Freethought Review.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 9, 1 June 1884, Page 1

Freethought Review.

VOL. I.—No. 9.

WANGANUI, N.Z.: JUNE, i, 1884.

There is no part of Mr. George's book, " Progress " and Poverty," more open to criticism and refutation than the chapters on Malthusianism. To tell the Irish people that they may be as reckless and improvident in this one respect in the future as they have been in the past, if they can only get rid of landlordism, is to encourage them to sink into a more helpless condition than they have yet experienced. Whatever increase of wealth or of food may take place in consequence of political or economic changes, it is certain that, unless the prudential or other cheek he applied, the population will rapidly rise to high-water mark of the means of subsistence. If the economic rent were confiscated to-morrow, and every occupier lived rent free, the enfranchised tenant would be able no doubt to increase his family connexions ; though we are afraid we should have to allow for the fact that the rentless landlord might at the same time be compelled to reduce his. The circumstances determining the population a nation may contain are too complex to enable anyone to arrive at an estimate worthy a moment's consideration. But one thing stands out as an indubitable scientific conclusion, that a people who hold it a virtue to bring as many children as possible into the world, will quickly meet with that check included in the Malthusian category which admits of no quibbling over terms—the giant spectre of starvation and premature death.

Mr. Moncure D. Conway conveys to an interviewing representative of the ' Pall Mall Gazette' a vivid picture of British India. " The population," he says, " grows thicker and ever thicker upon the soil, " increasing by millions the number of paupers — they are all more or less paupersfestering and squalid "in their misery." The interviewer appears to have been touched by the description, and he asked—- " What, then, Mr. Conway, do you think should be "done?" "It is difficult to say what," said Mr. Conway with a smile, " unless we are to appoint Mr. " Bradlaugh to undertake a general Malthusian " apostolate throughout India," A grave word spoken in jest! The rapid increase of population is due to the absence of those checks which before the advent of British rule held sway—the massacre|of millions in merciless wars, and periodical famines. These checks are removed, while the prudential one has not been supplied. "In India," our authority further remarks, " the first duty of man is to breed. The women are mere " child-producing machines." Christian missionaries no doubt increase the mischief as far as they are able by their idle cant about the " Providence of God." It is in this field science can work out its ends beneficently, and redeem by a gradual process myriads of human beings from national and individual degradation. Mr. Conway observes that all the educated Hindoos he met were Freethinkers, and it is to them we look with the hope that knowledge will be brought home to every village commune.

SCIENCE. RELIGION. PHILOSOPHY.

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In a recent number of the ' Melbourne Argus' we find the following words beginning a leading article on certain misstatements of Bishop Moorhouse:—"He " stands to this day in the position of having made "with regard to an important, and we may concede "pious, object, two very definite statements, one of the " school class pelting their Bibles and Catechisms at " the head of a teacher who proposed to instruct them "in religions matters, and the other involving the " morality of state school children, the first of which, " in spite of frequent demands, has never been verified, " and the other hopelessly broke down on inquiry." If a Bishop of "light and leading " to-day is so deficient in the moral qualities of caution and enquiry before making statements affecting the characters of individuals and institutions, what could be expected from the founders of " the faith " in the early centuries of the Christian era, when the temptation was so strong upon them to say, not what was true, but what would advance the cause, knowing how readily what was said would be accepted ? The philosophy of history has a vivid light cast upon it by the weakness of human nature. There is a strong tendency in the mind to reach desirable ends by short cuts and forbidden paths —a tendency that accounts for many curious events in history. If Bishop Moorhouse had not been so anxious to make out a case against the Victorian state system of education, he might have taken more pains to be accurate and well-informed.

It has been decreed by the Pope that " the Virgin " Mary should be venerated and her intercession " implored throughout the whole month of October, "by the recitation of the most holy Rosary." It appears that " the Rosary was instituted principally to " implore the protection of the Mother of God against " the enemies of the Catholic name, and, as everyone " knows, has been greatly effectual in delivering the " Church from calamities." Poor lady! when she bewailed the religious enthusiasm of her son, and identified it with monomania, she little thought how superstition would supply her want of faith. That a god should need a mother, is the inheritance of the old mythology, and is quite natural to all Natureworshippers and their modern representatives. What requires to be explained is that Mary's protection should have been only " greatly," and not altogether, effectual in delivering the Church. And why should she require the Dominicans, stimulated by the Fisherman, to make such strenuous efforts to rouse her to perform a duty that love of the Church would suggest she should undertake voluntarily? Further, it does seem a strange conception of her son's godhead, not to speak of his consistency, that he should require his mother's intercession for a cause that he had made specially his own. Further comment might excite more ridicule than we ever desire to cast on a mythological survival.

Socialism is taking a definite form in England, an organisation termed the Democratic Federation having adopted openly the theory in its programme. As there are many shades of socialism, that of the Federation will only be known when one of its members has defined it; and this is likely to be done in a public discussion between one of its champions, a Mr. Hyndman, and Mr. Charles Bradlaugh. Of Mr. Hyndman's powers of maintaining a cause in debate we know nothing ; but it may be expected that he will define what his association means by the term, and explain how it hopes to accomplish the salvation of the race by a principle cast aside by all nations emerging from barbarism. For the Village community was formed on a Socialistic basis, just as the hqpu of the Maori is at the present day. It is possible that all old definitions will be improved, if not in substance, at least in form. It was Louis Blanc, we think, who gave us the formula : " From every one according to his ability; to every one " according to his wants." The objection to this antithetical philosophy is that until the " Old Adam is driven out of humanity the wants will be in an inverse ratio to the ability that has to supply them. We suppose the Hyndman definition will seek to avoid the fallacy. Mr. Bradlaugh belongs to the school of John Mill, and the cause of Individualism has no abler champion. The question grows in interest.

In another column will be found a discussion on Masonry. If the contention of " A Master Mason "is correct it shows the order as possessing the elements of progress, and by no means so dependent on theology as the ceremonial part would lead outsiders to suppose. It is nevertheless true that in a great many of the Constitutions religion is preached with as much rigor as if the doctrines were proclaimed from an evangelical pulpit. That masonry is passing through a crisis of Freethought is apparent from the zeal of clergymen and others in preaching the crusade against the infidel. The Roman clergy denounce the order because it divides the allegiance of their people who become members, and because in France, Italy, and Spain the order has declared war against the clerical power. The Anglican clergy, on the other hand, imagine they can make the organisation a bulwark of orthodox theology. In Ireland, masonry has passed into the hands of the Orangemen, and Orange Christianity has actually been incorporated with the ritual. In the colonies there is beyond question a large element of freethought among masons, though the references to allegory and " sacred" law— pace "A Master Mason" leave the character of English masonry in some considerable doubt.

To those clergymen who have lately been reading to their congregations the Bishop of Peterborough's " three Discourses in Defence and Confirmation " of the Faith" we commend the following extract from Chillingworth's great work, " The " Religion of the Protestants, a safe way to " Salvation ": —" But then as for the authority which " you [the Catholics] would have men follow, you " will let them see reason why they should follow it. " And is not this to go a little about leave reason " for a short turn, and then to come to it again, and to " do that which you condemn in others ? It being " indeed a plain impossibility for any man to submit " his reason but to reason ; for he that doth it to " authority, must of necessity think himself to have

" greater reason to believe that authority." The true meaning of faith resting on authority is faith by wholesale. Its aim is to reduce inquiry to the smallest morsel. Authority is a general argument intended to hold the place of the study of particular facts. The railway bridge is safe because the engineer in charge says so. Well and good, our general experience of engineers is a reason for having faith in them. But if we see the bridge is shakey, a plate fractured here and a beam rotten there, and if, moreover, an engineer outside of the " department" condemns it, what becomes of our faith then; is it anything more than a prejudice likely to lead to disaster ? Substitute the Bible for the bridge, and theologians for engineers, and the analogy is obvious. Authority as a fact is one thing ; authority as a right is another. All men begin with authority, and faith is instinctive. The more a man is a child, the more he belongs to authority. In this respect the bulk of mankind are children, and in most things rightly so. True authority imposes itself upon us without having to show its titles. Let doubt arise, let objections be put forward —that moment authority is no more.

Allowing for rhetorical exaggeration and theological bias, there is more than a grain of truth in Archdeacon Farrar's description of the corruption of modern society. " Would to God," he said in a sermon preached recently at St. Margaret's London, " that " England's prophets and statesmen, would stand there " to think of and confess her faithlessness and her " drunkenness and her mammon worship—all the fraud " and all the greed that corrupt her commerce ; all the " dirt and degradation that lurk in her dark places ; " all the slanders and lies on which her fashionable " society ignobly gloats and daintily revels in ; all the " bad examples of frivolity and godless pleasure with " which many of her rich set a bad example to her " poor ; all the timid conventionality and immoral " acquiescence of her laws ; all the party spirit which " mars her politics and makes unchristian and anti- " christian the champions of her religionism; all the " ignobleness of her professions, her dearth of faith, " and of great examples, her desperate lack of " nobleness and magnanimity, her pride and envy and " fulness of bread, her sects and churches teeming " with zeal about trifles, and deadness about things " essential ; the streets of her Sodom rife with " prostitution, and reeking with abominable drink." The preacher goes on to complain that he hears no prophet's voice raised against these evils, but "only " the voices of the enemy and the blasphemer." It is not the first time in history that reformers have been mistaken for blasphemers and enemies, and it might be well if the churches, instead of denouncing such men as Bradlaugh, were to endeavour to understand them. A little direct contact with the realities of things would do the " sleek orthodoxies " a great deal of good, and would go far to prevent that social revolution, which Archdeacon Farrar predicts is imminent and seems almost to long for, as the only means by which England can be forced " to see God's " terrible finger shrivelling the falsehoods which so " thickly encrust her Church and her State."

Many worthy people seem to fancy that Freethought is certain to end in revolution, and point to France as an example and warning. This is much the same as attributing the bursting of a boiler to the lifting of an

overloaded safety valve, forgetting that if the steam had been allowed to escape sooner it would not have burst at all. Christianity is the name for the way in which men thought about their relation to unseen powers and to each other for nearly eighteen centuries of European civilisation. It was based on faith in God and devout obedience to his supposed will, both of which were to be infinitely rewarded in another state of existence. The time came when, in France at any rate, men found that gradually kings and priests, and those whose interests seemed bound up with that of king and priest, used the tremendous power which this faith gave them, not for the advantage of the mass of the people, but for their own. Against falsehood, tyranny, ignorance, and selfishness, men like Rousseau and Voltaire, appealed to truth, liberty, knowledge, and sympathy, and the old social order fell amid violence and excesses which disgraced " the revolution " but proved how corrupt had been the antecedent conditions. In no small degree, thanks to the spiritual revolution then created, whose effects are far wider spread and more permanent than the historical one, there is every probability that such social and political changes as may be due to modern freethought will be in no way revolutionary, but will recognise the scientific truth, that permanent progress can only arise from the development of order.

It is suggestive, and ought to shake people's faith in the conservative value of the so-called religious sanctions, that Mr Henry George's unjust and revolutionary proposal to nationalise the land by what is virtually the confiscation of the property of land owners, is largely due to his conviction that " the Almighty, who " created the earth and man for the earth, has entailed " it upon all generations of the children of men," hence, "though his titles have been acquiesced in by " generation after generation, to the landed estates of " the Duke of Westminster, the poorest child that is " born in London to-day has as much right as his " eldest son." In his later book, " Social Problems," there are not wanting indications that Mr. George is prepared to attack other forms of property on similar grounds, and to advocate breaches of public faith on the highest religious principles. In short, it is just as easy to preach the divine right of robbery now to sympathising audiences as it was formerly to preach the divine right of kings. It is perhaps more than a coincidence that Rousseau, who was the most directly revolutionary of the literary precursors of the reign of terror, was also the most reactionary force in religion.