Bernard Bosanquet THE CIVILIZATION OF CHRISTENDOM London 1893

8/3/2019 Bernard Bosanquet THE CIVILIZATION OF CHRISTENDOM London 1893

1/407

XTbe JStbtcal Xtbrarg

THE CIVILIZATIONOF CHRISTENDOMAND OTHER STUDIES

BERNARD BOSANQUET,M.A. {Oxon.), Hon. LL.D. {Glasscnv)

Formerly Fello^v of University Collejt

U. ^e4.if^Z:


2/407


3/407

Butler & Tanner,The Selwood Printing Works,

Frome, and London.


4/407


5/407


6/407

PREFACE.The following Addresses are printed so far as pos-sible in the form in which they were delivered. Butin some cases they were not fully written out beforedelivery, and have unavoidably been modified inpreparation for the press. My thanks are due to theproprietors of the International Journal of Ethics andof the Charity Organisation Reviexv for permission toreprint two of them. The various Societies beforewhich the addresses were given, including the LondonEthical Society, are of course not responsible for theviews expressed in them.

In the paper on Individualism and Socialism thereis one point which I desire to modify. I think thatI was wrong in favouring a differential Poor Lawtreatment of persons who have shown signs of thrift.Classification within Poor Law institutions, which iscertainly desirable, should, I now think, be guided bypresent differences of age, sex, behaviour, physicalcondition, and sensitiveness. But differential treat-ment on account of past conduct seems to me aprinciple not reconcilable with the proper workingof the Poor Law, and tending to widen the area ofdependence on it. Outside the Poor Law, by pensionsand analogous methods, such treatment may very

850395


7/407

vi PREFACE.

well be provided through the neighbourly kindnessof individuals.On another point, that of thrift or saving as a

working-class policy, I see signs of approximationbetween the two most antagonistic opinions. We,the advocates of thrift, have always insisted on thevalue of " constructive " saving,saving embodied inthe health and well-being of the family, and in theniceness of the home. Our opponents, I think, arebeginning to recognise the value of organised insur-ance, e.g. against the breadwinner's illness, from whichthe physical and moral ruin of the family, if un-prepared, so constantly takes its rise. The stillfundamental difference between us springs in a greatmeasure from differing experience. We mean by" thrift " and " unthriftiness " what we see from dayto day in the British working-class. Thrift is, for us,the germ of the capacity to look at life as a whole,and organise it. It involves a recognition both of thearea of life, as including the family and others whosesecurity from disaster depends on the individual'sprudence, and also of its duration, as a lapse of timefor which, and not merely for a few days or weeks,he must lay his account. Life thus looked at impliesa higher, not a lower standard of comfort, a moregenerous and not a more grudging acceptance ofobligation, than the life of those who have never


8/407

PRE'PACE. vii

learnt to look beyond the passing day and their mostsingle self, and in whose household there is no morecare for the family than there is for the future. Thelatter are the unthrifty, as we practically know them.They do not spend in the sense which our opponentsapprove ; they waste and muddle away their resources.There are other senses in which the terms " thrifty "and " unthrifty " may be used, and upon them ourjudgment might be different. But it is plain thatthrift, as above described, that is thrift as we employthe term (and this is the meaning which applies inEnglish life), is the polar opposite of an " individua-listic " quality. And yet, making life as a whole thestandard of comfort, it does not abate, but ratherincreases, the worker's just demands.The careless current usage of such terms as " indi- I

vidualistic," " socialistic," " egoistic," " altruistic," isa discredit to the popular theory of an age whichprofesses to be critical. If some of our very ablewriters of Ethical manuals would give all theseexpressions a thorough shaking-out before the public,they would do a good deed. Meantime, I hope thatthese Addresses may be of use or interest to somebesides those who have already heard them.

Bernard Bosanquet.August, 1893.


9/407


10/407

CONTENTS.CHAPTER PAGE

I. Future of Religious Observance . . iII. Some Thoughts on the Transition from

Paganism to Christianity . . -27III. The Civilization of Christendom . . 63IV. Old Problems under New Names . .100V. Are we Agnostics? . . . . .* 127VI. The Communication of Moral Ideas as a

Function of an Ethical Society . 160..VII. Right and Wrong in Feeling . . 208VIII. Training in Enjoyment .... 237IX. Luxury and Refinement.... 268X. The Antithesis between Individualism

AND Socialism Philosophically Con-sidered ...... 304

XI. Liberty and Legislation . . . -358


11/407


12/407

I.

THE FUTURE OF RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE.^I HAVE no dogma to put before you upon thisvery difficult question, I propose that weshould simply direct our attention to it. It iswell sometimes to let our thoughts play freelyupon such a subject, to walk round the moun-tain and look at it with a glass, instead oftrying to ascend it. Suitably to such a pur-pose, I will begin from the outside of theproblem, by considering how certain kinds ofchange would strike us in an English villageor town.The question is whether we think that any

^ Delivered before the Progressive Society.C. C. B


13/407

2 FUTURE OF RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE.

form of distinctively religious observance willlong survive our present orthodox Sabbata-rianism. I mean by "religious," for our presentpurpose, something generally and obviouslytaken as symbolic of the best we know ; some-thing allied to public worship and publicobservance of the Sunday ; not anything thatpresupposes special training or special know-ledge or specially acquired interest.We may assume that we shall have art,literature and science, and also associatedefforts of many kinds, which will bring peopletogether in the sympathy of a common causeand a common pursuit of good. But all thiswill be special, and people will sort themselvesin regard to it according to their tastes andcapacities. Will there, we further ask, bereligious observance, ceremonial, meeting, orgeneral abstinence from work on Sunday withany significance beyond that of a Bank Holi-


14/407

FUTURE OF RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE. 3

day, over and above our private and specialisedendeavours towards the best life ?At present the dominant Sabbatarianism

answers these questions even for us who haveno belief in its grounds. It protects us andimpresses us more than we know. On Sun-day we have either a social and domestic day,or a quiet day. If we go out to lecture or tobe lectured to, we are within the great analogyof Sunday observance. I never pass along themain thoroughfare of my district on a Sundayevening, having some such errand in view,without being reminded, by the sight of thestreet preachers, how all-pervading is the sen-timent which sends us out on that particularday. Where ethical meetings are held on aweek-day, their nature has appeared to me tobe somewhat different. They then take theform rather of special discussions than ofgeneral appeals. Owing to the pervading sen-


15/407


timent which survives, the question what ispermissible on a Sunday is not yet raised inextreme forms. We rail at Sabbatarianism,but we have hardly thought how we shouldget on without any Sunday at all.Now what is likely to happen,what do wewant to happen, assuming that we havemerely to consider the permanent needs andtendencies of ordinary people, without referenceto any authority beyond these needs them-selves ? Is it likely that Sunday will continueto differ at all from a week-day, on which wehappen not to be at work ?To what use, for example, will the fabricsof the churches be turned ? If there is Sun-day worship, that will go far to settle the wholematter of Sunday observance. Therefore theexistence of these fabrics, though in one sensea mere external circumstance, is yet a veryimportant point.


16/407


Let us think of a country village, with a fineold church before the very doors of the houses,in which there is a good organ and a fair musicalservice is held, forming the centre of a certainamount of musical training among the people.There may seldom be any sense talked in thepulpit, but yet the place is a sort of socialfocus. The crises of life receive through it,as it were, a social sanctioninfancy, maturity,marriage and death are officially brought topublic cognisance and sympathy.Now, supposeas the simplest expression

of complete national neutralitythat the Churchwere disestablished on the old Radical lines.The fabric would then belong, I imagine, toan exasperated sect, whose members wouldhave to maintain it. For a long time its oldprestige would continue, and wealthy personswould be found to meet the cost of mainten-ance. But one day the actual situation would


17/407


exert its influence ; many would abandon thesect in possession, which would become nar-rower and still more exasperated, and an appleof discord would have been planted in thecentre of the village, many of whose inhabitantswould feel themselves ousted from the oldchurch at their doors. One would hope thatsome village hall or music-room would assertitself as a centre, where all might unite onoccasions of general interest, and that theschism would not be intensified by the estab-lishment of a chapel beside the old church.Such a schism would no doubt prolong a de-finite observance of Sunday, and definite formsof worshipfor competition is the soul ofbusinessbut it would do so under the mostunhealthy conditions. It would be better thatall the antagonism should be on one side, andthat the village hall should become the centreof lectures or music or public ceremonies, and


18/407


Sunday observance should continue or notsimply on its merits, as the needs of the peoplemight dictate.

If, again, as has been suggested in recentyears, the fabric of the church were left to theratepayers, the question would arise whetherthey would care to support it. If not, the oldbuilding would become a ruin, or would bekept in order by the public spirit of someindividual. The general course of publicobservance in the village would be the sameas in the former case, only without the schism,unless, indeed, the disestablished sect shouldpurchase the building from the ratepayers. Ifthe old building became a ruin, or show place,and the life of the village centred round alecture hall or music-room, that would be aclean cut between old and new, and in someways a healthy thing. The church buildingwould be no great practical loss, for it is sel-


19/407


dom really well fitted either for speaking orfor music ; and the moral emancipation of thelittle community would be visibly symbolised.On the other hand, it would be somewhatstrange and sad to have an old ruin, or anunused building kept up from merely an-tiquarian interest, in the centre of half thevillages in England.

But if the ratepayers chose to maintain anduse the building, in a way more or less con-tinuous with that previously practised, it mightperhaps become a valuable centre of theirsocial life and religious observance. The pub-lic element which the Church now represents,both in its cognisance of incidents concerningthe individual and the nation, and, perhaps,through the Christmas festival and the harvesthome, would be the typical nucleus of its func-tions. There might be weekly musical services,and addresses from persons chosen by the


20/407

FUTURE OF RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE. 9community, on the duties of citizenship, or onthe significance of great movements and per-sonalities in history, or at the present day.The possibilities of village life have not yetbeen thoroughly studied ; but there are pheno-mena which point to a development that willexpel the countryman of comic tradition fromthe ideas of our age.

In this alternative we should have realisedwhat has been called " the disestablishment ofthe clergy, and not of the Church."Whether all this is or is not chimerical, I am

strongly of opinion that the existence of ourcountry churches, with their beauty and theircentral position and traditional importance inour villages, cannot be disregarded in consider-ing the future of Sunday observance. Eventhose who care least about them now would beannoyed to see others in possession of them,and to be excluded from them in those inci-


21/407

lo FUTURE OF RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE.

dents of life to which they communicate awell-recognised dignity. And if the Athenianmade his oath of service to the communityon becoming of age to bear arms, I do notsee why we should not have a rational con-firmation ceremony, at which the individualshould accept for himself the vows and in-tentions which, whether in church or out ofchurch, his parents have surely conceived onhis behalf.The question of buildings is, in one sense,

still more pressing in such cities as haveancient churches or cathedrals of nationalvalue. We can neither give up our minstersand our abbeys to a sect, nor permit them tofall into ruins. Are they then to be museums,like San Marco at Florence, where thegendarme watches the passing tourist inSavonarola's cell ? It seems more probablethat the fine services and the addresses of


22/407

FUTURE OF RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE. ii

great preachers for which, say, WestminsterAbbey has become famous, will gradually losetheir dogmatic element, and widen into some-thing that every one may value, while thefunerals of famous men and other national actsmay take place there, emphasised, perhaps, byspeakers publicly appointed like Pericles atAthens.

Here we have, in an intensified form, theproblem which we recognised in the case ofthe country churches. These great buildingswill always favour a tendency to some kind,however simple, of general religious observ-ance.

In the ordinary life of our great towns thematter is somewhat different. The dweller ina city has no relation to his local church. Itsorganisation is practically congregational, ratherthan territorial. An increasing proportion ofthe church buildings are hideous, and no one


23/407


could desire to preserve them for their ownsake. Of the people who care for religiousobservance, a very large fraction are Noncon-formists. This brings us nearer to the inside ofour question. Here we have to do with bodiesof strongly convinced worshippers of all creeds,practically working on a congregational system,i.e. depending for the repute and splendour oftheir church upon the position it can make foritself. . These people are set upon religiousobservance ; it seems a vital need to them,altogether apart from establishment, and fromsuch local influences as operate in a countryvillage. It is a striking sight to see a roomfulof hard-headed mechanics in a factory town,listening to an address on Pauline theology,in the "adult Sunday-school" of a Noncon-formist chapel.Do we think, and do we wish, that Sunday

should become like a Bank Holidaya com-


24/407


mon non-working dayfor the descendants ofmen like these ? Will something analogousto our own Ethical lectures serve as a meetingpoint for them, and as a means of guiding andconcentrating their " cosmic emotion " ? Maythe Ethical teacher look for this ? There aremany difficulties on both sides. There is thequestion of the young. Certainly one wouldwish that they should be helped and guidedtowards the higher side of feeling and reflec-tion. But yet it is, perhaps, a pitfall to try andkeep up religious observances only for theyoung. It tends to a division in life, andprobably to hypocrisy on the part of theelders ; to a different version of the view that"Religion, though a virtue in the female, isundoubtedly a defect in the male." Goodschools and healthy home life will do a greatdeal for the young, without specific religiousteaching.


25/407


I will suggest my own ideas merely as anillustration.

First as to Sunday in general. I assumethat it remains the practically universal holiday.li not,if, for example, different trades taketheir holidays on different days of the week,that destroys Sunday so far as the law is con-cerned ; there would then be no question ofclosing shops and stopping factories on oneday more than another. But, taking it as theuniversal holiday, I may be old-fashioned, butI do not think that I want the present law tobe altered. It alone protects Sunday from thewhole set of amusements which are carried onfor profithorseracing, cricket, football, andathletics with gate money, the music halls andtheatres. Of course, if the law could dis-tinguish, one would like good concerts and,perhaps, some theatres to be open. But thelaw cannot, I presume, distinguish between


26/407


performances carried on for profit. I see noway out of it but to maintain the prohibitionof entertainments for profit, while throwingopen without payment all public places ofhigher recreation, and providing music in theparks. Associations might well be formed togive musical performances, as at the People'sPalace, in public halls, especially during thewinter. The prohibition of profit furnishes afair negative test of quality. As a rule peoplewould not trouble themselves to give perfor-mances free, unless they really believed thatwhat they gave was worth giving in the generalinterest.Thus I should hope that before our Sab-

batarianism is destroyed we may have utilisedit to found a new kind of Sundayan EnglishSunday, not a Puritan nor yet a Parisian Sun-day. We have a great and grave responsibilityin this matter. We are working to destroy


27/407

i6 FUTURE OF RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE.

superstition. Are we or are we not aimingat such a result that the Derby will be runon Sunday, or the " Gentlemen and Players"played, or the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race rowed on Sunday ? Well, I hope not. Ishould like to see grow up a tradition of familyreunion (which is impossible for the workingclass on a day when many kinds of labour goon), of the simpler kinds of social reunion, ofhealthy country recreation, of occupation withart, music, and literature, and with the beautiesof Nature. Games, of course, would be therule for private amusement, but I should hopethat the huge machinery of Lord's and theOval would not be set in motion. If, however,one were forced to choose, I believe the BankHoliday Sunday would be better than thePuritan Sunday.

Secondly, as to more strictly ceremonialobservance. Out of what needs does it spring .-*


28/407


I have tried to explain that I have some beliefin the social recognition of great moments bothin national and individual life. I incline tothink that, whether in a public hall or in achurch, some little solemnity at the criticalpoints of life, with a few words spoken by aman or woman of intelligence and position,might be of service. But again, no doubt, itmight be ridiculous, according to the turn takenby the national mind.As to the continuance of any regular system

of meeting together week by week, amongwhole sets of neighbours, to participate inmusic or congregational singing, or to listento lectures or addresses, we have several pointsto consider. Lectures of this kind descendfrom the sermon ; and the sermon, I presume,from an age when the preacher was moreeducated than his hearers ; and certainly froma time when he is supposed to have some

c. c. c


29/407

1 8 FUTURE OF RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE.

key, which they had not, to religious know-ledge.

Conditions of this kind are quickly disap-pearing now, and in the time to which we lookforward no trace of them will remain. Now itis a great thing merely to meet a few sympathis-ing friends. Then we may hope that in themain all society will be sympathetic in a morerational standpoint. Now we are just breakingthrough to free thought, and we are strugglingwith great ideas as to the way of regardinglife and duty and what is best in the world.But then we shall no longer have the strenuousvirtues of the minority, but our danger will liein the inertia of our majority. Our generalstandpoint will have lost the excitement ofnovelty, and we shall be forming a neworthodoxy. Now there is only beginning to bea widespread system of first-rate Universityteaching made accessible throughout the


30/407


country, and the Ethical lecturer, if he is aboutas well qualified as an Extension lecturer, maybreak new ground and reach new audiences.But then, I sincerely hope, the Sunday lecturerwill be, at best, but one among a number ofteachers, from whom any student will be ableto learn under conditions no less stimulatingthan on Sunday, and more solidly and systema-tically. A teacher who tries to deal with lifein general is indeed almost certain, in an ageof universal education, to be behind a greatpart of his audience in every distinct matter hemay touch upon ; and if this false direction, asI think it, is adopted, the lecturer of the futurewill have as little that can interest his audienceas the preacher of to-day.

It appears, therefore, very doubtful whetherinstruction or oratory can ever take the placeofpublic worship. Instruction essentially dealswith special matter, while public worship is


31/407


32/407


what every sensible man knows as well as heTherefore, I should have hoped that Sundaywould come to be marked, as it now is in manyhappy households, rather by a peculiar tonewhich attaches to its occupations than by anydistinct habit of meeting or of ritual. The ruleon which this tone might be founded would besuggested by the public authority, if it adoptedthe attitude which I have advocated, viz, thatthe day should indeed be a general holiday,but one on which, comparatively speaking,families and individuals should be thrown ontheir own resources for entertainment. Ishould hope that circles of friends, and families,would find out, as so many already do, higherinterests to pursue, more appropriate, moreprofound, more continuous, and more ardent,than is possible for a general congregationbroug-ht together at random.

It may seem that these suggestions herald a


33/407


Splitting up of culture which will destroy unityand sympathy. I do not think so. The opensecret of modern life, to my mind, is that wefind the universal not in the general, but in theindividual. If our interest, for example, is infine art, we need not keep drawing back anddallying with ethics or history for fear weshould become one-sided. We should goright in as deep and thoroughly as we can,and we shall find our ethics and history, thoughin another form, when we have gone deepenoug-h.

So I say that I hope a definite tradition willform itself, that it is a duty, especially on theweekly holiday, to renew our hold, first indeed,if necessary,as it is for those who rarely meet,on our families and friends, and then on thoseworks of man and nature which best typify tous the unity of the world. It has been saidthat it is a duty to hear or read or see some-


34/407


thing very good every day. We who are lessfortunately situated might compromise per-haps upon " every week." But we ought notto be governed simply by historical inheritancein the form which we give to this aspiration,and we ought always to aim, for ourselves andothers, at an interest which is continuous andpenetrating, so that our emotional life may befed with realities, and we may lay hands onsomething which will not crumble in our grasp.

Especially I would suggest that the employ-ment of simple music as an accompaniment toprayer and praise has nothing in common withthe strictly aesthetic enjoyment and exaltationproper to the great musical art which wedelight in for its own sake at a concert. Itseems, therefore, altogether a mistake to intro-duce a concert into a service, or to turn aservice into a concert. A good concert is agood Sunday occupation,none better ; but it


35/407


is not appropriate to a mixed congregation, formany of whom it is a trial, while those whoenjoy it most do not enjoy an oration follow-ing It.

The literature of religious emotion, again,as, for example, the Hebrew prophets,seemsto be rather a stimulant than a food. It doesnot expand into a world, it does not lead uscontinuously forward, but rather subjects us torecurrent excitements of feeling. The studyof religions, on the other hand, is of coursean interesting study, but must be clearly dis-tinguished from the employment of religiousliterature for purposes of public worship or theutterance of a common feeling.

It seems, then, quite possible, that in spite ofa sound tradition as to the use of the weeklyholidayin part, perhaps, because of such atraditionwe may in course of generationscease to possess or to recognise any general


36/407


external symbol of our common human relationto the reality of what is best. And so super-ficial and so ambiguous have such symbolsproved themselves, that the loss may well be again. Only let us remember that the abandon- )ment of a symbol may always have two mean- /ings. It may indicate that we have surrendered^,the thing signified, or it may indicate that we 'have grasped it in a truer form.

It is not easy to be sure whether we arewholly free from the former risk. There is aFrench expression, signifying "the averagesensual man," which Matthew Arnold fre-quently refers to. Many things in modernlife have an appearance as if we were findingour level in this direction. If it were so, theworld would not be worth living in ; and suchtendencies we must see to it that we resist ; forthey would make life a baser thing than it everhas been before.


37/407


But if by abandoning the general externalsymbol we indicate, and truly indicate, that weat last have felt in our hands and recognised inour lives the thing signified, the actual spiritualworld in all its various reality, then, surely, lifewill be nobler than it ever has been before.


38/407

II.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE TRANSITIONFROM PAGANISM TO CHRISTIANITY}

In spite of Gibbon, we still on the whole acceptthe general idea of the Christian era whichSt. Paul and other writers of that age haveimpressed upon the modern mind. We havenot thoroughly readjusted our historical notionsto critical and natural ideas. Even so g^reat ascholar as Matthew Arnold does what he canto perpetuate a mysterious conception of thenew birth of the world at the time of Christ'scoming. Hear him in " Obermann OnceMore":

^ Delivered at Essex Hall for the London Ethical Society.


39/407

28 SOM^ THOUGHTS ON THE TRANSITION" Perceivest thou not the change of day ?

Ah ! carry back thy ken,What, some two thousand years ! SurveyThe world as it was then.

Like ours it looked in outward air,Its head was clear and true,Sumptuous its clothing, rich its fare,No pause its action knew.

Stout was its arm, each thew and boneSeemed puissant and alive,

But ah ! its heart, its heart was stone.And so it could not thrive !On that hard Pagan world disgustAnd secret loathing fell

Deep weariness and sated lustMade human life a hell.

In his cool hall, with haggard eyes.The Roman noble lay ;He drove abroad, in furious guise,Along the Appian way.

He made a feast, drank fierce and fast.And crowned his brow with flowers,

No easier nor no quicker passedThe impracticable hours.


40/407

FROM PAGANISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 29The brooding East with awe beheldHer impious younger world,

The Roman tempest swelled and swelledAnd on her head was hurled.

The East bowed low before the blastIn patient, deep disdain ;She let the legions thunder pastAnd plunged in thought again.

So well she mused, a morning brokeAcross her spirit grey ;

A conquering new-born joy awokeAnd filled her life with day.' Poor world,' she cried, ' so deep accurst.That runn'st from pole to pole.

Go seek a draught to slake thy thirst,Go seek it in thy soul !

She heard it, the victorious WestIn crown and sword arrayed !

She felt the void which mined her breast,She shivered and obeyed.

She veiled her eagles, snapped her sword.And laid her sceptre down ;

Her stately purple she abhorred.And her imperial crown.


41/407

30 SOME THOUGHTS ON THE TRANSITIONShe broke her flutes, she stopped her sports,Her artists could not please

She tore her books, she shut her courts,She fled her palaces.

Lust of the eye and pride of life.She left it all behind,

And hurried, torn with inward strife.The wilderness to find.

Tears washed the trouble from her face,She changed into a child !

'Mid weeds and wrecks she stooda placeOf ruinbut she smiled ! "This general idea of the bankruptcy of

Paganism is drawn from St. Paul and otherearly Christian controversialists, and fromRoman satirists. Is it possible for us at allto clear up our conceptions on this matteronthe question how far Pagan life had, in theage which we are considering, become devoidof good, and how far, under Christian influence,it was broken down and flung aside, and re-placed by convictions and impulses that were


42/407

FROM PAGANISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 31

wholly new ? The issue is one of immensescope, and demanding for its adequate state-mentits complete solution is not to be lookedfora very rare equipment, which I do notpossess, of historical and literary learning. Ionly propose to offer one or two hints as topoints of view which may be of value inhelping us to take our bearings with regardto it. The unquestioned facts with which weare confronted are such as these :The exist-ence of very terrible immorality and brutalityin the wealthy and civilised Roman Empire ;the lack of the greatest original genius of anykind, outside war and politics, for fully 300years before Christ ; and the startling pheno-menon that a new sect, originating among poorand unlettered Jews, did, after about threecenturies, become the official relig-ion of theRoman Empire, and nominally ousted thePagan Polytheism by a Monotheism derived


43/407

32 SOME THOUGHTS ON THE TRANSITION

from the Hebrew religion, though not identicalwith the form of Monotheism professed by theHebrews.For a thousand years, moreover, this sect,

now the victorious Catholic Church, was thestrongest power in the civilised world, andwhatever its true intellectual origin may havebeen, acknowledged but a trifling debt to theprevious Pagan civilisation, its attitude towardswhich was for the most part professedly hostile.This, so far, would suggest to us that theprevious civilisation had very little of value tobequeath, and as a fact its art and philosophyin the old form were for the time totallyextinguished by the new movement. Theworks of classical sculpture and painting wereto a great extent defaced or destroyed. Thephilosophical schools of Athens were closed byJustinian in 529. In the western or Latinworld the great Greek poets and philosophers


44/407


gradually ceased to be read, and the bookscontaining their works to be preserved asthings of value, till finally the Greek languageitself ceased to be known even to professedscholars and philosophers/ In the year 393A.D,, we may add, further to illustrate MatthewArnold's verses, the famous Olympic sportshad come to an end, after a reputed continu-ance of eleven centuries. Hopes and beliefs,supposed to be entirely new and true, with anew literature and a new music and hymnology,occupied men's minds. A fragment of such anew chant is supposed to be preserved in thewords " Awake, thou that sleepest, and arisefrom the dead, and Christ shall give theelight." We are even told, by a leading critic,^

^ Scotus Erigena (9th century a.d.), a really greatthinker, was the last scholar who knew Greek before thedawn of the Renaissance, and his knowledge was exceed-ingly imperfect.

2 Prof. Harnack in Encycl. Brit., Art. " Neo-Platonism."C. C. D


45/407


that the relapse of the Pagan world into bar-barism had nothing to do with the irruption ofuntrained races upon the stage of history, butwas a necessary consequence of the intrinsicexhaustion and abstractness at which theancient culture had arrived.The facts are not to be denied. But, con-

sistently with them, very different modes ofconceiving the transition are possible.The only definite set of phenomena which

I am at all qualified to bring before you arethose which concern the development of thesense of beauty in the Hellenistic or Graeco-Roman age, which is commonly thought of,from the standard of the greatest original art,as post-classical and as a time of decadence.Now this inquiry is very suggestive, for itreveals to us in this period many elements ofmodern feeling which are absent, comparativelyspeaking, in the great classical art of Greece,


46/407

FROM PAGANISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 35or, at least, of Athens. The deHght in familylife, the interest in man as man,^ all phases ofsentimental love, sensitiveness to the beautyof external nature, both in itself and as height-ened by the contrast with city life, and by theidea of a historical or national " mission,"^ anda new growth of literary sensibility displayedin the poetic appreciation of poetry,^ all thesethings belong to the later age of minor litera-ture and widespread culture and refinementwithin a great world-empire, in a degree un-known to the time when the greatest individualgenius was concentrated upon the service ofthe commonwealths of Greece. So, ao-ain, thephilosophers of the age after Aristotle, though

^ Terence:"I am a man, and nothing human is in-different to me." Heauton-timorumenos, i. i. 25.

2 Vergil, Georgic II. and ^neid VI. close.^ As in the conception of the Anthology or " Garland of

verses " with the appreciative poetical introduction ofMeleasrer.


47/407


by no means thinkers of the greatest graspand insight, touch new sources of plain humanfeeling and simple brotherly ^ friendliness.Science, even, was advancing, at least to theend of the 3rd century b.c. The names ofEuclid, Archimedes, and Apollonius (author ofa Treatise on Conic Sections) are enough toremind us of this.What was irrevocably lost to the ancientworld with the liberty of Greece was the career

for the individual man, the definite privilegesand duties in which the ordinary citizen couldexpress his personality and utter his will. Inspite of this loss, much had been gained. Theimpression on my mind is very strong thatCicero and Vergil, not to speak of Epictetus,Marcus Aurelius, or Plotinus, belong to a worldthat has far outstripped the age of Pericles

' See Wallace's Epicureatiism.


48/407


in ethical refinement and human sensibiHty,though inferior to it in energy and devotion,and in the conditions of individual greatness.The modern faults of pedantry and self-con-sciousness had appeared, and the new agewas inferior perhaps to the old in the centralqualities of moral life, while superior to it inbreadth and refinement of ethical feeling." Modernism," we must remember, had begunwith Socrates and Euripides, while the dis-tinction between this and the other world hadbeen introduced into religious thought byPlato, together with the specific simile ^ underwhich the Christian Church often expressed theconception of visible things as symbols of thepower and goodness of their Creator.

1 Drawn from the relation of a father to his offspring,and sometimes further illustrated by the relation of thevisible sun to its light, cf. Plato's Republic and Ep. toHebrews.


49/407


'Now it is hard to believe, without over-whelming evidence, that this broad and deepcurrent of humane culture and emotion wassuddenly turned back, or ended in a hopelessslough of evil. As to the proportion of viceand corruption existing in the life of any time,direct evidence is exceedingly difficult tocollect and to estimate. We could make outpretty nearly what case we pleased either foror against the civilization of the present day.My contention, however, does not require meto suggest that we have in no degree improvedwhen compared with the last days of Paganism.That would be a despairing view. Yet whenwe pay attention to what satirists and con-troversialists tell us about the world as it wasthen, we should not forget what sort of case apreacher or a journalist can make out againstus now. Doubtless, a gladiatorial show was amore official, more murderous, and therefore


50/407


more barbarous proceeding than any modernprize-fight. Moreover, a prize-fight, in mostcivilised countries, is now illegal, whereas thegladiatorial displays and other still morebrutal displays of the same kindwere publicfestivals carried on before the head of theState. Nevertheless, any one who hastravelled in a grreat modern democratic ^country when a prize-fight was about to takeplace, must have been surprised at the amountof attention devoted to it by journals andtelegraph officials, and in the ordinary societywith which a tourist is conversant. We areinclined to say that our vices are at all eventsless coarsely proclaimed to-day ; that a demandfor purity and decency, at least in commonsocial converse, has replaced the barbarity of

^ I refer to a particular experience. I do not mean toimply that a monarchical country is any better.


51/407


cultivated classes who could go together openlyto such entertainments as those of the sfames.But as we speak of any such antithesis, echoesof a time not very long past come into themind and deaden the opposition, while, on theother hand, in the private letters of Epicurus,or of Cicero, we catch glimpses of a family life,which, like our own, must have been to someextent a charmed circle, broken only at excep-tional crises by the horrors of surroundingvice.

If we now try to frame some notion of thereal junction by which Paganism is united withChristianity, we ought first to turn our atten-tion to the immense lapse of time occupied bythe transition. From the first distinct breachin naive or natural Paganism, to the assump-tion of a definitely doctrinal and orthodox formby Christianity, there is an interval whichcannot be reckoned at less than seven hundred


52/407


years, from the death of Socrates to thetriumph of Christianity under Constantinewhile, if we desire, as we ought, to considerthe contact of the two influences as continuousdown to the death of "heathen" philosophy,we should have to extend this interval to theclosing of the schools of Athens in 529 a.d.,,bringing up the transition to a total of more 1than nine hundred years.

In place, then, of our supposing a chasm tohave been suddenly bridged for the passagefrom Paganism to Christianity, let us maketrial of a somewhat different set of conceptions.The age following upon that in which greatdiscoverers have been active is confronted bythe task of applying and popularising theirdiscoveries, and often acquires, in consequence,a somewhat scholastic character. Scholasticismis in its essence the subordination of knowledgeto practice, and in this widest sense our own


53/407


time has, as I shall point out more in detailbelow, a scholastic tendency.Now the classical Greeks had made the great

discovery with which progressive civilisationbegins, the discovery of a free and reasonablemode of human life ; and this discovery theytranslated sanely, though not completely, intointellectual theory. But this discovery, likemany new inventions, could at first be workedonly on a small scale, and with reference to thevery limited area in which the most favourableconditions existed. The same was the casewith the monotheism and morality of theJewish people, which in their combination asa moral religion were discoveries belonging toabout the same period as that covered by thegreatest time of Greek history. The task laidupon the succeeding ages was that of makingavailable for the world at large these concep-tions of an ethical monotheism and of a free


54/407


but organised life. Especially the destructionof Greek self-government forced these problemsupon the world, because, in the rigid machineof the Roman empire, there was much lessfundamental moral distinction, than in a freecommonwealth, between master and slave.And so among the Stoics, for example, it waspossible for a slave to be a good man, andeven to be a philosopher,an idea which wouldhave seemed profane to Plato or to Aristotle.The simple human virtues of the individualman or womanthe servile virtuescame tothe front, and combined with the ideas ofhuman brotherhood and of God in humanity,and also with that of a golden age in thefuture, perhaps the most important contributiondue to the Jewish religion.

Thus, after four hundred years of strugglingwith these ideas in every shape and form, theywere at last put in a popular and picturesque


55/407


mould, and a new organisation was started toembody them in a visible society. So far,then, from being a new thing, contrasting withthe degradation of the Pagan world, this greatgrowth was the issue of the advance of thatworld during four centuries, and it was notthoroughly completed, in a definite shape,capable of ruling European civilisation, until,in a further development of five centuries, ithad adopted from Paganism the germs ofalmost all permanently valuable elements thatthe latter contained. The five hundred yearssucceeding the Christian era were a timeduring which Christianity was still in the wombof Paganism, and drew its nourishment fromthe life and circulation of its parent.The great need of the age, as is impliedthroughout in Professor Wallace's treatment of

Epicureanism, was the need for a practicalrecognition of the individual human being, and


56/407


a possibility of uttering his will in free har-mony with his fellow-men. Ultimately, as wenow see, the modern free nation was destinedto replace the little Greek commonwealth infurnishing this scope and recognition, but in themeantime the Christian congregations servedthe purpose. In them every man and woman,independently of rank or station, found recog-nition, brotherhood, and hope. Now, this newhope and faith was simply the best ideal ofGreece, translated, by help of Jewish imagery,into a coarse but popular shape. The advance,attended, as the law of such an advance ren-dered necessary, with a very considerable loss,was that it should be popularly accepted at all.It had needed four hundred years to getPlato's distinction between this and the otherworld into the popular consciousness ; andwhen it did get there, it could only do so inthe shape of a coarse material antithesis which


57/407


showed and shows itself in the dominant under-standing of Christ's " Kingdom of Heaven,"just as it showed and shows itself in thedominant interpretations of Plato's " Doctrineof Ideas." Jewish aspirations, Stoic exaggera-tions, neo- Platonic dualisms, cutting life in twowith an axe. were the instruments by whichthat naive and simply sensuous view of life,which Plato had rent asunder and re-combinedin a rational whole, was finally rendered im-possible for the European world. If this iswhat we mean by the exhaustion of a greatlife-principle, if to be exhausted is to be fruitfulin the heart and mind of a world, which needsmore ages than have yet elapsed to absorb thefull significance of what has descended uponit, then, but then only, can we say that ex-haustion and a relapse into barbarism wereinherent in the development of ancient thoughtand conduct. The Dark Ages are not a proof


58/407


that the great classical culture had lost itspower for human welfare ; they prove only howlong a discipline was needed by the mass ofhumanity before it could appreciate more thanthe first stammering misapprehensions of itsgreat inheritance. To frame this practical dis-cipline, to impart the first elements of cultureand dignity, not merely to new races but tothe whole of those classes who had been withinthe civilised world but not of it, was the workof the greatest intelligences and characters ofChristendom for a thousand years and more.Scholasticism, though it bears an external re-semblance to speculation, has in it no truespeculative elements.^ Its root is the sub-

^ Scholasticism is a word with a definite meaning, anddoes not apply to all mediaeval writings on doctrinal sub-jects. In as far as there is true mediaeval speculation, e.g..,in Scotus Ertgena, it shows itself as a struggle towards amore free and complete view of life.


59/407

48 SOME THOUGHTS ON THE TRANSITIONordination of knowledge to practice, theattempt to find a bearing upon life in doctrinesor tradition, not by grasping them as a whole,but by searching for an immediate applicationin every part.^ Thus, that which all mencould learn of the great ideas of Paganism wascalled Christianity, while as soon as they hadlearnt something, they necessarily gravitatedback to a new and humanised Paganism. Thefirst transition is symbolised by the images otChrist, which the Gnostics of the second cen-tury A.D. placed beside those of Plato and

^ This view may seem to conflict with our received idealof Scholasticism. Let us look at the doggerel verses whichexpress its rule of interpretation, which even Dante accepts." The letter teaches the facts, the allegory, what you are tobelieve, the moral " [interpretation] *' what you are to do,the exalting" [interpretation] "what you are to hope."These are the four kinds of interpretation. The viciouspredominance of practical aims in them is at once discern-ible. The whole labour and anxiety was to impress onignorant men what they were to do.


60/407


Aristotle ; the second by that painting ofRaphael which seems to set heathen poetryunder Apollo on a level with Christian doc-trine under Christ.The same relation holds in the history of art.The Pagan sense of beauty is not, as Matthew

Arnold implies, destroyed in Christianity, butit passes into a form that included suchelements of the older beauty as were suitablefor this infancy of a new epoch with largerclaims. Naturally, among people to whom thearts of intellectualised imagination could not

have effectually spoken, the first forms takenwere those of architectural and decorative ex-pression. You cannot all at once raise a massof slaves and barbarians to the intellectual lifeof Periclean Athens. They remained for agesilliterate ; but their sense of freedom and hopefound its new expression in a shape that every-one could feelthe great churches with their

c. c. E


61/407


decoration (often pictorial) and their services/and we can see a more subtle sense of naturalbeauty continuing to grow from the first daysof the Christian era. The history of art moststrikingly confirms the point of view suggestedabove, that the popular mind was now grasp-ing in a coarse and superstitious form, theprinciple to which Plato had tried to raiseGreek thought. For the Christian conscious-ness repeated, on its own ground, an error ofthe higher Greek philosophy. In a greatwave of feeling, about 800 a.d., partly underJewish and Arabian influence, the Christianmind turned fanatically against all sacred sculp-ture and painting in the famous " iconoclastic "movement ; that is to say, it felt for a time,as Plato had felt, that sensuous portrayals

^ It is well worth while to read Mr. Pater's Marius theEpicurean on this whole subject.


62/407


appeared unworthy of and inadequate to thespiritual world. It was a mistake, but a mis-take that could not have been made untilPlato's conception that a spiritual world was areality had in one shape or another penetratedthe popular mind. And, of course, when aconsciousness imbued with this conceptionshould finally express itself in art, the resultwould be all the deeper for the discrepancythat had been overcome.

If, in order to bring the old and the newinto close comparison, we look at the Christianconsciousness by the side of that which is pre-sented in Marcus Aurelius, the radical differ-ence between the two is merely, I think, in thesense of hope or value in life. The Christianhas, for every human being, the same sense ofbelonging to a spiritual body, which a Peri-clean Athenian had for himself and a fewothers. Only in the Christian this feeling is


63/407


deepened by being generalised, and he con-siders himself to be of infinite value, as amember of a community in which the divinespirit is inherent. Marcus Aurelius has all theChristian sense of duty and goodwill andcheerful resignation, but it is conjoinedthroughout with an indescribable languor andweariness. We see it, so I cannot help think-ing, in his face, the face of a weary man. Andso there is something grotesque to our views,if also something noble, in the picture of thegreat general occupying the Senate with dis-cussions on problems of philosophy for threedays before departing on his last campaign.The same tendency shows itself in his favouritetopic of comfortthat human life is so small athing in the universe that our fate is really amatter of indifference. This consideration isnot really helpful ; and such world-wearinessmight, no doubt, turn to serious corruption in


64/407

FROM PAGANISM TO CHRISTIANITY. ' 53

minds of a low order. All that was not gettingbetter would be getting worse.What was the root of this difference in feel-

ing, explained in the language of philosophy ?Clearly, the assumption of the self-sufficingnessof the individual human beingthe hopelessattempt to make the individual independent ofan external response to his will. Plato andAristotle, in conformity with the phenomena ofGreek life at its best, start definitely and ex-plicitly from the opposite of this idea" societycomes into existence, because each one of us isnot self-sufficing but in want of many things."^The intermediate age of practical speculationhad tried hard, in accordance with the isolatedexternal life of the time, to escape this truth,but had only succeeded in making clear theindividual's need, and revealing the impossi-bility of maintaining the inner will without an

^ Plato's Republic^ 369.


65/407


external organisation and reality correspondingto it. Plato's ** righteousness " is the germ ofChristian faith ; the accepting as one's real selfa purpose which is at once rooted in realityand represented by an actual society.

In the philosophy of the last age ofPaganism there may be discerned a similarapproximation to the theological principle ofChristianity. Gradually the idea of emanationthat the derivative is the inferiorpassesinto the idea of evolution, that the derivativemay reveal more than that from which it isderived. And the doctrine of Athanasius, byits insistance on the omission of a single iota/

^ Insisting that the Son is of one substance, "hom


66/407


may be said to have vindicated the centralprinciple of evolutionary science as the centralprinciple of Christianity. The " give andtake " between Christian and Pagan philosophyin this epoch was very considerable, and it isnot possible, I believe, to judge from thepurely philosophical writings of an author ofthe age in question, whether he should, orshould not, be reckoned as a Christian. Thetendency of the whole period, in which Paganand Christian thought cannot as yet be firmlydistinguished, was to begin the long task ofreconciling the popular Platonic and Hebraicdualism by at least recognising that the goodwas capable of appearing in the actual life ofman without deterioration.When we look at this great historical de-

velopment with ideas like these in our minds,it is impossible not to be struck by a parallelbetween the age of early Christianity and the


67/407


present day. The Dark Ages, we are sug-gesting, were brought on by a new possibilityand necessity for recognising the rights ofcommon human feeHng in virtue and art andworship, and universaHsing a certain inheri-tance of simple good, while sacrificing for thetime almost the whole of the vast culture fromwhich that good had sprung. Are we notforced to see something of the same kindwithin the area of our boasted universal intel-ligence of to-day ? Let the dawn of theFrench Revolution and the outburst of ideascontemporary with it stand to us as the Chris-tian era stood to the middle ao^e. For theuniversal form of human feeling, which in thatage ousted for the time being all regard toclassical learning, literature, and science, letus substitute in our consideration of to-daythe universal form of human intelligence, themembership of the republic of letters, the


68/407


power and right to have an articulate opinion,to be heard in the court of science and literature,and in the argumentative deliberation whichnow rules the destinies of civilised mankind.Have we not, as a consequence of the greatrenascence of a hundred years ago, attainedan advance which no one has rightly estimated,at the cost of a retrocjression which no onehas rightly understood ? What we have at- \tained is the universal right to argue, to havean opinion, to be heard through the speechon the platform, the book, the pamphlet, andthe newspaperthe recognition that civilisedman enjoys as his common birthright the formof articulate human intelligence. What, by Njthis very advance, we have lost for the time, ',is the adequacy of the substance of culture toits form. Never before, in the history of thehuman race, have the facilities of thought andexpression been so distributed as to render


69/407

58 SOME THOUGHTS ON THE TRANSITIONpossible so wild and immeasurable an ocean

, of error. For positive errorand this is theI simplest statement of my meaninghas now

taken the place of ignorance. Far from havingreached its climax, the movement towards amodern Dark Age has probably but just

; begun. ^ If early Christianity took on itsshoulders the spiritual welfare of the massesin a very narrow sense, the nineteenth centuryhas taken on its shoulders their intellectualand moral welfare in the very broadest anddeepest sense. Do we suppose that this canbe attempted without a sacrifice ? Do weimagine that enormous benefits to the racecan be obtained without paying a price ? Aglance at those countries where education, inthe general or formal sense, is most universaland best appreciated, will assure us of the

^ See some striking observations in vol. i. of Jowett'sFlato, 3rd edition, p. 424 ff.


70/407


contrary. There is nothing which large sec-tions of the educated populace (in all ranksof society) will not believe. There is noabsurdity so gross as not to find its ablejournalistic supporters. There is no opinionwhich is not maintained, by persons equippedwith full powers of articulate expression, witha granite obstinacy and indifference to reasonand experience. There is nothing so bad inart and literature that it will not be welcomedwith exultation by an enthusiastic crowd, quitecapable of maintaining their conceptions inlanguage, to all appearance, not unworthy ofthe republic of letters. Of this republic, Irepeat, all civilised men are now in theoryqualified citizens, and it wants but little forthem to take up the external privileges ofcitizenship.

Is all this a ground of despair ; and in speak-ing thus strongly am I a pessimist ? I do not


71/407

6o SOME THOUGHTS ON THE TRANSITION

accept this inference. My object is to makeclear that there is now a duty incumbent onall who believe in the organised substance ofculture as a body of science, art, and literature,parallel to that which was laid on the advocatesof Christianity in the Middle Ages, but at ahigher level. Their duty, and their hope, lie,according to the point of view here adopted,in the direction of an ultimate reanimation ofthe form of culture by its substance. Theso-called bankruptcy of the Pagan world wasnot its defect, but its merit. It had generated

so we may suggesta universal need and auniversal mode of feeling, which, because uni-versal, were incompatible for the moment withthe highest culture which had generated them,but were destined ultimately to combine thatculture itself with something beyond. In justthe same way the Revolution epoch has madeknown a universal need and formal capacity of


72/407

FROM PAGANISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 6i

an intellectual kind, but possessing, and likelyto possess for many a long generation, only theform of intellect, and not its substance.To illustrate the problem more clearly, an

obsolete conception may be alluded to. Noone, it may be hoped, in addressing himself toan Ethical Society, would express a regret forthe disappearance of authority in intellectualand spiritual matters. But where there is noauthority, we are badly off if the positive con-tent of intelligence is wanting. Authority, in \these matters, may be defined as the influence \of organised culture exerted by irrationalmeans. Now between the disappearance of ,this irrational influence, and the acquisition, \by culture, of an influence operative throughrational means, there is a transition stagewhich constitutes our peculiar modern formof the Dark Ages. " Reverence," an able andintelligent gentleman from one of the British


73/407

62 SOME THOUGHTS ON THE TRANSITION,colonies once said to me, " is a thing I cannotunderstand." Well, the reverence of mysteryis doomed ; the reverence of knowledge hasnot yet come.To work for the completion of the universal

form of intelligence by a content adequate toit is the next duty of all who have a faith inman's rational nature.


74/407

III.

THE CIVILISATION OF CHRISTENDOM}When we try to embody in a characteristicphrase those central purposes which animateour modern moral life, there are three ex-pressions that immediately spring into themind. "Culture," "Humanity," "Civilisa-tion," are the watchwords of the nineteenthcentury. In a romance written by IvanTurgenieff, who was the prophetic voice ofa slowly awakening people, we read the noblesentence : " My faith is in civilisation, and Irequire no further creed."

I wish to call your attention this morning^ Delivered at South Place Chapel, Finsbury.


75/407


76/407

THE CIVILISATION OF CHRISTENDOM. 65

our view, in order that we may not be blownabout with every wind of doctrine, nor hurryto new superstitions wherewith to replace theold ; but that we may rather

" Build to-day, then, strong and sure.On a firm and ample base ;And ascending and secure

Shall to-morrow find its place."I will comment in order on the terms which

I have mentioned.What is culture ? Is it to expose ourselves,

passively, to the influence of all that men havethought and written, or are thinking andwriting to-day ; to find all ideas and activities" interesting," and to maintain to them theattitude of the spectator and dilettante '^ Oh,no ! Culture is the habit of a mind instinctwith purpose, cognisant of a tendency andconnection in human achievement, able andindustrious in discerning the great from thetrivial. Everything, no doubt, has a value, if

c. c. F


77/407

66 THE CIVILISATION OF CHRISTENDOM.

rightly apprehended, but to apprehend thingsrightly we must apprehend them in due sub-ordination. He who would be, or do, or know

\ anything great, must have the penetration andresolution to limit and control his endeavours.So too with the idea of humanity. We

rightly welcome the saying of the Latin poet :" I am human, and nothing human is alienfrom me." Yet, if we ask ourselves frankly," Does the import of humanity consist canit consist, for mein all human beings, past,present and future, with their wicked andwasted lives, and even with those lives whichfor my personal knowledge have had no ex-istence at all, being of course the enormousnumerical majority ? " if we frankly and can-didly ask ourselves this question, the answermust certainly be negative. Humanity, as

/ a moral idea, does not signify to us all humanbeings, actual in the present or past, and


78/407


possible in the future, and is not in fact equally-applicable to all human beings. And thosewho by a confusion of thought, together withan unguarded effusiveness of feeling, havewholly or in part imagined this to be the caseCount Tolstoi, if not misreported, furnishesan example of what I meanhave been ledto turn their backs upon the noblest aimsof humanity, and to counterwork its mostessential purposes. To hear from a greatteacher that intellectual culture must be re-nounced as a mark and cause of exclusivenessand caste divisions among mankind, " Oh,the pity of it, the pity of it ! " For, in reality,without culture there cannot possibly be anyprogress towards the solidarity of man as man.This sad error simply arises from not notingthe distinction between the unoro^anised aof-gregate of human beings, and those definitecoherent characters and achievements which


79/407


alone give hope and value to life. It is theold, old difficulty of not seeing the wood forthe trees, or again of not seeing the trees forthe wood. Sentimentalism loves all humanbeings simply as they are ; doctrinairism lovesthem only foe the sake of the general purpose ;rational enthusiasm loves them indeed as theyare, but as seeing in them a relation to thegeneral purpose.A similar contradiction reigns in our ideaof civilisation. Earnest and able men havepronounced civilisation a hateful thing ; andit is certainly clear that not all the artificiallife of wealthy and ingenious nations can enterinto the idea which comes home to us as rightand noble in the saying of Turgenieff s clear-sighted Russian. Let me read you the linesof our English woman-poet, which state thiscontradiction in a way, that, once realised, cannever be forgotten. Mrs. Browning writes :


80/407

THE CIVILISATION OF CHRISTENDOM. 69*' The age culls simplesWith a broad clown's back turned broadly to the glory of

the stars ;We are Gods by our own reckoning, and may well shut upthe temples

And wield on, amid the incense-steam, the thunder of ourcars.

For we throw out acclamations of self-thanking, self-ad-miring,

With, for every mile run faster, 'Oh the wondrous, won-drous age !

Little thinking if we work our Souls as nobly as our iron.Or if angels will commend us at the goal of pilgrimage.

Why, what is this patient entrance into nature's deep re-sources

But the child's most gradual learning to walk uprightwithout bane ?When we drive out, from the clouds of steam, majestical

white horses,Are we greater than the first men who led black ones by

the mane ?

If we trod the deeps of ocean, if we struck the stars inrising,

If we wrapped the globe intensely with one hot electricbreath,


81/407


'Twere but power within our tether, no new spirit-powercomprising,And in life we were not greater men, nor bolder men in

death."These are words which it is right to bear

in mind, as the question of the Sphinx whichour civiHsation must answer, or die. Ourfirst feeling on hearing them is probably acombination of dejection at their truth, andindignation at their falsehoodso intermingledare the good and evil of our modern world.I cannot pass from them to my further sug-gestions without one remark, which is thishas there been any civilisation before oroutside that of modern Christendom, in whichso noble a trumpet-call could have beensounded by a woman ?

These three expressions, thenculture,humanity, civilisation, are often superficiallyemployed, cover dangerous bypaths, and needto be definitely interpreted.


82/407


Now if, in proceeding to define them, Iwere to ask of the more freethinkinor membersof this Ethical Society the question whichDavid Strauss embodied in a pamphlet many-years ago, " Are we still Christians ? " Isuppose that the answer would be givenwithout hesitation, which he also gave, " Weare Christians no longer." If I were thenfurther to ask, " Are we members of Christen-dom ? " there would probably be hesitation,and the answers might be divided. If, finally,I were to ask, " Are we rightly described asheathens ? " I should receive, I imagine, fromall who think seriously, a peremptory negative.We feel, I believe, that though much in theChristianity of many churches is no longerintelligible to us, yet the mind and life ofChristendom have gone through a process andreached a standpoint which makes its civilisa-tion an essentially different thing from the


83/407

72 THE CIVILISATION OF CHRISTENDOM.mode of existence, however wealthy or refined,of non-Christian countries. I am not alludingto comparative statistics, for example, aboutsoberness and chastity, if any of the so-calledheathen are really worse than we in thesematters, they must be very bad indeed, I amspeaking about the whole nature and principlesof fine art, science, politics, social action, philo-sophy.Now, of course, it was not simply Christ's

preaching that created the peculiar characterof the western races, in which the constructiveactivities that mark our civilisation have theirorigin and source ; but it is true, and cannotbut be true, because the religion is the man,that Christianity was fitted to become andhas become the definite and specific expressionof the character of those races, which downto the present day have been the history-making races of the world. From the first


84/407

THE CIVILISATION OF CHRISTENDOM. 73it was a western religion, a Greek revoltagainst Judaism, becoming continually moreand more pronounced ; and it embodied fromthe first, and under all its superstitions hasnever abandoned, those essential ideas whichconstitute the modern spirit.The spirit of Christendom, thenparodied

by its doctrines, but always animating its lifeand the modern spirit are on the whole con-vertible terms ; and when we speak of culture,humanity, civilisation, as indicating moral aimsand duties, we use these terms in the sensepractically defined for us by the mind ofChristendom.At this point I think it not wholly impossible

that I may be misunderstood. But standing,as I do to-day, in a place which has been fortwo generations a centre of free religiousthought in London, I feel able to count upon arobustness of conviction in my audience which


85/407


86/407

THE CIVILISATION OF CHRISTENDOM. 75I assert that Christianity is the distinctivecharacteristic of the constructive Westernmind ? The answer is very simple : Christi-anity is the form in which the progressiveciviHsation of Greece and Rome expressed itstendencies when time and experience hadpartly matured them. Its first words, nodoubt, were spoken by a heretic Jew from thedespised northern borderland of Palestinebut the actual shape of the new doctrine, aswell as its effect, was determined by thethought and forces of the age,^ and it is notperhaps in the genuine words of Christ thatthe Christian principle was most sharply ormost profoundly expressed. So much by wayof explanation. Greeks and Romans, in short,were not heathens in the full sense of the term.There would be a truth in calling them unde-veloped Christians. Their lives and works are

^ See p. 44 above.


87/407


bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. TheybeHeved, as we do, that the revelation of thebest for man lay in the eternal deed andpurpose which alone gives value to the indi-vidual life. Their ideas are not alternative toours, but belong to the childhood of our ownspiritual race, and are already included in andoperative throughout the spirit of modernChristendom.What do I mean, then, by this spirit ofChristendom which is, on the one hand themotor force of modern progress, and on theother hand the fundamental impulse of thenew departure at the time of the ChristianEra.?The modern spirit may be described as the

spirit of rational freedom, " freedom " becauseit fears nothing and acknowledges no superior"rational" because it is not Stoic or negative, butpositive and constructive. It not only believes


88/407


that it can morally face the world, and even, ifneed be, meet destruction calmly ; but it also (believes that in fact the world is friendly, andkindred to itself. This, whether acknowledgedor not, is the fundamental conviction of modernscience, modern art, modern enterprise ; al-though the progressive demonstration of it indetail, substituting itself for the vague faith init in general, produces a curious and unjustifiedappearance of doubt. I cannot argue out thisconviction at length. It is plain that we at anyrate believe in no accident, no miracle, nothingin its nature and essence inexplicable or irra-tional. And not only so, but we believe that,whatever fate may be in store for the race, wecan yet do, in spite of it, something worthdoing.

In theoretical philosophy this point of viewwas formulated at the dawn of the NewReformation, just about a century ago, under


89/407

78 THE CIVILISATION OF CHRISTENDOM

the name of the absolute standpoint. " Abso-lute," in this sense, means practically the sameas " modern " ; it means that the universe isnot to be treated as a sealed book, but as anopen secret ; not. of course, in the sense thatwe can, or ever shall, know all that we desireto know ; but in the sense that we can attachno meaning to the idea of something, which,being particularly and especially of importancefor us to know, is yet of such a kind that weare eternally debarred from knowing it. Theterm "absolute" does not exclude relativity;on the contrary, its whole point and meaning isthat we have contact with and relation to thereality of the universe. It does not excludea knowable relativity, but on the contraryassumes it ; what it does exclude is an unknow-able relativity. That is to say, it excludesaccident, caprice, and with these the vulgaridea of the supernatural.


90/407


Therefore, I must point out, we shall bevery cautious in employing the name Agnostic.Strictly, to be an Agnostic is to be a heathen,and we are not heathens, for we are membersof Christendom. You will observe that Ag-nostic does not merely mean a man who isignorant of many things which he would verymuch like to know. In that sense, no doubt,we are all Agnostics ; but the great Agnosticwriters have not spent their labour to proveanything so obvious as this. They meanmore ; they mean that there is something inparticular of great and fundamental value,which somehow they claim to know and expectto know, and are disappointed by not knowing.This, I must confess, seems to me a ludicrousposition ; it perpetuates the prejudice which itprofesses to combat, and which is really a merelegacy, not so much from Christian, as fromheathen superstition. Why are we, throughout


91/407

8o THE CIVILISATION OF CHRISTENDOM

our whole life and work to stigmatise ourselvesas Know-nothings, if we believe, as I certainlydo, that what is best and most essential in theworld is accessible to our experience and realis-able in our lives ? While admitting, then, that adecent caution is wise and modest in describingthe range of our knowledge, I must point outthat Agnosticism, if it implies more than atruism, implies what is incompatible with themodern spirit, and is really a survival of theworship of the unknown God at Athens, which,in this one respect, was a truly heathen city.

Havinof thus described what I call themodern or absolute standpoint, and havingillustrated it by its opposition to Agnosticism,I go on to explain why I connect it in par-ticular with Christianity, from which religionit was in fact derived by the great men whofirst proclaimed it in the time of Goethe and ofthe French Revolution.


92/407

THE CIVILISATION OF CHRISTENDOM. 8i

It may be said that the three teachers whoseminds determined the future of ChristianityJesus, Paul, and the writer of the fourth gos-pel, all believed in the existence of a personal

God, dwelling in another world, which is theheathen doctrine darkly implied by Agnostic-ism, and especially incompatible with themodern spirit. And this is true ; but let usexamine the matter a little more closely.

In the foreshortening produced by greatremoteness in time, the ages nearer to usoccupy an apparent interval disproportionatelygreater than their actual duration. Christianityis nearly 1,900 years old, and we scarcely real-ise or take account of any similar lapse of timebefore the Christian era. But some civilisationcan be traced for at least 3,000 years beforethe coming of Christ, and it is a very moderateassumption to suppose that supernaturalreligion, in some form, had existed for twice

c, c. G


93/407


as long before the Christian era as the intervalwhich has elapsed since that epoch. Duringall this time, so far as we can possibly conjec-ture, all reasoning nations must have believedin gods, whose life was differently conditionedfrom that of man, and interfered with hiscapriciously, irrationally, and mysteriously.This is the creed of a heathen. During thelast 500 or 600 years before Christ, the reason-able activity and intelligence of Greece andRome began to bring the idea of divinitynearer and nearer to man, and to modify theJudaic and heathen conception of the jealousGod, unapproachable by mankind.And now, with this point of view in our

minds, let us turn once more to early Chris-tianity. Unquestionably, the heathen belief inthe God in another world, or rather in anothersection of this world, having existed, probably,for 3,000 years, survived in the new teaching,


94/407


just as the custom of slavery, unquestionedthroughout the same period, passed un-challenged into the new practice. But we donot judge a doctrine by its survivals, but byits novelties and ultimate tendencies. Andthe novelty, the new word, spoken faintly byChrist, but like a trumpet-blast by Paul andby the author of the fourth gospel, was this,that God was revealed in man, that love andknowledge, the spiritual unity of mankind,were the actual being of God, so that ulti-mately the notion of Christ's second coming istransmuted into, and replaced by, this idea ofthe communication of the divine Spirit to theindividual believer. Now, of course, the earlyChristian teachers did not anticipate how thisnew Christian doctrine of God in our worldwould, in the course of ages, crush and destroythe old heathen doctrine of God outside ourworld ; but we, looking back, can clearly see


95/407

84 THE CIVILISATION OF CHRISTENDOM

how this conception of an immanent divinity,which is inherent in the character of the lead-ing Christian races, has operated throughouttheir history as the organic idea. For, oncemore, the organic or evolutionary idea is at onewith the absolute standpoint of the modernspirit. That a single principle or will lies atthe root of nature, and is also embodied in themind and actions of man, is the inspiring con-viction of every progressive society, as of allscience and practical energy. We can hardlyrealise the depth of the change by which thisChristian doctrine initiated the belief indevelopment, so characteristic of the modernworld, unless we compare the timid socialideas of the wisest Greeks with the audaciousmetaphors which were the first that occurredto the Galilean peasant. How to avoid revo-lution ; how to perpetuate the original wisdomof the founder ; how to maintain a political


96/407


97/407


we should reflect how modern this notion is ;it rests on the conception of a universal human-ity ; no Greek ever wanted to spread Hellen-ism through the world ; he did not believe theworld was capable of it. The idea thathumanity has a birthright, independent ofrace, and simply consisting in the one rationalspirit inherent in mankind, is an absolutelymodern principle, and lies at the root of moraland political progress.The peculiar operation of this principle in

Christendom might be illustrated in endlessways, from all aspects of action and intelli-gence. I will speak, not of its most funda-mental manifestation, but of one which is themost readily verifiable, and was most undeni-ably peculiar to the Christian world. I alludeto the history of Fine Art.

Fancy and ingenuity are present in the workof many nations, perhaps of all. But the art


98/407


which deals nobly and reasonably with manand with nature is not,' I believe, to be found,except in Christian civilisation, or in the Greekand Italian culture which was its forerunner.What little exception can be taken to thisstatement will only be found to heighten itsforce. We may remember that Mahometanismand Judaism alike prohibit the representationsof plastic art, whereas the tendency of Chris-tianity to representation and architecturalexpression at once reveals its fundamentalkinship with Hellenism.

Facts like these are riot accidental. Theperception of the divinity of the human form,the sense of friendliness between man andinanimate nature (replacing the heathen senseof hostility), the demand that both dwelling-place and place of worship shall manifest thereasonableness and beauty of the spirit thatlives in man, all these are consequences of the


99/407


absolute faith with which the Christian con-sciousness claims to be in harmony with theworld. We speak, sometimes, of the " DarkAges," and in matters of the exact sciencesperhaps they were dark enough. Yet wemust deduct something from our youthfulideas of their obscurity when we find that ourtruest lovers of beauty fix the building age ofthe world between the years 500 and 1,500 ofour era. Architecture, more than any otherart, is an index to the happiness and freedomof the people ; and during this period of i,ocoyears, " an architecture, pure in its principles,reasonable in its practice, and beautiful to theeyes of all men, even the simplest," coveredEurope with beautiful buildings from Constan-tinople to the north of Britain. In presenceof this manifestation of free and productiveintelligence, unmatched even in ancient Greeceand Rome, and utterly unmatchable to-day, we


100/407


may usefully reflect upon the expressive andconstructive force of the spirit of Christendom,even in its darkest hours. The more closelywe examine the question, the less ground weshall find for the conception of the MiddleAges as a long sleep fo

Bernard Bosanquet THE CIVILIZATION OF CHRISTENDOM London 1893

Documents

Transcript of Bernard Bosanquet THE CIVILIZATION OF CHRISTENDOM London 1893