Page
March 4, 1896.]
acts against the man he calls his friend must be classed with the Kirghis chief who, whilst lavishing gifts on his guest, organizes an expedi. tion to rob him before he reaches the next en- campment. How many amongst our friends can we name who are precisely what they pretend to be? With what a feeling of healthy pride do we think of the one man we can trust im. plicitly-showing both that we have an ideal in morality and how few of those with whom we have to do have attained to it. Is this the degree of morality we should expect to accom. pany the magnificent intellect which succeeds in everything but in causing us to stay our pro- gress in other directions and give beed to the one thing needful? When we remember that we have invented the phonograph, or that we can transmit four messages in pairs in opposite directions along the same wire at the same time, that someone has written the Principles of Psychology and the Ethics, whilst men discover planets which they cannot see and analyse the vapours of chemical changes in Sirius, we might seriously expect that a society which. displays so high an intellectual state would display an equally high moral state. Yet what do we find our newspapers gloating on the details of murders and massacres, our legislators by imprudent measures sacrificing human lives for votes at the next election, five million followers of him who manded them to turn the cheek to the smiter armed to the teeth with the express pur pose of exterminating their fellow Christians, millions annually spent by Christians in devis ing more efficient means of blowing Christians into eternity, the selling by tens of thousands in a few days of sensational novels which appeal
connection :
com.
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
ally to love science or by intellectual love is then inferior to the redemption wrought by the redemption wrought by will or by moral love.
Science, however spiritual and substantial it may be in itself. is still formal relatively to love. Moral force is then tho vital point." Other writers, our philosophers especially, might be quoted in similar strain. bat sum them all up and what a feeble phont it is after all compared with the roar of the huge intellectual breakers which flood our social life.
K
"But," will come the rejoinder, why not What does it matter? some will say. "If physical and intellectual welfare bring us com fort, why not be happy while the sun shines ? Life is short enough anyhow. If our bed is comfortable, why not make the best use of it If we have a good gun, what does it ter whom
matte we slay? Nature is red in tooth and claw, and we will take our example from her. Let the fittest survive. If by caring for the body and letting the soul look after itself we can attain comfort and happiness, well. As long as we can do so without present injury, let us hate and fight and kill
evolution;
overthrow of our physical and intellectual civi- civilization sure means the weakening and final lization. We cannot imagine a licentious or dissolute nation keeping its place at the
nd con-
fearless sin and laughing set our lips To, the sweet wild cup that shall our souls eclipse. attain true happiness, and, second, that so long To this the reply is, first, that we cannot thus
as we are still one-third savage we have no right the most important rejoinderis, that being but to consider ourselves completely civilized. But two-thirds civilized failure to attain the remain ing third implies loss of the other pas already There is no standing still in the history of socie attained and a relapse into primaeval barbarism. ties. The state which comes nearest to it is a state of rigidity produced by the want of pliability to the lowest emotions, the toleration in our drawing rooms of a thinly veiled type of con-
caused by the impact of exterual forts during versation more meet for the philanderings of stationary: though the movement be slow and but there is here in reality nothing the common lodging-house, a growing disregard imperceptible, the society is being carried either of truth and plain dealing in private and business
onwards in evolution or backwards to dissolution. life in short, a state of moral uncivilization If we are to learn a lesson from Greece and which, since it cannot be said to be character-Romo we shall see that failure to makkmr moral istic of savage life, we have no alternative but to place somewhere below savagery. We must cease to call ourselves civilized as long as we allow these relics of ultra-savagery to survive in our midst. Murrder and the phonograph belong rightly to two different stages of the world's history, and their co-existence in a society shows that these stages co-exist, aud, as one cannot be described as indicative of savagery, 50 neither can the other be said to be a sign of civilization: the immoral trait survives along, with the intellectual triumph; and we are, in so far, uncivilized. It has been said in another "Not reverence, not admiration, scarcely even respect, is caused by the sight of a hundred million Pagans masquerading as Christians," and we may here add that neither are these feelings cansed by the sight of a hundred million savages marquerading civilized men. It would surely be worth our while to pause and listen to the still small voice only now and then audible in the great and strong whirlwind of our mad intellectual onrush. One of the most alarming discoveries the student of the present day can make is that the weakness of our moral nature is scarcely even recognised. Read the utopias and elaborate plans for the reconstruction of society which are published periodically, and you find the physical and intellectual parts of our civilza- tion are
the prominent topics, whilst the moral is either left out of account altogether or passed over in a few pages. Our newspapers and magazines are full of papers and articles about the weakness of our strong navy, but scarcely a line do we see on the weakness of our weak selves. Here and there only is a writer to be found who lifts up a dissentient voice by the roadside as the pageant of intellect passes by, and who begs for a little aid to the cause of morality from those who throw up their caps iu its wake. We are forced finally to acquiesce in the words of Amiel, the thinker: "The statis- tician will register a growing progress and the moralist a gradual decline: on the one hand a progress of things; on the other a decline of souls.
The whole becomes less bring more moral? barous and at the same time more vulgar." man-his And again: Moral love places the centre of religion-must be affected by the answer the individual in the centre of being. It he gives to this one question. So far as has at least salvation in principle, the germ of eternal life.
can see, the facts say No." The strain to know is not virtu- and stress of modern competition are searing
LL
88
course.
193
Brows of brass are not to be seen amongst our sympathies and hardening our hearts.
savages, but we see them around us everywhere now. Contemplating the actions and motives of daily life, individual and social, we cannot deny that our moral civilization has not made the advance which was to be expected from the enormous progress made in other directions. We have done the one, but we should not have left the other undone.
Morality, then, first-first that is, not because physical and intellectual attainments are not equally important factors, but because
requires special attention: both for this reason tho moral, having been so little cared for,
and also as being all essential as a pre-requisite to success in the struggle to come. Believing as we do that the white racos, if not the English- speaking part of them, are the natural inheritors of the earth, we cannot regard signs of apparent decay as more than temporary retrogressions, resulting from that universal law of rhythm which embraces the contractions of the heart and the inflations of the lungs as well as the births and deaths of solar systems; but this must not blind ns to the danger that tem- porary retrogressions, if allowed to over- run their limits, may imperceptibly change into permanent retrogression, dragging the society to destruction. There can to the careful observer and student of social morality be no doubt that we are now in one of these stages of temporary retrogression-due, we think, to inadequate acquaintance with the fundamental laws of life, and illustrated by proposals such as those for the upsetting of the present form of marriage-proposals which a study of the evolution of this institution would show must, if adopted, bring about a return to therefore that the rhythmic course of life is primitive barbarism.
recognising both inevitable and in social questions nseful practicability of empyric ideas for the recons as slowing by direct experiment the im- struction of society (which can reach a mere of natural laws), it is both within our province perfect state only through the slow operation
and power to indicato certain traits the elimina- tion of which Sociology shows cannot but make
Whilst
for the redemption of natious morally weak. With this object in view, let us endeavour to prominent of the characteristics of our present point out as briefly as possible-some of the most
state which seem to belong to the class of
of complete civilization. causes operating adversely from the standpoint
-
head of the world for any length of time. Considering how involved sociological pheno. mena nearly always are, it is not remarkable that an instance should exist in a little
which the relation between canse and luxurious selfishness of imperial Rome sequence is plainly visible. Over the nilitancy
cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, from which there arose, at the beginning of cure, a small First of all, the rule of small things
must there shone forth, had they but read t aright, so often compols the better-minded amongst come to an end. What is it that the secret of national salvation, of which many TIS to live apart from men and from were then in ardent search. One of the char- the world and to inhibit all but a select few acteristics of progress, expressed in the law of of their fellow creatures ? On the part of rhythm, is the inability of individuals and those who recognise the value and importance aggregates of individuals to keep a middle of social intercourse there must be scue cause of joy and grief, of health and disease So, in small things. Those who find that social inter- Who is there who has not his periods for this attitude. This cause is the rule of the same way, nations, in making for the goal course is prejudicial, as lowering to the mind of all life, now progress and now retrogress, through petty jealousies and criticisms or dis- swaying sometimes to one side and sometimes couraging through constant disparurement of to the other. Yet when habituated to the one extreme the other may appear to absurd prefer to place themselves beyond the range of their best and well-meant endeavours, naturally
steeped in a life of egoism and egotism. Rome of existence-scarcely to be called life-stagnat- be rationally considered. Thus, these uncivilizing influences. The dull current received with a feeling of distrust and revulsioning around them produces an atmosphere as the new doctrine of altruism brought to her by dangerous to mental health as that of the jungle the followers of Jesus Christ. Not recognising or the fever-swamp is to bodily health. the true antidote to her sickness, she crucified out being defiled, the few better members of a in him the physician who brought with him the principle that you cannot touch pitch with- her Christ, as many in their ignorance and society are compelled by the larger number of blindness have done before and after her. the present day we behave in precisely the duly balanced egoisiu and altruism which must same way to that more rational doctrine of a supersede both extremes if we would advance beyond the condition to which the nations who have enthusiastically adopted either the one or the other have attained. The importance of
even to
At
the issue thus becomes obvious. It is not a mere difference of opinion, but a matter of life ourselves is: Are we or are we not becom- and death. The greatest question we can ask
All that is sacred to a life, his work, his love, his
we
On
worse members to cxelnde theniselves from in- tercourse with them both ou individual and social grounds, since each one of us has duties to perform to the race and to posterity as well us to himself. When the ordinary conversations or actious or petty dissensions and emptinesses mind implied by them are taken into account, it of our present everyday life and the low state of
will be seen that there is no other course. It is a physiological truth that emotion of any kind
the more energy is absorbed in trifles the less militates against intellectual activity; hence
remains for intellectual development, and in- civilization a state of degeneration is the result. stead of advance being made towards completo
IIo whose mind can rise to uo higher level than that indicated by the occupation of a large portion of time, which might be profitably
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.