George Eliot - "The Mill on the Floss"

Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm - "Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3)"

Andrew Lang - "The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot"

Sam Vaknin - "Issues in Population and Bioethics"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Lectures and Essays

G >> Goldwin Smith >> Lectures and Essays




We are enjoined, some times with a vehemence approaching that of
ecclesiastical anathema, to refuse to consider anything which lies
beyond the range of experience. By experience is meant the perceptions
of our bodily senses, the absolute completeness and finality of which,
we must repeat, is an assumption, the warrant for which must at all
events be produced from other authority than that of the senses
themselves. On this ground we are called upon to discard, as worthy of
nothing but derision, the ideas of eternity and infinity. But to
dislodge these ideas from our minds is impossible; just as impossible as
it is to dislodge any idea that has entered through the channels of the
senses; and this being so, it is surely conceivable that they may not be
mere illusions, but real extensions of our intelligence beyond the
domain of mere bodily sense, indicating an upward progress of our
nature. Of course if these ideas correspond to reality, physical
science, though true as far as it goes, cannot be the whole truth, or
even bear any considerable relation to the whole truth, since it
necessarily presents Being as limited by space and time.

Whither obedience to the dictates of the higher part of our nature will
ultimately carry us, we may not be able, apart from Revelation, to say;
but there seems no substantial reason for refusing to believe that it
carries us towards a better state. Mere ignorance, arising from the
imperfection of our perceptive powers, of the mode in which we shall
pass into that better state, or of its precise relation to our present
existence, cannot cancel an assurance, otherwise valid, of our general
destiny. A transmutation of humanity, such as we can conceive to be
brought about by the gradual prevalence of higher motives of action, and
the gradual elimination thereby of what is base and brutish, is surely
no more incredible than the actual development of humanity, as it is
now, out of a lower animal form or out of inorganic matter.

What the bearing of the automatic theory of human nature would be upon
the hopes and aspirations of man, or on moral philosophy generally, it
might be difficult, no doubt, to say. But has any one of the
distinguished advocates of the automatic theory ever acted on it, or
allowed his thoughts to be really ruled by it for a moment? What can be
imagined more strange than an automaton suddenly becoming conscious of
its own automatic character, reasoning and debating about it
automatically, and coming automatically to the conclusion that the
automatic theory of itself is true? Nor is there any occasion here to
entangle ourselves in the controversy about Necessarianism. If the race
can act progressively on higher and more unselfish motives, as history
proves to be the fact, there can be nothing in the connection between
our actions and their antecedents inconsistent with the ascent of man.
Jonathan Edwards is undoubtedly right in maintaining that there is a
connection between every human action and its antecedents. But the
nature of the connection remains a mystery. We learn its existence not
from inspection, but from consciousness, and this same consciousness
tells us that the connection is not such as to preclude the existence of
liberty of choice, moral aspiration, moral effort, moral responsibility,
which are the contradictories of Necessarianism. The terms _cause and
effect_, and others of that kind, which the imperfection of
psychological language compels us to use in speaking of the mental
connection between action and its antecedents, are steeped from their
employment in connection with physical science, in physical association,
and the import with them into the moral sphere the notion of physical
enchainment, for which the representations of consciousness, the sole
authority, afford no warrant whatever.

Another possible source of serious aberration, we venture to think, will
be found in the misapplication of the doctrine of _survivals_. Some
lingering remains of its rudimentary state in the shape of primaeval
superstitions or fancies continue to adhere to a developed, and matured
belief; and hence it is inferred, or at least the inference is
suggested, that the belief itself is nothing but a "survival," and
destined in the final triumph of reason to pass away. The belief in the
immortality of the soul, for example, is found still connected in the
lower and less advanced minds with primaeval superstitions and fancies
about ghosts and other physical manifestations of the spirit world, as
well as with funeral rites and modes of burial indicating irrational
notions as to the relations of the body to the spirit. But neither these
nor any special ideas as to the nature of future rewards and punishments
or the mode of transition from the present to the future state, are
really essential parts of the belief. They are the rudimentary
imaginations and illusions of which the rational belief is gradually
working itself clear. The basis of the rational belief in the
immortality of the soul, or, to speak more correctly, in the continuance
of our spiritual existence after death is the conviction, common, so far
as we know, to all the higher portions of humanity, and apparently
ineradicable, that our moral responsibility extends beyond the grave;
that we do not by death terminate the consequences of our actions, or
our relations to those to whom we have done good or evil; and that to
die the death of the righteous is better than to have lived a life of
pleasure even with the approbation of an undiscerning world. So far from
growing weaker, this conviction appears to grow practically stronger
among the most highly educated and intelligent of mankind, though they
may have cast off the last remnant of primitive or medieval
superstition, and though they may have ceased to profess belief in any
special form of the doctrine. The Comtists certainly have not got rid of
it, since they have devised a subjective immortality with a retributive
distinction between the virtuous and the wicked; to say nothing of their
singular proposal that the dead should be formally judged by the
survivors, and buried, according to the judgment passed upon them, in
graves of honour or disgrace.

With regard to religion generally there is the same tendency to
exaggerate the significance of "survivals," and to neglect, on the other
hand, the phenomena of disengagement. Because the primitive fables and
illusions which long adhere to religion are undeniably dying out, it is
asserted, or suggested, that religion itself is dying. Religion is
identified with mythology. But mythology is merely the primaeval matrix
of religion. Mythology is the embodiment of man's childlike notions as
to the universe in which he finds himself, and the powers which for good
or evil influence his lot; and, when analysed, it is found beneath all
its national variations to be merely based upon a worship of the sun,
the moon, and the forces of Nature. Religion is the worship and service
of a moral God and a God who is worshipped and served by virtue. We can
distinctly see, in Greek literature for instance, religion disengaging
itself from mythology. In Homer the general element is mythology,
capable of being rendered more or less directly into simple nature-
worship, childish, non-moral, and often immoral. But when Hector says
that he holds omens of no account, and that the best omen of all is to
fight for one's country, he shows an incipient reliance on a Moral
Power. The disengagement of religion from mythology is of course much
further advanced and more manifest when we come to Plato; while the
religious faith, instead of being weaker, has become infinitely
stronger, and is capable of supporting the life and the martyrdom of
Socrates. When Socrates and Plato reject the Homeric mythology, it is
not because they are sceptics but because Homer is a child.

But it is in the Old Testament that the process of disengagement and the
growth of a moral out of a ceremonial religion are most distinctly
seen:--

"'Wherewith shall I come before Jahveh,
And bow myself down before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
With the sacrifice of calves of a year old?
--Will Jahveh be pleased with thousands of rams,
With ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my first-born for my transgression,
The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?'
'--He hath showed thee, O man, what is good,
And what Jahveh doth require of thee;
What but to do justly to love mercy,
And to walk humbly with thy God?'"

Here no doubt is a belief in the efficacy of sacrifice, even of human
sacrifice, even of the sacrifice of the first-born. But it is a receding
and dying belief; while the belief in the power of justice, mercy,
humility, moral religion in short, is prevailing over it and taking its
place.

So it is again in the New Testament with regard to spiritual life and
the miraculous. Spiritual life commenced in a world full of belief in
the miraculous, and it did not at once break with that belief. But it
threw the miraculous into the background and anticipated its decline,
presaging that it would lose its importance and give place finally to
the spiritual. "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels,
and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling
cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all
mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I
could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.... Charity
never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether
there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall
vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that
which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done
away." Clearly the writer of this believes in prophecies, in tongues, in
mysteries. But clearly, also, he regards them as both secondary and
transient, while he regards charity as primary and eternal.

It may be added that the advent of spiritual life did at once produce a
change in the character of the miraculous itself, divested it of its
fantastic extravagance, and infused into it a moral element. The Gospel
miracles, almost without exception, have a moral significance, and can
without incongruity be made the text of moral discourses to this day. An
attempt to make Hindoo or Greek miracles the text of moral discourses
would produce strange results.

Compared with the tract of geological, and still more with that of
astronomical time, spiritual life has not been long in our world; and we
need not wonder if the process of disengagement from the environments of
the previous state of humanity is as yet far from complete Political
religions and persecution, for instance, did not come into the world
with Christ; they are survivals of an earlier stage of human progress.
The Papacy, the great political Church of mediaeval Europe, is the
historical continuation of the State religion of Rome and the
Pontificate of the Roman emperors. The Greek Church is the historical
continuation of the Eastern offset of the same system. The national
State Churches are the historical continuations of the tribal religions
and priesthoods of the Northern tribes. We talk of the conversion of the
Barbarians, but in point of fact it was the chief of the tribe that was
converted, or rather that changed his religious allegiance, sometimes by
treaty (as in the case of Guthrum), and carried his tribe with him into
the allegiance of the new God. Hence the new religion, like the old, was
placed upon the footing of a tribal, and afterwards of a state,
religion; heresy was treason; and the state still lent the aid of the
secular arm to the national priesthood for the repression of rebellion
against the established faith. But since the Reformation the process of
disengagement has been rapidly going on; and in the North American
communities, which are the latest developments of humanity, the
connection between Church and State has ceased to exist, without any
diminution of the strength of the religious sentiment

Whether there is anything deserving of attention in these brief remarks
or not, one thing may safely be affirmed: it is time that the question
as to the existence of a rational basis for religion and the reality of
spiritual life should be studied, not merely with a view of overthrowing
the superstitions of the past, but of providing, if possible, a faith
for the present and the future. The battle of criticism and science
against superstition has been won, as every open-minded observer of the
contest must be aware, though the remnants of the broken host still
linger on the field. It is now time to consider whether religion must
perish with superstition, or whether the death of superstition may not
be the new birth of religion. Religion survived the fall of Polytheism;
it is surely conceivable that it may survive the fall of
Anthropomorphism, and that the desperate struggle which is being waged
about the formal belief in "Personality," may be merely the sloughing
off of something that when it is gone, will be seen to have not been
vital to religion.

There are some who would deter us from inquiring into anything beyond
the range of sensible experience, and especially from any inquiry into
the future existence of the soul, which they denounce as utterly
unpractical, and compare with obsolete and fruitless inquiries into the
state of the soul before birth. We have already challenged the exclusive
claim of the five bodily senses to be the final sources of knowledge;
and we may surely add that it is at least as practical to inquire into
the destiny as it is to inquire into the origin of man.

If the belief in God and in a Future State is true, it will prevail. The
cloud will pass away and the sun will shine out again. But in the
meantime society may have "a bad quarter of an hour." Without
exaggerating the influence of the belief in Future Reward and
Punishment, or of any form of it, on the actions of ordinary men, we may
safely say that the sense of responsibility to a higher power, and of
the constant presence of an all-seeing Judge, has exercised an
influence, the removal of which would be greatly felt. Materialism has
in fact already begun to show its effects on human conduct and on
society. They may perhaps be more visible in communities where social
conduct depends greatly on individual conviction and motive, than in
communities which are more ruled by tradition and bound together by
strong class organizations; though the decay of morality will perhaps be
ultimately more complete and disastrous in the latter than in the
former. God and future retribution being out of the question, it is
difficult to see what can restrain the selfishness of an ordinary man,
and induce him, in the absence of actual coercion, to sacrifice his
personal desires to the public good. The service of Humanity is the
sentiment of a refined mind conversant with history; within no
calculable time is it likely to overrule the passions and direct the
conduct of the mass. And after all, without God or spirit, what is
"Humanity"? One school of science reckons a hundred and fifty different
species of man. What is the bond of unity between all these species and
wherein consists the obligation to mutual love and help? A zealous
servant of science told Agassiz that the age of real civilization would
have begun when you could go out and shoot a man for scientific
purposes. _Apparent dirae facies_. We begin to perceive, looming
through the mist, the lineaments of an epoch of selfishness compressed
by a government of force.




PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION


There appears to be a connection between the proposed substitutes for
religion and the special training of their several authors. Historians
tender us the worship of Humanity, professors of physical science tender
us Cosmic Emotion. Theism might almost retort the apologue of the
specter of the Brocken.

The only organized cultus without a God, at present before us, is that
of Comte. This in all its parts--its high priesthood, its hierarchy, its
sacraments, its calendar, its hagiology, its literary canon, its
ritualism, and we may add, in its fundamentally intolerant and
inquisitorial character--is an obvious reproduction of the Church of
Rome, with humanity in place of God, great men in place of the saints,
the Founder of Comtism in place of the Founder of Christianity, and even
a sort of substitute for the Virgin in the shape of womanhood typified
by Clotilde de Vaux. There is only just the amount of difference which
would be necessary in order to escape servile imitation. We have
ourselves witnessed a case of alternation between the two systems which
testified to the closeness of their affinity. The Catholic Church has
acted on the imagination of Comte at least as powerfully as Sparta acted
on that of Plato. Nor is Comtism, any more than Plato's _Republic_
and other Utopias, exempt from the infirmity of claiming finality for a
flight of the individual imagination. It would shut up mankind for ever
in a stereotyped organization which is the vision of a particular
thinker. In this respect it seems to us to be at a disadvantage compared
with Christianity, which, as presented, in the Gospels, does not pretend
to organize mankind ecclesiastically or politically, but simply supplies
a new type of character, and a new motive power, leaving government,
ritual and organization of every kind to determine themselves from age
to age. Comte's prohibition of inquiry into the composition of the
stars, which his priesthood, had it been installed in power, would
perhaps have converted into a compulsory article of faith, is only a
specimen of his general tendency (the common tendency, as we have said,
of all Utopias) to impose on human progress the limits of his own mind.
Let his hierarchy become masters of the world, and the effect would
probably be like that produced by the ascendency of a hierarchy
(enlightened no doubt for its time) in Egypt, a brief start forward
followed by consecrated immobility for ever.

Lareveillere Lepaux, a member of the French Directory, invented a new
religion of Theo-philanthropy which seems in fact to have been an
organized Rousseauism. He wished to impose it on France but finding that
in spite of his passionate endeavours he made but little progress he
sought the advice of Talleyrand. "I am not surprised" said Talleyrand
"at the difficulty you experience. It is no easy matter to introduce a
new religion. But I will tell you what I recommend you to do. I
recommend you to be crucified and to rise again on the third day." We
cannot say whether Lareveillere made any proselytes but if he did their
number cannot have been much smaller than the reputed number of the
religious disciples of Comte. As a philosophy, Comtism has found its
place and exercised its share of influence among the philosophies of the
time but as a religious system it appears to make little way. It is the
invention of a man not the spontaneous expression of the beliefs and
feelings of mankind. Any one with a tolerably lively imagination might
produce a rival system with as little practical effect. Roman
Catholicism was at all events a growth not an invention.

Cosmic Emotion, though it does not affect to be an organized system, is
the somewhat sudden creation of individual minds set at work apparently
by the exigencies of a particular situation and on that account
suggestive _prima facie_ of misgivings similar to those suggested
by the invention of Comte.

Now is the worship of Humanity or Cosmic Emotion really a substitute for
religion? That is the only question which we wish in these few pages to
ask. We do not pretend here to inquire what is or what is not true in
itself.

Religion teaches that we have our being in a Power whose character and
purposes are indicated to us by our moral nature, in whom we are united
and by the union made sacred to each other, whose voice conscience
however generated, is whose eye is always upon us, sees all our acts,
and sees them as they are morally, without reference to worldly success
or to the opinion of the world, to whom at death we return, and our
relations to whom, together with his own nature, are an assurance that
according as we promote or fail to promote his design by self
improvement and the improvement of our kind, it will be well or ill for
us in the sum of things. This is a hypothesis evidently separable from
belief in a revelation, and from any special theory respecting the next
world, as well as from all dogma and ritual. It may be true or false in
itself, capable of demonstration or incapable. We are concerned here
solely with its practical efficiency, compared with that of the proposed
substitutes. It is only necessary to remark, that there is nothing about
the religious hypothesis as here stated, miraculous, supernatural, or
mysterious, except so far as those epithets may be applied to anything
beyond the range of bodily sense, say the influence of opinion or
affection. A universe self-made, and without a God, is at least as great
a mystery as a universe with a God; in fact the very attempt to conceive
it in the mind produces a moral vertigo which is a bad omen for the
practical success of Cosmic Emotion.

For this religion are the service and worship of Humanity likely to be a
real equivalent in any respect, as motive power, as restraint, or as
comfort? Will the idea of life in God be adequately replaced by that of
an interest in the condition and progress of Humanity, as they may
affect us and be influenced by our conduct, together with the hope of
human gratitude and fear of human reprobation after death, which the
Comtists endeavor to organize into a sort of counterpart of the Day of
Judgment?

It will probably be at once conceded that the answer must be in the
negative as regards the immediate future and the mass of mankind. The
simple truths of religion are intelligible to all, and strike all minds
with equal force, though they may not have the same influence with all
moral natures. A child learns them perfectly at its mother's knee.
Honest ignorance in the mine, on the sea, at the forge, striving to do
its coarse and perilous duty, performing the lowliest functions of
humanity, contributing in the humblest way to human progress, itself
scarcely sunned by a ray of what more cultivated natures would deem
happiness, takes in as fully as the sublimest philosopher the idea of a
God who sees and cares for all, who keeps account of the work well done
or the kind act, marks the secret fault, and will hereafter make up to
duty for the hardness of its present lot. But a vivid interest--such an
interest as will act both as a restraint and as a comfort--in the
condition and future of humanity can surely exist only in those who have
a knowledge of history sufficient to enable them to embrace the unity of
the past, and an imagination sufficiently cultivated to glow with
anticipation of the future. For the bulk of mankind the humanity
worshippers point of view seems unattainable at least within any
calculable time.

As to posthumous reputation good or evil it is and always must be the
appendage of a few marked men. The plan of giving it substance by
instituting separate burial places for the virtuous and the wicked is
perhaps not very seriously proposed. Any such plan involves the fallacy
of a sharp division where there is no clear moral line besides
postulating not only an unattainable knowledge of men's actions but a
knowledge still more manifestly unattainable of their hearts. Yet we
cannot help thinking that on the men of intellect to whose teaching the
world is listening this hope of posthumous reputation, or to put it more
plainly, of living in the gratitude and affection of their kind by means
of their scientific discoveries and literary works exercises an
influence of which they are hardly conscious, it prevents them from
fully feeling the void which the annihilation of the hope of future
existence leaves in the hearts of ordinary men.

Besides so far as we are aware no attempt has yet been made to show us
distinctly what humanity is and wherein its holiness consists. If the
theological hypothesis is true and all men are united in God, humanity
is a substantial reality, but otherwise we fail to see that it is any
thing more than a metaphysical abstraction converted into an actual
entity by philosophers who are not generally kind to metaphysics. Even
the unity of the species is far from settled, science still debates
whether there is one race of men or whether there are more than a
hundred. Man acts on man no doubt, but he also acts on other animals,
and other animals on him. Wherein does the special unity or the special
bond consist? Above all what constitutes the holiness? Individual men
are not holy, a large proportion of them are very much the reverse. Why
is the aggregate holy? Let the unit be a complex phenomenon, an organism
or whatever name science may give it, what multiple of it will be a
rational object of worship?