Societies of men are fermenting masses, and as beer has what the Germans call "Oberhefe" and "Unterhefe," so every society that has existed has had its scum at the top and its dregs at the bottom; and I doubt if any of the "ages of faith" had less scum or less dregs, or even showed a proportionally greater quantity of sound wholesome stuff in the vat. I think it would puzzle Mr.Lilly or any one else to adduce convincing evidence that, at any period of the world's history, there was a more wide-spread sense of social duty, or a greater sense of justice, or of the obligation of mutual help, than in this England of ours. Ah! but, says Mr.Lilly, these are all products of our Christian inheritance; when Christian dogmas vanish, virtue will disappear too, and the ancestral ape and tiger will have full play. But there are a good many people who think it obvious that Christianity also inherited a good deal from paganism and from Judaism, and that if the Stoics and the Jews revoked their bequest the moral property of Christianity would realize very little. And, if morality has survived the stripping off of several sets of clothes which have been found to fit badly, why should it not be able to get on very well in the light and handy garments which Science is ready to provide?
But this by-the-way. If the diseases of society consist in the weakness of its faith in the existence of the God of the theologians, in a future state, and in uncaused volitions, the indication, as the doctors say, is to suppress theology and philosophy, whose bickerings about things of which they know nothing have been the prime cause and continual sustenance of that evil skepticism which is the Nemesis of meddling with the unknowable.
Cinderella is modestly conscious of her ignorance of these high matters. She lights the fire, sweeps the house, and provides the dinner, and is rewarded by being told that she is a base creature devoted to low and material interests; but in her garret she has fairy visions out of the ken of the pair of shrews who are quarreling down-stairs. She sees the order which pervades the seeming disorder of the world; the great drama of evolution with its full share of pity and terror, but also with abundant goodness and beauty, unrolls itself before her eyes; and she learns in her heart of hearts the lesson, that the foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge.
She knows that the safety of morality lies neither in the adoption of this or that philosophical speculation, or this or that theological creed, but in a real and living belief in that fixed order of Nature which sends social disorganization upon the track of immorality as surely as it sends physical disease after physical trespasses; and of that firm and lively faith it is her high mission to be the priestess.—Fortnightly Review.
