CONCLUSION.

Respectable reader, you are perchance by this time partly inclined to at least agree that this disease of yours may be harmful to yourself and to others. I have not minced my words in discussing the unpleasant symptoms of your ailment. You are a prey to hallucinations, and it behoved me, as a judicious physician, to jeer at your fancies and to deride your dreads. I have endeavoured to convince you that Respectability is anti-social, improgressive, and often cruel. You cannot deny that the world's greatest moral worthies have been the Non-Respectables, the Unconventionalists, the enlightened Eccentrics. They have all deviated in some particular, or in many ways, from the ordinary standards and customs of the majority. In many instances they have been accounted immoral, but that has not deterred them, because new morality has always been deemed immorality by the Respectables. Wesley, for example, thought it immoral to doubt the existence of witches. Yet, who to-day but the most degraded peasants of the wild hills believes in witches? Mr. Gladstone considers divorce immoral; but those who differ from him may be counted in millions. They are the adherents of a new morality, more reasonable, just, and humane than the old which has passed away.

Therefore, to make progress we are compelled to defy Respectability, and to outrage propriety. But that does not mean that we are to become ruthless Vandals, taking delight in destroying everything that is old. Far from it. We must pull down that idol Respectability from its throne, and set up some worthier object of veneration in its place. True worth and integrity of character can have no alliance with intellectual insincerity and social hypocrisy. We need more brave-hearted men and women, with the courage of their opinions, more heterodox thinkers, more consistent heretics to stand solidly together in a great attack on the shams and falsehoods that constitute Respectability.

Our children must be taught to use their brains, so that when they grow up they will not allow their little corner of the world to rule their lives and make them cowardly and deceitful. The words of the Knight in "Pericles" should be taught to boys: "We are gentlemen that neither in our hearts nor outward eyes envy the great, nor do the low despise." Education must be freed from the restrictions and hindrances of Respectability, and made catholic, comprehensive, and equal for both sexes.

The canker has eaten too long at the heart of our great nation. Its ravages, if unchecked, will ultimately destroy our prestige, and we shall fall as Babylon, Rome, and Greece have fallen. Our social affections are blighted and chilled by this fell disease, our emotions are shrivelled, our national virility enfeebled. Colonies in their youth offer us a good illustration of the rapid progress of a people who have abandoned the cant of Respectability. In such communities men and women work for the commonweal, on a fraternal basis, with no heed to rank and precedence, and it is in these societies that individualism, independence, and unconventionality have full play and outlet. Only at a later stage does the blight of Respectability descend upon the people of a new country, as we see it now in America, and, to a certain extent in Australia and Canada, where the bourgeoisie have established themselves and infected the populace with their disease. "This diabolical invention of gentility," as Thackeray terms it, is disintegrating society in England, slowly and surely. It is not foreign aggression, nor anarchy within, that we should most fear, but the insidious virus of the disease that is sapping our vitals.

It is the middle-men of the middle class who chiefly spread the contagion and transmit it to posterity. Antiquated political economists tell us that the middleman is useful to everyone, and that the man who gambles with other folk's money is a benefactor. There was a time when trade meant a handicraft; now it is a term for gambling with articles made by ill-rewarded workers. And the man who lives by this system of dealing expects the farmer, the miner, and craftsmen to doff their caps to him, and call him gentleman. "Since every Jack became a gentleman, there's many a gentle person made a Jack," says Shakspere. No one with a clear gaze on the future can delude himself that the middleman is a permanent institution, to be preserved and commended. His respectability, without dwelling upon his economic raison d'Être, has made him the contempt of the upper class and the detestation of the working population. He has made himself king of provincial towns, censor of morals, and patron of the arts; and the mob has let him gain the upper hand, looking on with mouths agape at his cleverness. Respectability in its worst forms will last as long as the bourgeoisie possess this power over the masses.

I leave it to Anarchists, Socialists, Individualist, Tories, and the rest to settle whether the shoddy god, Respectability, is to reign despotically over England.

THE UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE
AND
FREE REVIEW.

Among the high-class magazines, the University Magazine and Free Review takes the first place in English advanced literature. Independence of thought, freedom from conventional fetters, and boldness where necessary, impart a freshness and vigour to the articles of this publication, which we miss even in the best and most earnest literature of the day.

It is the Magazine for such readers as care for progressive thought in all or any of the main fields of discussion—the religious, the political, the sociological, the ethical, the economic, the literary, the scientific, and the Æsthetic.

It always takes the part of the weak and oppressed, and this Magazine has done much to call attention to indisputable evils.

Contents of the APRIL No., 1897, Vol. VIII., No. I—

• The Case Of Dr. Romanes, by John M. Robertson.
• Cardinal Manning, the Sceptic, by R. de Villiers.
• The Inertia of English Universities, by F. R. Sarritor.
• The Bible and the Child, by Chilperic.
• Tourgenieff, by Ernest Newman.
• Roden Noel, by Karl Blind.
• The Whole Duty of Woman, by Geoffrey Mortimer.
• The Blasphemy Laws, by Fred. Verinder.
• Martin Turner, by H. J. Cressingham.
• The Intellectual Movement in France, by A. Hamon.
• Periodicals, by Walter Shaw Sparrow.

Contents of the MAY No., 1897, Vol. VIII., No. 2—

• Bentley and Anthony Collins, by M. W. Wiseman.
• Roden Noel, by Karl Blind.
• Tourgenieff, by Ernest Newman.
• The Downfall of Olive Schreiner, by X.
• Marie Corelli and her Public, by A. W. Stanbury.
• Moral Instruction without Theology, by F. J. Gould.
• The Social Purity Hallucination, by J. P. Gilmour.
• Current Pseudo-Philosophy, by John M. Robertson.
• Slumland by Night, by G. M.
• William Blake and Modern Problems, by Edward Willmore.
• The Social Evil and the Moral Law, by A. Macevir.
• Periodicals, by Walter Shaw Sparrow.
• New Books.

Contents of the JUNE No., 1897, Vol. VIII., No. 3—

• Nietzsche's Indictment of Christianity, by John M. Robertson.
• An Ethical Excursion, by Hugh Mortimer Cecil.
• The Teachings of Thomas Hardy, by Duane Williams.
• The Tory Professor, by Robert Duncanson.
• Mr. Gladstone's Latest Postcard, by Alan Stephens.
• Usury and Thrift, by J. Greevz Fisher.
• A Specimen of Religious Journalism, by Stanley Bruce.
• In Extremis, by Allan Laidlaw.
• The Legitimation League, by A. Goldwin.
• Nancy, by Ernest Newman.
• New Books.

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, LIMITED,
16, John Street, Bedford Row, London, W.C.

Just published, 10s. nett,

PSEUDO-PHILOSOPHY
AT THE END OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
By Hugh Mortimer Cecil.

An Irrational Trio: Kidd, Drummond, Balfour.

A vigorous refutation of the well-known Pseudo-Philosophical Works, Social Evolution (Kidd), The Ascent of Man (Drummond), and The Foundations of Belief (Balfour), showing the absurdity of the methods adopted on the one hand, and the insincerity of these Pseudo-Philosophers on the other.

The Academy, April 17, 1897:

Mr. Hugh Mortimer Cecil will have none of this legerdemain; the flank of the rationalist position shall not be so turned if his vigilance can frustrate the manoeuvre; and with a pen steeped in sulphuric acid, he has set out to confute these writers one by one.

... He is one who must be reckoned with as a clear thinker, a cogent reasoner, a lucid and accomplished writer....

It is impossible, in the space at our disposal, to consider at large Mr. Cecil's criticism of "Foundations of Belief." It is a very serious and capable attack which will have to be reckoned with. Especially damaging is the criticism of Mr. Balfour's theory of authority. That argument can be employed with effect only by one religious body, and it is not that body of which Mr. Balfour is a member. And here we venture to suggest to Mr. Cecil that it would be well were he to find out, before the issue of a second edition, the meaning of the Roman Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception, to which he more than once alludes; he appears to be under the impression that the phrase is equivalent to parthenogenesis.

The New Saturday Review, April 17, 1897:

The book is only one of many evidences of the fact that it is quite time the theologians recognised the real danger of their position, and sent into the lists stronger champions than those we have been writing about. It is little to the credit of the theological leaders that, after first condemning Darwin and vilifying some of his supporters, they should adopt his teaching only to misrepresent it, and to make a sophistical use of that misrepresentation. Of what moment are all the questions concerning ecclesiastical tradition and ritual in comparison to the great question of the relation between science and religion which is agitating the minds of those who will be the shapers and formers of the next generation?

It is not the simple souls who find their modern gospel in Kidd's "Social Evolution" or in Drummond's "Ascent of Man," good as those simple souls are, that will make the dominant public opinion of the next half century. Nor are the rank-and-file of the clergy—of all denominations—in many instances qualified to engage effectively in this controversy. Their pulpit science has long been a by-word. Unless some defenders of the orthodox position abler than those that have yet appeared can be found, the rationalists will be believed when they boast, as our author does, that they hold a "fortress that is quite impregnable." Pseudo-science and pseudo-philosophy are not science or philosophy at all.

Our author's book will probably win its way into only a few of the libraries of the orthodox. Rationalists will read it, and will find in it only a vigorous statement of their own opinions. The proper use of the book is to show the orthodox what they have to do, if they would defend their position....

It is a challenge which would deserve attention if it stood alone. But it does not stand alone; it is backed up by a great body of philosophers and scientists and social reformers, and men of the highest culture and noblest characters, as well as by a vast amount of smouldering suspicion and distrust and doubt among the people.

National Observer and British Review, April 17, 1897:

Portions of the author's criticisms are not only just, but valuable; and when he is judicious enough to suppress his own personality, he can often be read not only with assent, but with satisfaction. The chief object of Mr. Cecil's antipathy is any attempt at reconciling positive science with religion, whether the religion be Christianity, or merely a natural theism; and, as types of the methods by which the attempt is now being made, he takes the arguments of three modern apologists—Mr. Kidd, Mr. Drummond, and Mr. Arthur Balfour. He takes these in order. The first section of his work is a criticism of "Social Evolution"; the second of "The Ascent of Man"; the third, of "The Foundations of Belief." In completely discrediting the two first of these three works, Mr. Cecil's task has been easy, and he has shown considerable skill in accomplishing it. If we take Mr. Kidd's "Social Evolution" as it stands, it is difficult to imagine a more signal monument of self-deception; and when we recollect the avidity with which a large section of the public devoured the volume, and allowed themselves to be deceived with the author, we feel that such a fallacious guide can hardly be too trenchantly exposed. Mr. Cecil contrives, with the adroitness of a sharp solicitor, to collect and place side by side a number of Mr. Kidd's self-contradictions, and shows that his argument, taken as a whole, falls to pieces at one touch of serious criticism. He shows also that Mr. Kidd's history is as childish and imperfect as his logic.

... But, in spite of these omissions, he has said quite enough to discredit effectually what would rank as the most remarkable specimen of contemporary pseudo-philosophy, if it were not for a specimen produced by a Scottish writer, who has distanced altogether the fallacies of his English rival. This last is Mr. Drummond's "Ascent of Man;" and it is in his criticism of this that Mr. Cecil shows himself at his best. Had he only been less destitute of the rudiments of good behaviour and good feeling, we should have had little but commendation to bestow on the manner in which he exposes Mr. Drummond's absurd justifications of the ways of God to man, and the hopeless inaccuracies of his theories as to altruism, and "the struggle for the life of others." Few books in the long run do more harm than such books as "The Ascent of Man." Instead of really reconciling religion and science, they injure religion by making the attempt at reconciliation ridiculous.

The Morning Leader, March 25, 1897:

Mr. Cecil is a born fighter. He attacks with courage and cunning and resource, having at command a never-failing artillery of invective to complete the havoc he works by means of his sapping and mining. This latter plan of campaign he mercilessly pursues by quotation after quotation from previous essays and pamphlets of his "irrationalist trio," preparing his reader for the overthrow of the citadel by showing how hollow and unsubstantial are the outworks. So savagely complete, indeed is the attack that as one gazes upon the ruins of Kidd, Drummond, and Balfour, a feeling of sympathy with the fallen philosophers must take the place of joy in the whizzing of the rationalist shells.

The method of attack adopted by this new and puissant slogger shows, perhaps, a little too much contempt for the enemy, a little too much confidence in the impregnability of the attacking party's position. But, although the book may enrage the philosophic doubters, it is bound to make a glorious show for the robuster members of the rationalist party. The author's advice to the former is to "feed on the religious novel of Mrs. Humphry Ward, the geology of Sir J. W. Dawson, the apologetics of Mr. Gladstone, and the biographies of Jesus that are said to be in preparation by Mr. Hall Caine, Mr. Ian Maclaren, and Mr. Crockett—three gentlemen whose capacity for sentimental fiction is the best guarantee of their fitness for such a task." Language of this kind is distinctly provocative, but it may be found bracing enough to the energetic rejector of scientific compromise. Whatever "Pseudo-Philosophy" may lack in urbanity and serenity, no charge can be brought against it on the score of dulness or stupidity. The book is at once a brilliant and pitiless exposure of loose thinking, and a literary entertainment of the richest kind.