The result of the argument is this: that liberty is, in its nature, freedom from constraint in the employment of our faculties; that, in its end, it is the exercise of personality; that its condition is a certain stage of intellectual and spiritual development, in which a man shall be capable of tending consciously towards the realisation of personality; and that the law of its tendency is ethical. When we measure the progress of a society by its growth in freedom we measure it by the increasing liberation of the powers of all men, equally, for a common good " 66 PAGE 37 How far has the Revolution vindicated such freedom? Its work has been almost entirely negative; it has destroyed restrictions upon the exercise of human powers in France and in various parts of Continental Europe But where has it achieved liberty in the positive sense? . Consider France, where it has had its most perfect work. It has converted that country into a chaos of hostile individuals Can we predicate freedom of the French peasant, brutalised and utterly selfish, a mere human automa- The French artisan, his whole being penetrated by the 38 39 40 40 41 wherein liberty is rooted, that have been set free 44 Of such agitators the Chamber of Deputies is chiefly composed; the Revolution has destroyed public spirit in France The Revolution has shown itself in France hostile to liberty of person, liberty of property, liberty of education CHAPTER III. THE REVOLUTION AND RELIGION. PAGE 47 48 Hostility to religion is one of the chief characteristics of the Revolution. In the popular movement from which the Revolution issued, the French clergy, as a body, heartily joined The Declaration of Rights made manifest the anti-Christian inspiration of the Revolution. Within a year, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy applied the Revolutionary dogma to the ecclesiastical domain. The subsequent history of the Revolution, until Napoleon crushed it for a while, justifies the words of Pius VI., that its aim was to abolish the Catholic religion in France. 52 52 52 54 56 That has ever since been its most cherished aim . 56 By "Clericalism," which it denounces as its enemy, is meant "all religions and all religiosity" The reason for the hostility of the Revolution to all religions is that it claims to be a religion itself. This truth will be elucidated by the help of Mr. John Morley, the professed apologist of the Revolution, and a special authority on its inner meaning and spirit Mr. Morley compares the Revolution, as a religious movement, with Christianity, pronouncing it a new gospel and a better one This new gospel, as Mr. Morley abundantly shows, is anti PAGE 57 59 60 62 theistic It is a kind of Positivism "Naturalism in art" and " Materialistic explanations in the science of Man" are among its "notes" Together with belief in God, and belief in the immortality of the soul, the new gospel rejects belief in man's liberty of volition And seeks to get such ethics as it desires out of necessarianism Its moral philosphy examined The determinism which appears to be a primary doctrine of the Revolutionary religion, is fatal to the idea of justice, and makes of legislation vanæ sine moribus leges 75 77 78 81 84 86 90 PAGE If law, with penal sanctions, be the bond of civil society, the family is its foundation 91 The family, as it exists in Europe, is mainly the creation of Christianity And rests upon the ascetic teaching of Christianity concerning the virtue of purity The new gospel brands that teaching as a superstition 93 94 Licence, teste Mr. Morley, is in the new gospel what austerity is in the old . 94 Paternity is of as little account as marriage in the new gospel. 98 The traditions of the English home are irreconcilable with the new gospel 99 Mr. Morley insists that those who desire to see the Christian dogma and Churches replaced by the "higher form of faith" presented by the Revolution, are bound to labour for that end. The means specially recommended is the banishment of Christianity from primary education . 101 Mr. Morley inveighs against the Education Act of 1870 as being "of the nature of a small reform," and desires the entire destruction of the denominational system. 104 The reason is obvious: this "future great reform" would supply the most effective means of undermining the Christianity of England, and of making straight the paths of the new gospel 105 SUMMARY. XV CHAPTER IV. THE REVOLUTION AND SCIENCE. There is a great consensus of Revolutionary publicists that the Revolution must be "scientific " 66 They urge that the public order must rest on natural truths;" for them physical sciences are the only sciences; and the generalisation of those sciences called Darwinism, is specially dear to them. By Darwinism they mean, however, the speculations. engrafted on Mr. Darwin's writings by teachers such as Professor Haeckel, the general result of which is a purely physical explanation of life. In this Haeckelian Darwinism the new gospel hopes to find a most effective weapon for the overthrow of the old . The appeal, then, is to Darwinism. To Darwinism let us go. What are the facts of Darwinism as apart from the speculations founded on it ? It does not appear to be open to doubt that the law of natural selection, as Mr. Darwin has stated it, largely explains the progress of descent; or that the struggle for existence, the variation of types under circumstances, heredity, sexual selection, the action of environment, the use and disuse of organs, correlation, are really principles whereby the survival of PAGE 106 107 108 110 111 |