futile longing (which the Freudians have shown to be "infantile") to the ground of solid and tangible values. For the mysticism of the divine will science substitutes the realities of human welfare. And this gospel is often announced in tones that remind one of Lucretius, as a glad emancipation from religious superstition.

One might then expect that, here at least, the tone of authority would give way to gentle persuasiveness and sweet reasonableness. But not at all. The "orthodoxy" of today is as often scientific as religious. This scientific view of the world has merely appropriated the panoply of authority after destroying the person of the Author. The scientific sociologist proclaims the sacred authority of Society in tones that recall the ancient law of Sinai. The modern judge endeavours to awe the condemned criminal by explaining that he is sentenced for an offence against Society. The majesty of the law, which was formerly the majesty of God, is now (since the law cannot dispense with majesty) the majesty of the Social Order. And this conception of the sacredness of the group as against the individual is re-echoed down to the gangs of boys on the street-corner. A college Greek-letter fraternity1 in expelling a recalcitrant member (who may have been too intelligent to take his fraternity seriously) conceives that it thereby places upon him a moral stigma.

The scientific biologist then fortifies the authority of society by explaining that in the struggle for existence the solidarity of the species is all-important. His special

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1 For the benefit of British readers it should be said that the Greekletter fraternity, its name consisting of the two or three Greek letters forming (I understand) the initials of its Greek motto, is a secret society of students with intercollegiate affiliations. In each college the members of a given fraternity form a chapter", of perhaps twenty or thirty students, who eat together and for the most part live together in "fraternityhouses which are often costly. Thus membership in a fraternity becomes an aristocratic distinction, varying with the fraternity, and those who are not fraternity-men, the non-Greeks (perhaps half or more of the college), are distinguished as barbarians". Membership in a fraternity is supposed to mark a mystical bond of union-with a corresponding exclusion. At any rate it is the man's fraternity that chiefly determines his social affiliations.

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authority is therefore the authority of the Laws of Nature, and for the majesty of God he substitutes the majesty of the Species. His lead is followed by the scientific anthropologist, who discovers in the solidarity of the species the origin and ground of the belief in God, and now proposes to reconcile science and religion by demonstrating the solid usefulness of religion.

It was very interesting during the World War to observe all the more ardent militarists rallying quietly to the cause of religion. Omitting those whose thoughts were turned to serious things by the horror of the situation, perhaps by 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 neighbour'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 vengeance?"

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 idea 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 :