ghastly recital of the murder. If this expedient were adopted, there would be no intrinsic absurdity in the appearance of the strange man at the feast. He might come there with a secrecy the more effectual because of its apparent openness, for he would be in the company of one of Macbeth's chief retainers, with whom many of the guests were familiar, and with whom he might naturally, even at such a time, be obliged to speak aside a few words on some urgent and private matter. The conversation so conducted, even under the eyes, and only just out of earshot, of the whole company, might and would be no violation of probability, and need attract no special notice from the guests, even though the deadliest secret were clothed under the audacious but complete and natural disguise. But the effect upon the audience would be widely different from that of the present almost unmanageable tradition, which necessitates an improbability so absurd as almost, if not quite, to render ridiculous what might be one of the most thrilling horrors of the tragedy.

HENRY IRVING.

A MODERN

SYMPOSIUM."

THE INFLUENCE UPON MORALITY OF A
DECLINE IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF.

SIR JAMES STEPHEN.

Many persons regard everything which tends to discredit theology with disapprobation, because they think that all such speculations must endanger morality as well. Others assert that morality has a basis of its own in human nature, and that, even if all theological belief were exploded, morality would remain unaffected.

My own view is that each party is to a considerable extent right, but that the true practical inference is often neglected.

Understanding by the theology of an age or country the theory of the universe generally accepted then and there, and by its morality the rules of life then and there commonly regarded as binding, it seems to me extravagant to say that the one does not influence the other. The difference between living in a country where the established theory is that existence is an evil, and annihilation the highest good, and living in a country where the established theory is that the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof, the round world and they that dwell therein, has surely a good deal to do with the other differences which distinguish Englishmen from Buddhists.

Even if it be said that such differences are merely a way of expressing the result of a difference of temperament and constitution otherwise caused, this does not diminish the effect of a belief in the truth of the theory. Kali, Bhowanee, and other malevolent deities worshipped in India are probably phantoms engendered by fear work

1 A certain number of gentlemen have consented to discuss from time to time, under this title, questions of interest and importance. Each writer will have seen all that has been written before his own remarks, but (except the first writer) nothing that follows them. The first writer, as proposer of the subject, will have the right of reply or summing-up at the end. The present discussion will be continued and concluded in the May number of the Review.-EDITOR Nineteenth Century.

ing on a rank fancy; but this does not make the belief in their real existence less influential in those who hold it. A man who cuts off the end of his tongue to propitiate Kali would let it alone if he ceased to believe in her existence, though the temper of mind which created her might still remain, and show itself in other ways.

The belief that the course of the world is ordered by a good God, that right and wrong are in the nature of a divine law, that this world is a place of trial, and part only of a wider existence-in a word, the belief in God and a future state-may be accounted for in various ways. Now that in this country (to go no further) the vast majority of people believe these doctrines to be true in fact just as they believe it to be true in fact that ships and carriages can be driven by steam, and that their conduct is in innumerable instances as distinctly influenced by the one belief as by the other, appear to me to be propositions too plain to be proved.

On the other hand, it seems at least equally evident that morality has a basis of its own quite independent of all theology whatever. It is difficult to imagine any doctrine about theology which has not prevailed at some time or place; but no one ever heard of men living together without some rules of life-that is, without some sort of morality. Given human action and human passion, and a vast number of people all acting and feeling, moral rules of conduct of some sort are a necessary consequence. The destruction of religion would, I think, involve a moral revolution; but it would no more destroy morality than a political revolution destroys law. It would substitute one set of moral rules and sentiments for another, just as the establishment of Christianity and Mohammedanism did when they superseded various forms of paganism.'

It would be scarcely worth while to write down these commonplaces, if it were not for the sake of the practical inference. It is that theology and morality ought to stand to each other in precisely the same relation as facts and legislation.

No one would propose to support by artificial means a law passed under a mistake, for fear it should have to be altered. To say that the truth of a theological doctrine must not be questioned, lest the discovery of its falsehood should produce a bad moral effect, is in principle precisely the same thing. It is at least as unlikely that false theology should produce good morals as that legislation based on a mistaken view of facts should work well in practice.

I will give two illustrations of this-any number might be given. Suicide is commonly regarded as wrong; and this moral doctrine is defended on theological grounds, which are summed up in the old saying that the soldier must not leave his post till he is relieved. I will not inquire whether any other argument can be produced forbidding suicide to a person labouring under a disease which converts his whole life into one long scene of excruciating agony, and which must

kill him in the course of a few useless months, during which he is a source of misery, and perhaps danger, to his nearest and dearest friends. I confine myself to saying that, if it could be shown that there is no reason to suppose that God has in fact forbidden such an act, its morality might be discussed and decided upon on different grounds from those on which it must be considered and decided upon on the opposite hypothesis.

Take again the law of marriage. Suppose a man's wife is hopelessly insane-ought he to be allowed to marry again? Ought divorce to be permitted in any case? These questions will be discussed in a very different spirit, though it is possible that they might be answered in the same way, by persons who do and by persons who do not believe in sacraments, and that marriage is a sacrament.

Now let us suppose for the sake of argument that it could be shown that if all theological considerations were set aside, it would be desirable that a person dying of cancer should be permitted to commit suicide, and that a man whose wife was incurably mad should be allowed to marry again; and that on the other hand, if theological considerations were taken into account, the opposite was desirable. Upon these suppositions the question whether the theological beliefs which make the difference are beneficial or not will depend on the question whether they are true or not. Applied generally, this shows that the support which an existing creed gives to an existing system of morals is irrelevant to its truth, and that the question whether a given system of morals is good or bad cannot be fully determined until after the determination of the question whether the theology on which it rests is true or false. The morality is good if it is founded on a true estimate of the consequences of human actions. But if it is founded on a false theology, it is founded on a false estimate of the consequences of human actions; and, so far as that is the case, it cannot be good; and the circumstance that it is supported by the theology to which it refers is an argument against, and not in favour of, that theology.

LORD SELBORNE.

I begin by observing that (putting special cases aside, and looking at the question in a general way) morality has not flourished, amongst either civilised or uncivilised men, when religious belief has been generally lost, or utterly debased. Not to dwell upon the case of savage races, the modern Hindoos and Chinese have long been civilised, but are certainly not moral; nor can anything worse be conceived than the morality of the Greeks and Romans, at the height

of their civilisation. The morality of the Romans, in the old republican times when they knew nothing of Greek philosophy, was praised by Polybius, who connected it directly, and emphatically, with the influence among them of religious belief. After their intellectual cultivation had taken its tone from the irreligious or agnostic materialism of Epicurus (hardly distinguishable, I think, from that sort of philosophy which some persons think destined to supplant religious belief in the present day), their morality became what is described in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans and in the Satires of Juvenal; nor does it seem to have been worse than that of the other civilised races on the shores of the Mediterranean, over whom, at the same time, religion had equally lost its influence.

On the other hand, it seems to me certain, as an historical fact, that the place which the principles of love and benevolence, humility and self-abnegation, have assumed in the morality of Christian nations (with a wide-spreading influence which has been advancing till the present time with the growth of civilisation) is specifically due to Christianity. To Christianity are specifically due (1) our respect for human life, which condemns suicide, infanticide, political assassination, and I might almost say homicide generally, in a way previously unknown, and still unknown where Christianity does not prevail; (2) our recognition of such moral and spiritual relations between man and man as are inconsistent with the degradation of women, and with the practice of slavery; (3) our reverence for the bond of marriage; and (4) our abhorrence of some particular forms of vice. I do not mean to deny that traces of a state of opinion, more or less similar upon some of these points, are discoverable in what we know of the manners of some non-Christian nations; but it is historically true to say, that the prevalence of each of these principles, as manifested amongst ourselves, is specifically due to Christianity. Of Christianity I speak in a sense inclusive of all that it derives from the antecedent Jewish system; of which it claims to be the true continuation and development.

If freedom of inquiry is not to be stopped, after the rejection of religious belief, it must gradually extend itself to the whole circle of morality: most, if not all, of which is as little capable of demonstrative proof through the evidence of the senses as any of the doctrines of religion. Those who reject religion will not voluntarily submit to moral restraints founded upon the religion which they reject, unless they can be placed upon some other intellectual basis, sufficiently cogent to themselves to resist the attractions of appetite or selfinterest. That large part of mankind who are always too much under the government of their inclinations and passions will be quicker in drawing moral corollaries from irreligious principles than the philosophers by whom those principles are propounded; and the advanced posts of morality, in which the influence of religion cul