personal losses, I have in mind the many others, men of hard fact, not conspicuous at any time for the sentiment of reverence, and hardly to be charged with a longing for communion with God, who suddenly discovered that religion was a good thing. Directly or indirectly, they had learned from the anthropologists (what they might also have learned from Cicero) that religion is the necessary support of patriotism. Much of the religion preached today is of this pragmatic variety. It should be described, not as religious belief, but rather as a practical and utilitarian application of Voltaire's suggestion that if God did not exist we should have to invent him. For-and this is the major premise—if we are to have morality (that is, if we are to have social order) we must have authority...

§ 17

And so beneath "authority" we may read utility, or social convenience. But if social convenience were the only motive in question a moral law would be a simple business proposition, authority would stand only for sound judgment, and criticism of authority would be as little reprehensible as any other criticism. This would not wholly account for the attitude of authority. To explain this attitude I think we must add to the motive of social convenience (never quite divorced from the interests of class or party) a certain animal passion which manifests itself in the love of domination and the love of punishment. Authority which is neither masterful nor vindictive, authority which seeks only to persuade, seems to be—well, "lacking in authority".

Such at any rate is the reading to be derived from that more extreme form of orthodox morality which the radicals call "Puritanism", but which calls itself "austere". I have

no doubt that "Puritanism" is often a jest at all seriousness. On the other hand, to identify the serious with the dogmatic attitude is begging the question. The Puritanical attitude is only the more resolute expression of the common orthodox morality of authority. It is because morality is identified with authority that it becomes the mark of "a moral person" to guide, instruct, admonish, and, if possible, to punish his fellows. It is authority that justifies "the good example" and "the brother's keeper"-functions hardly compatible with a respect for his personality. In the orthodox conception morality is inseparable from censorship. "Censoriousness" may indeed be formally deprecated, but it is only a saving censoriousness that separates positive morality from moral scepticism. To be tolerant of your neighbor's vices is to prove that you are yourself without serious convictions. Every moral person must then become a moralist, whose function is "to award praise and blame". In the older and "sterner" days moral earnestness had to be authenticated by a fierce denunciation of the evil-doer. But we still look for "moral indignation" or "righteous indignation"-the assumption being that morality without indignation must be unreal, and that indignation is the only mood appropriate for a communication of moral values.

In a story by Nemirovitch-Dantschenko a mother-a peasant-woman, the mistress of a landed-proprietor, who by her own effort has become a person of some education -is giving some sad parting advice to her son, a lad of sixteen, who is to be sent to school, and from whom she is to be separated indefinitely at the instance of the father: "Do you, Sasha, not take it upon yourself to judge either your father or your mother. That is a sin. You do not receive an education that you may learn to judge, but that you

may learn to understand." To judge (i. e., "to award praise and blame")—or to understand? This is the question. The question may not be free from perplexity. But I ask which of these two functions stands for a more characteristically spiritual achievement and which, on the other hand, is more nearly allied to animal passion and resentment. The morality of authority calls for judgment; that is to say, for punishment; in the end, for vengeance. "Who," cries Cotton Mather, in the book written to justify the burning of witches, "shall be the instrument of God's venge

ance?"

Such was the "austere" morality of the Puritans-austere and forbidding. The illustration is doubtless extreme, yet it is the extreme that most clearly suggests the motive and raises the question. There are passages in Cotton Mather's diary which indicate that he rejoiced over the number of the damned-on the ground, rather evidently, that the chances of his own salvation seemed thereby improved. Viewed anthropologically, this representative of the Puritans appears to differ but little from any other primitive barbarian, red, brown, or black, who thinks to propitiate his tribal deity by the shedding of blood and at the same time enjoys in the practice of cruelty a liberation of atavistic impulse.

This atavistic explanation is suggested rather forcibly when we note how much moral indignation is expended, and with what mysterious ferocity of resentment, upon sins of sex-and quite apart from any question of betrayal or desertion. That the contemplation of cruelty or treachery should excite a desire to punish seems intelligible enough; but that this desire should be excited by the attraction of other persons for one another suggests something sub

human, something even more deeply and mysteriously animal than animal jealousy. One is reminded of the sudden nausea induced by the sight of blood or by contact with a corpse; or of that instinctive repulsion to suffering and mutilation which may even paralyse pity; or, again, of the disgust aroused by the tears of another when, logically and humanly speaking, he deserves our sympathy.

And yet I would not withhold my respect for the "austere" ideal in one who confines his austerity to himself. One must freely admire the man who, with a sensitive appreciation of the many sides of life, resolutely puts aside even most of its satisfactions on behalf of what his imagination presents to him as a great end. Some such resoluteness of choice must doubtless be a part of any moral life. We may question his valuation as we may question any other valuation of life. But if a man chooses to be austere with himself it is his right, and it may be his salvation. Yet this only means that it takes all kinds to make a moral world, and that the austere choice is one among others. And I fancy that he for whom it has been a choice, and not merely the result of insensitiveness, will be very slow to condemn those who have chosen differently. In any case, it seems that the austere-and-forbidding ideal conceals somewhere a contradiction. When it becomes possible to say (as I have often heard), "Well, he's not just what you would call a moral person, but"-but something rather more distinctively humane-the idea of the moral person must be out of joint.

Among the modern prophets of authoritative and austere morality the greatest perhaps is Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle's moral ideal is the strong man, or "hero". His heroes, of whom Mohammed, Napoleon, Cromwell, and Frederick

the Great are conspicuous examples, are seemingly men who do things without asking questions; even the shrewd and benevolent Abbot Samson, pictured so persuasively in "Past and Present", was not much given to taking counsel. Like Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Carlyle believes that those who know should tell the others what to do and make them do it; and for him this is the gospel of duty. In a passage levelled anonymously, but obviously, at Carlyle, Herbert Spencer proposes an alternative explanation. The passage is too full of interesting implications not to be given in full:

"It is curious to see how the devil-worship of the savage, surviving in various disguises among the civilized, and leaving as one of its products that asceticism which in many forms and degrees still prevails widely, is to be found influencing in marked ways men who have apparently emancipated themselves, not only from primitive superstitions, but from more developed superstitions. Views of life and of conduct which originated with those who propitiated deified ancestors by self-tortures enter even still into the ethical theories of many persons who have years since cast away the theology of the past, and suppose themselves to be no longer influenced by it.

In the writings of one who rejects dogmatic Christianity, together with the Hebrew cult which preceded it, a career of conquest costing tens of thousands of lives is narrated with a sympathy comparable to that rejoicing which the Hebrew traditions show us over the destruction of enemies in the name of God. You may find, too, a delight in contemplating the exercise of despotic power, joined with insistence upon the salutariness of a state in which the wills of slaves and citizens are humbly subject to the wills of masters and rulers—a sentiment reminding us of that ancient Oriental life which the biblical narratives portray."

But

I do not offer this as a final analysis of Carlyle. to me his "delight in contemplating the exercise of despotic power" is unmistakable, along with his appreciation of its

3 Data of Ethics, Chapter III, Sec. 15.