The Freethought Review WANGANUI, N.Z., MAY 1, 1884. THE OBJECTS OF ORGANISATION.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 8, 1 May 1884, Page 9

The Freethought Review WANGANUI, N.Z., MAY 1, 1884. THE OBJECTS OF ORGANISATION.

The Freethought body in the colony having thought fit to bring its numerous detachments into communication with each other, and to march in line, the question has been asked by outsiders, What object is to be gained by organisation which could not be attained as well without it ? It is urged that the country is free, that individual liberty is not in jeopardy, and that such dangers as the creation of ' crimes against religion' are either imaginary or would be rendered harmless by the * good sense' of the people and their rulers. To which it may be replied that the facts do not warrant indifference, but show more conclusively every year that " the price of liberty is " eternal vigilance." The shapes that persecution takes are protean. At one time it is found in legal prosecutions ; in another in proscription, as in Mr. Bradlaugh's war with the House of Commons; in another, persecution is to be seen embodied in social prejudice. In theory, liberty of thought and expression has for some time been admitted in England and other countries ; but in practice it can hardly be pretended that we have more freedom than was enjoyed when Hume denied the possibility of miracles, and Junius made Burke's " blood run cold " by the " venom and the rancour "of his attack upon the King. To-day an organisation exists in the United States whose object: is to have Christianity recognised as a part of the Constitution of that country. The success of the movement would almost certainly inaugurate an era of disfranchisement and persecution. Christianity has ever been a persecuting religion, and there is no reason to suppose that, given the opportunity, it would not in New Zealand be true to its past history.

But the defence of Liberty is only one of the many objects of Freethought. Christianity is a great force in the world, and if, as Freethinkers believe, its principles are false and hurtful to humanity, it must receive no quarter. It has been checkmated effectually in British India. The 250 millions who live under the flag of England are receiving a Freethought propaganda as active and potent as the Christian, and infinitely more likely to succeed. For the prevailing religions have only to be reformed and stripped of their moral impurities to transform them into the religion of humanity. Buddhism, as originally promulgated, is the best of all religions, and admirably adapted to the genius of the people of India. Turning to England herself, Freethought is winning its conquests through agnosticism in the upper strata of society, and by means of two great secular organisations in the lower. In France, Atheism meets Catholicism face to face. In Germany, there is a metaphysical scepticism enthroned in its Universities, and a happy indifference in all religious questions widely spread throughout Fatherland. In the British colonies,, the religions of the mother country have been transplanted, and appear to flourish, yet in no part of the world has scepticism so firm a hold in the minds of intelligent men. It is still fashionable to go to church, to be baptised, married, and buried by the church, to send wife and children twice on Sunday to church, and to pay seat rents and subscribe moderately to missionary enterprise. These are the conventionalities of society, with which conformity is less difficult to the easygoing man of the world than to step out of the beaten track and take the course into which his honest convictions might lead him. What says Freethought to all this ? It finds a chaos of beliefs built up out of the private interpretations of the Bible ; and it finds one religious corporation with its semper, übique et omnibus, with a mind of its own, and possessing a wide and intimate knowledge of what is passing in every country in the world. The Protestants have for some time

been inclined to doubt the infallibility of the Bible. With the most intelligent the Old Testament has become a mere record of what man, not the Lord, said, while such doctrines as a material hell, preached in the New, have shocked the more rational of the clergy and laity, and are being rapidly abandoned. The work of Freethought has been to demonstrate the human character of the writings in the book from beginning to end ; in a word to destroy the foundations from which the Protestant sects at least have raised their religious superstructures. The Romish Church will continue to flourish until education and liberalism have rescued her millions of votaries from the grips of that sacred alliance in which they are heldignorance and superstition. When the Protestant sects have accepted the principles of Freethought, as they are certain to do within the next fifty years, Rome will see the necessity of abandoning the more repulsive and extravagant of her dogmas, and will be on the return march to the civilised paganism in which she had her origin. But will Freethought have done its work when the foundations of Christianity as a system have been undermined, with nothing left but a sentimental regard for the moral truths which are to be found in that as in all other religions ? By no means. On the other hand, the real work will only have begun. We have seen Freethought as the guardian of freedom, and as the eternal foe of an enslaving theology ; let us now contemplate it in the conservative and positive aspect of forming and following an ideal of its own. However great may be the work of combating error and arraigning false principles, of infinitely more importance to society is the constructive energy which shall erect the temple of humanity. It is often charged against Freethought that its labors are iconoclastic and negative. The charge is founded on the grossest misconception of its aims and methods. Let it be supposed that Freethought forms to itself an ideal in which the moral elevation of the human race on earth is the vital principle, is there not a sphere wide enough for all the positive and active virtues, without adding to them the theological speculations about gods and spirits ? The fundamental principle of Positivism is, Live for Others— a command of supreme authority' before which the maxim of Confucius, Hillel, and Jesus, Do unto Others, sinks into a subordinate place Proceeding yet another step, we have the sacred motto:

" Love as the principle ; Order as the basis ; Progress as the end.

Applying the term religion in its derivative sense, and separated from the supernatural, we have the Religion of Humanity, the worship of an ideal in which the good of the human race has the highest place The supernatural, whether associated with theological or metaphysical conceptions, has no shrine in the temples of humanity. _ The myths of theology have been relegated to their proper sphere, and no longer play a part in guiding the human conscience, which is left free to obey its own dictates, directed by the reciprocal action of duty between man and man Whether we follow the method of Positivism or any other, the object remains the same. There will be a wide variety of opinions among Freethinkers as to the paths : there will be but one opinion about the goal. Although we have noticed by way of illustration the leading principles of the Positive Philosophy, the writer differs widely from many of the details of the system. It is sufficient we here show that Freethinkers cie ®d a creed containing a single article of belief, leaving those who accept it free to attain the consummation of their faith in their own way It is this higher faith—the enthusiasm of humanity—which will give to the world a deeper morality and a loftier conception of duty. Theology can never supply the inspiration, as it cannot afford demonstration of the truth of its own dogmas, and, being based on rewards and punishments, it does not appeal to the highest sense of moral obligation. The Freethinker, in a word, possesses an ideal pure, lofty, and unselfish attracting the best and appealing to all—devotion to the ever real and present cause of humanity. B.

MATERIALISM.— ( Continued.)

We have seen that the main objection to a monistic theory of the universe is based upon certain a prori fallacies, such as that matter cannot think, and that whatever can be thought of apart, or has a sparate name, exists as a separate entity, and that the conditions of a phenomenon must necessarily resemble the phenomenon itself. How persistent and far reaching are notions of this class has been admirably shown by Mill in the fifth book of his " Logic," though as Professor Bain remarks in his own work on the same subject, many of them are extra-logical, and cannot be adduced as violating either deductive or inductve precepts, and owe their influence "to defective acqaintance with the subject matter of the reasonings and to a low order of intellectual cultivation generally, rather than to misapprehending logical method." This is conspicuous even in so profound a thinker as Bishop Butler, whose first chapter of the "Analogy," that "Of a Future Life," read by the light of modern science, seems almost puerile in its argument, though logically consistent in maintaining the natural immortality of brutes as well as of man. The truth is that in our day we have come to regard Nature from a different point of view than that taken by the majority of philosophic thinkers of the past, and especially of those whose philosophy and science were determined by their theology. By them the material universe was regarded as an inert mass, to which form and motion was imparted from without, by a being who was substantially an infinite man. To the modern thinker the universe seems almost alive. Not only do bodies of immense magnitude whirl through space in strict accordance with known mechanical conditions, but they convey to us their molecular pulsations, in the shape of light, heat, and electrical effects, with such perfect rythm that through such instruments as the spectroscope they reveal to us much of their history as certainly and definitely as the telephone conveys the sound of the human voice. In our day science deals with aetherial undulations and atomic motions with as much ease as she deals with astronomical phenonomena, subjecting both to the processes of the calculus, and having once established the primary equations by observation and experiment proceeding by purely mathematical reasoning, continually checked by verification, to unfold the secrets of Nature, and to predict what experience afterwards confirms. However convenient it may be for practical purposes to keep up the old distinction between inorganic and organic matter, as chemical writers especially were till very lately in the habit of doing, we must remember that from the philosophical point of view this distinction is arbitrary and conventional. No chemist and no biologist can say where matter ends and life begins. A spec of protoplasm is in some respects less organic than a crystal. The organic nature of the former is rather potential than actual, and it is hard to see why a crystal which repairs a broken facit or angle should not be credited with as much inner potency as the Hydrozoa or the Actinozoa which repair themselves in a similar manner. In short all Nature tends to become organic in the sense of differentiation of parts and specialization of function. An iceberg is almost as complicated a structure of the molecules of water arranged in definite crystaline forms, as is the whale that swims beside it a structure of other molecules arranged in what we call an organic form. In both there is a similar play of complex forces holding the atoms together beyond a certain sphere and repelling them within it. Both derive their being from different forms of the same energy, and of neither is it necessary to say that it was especially designed or created, except to gratify that common craving for an explanation which explains nothing, derived from an earlier stage of thought. Chemical elective affinity shows the atoms simulating a form of choice which is only carried a step further by the Amoeba and other forms of Proteus animalcule when they select their appropriate nourishment from the water in which they exist, and all vegetable and animal life essentially consists' in the redistribution of external forces. It is only those who are ignorant of the latent powers of matter, who fail to

see in it, with Professor Tyndall, the " promise and potency of all terrestial life," while a great biologist like Haeckel holds " that consciousness, like sensation and volition, like all other soul-activities, is a function of the organism, a mechanical activity of the cells ; and, as such, is referable to chemical and physical processes." If, as evolution teaches, the connection and order of our ideas tends to become identical with the connection and order of things, it is evident that we must come to a mode of conceiving the universe radically inconsistent with the old theology. We may seek to retain something of the old belief by using its phrases emptied of all meaning, and in the Pantheism of the " God-intoxicated " Spinoza many persons have fancied a real reconciliation between theology and science could be effected, but the God of Spinoza is a pure being, and thus used the term " God " connotes none of those ethical ideas which attach to the personal God of popular theology. In this sense an orthodox critic has not unfairly said that with " Pantheism everything is God except God himself." Monism, soberly regarding the universe, entirely fails to see any sign of personality in it except as the outcome of a long and complex process of evolution culminating in man. Moreover, as Haeckel says, the cruel and merciless struggle for existence which rages throughout living nature, and in the course of nature must rage, this unceasing and inexorable competition of all living creatures, is an incontestable fact"—a fact utterly incompatible with the existence of a benevolent deity, such as any scheme of modern supernaturalism must postulate before its dogmas can be either credible or credited. Belief in the supernatural, depending mainly upon sentiment and emotion, it may be safely affirmed that belief in the existence of a malevolent personal God will never arise among civilised mankind, and if personality is admitted it is to such a belief only that the facts of the universe point. In this respect at least, the most orthodox writers are in complete accord with the most pronounced Agnostics and Atheists of the present day. Newman's " Apologia" contains a more terribie indictment against nature for cruelty than do Mill's Essays on Religion, and Bishop Magee in his " Discourses" seems to gloat over the fact in the interests of Christianity " that there are no laws so merciless—so utterly unforgiving, as the laws of nature —aye, and so utterly regardless of the circumstance whether a man has transgressed ignorantly or purposely: he who transgresses ignorantly and he who transgresses wilfully is alike beaten with many stripes, The great machinery of the world will not arrest its revolutions, for the cry of a human creature who by a very innocent error, by the mistaken action of his free-thought, is being ground to pieces beneath them." In other words nature is essentially impersonal and immoral, not as it were incidentally, but in its innermost processes and methods by which sentiency is gradually developed into consciousness, and is profoundly indifferent to the suffering caused by the inverse operation till the unconscious and non-sentient stage is again reached. That it is reached at last is perhaps the best that can be said in favour of nature's benevolence. As is the work so must be the author, and the complaisant optimism of the theologians is dashed to pieces against the hard facts of the universe. Regarding consciousness, with its enormous capacity for pain, and its limited capacity for pleasure, as the result of an extremely complex play of forces culminating in the still greater complexity of the social organism, it is easy to see how readily the mistake is made of attributing to the more general relations of things what exists only in very special relations. Such ethical ideas as benevolence, right, and justice, imply personal relations which have no meaning when applied to the impersonal. Existence, order in time and in place, causation or resemblance, may be truly asserted of any facts, but the more special the facts the more special must be the propositions we can make concerning them. To talk of impersonal nature as cruel or unjust is like speaking of an angry triangle or a wicked colour. To attribute personality to nature or to attribute nature to a personal cause without the strongest evidence, is to introduce needless moral

and intellectual difficulties, and to add a new horror to the universe which theology vainly endeavours to hide under vague phrases which appeal to the feelings but cannot blind the intellect. On the other hand, to know that we have only to deal with the fixed order of things and that in some respecfls we can “ rule by obeying nature’s powers,” while in the life of humanity we hope to find that continual approach to an ideal perfection to which each of us may contribute materially and morally, is to accept a theory which agrees with fads and furnishes a motive for aClion. It is true that this motive is mainly altruistic, and so may seem to have but little force compared to the egoistic sentiments to which theology appeals, but hopes and fears which are purely personal read on charader, and worldlyness and other worldlyness,’ including in the term the craven worship of mere power not felt to be justly exercised, tends to produce a charader in which human sympathy is deficient and intellectual perception is perverted. Regarding character and morality as produds of the social factor, it does not seem probable that either can be improved by believing in a moral governor of the world who was either unable or unwilling to prevent his subjeds from being wicked, or in a creator who punishes men for being what he has made them, and revenges rather than reforms, and all without proportion or justice. On the contrary, the proverb, “ tell me the company you keep and I’ll tell you what you are,” applies to ideas as much as to persons. As are the gods so are the people. It is only those nations which have broken the chains of their primitive beliefs that are really progressive. Monism gives free scope to that moral and intellectual evolution which bases conduct and knowledge upon experience. Regarding nature and human nature as equally the subject of law, the outcome of inscrutable and impersonal power, mankind will learn to limit their hopes and fears by their experience, and cease to trouble themselves about problems which cannot even be intelligibly stated much less solved. The questions still asked about morality will be more easily answered because confined to their proper sphere—the special relations of the social organism to its environment, and of its parts to the whole. As Mr. John Morley eloquently says in his “ Voltaire,” it is “ monstrous to suppose that because a man does not accept your synthesis, he is therefore a being without a positive creed or a coherent body of belief capable of guiding and inspiring conduct. There are new solutions for him, if the old are fallen dumb. If he no longer believes death to be a stroke from the sword of God’s justice, but the leaden footfall of an inflexible law of matter, the humility of his awe is deepened, and the tenderness of his pity made holier, that creatures who can love so much should have their days so shut round with a wall of darkness. The purifying anguish of remorse will be stronger, not weaker, when he has trained himself to look upon every wrong in thought, every duty omitted from act, each infringement of the inner spiritual law which humanity is constantly perfecting for its own guidance and advantage, less as a breach of the decrees of an unseen tribunal, than as an ungrateful infection, weakening and corrupting the future of his brothers; and he will be less effectually raised from inmost prostration of soul by a doubtful subjective reconciliation, so meanly comfortable to his own individuality, than by hearing full in the ear the sound of the cry of humanity craving sleepless succour from her children. That swelling consciousness of height and freedom with which the old legends of an omnipotent divine majesty fill the breast, may still remain ; for how shall the universe ever cease to be a sovereign wonder of overwhelming power and superhuman fixedness of law. And a man will be already in no mean paradise, if at the hour of sunset a good hope can fall upon him like harmonies of music, that the earth shall still be fair, and the happiness of every feeling creature still receive a constant augmentation, and each good cause yet find worthy defenders, when the memory of his own poor name and personality has long been blotted out of the brief recollection of men for ever. R.P.