What Is and What Might Be | Page 7

it is still farther from him to
desire it. How, then, shall he be induced to walk in the path which the
Law has prescribed for him? To this question there can be but one
answer: By the promise of external reward, and the threat of external
punishment. To set before Man an ideal of life--an ideal which would
be to him an unfailing fountain of magnetic force and guiding light--is
not in the power of legalism. For if an ideal is to appeal to one, it must
be the consummation of one's own natural tendencies; but the current
of Man's natural tendencies is ever setting towards perdition, and the
vanishing point of his heart's desires is death. Were an ideal revealed to
the Law-giver and by him presented to his fellow-men, and were the
heart of Man to respond to the appeal that it made to him, the basic
assumption of legalism--that of the corruption of Man's nature--would
be undermined; for Man would have proved that it belonged to his
nature to turn towards the light,--in other words, that he had a natural
capacity for good. The plain truth is that legalism is precluded, by its
own first principles from appealing to any motive higher than that
instinctive desire for pleasure which has as its counterpart a
quasi-physical fear of pain. It is impossible for the lawgiver to appeal
to Man's better nature, to say to him: "Cannot you see for yourself that
this course of action is better than that,--that love is better than hatred,
mercy than cruelty, loyalty than treachery, continence than
self-indulgence?" What he can and must say to him is this, and this
only; "If you obey the Law you will be rewarded. If you disobey it you
will be punished." And this he must say to him again and again.
It is true that among the many commandments which the Law sets
before its votaries, there are some--the moral commandments, properly
so called--which do in point of fact, and in defiance of the
philosophical assumption of legalism, appeal to the better nature of
Man. But these are at best an insignificant minority; and their relative
importance will necessarily diminish with the development into its
natural consequences of the root idea of legalism. For legalism, just so
far as it is strong, sincere, and self-confident, will try to cover the

whole of human life. The religion that is content to do less than this, the
religion that acquiesces in the distinction between what is religious and
what is secular, is, as we shall presently see, a religion in decay.
Religion may perhaps be defined as Man's instinctive effort to bring a
central aim into his life and so provide himself with an authoritative
standard of values. In its highest and purest form, Religion controls
Man's life, both as a whole and in all its essential details, through the
central aim or spiritual ideal which it sets before him and the
consequent standard of values with which it equips him. But legalism is
debarred by its distrust of human nature from trying to control the
details of life through any central aim or ideal; and its assumption that
all the commandments of the Law are of divine origin, and therefore
equally binding upon Man, is obviously incompatible with the
conception of a standard of moral worth. Its attempt to cover the whole
of life must therefore resolve itself into an attempt to control the details
of conduct in all their detail; to deal with them, one by one, bringing
each in turn under the operation of an appropriate commandment, and
if necessary deducing from the commandment a special rule to meet the
special case. In other words, besides being told what he is not to do (in
the more strictly moral sphere of conduct), and what he is to do (in the
more strictly ceremonial sphere), Man must be told, in the fullest detail,
how he is to do whatever may have to be done in the daily round of his
life. Such at least is the aim of legalism. The nets of the Law are woven
fine, and flung far and wide. If there are any acts in a man's life which
escape through their clinging meshes, the force of Nature is to be
blamed for this partial failure, not the zeal of the Doctors of the Law.
It is towards this inverted ideal that the doctrine of salvation through
obedience will lead its votaries, when its master principle--that of
distrust of human nature--has been followed out into all its natural
consequences,--followed out, as it was by Pharisaism, with a fearless
logic and a fixed tenacity of purpose. An immense and ever-growing
host of formulated rules, not one in a hundred of which makes any
appeal