THE

SOUTH PLACE MAGAZINE: A MONTHLY RECORD

OF THE WORK OF

U:be $ontb ll)lace -JEtbical $ocfet\? Vol. 1., No. 7. OCTOBER, 1895. 2d. Monthly;

28. 6d. Annually. poet free.

SUNDAY MORNING DISCOURSES. OPTIMISM, PESSIMISM, AND MELIORISM.

On September ISt the address was by Mr. J. McGavin Sloan, on "Optimism, Pessimism, and l\feliorism." The lecturer remarked that Comte's law of the three stages-the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive, or scientific­might assist us by analogy to comprehend the procession of thought from optimism, along the dark paths of pessimism, to the goal of meliorism. Man as theologian is first optimist more or less; as metaphysician he tends towards pessimism; as positivist he arrives at meliorism; that is, in the sphere of fact and law he finds a mysterious mixture of good and evil, pervaded by a tendency to give the victory everywhere to the good. The first writer to employ the term" meliorism" was George Eliot. The stages of one's personal life were explained by the same threefold principle. Youth and young love are optimist; middle age discovers the dark and cruel side of things, observes how the joys of existence often hide whole worlds of pain in their heart, like the turf that covered the spiked pits of the Bannockburn tradition, and grows pessi­mist. The full-grown reason, however, arrives at a more workable and encouraging synthesis in the meliorism which recognises a necessary and stationary evil as well as a necessary and stationary good, yet finds the good, relatively to self, the supreme authority, and works for improvement. The procession from optimism, through pessimism, to meliorism, was traced by means of examples in history, politics, and sociology. Schopenhauer's pessimism-the crucifixion of the will to live at the bidding of the under­standing-was shown to rest upon the same fallacy as the Christian asceticism,-that the cosmos is corrupt and wicked at its central heart, and that the mortification of the will to live is a greater good than the control of the same in the light of the findings of experimental reason . Buckle's theory of a stationary moral consciousness in the race, was accepted as consistent with the principle of a progressive manifestation

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of moral force, according to the analogy of the quantum of physical energy-now hidden now revealed, here dormant there applied-in the knowable universe. Dualism, so the lecturer argued, is the perennial source alike of optimism and pessimism; whereas pantheism and ethical monism produce meliorist habitudes of mind and life. The dualist conception of the universe which lies at the root of Hebrew monotheism and of the Christian doctrine of the Fatherhood, accounts for the polarities of an omniscient and grandiose optimism and an ascetic pessimism in historical Christianity. Monism, on the contrary, conducts us to the shelter of meliorism. The universe is one, the hierarchy of organisms, from insect or worm up to man, is bound together by the same laws. The meliorist, from the standpoint of this monistic assumption, accepts things as they are, but devotes himself to discovery and improvement. His world is neither the best possible of Leibnitz, nor the worst possible of Schopenhauer. It is the only world he knows. Wanting a second world, or more, no comparisons can be made. It is a world sometimes better, sometimes worse. The cosmic blend, relatively speaking, of moral and non-moral elements is not comparable to the" hell­broth" of the witches in 111 acbeth: it does not seethe around us to the fearful refrain :-

" Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble."

If here and there this sort of thing appears, there must be coupled with it humanity's much more prevalent lyrics of love and hope, the prean of truth's frequent victories, the battle song of the victorious will as it subdues rebellious flesh, the ode of the social conscience sung over the downfall of tyranny. Meliorism works its way among the thick darkness. The offspring of pain is not always a cripple, a dwarf, an incurable sufferer, a prisoner in some dungeon of despair. Sorrow is often an actual this-world sanctuary, a source of inspiration, a fountain of rare emotional delights. I t was Shelley who sung:-

"Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought."

The readings were from Sartor Resarttts, "Two men I honour," &c., and from George Eliot's Romola, with Goethe's verses entitled Mason-Lodge.

COMPROMISE. On 8th September Mr. J. M. Robertson delivered the

address, taking as his subject "Compromise," and selecting his readings from Mr. John Morley's work of that title. After

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paying a tribute to the earnestness and eloquence of Mr. Morley's treatise, Mr. Robertson remarked t~at it was now some twenty years old, and that it would be interesting to have Mr. Morley's comments on its propositions after his experience of public life. The ~ubjecJ of Compromise seemed as well worth discussing as ever, and was freshly raised by the anecdote recently published of Mr. Morley's paliicipation in family prayers. As the method of moral appeal had apparently had no effect on average tendencies in the matter of compromise-though the lecturer yentured to doubt whether the nation was, as Mr. Morley had argued, more insincere in this than in past generations-he suggested that the question should be looked at in the light of economic pressure. There is to-day a good deal of dissimulation and sham conformity on matters of religion, because, while unbelievers are more numerous than ever, they are not, or do not know themselves to be, numerous enough to hold their own against the religious majority, whose tendency is to boycott or commercially injure avowed rationalists. In matters of general party politics, where both i?ides are strong, there is at least as much openness as formerly . It is always much easier, further, to make a party on a pecuniary or otherwise directly personal issue than on a question of disinterested opinion and propaganda. On the other hand, movements in past ages which were credited with supreme conscientiousness- such as those of Luther and the English Puritans-had really involved no "lonely courage"; Luther and Cromwell alike having from the first had abundant neighbourly support. Far more of lonely courage had been shown by Sir Thomas More in resisting Henry VIII, at a time when cowardly conformity was perhaps more abundant in England than ever since. While doubting whether there could be any thorough reform in our own day, so long as the conditions of commercial struggle for existence remained unchanged, the lecturer suggested that if only the existing rationalists could be organised they would probably find they were numerous enough either to take the risks of commercial loss, which would be lessened by such organization, or that they could make compensatory gains from mutual support, as happens in political parties. And such organization need not be for purposes of propaganda, which were often hard to agree upon . If only it were systematically directed to such points as the withdrawal of rationalists' children cn massc from religious instruction in the public schools, and the abstention of rationalists from

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insincere conformities to the priestly forms of marriage, christenings, and funerals, it would go a long way to purify the intellectual air. Finally, however, the lecturer confessed that really new truths must always have to struggle for existence against obloquy. When one had reached the stage of organised support, another had to begin its way alone. So that that was morally true for the reformer of to-day, which was said to the Moslem fanatics of old, "Paradise lies under the shadow of swords." But that was not a saying for all men. For the simple citizen there remained the principle of upright action on beliefs held by him to be established, in concert and co-operation with his fellows .

LONDON IN THE LAST CENTURY.

Mr. Graham Wallas, M.A., M.L.S.B. . spoke on Sunday, 15th September, on "London in the last Century." Even in the last century London was already the greatest city­with the possible exception of Rome-that the world had seen . At the beginning of the eighteenth century its popu­lation was under 700,000, and at the end little less than 1,000,000. The whole inner ring of London parishes out­side the City walls was already densely over-crowded . This entire area knew hardly any life of a governmental kind save the parochial organisation. Inside the City boundaries the parishes were extremely small. The single square mile which it covers had about 120 parishes, many consisting of a few houses . People outside the City were governed either by open or by select vestry. Both did their work as badly as any governing bodies ever did. Some of the saddest and grimmest pages in our history were connected with the ad­ministration of the London Poor-Law, by overseers and select vestries. Sanitation was so little thought of that in the crowded work-houses children died like flies in winter. Those sent out of London were a little better off; thev were sent to baby-farms, or at four, five, and six years old were sold into slavery to northern manufacturers, or to fishermen, to be beaten at will and to work for nothing until they were twenty or twenty-one years old. Out-relief was almost entirely a matter of jobbery and degradation . Paupers were herded together like cattle all day waiting for their relief, and then spent it in drink. Parish officers made a profit by sell­ing gin to the paupers. The whole machinery of government in London was outside public knowledge and therefore public control. Parliament, as time went by and London became more and more insanitary and ill-protected, conceived the idea

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of getting a few of the principal inhabitants in each parish together and making them commissioners with certain limited powers of taxation . These powers w&e conferred by private Acts of Parliament of which there were 250 for London alone at the close of the last century; 110 one except the vestry clerks and professional men connected with London local administration knew how far these Acts went and to what districts they applied. Districts which dared not face the expense of a private Act had recourse to voluntary contribu­tions for maintaining a watchman, &c. In the select vestries ecclesiastical and civil affairs were mixed in the strangest way. The vestries, for example, appointed afternoon lecturers for the parish church. In the last century the workman, after his day's toil, could have no recourse to books. There were no pictures, save in the private galleries of the great, and no theatres but the two royal theatres, which were filled by those who could afford a guinea for a box. There were no means of popular discussion-a thing which the Government feared -l1or of healthy recreation . In the dearth of wholesome amusements, visiting an execution was regarded in the light of a frolic . Popular education was unknown . Noble men there were like J ones Hanway, and Sir John Fielding, or women like Mrs. Fry, devoting themselves to the cure of these evils. But they did in each case what they could with their own means to attack what came under their own observation . The I9th century has had to accept the stern er duty of facing the problem as a whole. \Ve are beginning to recognise that neither goodwill nor energy are sufficient without "the in­tolerable disease of thought."

The readings w~re from Swinburne's "The Pilgrims" and from Matthew Arnold.

ST. LAZAR US. Mr. Conway' discourse on Sept. 22nd was a lucid exposition

of the legend of Lazaru. He quoted Renan s dictum that every institution has fiction at its base, and pointed out that prevalent as is fiction to-day it was infinitely more so in the past, nearly all literature in remote ages being largely fiction. The poet was compelled to affect the prophet, the novelist the apocalyptic seer. A certain literary instinct only is required to detect the novelettes in the Bible. The story of Lazarus is one of them. Among the many romances of the Gospels is the one concerning the rich man and Lazarus. That Jesus was the author of this is doubtful; it seems to belong to a later communistic period, when the disciples were arraigning wealth, for Dives went to Hell for his wealth and

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Lazarus to Heaven solely on account of his poverty. If Jesus was the author, it must have been when he was a crude young radical. The name Lazarus seems to be a corruption of Eliezer, a servant of Abraham, who was to have been his heir but was disappointed owing to the miraculous birth of Isaac; probably compassionate tradition recompensed Eliezer at death by translation into his master's bosom . The writer of the fourth Gospel changes the allegory into history, but alters its close: despite Abraham's refusal to return him to life, Lazarus is raised from the dead . This gospeller does not know in the least that he is dealing with allegory, but talks of Lazarus as a real personage, much as if an English historian should write of Mr. Worldly \Viseman as a historical person of Bunyan's time. He introduces the story at a critical time-shortly before the betrayal of Jesus -apparently to establish the faith of the disciples, and an important doctrinal point at the same time . "Lazarus is dead," Jesus said to his disciples, "and I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent that ye may believe." It is all a miracle play to support a new doctrinal system, and is nowhere else mentioned in the Bible . The new system invents a theological Christ to replace a human Jesus. The romance of Lazarus continued for ages. It is said that he was made Bishop of Bethany, but being persecuted by the Jews he fled to Cyprus, became Bishop there, and after­wards at Marseilles. There he was martyred, and became the patron saint of lepers, relieving their miseries through the" Knights of St. Lazarus." Human credulity is one of our great obstructions; in speculation, science, and even business it is rampant; and little wondar, for it has been deliberately bred for ages by killing off the sceptics. "Bles­sed were those who saw not yet believed." Still the age of reason advances; the new crusade of clerical ism in the Board Schools is a confession that its authority is broken . Superstition now has to plead for its institutions on grounds of public utility. Church defence does not now rest on apostolic succession, but on practical work among the poor. We rationalists must not be discouraged by the strength of old fictions, for great forces are with us. Papal power, serf­dom, and slavery, just now strongholds resting on criptural fiction, fell before the Reformers as other strongholds will, because of unconscious untheoretical necessities. Among the masses, forces of want, pain, discontent, are at work, which pious fiction cannot long master. Weary hearts cry to an unreplying Heaven. Lazarus of old could be raised

ostentatiously from the dead to establish a dogma, but the London sufferer can only say in vain, " If thou hadst been here my brother, my child, my wife, - my husband, had not died." The thaumaturgist, Christ, at last is steadily vanish­ing; the sects are all competing to lead on the human Jesus, whom the terrible "Tom Paine" pronounced a hundred years ago, " too little imitated, too much forgotten, too much misunderstood. "

The readings were from" Ecclesiasticus," and from Thomas Paine's essay on " Dreams."

Death is the shadow of life; and as the tree Stands in the sun and shadows all beneath,

So, in the light of great Eternity, Life eminent creates the shade death;

The Shadow passeth when the tree shall fall, But love shall reign for ever over all.

On Sunday, September 8th, Mr. Conway delivered an address at the Unitarian Church, Great Yarmouth, on "Protestant Bambinos."

On Tuesday, loth September, the marriage took place at South Place Chapel, of Irene Seyler, eldest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Clarence H. Seyler, and Arthur Andrews, the ceremony being conducted by Mr. Moncure D. Conway. By consent of the contracting parties the coming event was announced from the platform on the preceding Sunday, the Committee having recently decided that in future, marriages at South Place shall be so announced, unless objections are raised by those concerned.

The Discussion Society's programme for the first half of the season is a very attractive one. Mr. Conway has kindly consented to open a discussion on Wednesday evening, October 2nd, the subject being "Are Conventional Lies, so-called, Real Lies;" Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner will take the Chair. On October 16th, Mr. Frederick Whelen, of the London Reform Union, will open on " U ni fication "; and on October 30th a debate on "Free Trade in Drink" will be opened by Mr. William Rawlings, Mr. Clarence Seyler in the chair. The hour of meeting has been altered to 8 o'clock. The Secretary would be glad to receive suggestions as to future debates.

The Tenth Season of the Sunday Popular Concerts will commence on October 6th, at 7 o'clock. The artists on the opening night will be Mr. A. J. Slocombe, Mr. H. W. Warner, Mr. A. Hobday, Mr. J. Field, Mrs. Helen Trust, and Miss Kate Augusta Davies. The programme will include the first of Beethoven'S String Quartets, it being intended to perform in numerical order during the season the first eleven or twelve of these famous works.

The Sunday Afternoon Free Lectures will be resumed on October 6th, when a series, on the "British Empire," WIll be commenced by Sir Charles Tupper, G.C .M.G., C.B. , High Commissioner of Canada, with a lecture on "Canada." On the following Sunday, Mr. W . S . Sebright Green will deal with "British Columbia"; on 20th 1\1r. Sydney G . P. Coryn with the "Canadian Pacific Railway" (with lantern illustrations); and on 27th , Mr. James Bonwick with" New South Wales." Most of the lecturers will speak from personal experience of the countries dealt with, which in the first list include: Sind, ] amaica, Tasmania, and Australia as a whole. Several lectures will be illustrated by lantern slides, maps, charts, &c. Each lecture will begin at 4 o'clock, being preceded by an organ recital at 3 .30.

A course of ten lectures on the" Story of our English Abbeys," illustrated by photographic lantern slides, will be delivered on Tuesday evenings at Seven o'clock, by MIss Edith Bradley (Managing Director, Women Lecturers' Association), commencing Tuesday, 15th October. Tickets for the course, Ss.; for a single lecture, IS . ; or by season ticket. Admission to the first lecture will be free. The second will be given on Tl11l1'sday, Bit-tit Oct .

Mr. McGavin Sloan, of IS Preston Grove, Liverpool (an abstract of whose recent address at South Place appears in the present number) retires shortly from the regular ministry of the Unitarian churches, and will then devote himself to journalism and literary lecturing.

As already announced in the" Athemeum ,. and other journals, an Exhibition is proposed to be held at South Place, early in December next, of relics relating to Thomas Paine and his contemporaries . Portraits of the author of" Rights of Man" and "The Age of Reason," and of his chief supporters as well as opponents, whether paintings or prints, caricatures, early editions of their writings, broadsides, medals, &c ., are invited, and may be addressed to the Secretary, Thomas Paine ExhibitlOn, South Place Chapel, Finsbury. It is hoped that a ready response may be made to the appeal tor exhibits, and that the Exhibition may prove worthy alike of the Society and of one whose name Mr. Conway has done so much to place in its true position, by his" Life" and "Writings ." Provision has been made for the entire security of such articles as shall be loaned, and their safe return, all expenses being borne by the Committee .

NOTE.-The Editor is relying upon the members to furnish him with matter regularly from month to month .

Contributions should be addressed-"EDITOR SOUTH PLACE MAGAZINE,"

67 Cromwell Avenue, Highgate, N., and reach him not later than the last Saturday in each month. In order not to exclude any branch of the SocIety's operations, brief notices should be sent.

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