WITH AND WITHOUT.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 9511, 5 September 1891, Page 5

WITH AND WITHOUT.

[By E. C.] With and without are small words, but they may carry with them a big significance. General Booth and Miss Jane Hume Clapperton have got hold o£the two words and are going to do a mighty work. Each has taken a large order: the one to deliver darkest England from its misery with God, the other to deliver darkened Humanity from its misery without God. “ The dark and dismal jungle of pauperism, and vice and despair, is - the inheritance to which we have succeeded from the generations and centuries past," says General Booth. . . “Without God we can do nothing in this frightful chaos of human misery, but with God we can do all things.” “ The evils of our present state,” says Jane Hume Clapperton, the scientific meliorist, “are poverty, a life-long struggle for existence, premature death, drunkenness, widespread prostitution, war, inequality of comforts, tyranny, crime,” and a few more terrible etceteras, “ but with Utopianism for its propeller, and science at the helm, humanity cannot bat speed forward to a new heaven and a new earth.”

To watch these two modern reformers, and to follow carefully along their different lines of work; to note the widely divergent goals they desire to attain is like watching a game of chess; both are enthusiasts, and well skilled in the management of their pieces; but Booth is working with flesh and blood. Miss Clapperton is playing her intricate game with theories. Which will win ?

It is, however, refreshing to come across two really earnest thinkers who do not harp on the worn-Out theme of political agency for the amelioration of our distressed humanity; both reformers declare that political reform is of minor importance; both deprecate social revolution, and both unite in stating that in order to make men and women good and happy (the General uses the word "good;" Miss Clapperton the term “happy"), their environments must be wholesome and comfortable. The Scientist says, "If a poor man’s wife is to be a model of home virtues, cleanliness tidiness, &c., she must not be compelled to wash and dress linen in the one little chamber where she cooks and eats her food."

The Salvationist says, " Of course, there is only one real remedy for this state of things, and that is, to take the people away from the wretched novels in which they sicken, suffer and die * * * in less comfort than the cattle in the stalls and styes of many a country squire.” We find, then, that the philosopher and the religionist both start on the common ground: that our present social condition is utterly deplorable, and that the profound discontent of all earnest people should move in the direction of concerted action—not towards political change, but change of the causes of our evil state, that lie far deeper than the roots of systems and Governments.

But the methods hy which these evil causes are to be altered are completely different in the two reformers. General Booth’s method of work is well known; the watch-words are: " Blood, Fire, Salvation.” The agency for carrying out reform among the people is to be found in his body of ten thousand officers, bound to implicit obedience to headquarters, (wherein lies so great a fascination —for men love to obey implicitly, in spite of all the talk of the freethinkers to the contrary). The chief enemy to be combated is the devil. The reward and goal._fcojbe. obtained for humanity finally is Heaven. The Scientific Reformer has one watchward —conscious evolution; her agency for reforming the world is psychic force, commonly called Reason; the chief enemy is Mrs Grundy. The reward and. goal-to-be obtained for humanity finally is—the greatest happiness at all tine to all people. Before discussing in detail the*method of the scientist, we cannot refrain from remarking upon the delightful self-assurance of both authors. They shrink from no difficulties ; they acknowledge no conceivable objections to their schemes, and, above all, they both utterly and supremely ignore the work of any other reforming agencies. Certainly on one page of “Darkest England” the General kindly and condescendingly remarks that he does nob wish to interfere with the Little Sisters of the Poor in collecting broken victuals from hotels. We believe this is his only allusion to that mighty organisation—the Roman Catholic Church. No other religious bodies are ever mentioned. Miss Clapperton, in her book, “ Scientific Meliorism,” lightly touches Christianity en passant, as (so to express it) a portion of the long scroll that evolution is unrolling, a part of the continuity of the emotional force, whatever that may mean; very useful, no doubt, in having developed qualities of tenderness, <tc., in man, but a trifling feature in the progress of humanity not worth very much intellectual consideration. To put it briefly; Booth shelves the churches, Miss Clapperton shelves Christianity ! They both do it neatly and thoroughly. Place autx dames. Miss Clapperton demands our first attention. Her book is profound; the title. Scientific Meliorism, reminds one of a man with a double first at Oxford ; it is scientific and classical in title. George Elliot has given us the word meliorism. Someone called her an optimist. She replied : " I will not answer to the name of optimist; but if you like to call me meliorist I will not say you call me out of my name.” « The meliorist neither asserts that life is good or bad; but contends that it can be made worth living.” So much for the title of Miss Clapperton’s book : a title fully worked out in the most exhaustive and somewhat exhausting manner. Our authoress is thoroughly scientific, and consequently deeply imbued with the doctrine of evolution.

Humanity, she says, is a living, growing organism, therefore it ia governed from first to last by Law. This ia the keynote of all her book; with law—without “ Unconscious evolution has carried us forward from savagery to civilisation,” she tells us; and then she turns round upon civilisation and soundly rates it. It is grossly imperfect; it ia completely under Mrs Grundy’s thumb; it ia bad—thoroughly bad, and will soon hurry us to ruin. Evolution has made humanity what it is by the varied workings of its laws, and a nice muddle she has made of her work.

The survival of the fittest, natural selection, the law of heredity, adaptability of the individual to its environments, and sundry other of the laws of evolution have made a pretty mess of society. For instance, religion and benevolence are developments of evolution, and religion and benevolence built children’s hospitals, asylums for idiots, &c., and many other foolish institutions!, Our writer instances a case of a little child in a tiny cot, smelling strongly of alcohol. Its nurse explained thus: “ Poor dear! Sho is one of them wo call our whisky children! ” Born of drunken parents, and suckled on gin! “Now,” says our meliorist: “the best thing for these children and for society at large would be that they should perish.” The survival of the fittest is, in the case of society, too often the survival of the nastiest.* Witness the children of the criminal classes, how they adapt themselves to their surroundings, and thrive and multiply precisely where the more refined would die. Take also the law of natural selection, not as it acts among pretty butterflies and sparkling fire-flies, but as it works among the brutal and the degraded—with whom do they mate ? What with “ whisky babies,” and inherited vice, and! congenital idiocy, evolution has forged weapons of ghastly destructive power. If evolution is the fundamental Jaw of life, it has certainly in the case of humanity made life very ugly, and very

unmanageable. What then are we to do ? Can we kick against the pricks ? Upset, evolution ? Oh,no! says Miss Clapperton, we will gently remove evolution and place, in its stead a sort of second cousin and call it conscious evolution! We are,no longer to trust ourselves blindly to an unconscious law j we are in short t'O make a law for ourselves—a psychic force working with design towards definite.endK This designing psychic force (termed conscious evolution), is to he our god, and rule, and shape society in its own way;' it wilt be an “ organisation of all facts, forces and phenomena into an orderly and connected system,” combined with practical method* of reform working on strictly rational principles. “ The era of science,” says our scientist, “will he the Utopian golden age;, the. beautiful Psyche (the mind) now wandering aimlessly through the world, will in the evolution of happiness bo sought out and, cherished, and be raised to the Olympus of! a new heaven above the sweetness of a new earth, there to be joined td love, and reign evermore in all true,' hearts as the genius of Socialism, and the guardian of Individuality."’ Miss Clapperton does not accurately locate, the new heaven or “Olymjpus” where Psyche is to reign. Men’s hearts are such changeable things—what if they weary of this goddess! In fact, this new power* conscious evolution, is but a new system under the awe-inspiring name of Law; it will only he a synthetic arrangement of the ideas prevalent at this particular age. Beeson now, it may in a few years be but foolishness; and this Psyche after alt may be sending humanity on a “ fool’s errand." We want to know a little more, about our new goddess Psyche, before we trust her too much; she has a huge work, to perform, namely, undoing to a very large extent all that her relation. Unconscious Evolution, has done. Our nest paper will describe the proposed operations that are to come into force with this epoch of conscious evolution, which, says our enthusiastic scientist, “ will reveal a new heaven and a new earth.” A hew heaven and a new earth' without God I We feat them!.