Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 162.djvu/23

 too, if you can get a man to love the hu- man race with a surpassing love, no doubt he will treat his wife well. But the first step in putting the salt on is to catch the bird ; and the first step towards loving the human race is to have tenderness for those who are nearest. The conclusion, then, to which I fancy the "plain man," whose questions are perversely practical, will come on this subject after a short cross-examination of his teacher, is something of the following kind. The progress of the human race, as Comte's own calendar implies, is the progress of very various kinds of activity. There must be scientific progress, artistic progress, moral progress. Newton, Raphael, and Thomas a-Kempis are all parts of the supreme being. And those who have contributed to each of these departments have had faith and hope in the aim they worked for. Science and art will no doubt continue to have their devotees as heretofore — no thanks to Positivism, for they are devotees not in virtue of the general thought of progress, but in consequence of their genius and enthusiasm in relation to a special object. But where is the moral regenerator of mankind in the past or the consistent pursuer of virtue who has worked without faith in supernatural guidance and sanctions. "I have somewhere heard a saying — I forget to whom it is ascribed — "In astronomy I should be sorry to hold a different opinion from Newton, and in religion I would not differ from the saints." This seems to point to that indissoluble connection between moral progress and spiritual faith of which I speak. And if, in meditating on the heroes of morality, we find that their action has been invariably inspired by a faith — that their strength came from a belief in supernatural guidance, that what conscious genius has ever been to the great painter, that consciousness of the inspiration of a higher power has been to the moral reformer and to the saint — where is our hope that, if all such faith be parted with, that progress of which such faith was the very life can be continued? Positivism, then, seems to leave the motives, hopes, and beliefs which have hitherto inspired men to work for the progress of the race in secular sciences and arts just where it found them, consisting, not in a general worship of human progress, but in devotion to some particular department of study, while it fails to give any faith parallel to that which has hitherto been found indispensable to moral progress. And this is surely to fail in exhibiting even that small amount of religiousness which it professes to exhibit. It gathers together all the sentiments and beliefs which are associated with the various types of activity, and gives them the name of "religion ; " but upon examination we find that the one type of activity which ought to be associated with religion is left without its belief and motive. High moral greatness must remain in such a scheme a mere idea, having no motive force left whereby it may realize itself in action. So much, then, for the practical effect of this system on conduct. And what of the consolation it gives in affliction? of the hope in death ? It seems a mockery to speak of it. And how is it that Mr. Harrison has failed to see the obvious tu quoque which his criticism on the unknowable must provoke in this connection. When the mother of whom he speaks, wrung with anguish for her loss, asks for consolation, does it seem greater irony to say to her, "Think on the unknowable," than to say "Think on humanity or human progress".? It is hard to say whether it would be a more grotesque, or a more touching spectacle, to see a humble, simple-minded woman be- take herself to Mr. Harrison in such straits, and attempt to gain consolation from the thoughts he holds out. It would probably be, in the words of the proverb, a comedy to him that thinks; but a tragedy to her, for she would feel. " Your son is not dead," the Positivist says, "he has joined the choir invisible. He lives even more in the energies he has set in motion and the works he has done, than while he was yet here." But the woman, having a hopelessly concrete mind, asks for further explanation, and tries to get beyond the phrase — the clothes — " choir invisible." She asks how he lives — what are the works — where are the energies? " He lives in you all whom he influenced. He lives in the results of his labors. That bench which he made, that useful table, keep him more with you than ever. Cherish them. He lives in them though you see him not." This is really no exaggeration of Mr. Harrison's statement. The saints of industry live in their works, he says. " We live by one another, we live again in one another,

Mr. Harrison is very express in his statement that those who enjoy immortality in the Positivist sense are by no means exclusively distinguished people. "We were apt," he said in his address last New Year's Eve, " to associate the memory of the men of the past with the great men alone. But all men of the past had a common life with us, and were in us, and round us, and with us — all but the worthless and evil," etc. {{Smallrefs}