IV THE HERITAGE OF PAIN

In the foregoing pages has been set forward some attempt to explain how the transmuting action of the creed of optimistic suffering operates in a progressive revelation of the spiritual unity of the Whole of Life, whereby pain appears as the agent of the Will of a God of Love in the conversion of evil into good, and whereby the perfecting consciousness of Creation may be drawn into willing co-operation with the Creator.

Such an interpretation of the presence of evil and pain in the world is in agreement with that advanced by Science in support of the supposition that evolutionary growth entails the susceptibility of organisms to contrasting sensations. But is it also compatible with that other explanation of the origin of evil which holds the sin of Adam accountable for the suffering of the whole world, and upon which is based the ecclesiastical doctrine of the need of the Christian Atonement?

While affirming the interdependence of sin and suffering, there is drawn a careful distinction between the two, observation of which is necessary by the man who would avail himself of the Church's aid in the salvation of his soul. Supported as allegorical truth, if not as actual historical occurrences, the Hebrew legends of the Creation and the Fall have been adopted as an explanatory foundation for the need of a new covenant between man, whose sinful conduct marred an originally perfect world, and his justly offended Deity.

Before the advent of Christ the souls of men are held to have been in bondage to the spirit of evil. But through the death of Christ the wrath of God was appeased, and redemption of the sins of all who should acknowledge His redemptive power was secured.

The Catholic Church, as the accredited representative of the divine authority of Christ, teaches that by sacramental agency men may obtain remission and absolution of sins. But there is no concomitant remission of suffering, which is the consequence of evil-doing. The painful labour of men and the travail of women are the result of sin committed by their progenitors, Adam and Eve. It is one thing to forgive a wrong action, but another to arrest its mischievous effects. Man, having marred God's scheme of Creation, must suffer to the end of time from the ineradicable presence of evil in the world, although individual responsibility for its existence is secured by belief in the power of absolution claimed by the Catholic Church in the carrying on of Christ's mission of redemption.

Ecclesiasticism hails Christ as the Saviour of the world, inasmuch as His death was a sacrifice sufficient to atone for the sins of all men. But it is reserved for Science to confirm the truth of this spiritual recognition of the Divine Redeemer, Love, by evidential testimony adduced from proven facts of so-called natural law, whereby Christ is seen as the expounder of doctrine that controverts the theory of evil and suffering as opposing forces to the Will of a God of Love, and reveals their purpose in the spiritual evolution of mankind.

To the scientific mind, sin is non-existent apart from recognition of moral law. Reason asserts that a knowledge of evil is necessary to a knowledge of good, discrimination between the two being preliminary to the establishment of moral law; that such discrimination is chiefly obtained through the sensibility of organisms, the degree of whose susceptibility determines their relative positions in the evolutionary scale—a degree which terminates in man, who manifests the highest consciousness, estimated by his ability to feel, and the highest form of intelligence of any known creature.

Although sensory consciousness may be regarded as a register by which the relative positions of organisms in the evolutionary scale may be determined, the increasing inability to speak positively with regard to distinction between living and non-living matter forbids any dogmatism as to the impropriety of applying the term "conscious" to the inorganic world.

It is, perhaps, here permissible to suggest a possible point of reconciliation between the natural desire of men to obtain evidence of their spiritual survival of organic decay and that disregard of individual importance and advantage which is characteristic of a purely secular interpretation of the laws of Nature. The Christian, whose creed includes immortality as the birthright of his soul and the crown of his religious faith, resents the exclusion of all personal interest from the consideration of natural phenomena. For instance, with regard to the effect which physical death is supposed to exercise on his individuality, Science and Religion, regarding the phenomenon from different points of view, appear to be in opposition of opinion. But is this really the case? Is there not in reality fundamental unity between the secular and sacred aspects of all natural phenomena?

It has been suggested that the sliding scale of physical consciousness has its psychical counterpart in moral ideals, from which the aspirations and perceptions of men reach out towards spiritual apprehension. Can endorsement of this supposition be drawn from the realm of Natural Science? What reasonable evidence is forthcoming in support of the conjecture?

Although dogmatic distinction between the organic and inorganic kingdoms can be of no permanent value (since what is to-day classified as non-living matter may possibly to-morrow be declared to belong to the organic world), yet there is justification—drawn from observation of the simple characteristics of clearly defined organic and inorganic matter—for remarking the former to be distinguished by apparent sensory consciousness, which may therefore be called an active ingredient of manifested life; but the latter shows no such apparent consciousness, and can therefore be called a passive ingredient. Both forms of matter react upon each other, and are inextricably present in life contemplated as a whole. And both forms of matter are interdependent upon a logical sequence of action, by which the supreme Spirit of Life pervades and controls all manifested life. By this maintained interaction, perpetual manifestation of life is carried on, and the cycle of Birth and Death as a recurring demonstration of being is shown to be the transmuting accompaniment of the progressive will of the Spirit of Life. Continuance of sensation in an individual is dependent upon the maintenance of correspondence between its organisation and its environment, cessation of which is synonymous with death. In other words, matter hitherto possessing an individual consciousness, manifested by response to its environment, is resolved into particles of matter which show no united susceptibility to environment, and which are therefore not deserving of description as an individual living organism. Conversely, birth is a resolution of (in the above sense) inorganic matter into organic.

The more complicated an organism the wider its environment, and to the degree of its susceptibility the more liable to resolution into inorganic matter, unless a corresponding degree of ability to protect itself from danger continues to accompany its evolution. In the case of man, knowledge of how to maintain his bodily health must keep pace with intellectual development if the balance between physical consciousness and psychical apprehension is to be properly sustained. Psychical apprehension can be translated into physical comprehension only through the medium of sense, and appreciation of the meaning and value of spiritual life through the medium of the brain. Health of body is necessary for health of mind, and the co-operation of mind and body is necessary for the apprehension of spiritual truths.

Now consciousness, both in its physical and psychical aspects, is manifested by the response of an organism to its environment, and in the case of organisms characterised by the possession of brain, more particularly by the power to register sensation. Human consciousness is achieved largely by an ability to perceive and register contrast in the impressions conveyed to the understanding, and it is the exercising of this faculty which leads to an established recognition of Moral Law. Appreciation of the existence of shadow and darkness presupposes the existence of light, and distinction between these contrasts is summarised by the sense of sight. In like manner, the perception of truth rests upon the power to recognise falsehood, and an estimation of what constitutes honesty on a corresponding idea of dishonesty. The sensation of pleasure is obtained from the possession of a correspondingly acute capacity to feel pain, discrimination placing value on either polaric contrary proportionate to the sensory capacity involved. In short, the register of abstract qualities is more or less dependent upon an appreciation of their antitheses—the moral worth of virtue being determinable by the degree of perceptive discrimination displayed in recognition of its contrast. Just as vision is a result of light, only known to us as vision and formulated as such by reason of its contrast or absence, darkness, which spells blindness, so the idea of good is only known to us by force of its contrast, evil. Registration of the alternating sides of the swing of this polaric machinery of sense makes for an advance in moral and spiritual, as well as in physical consciousness. Evil, on the moral plane of consideration, is as entirely a result of ignorance and absence of good as blindness on the physical plane of actuality is the consequence of perpetual darkness, or insensibility to light. The negative elements of both conditions possess a potential possibility of transmutation into positive elements—the operation of psychical and physical alchemism forming the dual revelation of a God of Love, whereby those who are blind in spirit and body are made to see, to the end that the whole consciousness of man may be confirmed by his increasing knowledge of the glory of his Creator.

To be unable to suffer would entail insensibility to pleasure, and no moral meaning could in this case be evolved from and attached to the idea of feeling. But it is precisely by reason of his attainment of a high degree of consciousness, manifested by the ability to register sensation, that man can claim a comparatively high position in the evolutionary scale; and if suffering and death be indeed a result of his prehistoric interference with an originally painless scheme of Creation, it is difficult to reconcile the benefits he appears to have thereby gained with the idea of such being a punishment for his wrong-doing inflicted upon him by God. For since perception of contrast in abstract quality is absolutely necessary for the obtaining of conscience on the moral plane of thought—that is, for recognition of good and evil, and for the ability to transmute evil into good—it follows that where such perception does not exist there can be no moral responsibility attaching to individual action, no possibility of attaining a dominant spiritual consciousness, and no question of sharing the redemptive mission of Love. In the words of Christ, "If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth" (St John ix. 41).

It is conceivable that just as that which to the eyes of men appears as darkness is not in the same degree dark to creatures whose habits have developed visual organs differing from those of man, so on the moral plane that which appears as evil to one man may to his differently developed brother seem less evil, and to creatures less highly organised than man, even good. No quality, physical, moral or spiritual, can be restricted or finally actualised; and no one man's opinion of what is estimable can stand as a perfectly true expression of any but his own ideas.

To sum up. The existence of pain is as necessary to the appreciation of pleasure as the existence of evil is to the appreciation of good. Therefore we may regard the sliding scale of consciousness as a register of sensation, a scale adapted to actual physical life and necessary for its continuity and development; and a scale which has its exact psychical counterpart in moral ideals, from which the evolving aspirations and perceptions of men reach out towards spiritual life. The degree of all quality, physical and moral, appears to be primarily dependent upon the capacity to feel—the capacity of consciousness. And upon the perception of contrast rests the possibility of attaining to a dominant plane of spiritual consciousness, and the power to become an active and willing agent in the divinely ordered transmuting, redemptive, and progressive government of life.

It is especially with regard to the spiritual consciousness of man, and of man's participation in the divine government of life, that the doctrine of Christ controverts the idea of suffering as an evil. In His verbal teaching, and in His rite of communion established as a symbolic epitome of His spiritual convictions, there is a clear acknowledgment of the fundamental unity of Nature—a basic point of argument which is also adopted to-day by every scientist in all departments of research. Christ laid particular emphasis upon the spiritual unity of man with God, He Himself speaking as a son of God—a manifestation of the divine Spirit of Life. He urged the following of His example upon His disciples, trying to open the blind eyes and deaf ears of men who had as yet so imperfect an understanding of spiritual things. He tried to teach them to look at life from His point of view. Did He not regard the son of man as the expression of God, recognition of which spiritual truth gave Him, as it can give to all, assurance of eternal life? The Spirit of Life which is in every man cannot die, for it is part of God, who is Life without beginning and without end. Only the expression or medium of spirit, only the finite form, is mortal. Spirit is infinite and immortal.

Such sayings as the following, attributed to Christ and His disciples, are expressive of the relation of man to God, and each may be seen to form a logical corollary of the other:—

"I and my Father are one" (St John x. 30). This is the simple summary of Christ's conviction of fundamental union between the Spirit of Life, God, and manifested being.

"My Father is greater than I" (St John xiv. 28) expresses the fact that the Spirit of Life as a whole is greater than its manifested parts, although those parts are contained by the whole and are at one with the whole.

"He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (St John xiv. 9). Here Christ speaks of Himself as a manifested part of the Spirit of Life, in which sense every man can see in his fellow-creatures the same manifested Spirit, who is God. He who looks at the son of man as the incarnate Son of God is following the example of Christ, who taught the brotherhood of man.

"No man hath seen God at any time" (St John i. 18)—shows the futility of imagining it possible to confine the supreme Spirit of Life in any one form at any one period of time. All form is manifested Spirit, but the Spirit of Life is not only in all, but over all.

The following, among very many other sayings, are also susceptible of the same interpretation:—

"I came from the Father, and am come into the world; again, I leave the world, and go to the Father" (St John xvi. 28).

"As the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself" (St John v. 26).

This doctrine of Christ, indicative of His sense of union between God as the supreme Spirit of Life and of individual being—a union unbroken by the incidents of birth and death attendant upon the manifestation of the Spirit—harmonises with the scientific doctrine of the unity of nature, and if accepted as a fundamental clue to His reported words and deeds, very many of the difficulties and supposed inconsistencies apparent in a purely ecclesiastical interpretation of His person and mission melt away, leaving a beautiful coherency of religious truth in accord with the revelations of natural science.

When men look at life from Christ's point of view, thereby attaining recognition of God as their Father, they become spiritual creatures who hold the moral responsibility of their beings in trust to the Spirit of Life. Christ lived in advance of the intellectual thought of His day, having intuitive knowledge of the unity of nature, but no scientific evidence to offer in its support. But His life and doctrine afford convincing illustrations of His spiritual convictions, and the key to the mystery of His miraculous works of love may perhaps be found in our realisation of His sense of kinship with all living creatures. His acquiescence with natural laws, known by Him to be the working of the will of the Spirit of Life, gave Him influence over all persons with whom He was able to establish a spiritual relation—with all who were willing to co-operate with Him in the alchemistic law of love. His own self-command gave Him dominion over those weaker than Himself, who did not resist His will, who, in the language of Scripture, "had faith in Him." Without such faith we are told He could do no mighty works. But given this receptive attitude of mind, He was able to infuse strength into a sick person and thus to stimulate the Spirit to resume its normal correspondence with the functions of the flesh.

Realisation of union with God as the supreme Spirit of Life entails an awakening to the significance of the unity of nature, and calls for an adjustment of the physical equipment of sense into accord with what is perceived to be the will of the Spirit of Life. With the desire to be at one with the Will of God, consciousness of those influences hitherto dimly apprehended to control existence as though by autocratic law, widens into perception of a progressive government of the whole of life, in the ordinance of which men may take an active part. Here, surely, is that recognition of God possible to all, to which Christ referred in the words, "God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth" (St John iv). This is that heaven of light and truth, to be excluded from which is to dwell in the outer darkness of spiritual ignorance. And this is the new birth unto righteousness with a death unto sin which is the epitome of the ethical teaching of Christ.

But, it will be asked, how does this view of life eliminate suffering as an evil from the world? How can it be shown that disease and death, the fear and danger of which cast a perpetual shadow over life, are not evil things, responsible as such for the suffering of all creatures? Granted that man has attained his present high position in the evolutionary scale chiefly through his ability to feel, to suffer; granted that the establishment of morality, brought about largely by registration of contrast in sensation, leads directly to realisation of spiritual life; granted that we may be privileged thereby to exercise a transmuting influence upon evil and its effects, thus making us partakers in the progressive government of life; if our future evolution, proceeding on the same lines of development, entails an ever greater capacity to suffer, is it a desirable thing? Have not less highly organised creatures, with correspondingly lower degrees of consciousness and with less knowledge of the governing principle of life and their own responsibility towards that government, happier lives than men? Whither are we tending? What is the ultimate goal of the recurring cycle of birth and death, manifested by the operation of natural laws, in the general scheme of life in which the evolution of man is but a part?

The welfare of individual man has no meaning apart from its relation to the benefit of mankind as a progressive whole. If a man participate in the common habits of his fellows, he must take his share in those dangers to individual existence which the development of his race necessitates. The advantages which we to-day derive from our employment of social and scientific contrivances common to civilised communities have been wrought from the effort and suffering of men of past times. We are debtors to our ancestors who, by their own labour and sacrifice, have given us a better equipment for the battle of life than was their own inheritance from their forefathers. We are under an obligation to our race which, whether we discharge it willingly or no, is drawn from us by the operation of forces beyond our own control, as the just equivalent of our gain. We cannot separate ourselves, humanly speaking, from our kind. Inasmuch as the spirit of humanity reaches out towards immortality from one generation to another, our lives are not our own. Rather are they hostages to fortune, to that evolutionary principle which, while allowing us as individuals to participate in the benefits actualised to-day as the results of the labours of past generations of men, also exacts from us our own contribution towards the slow perfecting of our kind.

It is indubitable that suffering is an important factor in the evolution of the mind as well as of the body of man. Inefficiency and defect in scientific and social contrivances are made apparent by accident, which, having entailed human suffering, is therefore productive of effort to rectify the cause of danger, and thus of reducing the risk of further punishment.

Could perfect correspondence between an organism and its environment be perpetually maintained, physical death could only occur as the final stage in the gradual decline of the medium of the spirit. Such natural dissolution appears to be part of the order of manifested life, requisite for its continuity and for the evolution of species, and necessary for the development of the spiritual desire for immortality. It is not of necessity a painful process, since the slow decline in physical vitality implies a corresponding decrease in sensibility, or, in other words, a decrease of physical consciousness. Premature death, the result of disease and accident, and accompanied by more or less suffering, constitutes the wages of ignorance, and only in this sense can pain and death be said to be a punishment for sin inflicted by God. If man, individually and socially, does not know how to protect himself from danger, he must pay the penalty for ignorance. Only a perfected organism, maintaining a permanent correspondence with its environment, could be permanently capable of combating physical death. And since the cycle of the birth and death of all forms of life constitutes the central principle of natural law, it is difficult to imagine an eventual eternal preservation of individual physical life to be the ordained end of the evolution of humanity.

When life is looked at as a whole—a point of view entailing perception of God as the supreme Spirit of Life informing and governing all matter—there appears no injustice in the suffering of the human race, or of other organisms whose evolution requires their conscious susceptibility to environment. Men must suffer for their ignorance in order to become wise, and to get wisdom they must eat from the tree of good and evil. Those who are ignorant of what is necessary for the preservation of health receive the wages of their imperfection—suffering, and premature death unto the third and fourth generations—not as the vindictive vengeance of an offended Deity, but as the remedial vindication of a persisting will of love, a transmuting process which must endure until the result of fatal ignorance is expurgated from a progressive world.

If individual thought, individual free-will and action, were more generally recognised to be the prime factors by which human evolution is forwarded or deterred; if concern for the preservation of individual advantage were dominated by a desire to promote the welfare of the race; if the willing transmutation by vicarious suffering of the effects of evil into elements of good were more readily accepted as the privilege of the members of the communion of love; we are justified in believing that unnatural suffering and death, with their manifold accompaniment of sorrow and fear, would be gradually eliminated from the lives of men according as they grew into a more perfect wisdom and understanding of the meaning and purpose of life.

Like Christ, we must be perfected through suffering. The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together, to the end that the incarnate purpose of life may be fulfilled, and that the increasing sum of the spiritual consciousness of creation may be brought into co-operation with the Divine Creator and so actively and willingly share in the divine government of life.