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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 pro-
gress 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 "
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 Con-
tinental 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-
ton, a voting animal, incapable of realising his powers
for the common good?.
The French artisan, his whole being penetrated by the
anarchic teaching of Rousseau, is the prey of political
agitators, who dazzle him with visions of Socialistic
Utopias; it is his passions, not his rational faculties,
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wherein liberty is rooted, that have been set free
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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.
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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.
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That has ever since been its most cherished aim.
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 reli-
gions 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 move-
ment, with Christianity, pronouncing it a new gospel
and a better one
This new gospel, as Mr. Morley abundantly shows, is anti-
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"Naturalism in art" and "Materialistic explanations in
the science of Man are among its "notes"
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Together with belief in God, and belief in the immortality
of the soul, the new gospel rejects belief in man's
liberty of volition
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And seeks to get such ethics as it desires out of neces-
sarianism
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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 vane sine moribus
leges
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If law, with penal sanctions, be the bond of civil society,
the family is its foundation
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The family, as it exists in Europe, is mainly the creation
of Christianity
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And rests upon the ascetic teaching of Christianity con-
cerning the virtue of purity.
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The new gospel brands that teaching as a superstition
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Licence, teste Mr. Morley, is in the new gospel what
austerity is in the old .
Paternity is of as little account as marriage in the new
gospel.
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The traditions of the English home are irreconcilable
with the new gospel
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Mr. Morley insists that those who desire to see the Chris- tian 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.
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
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SUMMARY.
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CHAPTER IV.
THE REVOLUTION AND SCIENCE.
There is a great consensus of Revolutionary publicists
that the Revolution must be "scientific
"natural
They urge that the public order must rest on
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 circum-
stances, heredity, sexual selection, the action of
environment, the use and disuse of organs, correla-
tion, are really principles whereby the survival of
.
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