I have never expressed a doubt--for I have none--that, when Mr. Booth left the Methodist connection, and started that organisation of the Salvation Army upon which, comparatively recently, such ambitious schemes of social reform have been grafted, he may have deserved some share of such honour. I do not say that, so far as his personal desires and intentions go, he may not still deserve it. But the correlate of despotic authority is unlimited responsibility. If Mr.
Booth is to take credit for any good that the Army system has effected, he must be prepared to bear blame for its inherent evils. As it seems to me, that has happened to him which sooner or later happens to all despots: he has become the slave of his own creation--the prosperity and glory of the soul-saving machine have become the end, instead of a means, of soul-saving; and to maintain these at the proper pitch, the "General" is led to do things which the Mr. Booth of twenty years ago would probably have scorned.
And those who desire, as I most emphatically desire, to be just to Mr.
Booth, however badly they may think of the working of the organization he has founded, will bear in mind that some astute backers of his probably care little enough for Salvationist religion; and, perhaps, are not very keen about many of Mr. Booth's projects. I have referred to the rubbing of the hands of the Socialists over Mr. Booth's success;but, unless I err greatly, there are politicians of a certain school to whom it affords still greater satisfaction. Consider what electioneering agents the captains of the Salvation Army, scattered through all our towns, and directed from a political "bureau" in London, would make! Think how political adversaries could be harassed by our local attorney--"tribune of the people," I mean; and how a troublesome man, on the other side, could be "hunted down" upon any convenient charge, whether true or false, brought by our Vigilance-familiar!
See Letter VIII.
See Letter II.
I entirely acquit Mr. Booth of any complicity in far-reaching schemes of this kind; but I did not write idly when, in my first letter, I gave no vague warning of what might grow out of the organised force, drilled in the habit of unhesitating obedience, which he has created.
The vast and varied procession of events, which we call Nature, affords a sublime spectacle and an inexhaustible wealth of attractive problems to the speculative observer. If we confine our attention to that aspect which engages the attention of the intellect, nature appears a beautiful and harmonious whole, the incarnation of a faultless logical process, from certain premises in the past to an inevitable conclusion in the future. But if it be regarded from a less elevated, though more human, point of view; if our moral sympathies are allowed to influence our judgment, and we permit ourselves to criticise our great mother as we criticise one another; then our verdict, at least so far as sentient nature is concerned, can hardly be so favourable.
In sober truth, to those who have made a study of the phenomena of life as they exhibited by the higher forms of the animal world, the optimistic dogma, that this is the best of all possible worlds, will seem little better than a libel upon possibility. It is really only another instance to be added to the many extant, of the audacity of a priori speculators who, having created God in their own image, find no difficulty in assuming that the Almighty must have been actuated by the same motives as themselves. They are quite sure that, had any other course been practicable, He would no more have made infinite suffering a necessary ingredient of His handiwork than a respectable philosopher would have done the like.
But even the modified optimism of the time-honoured thesis of physico-theology, that the sentient world is, on the whole, regulated by principles of benevolence, does but ill stand the test of impartial confrontation with the facts of the case. No doubt it is quite true that sentient nature affords hosts of examples of subtle contrivances directed towards the production of pleasure or the avoidance of pain; and it may be proper to say that these are evidences of benevolence.
But if so, why is it not equally proper to say of the equally numerous arrangements, the no less necessary result of which is the production of pain, that they are evidences of malevolence?
If a vast amount of that which, in a piece of human workmanship, we should call skill, is visible in those parts of the organization of a deer to which it owes its ability to escape from beasts of prey, there is at least equal skill displayed in that bodily mechanism of the wolf which enables him to track, and sooner or later to bring down, the deer. Viewed under the dry light of science, deer and wolf are alike admirable; and, if both were non-sentient automata, there would be nothing to qualify our admiration of the action of the one on the other. But the fact that the deer suffers, while the wolf inflicts suffering, engages our moral sympathies. We should call men like the deer innocent and good, men such as the wolf malignant and bad; we should call those who defended the deer and aided him to escape brave and compassionate, and those who helped the wolf in his bloody work base and cruel. Surely, if we transfer these judgments to nature outside the world of man at all, we must do so impartially. In that case, the goodness of the right hand which helps the deer, and the wickedness of the left hand which eggs on the wolf, will neutralize one another: and the course of nature will appear to be neither moral nor immoral, but non-moral.
This conclusion is thrust upon us by analogous facts in every part of the sentient world; yet, inasmuch as it not only jars upon prevalent prejudices, but arouses the natural dislike to that which is painful, much ingenuity has been exercised in devising an escape from it.
