether of a purely intellectual existence.
Christ must have become more godlike, and therefore
more loving, during the millenniums since he trod the
Via Dolorosa. Assuredly he has not attained a stage
whereunto Goethe might fitly have preceded him.

There is, however, no greater mistake, I imagine, than
the fundamental one of supposing that any " self-losing,"
" absorption," or merging of personality of one kind or
another, can possibly form a step of progress hereafter.
The advance through inorganic, vegetative, animated,
conscious and self-conscious existence, and again from
the lowest savage to the loftiest philosopher or heroic
martyr, is all in the direction of a more and more perfect,
complete and definite personality. The severance of the
Ego from the Non-ego may indeed be held in one sense
to be the supreme result of all the machinery of the
physical life ; and the whole history of Thought tends
to show tlmt a butter recognition of the distinction has

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH. 139

been at the root of the superiority of the Western over
the Eastern and classic nations. Morality, of course, is
grounded in it ; and the ages before Personality was
cletrly self-conscious, were necessarily, like the years of
infancy, ages before Morality. To suppose that there is
a height in the range of Being, whereto having attained,
this supreme, slowly-evolved Personality suddenly col
lapses like a volcanic island, and subsides into the ocean
of impersonal being, in which " He" becomes " It," is to
suppose that the whole scheme of things is self-stulti
fying — a great " much ado about nothing" — the building
up of a tower which should reach to heaven, but which
is in truth only a child's house of cards, to be swept flat
as soon as the coping is laid on it.

The meeting of two souls here or hereafter in perfect
affection is not, as our inadequate and misleading meta
phors often seem to imply, a blending in which person
ality is lost, but rather the act wherein personality comes
out into most definite form. As in strong moral effort
or vivid religious consciousness, so in the not less sacred
outburst of pure human love, the intensity with which
we admire, revere, sympathize with, embrace soul to soul,
the soul of a friend, is like the heat which brings out all
the hidden scriptures on our hearts. We are never 10
truly ourselves as when we go out of ourselves. And as
Emerson says that "the lirst. requisite for friendship is
to be able to do without fri«'iid>hi}>," so it is those natures
which are most self-sustained, and possess the mod
vigorous and dclinud pcttsoihilky, with smallest ot'blunx-d

140 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

and slovenly margins, which are most capable of vivid
and stringent friendship. And, on the other hand, there
are people who may rather be said to slop over into each
other, — to invade each other's personality and lose their
own, — than to be united, as true friends ought to be,
like the Ehone and the Arve, absolutely clear and
distinct, even when running side by side in the same
channel.

IV. The Moral Condition of the Dead is (as I have
remarked) the one point concerning them on which the
thought of Christendom has persistently fastened. Yet
it has fixed on a view of that moral state which origin
ated in a comparatively dark and rude age of ethical
feeling, and must necessarily have given place long ago
to higher conceptions, were it not for the stereotyping
process by which the Cyclopedia of Eeligious Know
ledge supposed to be contained in the two Testaments
has been closed against either correction or amendment
for eighteen centuries. While our clergy say as little as
they can help about the eternit}r of torment, we are all
aware that any serious attempt to remove the doctrine
from the Church formularies, or even to place the
dogmas of the Resurrection of the Body, and the physi
cal penalties with which it is threatened, in the category
of open questions, would be met by invincible opposition.
We have conquered from the adherents of the Book of
Genesis the million ages of past geologic time ; but the
million millions of ages of future torment in the Lake of

Till: IJ1-K AFTER DEATH. 141

Fire we have by no means won from the disciples of tin*
Book of the Apocalypse. They will give up almost any
doctrine sooner than this. As Theodore Parker said,
they cry out in dismay when such a thing is named —
" What ! give up Hell ? our own eternal Hell ? Never,
Never, Never !"

We shall accomplish very little, however, towards the
removal of this dreadful cloud from the souls of men,
by merely pointing out how gloomy it is, or even by
proving how it darkens the face of the Sun of Righteous
ness. Consciously or unconsciously, it is felt by the
orthodox to be a necessary part of their whole scheme
of theology; and the Atonement, which is their .Rain
bow of Hope, would fade and disappear were that black-
cloud to pass away from behind it. Our only course is
to do justice to the profound sentiment of the infinite
solemnity of moral realities, the "exceeding siniulin-s
of sin," out of which sprung such ideas ; and then, if
possible, shew how the same sentiment, guided by the
calm. T icil.-ctiou and more refined ethical judgment of a
later age, may project other ideas of the future world,
vindicating tin- I )i\ ine . Justice and Love, no longer as in
the awful diptych of an eternal Heaven and an eternal
Hell, hut in one harmonious picture of a world of souls
all ascendin- l.y various paths, thorny or flower-strewn,
towards the Fathers Throne. It cannot be doubted, I
apprehend, that it was the intense sense of the horror
and ill-desert of sin which impressed itself on the minds
of the tiiM teaohen of Christianity M the com-laiive of

142 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

their new-born sense of the love of God, which drove
them to make the future world of retribution darker,
more hopeless, and embracing a larger class of souls,
than any other prophets ever painted it. Christianity
is nearly the only religion in the world which teaches
that there is such a thing as eternal torture, and that it
awaits ordinary sinners. The paradox that this should
be the lesson of the creed which also teaches more
clearly than any other that " God is Love," is explicable
only on the hypothesis, that with the fresh conviction
of God's goodness came likewise to the early Christians
a fresh conviction of the heinousness of human guilt.
They could actually see no light through it at all.
Christ himself never said a word implying that Dives
would ever taste one cooling drop; that the "worm"
would ever die, or the fire of hell ever be quenched.
But, then, there is no token in the New Testament that
he or any of his apostles dreamed of composing a Scheme
of Theology such as Calvin and Jonathan Edwards de
lighted to construct, each doctrine dovetailing neatly
into the next, till the whole terrible " Puzzle" is square
and complete. Had they done so, it could hardly have
been but that most merciful heart which uttered such
tender words of peace and pardon to Magdalen, and the
adulteress, and the crucified thief, — or even his who
wrote the Epistles to Timothy and to Philemon, — would
have thrilled with horror at the thought that they were
practically bequeathing to Christendom for eighteen
centuries the idea of a God whose cruelty should exceed

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH. 143

that of all the tyrants of Persia or of Rome, and towards
whom men should lift their tear-worn eyes, divided ever
between natural filial trust and the abject terror of
slaves awaiting their doom. Viewed from the side of
man, and man's guilt, they could threaten limitless
punishment of sin. Had they looked at it from the side
of God, and thought what the character of the Creator
involved and guaranteed, it would have been, I venture
to affirm, impossible for Christ or his followers to have
left this hideous dogma of a world of perdition, unrelieved
by the assurance that even into the lowest pit of sin and
suffering the Father's Love should penetrate and the
Father's Ann lift up the fallen.*

But if, on the one hand, human guilt must remain for
us, as for the greatest souls of the past, an abyss of
darkness we cannot fathom ; and, on the other hand, the
goodness of God stands out rounded into such an orb
that we know evermore that " in Him is no darkness at
all/' nor in His universe any final evil, — how are the
two truths to be reconciled ? How are we to avoid sub-

* A MS. sermon by an old divine, Archbishop Cobbc, aflirms
that tli.- Cn.k words in St. Matthew signifying "Thou fool,"
were ].n,l,aUy tran-latrd fmin tin- Aramair original, and might
be ren-h-r.-d m«uv juvunit.-ly, " Th->u n probate." I know not on
what authority tin- Aivlil.Ni"j, mad.- this .>tatcni. nt, hut if veri
fiable it w«MiM mark a v.-ry rurii.us anomaly in tin- t.-arhing of
Christ. He condniinrd it as a mortal OB, <l.-,-i \ in- "flu-ll I'm-
for a man to Uvat his l.rotlu-r a- in.-. laimaMr ami nn> tally worth-
Y« t In- taught that tin- /•'"'//• r would actually a.n.-ign that
bmtlicr, as *//••/!, t-i .-ti-rnal j-rr-lit ion .'

144 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

tracting somewhat from our sense of the ill-desert of

o

Sin, while affirming with fearless confidence that it is
finite and evanescent? I believe this is a problem
having a very practical bearing on the religious life of
the time, and I doubt very much whether the common
substitute for the doctrine of the eternity of future phy
sical pain — namely, a definite period of such pain after
death — will at all meet the requirements of the case.
Whatever be the relations of Pain and Sin (and I am
far from denying that they exist), they are not of a kind
which wholly satisfy the mind. They seem to offer a
form of Eetribution and a method of Eestoration, but not
necessarily to constitute one or the other. Something
different from mere suffering is needful to complete an
" atonement " (or renewal of union) between the sinful
soul and the Divine Holiness. Not every "fire" would
be a " Purgatory." In fact, among the mysterious uses of
Pain it is hardly possible to reckon it as a simple coun
terpoise thrown into the scale against guilt, and of itself
adjusting the balance of Justice. Those who hold that
there is no such thing as Punishment in the Divine
order, and those who hold that a certain definite modi
cum of pain apportioned to each sin fulfils that order,
seem to me equally to err.

Surely the clue to the truth must lie in some other
direction ? Our bodies, with their pleasures and pains,
are so much a part of ourselves now, that our moral
lessons must necessarily come to us partly through them.
Very naturally, that intimate union and its consequences

Till: I.IIT AFTER DKAT1F.

was transferred in the imagination of the men of old to
another world, and the doctrine of the Kesurrection of
the Flesh (which happened to descend to us with more
valuable heirlooms in one line of our mental pedigree)
has served to give some sort of colour to our persistence
in their ideas. But looking at the matter from the
standpoint of modern psychology, it is hard to see what
we can have to do beyond the grave with physical pains
of any kind. Of course it is possible to imagine that
the new bodies with which we may (or may not) bo
clothed should from the first be inlets of suffering. l»ut
as they can hardly be supposed to receive the taint of
the diseases of the poor sin-stained frames left in the
grave, whatever pains they may endure must be con
ceived of as purely arbitrary, and of a kind bearing in)
analogy to any order of the Divine government with
which we are acquainted

But though it is most difficult to conceive of ph>i*
sutr.-ring under the conditions of a new life (unless as
the reflex of more sensitive frames with the sufferings of
the soul , it is, on the contrary, almost saliently obvious
that the disembodied soul must immediately pass into n
state wherein mental pain proportioned to its moral guilt
will IK- unavoidable. We have no need to imagine a
burning vault, Tit of Devils, or any other machinery of
the Divine Inquisition. The mere act of disembodiment,
it would seem, must adequately account for all that is
needed to work out the ends of justice.*

* •' When tin- j", rials of thU \vm-M liavr l>i-.-n j>;^t, wlim tiin.-
havi> l>r»-n li-t'i ln-himl, .\n-l thi.< ' hmlv "!' 'ir.uli ' h,i ;
L

146 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

In those rare hours when the claims of the body are
for a time partially suspended, — when we are neither
hungry nor thirsty, nor somnolent nor restless, — when
no objects distract our eyes and no sounds play upon
the ear, — when we feel, in a word, neither Pain, nor
Want, nor Pleasure, from our corporeal frames, we obtain
in a few moments more self-insight than in weeks and
months of ordinary life. A prolongation of such a con
dition under disease, wherein (in some rare cases) the
body's wants are reduced to a minimum without such
positive pain as to occupy the mind, — in interminable
sleepless nights, and days when in solitude and silence
the hours go by almost uninterrupted by those changes
of sensation produced in healthy life by food, ablutions
and exercise, — then, it would seem (from the testimony
of those who have passed through such experience), the
soul becomes self-conscious to a degree quite inconceiv
able under ordinary conditions. The physical life falls
comparatively into the background, the spiritual and
moral life come forward ; and the facts of our rela
tions towards God, our sense of past transgressions,
and our hopes of existence beyond the nearly-opened

dropped away from the liberated soul, everything which clouded
the perception, which dulled the vision, which drugged the con
science while on earth, will be cleared off like the morning mist.
We shall see things as they really are, ourselves and our sins among
the number. No other punishment, whether retributive or pur
gatorial, is needed. Naked truth, unfilmed eyes, will do all that
the most righteous vengeance could desire." — Enigmas, p. 260.
The following two pages of this essay are among the most beauti
ful and striking in the range of literature.

Till: LIFE AFTER DKATH. 147

grave, become realities quite as sensibly felt as those of
our bodily surroundings. We luive but to imagine one
degree more of such separation from physical interrup
tions and sensations, and conceive ourselves as actually
severed from the body, and it becomes clear that we
should instantly, and from that circumstance alone, \
into a Purgatory. Even if we should retain no recoil • <•-
tion of the special sins of earth, their consequences, sen
sible at last in our degraded natures, our mean im<l
malignant sentiments, our withered hearts, would be the
heaviest curse. Everything we have ever done of evil
has undoubtedly left its stain on us in ways like tlu-r,
even should the actual recollection of it be effaced witli
the brain-record of Memory. We — our very selv.-s,
whatever in us can possibly survive the dissolution of
tin; body — must carry with us — nay, rather in us, these
dreadful results. As Theodore Parker says quaintly,
" The saddler does not remember every stitch he took
when a 'prentice, but every stitch served to make him
« tiddler." So every act we have done of good or evil,
every sentiment we have indulged of loving or hateful,
has gone to make us saints or sinners. We may repent
the past, abhor it, renounce it, with the whole force of
(iod-supp'.rt.-d will. But, as even Aristotle knew, "of
this even God is deprived, to make the Past not to have
been." The sins Jiave been committed, and the trail of
them over our souls must remain, even if we forget them
one by one.

But if (as seem- infinitely unuv iaat with the

148 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

Divine order) we pass through no river of oblivion on
leaving the world, but, on the contrary, find all the Past
unrolling itself in one long unbroken panorama from the
hour of Death backward to the first hours of childish
consciousness, — then will our Purgatory be complete
indeed! Then as we look, unhurried, dispassioned, at
one hour of mortal life after another, remembering all
we felt and did in it, all the weaknesses and mixed
motives which spoiled our purest moments, all the
selfishness, the bitterness, the ingratitude, perchance the
sensual vice or cruel vindictiveness which blackened
the worst — then in very truth shall we learn at last —
what it has been idly dreamed that only Hell could
teach — " the exceeding Sinfulness of Sin." The thought
is almost too tremendous to dwell upon, yet it is but
the simplest consequence from the laws of Mind, as
we know them. There is no need for the Almighty to
bare His arm and hurl us into the Lake of Fire. He
has only to leave us alone with our sins ; to draw the
curtain between us and the world ; and our punishment
must come with unerring certainty.

This is the awful Purgatory which I believe awaits
us all. Is there nothing but terror in it for the sinner
and sadness for the saint ? Nay, but is there not also
somewhat of deep and stern satisfaction ? At the best
moments of life, have we not longed for such an insight
into our own dark souls, such a sense of the guilt which
we dimly knew existed, but under which our hardened
consciences remained numb ? Will it not be something

THE LIFE AFTER DEATH. 149

gained when the scales which ever cover our eyes when
we strive to look inward shall fall from them at last ?
"We shall then know, and be sure we know truly, what
is the whole evil of our hearts, the sinfulness of our
acts. There will be no more uncertainty and fear of
self-delusion, of walking in a vain shadow of self-
acquittal, or, it may be, of ill-allotted self-condemna
tion. We shall know our true place in the moral world,
our true relation to the all-holy God. And we shall not
only know what is true, but suffer what is just. We
shall endure all the agony, and also learn the infinite
relief, of a repentance at last adequate and proportioned
to our sinfulness. The pain will fall, where it ought to
fall, upon our hearts themselves ; and, as Cranmer held
his "guilty hand" to the fire, so perchance shall we,
instead of striving to escape, even desire to hold them
to their torture. That entire, absolute, perfect Repent
ance will be the great and true Expiation ; and when it
has been accomplished, the blessed Justice of God will
be vindicated, and all will be well.

Is there an outlook beyond this Purgatory, wherein
Time can have no meaning ? Assuredly there must be.
There yet must remain for the souls which God has
in; ill.- and purified both work to do for Him and joy in
Him and in one another. There niu>t In- the service of
His creatures ; the learning of His truth ; the reconcilia
tion with every foe ; the re-union of immortal affection ;
and the everla-t in- approach, nearer and nearer through
the infinite ages, to perfect -i><>dnu.ss and t«. Him who is

150 THE LIFE AFTER DEATH.

supremely good. But these things lie afar off, where eye
hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man con
ceived, the things which God hath prepared for those
who love Him — aye, and for those, also, who now love
Him not.

DOOMED TO BE SAVED.

IN old times, two or three centuries ago, men believed
that they could sell their souls to the Devil No one
seems to think such a bargain possible now, though the
belief in the existence of the strange Incarnate Evil, the
Qreat Bad God, with whom it was supposed to be trans
acted, still forms part of the accepted creed of Christen
dom. I am not concerned now to discuss the absurd it y
and blasphemy involved in this doctrine of a cruel and
i tless Wolf left freely by the Shepherd of Souls to
prowl for ever through His hapless fold, lint I shall
ask of you to dwell in imagination for a few moments
on the state of one of the hundreds of men and women
who forinrrly believed, with unhesitating credulity, that
they bad bartered their existence to the Fiend, and were
henceforth for evermore, and without hope of escape,
the sworn -ervants of Sa:

Probably aiich imaginary trail-actions ^em-rally hap-

152 DOOMED TO BE SAVKl>.

pened somewhat in this way. A man was violently
goaded by vindictiveness to desire the ruin of an enemy,
or by want or avarice to long for gold, or by pas
sionate love to covet the possession of the person he
loved. At the same time he entertained, undoubt-
ingly, the dangerous belief that there was a Power
always at hand ready to gratify his desires at the price
of a penalty to be paid only in the distant future. If
we attempt to realize the terrible ever-present temp
tation which such a belief would offer, I think it will
appear only too natural that in some moment when
his longings were most vehement, the tempted wretch

should say, " / will be revenged" — or " / will be rich"

or "I will gain the woman I love — even if I lose my
soul ! I will give myself to the Devil for ever, if he
will do for me what I want !" Supposing after this, by
some perfectly natural chance, the man did obtain his
end, his enemy fell sick or died, a little money un
expectedly came in his way, or the woman he loved
returned his passion, — from that moment he would in
evitably conclude Satan had accepted the bargain, and
fulfilled his part of the contract. There was no more
retrocession possible. He was no more free to draw
back and give up his coveted gains. Hell had hold of
him by a bond which could never be broken. He was
the servant of Sin, outlawed from God and Heaven and
the society of the good and innocent, and destined,
without hope of pardon or reprieve, to pass, whenever

DOOMED TO BE SAVED. I":1,

his new Master chose to call him, to the realms of ever
lasting torture and despair. What, I ask, would be the
result on a man's character of finding himself so doomed ?
I think that after the first flush of gratified passion had

ided, the poor deluded wretch must always have
felt creeping over him a horror such as no experience of
our lives can render altogether comprehensible. Even
the fact of his success (being at the same time the pledge
that the barter was actually made) must have brought
with it u thrill of unspeakable awe. Then as time went
on, and the gratified desire sank down among his pas
sions, while natural affections and harmless interests
resumed their ordinary sway, there would begin a period
of unmitigated agony. No innocent pursuit could be
followed, no pure affection cherished, no kindly action
perfumied, I'm- tin- man would know that he would l>e
an object of loathing and horror to the nearest and

at did they understand his real condition, and that
none would take a gill from his hand. K\vry allusion
made by those around him to n-liui<>n, the memory of
his own innocent childhood, the spectacle of death and
interment, would each be like a fr.-h la^h of despair,
r.y de^n-es, I believe, even a very bad and irreligious
man, lindin^ thus every avenue to good closed to him,
would heu'in to envy every beggar by the wayside, every
dying sufl'eivr in the hospital, nay, every criminal ^oing
to the gallov, was not like himself utterly and

eternally shut out from Cod and < H . ourse

the belief in the futility and liop.-K—ness of any n-pent-

154 DOOMED TO BE SAVED.

ance on his part, the idea that the Fiend would laugh
were he to attempt to pray, would finally drive him into
absolute recklessness and hardness of heart. He would
say, " Evil, be thou my good," and give himself up to
such gross pleasures, such malignity, cruelty, perfidy
and blasphemy, as his miserable heart might choose in
its despair. Looking back after the lapse of ages to the
historical proofs that our fellow-men have actually gone
through this hideous torture, we feel now as if the night
mare must have been more than the brain of man could
bear, and that the having caused such direful woe must
be added to the long list of terrors, persecutions and
asceticisms, which go farther, perhaps, than Christians
commonly imagine, to counterbalance the benefits which
humanity has received from their creed. If the faith
which had its origin in the pure spirit of Christ, but
which so soon became corrupted, has indeed bound up
many a broken heart, it has also assuredly broken
many; in monasteries and nunneries, in the dungeons of
the Inquisition — aye, and in Protestant homes, whence
guiltless and believing souls have been driven into mad
houses under the terrors of the Unpardonable Sin.

But for us, who neither believe it possible to sell our
souls at all, nor in a Devil to whom we might sell them,
is there any lesson in this sad old story ? I think there
must be one, for we believe exactly the reverse of that
hideous doctrine which drove these poor wretches to
destruction. Our faith teaches us that our only Lord is
Goodness itself impersonated ; and that we arc not

DOOMED TO i;i: BAYED. 155

"sold" to Him by any act of our own, not even "recon
ciled" to Him by any Atonement or Mediator, but are
His by birthright and by nature, His as the child belongs
to its parent, His as a man's thought is his own. We
are each of us Thoughts of God. We owe our being to
having been in that Infinite Mind ; and, as the author of
the Book of Wisdom says, " Never wouldst Thou have
made anything hadst Thou not loved it." The Creator
cannot be disgusted with His creature's infirmities, or
wearied of his weakness, or ready to abandon him be
cause of his sin, for He has understood it all from the
first, and in His book were all our transgressions written
when as yet there were none of them, and we hung as
innocent babes upon our mothers' breasts.

I know that this faith is held by us in the very teeth
of scores of passages in the Bible, and of the denuncia
tion of ten thousand orthodox divines. Nay, there are
some even among those who have left orthodoxy far
behind, who yet hold that it is both a false and especially
a dangerous creed to teach men that (;<>d loves them
always, and that they are certain to be saved (to Tise the
much misapplied old phrase) at last. Let us inquire
more carefully how this may be, seeing that, in a •

uiv, tin- praetiral side of our religion depends on
our sense of the matter.

I think it will he found that Sin h><>ks very dilfenmtly
in proportion as v. i it from its own level, or from

a little higher up, or from still farther ah.,.

The man who i- <juite nu a le\el with flu- sin. w!

156 DOOMED TO BE SAVED.

himself cruel, unchaste, deceitful, dishonest, drunken,
hears always of another falling into his sin with a certain
evil pleasure. As we say, it "keeps him in countenance,"
and prevents him feeling shame. He finds no jests so
diverting as those which tell of cheats and drunken
brawls, adulteries and filth. A large mass of literature,
from the old story of Gil Bias and Fielding's novels
down to the latest French romances, prove how wide
spread is this taste for tales of vice, this propensity to
" rejoice in iniquity."

But when a man has begun in earnest to try and
amend his own life, and has learned to hate his own sins,
he ceases to find anything amusing or ridiculous in the
sins of others. His feeling about them becomes one of
righteous anger, if the offence involve cruelty or perfidy;
of disgust and loathing, if it be one of sensual vice. He
wishes heartily that justice may be done on the offender,
and beyond this he has no feeling towards him but
contempt and abhorrence. Fortunately the majority of
people in every civilized community have attained at
least so far as this point ; and it is, so far as it goes, a
very sound standing-ground, and one infinitely superior
either to the pleasure of the grossly wicked, or to the
sentimental softness and laxity about crime, which is
one of the evil fashions of our day. I confess, when I
hear of a mob being with difficulty prevented from
tearing to pieces some monster who has committed an
act of dastardly cruelty, I cannot altogether regret the
exhibition of righteous popular indignation ; and on the

DOOMED TO BE SAYKD. 157

other hainl, I kn»w ffw worst- symptoms of national
moral health than a great crowd cheering and doing
honour to a villain.

But does no man, I would ask, get beyond the stage
of mere anger at crime ? I think even very poor aspi
rants after goodness do so, especially if they are parents.
Suppose a man or a woman to have striven for years to
bring up a young lad in honesty and religion ; to have
watched his boyish faults and repentances, his efforts to
do well, and his sorrow and shame when he failed. At
the end of all, the elder friend hears perhaps that the
youth has committed a forgery, or seduced an innocent
girl, or has sunk into habits of perpetual drunkenness.
What are the feelings with which he receives the sad
tidings > Surely they are very different from mere
anger and indignation, and a fierce desire to punish the
offender. He will indeed feel (inasmuch as he is human)
a horrible shock of surprise and disappointment, and
also perhaps some personal resentment that all his good
counsels have been thrown away. But beyond all this,
and far more deeply, he will grieve that such wickedness
should be done, and done by the man he knows so wrll,
whose soul has so often lain bare to him, who was
capable of so much l>rttci things. He will understand
how certain faults in his nature, certain temptations in
his lot, have !••«! him on, step by step, till he has been
entangled in sin and has fallen so miserably. And thru
his heart will i:» nut in pity and compassion unuttnaM.'
towards the unhappy one. He will know that hi* OOtt-

158 DOOMED TO BE SAVED.

dition is infinitely deplorable ; that if he repent and feel
his guilt he must endure agonies of remorse, and that if
he be callous and feel it not, it is so much the worse.
He will estimate the man's misfortunes as ten thousand
times heavier than if he had lost his health or wealth,
or become blind or maimed. And if he be the father or
master of the offender, and obliged in some way to visit
his transgression with punishment, he will earnestly
strive that even in punishing him he may do him good
and bring him to a better mind, so as to lead to his
restoration to peace and virtue, and entire reconciliation
with himself.

Now I challenge those who forbid us to believe in the
infinite mercy of God to say which of these three ways
of viewing Sin is most godlike— most probably nearest
to the way in which God must view it. Will he feel
pleasure in it ? Assuredly not ! Will He feel mere
anger and wrathful indignation ? I think it was very
natural that the old Hebrews, who had just reached
that stage themselves, should suppose He did so. But
I also think that it is monstrous, for a race who have
for two thousand years taken Christ's blessed parable of
the Prodigal Son as the very Word of God, to do any
thing of the kind. I think if we were not caught in the
meshes of that wretched Augustinian scheme of theology
which makes the Atonement necessary to appease God's
wrath, and postulates eternal Hell to compel us to accept
it,— I think, I say, if it were not for this theology, all
Christendom must have long ago come to see that, at

DOOMED TO in: SAvr:n. 159

tlif •. ! : .1 1 towanU a -inner as a Father or

nt would do, and not as a man less good or wise or
merciful, — the great Police HHUI of the Universe ! And
remember, when we are presuming to speak of the awful
character of God, it is not our business to inquire what
it is jt'.^t II.- may be or do without injustice or

cruelty ; but what is the very highest, the noblest, the
kindest, the most royal and fatherlike thing we can
possibly lift our minds to conceive. When we have
found ///'//, we may be assured it is the nearest we can
yet approach to the truth. By-and-by, when we are
loftier, nobler, and kinder too, we shall get nearer to it
still. Of all impossible things, the most impossible must
surely be that a J/a/t should dream something of tin;
(iood and the Noble, and that it should prove at last
that his Creator was less good and less noble than he
had dreamed. We Theists then, I conceive, are justil.i-d
(even in this dim world of imperfect and uncertain
vision) in holding clearly and boldly, as the very core
of our faith, that God loves eternally and unaheiahly
.-very Onal In- has made; and that our Sin, while it
draws a thick veil over our eyes, and makes it impossible
to ^ive us the joy of communion with Him, yet never
chants Him; never blarki-ns that Sun of Love in the
heavens.

Nor ifl it only by argument and analogy that we come
to this conclusion. The Lord of Con- ienoe win. bids
us forgive till seventy ti. the Lord of Life,

the Lather of Spirits, who re\v.tN Him-i-if to u> in the

160 DOOMED TO BE SAVED.

supreme hour of heartfelt prayer ; that God whose voice
has so often called us back from our wanderings and
put it into our hearts to pray, and then has blessed and
restored us again and yet again — that God we know is
never to be alienated. He is our Guide for ever and
ever ; Friend, Master, Father, Lord ! As physically we
live and move and have our being in Him, so morally
we live in His bosom, and are surrounded by His love
and pity. Poor, froward, rebellious babes, struggling
now with the pains of mortality, and now stretching
out vain hands of longing to seize forbidden joys — with
all our wrestlings and struggles we never fall out of His
Arms. They close round us even at our worst. The
Calvinists hold, as one of their " Five Points," the " Final
Perseverance of the Saints." We Theists believe in that
"Perseverance" too, and are persuaded that no human
heart which has once known the unutterable bliss of
loving God can ever forget it, or cease to yearn to return
from every wandering to His feet. But we also believe
in the Final Salvation of those who are not Saints, but
Sinners — nay, of the very worst and most hardened of
mankind. As one of the wisest men I ever knew (the
late Matthew Davenport Hill) once said to me, " I
believe in the aggressive power of love and kindness, and
in the comparative weakness of every obstacle of evil or
stubbornness which can be opposed thereto." We do
not think man's evil can, in the long run of the infinite
ages, outspeed finally God's ever-pursuing mercy. He
must overtake us sooner or later. True, it may be late

DOOMED TO BE SAYF.D. 161

— very late, before He does so. Not necessarily in this
world ; not perchance in the next world to come. We
may doom ourselves to groan beneath the burden of sin,
and writhe beneath the scourge of just and most merciful
Betribution — again and yet again — no one knows how
long. We may choose evil rather than good, and vile-
ness instead of nobleness, and be ungrateful and sinful
almost as He is long-suffering and infinitely holy. But
it is almost, not quite ! God will get the better of i;
last.

Is this indeed a "dangerous creed"? Will men be
the worse and harder and more daringly wicked for
holding it ? My friends, we are all, I fear, very un
worthy types of what Theists should be. Nay, I have
never yet seen man or woman, not that hero -soul
Theodore Parker — not that true saint of God, Keshub
Chunder Sen — who altogether and perfectly attained
those Alpine heights to which Theism should lift us.
But yet even at our weakest, we know that we are not
the worse for believing in the infinite goodness of God.
Was any one ever the worse for having an earthly father
who would grieve, or a mother who would weep and
pray for him in his sin, rather than curse him and cast
him nil ' Unman nature is bad enough, — I am not dis-
poted to underrate its vi»vs ami un-unness. But with
all my soul I repudiate and ivj. « L the blasphemy that it
can grow worse for having a bt itn knowledge of God.

The results of a settled faith that we are inevitably
destined to become good and l.lrss.-d, ought obviou.-ly

162 DOOMED TO BE SAVED.

to be as nearly as possible the precise converse of the
results of the belief of the poor wretch who imagined
he had sold himself to the Power of Evil. Just as he
must have looked round and envied the meanest or
most suffering of mankind, so we must look upon the
happiest or most fortunate who hold darker creeds as
far less blessed than ourselves. To them, half the horizon
is covered by a great lurid cloud, out of which come the
thunders and the bolts of doom, and which may at any
moment blot out the sun for ever from their sight, even
as they believe that to tens of thousands of the dead
He is hid for evermore. For us, that shroud of black
ness has rolled utterly away, and the Glory of God
shines wide as earth and heaven, showering blessings
on the head of every creature He has made. It is only
our own dim eyes, blinded by the mists of sin and
selfishness, which sometimes fail to see Him.

And again— just as the fiend-bought man dreamed it
was of no use for him to try to return to virtue, or to
yield to the softening of his heart when the sweet dews
of penitence fell on him, as they fall sometimes on us
all, — so we, on the contrary, must needs know that it is
no use for us to persist in rebellion and harden ourselves
against the thought of God's love. We are doomed (0
blessed doom !) to be conquered at last, and brought in
remorse and shame, and yet with the infinite peace of
restoration, to our Father's arms. We are destined to be
noble, not base ; pure, not unholy ; loving, not selfish or
malicious. Sooner or later throughout the cycles of our

• >MKI> TO i;i: <s\v 1G3

immortality, all the vih; .sensuality, the yet inure hideous
hate and malice which we sometimes hug now to our
hearts, must fall off us like loathsome, outworn rags,
and he trampled under our feet with disgust and shame.
We never sink our souls in gross and unholy pleasures
now, but we are befouling them with mire which here
after we shall wash away with rivers of tears. We
never utter a cruel or slanderous word, or hurt a child
or a brute, but we are making a wound in our hearts
whii-.h will smart long, long, after our victim has for
gotten its pain. Nay, we never miss an opportunity of
giving innocent pleasure, or of helping another soul on
the path to God, but we are taking away from ourselves
for ever what might have been a happy memory, and
leaving in its place a remorse. A French cynic (who
could not have known what friendship meant) ad\
us to "live with our friends as if they mi^ht one day
become our enemies." A good Kn^li>hman reversed the
maxim, and bade us "live with our enemies as if they
mi'Jit one day become our friends." My Iellow-Th<
it is not for us a matter of chance that our enemies ///////
on.- day become our friends, hut of tirm faith that they t>-<//
one day do so ; that, as Mahomet said, "the blessed shall
sit beside one another, and all -rud-es shall be taken
away out of their hearts." Why, even the approach of
Imly I )eath heals our misi-rahlr <|iiarrels now, and BOJ
our bitterest animosity! When we have crossed tin-
nark Iliver and climlu-d hut a little way Inwards the
City of God brynnd, everything iv^-mhliiiL; hatred and

164 DOOMED TO BE SAVED.

jealousy and malice and spite will have died out of our
souls. Only where their baleful fires have burned, there
must long remain a black spot charred and blistering.

And as to God ; when we come a little more to know
Him, a little to understand what love He bears us, how
He fulfils all our dreams of what the highest, the most
loveable and adorable can be, that which our own hearts
from their depths spontaneously love and adore, — when,
I say, we come to know somewhat more of all this, how
shall we look back on our hardness and our ingratitude ?
The tears of an unworthy son upon a mother's grave
must be less bitter than ours. God will forgive us, but
when shall we be able to forgive ourselves ?

These are, in our faith, the certainties of the future.
We are sure that we must repent every sin, and rise out
of every weakness, till we become at last meet to be
called the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty.
Assuredly the conviction that such things are in store
should not leave us passive now, any more than it could
be indifferent to the man who had sold himself to the
Fiend that he was irrevocably destined to perdition.
At the bottom of our hearts, I think, there is even at
our worst and weakest a wish to be good, a dumb long
ing to be brave, upright, truthful, sober, deserving of our
own esteem. Perhaps our ideal is not very high ; we do
not hunger and thirst after any very exalted and self-
denying righteousness; but at least we wish we were
better than we are. The German poet Schiller says,
that no man ever loves Evil for Evil's sake, as he may

DOOMED TO BE SAVED. 165

love Good for Goodness' sake. He only chooses evil
because, contingently, it includes what is agreeable or
saves what is disagreeable. This is the lowest platform
on which I believe we ever stand permanently, though
now and then some of us may be able to understand all
too well what the wretch did whom we have been con
sidering, who gave himself up to the powers of darkness,
or as St. Paul says, determined to " work all iniquity
with greediness." There are some of us who can look
back to such black eclipses of all the better life in us,
when deliberately and with our eyes open we resolved
to do some wicked thing, even though we saw beyond it
a long vista of other sins and deceits, and practically in
doing it threw our whole future into the balance of evil.
Looking back to such days (if any such there be in our
memory), we tremble as in remembering how once per
chance we hung helpless over a terrific precipice, till
some strong hand lifted us up; or how we were sinking
in the waters of a fathomless sea, when some plank was
thrown to us to which we clung and were saved. Again,
then- are some of us who have risen a little above either
of these states, who have long turned their backs on tin-
dreadful temptations of a life of resolute sin and self-
induliM-iicr, and who do a little more than vaguely wish
to be better, or pray (as St. Aii^u-tine says he diil in his
y>uth), " Make me holy, but not yet." They desire to be
holy now and at once. They have leann -<l to hate and
luiithe their remaining faults, "the .sin which doth 10

166 DOOMED TO BE SAVED.

easily beset them," and to wish, beyond all earthly
wishes, for strength

" To feel, to think, to do,
Only the holy Right ;
To yield no step in the awful race,
No hlow in the fearful fight ;"

to be " perfect even as their Father which is in Heaven
is perfect."

But whether our desire to be good and noble be only
a feeble and faint aspiration, dimly felt amid the tumult
of life's toil and passion, or the supreme and conscious
longing of our souls, — in either case, I think the faith
that we are made for such goodness is calculated (if we
could but realize it aright) to carry with it an immea
surable power to strengthen us, to fan our little spark
of holy ambition into a flame which might burn on God's
own altar. The Parsees, the disciples of Zoroaster, have
among their prayers in the Zend-Avesta the direction
that every believer should say every morning as he
fastens his girdle, " Douzakh (Hell) will be destroyed at
the resurrection, and Ormusd (the Lord of Good) shall
reign over all for ever." Not amiss, I think, was their
ritual devised to make the first thought of each opening
day one of moral encouragement, and of hope assured in
the final victory of Light over Darkness, Virtue over
Vice, and Joy over Sorrow and Pain. I do not say that
good men have not been ready to lead a forlorn hope,
and fight the good fight even in a world they believed

DOOMED TO HE SAVED. 107

doomed to perdition, with the terror before their <
that even they themselves might become, as St. Paul
said of himself, perhaps " a castaway." But beyond all
doubt it is a very different thing to wage that awful and
relentless war with inward and outward evil, if we can
but see, like Constantino's Conquering Legion, far away
in the heavens the signals of victory. To look round on
our fellow-men, the worst and weakest, — or, what is far
harder to understand, the basest, — and believe with firm
assurance that they are one day to be worthy of all the
love and honour we can give them, — this is to enable us
to love and labour for them now, and to have patience,
as God has patience, with the weight of clay which
overlays so heavily their little seed of good. And still
more, to look into our own souls, and trust that one day
hull be pure, one day all tin- vilmess there shall he
burnt out, one day we shall live in that upper uir of
nol.le feelings and high thoughts into which now and
th''ii we have just risen in some hour of prayer, to sink
.1 in shameful failure to the dust, — to trust that all
\^ \n store for us, is to lift us up out of the slough
of nur ilrspoml and renew our strength like the eagle's.
i iv an- not many of us \vlio have advanced

many steps along that hrief way which leads from the
(ladle to the grave without having sad reason to feel
ry and disgusted with themselves and their futile
its to amend. As the old hymn of ( 'harl< \\
says, th- ; a hundred times, "Thi-onh

forgive," and then they have sinned again, till at \.\<l th«-

168 DOOMED TO BE SAVED.

power of feeling anything like acute repentance has
passed away, and they have ceased to hope very much
that they will ever grow better in this world. There is
nothing in all life so sad as this November of the soul ;
—the scorching suns of summer passion, the April
showers of youthful remorse, would be infinitely better
than this colourless, dim moral life, so chill, so unhope
ful ! But even for this, the faith in the Eternal Love of
God is the return of spring. Brothers and sisters, if you
have felt this deadness fall on you, remember that it
has no place, no reason in our creed. We may be
cold and dull and unrepenting. We may know even
the horrible experience that we have greatly failed,
greatly sinned, and yet have no tear of anguish, no
heartfelt throb of remorse to give to our shameful past.
Yet this is all our misery and deadness of heart, — not
God 's withdrawal. We cannot help ourselves. But our
Father in Heaven, He who desires our righteousness
more than we ever desire it, whose "Will is our salva
tion," — He can help us, He will help us. We have
learned our own weakness. Now is the time to learn
His Almighty strength. It is not for us to despair of
growing, not merely pure but good, not merely good but
holy. God has made us for that very thing, and what
God intends, that assuredly will, at last, be done. He is
not wearied of us ; it is we who are weary of our vain
and vacillating selves. I cannot use the accustomed
phrase, that "He will forgive us if we pray." He is
always forgiving. He stands by every hour watching

DOOMED TO BE SAVED. 169

all our poor struggles, with pity and love ineffable;
Inning — yes! — I believe we may dare to say it — long
ing for our return, that He may bless us once more with
the consciousness of His love ; the sense of re-union
with His holiness ; the infinite, immeasurable, awful joy
of giving ourselves to be His in soul and body on earth,
His to do His holy Will in worlds beyond the grave for
ever and for ever.

Father ! Blessed Father ! Take us thus back ! From
all our wanderings, our coldness, our miserable guilt
and rebellion, our baseness and our sin, redeem us, O
God ! Father, we love Thee, — only a little now. But
we shall love Thee hereafter, wholly and perfectly. Take
our hearts and mould them to Thyself. We give them to
Thee. That which Thou desirest for us, even the same do
we desire. Fulfil Thy blessed purposes in us. As Thou
hast made us to be pure and good, so burn out of our
souls all our sinfulness. As Thou hast made us to be
strong and holy, so do Thou strengthen us with might
by Thy Spirit in the inner man. Shew us all the depth
of the evil, the sensuality, the bitterness of heart, the
coldness towards Thee in which we have lived, and the
;jl«rv and beauty and blessing of the life of love to Thee
and to our fellows, which it is in our power yet to live.
Lift us out of the pit, out of the mire and clay, and set
our feet upon a rock, and order all our goings. We are
Thine, 0 Father and Mother of tin- wm-ll : we are Thine
— save us ! We know that Thou wilt save !

THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOCIAL
SENTIMENT;

OR,

HETEEOPATHY, AVEKSION AND SYMPATHY.

THERE is perhaps no human emotion which may not
be described as infectious or epidemic, quite as justly
as idiopathic or endemic. We " catch" cheerfulness or
depression, courage or terror, love or hatred, cruelty or
pity, from a gay or a mournful, a brave or a cowardly,
an affectionate or malicious, a brutal or tender-hearted
associate, fully as often as such feelings are generated
in our own souls by the incidents of our personal expe
rience. In the case of individuals of cold and weak
temperaments, it may even be doubted whether they
would ever hate, were not the poisoned shafts of an
enemy's looks to convey the venom to their veins ; nor
love, did not the kiss of a lover kindle the unlighted
fuel in their hearts. The sight of heroic daring stirs the
blood of the poltroon to bravery, and the sound of a

THE SOCIAL SKNTIMI-NT. 171

single scream of alarm conveys to whole armies the con-
'ii of panic fear. Among the horrors of sieges and
revolutions, the worst atrocities are usually committed
by men and women hitherto harmless, who suddenly
exhibit the tiger passions of assassins and petrolenses ;
maddened with the infection of cruelty and slaughter.
Sympathy, then, is not, properly speaking, one kind of
Emotion, but a spring in human nature whence every
Emotion may in turn be drawn, like the manifold liquids
from a conjuror's bottle. In the following pages I shall,
however, endeavour to trace its development only in the
limited sense of that Emotion to which we commonly
give the name of Sympathy par excellence ; namely, the
sentiment of Tain which we experience on witnessing the
Pain of another person, and of Pleasure in his Pleasure,
irrespective of any anticipated results, present or future,
touching our personal interests. It has been hitherto
assumed universally (so far as I am aware) that this
ise emotion of Sympathetic Pain and Pleasure has
been frit in all ages by mankind ; and that, allowance
l>cinur made for wanner and colder temperaments, and
for the intervention of str* H.M i <,r \\eaker moral rein
forcements, we might take it I'm • «,rranti •<! that every man,
woman and child, savage and civil i frit,

and will always ! pain in pain and pic,

in pleasure.* It i m «•!' the present paper to i

Mr. Bain >ays ; tin- Will, ].. I i:i> that

Com]

172 THE EVOLUTION OF

certain reasons for reconsidering this popular opinion,
and for treating the Emotion of Sympathy as a sentiment
having a Natural History and being normally progressive
through various and very diverse phases ; differing in
all men, not solely according to their temperaments or
moral self-control, but, still more emphatically, accord
ing to the stage of genuine civilization which they may
have attained. It is superfluous to remark that this
inquiry is an important one, and must, if successfully
conducted, serve to throw no small light on the whole
subject of the Social Affections. Here, in the electric
commotion caused by the actual spectacle of vivid pain
or pleasure, we must needs find the best marked among
all the multifarious psychological phenomena which
result from the collision of human souls. All our
Benevolence is, in truth, only the extension of such
instant and vehement sympathy with actually-witnessed
pain or pleasure, into the remoter and less ascertained
conditions of our fellow-creatures' sufferings and enjoy
ments ; all our Cruelty is only the perpetuation and
exacerbation of the converse sentiment. As a flash of

that "never has the destitute been utterly forsaken." Also
(p. 210) that "the foundations of Sympathy and Imitation are
the same ;" and that though " the power of interpreting emotional
expression is acquired, some of the manifestations of feeling do
instinctively excite the same kind of emotion in others, the princi
pal instances occurring under the tender emotion. The moistened
eye, and the sob, wail or whine of grief, by a pre-established con
nection or coincidence, are at once signs and exciting causes of the
same feeling."

THE SOCIAL SENTIMENT. 173

lightning is to latent electricity, such is the rapid and
vivid Emotion struck out in us by the sight of another's
agony or ecstacy, compared with our calm, habitual
social sentiments. Hitherto little attention has been
paid to such Emotions, because (as above remarked) it
has been assumed that they exhibit uniform phenomena ;
and that if a man be so far elevated above a senseless
clod as to feel anything at the sight of another's Pain,
that which he feels is always sympathetic Pain ; and if
he feel anything at sight of Pleasure, it is Pleasure. So
deeply, indeed, is this delusion rooted in our minds, that
it is almost impossible at the first effort to dissever the
idea of such sympathy from our conception of human
nature in its rudest stage ; much more to divide it from
the sentiment of Love, or avoid confounding the lack of
it with personal Hatred. With those whom we love (it
is taken for granted) we must sympathize intensely;
and with the rest of mankind in lesser measure, unless
some special bar of antipathy intervene. But a little
reflection will shew that this is far from holding good
as universally true. There is such a thing as Love
which is wholly a Love of Complacency without admix
ture of Itenevolence ; which seeks its own gratification,
and is perfectly callous to the pains and joys of its object.
And there is often absolute absence of sympathy bet\\ « •« -n
man and man, when no personal hatred exists to inter
fere with its expansion. The explanation of the facts
must be found, if at all, by disentangling the roots
of Egotism and Altruism (now so clusuly interwoven,

174 THE EVOLUTION OF

but in their origin so far apart) at the very nexus of
immediate Sympathy, where one human heart reflects
back in vivid Emotion the Emotion of another.

The first question which concerns us is : Does the
description of Sympathy, as above given, as the common
sentiment of men and women at our stage of civiliza
tion, apply properly to the spontaneous sentiments of
children and savages ? Does their Emotion at the sight
of Pain or Pleasure take the same form as ours, and
does it prompt them to similar actions? There are
grounds, I believe, for denying that it does anything of
the kind, and for surmising that the Emotion felt at
such stages at the sight of Pain is more nearly allied to
Anger and Irritation than to Tenderness and Pity ; and
the Emotion felt at the sight of Pleasure, more akin to
Displeasure than to reflected Enjoyment.

Before endeavouring to interpret the sentiments of
savages in these matters, we shall do well to cast a pre
liminary glance at the behaviour of the lower animals,
concerning which we know somewhat more, and are less
liable to be misled. Without assuming that the feelings
of brutes supply, in a general way, any direct evidence
regarding those of even the most degraded tribes of men,
they may justly be held to afford useful indication of
them in the case of those actions wherein brute and
savage obviously coincide, while the sentiments of civi
lized humanity fail to supply any explanation.

Of all the facts of natural history, none is better
ascertained than the painful one, that almost all kinds

THE SOCIAL SENTIMENT. 175

of animals have a propensity to destroy their sick and
aged or wounded companions. The hound which has
fallen off his bench, the wolf caught in a trap, the super
annuated rook or robin — in truth, nearly all known
creatures, wild or domesticated, undergo involuntary
'•Kutlianasia" from the teeth, bills or claws of th.-ir
hitherto friendly associates. It may be said to be the,
law of creation that such destruction of the sick and
aged should take place ; a law whose general beneficence,
as curtailing the slow torments of hunger and decay,
has properly been adduced by natural theologians to
console us for its seeming repulsiveness and severity.
The sight of another animal of its kind in agony appears
to act on the brute as an incentive to destructive rage.
He is vehemently excited, rushes at the sufferer, bellow
ing, barking or screeching wtfdiy, and commonly gores,
bites or pecks it till it dies. The decay of its aged com
panion, though it affects the animal less violently than
its agony, stirs somehow the same in-tin< t, which is the
precise converse of helpful pity ; and, if the species be
gregarious, a whole flock or h«-rd will often join to
extinguish the last spark of expiring life in one of their
own band. There are of course exceptions to this rule,
especially among domesticated animals, which some
times acquire gen tier habits, and atone stage of ad vain •«?
merely forsake th<-ir sick companions, and at another
actually help and befriend them. The broad fact, how
ever, on which 1 de-ire to insist at this moment is, that
at tin; .si.ijht of Tain animals generally feel an impulse.

176 THE EVOLUTION OF

to Destroy rather than to Help ; a passion more nearly
resembling Anger than Tenderness. This emotion (to
avoid continual circumlocution) will be indicated in the
following pages by the term which seems most nearly
to describe its chief characteristic, namely, Heteropathy.
It is the converse of "Sympathy," as we understand that
feeling; and it differs from "Antipathy" as Anger differs
from Hatred ; Heteropathy being the sudden and (pos
sible) transient emotion, and Antipathy implying per
manent dislike, with a certain combination of disgust.

The sight of the Pleasure of another animal does not
seem generally to convey more Pleasure to the brute
than the sight of another's Pain inspires it with Pity.
As a rule, the beast displays under such circumstances
emotions ludicrously resembling the exhibitions of
human envy, jealousy and dudgeon. Only will the
friendly dog testify delight at his comrade's release from
his chain; or the generous horse display satisfaction
when his yoke-mate is turned out in the same field with
him to graze.

Keeping these facts of animal life in view, we are
surely justified in interpreting the murderous practices
in vogue to the present day among many savage tribes
(and formerly common all over the world) as monu
mental institutions, preserving still the evidence of the
early sway of the same passion of Heteropathy in the
human race in its lowest stage of development. The
half-brutal Fuegian, who kills and eats his infirm old
grandfather, differs in no perceptible way, as regards his

THE SOCIAL SKXTIMKXT. 177

action, from the young robin which cruelly pecks to
death the robin two generations older than himself. An
equally wide-spread and similar impulse may fairly be
assumed to account for actions so nearly identical in
barbarian and in bird. The only appreciable difference
is, that, as regards the savage, it would seem that Custom
(which must have originally sprung out of an instinct,
or at least have been in harmony with it; lias so long
been stereotyped, that the act of human parricide is
generally performed with unruffled calmness of demean
our, and even with some display of tenderness towards
the father or mother, who is buried alive in Polynesia
as kindly, as he, or she, would have been put to bed by
an affectionate son or daughter in England.*

O O

The same dispassionateness in the performance of th«»
dreadful act seems indeed to have prevailed so far back
as historical records extend, and we cannot (as it were)
actually catch the brutal Heteropathy in the fact of
mnrdcr. Herodotus says the Masagetao used in his time
to kill, boil and eat their superannuated relations, holding

J, Lul.lio.-k (Origin nf Civili/ation. j,. M8) quota from
"Fiji ami tin- Fijian.-" an in-tann- in wlii.-h Mr. Hunt was invitr.l
l.v a y..iinU' mail to attrml hi- mother'l lum-i-al. Mr. Hunt j,,i,,,.,l
tin- pro.-* — ion ami wa- Mirj.ri-r.l i,, ,,-,• ]„, eOTpte, wln-n tin- v«.un^
in. in ]>ointed out hi- nii.tlii-r, win. w.i- walking al-.n^ with tli.-m
as gay and liv.-ly and a|i].;uvntly a- much : ;myl..Mly

'. TII Mr. Hunt's ivnion-tiMii.-,., the VMIII- man on!-
l»lii-d, that ''.-h.- was thrir in..tln-r, and ln-r sun- mi-lit tn jmt ln-r
tn d.-atli, m.w >li,. had livi-.l h.n- .•n.,u_;h.'' Kvoiituallv tin- nM

woman w.(- , en monio

178 THE EVOLUTION OF

such to be the happiest kind of death.* JElian describes
the Sardinians as killing their fathers with clubs as
an honourable release from the distresses of age. The
Wends, even after the introduction of Christianity, are
accused of cannibal practices of the like kind ; and (Mr.
Tylor adds) there still existed in Sweden in many
churches, so late as 1600, certain ancient clubs "known
as attOrdubbor, or family-clubs, wherewith in old days
the aged and hopelessly sick were solemnly killed by
their kinsfolk.

Nevertheless, taking into consideration the law per
vading the brute creation, and (as we shall presently
see) the yet perceptible destructive impulse in the chil
dren of civilized regions, there seems to be ground for
attributing the remote origin of all such practices, how
ever tenderly performed within historic times, to the
fierce instinct of the earliest savage, whom the sight of
pain and helplessness excited just as it excites the bird
or beast. In the wild animal, it still acts simply and
unimpaired. In the man, even in his lowest present
condition, it has been stereotyped into a custom.

* See an article on Primitive Society, by E. Tylor : Contemp.
Review, April, 1873. Mr. Tylor traces the custom to the necessi
ties of wandering tribes, and says that after there is no longer the
excuse of necessity, the practice may still go on, partly from the
humane intent of putting an end to lingering misery, but perhaps
more through the survival of a custom inherited from harder and
ruder times. Necessity may explain desertion, but surely hardly
murder and cannibalism 1

TIIK SOP! \I. SKNTIMKXT. 179

Nor is it by any means only in the case of aged
parents that the Heteropathy of the savage betrays
itself. No similar custom of deliberate murder of the
infirm has had room to grow up in the case of wives,
who are of course usually younger than their husbands ;
and we do not therefore hear of a regular system of
strangling them when permanently diseased or incapa
citated. They are only starved, beaten and overtaxed
with toil, till they expire in the way unhappily not un-
faniiliarly known to English coroners' juries as "Death
from natural causes, accelerated by want of food and
harsh treatment." But if Heteropathy acts only indi
rectly on sickly wives, it exhibits itself in full force on
puling and superfluous infants. Custom, among number
less savages, and even among nations so far advanced in
civilization as the ancient Greeks and modern Chinese,
has regularly established child-murder precisely in those
cases in which the helplessness threatens to prove perma
nent, and which, consequently, leave the destructive
sentiment full play, though they would call forth the
most passionate instincts of pity and protection ainon^
ourselves. A puny and deformed boy is, in the ruder
state of society, an unendurable object to his parents,
who, without troubling themselves about Spartan prin
ciples concerning the general interests of the community,
silence his pitiful baby-wails at once and for ever. Kee, 1-
less to add, no mercy can be expected for a daughter
born where women are (to use Mr. dreg's phrase) "re
dundant." She is exposed or drowned with less pity

» 2

180 THE EVOLUTION OF

than a humane Englishman feels for a fly in his milk-
jug.*

* See the Marquis de Beauvoir's hideous account of an evening
wajk outside the walls of Canton, with scores of dead and dying
infants lying beside the path. A recent official Chinese Ukase on
the subject of infanticide, translated in the correspondence of the
Times, sufficiently corroborates these statements, and shews also,
happily, some desire on the part of the Government to put a stop
to the practice. It is issued by the provincial Treasurer of Hupei,
who begins by quoting stock examples from Chinese history of the
piety of daughters, and proceeds to ask how it comes to pass, since
in the present day girls are doubtless equally devoted, that " the
female infant is looked upon as an enemy from the moment of its
birth, and no sooner enters the world than it is consigned to the
nearest pool of water ? Certainly, there are parents who entertain
an affection for their female infants and rear them up, but such
number scarcely 20 or 30 per cent. The reasons are either (1) that
the child is thrown away in disgust because the parents have too
many children already; or (2) that it is drowned from sheer
chagrin at having begotten none but females; or, lastly, in the
fear that the poverty of the family will make it difficult to devote
the milk to her own child, when the mother might otherwise hire
herself out as a wet-nurse. Now all these are the most stupid
of reasons. All that those have to do who are unable through
poverty to feed their children is to send them to the Foundling
Hospital, where they will be reared up until they become women
and wives, and where they will always be sure of enjoying a
natural lifetime. With regard to the question of means or no
means of bringing up a family, why the bare necessaries of life for
such children do not cost much. There are cases enough of poor
lads not being able to find a wife all their lives long, but the
Treasurer has yet to hear of a poor girl who cannot find a hus
band, so that there is even less cause for anxiety on that score.
But there is another way of looking at it. Heaven's retribution
is sure, and cases are nnmmm where repeated female births have
followed those when the infants have been drowned ; that is, man

THE SOCIAL SENTIMENT. 181

Of the feelings of savages towards their sick and
wounded companions, we rarely hear any anecdotes.*
I have failed to meet one illustrative of Pity or Ten
derness. Their Emotions on witnessing the pleasures,
feastings and marriages of others, seem usually to par-

loves to slay what Heaven loves to beget, and those perish who
M-t themselves against Heaven, a- thosr die who take human life.
AIM they are haunted l»y tin- wraiths of the murdered children,
ami thus not only fail to hasten the birth of a male child, but run
a risk of making victims of them -elves by their behaviour. The
late Governor, hearing that this wicked custom was rife in Hupei,
itli tin- law some time ago in seven- prohibitory proclama
tions; notwithstanding this, many poor districts and out-of-the-
way place* will not allow them.-«-l\vs to see what is right, but
obstinately ding to their old delusion. Hia Chien-yin, a graduate
from Kianghia, and otlu-rs hav.- lately petitioned that a jn-o.-l ma-
tioii In- i — iied once more prohibiting this j tract ice in >tr»ii'_r term-.
Wherefore you an- now required and r«-'jin-t.-d to ac.juaint V"ur-
all, that malr and female infant- being of your own llesh
and blood, you may be vi-it--d by SLUM- mon.-ti'ous calamity if
you n-ar only the mah- and diown the female rhiMren. If these
exhortati- ked ujion any more a- m.-iv iormal words, and

it' any JMM.J. lc \\iih c..n^i-i..u- wicki-dn- io turn over a

n.-w I.-af. they will b.- ]. uni-hed.

"Beware and ob.-y ! l'..-wan-!"

* Dr. John-Mil l'll{. : "Pity is not natural t*t man. Children
!\\a\- cruel. B -iiiri. Pity i- acquired

an. I ini|ipiv«-il by tin- riiltivalioii of iva-on. \\'.- may lia\.- uneasy

ng a creature in diBtreas, without pity i f"i- \\«-

ha\«- not j.ity unh-- \\»- \\i-li to ivli.-\r them. Wln-n 1 am "ii
my way t<t din.- with a fri.-nd, and, lindinu' it hit.-, have bid tin-
ri-at-hman mak- 1 happen to attend when he whips his

. 1 may 1. .-1 nnph-a-antly that the animals are put to pain,
but 1 do not \vi-li him to «l.-i^t. No, B b him to drive

on.*— Main -, p. i-().

182 THE EVOLUTION OF

take of the character of restless and envious disquietude,
visible in dogs when their companions are petted or
possessed of a supernumerary bone.

Passing now from the Brute and the Savage, we must
inquire whether any faint trace of Heteropathy yet
lingers amongst ourselves. Let us take a young child,
the offspring of a cultivated English gentleman and
tender-hearted English lady, and observe what are the
emotions it exhibits when it sees its baby-brother receive
an injury and cry aloud in pain. That child's sentiments
are, we cannot doubt, considerably modified from those
of its barbarian ancestors,

"When wild in woods the noble savage ran;"

just as the instincts of the kitten of a domestic cat or
puppy of a lap-dog differ from those of the cub of a
cat-o'-mountain or the whelp of a wolf. Even yet, how
ever, an impartial study may leave us room to hesitate
before we " count the grey barbarian" so very far " lower
than the Christian child/' as that no signs of savage
impulse shall now and then betray the old leaven in
the curled darling of the British nursery. If narrowly
watched, at least one child out of two or three will be
seen to be very abnormally excited by the sight of his
brother's Pain. He will appear much as if subjected to
an electric shock, and his behaviour will be found to
partake in an unaccountable way of all the characteristics
of Anger and Annoyance against the sufferer. There is
no softness or tenderness in the looks which he casts at

THK SOCIAL SENTIMENT. 183

his companion, nor will he usually spontaneously make
the slightest effort to help or comfort him by the caresses
which he is wont to lavish on him to excess at other
moments. On the contrary, a disposition will generally
be manifested to add by a good hard blow or sharp
vicious scratch to the woe of his unfortunate friend.
Tin -re may be — indeed, there will usually occur — a burst
of tears like a thunder shower, but the character of this
weeping fit is that of an explosion of irritation and dis
gust, rather than of pity or fellow-feeling. A gentle and
tionate little girl of three years old has been seen
by the writer to exhibit these emotions of Heteropathy
as distinctly as any angry bull or cannibal savage. The
child's baby-sister of two years old fell off the lofty bed
on which both were amicably playing, and of course set
up a wail of fright and pain on the floor. Instantly the
elder child let herself slip down on the opposite side,
round the bed, and pounced on the poor little one
on the floor, whom she proceeded incontinently to be
labour violently with both hands before rescue could
arrive. Of course eventually both parties join, a in ;i
but tin- Utby's was a wail of pain and terror, the
.•Idrr child's a trm pest of indignation. Mothers and
nurses, on bt-iii- >t ridly interrogated, will m-m-ially con-
i.(, havii; rd similar unmistakable symptoms

of Heteropathy still lurking in iln- sweetest-temp
children. T 1 of the pain-di>init,-d features of

th'-ir friends or tin- moans of an invalid 0 i'"i'th

very ugly emotions; and though many tcnder-natnred

184 THE EVOLUTION OF

babies shew trouble at the tears of their elders, even
they are generally more excited than depressed when
they chance to witness any solemn scene or demon
strative grief. Fond mothers naturally explain all such
disagreeable exhibitions as resulting from the inability
of innocent little children to understand pain and sorrow.
But the fact is, that they do, to a certain extent, under
stand what they see, but the exalted emotion of reflected
Sympathy is yet lacking, and in place of it there are
traces of the merely animal and savage instinct. Of
course the infantine displays of anger and irritation are
instantly checked in civilized homes, and the imitative
faculty is enlisted, during its earliest and most vigorous
period, on the side of Compassion, which is often enough
foolishly misapplied and exaggerated, till by the time the
little girl is four or five years old she is so far trained
as to endure paroxysms of woe for the misadventures of
her doll, deprived of an eye, or exposed to the martyrdom
of St. Lawrence before the nursery fire. The "Hereditary
transmission of Psychical Habits" has also obviously in
many cases resulted in the inheritance of genuine Sym
pathy even from the cradle. The old Heteropathy has
been, strictly speaking, " bred out."

In a similar, though less marked manner, the sight
of another person's Pleasure produces in the childish
and yet uncultured mind something much more like
Displeasure than reflex happiness. Apart from the
sense of injustice in the distribution of toys, food or
caresses (of course a fertile source of infantile jealousy),

THE SOCIAL SF.NTIMKNT. 185

there is an actual irritation at the spectacle of another's
enjoyment, and a disposition to detract from it, — to
destroy the toy, or spoil the food, or disturb the caresses
— forming the most perfect antithesis to the reflected
delight in, and desire to enhance another's pleasure
which constitute the sympathy of adult life. Of course
here also Education generally steps in to check the
display, if not to eradicate the sentiment, of Envy,
which, as La Kochefoucauld says, is the only one of all
human passions in which no one takes pride, and which
therefore its most abject victims soon learn carefully to
cloak. But enough of it is betrayed in every school
room and play-ground to corroborate the assertion that
our earliest emotion is not Pleasure in another's Pleasure,
any more than Pain in another's Pain.

.May we stop here ? Does true Sympathy invariably
iill the breasts of all grown-up men and women in a
civili/ed land so as to leave no room for Heteropathy,
either in its form of irritation at Tain or disgust at
Pleasure 1 Ala-: it is to be feared that a stern Belf-
scrutiny would permit few of us to boast that there an:
no impulses ivst-mbling these left in our nature to testify
to their ancient sway, There are not many men whom
the tears of a woman or the wail of an infant do not
irritate, and who have no need of self-control to avoid
giving expression to anger at such sights or sounds. To
many more, and even to some women, the spectacle of
LM and i naturally so repugnant, that

the effort to render help mu.-t always he stimulated l.y

186 THE EVOLUTION OF

some potent affection, interest or sense of duty, — a fact,
we may parenthetically observe, which merits the serious
attention of that "Noodledom" which Sydney Smith
says is " never tired of repeating that the proper sphere
of woman is the sick room," and assumes that every
human female is a heaven-made nurse.

Among the lower classes of society, the Emotion of
Heteropathy unmistakably often finds its terrible vent
in the violence of husbands and wives, and of parents,
step-parents and schoolmasters, to children. Carefully
scanning the police reports, it will be seen that the rage
of the criminal (usually half-drunk and guided by in
stinct alone) is excited by the precise objects which
would wring his heart with pity had he attained the
stage of genuine Sympathy. The group of shivering
and starving children and weeping wife is the sad sight
which, greeting the eyes of the husband and father reel
ing home from the gin-shop, somehow kindles fury in
his breast. If the baby cry in its cradle, he stamps on
it ; if his wife wring her hands in despair and implore
him to give her bread for their children, he fells her
with his fist, or perhaps (as in a recent notorious case)
holds her on the fire till she is burned past recovery.
Again, as regards the no less horrible crime of cruelty
practised by both men and women (especially as step
parents) upon children, it may be always observed
that from the moment in which an unfortunate little
creature has fallen behind its brothers and sisters in
physical or mental strength, or received an unjustly

THE SOCIAL SI.NTIMF.NT. 1ST

severe punishment, from thenceforth its weakness and
sobs, its crouch i n LJ ;uid timid demeanour, and at last its
attenuated frame and joyless young face (the very sights
"which almost break a compassionate heart to behold),
prove only provocations to its natural guardians to fresh
outrage and chastisement. The feebler and more miser
able the child grows, the more malignant is the Iletero-
pathy of its persecutors, till the neighbours (often so
criminally inert !) wonder " what has come to them" to
behave so barbarously. The truth is that here, in the
yet lingering shades of the old savage passion, we find
the explanation of a familiar but most hideous mystery
in our nature, the fact that Cruelty grows by what it
feeds on ; that the more a tyrant causes his victim to
suffer, the more he hates him, and revels in the si.uht
of his anguish. Beside the deep-seated sting of self-
reproach, which has been generally supposed to goad
tin- cruel man to hate those whom lie lias injured (just
as self-complacency makes the philanthropist love the
t of his beneficence), the cruel person is always
la-hed by his own Heteiopathy to hate his victim
exactly in proportion to his sufferings. The boor who
has, perhaps almost unconsciously, struck some wivtrhrd
woman who bears his burdens, gxowfl
her bleed or faint, and repeats the, blow with redoubled
violence, till the moment comes in which IK; sullenly
recogni/es that the object of his rage can sufl.-r no D

•! his passion instantly collapses and he seems to
waken out of a dream. Just in a parallel way in the

188 THE EVOLUTION OF

higher walks of life, moral cruelty develops itself in
proportion as the victim betrays the anguish caused by
cutting words and unkind acts ; and receives its check
only when a real or feigned indifference shields the suf
fering heart from further wounds.

If we go yet a step further, and note the emotions
raised in the breast of men of the ruder sort at the sight
of the pain and death of animals, there can be little doubt
that the existence of thoroughly savage Heteropathy may
often be traced among the cruelties of slaughter-houses,
whale and seal fisheries, bull-fights and dog-fights, and
even among many field sports of a better kind.

The rudimentary form of reflex emotion where it
concerns Pleasure is somewhat more difficult to trace
than where it meets with Pain. The Envy* candidly

* The Chinese, to justify the sentiment, have framed the inge
nious theory that there exists only a fixed quantity of happiness
for mankind to partake, and that consequently when A is happy,
B is authorized to consider himself defrauded. The late amiable
and gifted statesman, Cavaliere Massimo d'Azeglio, who had sin
gularly favourable opportunities for comparing English and Italian
public life, remarked to the writer, that " Invidia" unhappily
pervaded Italian politics to a degree almost inconceivable to an
Englishman. Even a success, he said, such as a battle gained or
a powerful speech made in the Chamber, was a source of danger
to a Minister, owing to the enmity it excited even among his own
parti/ans. In France, the immense success of the insurance offices
is attributed to the value of their plaques, placed prominently on a
house, as a protection against malicious arson ; and in Normandy,
of very recent years, the inhabitants of several districts have
adopted the use of tiles, instead of thatch, avowedly to save them
selves from the dangers arising from the envy of neighbours and
relatives.

THE SOCIAL SF.NTIMF.NT. 189

exhibited by children, .animals and savages, as before
remarked, is carefully veiled in civilized and adult life ;
but undoubtedly it prevails everywhere to an extent
sadly inimical to the existence of genuine reflected
Pleasure. For reasons to be hereafter stated, however,
it would appear that the development of true Sympathy
with Pleasure precedes chronologically that of similar
Sympathy with Pain.

Starting now from the position, which I hope may
have been sufficiently established, that the earliest re
flected emotion is not sympathetic Pain with Pain, nor
yet Pleasure with Pleasure, but heteropathic Resentment
towards Pain, and Displeasure towards Pleasure, — our
next task is to attempt to define the stages by which
these crude and cruel emotions pass into the tender and
beneficent sentiment. That this transition is n»»t only
exceedingly slow, but also altogether irregular, is obvimis
at first sight. There are two things to be accomplished
simultaneously — the sentiment itself must alter its < -ha-
racter from cruel to kind; and secondly, having Ix-rmnn
kind, it mii-t extend its inlluence, according to Pope's
beautiful simile, in evrr-\vidniing circles,

"As a small pebble stirs som.- ju-a.-rful l;ikc."

Practically, we find that the sentiment is always un
equally developed in character, and also extended in an
erratic and unaccountable manner, not at all in sym-
metric Circles, 1-ut in inv-ular pnlyg»ins with which no
geometry uf the aikutiuns can deal. Nay, there \\uuld

190 THE EVOLUTION OF

appear to be almost insuperable difficulties in the way
of a simultaneous development in warmth, and in ex
panse, of sympathy. He who feels passionately for his
friends, rarely embraces the wider range of social and
national interests ; and he who extends his philanthropy
to whole classes and continents, too often proves inca
pable of that strong individual love of which the poet
could boast,

" Which, like an indivisible glory, lay
On both our souls, and dwelt in us
As we did dwell in it ;"

the most beautiful sentiment in human nature, and the
most blessed joy — next to the joy of Divine love — in
human life.*

How the destructive and cruel instincts began of old to
modify themselves, is naturally a very obscure problem,
on which even Mr. Bagehot's ingenious and valuable
speculations regarding the early crystallization of society
can throw little light. The process of amelioration must
have advanced considerably even before a Polity, in any
sense, can have existed. From the first, the human
mother, like the mother-bird and brute, no doubt felt
" compassion for the son of her womb," even though her
pity lamentably failed to prevent her concurrence in

* That it is not impossible, though singularly rare, for a man
to unite the character of an ardent philanthropist with that of a
most affectionate husband, father and friend, will be readily con
ceded by the many who mourn the recent death of Matthew
Davenport Hill.

THE SOCIAL SENTIMENT. 101

infanticide in the cases most calling for that compassion.
From the tenderness of mothers must have radiated, as
from a focus, the protective instincts in each family ; the
father sharing them in a secondary degree. In the
earliest savage state, except for such parental love, those
affections defined by the Schoolmen as the Complacent,
as distinguished from the Benevolent, must have had it
all their own way. The man loved the persons whu
ministered to his pleasure, not those who called on him
for self-sacrifice. Still, even through such wholly selli-h
love, we must suppose him to have begun to realize in
his dim imagination the pain he witnessed in a beloved
person, and, having once figured it as his own, to have

ided the sufferer with softened feelings. Fossil. ly
in some cases this newly-born emotion may at once
have taken the shape of helpful Sympathy. The "brave
who saw his companion wounded may have carried him
off the field, ]i lucked out the spear-head from his MoV,
or quenched his burning thirst with water. More often,
and as a general rule, however, it may be suspected that
a lonur interval has taken place alter the dotnu-tive,

met is checked before the protective one arises ; and
in tin- interval the emotion exhibited is that which I
shall class as the second in the development of the
feelings — namely, Acerswn.

Pursuing mir method of seeking illu>trati<>ns from the
animal world, we find that several of the gentler 1>:
and such as have seemed to receive some influence from
the Companionship Of civili/ed man, very often display

192 THE EVOLUTION OF

this Aversion to their sick and suffering companions.
They forsake and shun them, instead of goring or tearin^
them to pieces. Among such species, the diseased crea
ture itself is so well aware of the instincts of its kind,
that without waiting to be " sent to Coventry," it shrinks
into some out-of-the-way corner to hide its misery from
their unfeeling eyes, though in the very same distress it
will seek out a human friend and deliberately call his
attention to its sad state, obviously with full confidence
that he will gladly afford relief.

Just in the same way young children very often testify
Aversion to grown people of mournful aspect, or who
bear the traces of suffering on their features. As a gene
ral rule, they shrink from the sight of pain, and run from
it to hide their faces in their mothers' lap. A little girl
brought to visit a lady whom she had been accustomed
to see strong and active, but who had become a cripple,
burst into a passion of tears at the sight of her crutches,
and could not be persuaded to approach or look at her
again. Perhaps few of us even in after life could boast
that we have wholly outgrown this phase of feeling, and
that we invariably experience the impulse of the Sama
ritan, and not that of the Levite or the Priest, when any
specially deplorable spectacle lies by the side of our way.
Certainly the pleasure-loving nations of the South of
Europe have by no means arrived at such a stage of pro
gress, but habitually abandon even the house wherein
father or mother, wife, brother or child, is lying in life's
last piteous struggle, aided only by the muttered prayers

THE SO. 1IMKNT. 193

of the prie<t at the l»ed-foot, and without a loving hand
to wipe the death-sweat from the brow, or a human
breast on which to rest the fainting head. That the
childish tears of Italians concerning infection from such
diseases as consumption has something to do with this
shameful cowardice (prevalent under all circumstances
and in every class, from the highest to the lowest,
throughout the Peninsula) may be probable. And that
the monopoly of religious consolation by the Romish
priesthood, and their jealousy of all lay interference
with the position into which they thrust themselves
between each soul and its Maker, has encouraged and
sanctioned it till it has become an indisputable custom,
there can be little doubt. Nevertheless, we have assur
edly here, among one of the most gifted and warm
hearted of nations, an illustration on the largest scale ..f
the fact I am endeavouring to bring forward, namely,
that Aversion to the suffering and dying is an Emotion
having a place in the historical development of human
t'-eling, no less marked than the Heteropathy which
preceded it.

If my theory of development be correct, this senti
ment of Aversion must at a certain sta^e of progress
have been the prevailing one, and perhaps I shall do
no injustice to Mr. Gladstone's dearly-loved Homeric
Greeks if I surmise that they had approximately reached
that era, and stood, in the matter of sentiment, about,
halt-way between the pre-hi.tm ic Murage and the Kn^lish
'gentleman. Amon^ the Inn, in-, Phfloctetee would have

194 THE EVOLUTION OF

been speared or stoned to death. Had he lived in our
time and served on those same shores in British ranks, he
would have been tenderly conveyed to a hospital, and
a band of high-born ladies from his native land would
have traversed the seas to nurse him. The actual com
rades of Philoctetes took, or (what comes to the same
thing) are represented by their poets as taking, neither
one course nor the other. They felt Aversion to their
miserable companion in his horrible suffering, and accord
ingly banished him to Lemnos, where even Sophocles is
content to represent him howling over his anguish and
desertion as quite in the natural order of things.

Throughout the whole millennium before the birth
of Christ, we may dimly discern among the nations of
East and West the struggle which was going forward.
If Aversion were probably the predominant sentiment
towards distress, Sympathy was beginning to work
freely, and Heteropathy still remained as a stupendous
power. The most ancient literature — the Eig-Veda, the
Zend-Avesta and the Hebrew Scriptures — reaches back
to no period before Sympathy was in full exercise, and
had received the solemn sanction of religion. Among
the Hebrews (or perhaps, in the special case, we must
say the Chaldaeans), the sense of Sympathy with pain
and misfortune reigned at all events as early as the
days of Job, whose friends, unlike those of Philoctetes,
flocked ostensibly to mourn with him, albeit their sym
pathy was injudiciously expressed, and bears some tokens
of that disposition to add moral to physical suffering

THE SOCIAL SENTIMENT. 195

which is a refined form of Heteropathy. It took several
centuries more before Euripides, the most sentimental
of the Greeks, could go so far as to say,

" Tis unbecoming not to shed a tear
Over the wretched. He too is devoid
Of virtue who abounds in wealth, yet scruples
Through sordid Avarice to relieve his wants."*

And, on the other hand, Hebrews and Heathens alike
believed that the opposite sentiment of Heteropathy
towards the sufferings of enemies was divinely sanctioned,
and that, in a word, the principle to be acted upon was,
" Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy."
Few modern readers can have failed to remark the
extraordinary share which those "enemies," against
whom it was lawful to pray, seem to take in the con
cerns of the Psalmists ; and perhaps to have wondered
whether the thoughts of any men of similar piety and
exalted feeling in these days are ever occupied in the
like way.

Among the Gentile nations no subjects of art seem to
have pleased the Assyrians and Egyptians better than
the impalings and flayings of captives, — cruelties which,
had they been committed by a modern army, would
certainly not have been reproduced in painting or sculp
ture. A great revolution in feeling must have occurred
between the ages when Sennacherib and Rameses desired
to be immortalized in connection with such atrocities,

* Antiope.
o 2

196 THE EVOLUTION OF

and that when Marcus Aurelius chose that his magni
ficent equestrian statue on the Capitoline Hill should
represent him in the act of protecting his captives from
the violence of his Legions.

Not only Art, but the very Language of the ancient
world, preserves the traces of the cruel Heteropathy of
old, as the rocks the fossil teeth of the Saurians,

" Which tare each other in their slime."

It shocks us to imagine the disciple of Socrates, " whose
benevolence," as Xenophon wonderingly remarks, " even
extended to all mankind/' wandering amid the groves of
the Academy discussing all the loftiest themes of human
thought, and at the same time talking incidentally of
€TTiXaLPfKaK^a as °f an every-day and familiar passion.
Yet this was the case even in " sacred Athens," where

" near the fane
Of Wisdom, Pity's altar stood,"

an altar which Demonax said would need to be over
thrown were the cruel Eoman Games to be introduced
into the city. Between " rejoicing in the misfortunes of
others" and enjoying a gladiatorial show, there was not
much to choose in the way of sympathetic emotion.

Passing from Greece to Kome, we find the whole
population, at the close of the Republic and the era of
the Caesars, mad with enthusiasm for the exhibitions,
held in every town in the empire, of men killing one
another by scores or thrown to be devoured by beasts.
Marvellous is the story that the very same populace

THE SOCIAL SENTIMENT. 197

which clamoured for these "circenses" as for bread,
fill. -.1 the theatre with shouts of applause when Terence
first gave expression to that sense of the claims of all
human beings to Sympathy which 1ms since played so
! a part in the history of our race :

•• Homo sum, human! nihil a me alienum puto."

Something within those stony Roman breasts echoed,
like Memnon's statue, to the kindling rays of the rising
sun. But we should deceive ourselves widely if we
imagined that anything resembling our sense of the
claims of human brotherhood was then, or for ages after
wards, commonly understood. The precept of Sextius
tin- Pythagorean (preserved by Stobseus) — " Count your
self the care-taker of all men under God" — is almost an
anachronism still, it we place the author in the Augustan
age, and critically incredible at the earlier date when
it was formerly supposed to have been written. The
current feeling of the contemporaries of Cato and Cicero,
Tacitus and Pliny, received no shock from the most
hideous cruelties, hourly practised on slaves and captives
of war: nor did there then exist in Europe a single
hospital for the sick, or asylum for the destitute, the
blind, or tin- insane; the first institution of tin- kind
known in history being a hospital, built in the til'th
century in -Jerusalem, for monks driven mad by asceti-
Gigm, and <>ne of the next earliest, a Foundling hospital
Opened in Milan in TS'.l. ( )j--ani/ed Cruelly was in
full turd-, but 01 • hunt} Vftfl yet unknown; and

198 THE EVOLUTION OF

the wealthy Herodes Atticus, the proto-philanthropist,
found no better way to display his beneficence than by
building the splendid theatre whose ruins still crumble
in the shadow of the Athenian Acropolis.

And here we fall on the natural explanation of a fact
mentioned a few pages ago. The Emotion of Pleasure
in another's Pleasure, though usually fainter than the
parallel sympathy with Pain, seems to have been histo
rically the soonest developed, — at all events, among the
sunny-spirited nations of the South with whom classic
history is concerned. The Greeks and Eomans "re
joiced with those who did rejoice," much sooner and
more readily than they " wept with those who wept."
" Vse victis!" the vulture-shriek of Heteropathy, echoes
through the night of time across the arenas where
slaughtered gladiators, and Christians mangled by the
lions, made the " glory of a Eoman holiday." But even
that hideous triumph may be interpreted as in some
sort the expression of Sympathy felt for the successful
swordsman or for the ravenous wild beast. The pain
(if any could be said to exist) of beholding so pitiful a
sight as that which the statue of the Dying Gladiator
recalls, or the still worse horror of watching a tiger's
carnival, was lost to the fierce Eoman heart in the joy
of triumph with the victor. Is all this utterly incon
ceivable to us ? The bull-fights of Spain exhibit to the
present day precisely analogous phenomena ! The spec
tacle of a miserable horse gored to death and dragged
along, leaving his entrails strewed across the arena, has

THE SOCIAL SKNTIMENT. 199

been witnessed scores of times with supreme indifference
by men and women, noble and imperial, engrossed by
sympathetic delight in the skill of the Toreador, or even
in the courage of the poor maddened bull, whose dying
agony afforded the next instant's pleasure.

Even in our own field-sports, whence cruelty has been
eliminated to the uttermost, the most tender-hearted of
fox-hunters and fowlers tell us that they sympathize so
much with the hounds that they have no time to feel
for the fox ; and share so keenly the pleasure of their
pointers in a day on the moors that the brief death-
pa 11^3 of the grouse are unnoticed. In the earlier ages,
it would seem as if Pleasure in the Pleasure of others,
particularly in the Pleasure of Victory, always outran
Pain in the Pain of the vanquished. It asked the deeper
sentiment of the "dark and true and tender North," the
tenderness breathed all through Christianity from the
spirit of its Founder, perchance even the accumulated
experience of suffering ploughing deep through genera
tions into the race, as a single experience ploughs up
and makes soft the individual heart, — it needed all these
to enable men to feel other men's Pain as their own.

Be it also borne in mind, that Sympathy with Pleasure
Usually demanding Of IN far less sacrifice than Sympathy
with Tain (indeed generally demanding no sacrifice at
all), obtains its way, necessarily, sooner than the senti
ment whi«-h imiM rise hiL'h enough to compel self-sacri
fice before it becomes manifest. The proverhial readiness
of Englishmen to espouse the weaker cause, implies more

200 THE EVOLUTION OF

stringent as well as nobler emotion than the spaniel-like
readiness of slavish races to attack the beaten and side
with the strong. Of course such heroism, like every
other good deed, brings its reward in a fresh sense of
sympathy towards those who have been protected. The
roots of the tree of human love are nourished by the
fallen leaves of kind actions which sprung from its
heart, and have long dropped and been forgotten.

While the slow progress above described was going
on, a singular limitation may be observed among those
to whom Sympathy was extended. Among the indu
bitable results of recent ethnological research, is the
discovery that in early times, and to this day among
savages, such affectionate sentiments and notions of moral
obligation as are yet developed are entirely confined to
the tribe. Beyond the tribe, robbery, plunder, rape and
assassination, are never understood to be offences, and
are frequently considered as meritorious ; much as tiger-
shooting is deemed laudable and public-spirited among
ourselves. There is a line of circumvallation outside
of which kindly feeling does not extend, and the moral
obligations which concern such feelings are consequently
not imagined to apply. Within the line there is brother
hood, and certain recognized rules of action, rising by
degrees from the mere prohibition of perfidy, murder
and adultery, to the inculcation of truth and helpfulness,
extending to the very borders of communism. Outside
the line all the while, the "Gentile," the "Barbarian,"
the man of alien blood, is not merely less considered (as

THE SOCIAL SKNTIMKNT. -<'l

is the case between ourselves and foreigners), but has
actually no statics at all, either as regards feeling or duty-
The step over this barrier of race, when it begins to be
taken, is an enormous stride; and we may see how it
te.lt as such even by the writers of the New Testa
ment. This subject, however, is far too large to be here
treated otherwise than by briefest indication. No doubt
the union of the known world in one empire in the
Augustan age helped to give birth to the great idea of a
common Humanity, with universal claims to Sympathy,
which, as I have remarked, at that time first arose. The
simile of the Body and its members occurred alike to
St. Paul and to Cicero* to express the mutual suffering
of men in the woes of their kind ; and from thenceforth
the enthusiasm of Humanity may be said to have been
kindled, though as yet but a spark.

15ut from the hour that the idea of a common Hu
manity with universal claims dawned on the minds of
men, the question, "Who is Human?" appears to have
arisen; just as the Pharisee, when commanded to "love
his nei-hhonr," a-ked, " Who is my neighbour ?" From
that distant date, till the day, not yet a decade ago,
when the Supreme Court of the United States decreed
that '• not a Man u i id. -r the, terms of the

Constitution," then i, a ceaseless effort to shut

out inferior and inimical races from the title which was
Irk to euiTv with it the claims of brotherhood In the
«ric and rarlic-t historic times, the basis was

* DC Uii.

202 THE EVOLUTION OF

laid for a great many of the prejudices which survive
even yet. When the tall fair races invaded Europe and
drove the short and dark-haired ones into remote moun
tains and caves, then began the legends of the Giants
and the Dwarfs, each regarding the other as nan-human,
and fit objects of hatred and all manner of perfidy and
injury. To the tall race, their predecessors were Pigmies
and Gnomes, engaged in mysterious arts of metallurgy
in the bowels of the hills. To the short race, their lusty
conquerors were Monsters, Cyclopes, Giants, ever ready
to slay them with clubs, and perchance devour them
limb by limb. Wonderful is it to reflect that the stories
embodying these primeval passions of fear and hatred
have actually borne down to us in their course, through
the traditions of thousands of years, so much of their
original sentiment, that every child amongst us to this
hour entertains the belief that it is quite right and
proper to play perfidious tricks on a Dwarf; and that
the sanguinary achievements of Jack the Giant-killer,
Jack of the Bean-stalk and Tom Thumb, against the
most unoffending Giants, were altogether laudable and
glorious ! Which of our readers (we beg to ask the
question with due seriousness) can even in adult years
lay his hand on his heart and say he should feel any
moral or sentimental objection to murdering a "Giant"
in cold blood, or running a red-hot stake into his soli
tary eye ? As to Ogres, the case is worse. If those
archaeologists be right who say that the word is the
same as Hogres, Hongres, Hungarians, Huns, we have

THE ROCIM. SINTIMENT. 203

here, in the full daylight of History, a peculiarly noble
European race actually transformed by the imagination
of their neighbours into such preternaturally horrible
monsters, that even our uncharitable feelings towards
Giants fade into mildness beside our animosity towards
an Ogre !

As our own ancestors felt towards the earlier races of
Europe, as the old Vedic Aryans felt to the Dasyus
(their dark-skinned enemies), as the Mazdiesnans of
Zoroaster felt to the Touranians, so, it would seem,
existing savage tribes still feel to races far apart from
their own in blood, but having neighbouring habitations.
Among numerous anecdotes illustrative of such senti
ments, none are more horrible than those which tell of
the hatred of the Red Men for the Esquimaux. A case
is recorded where a tribe of the former travelled two or
three hundred miles over the snow for the sole purpose
of destroying a village of the inoffensive Esquimaux,
with whom they had no quarrel, and who possessed no
property worth their robbery. As a dog kills a rat, so do
such races destroy each other under an impulse of pure
hatred, which perhaps had its origin in the Heteroputhy
of conquering generations ages before. Probably in its
earlier stages every nation now existing has thus had
letested "Canaanite" dwelling on tin- ImnU-rs of the
land, and credited with every inhuman vice and crime.*

* "The almost physical loath in- whirl, a j.rimitivr community
feels for in. -n «•!' wi.l.-ly .litl'nvnt manm-i- iV-in iN «>\\n. n.-ually
--••- it^, If by describing lh»-iu a, mongers, such ad ^iai

204 THE EVOLUTION OF

Parallel and nearly contemporaneously with the idea
of a common Humanity, arose the idea of a common
Christianity, forming the bond of still more sacred
mutual Sympathy. It would be to re-write the history
of the last eighteen centuries to record how this new
impulse has drawn together the hearts of men in two
fold fashion. Inwardly, the deeper spiritual life which
then was awakened, and with it the peculiarly softening
influence of penitence, must have effected much ; while
the apotheosis of Suffering in the ever-recurrent emblem
of the Cross cannot have failed (as Mr. Lecky eloquently
describes it) to have trained to sentiments of compassion
the rough races who substituted it for the images of
Thor and Woden, or of Mars and Zeus. Outwardly, a
welding no less obvious has been effected by the organi
zation of a "Christendom" begun among all the tender
associations of the little band in the " upper chamber,"
and continued through ages " when the disciples had all
things in common," and in those wherein they endured
together the Ten Persecutions ; and finally completed
in the era when antagonism with Islam united all the
Christian nations in the Crusades. A similar, though
perhaps less forcible, influence of the outward kind was
meanwhile effected outside the Christian camp, among
the nations which accepted the creed of Mahomet, whose
levelling tendency (like that of Buddhism) has probably

even (as is almost always the case in Oriental mytholo-
demons. Tin- (V.-lops is Homer's type of an alien."— Maine's
Ancient Law, p. 1 -2'>.

Tin: SOCIAL SENTIMENT. 205

ly less aided the growth of mutual sympathies
among its disciples, than the presentation of a common
Object of worship and the direct inculcation of mercy
and beneficence. As the present condition of India un
happily exemplifies, Caste is of all barriers the most
insurmountable to the sympathies of mankind. All the
great religions of the East, however, and pre-eminently
Zoroastrianism and IJuddhism, have contributed impor
tantly to the nourishment of the sympathetic affections,
by stamping them with approval and condemning any
manifestation of the opposite sentiments. When men
in each nation have risen so high as to recognize the
Benevolence of God, they have always embodied that
truth in creeds, win -re in God is represented as com
manding men to be benevolent ; and these crystal! i/ed
creeds have acted with compact and persistent force oq
the future development of the benevolent affections. In
each case, we must needs account in the first plaee,
outside of conscious or recognized religious influem «•>,
and in tin- region of the secret Divine education of the
race, for the development of those social sentiments
which, as all ethnology proves, an- not in the eaii

understood to have any connection with the wor
ship of the unseen Powers.

Returning to the history of such t'e<-lin<_^ in ChiM
dom, we find that, just as the title of "Human" was
refund to inimieul races as soon as a common Humanity
was understood to convey the ri.u'ht to sympathy, so the
claim of ( 'hnViian Urotln-rhood was still more jeali >u^ly

206 THE EVOLUTION OF

refused to all outside the pale of the Catholic Church.
Pity for Jews, Turks, Infidels or Heretics, there was
little or none during all the ages wherein that great
Church maintained its unity unbroken. To torture the
Jew, to slay the Saracen, and to burn the Heretic, were
actions not only laudable (as the primitive savage
thought it laudable to slay the enemies of his tribe),
but religiously obligatory. The Church had taken the
place of the Tribe, and the feelings it inspired and sanc
tioned were even more vivid, alike for good and for
evil

At last the Reformation came, and with it fresh ques
tionings as to whom the fold of Christian Brotherhood
should include. The Protestants — themselves outside
the pale of Roman fraternity — found Quakers, Socinians
and Anabaptists, to exclude from their own ; and still
further off, a hundred thousand hapless witches and
wizards to thrust beyond the limits even of Humanity.
At last the fires of Hate and Fear died down, and for a
century and a half true Sympathy has been permitted
to grow up amongst us comparatively unchecked. The
result is, that the sense of Christian Brotherhood has
perhaps more force amongst us than ever before, while
the Enthusiasm of Humanity (extending far and ex
perienced intensely, altogether beyond the bounds of
the Churches) has risen to the height when a passion
becomes self-conscious, and receives baptism, evermore
to take its place among the recognized sentiments of our
race. If a barrier to perfect sympathy among men be

THE SOCIAL SENTIMENT. 207

now anywhere left, standing, we acknowledge unani
mously that it is a blot on our civilization, and, so fur
from being in accordance with our religion, is in defiance
thereof.

From destructive Heteropathy to negative Aversion,
and thence to positive and helpful Sympathy, such has
been the progress in the character of the Emotion I have
now endeavoured to trace from the dawn of history till
the present time. From the Tribe to the Nation, to the
Human Race, to the whole sentient Creation — such has
been the progress in extension of that Sympathy as it
gradually developed itself. Neither line of progress is
yet nearly completed. Much Heteropathy still lingers
amongst us. Aversion to the suffering and miserable is
even yet a common sentiment ; and our Sympathy, such
as it is, might be far warmer and better sustained. Nor
is the lateral expansion of our fellow-feeling any way uni
form or co-extensive with our knowledge. There must
of course, from the limitations of our natures, be always
a more vivid emotion raised by a neighbouring than by
a remote catastrophe. None but He who is alila; near
to all can sympatlii/c with all alike. But, making ei
allowance for the inevitable partialities of nationality
and neighbourhood, and the comparatively easy compre
hension of the joys and sorrows of persons of our own
age, race and class, it would seem that there is yet givat
room for further and more equable development. Along
every plane on which our feelings run, tli«-y as yet come
short. In the first place, even as regards local and

208 THE EVOLUTION OF

national extension, the just proportion between the near
and the remote, the concerns of our countrymen and
those of others, is very far from being represented by
the various degrees of interest manifested by the British
public when it reads of the burning of a warehouse in
London, or the conflagration of a city in America ; of a
boat upset on the Isis, or of the suffocation of the whole
crew of a Chinese junk ; of a breeze off the Goodwins,
or of a hurricane in Bengal ; of a scarcity of water in a
Kentish village, or of the depopulation of whole pro
vinces by famine in Persia.

Secondly, it is not only geographically and laterally
that our sympathies fail in extension, but also, and much
more emphatically, perpendicularly (if we may so express
it), through the various strata of society. Our class-
sympathies (especially at both ends of the scale) are as
strong as our national sympathies, and, more than they,
need to be widened. The high-born Englishman feels
more akin to the German, Italian or Eussian noble than
to the small tradesman or peasant of his own country; and
the rise of the perilous International affords singular proof
how far the working classes are beginning to feel their
cosmopolitan class-sympathies over-ride their patriot
ism. A great deal, however, has been done during this
century, on the other hand, towards the breaking down
of the barriers which limited the more tender emotions
to different ranks. Free and cordial association is far
more common everywhere, and the failure to sympa
thize outside of a man's own class is now (as it ought

THE SOCIAL SKNTIMENT. 209

to be) more often noticeable among the uneducated or
half-educated than the cultured.

The literature of two generations past recalls the yet
recent period when anything like " sentiment" was sup
posed to be the exclusive attribute of well-born and
well-mannered people, and when no novelist would
have dreamed of asking for sympathy in the woes of
any " common person." There were gentlemen, indeed,
of whom Tremaine was the archetype, and ladies, who
lived on air and ^Eolian harps, and there were jilso
beggars and shepherdesses ; but of the intermediate
classes of cotton-spinners, clerks, bakers, iromnon
bricklayers, needlewomen and housemaids, it had never
entered into anybody's head in the pre-Dickens age that
anything affecting could be written. Even Shakespeare
himself had looked, like a born aristocrat, not unkindly
but somewhat jestingly, at such subjects; and though
we cannot doubt that in real life there must have been
far more of mutual sympathy than books betray, it is
:ably certain there was infinitely less readiness to
feel for vulgar sorrows and rejoice in homely joys than,
thank ( lod ! is now to be found amongst us. The writers
who have helped us to this tenderer feeling for human
nature under its less refined forms, — writers suel
I>i<kens and Mrs. Gaskell and Mrs. Stowe, — deserve
even more honour than those who, like Miss Bremer
and d'Azeglio and George Sand and Ilichter, have aid. d
us to sympathize with the inner life of other nations.

There yet remain to be. noticed other directions in

210 THE EVOLUTION OF

which our sympathies extend themselves very irregu
larly. As a general rule, the tenderest of all feelings
are those between persons of opposite sexes, and the
differences which exist, so far from diminishing sym
pathy, probably often enhance it. Nevertheless, the
position of women in the East, and even in Europe,
offers irrefragable evidence that, with all their lavish
affection, men have not, on the whole, been able to
sympathize with women as with one another. They
have been ready enough to indulge their pleasure-loving
propensities, their vanity and their indolence ; but those
nobler aspirations after instruction and usefulness which
many of them must always have shewn (aspirations
which men remark with the most ardent and helpful
sympathy when displayed by boys) have rarely touched
them in women. No man will give his son a stone
when he asks for bread ; but thousands of men have
given their daughters diamonds when they prayed for
books, and coiled the serpents of dissipation and vanity
round their necks when they needed the wholesome
food of beneficent employment.

On the other hand, though women cannot be accused
of any general want of sympathy with men, yet they
too bestow it often in a weak and unworthy manner,
rejoicing in their lower pleasures and suffering with
their lower pains, but having little fellow-feeling with
their loftier aims, or regrets for their sadder failures.
"Kosamond Vincy" would have doubtless shed abun
dant tears over Lydgate's misfortune had he broken his

THE SOCIAL SF.XTIMKNT. 211

ana. She had not a sigh to give to his shattered aspi
rations.

And yet, again, beside the imperfect sympathy of
men and women for each other, there is very commonly
failure in the sympathy of both for children. With all
the fondness of parents and relatives, numberless poor
little creatures pass through the spring-time of life ex
posed to very nipping winds, so far as their feelings are
concerned, though perhaps all the time mentally and
physically precociously forced in a hot-bed of high cul
ture. Because their pains are mere childish pains, we
find it hard to pity them ; and their little pleasures,
because they are so simple, seem only to deserve from
us a patronizing smile, or the warning " not to be fool Mi
and excited," which often quenches the joyous little
spirit most effectually. But, as St. Augustine truly
says, the boy's sufferings while they last are quite as
r<-;il as those of the man ; indeed, few of us have troubles
much worse even now, than punishment and heavy tasks.
And as to the pleasures of those young years when all
earth seemed Paradise, and every sense was an inlet of
tiv>h drlJLiht, — may we not vainly look round for cause
for equal sympathy in tin- happiness of an adult com
panion such as we may find in that of the child playing
in the meadow with its cowslip ball, or shouting with
ecstacy as its kite soars into the blue summer heaven ?
Hateful is it to reflect that to many a world-worn heart
amongst us the spectacle of such pure joy, instead of
awakening that sense of "Pleasure in Pleasure" whi<-h

212 THE EVOLUTION OF

we flatter ourselves is our habitual sentiment, not seldom
calls up, on the contrary, an ugly emotion much more
partaking of the character of Heteropathy, and provoking
us to check the exuberance of the child's delight by some
harsh word or peremptory prohibition.

One more observation, and this part of my subject
may close. Not only do our sympathies require to be
more equally extended as regards nations, classes, sexes
and ages, but there is sore need that they should spread
outside the human race among the tribes of sentient
creatures who lie beneath us and at our mercy. The
great ideas of a common Humanity and a common Chris
tianity, which were at first such noble extensions of family
and national sympathies, have long acted as limitations
thereof. To this hour in all Eomish countries, the sneer,
"You talk as if the brute were a Christian/' or the
simple statement, " Non e Cristiano" is understood to
dispose finally of a remonstrance against overloading a
horse, skinning a goat alive, or plucking the quills of a
living fowl. The present benevolent Pope answered, a
few years ago, the request to found a Society for Pre
vention of Cruelty in Rome, by the formal response
(officially delivered through Lord Odo Russell), "that
such an Association could not be sanctioned by the
Holy See, being founded on a Theological error, to wit,
that Christians owed any duties to Animals." Similarly,
the limitation of sympathy to Humanity caused English
moralists of the last century to argue deliberately, that
the evil of cruelty to the lower creatures lay solely in

T:IK SOCIAL SI-NTIMKNT. 213

the fact that it injured the finer feelings — the lumianity
— of the men who were guilty of it. Even to this hour
it is not rare to hear in cultivated society the fiendish
practice of vivisection condemned or excused by refer
ence solely to the hardening of the sentiments of young
surgeons, or the benefits which may remotely accrue to
some hypothetical human sufferer, the cause of whose
disease may, just possibly, be elucidated thereby.*

Surveying the position in which we now stand, after
reviewing the long progress of the ages, there is much
at which to rejoice for the present, much more to hope
for the future. The human heart seems more tender
than it has been heretofore ; and if so, the gain is one
to which all the triumphs of science and art are small
in comparison. Our sympathies are yet very imperfect
and very unequally distributed. To one of us, Physical

* "Tin- horrors <»f vivisection, often so wantonly ami so i
lt--Iy pra< ti-ed" iln- .»,/,!/. //,//./ vivontm which tin- heathen (VNus
]••]'!' ,\i-«l a- too inhuimin to In- perpetrated) — w the prolonged and
atro.ioiis torture- -onietimes inflicted in order In procure some
Momic drli.-aey. UN M lar ivm< 'Ved IVoin tin- puMic ^a/e that
tln-y exerciM little inihu n« e on the characters of men. Yet no
liuniane man ran ivIl.-.-t on them willmut a sluul.ler. To l.rin^

itliin the range of nliies to create tin- notion of

»liitie~ touard- the animal World, ha- i Chri.-tian

roiint Deemed, on.- of the peculiar nn-rit- ..f the l.i-t cen-

turv, and tor tin- nio-t p.ut of li -..ti-lant nations. MahonietaiiH
and Jiiahmins lia\x- in this >jiheiv con.-ideiaM\ >ui-pa-M-d the.
( 'hi i.-tian-. and Spain and Italy, in which ( 'atholi, i-m ha.- ino-t
deej.ly 1'lanted it- roots, an- .-\. n now j.rol,;il.ly l-evoiid all other
• Muntrie- tlio-«- in which inhumanity to anim.d- i- nn-t wanton
and nio-t iinivl.ukeil."— -Km-"; -. 11. p. 1

214 THE EVOLUTION OF

Pain appeals most forcibly; to another, Want; to another,
Ignorance. Some of us feel for the sorrows of the aged,
some for the helplessness of infancy. One can weep
with the mourner, another can joy with the happy.
Mental doubts and anguish touch minds which have
known their agony, and the aspirations after Knowledge
and Beauty those which have felt their noble thirst.
Some of us feel intensely for human troubles, and others
again are full of compassion for the harmless brutes, and
feel keenly the

" Sorrow for the horse o'erdriven,
And love in which the dog has part."

But all these various hues of the same gentle sentiment
have their natural explanation in the experience or the
idiosyncrasy of those who display them ; and if they act
only as special stimulants to activity, and not as limita
tions of it, they are innocent and even beneficial. Such
as they are, also, these inequalities in the distribution
of our sympathies tend constantly to reduce themselves
to a minimum, seeing that, in every direction, one tender
emotion leads imperceptibly to another. We cannot
help the child without helping the parent, nor educate
the mind without feeding the body, nor in any way
cultivate the habit of noting and relieving the wants of
others without causing the full tide of our outflowing
charity to rise beyond any bounds which we may at
first have assigned to it.

In point of strength, we cannot doubt that in our
time, in spite of the supposed materialism and selfishness

THE SOCIAL SENTIMENT. 215

of the age,* Sympathy has acquired in thousands of
generous hearts a very high development indeed. It
affords the mainspring of life to a whole army of phi
lanthropists, statesmen, clergymen, sisters of charity, and
many more of whom the world never hears. Did the
laws of nature permit one person to take the physical
pains of another, there would be a constant struggle as
to which should bear each wound, each deformity, and
each disease. Especially among women, in whom this
spirit of loving self-sacrifice is commonly predominant,
there would be found at an hour's call a hundred Arrias
to tell every shrinking Psetus that " death did not pain ;"
a thousand Alcestes to descend to the grave in the stead
of every selfish Admetus. Nay, it may be doubted
whether after a while the hospitals of the land would
contain a single inmate (save perchance a few forsaken
oli I women) of those originally sent there as patients;
but every man would go forth, bailed out, willingly and
joyfully, by mother, sister, wife or child, remaining to
r in hi* stead. Of course there are special obstacles
as well as special aids uiid'-r tin: nr\v forms of modern
lift- to tin- -ruwth and di If usion of sympathy. If litera
ture and steam locomotion, and cheap and rapid postage,
and telegraphy, assist immensely to diffuse and to sustain

* Mr. BaiiiMqypix)«ohettheooD>ideraticBi>>afth«J "lai^n-

of human f.-rlin-." ii,,- "Tender Kiii-.ti'.ii." l.y rrmurkin-, '•Thi.*

i- pre-eminently ft Glandular Kin<>ti..n. In it, tin- nnis.-ular «Hf-

,c. — The \'." '.!)!.

216 THE EVOLUTION OF

the sympathies of mankind, on the other hand the vehe
ment struggles for existence and for wealth, and the
haste and bustle of our lives, tend almost equally to
check and blunt them. If we only compare the amount
of feeling which any one of us readily gives to the illness,
ruin or death of a neighbour in the country, and that
which we find time to spare to the same misfortunes
of another, equally well known and liked, in London,
we shall obtain some measure of the influence of the
increased rapidity of social circulation on the affections.
More difficult is it to estimate the cruel results of the
competition for professional advancement and for "quick
returns and large profits," out of which come such
offences as the adulterations of food and medicine, the
unnatural and portentous extension of the liquor-traffic,
and the frightful recklessness of life displayed in the
employment of unseaworthy ships. These things are
more shocking to the moral sense than the savage atroci
ties of half-barbarous times, being done at the instigation
of meaner passions by men far more accountable for their
actions. But though Mr. Euskin and Mr. Carlyle treat
them as the genuine " Signs of the Times," I am inclined
to believe that a better test of our state may be found
in the wide-spread horror and disgust which they have
created, and the preponderance, far beyond that of any
former age, of public deeds springing unmistakably from
the purest Enthusiasm of Humanity. There are few, I
think, who on calm reflection will hesitate to admit that
there exist less of the anti-social passions and more of

THE SOCIAL SENTIMENT. 217

the humane and benevolent ones now in the world than
at any known period of past history.

Beyond all that we have yet attained, we may dimly
discern the progress yet to be, and welcome for happier
generations the time when a divine and universal Sym
pathy will do its perfect work. Even now there are
few of us but must have felt how variable are our
powers to feel with others; how for long periods our
hearts seem shut up in our own interests and pains;
and how again they seem to open, we know not why, to
a sense of the suffering of a friend, a child, a bird or
brute, so keen that it seems a revelation, and every
other sorrow and pain we know of acquires new meaning
in our eyi-s, ami pierces us as a thorn in our own breast.
There are hours wherein we spontaneously long to do
anything or suffer anything which should mitigate the
woes we have suddenly learned to perceive. And again
there are times when the happiness of others is similarly
IK ar and dear to us, and we feel capable of sacrificing
all our own joys to secure for them felicity here and
beatitude hereafter. These oscillations of our emotions
must surely point to a time in the future growth of
humanity wherein that which is now rare shall be fre-
<|ii. nt, and that which is only occasional shall !••• habi
tual. As th<- whnk- history of the past shews the xia-lual
drnppiM'4 away of the crude and cruel emotions of Hete-
ropathy and Aversion, and the development of Sympathy
from it-- first .-mall sued in the family till it ha.s

218 THE EVOLUTION OF

the great Tree of Life which we behold, so, without
indulging in Utopian dreams of human perfection, we
may reasonably anticipate that the long progress will
not stop at that precise step where we find it, but extend
yet further indefinitely. As the men of old felt in rare
hours of tenderness amid their ceaseless struggles, when
" the earth was full of violence and cruel habitations,"
so the cultured amongst us feel habitually now. And
as we feel in our best and tenderest moments, so men
in ages to come will likewise feel habitually.

Such gradual rising of the temperature of human
Sympathy, when it shall take place, will necessarily call
into existence a whole new flora of kindly deeds and
customs to cover the ground of life. Economists are for
ever looking to improved external organizations to better
the conditions of all classes, and these have doubtless
their significance and use. But what would be the
introduction of the wisest, justest, most perfect political
and social organizations which could be planned, com
pared to the elevation, even by a single degree, of the
sense of universal Brotherhood and of the kindly sym
pathies of man with man ? Already we begin to feel
that acts of beneficence are scarcely lawful save when
they come as from brother to brother, from the heart of
the giver to the hand of the receiver. In the time to
come, it is not too much to hope that there will be far
less than now of such ungenerous generosity as finds
vent in such phrases as, " I have done my duty by him,
and now I wash my hands of him ;" "I have done my

THE SOCIAL SENTIMENT. 219

part, and if he rot I care not." Less need even may
there be for the deep-sighted Buddhist precept, " If a
man cannot feel in charity with another, let him resolve
on doing him a kindness, and then he will feel kindly."

And, finally, there seems faintly revealed, above the
mists wherein we dwell, the lofty summits of an emotion
transcending all that our race yet has experienced, — a
Sympathy which shall shine on the joys and melt with
the sorrows, not only of the Lovely, but of the Unlovely,
and thus make man at last "perfect as his Father in
Heaven, who makes His sun to rise on the evil and on
the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."
For eighteen centuries those words have rung in the
ears of men ; but who can boast he has fathomed their
meaning, or conceived any plan of life which could give
them practical realization ? To do this thoroughly, to
feel such genuine sympathy for the stupid, the mean-
minded, the vicious, as to enable us to make for them
the same sacrifices we should readily make for a beloved
iYi«-nd, this is to reach that zenith of goodness which the
world has ideal i/ed in Christ, but towards which scarcely
an approximation has been practically made, even by
tin- best of Christians.

What will mortal life be when men come to feel thus ?
It will In; already the fulfilment of the best promise of
heaven, for " he that livcth in love, liveth in (in.l, and
God in him." Mankind will then be joined as in one
-real Insurance a^ain-t Want ami W«>r, and no misfor
tune will be unhcarable to one: b.jcuusu it will be -1

220 THE EVOLUTION OF

by all. So many hearts will rejoice with every innocent
joy, that men will live as in a room brightened all round
with mirrors reflecting every light. So many hands will
stretch forth to alleviate every pain, and remove every
burden, and supply every want, that in the sweet sense
of that kindly human love even the heaviest sorrow will
melt away like snow in the sunshine of spring.

Even our poor sympathies, such as they are now, are
the source of all our purest joys. Pain and Pleasure
alike undergo a Kosicrucian transformation from lead to
gold when they pass through the alembic of another's
soul ; and, while the dreariest hell would be entire self-
en wrapment, so the sweetest heaven would be to feel as
God feels for every creature He has made. When we
have advanced a little nearer to such Divine Sympathy,
then it is obvious, also, that we shall be more capable of
the supreme joy of Divine Love, and no longer find the
harmony of communion for ever broken by the discords
of earth. He who will teach us how truly to love the
unlovely, will lead us into the land where our Sun shall
no more go down.

Such is, I believe, the great Hope of the human race.
It does not lie in the " Progress of the Intellect," or in
the conquest of fresh powers over the realms of nature ;
not in the improvement of laws, or the more harmonious
adjustment of the relations of classes and states ; not in
the glories of Art, or the triumphs of Science. All these
things may, and doubtless will, adorn the better and

THE SOCIAL SENTIMENT. 221

happier ages of the future. But that which will truly
constitute the blessedness of man will be the gradual
dying out of his tiger passions, his cruelty and his
selfishness, and the growth within him of the godlike
faculty of love and self-sacrifice ; the development of
tli at holiest Sympathy wherein all souls shall blend at
last, like the tints of the rainbow which the Seer beheld
around the Great White Throne on high.

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