G b e
Xtterar^ (3tube AND RATIONALIST REVIEW.
[ESTABLISHED 1883.]
No. 2^. (N ew Se r ie s .)
S E P T E M B E R i , 1898.
Monthly ; T wopence.
WHY? By Amos Waters .
Contents.
PAGE
, 2g ph y s ic a l Individuality. By Charles E. Hooper 130 A Word to Crusoe. By F. J . Gould . . .131 S k etch es ry a Master . . . .131 T olstoy ....... , 32 T h e H istory of Conscience . . . .133 A n c ien t Christianity and Modern Morals . 13 3 F rom 29 to 190 c.e ............................................................. ....... A Militant F reethought Novel . . .134 To th e Orien t for L ight . . . .134 S olving the Social Prorlf.m . . . .135 S igns and Warnings . . , , .135 random J ottings. . . . . .136 T h e Fatal R ainbow i The Polychrom e B ib le . . i 37 Passing T houghts. By R. Bithell . . .138 ratio nalism in th e Magazines . . .139 q u a r t e r l y and Monthly Magazines . .140 S hort Notices and Correspondence . , I4 ,
Mlb\> ? « Why ” is the simplest yet most significant of monosyllables. Wisely utilized— to instruct rather than confound— it enlarges intellectual limits, and limits the enlargement of ill-informed self-sufficiency. It reveals ignorance, scourges arrogance, and destroys illusions that are dangerous when unchallenged.
]Vhy is the challenge to indolence of opinion— the incentive to investigation. It gives trouble to prever)t trouble. It is a proposal for protection against accidents through unreasoned assent— insurance against imbecility of action through apathy or atrophy of the reasoning faculty. Why was the first sound in the dawn 0 f inquiry ; it is the final endorsement o f the suffrage o f reason. Interrogation ends intellectual slavery ; emancipates the vassals of vicious delusions; discredits every symbol and semblance of degrading allegiance to artificially-protected error. It expresses the faith o f freetrade in opinion; obtains the fullest value of supply according to the receptive capacity of the consumer. You may f i l l a P 'nt anc* a gal'on Jar > both are *)Ut one holds more than the other. The capacity to question similarly ulates the space for holding as well as obtaining informaFoii. Silence may be an oblique rebuke to blatant nwisdom ; reticence may be dignity or self-respecting self-
tection against violent intolerance ; but given just equality F tf,e free republic o f thought, and the man who never asks \ v h v has mental apartments to let (with attendance by a
. y g -soul) for any stray charlatan without character. S 1 ’he great creeds of the world have casual-wards for the rants of opinion who never earned an intelligent answer T a thoughtful question in all their lives. There is shelter r r the intellectually infirm who could not ask for reasons if !. v would; and the helots who dare not if they could. These refuges for soul-impoverished and creed-crippled liens to inquiry are as feudal anomalies in the modern a r]d. These poor-laws for the unthinking are enforced "n d supported by municipalists of spiritual privilege, for 1 il 0 m die smell o f burning philosopher is no longer possible ; 'y e c0rrection o f heretics by roasting having become a post1 ortem anticipation, instead o f an immediate luxury. 1X1 rp|,e tragedy of persecuted philosophy was abruptly ithdrawn, the ashes of the martyrs were the seeds of interrogation ; the critics asked Why, and the audience began to hiss. Why was a protest, a challenge, an accusation, a verdict. Why liberated the imprisoned thinker and humanized the priest. It will liberate the multitude from pauper-submissiveness, and discipline their conduct when ethics and freedom are justified of each other.
The man with fortitude for the task of truth—with intrepidity for interrogation— consecrates his refusal to be enslaved into a religion. His free thoughts are chainless. Servile senators may legislatively define his speculations as heretical, and penalize their publication ; the pound of flesh may be enforced against the propagandist, but cannot suppress the passion for inquiry, nor cancel its results. You cannot imprison ideas. Every penalty devised to impoverish opinion— to prevent novelty of conviction and candour in expression— is insulting mistrust of God. Truth has no timidity. Integrity is necessarily in trepid; and the philosophy o f Why necessarily establishes sincerity. Sincerity, if judiciously invested, is an opulent endowment for utility ; utility in its largest and loftiest significance is the base of the splendid pyramid of conduct, whose apex soars from the difficult drudgeries of common duty to the rainbow-arch of beauty that enshrines the passion and colour of all art and aspiration. Yet in effort or in vision each step and scan should be as the climbing of a ladder of certainties— each rung an answered Why ? The angel’s ladder of revelation was a fairy fancy— beautiful, but not substantial ; collapse of creed and conduct and broken necks are dangerously possible for those who ignore limitations and scramble for easy ascents and ready-made revelations. Orthodoxy encourages fervent excursionists to “ find ” truth in a free day-trip of exuberant emotion. Such facility is fatal to regard for “ truth ” so inexpensively acquired. 'Lhe wholesome Why would preserve the sanity of many such enthusiasts ; prevent the suicide of some ; create for more a dignity of discipline in aspiration, and reverence for the majesty and immeasurable mystery of the supreme secrets of life.
The right to query is the root of all wise reform. Creeds and conduct are as good as men permit them to b e ; discussion is the first sanction of discipline; improvement is impossible without inquiry, and creeds and conduct would even then be better than men deserved them to be. Deity and diet yield useful results in proportion to excellence of conception obtained through inquiry. Dirt and the devil were economized and philosophized through the potent monosyllable. Why was the inception of salvation through sanitation. Between the sinner who asks why he should wash himself and finds a reason for ablutions, and the saint who sings “ Ju st as I am,” one prefers the clean sinner. The dirty saint asks no questions. Why reasoned behind the barbarous Hebraic curse on child-birth, discovered anaesthetics, and, through the alleviation of pain and the saving of innumerable lives, assisted the orthodox to merciful conceptions of God. Why utilized steam by sea and land, girdled the earth with railways, conquered space and time with electricity, wrestled with mental and physical disease, subdued the tyranny of t o i l ; and its victories are yet at the beginning. Why explained man to himself as a rising animal, not fallen angel ; explained the earth to him as other than a mass of mud in meaningless void.
I f the old creation-traditions were true, the existence of the universe would be God’s own answer to the first sporadic Why. The Sceptic o f Space questioned, then created. He “ created man in His own im age”— man asked Why, and returned the compliment. Scepticism is, therefore, the philosophy of all creation, the precursor of all affirmations,
