The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever (30 page)

Kneeling, with head bent and hands clasped against her knees, she set herself swiftly to pray for forgiveness before her father should reach her with the wafer. But the current of her thoughts had been broken. Suddenly it was quite useless attempting to pray; her lips moved, but there was neither heart nor meaning in her prayers. She could hear Proggett’s boots shuffling and her father’s clear low voice murmuring “Take and eat,” she could see the worn strip of red carpet beneath her knees, she could smell dust and eau-de-Cologne and mothballs; but of the Body and Blood of Christ, of the purpose for which she had come here, she was as though deprived of the power to think. A deadly blankness had descended upon her mind. It seemed to her that actually she
could
not pray. She struggled, collected her thoughts, uttered mechanically the opening phrases of a prayer; but they were useless, meaningless—nothing but the dead shells of words. Her father was holding the wafer before her in his shapely, aged hand. He held it between finger and thumb, fastidiously, somehow distastefully, as though it had been a spoon of medicine. His eye was upon Miss Mayfill, who was doubling herself up like a geometrid caterpillar, with many creakings, and crossing herself so elaborately that one might have imagined that she was sketching a series of braid frogs on the front of her coat. For several seconds Dorothy hesitated and did not take the wafer. She dared not take it. Better, far better to step down from the altar than to accept the sacrament with such chaos in her heart!

Then it happened that she glanced sidelong, through the open south door. A momentary spear of sunlight had pierced the clouds. It struck downwards through the leaves of the limes, and a spray of leaves in the doorway gleamed with a transient, matchless green, greener than jade or emerald or Atlantic waters. It was as though some jewel of unimaginable splendour had flashed for an instant, filling the doorway with green light, and then faded. A flood of joy ran through Dorothy’s heart. The flash of living colour had brought back to her, by a process deeper than reason, her peace of mind, her love of God, her power of worship. Somehow, because of the greenness of the leaves, it was again possible to pray. O all ye green things upon the earth, praise ye the Lord! She began to pray, ardently, joyfully, thankfully. The wafer melted upon her tongue.

Let me take this other glove off

As the vox humana swells,

And the beauteous fields of Eden

Bask beneath the Abbey bells.

Here, where England’s statesmen lie,

Listen to a lady’s cry.

Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans.

Spare their women for Thy Sake,

And if that is not too easy

We will pardon Thy Mistake.

But, gracious Lord, whate’er shall be,

Don’t let anyone bomb me.

Keep our Empire undismembered

Guide our Forces by Thy Hand,

Gallant blacks from far Jamaica,

Honduras and Togoland;

Protect them Lord in all their fights,

And, even more, protect the whites.

Think of what our Nation stands for,

Books from Boots and country lanes,

Free speech, free passes, class distinction,

Democracy and proper drains.

Lord, put beneath Thy special care

One-eighty-nine Cadogan Square.

Although dear Lord I am a sinner,

I have done no major crime;

Now I’ll come to Evening Service

Whensoever I have the time.

So, Lord, reserve for me a crown.

And do not let my shares go down.

I will labour for Thy Kingdom,

Help our lads to win the war,

Send white feathers to the cowards

Join the Women’s Army Corps,

Then wash the Steps around Thy Throne

In the Eternal Safety Zone

Now I feel a little better,

What a treat to hear Thy word,

Where the bones of leading statesmen,

Have so often been interr’d.

And now, dear Lord, I cannot wait

Because I have a luncheon date.

It was a sound instinct that led the religious world to brand the Pantheism of Spinoza as Atheism. Equally sound was the judgment of Charles Bradlaugh in resting his Atheism upon a Monistic interpretation of nature. Every intelligible Theism involves a dualism or a pluralism, while every non-theism is as inevitably driven, sooner or later, to a monism. With an instinct sharpened by perpetual conflict, the Churches saw that, no matter the terminology in which the monism is disguised, its final outcome is Atheism. For the essence of the Atheistic position is not the establishment of any particular theory of matter, or force, or volition, but that, given a first principle as a starting-point, all else follows as a matter of the most rigid necessity. It thus dispenses with interference, or, to use a favourite mystifying expression of Sir Oliver Lodge, guidance, at any step of the cosmic process. To call the monism advocated a spiritual monism does not alter the fact; it only disguises it from superficial observers and shallow thinkers. Spiritual and material are mere words, and words, as we have been told, are the counters of wise men and the money of fools. It is the thing, the conception, that matters, and the mechanical conception of cosmic evolution is Atheism, under whatever form it may be disguised.

Monism—too much emphasis cannot be placed upon this truth—admits of no breaks, allows for no interference, no guidance, no special providence. From star mist to planet, on through protoplasm to man, it asserts the existence of an unbroken sequence. If there are any gaps they are in our knowledge, not in things themselves. The promise and potency of all subsequent phenomena is, for Monism, contained in the primitive substance, whatever its nature may be. Every advance in scientific research is based, tacitly or avowedly, upon an acceptance of this belief.

What place does the individual hold in such a conception of things? Clearly he can be no exception to the general principle of causation. The same principle that accounts for the development of the species as a biological phenomenon must also explain the individual as a sociological or psychological product. Either the individual is the necessary product of his antecedents or he is not. If he is, we have merely another phase of a general problem, only in a highly complex form. If he is not, then we have an absolute creation of something, a reintroduction of a disguised supernaturalism, and our scientific principle breaks down. The greatest genius, the most striking individual the world has ever seen, forms no exception to this universal principle of causation. Indeed, when the believer throws at the head of the Atheist the names of Shakespeare or Beethoven, and asks how can natural processes explain their existence, he is needlessly confusing the issue. First, because the problem of explaining the existence of the genius is no greater, fundamentally, than explaining the existence of the fool. Show me how to explain the complex processes that result in the existence of a penny-a-liner, and I will explain the existence of the author of
Hamlet.
The problem is substantially the same whichever we take. And, secondly, to take either the genius or the fool as a finished project, and study him in isolation, is emphatically not the way to set to work. We could not explain a man, or an animal, or a plant by such a method. Evolution ought to at least have taught us that the explanation of a thing is to be sought in its history. Behind the greatest musician and behind the greatest poet there lies that long history of the race leading to the rude rhythmical howlings and gutteral ejaculations of the primitive savage, without which, as a starting-point, neither poet nor musician would have existed. The greatest and the least of men are links in a chain of being, and can neither separate themselves from all that has gone before nor from that which will come after them.

I have put the claims of a Monistic conception of nature as strongly and as plainly as possible, in order to meet fairly a challenge raised by a prominent clergyman, in a recent issue of a religious weekly. We are told that the issue today lies between Monism and Christianity, and Monism is ruled out of court on account of its supposed depreciation of the individual. Even were this depreciation of the individual admitted it might still be argued that the real value of any theory depends ultimately upon its truth. The argument from consequences is only valid if it can be shown that these are in obvious conflict with facts. In that case, we should have to admit that our first principles were faulty, and revise them accordingly. Facts are facts, and sooner or later we are compelled to deal with them. Theories may ignore them, but the consequences follow just the same. It is not merely our duty to face the facts, it is to our interest to do so. All life is an adaptation of organism to environment, and all healthy mental life is the expression of a harmony between our ideas of facts and the facts themselves. And without posing as a philosophical Gradgrind, one may confidently assert that the man or the philosophy that ignores facts will sooner or later come to grief.

The article in question is headed, “Is the Individual Doomed?” and the answer is that he is if Monism prevails. With Christianity, we are told, the individual is everything; with Monism the individual is nothing. The Christian view of the individual acts as a powerful incentive to progress; the Monistic view “is utterly devoid of the dynamic which can generate any great social reform.” While the conception of humanity as an organic structure in which the individual is ultimately merged is brushed aside in the following:

The smallest and forlornest actual slum baby appeals to our sympathy immeasurably more than a vast, dim, aggregate of indistinguishable items called the Race, for we have actually met the slum baby, and we have never met—and what is more, we never shall meet—the Race…. No matter by how many times we multiply nothing, the result is still—nothing…. If we wish to be social reformers in earnest, we must take care of the individual and the race will take care of itself.

That the concrete example of a suffering slum baby appeals to us more than an abstract proposition about the race is true; but instead of this proving the case, it is, as will be seen later, dependent upon the fact of race, and is only an illustration of its influence. And to say that we must take care of the individual if we wish to take care of the race is a mere
ipse dixit
, since the question at issue is whether or not we are best promoting the interests of the individual when we keep our mind steadily on the question of race welfare. Finally, when we are told that the conception of man as a mere cell in the social tissue, an item in the long story of human progress is “devoid of the dynamic which can generate any social reform,” the reply is that no other factor has shown itself of such inspiring force with social reformers. One need go no further back than the French Revolution of 1789—one of the most “dynamic” events of modern history—to prove this. The schools of St. Simon, Owen, Fourier, with the modern development of Socialism on its higher side, are all permeated by a conception of human development that we are told is fatal to social progress. In fact it is next to impossible to point to a great social movement that has not been inspired by the conception of humanity as a slowly developing organism from which the individual springs, and in which the individual is ultimately merged.

Our preacher may be correct in saying that with Christianity the individual is everything; he is quite wrong in saying that with Monism the individual is nothing. The question is ultimately one of the nature and function of the individual, and to assume that unless we assert that he is independent of the social structure we are destroying him is quite beside the point. We do not annihilate the earth by showing its place in the solar system; we do not annihilate the cell by showing its place in the organism; nor do we destroy the individual by showing him to be a cell in the social tissue. On the contrary, it is only when man is thought of in this sense that we really begin to form a genuine conception of individuality.

One of the errors of Christianity has been to make constant appeals to the individual without considering those conditions of which individual life is the expression. It has preached purity of thought and deed while leaving untouched conditions that make purity of life an impossibility. It has taught morality without realizing that morality is not something that is grafted on life, but something that springs from social life and is conditioned in its expression by the prevailing social conditions. All the ethical failures and extravagances of moral teaching that dog the history of Christianity are attributable to this initial error. It may be quite correct to say the Christian teaching is that we must look to the individual and leave the race to attend to itself; but it is none the less a mistaken teaching. For you can only permanently affect the individual through a modification of those conditions that are summed up in the phrase “social environment.” I do not mean here an environment that covers only the material conditions of existence, but include all those mental forces that play so large a part in moulding the life of each of us. If man is to be morally, mentally, and physically healthy, he must live in an environment which permits health in all these directions. Otherwise we may appeal to the individual as long as
we
choose; our appeal even in the most favourable of circumstances, will only be in the nature of a stimulant, and like all such will be of a temporary nature only. Doctors, scientists, sociologists, all shades of real thinkers, are fast realizing that it is the race problem that is the vital one, and this, not in the interests of an abstract entity called the Race, but in the best interests of the individual himself.

In thus contrasting the Monistic and the Christian view of the function of the individual, there is raised the old question of the relations of the individual to society. And although the limited influence of social conditions is admitted, the main position is that of a species of sociological atomism. Our preacher would agree with those writers who argue that society is a mere aggregate of individual human beings. On the other hand, one may submit that, while society is an aggregate of individuals, it is yet something more than is given in any number of individuals merely added together. The strength of an army is not the mere sum total of the strengths of the individual members composing it; it is that plus the addition of what results from combination. The product of a chemical compound is not to be discovered by adding together the properties or qualities of its constituents. Some quality is given in the combination not to be found in its constituent parts. And in the same way no amount of adding together of individuals can give us all that we find in a social structure. We cannot, try how we may, derive society from the individual. We can, as will be seen, derive the individual from society.

I am not claiming the existence of some mysterious social ego presiding over society, as theologians conceived a soul dominating the organism. My point is that just as
I
am made up of the various parts of my organism plus the combination of these parts, and that just as the relations between the parts are as real as the parts themselves, so there develops a social force which expresses the relations existing between all individuals, and which is as real as the individuals themselves. And this is strictly analogous to all that we know, scientifically, of other forces. The law of gravitation, the laws of heat, light, and sound are the expressions of a relation, and have no existence apart from the relations between atoms of matter. And it would be as absurd to deny the existence of gravitation, because it cannot be shown apart from matter, as it is to deny the existence of this social force, because we cannot separate it from the individuals that comprise society.

It is perfectly true that, apart from individuals, society has no existence, but it is equally true that, apart from society, the individual ceases to be. Society is no more an abstraction than is the individual. When we speak of society it is true that we are expressing the totality of individual actions, but it is also true that when we speak of the individual we are expressing the result of a whole complex of social forces. Take from the individual all that society gives him in the shape of language, beliefs, clothing, institutions, take away the relations existing between him and his fellows, and the individual, as we know him, has ceased to exist. One view of the case is certainly as true as the other; and when such opposing conclusions can be logically reached, it is highly probable that the truth lies between the two, or in a combination of both. The truth is that either aspect alone represents a one-sided view of the subject. Neither individual nor society can, or ought to be, considered separately. Both are aspects of the same fact. The individual is a concrete expression of social forces; society is an organism precisely because, like all organisms, one cannot understand aright any one of the parts without considering its relation to the whole, and because one cannot appreciate the whole without understanding the nature and function of each of the parts.

One may reach the same conclusion by another method. Much is often made of the statement that the end of social action is the production of strong individuals. This is true; but individuation is the product, biologically, of a differentiation, and this, instead of making the part less dependent on the whole, really involves a greater coherence and a more profound interdependence of parts. In the animal organism he taking on of specific functions by certain groups of cells involves the performance of other functions by other groups; and thus, while in view of a specific function a particular cell group may be said to acquire a greater individuality, from another point of view its individuality is an expression of the organized cell life of the entire organism. With equal truth this generalisation holds good of the individual in relation to society. Social action necessarily results, not in the production of individuals who are above social forces and who control them, but in the production of individualities that express the highly elaborated social forces behind and around them. There is positively no other source for their existence. An individual cannot create new forces; he can only utilize those already existing. And unless he is the exact equivalent of all the forces that preceded him, neither more nor less, we have in the individual something that is impossible of explanation, and which cuts the ground from under all scientific and all coherent thinking. The very feeling of the individual that he is controlling social forces is a trick of the imagination, which ultimately expresses the deeper truth I have indicated.