ETHICAL SPECULATIONS AND INQUIRIES. CHAPTER XI. TO WHAT EXTENT WILL ONE'S BELIEF MODIFY HIS MORAL CHARACTER? SOME assert that the influence of belief, especially religious belief, is merely nominal. A distinction should be drawn between what a man believes and what he professes to believe. It is not profession, or what a man professes, that has lasting power, but the belief which is ingrained in the character will have a powerful effect upon his whole life. If a man believes that by investing in certain property he will become rich, does any one suppose that such belief will not influence his acts? In religious matters, if a man hardly knows whether he believes or not, but simply falls in with the current, as many do, and professes to believe with the majority, because it is easier to go with than against the current, such belief is of little value, and will be likely to change as soon as his surroundings change. But if a man has a firm conviction that a certain course is right, and also determines to be himself right, then his belief avails much towards giving character to his whole life. It has been said that Washington believed that "honesty is the best policy ;" and doubtless he was correct. But if a man's honesty does not spring from a higher motive than common policy, it will not be of a very high type. The same rules apply to a man's belief in a future life and its rewards or retributions. If he really believes that he will consciously exist in a future world, and that what he does here will have an important effect on his future happiness, most certainly this belief will exert a powerful influence in shaping his acts. But if he has simply a half-conscious idea that he may possibly exist, or perhaps not exist, then such a belief cannot have any marked influence on his character. Hugh Miller says: "That belief in the existence after death, which forms the distinguishing instinct of humanity, is too essential a part of man's moral constitution not to be missed when away; and so, when once fairly eradicated, the life and conduct rarely fail to betray its absence." The belief of a nation will influence the character of its laws and habits, for nations are made up of individuals. If the individuals of a free nation believe in honesty and integrity the rulers will feel this influence, and we may expect an equitable enforcement of just laws. The decline of religious belief is now making itself very apparent in European countries, controlling, in some respects, their politics. Formerly, in Italy, the words of the pope and the priesthood, in many respects, had the force of law. But times have wonderfully changed. Many who once bowed submissively now care little what the pope and priests may say. Those who have relapsed from belief into non-belief are very different from what they formerly were, and new motives must be supplied in order to influence their BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. 255 acts. Some, who formerly believed in the immortality of the soul, now believe that the death of the body is the last of them. If you wish to keep such in a right course it will not do to appeal to the motives which formerly influenced them. It ever has been very dangerous to the welfare of the state for lawless classes not to feel some sense of moral responsibility; for you can never tell to what excesses such may go while unrestrained by religious or moral belief. This is more especially true when the immoral become atheistic. But I would not advise preaching untruth to control even the immoral, for untruth is not to be defended. "Truth is mighty and must prevail," and no lasting good can come from teaching error. But it is not teaching error to proclaim to its fullest extent the doctrine of moral responsibility. I am well aware that many have tried to show that there is no unvarying moral standard, and have further attempted to show that all our ideas of right and wrong are connected with remembrances of pleasures or pains; or are the inherited echoes of pleasures or pains experienced by our ancestors in connection with various courses of conduct. Referring to this idea, Mansel says (p. 143, "Metaphysics"): "Pleasure and pain, so far as they are objects of desire and aversion, do not probably lie in the things by which they are caused, but in the actions by which those things are brought into contact with the person affected. But the actions, and, in some degree also, the feelings which prompt them, may be exhibited in another point of view not merely as pleasant or painful, but as right or wrong. The existence of these terms, or their equivalents, in every language, indicates a corresponding phenomenon in the universal consciousness of mankind which no effort of ingenuity can |