Does of the physical cosmos, the identification of the power that makes for righteousness' with the necessity of natural evolution. If, as I have contended, a naturalistic explanation of the moral ideal is impossible, if that ideal has another and a higher certificate of birth to show, then we need not wonder that nature should prove an insufficient sphere for the moral life, and that we should fail to harmonise the order of nature with the order of morality. If man is not part of nature, but disparate from nature, then his life and nature's may well conflict in the lines of their development. If we acknowledge such a conflict, we may either be candidly agnostic, and, regarding physical explanation as the only explanation, we may say that morality, just because it is undeniably different from nature, is inexplicable; or we may seek for another explanation of it, and try to answer Mr Spencer's question: "If the ethical man is not a product of the cosmic process, what is he a product of?” 1 not the very insufficiency of Naturalism necessitateunless we are to remain agnostica supernatural or transcendental view of morality? Does not the nonmoral character of nature necessitate a moral government of man's life higher than the government of nature, a discipline, retribution, and reward that transcend those of nature in justice, insight, and discrimination? Professor Huxley's lecture, with its emphatic, almost passionate, assertion of the dualism of nature and morality, with its absolute refusal to merge the latter in the former, is itself a fine demonstration of the impossibility of metaphysical indifference. The profound ethical faith which it expresses is the best evidence of the author's superiority to his creed, the best proof that Agnosticism cannot be, for such a mind, a final resting-place. For the mere assertion of the dualism and opposition of the ethical and the cosmical process is not the whole case. That dualism and opposition raise the further question of the possibility of 1 Athenæum, August 5, 1893. their reconciliation. As one of Professor Huxley's reviewers said: "The crux of the theory lies in the answer to the question whether the ethical process, if in reality opposed altogether to the cosmical process, is or is not a part of the cosmical process; and if not, what account can be given of its origin. In what way is it possible, in what way is it conceivable, that that should arise within. the cosmical process which, in Mr Huxley's comprehensive phrase, is in all respects opposed' to its working?" 4. Man and nature.--The dualism of nature and morality raises for us the question whether we must not postulate for man as a moral being another and a higher environment or sphere than nature, whether the ethical process is not a part of the process of a larger cosmos which transcends and includes the physical? The fact that the physical scheme is not the ethical scheme, renders necessary, for the justification and fulfilment of morality, a moral theology, a scheme of moral government which will right the wrongs of the physical government of the universe. The fact of opposition between nature and spirit, the fact that man's true life as man has to be lived in a foreign element, that the power which works in the physical cosmos is not a power which makes for righteousness or a power which cares for righteousness, the fact of these hindrances and antipathies of the actual,' the indubitable and baffling fact of this grand antinomy, forces us beyond the actual physical universe and its order, to seek in a higher world and a different order the explanation and fulfilment of our moral life. Intellectually, we might find ourselves at home with nature, for her order seems the reflection of our own intelligence. But morally, she answers not to the human spirit's questionings and cravings; rather, she seems to contradict and to despise them. She knows her own children, and answers their cry. But man she knows 1 Athenæum, July 22, 1893. not, and disclaims; for, in his deepest being, he is no child of hers. As his certificate of birth is higher, so is his true life and citizenship found in a higher world. Thus there comes inevitably to the human spirit the demand for God, to untie the knot of human fate, to superintend the issues of the moral life, to right the wrongs of the natural order, to watch the spiritual fortunes of his children, to be himself the Home of their spirits. Nature is morally blind, indifferent, capricious; force is unethical. Hence the call for a supreme Power akin to the spirit of man, conscious of his struggle, sympathetic with his life, guiding it to a perfect issue-the call for a supremely righteous Will. This belief in a moral order is necessary if we are to be delivered from pessimism. Mere agnosticism means ethical pessimism; the only escape is to 'see God.' Without such a vision the mystery of our human life and destiny is entirely dark, the riddle of the painful earth' is absolutely inexplicable. Unless our human nature and life are, in Professor Huxley's phrase, "akin to that which pervades the universe," unless God is on our side, and we are in a real sense not alone but co-workers with him, our life is, as Hume described it, "a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery." The problem raised for human thought by this dualism of nature and morality is as old as human thought itself. It is the problem of Fate or Fortune-a Power blind but omnipotent, that sets its inexorable limit to the life of man, that closes at its own set time and in its own appointed way all his strivings, and blots out alike his goodness and his sin; a Power which the Greeks quaintly thought of as superior even to the gods themselves, and which to the modern mind seems to mean that there is no divinity in the world, that the nature of things is nonmoral. That which so baffles our thought is "the recognition that the cosmos has no place for man"; that he feels himself, when confronted with nature's might and apparent indifference, an anomaly, an accident, a foreigner in the world, a "stranger from afar." The stream of good and evil seems to lose itself in the mazes of the course of things; the threads of moral distinctions seem to get hopelessly intertwined in the tangled skein of nature's processes. "Streams will not curb their pride The just man not to entomb, Nor lightnings go aside To give his virtues room : Nor is that wind less rough which blows a good man's barge. Nature, with equal mind, The wind sweep man away; Allows the proudly riding and the foundering bark." 1 I have said that it is a world-old problem, this of the ultimate issues of the moral life. And it has often seemed as if the only escape from total pessimism lay in a calm and uncomplaining surrender of that which most of all in life we prize. Let us cease to make our futile demand of the nature of things; ceasing to expect, we shall also cease from disappointment and vexation of spirit. Be it ours to conform with the best grace we can to Nature's ways, since she will not conform to ours. Let us meet Nature's "moral indifference" with the proud indifference to Nature of the moral man. A stranger in the world, with his true citizenship in the ethical and ideal sphere, let man withdraw within himself, and escape the shock of outward circumstance, by cutting off the tendrils of sensibility which would take hold on the course of the world and make him its slave. "Because thou must not dream, thou needst not then despair!" But neither the philosopher nor the poet, no, nor even the ordinary man, will consent to forego his dreams and hopes, nor will humanity pass from its bitter plaint 1 Matthew Arnold, Poems: "Empedocles on Etna." against the evil course of things and the tragic wreck of human lives. Such a dualism and contradiction between man and his world presses for its solution in some deeper unity which will embrace and explain them both. The Stoics, themselves the great preachers of resignation, had their own solution of the problem. The ways of the cosmos were not for them dark or unintelligible; the nature of things was, like human nature, in its essence altogether reasonable. The question raised by the impossibility of correlating man and nature by naturalising the moral man is, whether we cannot reduce both man and nature to a deeper unity; whether, though human nature is for ever distinct from physical nature, and the world of morality an artificial world within the cosmos, both are not expressions or exponents of a deeper nature of things. Such a question the unifying instinct of man cannot help raising. Even Professor Huxley admits that "the ethical process must bear some sort of relation to the cosmic." Nor need this relation be that of levelling down, of reducing man to nature. Why should we not level up? Why should not nature, if in one sense the eternal enemy of man, to be subdued under his feet if he is to be man, yet also be the minister and instrument of man's moral life, charged with a moral mission even in its moral enmity and indifference? If the ethical process is not part of the cosmic process, may not the cosmic be part of the ethical? Or, better, may not both be parts of the divine process of the universe? Since man has to live the ethical life in a natural world, in a world which is in a sense the enemy of that life, and in a sense indifferent to it, may not the ethical process be more reasonably described as an agency which directs and controls rather than entirely opposes the cosmical process "?1 1 To the question whether we can thus correlate the ethical with the cosmical process, man with nature, by 1 Athenæum, July 22, 1893. |