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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



mit that antisocial instincts exist, and will exist. 

 He is not concerned with the difficulty, which 

 has perplexed theologians since the days of Job, 

 as to the unequal distribution of rewards and 

 penalties in this world, nor with the solution 

 reached by postulating a complementary world 

 in which all the wrongs will be redressed. He 

 may hope that the antisocial forces will finally be 

 crushed out ; but he sees that the process must 

 be slow and stern. If, on his view, justice does 

 not always strike the individual sinner, it falls 

 unrelentingly on the society. If a disregard of 

 morality is nothing but a disregard of the con- 

 ditions of social welfare, the larger organism is 

 certain to sutler in the long-run for an erroneous 

 or degrading standard. The negative guarantee 

 for the triumph of good principles is, in the last 

 resort, that evil means social degeneration and 

 ultimate destruction. But as the unbeliever holds 

 that the social instincts are in the strictest sense 

 natural ; that they tend to strengthen and adapt 

 themselves to the growing needs of society ; and 

 that they survive the decay of the particular dia- 

 lects in which men have uttered their emotions 

 and their speculations, he may reasonably hope 

 that society will develop itself and reach a higher 

 moral standard by a direct growth and at a small- 

 er cost of error and consecpient suffering. The 

 ceaseless struggle between good and evil implies 

 the existence of impulses tending both ways, but 

 it may be hoped that, as the race becomes more 

 intelligent and more distinctly conscious of its 

 aims, the victory of good may be won at a small- 

 er cost of error and opposition. 



If this be a brief indication of the main lines 

 of the unbeliever's moral theory, we have to ask 

 at what point it conflicts with the believer's 

 tenets. It is undoubtedly possible to state the 

 believer's theory in such a form as to minimize 

 or entirely remove the opposition. Diminish the 

 anthropomorphic element as much as possible; 

 identify God with Nature : and theology becomes 

 little more than a guarantee for the solidity of 

 our methods. If the belief in the uniformity of 

 Nature implies a belief in the divine ruler of 

 Nature, and, conversely, the belief in the order 

 implies merely a belief in a regular order, the 

 question becomes one of those already noticed. 

 We do not ask whether, but why, we believe. 

 One party thinks it necessary to get behind ex- 

 perience ; it is not content with knowing without 

 also knowing that it knows, or satisfied with the 

 certainty of a doctrine unless it can be also 

 called necessary. The other party is content to 

 regard belief as an ultimate fact, and to assume, 



without finding an a priori deduction for the so- 

 called uniformity of Nature. I am content to 

 observe that so far there need be no controversy 

 as to practice ; the believer and the unbeliever are 

 at one in their methods and results, though dif- 

 fering as to the cause of their validity. It is 

 mere waste of time to bandy charges of skep- 

 ticism and credulity. But, further, I must say 

 that a theology of this neutral tint and abstract 

 character is not one which really governs men's 

 minds. It is only in so far as the scientific con- 

 ception is modified that the difference is really 

 important. The question of whether or not it 

 requires a certain guarantee is little better than 

 a scholastic puzzle, except so far as it helps the 

 rcintroduction in a disguised shape of ancient 

 fallacies. 



When we turn to that kind of theology which 

 undoubtedly makes a relevant contention, we are 

 at once met by a significant difficulty. A belief 

 may fairly be called skeptical in the practical 

 sense which confirms equally a number of con- 

 flicting theories. Morality, you say, depends 

 upon theology. Then, is all theological morality 

 identical? It is little better than a juggle to tell 

 us that you alone have an absolutely certain rule 

 if it turns out that you give an equally plausible 

 foundation for mutually contradictory rules. 

 Now, there is no dispute between theologians, or 

 between anybody worth notice, as to the value of 

 certain well-known rules. Nobody explicitly de- 

 nies that chastity, truthfulness, and mercy, are 

 good qualities. Widely as systems differ, the 

 ordinary code — kill not, steal not, lie not, and so 

 forth — may be regarded as definitively sanctioned 

 by the experience of the race. But go a step 

 further : consider any of the really open ques- 

 tions, and you will find that theologians can take 

 diametrically opposite positions. There is no 

 theory of morality which may not be expressed 

 in theological language. There are theological 

 utilitarians and theological inflationists. One the- 

 ologian says that man could not have discovered 

 the moral law without a revelation ; another, 

 that morality is a science of observation, and 

 that God simply orders us to pursue the greatest 

 happiness of the greatest number; a third holds 

 morality to be deducible by the pure reason, and 

 infers that revelation and experience are alike 

 superfluous. On one system, the essence of the- 

 ology is the proclamation of future rewards and 

 penalties. On another, the utterly unselfish love 

 of God is the only foundation of true virtue, which 

 is destroyed so far as it is adulterated with per- 

 sonal interests. One theologian regards the vir- 





