Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, April 1885

Conveyed somehow, however, they certainly should be, and in this disquisition I have tried to deal with them. But the political and social problem, as the thinkers call it, must not so occupy us as to make us forget the human problem. The problems are connected together, but they are not identical. Our political and social confusions I admit; what Parliament is at this moment, I see and deplore. Yet nowhere but in England even now, not in France, not in Germany, not in America, could there be found public men of that quality – so capable of fair dealing, of trusting one another, keeping their word to one another – as to make possible such a settlement of the Franchise and Seat Bills as that which we have lately seen. Plato says with most profound truth: “The man who would think to good purpose must be able to take many things into his view together.” How homogeneous American society is, I have done my best to declare; how smoothly and naturally the institutions of the United States work, how clearly, in some most important respects, the Americans see, how straight they think. Yet Sir Lepel Griffin says that there is no country calling itself civilised where one would not rather live than in America, except Russia. In politics I do not much trust Sir Lepel Griffin. I hope that he administers in India some district where a profound insight into the being and working of institutions is not requisite. But, I suppose, of the tastes of himself and of that large class of Englishmen whom Mr. Charles Sumner has taught us to call the class of gentlemen, he is no untrustworthy reporter. And an Englishman of this class would rather live in France, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, than in the United States, in spite of our community of race and speech with them! This means that, in the opinion of men of that class, the human problem at least is not well solved in the United States, whatever the political and social problem may be. And to the human problem in the United States we ought certainly to turn our attention, especially when we find taken such an objection as this; and some day, though not now, we will do so, and try to see what the objection comes to. I have given hostages to the United States, I am bound to them by the memory of great, untiring, and most attaching kindness. I should not like to have to own them to be of all countries calling themselves civilised, except Russia, the country where one would least like to live. —Nineteenth Century.

REVIEW OF THE YEAR

BY FREDERIC HARRISON

The opening of a new year again assembles us together to look back on the work of the year that is gone, to look faithfully into our present state, and to take forecast of all that yet awaits us in the visible life on earth, under the inspiring sense of the Great Power which makes us what we are, and who will be as great when we are not.

In the light of this duty to Humanity as a whole, how feeble is our work, how poor the result! And yet, looking back on the year that is just departed, we need not be down-hearted. Surely and firmly we advance. Not as the spiritualist movements advance, by leaps and bounds, as the tares spring up, as the stubble blazes forth, but by conviction, with system, with slow consolidation of belief resting on proof and tested by experience. If at the beginning of last year we could point to the formation of a new centre in North London, this year we can point to its maintenance with steady vigor, and to the opening of a more important new centre in the city of Manchester. Year by year sees the addition to our cause of a group in the great towns of the kingdom. Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle, already have their weekly meetings and their organised societies.

I make no great store of all this. The religious confidence in Humanity will not come about, I think, like the belief in the Gospel, or in the Church, or in any of the countless Protestant persuasions, by the formation of a small sect of believers, gradually inducing men to join some exclusive congregation. The trust in Humanity is an ineradicable part of modern civilisation: nay, it is the very motive power and saving quality of modern civilisation, and that even where it is encumbered by a conscious belief in God and Christ, in Gospel and salvation, or where it is disguised by an atheistical rejection of all religious reverence whatever. Positivists are not a sect. Positivism is not merely a new mode of worship. It is of small moment to us how numerous are the congregations who meet to-day to acknowledge Humanity in words. The best men and women of all creeds and all races acknowledge Humanity in their lives. For the full realisation of our hopes we must look to the improvement of civilisation; not to the extension of a sect. Let us shun all sects and everything belonging to them.

I shall say but little, therefore, of the growth of Positivist congregations. Where they are perfectly spontaneous and natural; where they are doing a real work in education; where they give solid comfort and support to the lives of those who form them, they are useful and living things, giving hope and sign of something better. But I see evil in them if they are artificial and premature; if they spring out of the incurable tendency of our age toward sects; if they are mere imitations of Christian congregations; and, above all, if their members look upon them as adequate types of a regenerated society. The religion of Humanity, by its nature, is incapable of being narrowed down to the limits of a few hundreds of scattered believers and to casual gatherings of men and women divided in life and activity. And that for the same reason that civilisation or patriotism could not possibly be the privilege of a few scattered individuals. Where two or three are gathered together, there the Gospel may be duly presented, and God and Christ adequately worshipped. It is not so with Humanity. The service of Humanity needs Humanity. The only Church of Humanity is a healthy and cultured human society. It is the very business of Humanity to free us from all individualist religion, from all self-contained worship of the isolated believer. And though the idea of Humanity is able to strengthen the individual soul as profoundly as the idea of Christ, yet the idea of Humanity, the service of Humanity, the honoring of Humanity, are only fully realised in the living organism of a humane society of men.

For this reason I look on a Positivist community rather as a germ of what is to come, one which may easily degenerate into a hindrance to true life in Humanity. The utmost that we can do now as an isolated knot of scattered believers is so immeasurably short of what may be done by a united nation, familiar from generation to generation with the sense of duty to Humanity, saturated from infancy with the consciousness of Humanity, and with all the resources of an organised public opinion, and a disciplined body of teachers, poets, and artists, to secure its convictions and express its emotions, that I am always dreading lest our puny attempts in the movement be stereotyped as adequate. Our English, Protestant habits are continually prompting us to look for salvation to sects, societies, self-sufficing congregations of zealous, but possibly self-righteous reformers. The egotistic spirit of the Gospel is constantly inclining us to look for a healthier religious ideal to some new religious exercises, to be performed in secret by the individual believer, in the silence of his chamber or in some little congregation of fellow-believers. Positivism comes, not to add another to these congregations, but to free us from the temper of mind which creates them. It comes to show us that religion is not to be found within any four walls, or in the secret yearnings of any heart, but in the right systematic development of an entire human society. Until there is a profound diffusion of the spirit of Humanity throughout the mass of some entire human society, some definite section of modern civilisation, there can be no religion of Humanity in any adequate degree; there can be no full worship of Humanity; there can be no true Positivist life till there be an organic Positivist community to live such a life. Let us beware how we imagine, that where two or three are gathered together there is a Positivist Church. There may be a synagogue of Positivist pharisees, it may be; but the sense of our vast human fellowship – which lies at the root of Positivist morality; the reality of Positivist religion, which means a high and humane life in the world; the glory of Positivist worship, which means the noblest expression of human feeling in art – all these things are not possible in any exclusive and meagre synagogue whatever, and are very much retarded by the premature formation of synagogues.

I look, as I say always, to the leavening of opinion generally; to the attitude of mind with which the world around us confronts Positivism and understands, or feels interest in Positivism. And here, and not in the formation of new congregations, I find the grounds for unbounded hope. Within a very few years, and notably within the year just ended, there has been a striking change of tone in the way in which the thoughtful public looks at Positivism. It has entirely passed out of the stage of silence and contempt. It occupies a place in the public interest, not equal yet to its importance in the future; but far in excess, I fear, of anything which its living exponents can justify in the present. The thoughtful public and the religious spirits acknowledge in it a genuine religious force. Candid Christians see that it has much which calls out their sympathy. But apart from that, the period of misunderstanding and of ridicule is passed for Positivism for ever. Serious people are beginning now to say that there is nothing in Positivism so extravagant, nothing so mischievous as they used to think. Many of them are beginning to see that it bears witness to valuable truths which have been hitherto neglected. They are coming to feel that in certain central problems of the modern world, such as the possibility of preserving the religious sentiment, in defending the bases of spiritual and temporal authority, in explaining the science of history, in the institution of property, in the future relations of men and women, employers and employed, government and people, teachers and learners, in all of these, Positivism holds up a ray of steady light in the chaos of opinion. They are asking themselves, the truly conservative and truly religious natures, if, after all, society may not be destined to be regenerated in some such ideal lines as Positivism shadows forth: —

“Via prima salutis,Quod minimè reris, Graia pandetur ab urbe.”

Here, then, is the great gain of the past year. It has for some time been felt that we have hold of a profound religious truth; that Positivism, as Mr. Mill says, does realise the essential conditions of religion. But we have now made it clear that we have hold of a profound philosophical truth as well; and a living and prolific social truth. The cool, instructed, practical intellect is now prepared to admit that it is quite a reasonable hope to look for the cultivation of a purely human duty towards our fellow beings and our race collectively as a solid basis of moral and practical life – nay, further, that so far as it goes, and without excluding other bases of life, this is a sound, and indeed, a very common, spring to right action. It is an immense step gained that the cool, instructed, practical intellect of our day goes with us up to this point. It is a minor matter, that in conceding so much, this same intelligent man-of-the-world is ready to say, “You must throw over, however, all the mummery and priestcraft with which Positivism began its career.” Positivism has no mummery or priestcraft to throw over. The whole idea of such things arose out of labored epigrams manufactured about the utopias of Comte when exaggerated into a formalism by some of his more excitable followers.

In the history of any great truth we generally find three stages of public opinion regarding it. The first, of unthinking hostility; the second, of minimising its novelty; the third, of adopting it as an obvious truism. Men say first, “Nothing more grotesque and mischievous was ever propounded!” Then they say, “Now that it has entirely changed its front, there is nothing to be afraid of, and not much that is new!” And in the third stage they say, “We have held this all our lives, and it is a mere commonplace of modern thought.” Positivism has now passed out of the first stage. Men have ceased to think of it as grotesque or mischievous. They have now passed into the second stage, and say, “Now that it is showing itself as mere common-sense, it is little more than a re-statement of what reasonable men have long thought, and what good men have long aimed at.” Quite so, only there has been no change of front, no abandoning of anything, and no modification of any essential principle. We have only made it clear that the original prejudices we had to meet were founded in haste, misconception, and mere caricature. We have shown that Positivism is just as truly scientific as it is religious; that it has as much aversion to priestcraft, ritualism, and ceremony, as any Protestant sectary: and as deep an aversion to sects as the Pope of Rome or the President of the Royal Society. Positivism itself is as loyal to every genuine result of modern science as the Royal Society itself. The idea that any reasonable Positivist undervalues the real triumphs of science, or could dream of minimising any solid conclusion of science, or of limiting the progress of science, or would pit any unproven assertion of any man, be he Comte, or an entire Ecumenical Council of Comtists, so to speak, against any single proven conclusion of human research, this, I say, is too laughable to be seriously imputed to any Positivist.

If Auguste Comte had ever used language which could fairly be so understood, I will not stop to inquire. I do not believe he has. But if I were shown fifty such passages, they would not weigh with me a grain against the entire basis and genius of Positivism itself; which is that human life shall henceforward be based on a footing of solid demonstration alone. If enthusiastic Positivists, more Comtist than Comte, ever gave countenance to such an extravagance, I can only say that they no more represent Positivism than General Booth’s brass band represents Christianity. If words of Auguste Comte have been understood to mean that the religion of Humanity can be summed up in the repetition of phrases, or can be summed up in anything less than a moral and scientific education of man’s complex nature, I can only treat it as a caricature unworthy of notice. This hall is the centre in this country where the Positivist scheme is presented in its entirety, under the immediate direction of Comte’s successor. And speaking in his name and in the name of our English committee, I claim it as an essential purpose of our existence as an organised body, to promote a sound scientific education, so as to abolish the barrier which now separates school and Church; to cultivate individual training in all true knowledge, and the assertion of individual energy of character and brain; to promote independence quite as much as association; personal responsibility, quite as much as social discipline; and free public opinion, in all things spiritual and material alike, quite as much as organised guidance by trained leaders. Whatever makes light of these, whatever is indifferent to scientific education, whatever tends to blind and slavish surrender of the judgment and the will, whatever clings to mysticism, formalism, and priestcraft, such belongs not to Positivism, to Auguste Comte, or to humanity rightly regarded and honored. The first condition of the religion of Humanity is human nature and common sense.

Whilst Positivism has been making good its ground within the area of scientific philosophy, scientific metaphysics has been exhibiting the signal weakness of its position on the side of religion. To those who have once entered into the scientific world of belief in positive knowledge there is no choice between a belief in nothing at all and a belief in the future of human civilisation, between Agnosticism and Humanity. Agnosticism is therefore for the present the rival and antagonist of Positivism outside the orthodox fold. I say for the present, because by the nature of the case Agnosticism is a mere raft or jurymast for shipwrecked believers, a halting-place, and temporary passage from one belief to another belief. The idea that the deepest issues of life and of thought can be permanently referred to any negation; that cultivated beings can feel proud of summing up their religious belief in the formula, that they “know nothing” this is too absurd to endure. Agnosticism is a milder form of the Voltairean hatred of religion that was current in the last century; but it is quite as passing a phase. For the moment, it is the fashion of the emancipated Christian to save all trouble by professing himself an Agnostic. But he is more or less ashamed of it. He knows it is a subterfuge. It is no real answer. It is only an excuse for refusing to answer a troublesome question. The Agnostic knows that he will have to give a better answer some day; he finds earnest men clamoring for an answer. He is getting uneasy that they will not take “Don’t know” for an answer. He is himself too full still of theology and metaphysics to follow our practice, which is to leave the theological conundrum alone, and to proclaim regard for the human race as an adequate solution of the human problem. And in the meantime he staves off questions by making his own ignorance – his own ignorance! – the foundation of a creed.

We have just seen the failure of one, of these attempts. The void caused by the silent crumbling of all the spiritual creeds has to be filled in some way. The indomitable passion of mankind towards an object to revere and work for, has to be met. And the latest device has been, as we have seen, to erect the “Unknowable” itself into the sole reality, and to assure us that an indescribable heap of abstract terms is the true foundation of life. So that, after all its protestations against any superstitious belief, Agnosticism floats back into a cloud of contradictions and negations as unthinkable as those of the Athanasian creed, and which are merely our old theological attributes again, dressed up in the language of Esoteric Buddhism.

II

I turn now, as is our custom, to review the work of the year under its three-fold heads of Cult, Education, Politics. You will see that I avoid the word Worship, because worship is so often misunderstood; and because it wholly fails to convey the meaning of the Positivist cultus, or stimulus of the noblest emotions of man. Worship is in no way a translation of Comte’s word culte. In French we can talk of the culte des mères, or the culte des morts, or the culte des enfants, or the culte de l’Art. We cannot in English talk of worshipping our mothers, or worshipping our dead friends, or worshipping children, or worshipping art; or, if we use the words, we do not mean the same thing. Comte has suffered deeply by being crudely translated into English phrases, by people who did not see that the same phrase in English means something different. Now his culte de l’Humanité does not mean what Englishmen understand by the worship of Humanity: i. e., they are apt to fancy, kneeling down and praying to Humanity, or singing a hymn to Humanity. By culte de l’Humanité is meant, deepening our sense of gratitude and regard for the human race and its living or dead organs. And everything which does this is cult, though it may not be what we call in English worship. So service is a word I avoid; because the service of Humanity consists in the thousand ways in which we fulfil our social duties, and not in uttering exclamations which may or may not lead to anything in conduct, and which we have no reason to suppose are heard by any one, or affect any one outside the room where they are uttered. The commemoration of a great man such as William the Silent or Corneille is cult, though we do not worship him; the solemn delight in a piece of music in such a spirit is cult, though it is not worship, or service, in the modern English sense of these words. The ceremony of interring a dead friend, or naming a child is cult, though we do not worship our dead friend, nor do we worship the baby when brought for presentation. Cult, as we understand it, is a process that concerns the person or persons who worship, not the being worshipped. Whatever stimulates the sense of social duty and kindles the noblest emotions, whether by a mere historical lecture, or a grand piece of music, or by a solemn act, or by some expression of emotion – this is cult.

In the same way, I avoid the word religion, to signify any special department or any one side of our Positivist life. Religion is not a part of life, but a harmonious and true living of our lives; not the mere expression of feeling, but the right convergence of feeling and thought into pure action. Some of our people seem to use the word “religion,” in the theological sense, to mean the formal expression of a sentiment of devotion. This is a mere distortion of Comte’s language, and essentially unworthy of the broad spirit of Positivism. The full meaning of culte, as Comte employed it, is every act by which man expresses and every means by which he kindles the sense of reverence, duty, love, or resignation. In that sense, and in that sense only, do I now employ cult, which is obviously a somewhat inadequate English phrase.

The past year opened with the commemoration of this day, in which, though the words of praise and devotion that we uttered were few, we sought to brace our spirits and clear our brains by pausing for an hour in the midst of the whirl of life, to look forth on the vast range of our social duties and the littleness of our individual performance. On the 5th of September, the twenty-seventh anniversary of the death of Auguste Comte, we met, as usual, to commemorate his life and work. The discourse then given will be shortly published. At the friendly repast and in the social meeting of that day we had the welcome presence of several members of our Positivist body in Paris and also from the northern cities of England. The hundredth year since the death of Diderot, the two hundredth since that of Corneille, the three hundredth since that of the great founder of the Netherlands, William of Orange, called the Silent, were duly commemorated by a discourse on their life and work. Such vague and unreal ideas are suggested by the phrase, the worship of humanity, that it is useful to point out that this is what we in this hall mean by such a notion: the strengthening our sense of respect for the worthy men in the past by whom civilisation has been built up. This is what we mean by the worship of humanity. A mere historical lecture, if its aim and its effect be to kindle in us enthusiastic regard for the noble men who have gone before us, and by whose lives and deaths we are what we are, – this is the worship of humanity, and not the utterance of invocations to an abstract idea.

On the 28th of last month we held a commemoration of the great musician, Beethoven, in all respects like that which we had given two years ago for Mozart. Our friend Professor Henry Holmes and his admirable quartet again performed two of those immortal pieces, and our friend, Mr. Vernon Lushington, again gave us one of those beautiful discourses on the glorious art to which he and his have devoted so much of their lives. These occasions, which are a real creation of Positivism, I deeply enjoy. They are neither concert nor lecture, nor service specially, but all three together, and much more. It is the one mode in which at present the religion of the future can put forth its yearnings for a sacred art worthy to compare with the highest types of Christian art. We meet not to listen to a musical display – not to hear the history of the musician’s life – not to commemorate his career by any formal ceremony; but we mingle with our words of gratitude, and honor and affection for the artist, the worthy rehearsing of his consummate ideas in a spirit of devotion for him and the glorious company of whom he is one of the most splendid chiefs.