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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 35

[chapter viii]

Proof of the Inefficiency of super-human Inducements, when unassisted by, or at variance with, public Opinion.

By the preceding analysis I have attempted to show, that the apparent influence of posthumous expectations is at the bottom nothing more than a disguised and peculiar agency of public opinion; and also to trace the process by page 57 which these expectations naturally and infallibly give birth to such an inflexion of the popular voice. I now propose to confirm this explanation still farther, by citing a few most convincing examples of the complete disregard with which posthumous anticipations are treated, when the voice of the public either opposes, or ceases to enforce, their influence.

For this purpose it will be absolutely necessary to allege instances from revealed religion, because it is only by means of revelation that a written, unvarying collection of precepts has become promulgated, completely independent of any variations which may take place in the national feeling. In natural religion it is impossible to discover what is the course of action enjoined, except by consulting the reigning tone of practice and sentiment; and, therefore, the two must necessarily appear harmonious and coincident, since we can only infer the former from the latter. Revelation alone communicates a known and authoritative code, with which the actual conduct of believers may be compared, and the points of conformity or separation ascertained.

1. The first practice which may be cited, as manifesting the impotence of religious precepts, when opposed to public opinion, is that of duelling. Nothing can be more notoriously contrary to the divine law; which acts too on this occasion with every possible advantage, except the alliance of the popular voice. For the practice which religion here interdicts is attended with pain and hazard to the person committing it, and often with the most ruinous consequences to his surviving relatives. If ever super-human inducements could ensure obedience when opposed to the popular sanction, it would be in a case where all other motives conspire to aid them.

If posthumous enjoyments were the actual reward aimed at, and the real motive for religious conduct, this concurrence of other inducements would swell their influence and render them preponderant. But the truth is, that they are not the actual reward sought by the religionist. What he desires is, to prove to the satisfaction of other men that they are so—to acquire in their eyes the credit of unbounded attachment to the Deity. No man will give him credit for any such attachment, simply because he declines a duel. He knows that the world will ascribe his refusal to coward- page 58 ice—and thus the concurrence of motives abates and enfeebles, instead of confirming, the efficacy of the religious precept. He will be more ready to inflict upon himself severe bodily sufferings, in compliance with the divine code, than to follow its precepts where mankind will give him no credit for the sincerity of his obedience.

Whether, however, the justice of this solution be admitted or denied, the instance of duelling must in either case demonstrate the inefficiency of religious inducements, when opposed to public opinion.

2. Fornication is an act directly forbidden by the super-human code—but not forbidden by the popular voice. The latter, however, does not in this case imperatively demand the infringement of the prohibitory precept, as it did in the case of the duel; but merely leaves the divine admonition to operate unsupported. To what extent it operates thus single-handed, the state of all great cities notoriously attests.

3. Simony, again, is forbidden in the religious code with equal strictness, and practised with equal frequency.

4. But perhaps the case in which the impotence of posthumous apprehensions is most glaring and manifest, is that of perjury. The person who takes an oath solemnly calls down upon himself the largest measure of divine vengeance, if he commits a particular act. In this imprecation it is implied, that he firmly anticipates the infliction of these penalties, if he becomes guilty of this self-condemned behaviour. Yet this expectation, which he thus attests and promulgates, of posthumous inflictions, has not, when stripped of the consentient impulse of public opinion, the slenderest hold upon his actions. It cannot make him forego any temptation, however small; as an appeal to unexceptionable facts will evince.

Every young man, who is entered at the University of Oxford, is obliged to take an oath, that he will observe the statutes of the University—a collection of rules for his conduct while he is a student, framed many years ago by Archbishop Laud. On this oath, after it has been once taken, not a thought is bestowed, even by the most scrupulous religionist. Its precepts are altogether unheeded and forgotten—infringed of course on every occasion when the page 59 observance of them is at all inconvenient. The conduct of all the swearers is precisely the same as it would have been had the oath never been taken. All the posthumous vengeance which they have imprecated upon themselves—all the superhuman inflictions which they firmly anticipate—suffice not to produce the most trivial alteration of behaviour. Yet an adherence to some at least among the injunctions thus solemnly sealed, would entail scarcely any inconvenience at all. Slight, however, as this inconvenience is, the fear of post-obituary penalties is still slighter, and, therefore, even the easy means of averting them are altogether neglected.

The regulations prescribed by the oath, it will be said, are useless, and, therefore, there is no necessity for observing them. This may be very true, and may afford an unanswerable reason for discontinuing the form altogether: but it offers not the shadow of a plea for neglecting its dictates, when you have once gone through the ceremonial. By virtue of the oath you have imposed upon yourself a special obligation to the performance of certain acts; you bind yourself by your apprehension of posthumous visitations in case of failure, and in order to obviate all reluctance on the part of the Almighty, you state your own fervent desire to be so treated. Whatever obligatory force was comprised in the formula, can never be impaired by your discovery that the act enjoined will produce no beneficial consequence.

The uselessness of these regulations is, indeed, the real cause why the oath to fulfil them remains universally unobserved. But why? Because the popular voice has no longer any interest in enforcing them. But the strength of the posthumous fears remains unaltered—and the result attests most strikingly their debility and nothingness.

As another confirmation of this doctrine, let us remark the conduct of Jurors, when they administer a law which popular opinion, as well as they themselves, condemn as sanguinary and impolitic. How undisguised is the manner in which they infringe their oaths in order to elude the necessity of passing a capital sentence! In defiance of the most irresistible testimony, they find a man guilty of stealing under the value of forty shillings, and thus con- page 60 sign him to the milder and more appropriate punishment. Whence comes it that the force of the oath, weighty and inflexible up to this point, suddenly dissolves into nothing and is shorn of all its credit? It is because the popular voice has ceased to uphold it. Public opinion gave, and public opinion has taken away; and all the sway, which superhuman expectations possess over human behaviour, is surreptitiously procured, from their coincidence with this omnipotent sanction.

Though it is popular opinion, or the desire of temporal esteem, which forms the actuating stimulus to religious observances, yet there are unquestionably instances in which such works have been faithfully performed without any prospect of consequent credit—nay, perhaps, in spite of bitter and predominant enmity. This is perfectly conformable to the general analogy of nature. For when the associations of credit have once linked themselves with any course of behaviour, by conversation with a peculiar class, by strong personal affection, or any other cause—when the feeling of self-respect has become attached to that course—an individual will not unfrequently persevere in it, though the harvest which he reaps may not actually gratify and realize the association. What is the motive which impels the friends of mankind to exert themselves in reforming a bad government? It springs unquestionably from the desire of esteem; first the desire of obtaining it, then that of deserving it, whether it is actually attainable or not. A similar anxiety, for veneration and influence over the sentiments of others, possesses the religionist, even when he both anticipates and encounters unqualified obloquy; and the fury of proselytism, which is inseparable from his tone of feeling, attests this beyond all dispute. Even the solitary penance of the monk springs from the very same principle; for the association of credit, when once deeply implanted, will govern human conduct, though there should be no prospect of realizing the hope which originally engendered it.

In addition to this it should be remarked, that no one can question the powerful influence exercised by superhuman inducements, in some peculiar cases. They sometimes produce insanity. But these are exceptions to their page 61 usual impotence, and cannot be admitted as evidence against the general conclusion which we have just established.

As it has been demonstrated that all the efficacy of posthumous inducements is in reality referable to their alliance with public opinion—we at once discover the weakness of that plea by which these inducements were asserted to affect secret crimes, uncognizable by human laws. He who entertains confident hopes of perpetrating a misdeed without detection, will of course pay no regard to the popular voice. Nor will the fear of future pains, stripped of that auxiliary which alone renders it formidable, counteract a temptation to delinquency, when we see that it cannot prevail upon an Oxford student to undergo the smallest inconvenience. That the conduct of the former is guilty and injurious—the neglect of the latter, innocent—is a distinction which does not in the least vitiate the analogy. They are both under the special and solitary restraint, whatever be its power, which superhuman terrors impose. The one therefore may serve as an unexceptionable measure of the other. Nay, if anything, these fears ought to be more potent and effective in the case of the Oxford student, than in that of the secret criminal—inasmuch as the former has himself solicited and sanctioned their infliction, and has originated his own claim for their fulfilment.

But if posthumous apprehensions are inapplicable for the coercion of secret crime, it cannot be pretended that they are ever necessary—for human enactments will embrace all open and definable delinquency. To say that earthly laws do not actually perform this, is merely to affirm, that governments are defective and ought to be reformed.