A MODEBX " SYMPOSIUM:' 



131 



and courage, that self-abandonment to a higher 

 will, that sense of complete irresponsibility for 

 the result when the right thing is once done, 

 which constitute moral heroism ? Could such 

 moral heroism survive the belief in a divine will 

 which is shaping all right action to a perfect end ? 

 Suppose we believed in unknown causes which 

 produce indeed such moral phenomena as those 

 of human life for a moment in the long ages of 

 evolution — which bring them like a ripple to the 

 surface, but quench them, like that ripple, for 

 evermore, and which are as certain so to quench 

 them as the sun is one day to be burned out — is 

 it possible we could cast ourselves on such un- 

 known causes with the sort of faith in God that 

 has "moved mountains," and that will move 

 mountains again, that will say, for instance, to 

 this huge dead weight of secularism and positiv- 

 ism, "Be thou cast into the sea," and it will 

 obey ? 



Nor can I .see any better help in Prof. Clif- 

 ford's substitute for God — namely, the higher 

 self represented by " the voice of our Father Man 

 who is within us," i. e., by " the accumulated in- 

 stinct of the race poured into each one of us" 

 and overflowing us, " as if the ocean were poured 

 into a cup." The " accumulated instinct of our 

 race" includes a great deal of evil as well as 

 good, and is often unaccompanied by any accu- 

 mulation of instinct for the suppressing of the evil 

 by the good. I quite agree with those who have 

 urged that it was the "accumulated instinct" 

 of the Athenian people which taught them the 

 necessity of putting down Socrates as one who 

 was undermining the social order to which he be- 

 longed. I do not doubt that Socrates shared that 

 accumulated instinct not less — nay, probably, 

 much more — than the rest of his countrymen. 

 Probably it overflowed him " as an ocean might 

 overflow a cup." Nevertheless the solitary voice 

 within him, which he attributed to his " daemon," 

 though it could not drown the voice of this " ac- 

 cumulated instinct," was heard above it, and pre- 

 vailed over the pleas of comradeship, and over 

 what Prof. Clifford deems the only " spring of vir- 

 tuous action," the impulse which invites men to 

 make individual sacrifices to promote the greater 

 efficiency of the social bond. 



" Some one may wonder (says Socrates, in 

 Plato's ' Apology ') why I go about in private giving 

 advice and busying myself with the concerns of 

 others, but do not venture to come forward in pub- 

 lic and advise the state. I will tell you the reason 

 of this. You have often heard me speak of an 

 oracle or si>rn which comes to me, and is the di- 



vinity which Meletus ridicules in the indictment. 

 This sign I have had ever since I was a child. 

 The sign is a voice which comes to me and always 

 forbids me to do something which I am going to 

 do, but never commands me to do anything, and 

 this is what stands in the way of my being a poli- 

 tician. And rightly, as I think. For I am certain, 



men of Athens, that if I had engaged in politics 



1 should have perished long ago, and done no good 

 either to you or to myself. And don't be afraid 

 of my telling you the truth, for the truth is that 

 no man who goes to war with you or any other 

 multitude, honestly struggling against the com- 

 mission of unrighteousness and wrong in the 

 state, will save his life ; he who will really fight 

 for the right, if he would live even for a little 

 while, must have a private station and not a public 

 one." x 



This is unsocial doctrine enough, and, of 

 course, Prof. Clifford will say that, though fatal 

 to the existing Athenian state, it had its source 

 in instincts essential to a higher political virtue 

 and to the cohesion of a nobler kind of state. 

 Grant it for a moment. Yet how can we 

 expect moral heroism of the same type as that 

 which is convinced that invisible Power is on its 

 side, and trusts to the vindication of the future, 

 if instead of ascribing the origin of its impulses 

 to a divine Power which is the same yesterday, 

 to-day, and forever — a Power above it and be- 

 yond iU— he who has to evince this moral heroism 

 believes that there is no inspiring mind higher 

 than his own, and holds, therefore, that he must 

 rely on himself, and on himself alone, for the 

 fine faculty to discriminate between the inchoate 

 order of a new society and the worn-out guaran- 

 tees of an order which is passing away ? How is 

 one who is fully aware that he is dissolving the 

 ancient bonds of a venerable society and polity, 

 but who only hopes that he is creating the germs 

 of something better, to set his face against the 

 brotherhood among whom he lives, and to defy 

 the wrath of the fellow-citizens whom he sees, 

 and all without the whisper of approval from any 

 spiritual being behind the veil ? Surely the hesi- 

 tating inspiration of that long-buried ancestor, 

 "our Father Man" — to admit, for a moment, 

 Prof. Clifford's assumption — when it spells out 

 dubious and unaccustomed lessons which the 

 voices of our brother-men join, in loud chorus, to 

 decry, would not be very likely to triumph over 

 fears and scruples which " our Father Man " also 

 authenticates, and authenticates much more pos- 

 itively than he ever can authenticate the first 

 faintly-uttered principles of a new kind of social 



1 Prof. Jowett's "Plato," vol. i., p. 346, first edition. 



