Ethical Record The Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society Vol. 104 No. 7 £1.50 July/August, 1999 INGERSOLL BROUGHT TO LIFE AT CONWAY HALL

Photo: Martin Harris

The Time to be Happy was 1930 hr. Friday 9 July 1999 The Place was Conway Hall Library The Reason 70 eager Rationalists assembled at the behest of SPES and GALHA to be stimulated and entertained by Derek Lennard's imaginative Dramatisation of the Life and Work of R.G. Ingersoll (1833-1899). following on his successful lecture to the Society in May last year.

Illustrated above: The 19th Century 'Question Time' Sketch - a debate between Ingersoll (played by Derek Lennard on the left), the Rev. Talmage (played by Terry Sanderson on the right) chaired by Mike Savage (keeping the peace in the middle).

The Compere for the evening was Marios the Heathen (Marios Hajipanayi).

GM CARS, THEN GMTV, NOW GM FOODS Alan MaIcahn 3 FROM POLITICS PAST TO POLITICS FUTURE Peter Lonsdale 5 CONVICTION, CONVERSION AND CHESTERTON T.E Evans 6 WHO FIRST TRANSLATED STRAUSS'S LIFE OF JESUS? D. O'Hara 11 MORAL JUDGEMENTS ACCORDING TO KANT Christopher Bratcher 91 VIEWPOINTS: M. Granville: H. Erenherg; L. Elton; G. Hutchinson; A. Langdon; PA. Lovell; J.R.J.; R. Eden; M. Sergeant; M. Lincé; J. Langdon: P Rhodes; B. Smoker; D. Murray; C. Onnell; S. Hayes; I. Buxton. 34 MARION GRANVILLE, 1925-1999 Jennifer Jeynes 35 ETHICAL SOCIETY EVENTS 36 SOUTH.PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, London WC IR 4RL. Tel: 0171 242 8034 Fax: 0171 242 8036 website: www.ethicalsoc.org.uk Officers General Committee Chair Donald Rooum. Vice-Chair: Vacant Hon. Treasurer: Don Liversedge. Registrar: Ian Ray-Todd. Hon Representative: Terry Mullins.

Editor, Ethical Record: Norman Bacrac. SPES Staff Administrative Secretary to the Society: Marina Ingham Tel: 0171 242 8034 Librarian/Information Officer: Jennifer Jeynes. Tel: 0171 242 8037 Operations Manager: Frances Hanlon. Tel: 0171 242 8033 Lettings Manager: Peter Vlachos.For Hall bookings: Tel: 0171 242 8032 New Members Nick Duckett, London; Fiona Sutherland, Bristol.

We regret to report the death of J.R. Bennett

NOTICE OF SPES ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING Sunday 3 October 1999 at 2.30 pm. Registration from 2.00 pm. A leaflet accompanying this issue gives further details.

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2 Ethical Record, July/August, 1999 GM CARS, THEN GMTV, NOW GM FOOD - WHATEVER NEXT?

Professor Alan Malcolm Institute of Biology Lecture to the Ethical Society 28 March 1999

I wish to address seven questions which I think are uppermost in many people's minds in order to reach conclusions about the introduction of gene technology into the food chain. These are

What is it? 4 Do we want it? 2 Is it ethical to interfere with 5 Can we reject it? our genetic material? 6 Who is in charge? 3 Do we need it? 7 Where will it end?

Although scientists love to describe the fact that we have been interfering with the genes of plants and animals in the food chain ever since man became agrarian and that therefore this new technology is little more than a logical extension, many would believe that this is being economical with the truth. The type of genetic improvements which have been made over the millennia have taken place extremely slowly and have given generations opportunities to pause and take stock of each advance and also to reject such mistakes as occurred.

The new technology has within two decades totally revolutionised the way that we approach the introduction of new varieties of food-crops. The fact that it is a much more specific technology and is, if anything. less likely to result in undesirable products is clearly not widely accepted. The idea that genes can be taken from one organism and put into an alternative organism which would never normally have been able to cross-breed within nature seems to many people, at the very least, bizarre. It is perhaps important to emphasise that we are really considering two different applications of the technology. At the present time none of the food in British supermarkets is itself modified or altered in any way as a result of this technology. It is the production of enzymes in the factory or the production of the food crop in the field which is changed but the product on the shelf or in the tin has not altered. However in the very near future we will be eating fruits and vegetables where the concentration of nutrients such as vitamins or anti-oxidants has indeed been altered.

Should We 'Interfere' with Nature? Everybody will, of course, have their own definition as to the extent to which we should 'interfere with nature'. For most, it will be the selecting of wheat varieties for shortness of stalk in order to increase yield. Very few people have had problems with the introduction of human genes into bacteria in order to produce pharmaceutically useful products such as insulin, blood-clotting factors and growth hormone. Very clearly, people's acceptance of the latter relates to the clear demonstration of a case of need for those suffering from illnesses which might otherwise prove fatal. The Polkinghorne Committee, set up by the Government seven years ago, considered the problems of inserting animal genes into plants (could vegetarians eat them?) and of putting pig genes into any other species (could Jews and Moslems eat them?). They also discussed whether putting human genes into food crops might be perceived by some as equivalent to cannibalism. On the basis of their discussions they came to the conclusion that there was no major ethical problem for most of society in altering

Ethical Record, JulylAugust, 1999 3 the gene of a tomato to change its ripening characteristics, that Jews would not have a problem with putting pig genes into non-porcine species but that Moslems would. They felt that on the whole it would not be a good idea to put human genes into food crops. Interestingly enough, there is in fact no commercial driver to perform this operation either.

Cheese produced using Chymosin, wawa .3 produced in the laboratory by gene .rornea"" N\ technology, provides an advantage to le •cally secoltfired?? vegetarians who would previously have rn objected to the use of animal-based rennet to clot the milk proteins. The tomato, with modified ripening characteristics, enables the farmer to produce the ripe tomato with less input of water. It enables to processor to use less electricity to drive off this water in order to produce tomato paste and the net effect for the consumer is that the tomato paste is that little bit cheapen In the case of herbicide-resistant crops such as soya, it enables the farmer to produce the harvest with less input of herbicide and with less I) &maim labour. In the case of insect-resistant crops such as cotton and maize, it enables the yield to increase very dramatically with much reduced application of chemical insecticides. It does however remain the case that in Europe and in North America we are not, on the whole, short of food. Indeed, if anything, we suffer from a surfeit of food such that the fastest growing health problems are based round obesity.

That situation, however, does not yet obtain in less well-developed countries such as South America, many part of Africa, China and India where, for many reasons, there is a genuine shortage of protein and carbohydrate. It is, therefore, essential that crops capable of growing in arid conditions or high salt environments or resistant to locusts are developed and used in order to cope with a world population which, while growing less rapidly than twenty years ago, is none-the-less still expanding. An increased food production on a global scale is clearly necessary and this needs to be achieved without increasing the land area available for agriculture and without an increase in chemical fertilisers, herbicides or insecticides.

Unease in the Public In spite of the clear benefits to different people on different occasions, there is obviously considerable unease in the public at large, although the extent to which this is aggravated by sensational media coverage is a matter for debate. Although many opinion polls ask leading questions resulting in the impression that the public in northern Europe would prefer to do without it, the behaviour of people when faced with choices in the supermarket clearly is inconsistent with this. The cheese mentioned above clearly labelled and with suitable information leaflets available, haS clearly been successful in commercial terms. The GM tomato paste outsells its non-GM rival quite comfortably since the customer cares more about the reduced price than about their awareness of the technology behind its production. It remains a fact that although people are aware that electricity is produced in a variety of different ways, some of which have environmental or potential ecological consequences which they would not endorse, no serious attempt is made by the 4 Ethical Record, July/August, 1999 public at large to reject electricity coming from sources such as nuclear power stations. They are, on the whole, concerned with the safety and the usefulness of the product itself, trusting to other regulatory processes to ensure overall global security. It is clearly only possible to exercise freedom of choice and to reject it if desired, if the product is clearly labelled and if sources of primary production are clearly segregated. While this may sound a trivial undertaking, it is not in fact a simple operation. The cheese mentioned above is, in fact, identical as cheese to that produced using animal rennet. There is no scientific basis on which to conduct an authenticity test nor is it a nutritional consequence to the consumer of eating GM cheese instead of classically produced cheese. There is no chemical difference between Lecithin produced from herbicide-resistant soya compared with Lecithin produced from traditional soya. It would, therefore, be impossible for arty legislation to monitor the validity of any claim either way. Even where claims of segregation have been made, it is very debatable as to how long a free market will sustain such behaviour. The price of soya from southern American producers which are claimed to be GM-free is already running at approximately double that of United States soya, partly driven by market forces and partly driven by the cheaper cost of producing the soya using gene technology. In view of the consumer's preference for low prices where given a choice, it seems highly improbable that such segregation has a genuine commercial future. There is clearly great concern that an increased power and influence over the food supply chain is shifting away from Governments who used to regulate, either by rationing during World War Two and its aftermath or by the use of the Common Agricultural Policy, the range of foods available to us as well as the prices at which these are offered - to multinational companies whose only responsibility is to their shareholders. FROM POLITICS PAST TO POLITICS FUTURE by Alan J. Mayne (UK distributor: Eurospan, London) Hbk £47.95 ISBN 0 -275 -96151 -6 316 pp Book Review by Peter Lonsdale Those of us who are familiar with Alan Mayne's previous work will say on reading this book that he has surpassed himself. His research and accumulation of vital information are truly stupendous. Those who share his concern for this planet are thereby spared the tedious task of hunting for relevant details and for knowledgeable writers.

The references alone cover an exhaustive sixty-eight pages so that we can find at a glance any data we need, whether we want to know about food or Keynes, the World-watch Institute or H.G. Wells, Vietnam or Stalin. It's all there, a mine of important information. All his many years of research and writing can probably be summed up in his phrase 'until a genuine global community emerges,' in the section Basic Needs Paradigms. Both Alan and I have attended meetings of various groups and organisations for the past thirty-seven years, and those who know him will not deny that he is truly a World Person, as a glance through this current book will amply demonstrate.This book does refer to what amounts to organised world public opinion as a means of achieving improvement, but how to encourage our fellows to create such a movement is not an easy task. If Alan Mayne's book helps to start the process we will certainly be deeply in his debt. Ethical Record, JulylAugust, 1999 5 CONVICTION, CONVERSION AND CHESTERTON

T.F. Evans Lecture to the Ethical Societ); 6 June 1999

Mr Chesterton omits, perhaps scorns, to classify himself He speaks of perils which the Church has escaped... he reprobates 'modernism' with fiery and multitudinous words. He reveals himself as a reactionary of the pronounced type: and it is really difficult to see how he can avoid Roman Catholicism. Mysticism in terms of flippancy - that is his book. from unsigned review of Orthodoxy in Observer, 4 October 1908.

I have always found Mr Chesterton's style exasperating to the last point of endurance, though there must be many people who like it... To assume that one's readers are in total spiritual and intellectual darkness is easy and dispenses the author from any great intellectual effort himself. from review by T.S. Eliot of Robert Louis Stevenson in The Nation, 8 Nov 1927.

...when asked how he could possibly believe that the Bread and Wine were really changed into the Body and Blood of Christ, he replied that he would believe that they were changed into an elephant, if the Church told him so. attributed to Hihtire Relloc

Memory fails to record the lips or pen from which the saying originated but in that strange period of two decades between the great wars of this century, it is observed that for the young intellectual seeking to make his, or perhaps her, way in the world, there was an important choice between joining either the Party or the Church. The Party was, of course, the Communist party and the Church was, of course, the Catholic Church or, as those not of that faith would prefer to put it, the Roman Catholic Church. Those who adhere to that faith do not use the term Roman, if they can avoid doing so, as it implies that there could be more than one Catholic Church. With all due regard to their susceptibilities on that question of nomenclature, we will use the term Roman as it does avoid confusion with the breakaway union that owes allegiance to Canterbury rather than to the Vatican. Time does not allow us to think about the Communist party today as our concern is with some of the writers whose decisions were on religious not political grounds. Those who chose the religious path include such luminaries of the inter-war literary and intellectual scene as, in order of birth, G.K. Chesterton (1874), Eric Gill (1882), T.S. Eliot (1888), Ronald Knox (1888), C.S. Lewis (1898), Malcolm Muggeridge (1903), Evelyn \Vaugh (1903) and Graham Greene (1904). We cannot give to some of these luminaries of our intellectual life the time that some of them, putting aside for the moment, their appropriate humility, might consider their due, but that cannot be helped. Sharper readers will point out at once that neither Eliot nor Lewis ever joined the Church of Rome, although it cannot be doubted that the thought of doing so entered their minds before they actually made the decision to stay with Canterbury. Nevertheless, they deserve brief mention in our survey.

Gill, Eliot and Knox Although the earliest in date of birth of the writers named, Chesterton will be left to the end of our thoughts for more detailed comment. The next oldest is Eric Gill, better known now as an artist in sculpture and design generally. Gill also wrote essays on social, religious and political subjects as well as an illuminating autobiography. He came to believe that Catholicism was the most certain and 6 Ethical Record, JulylAugust, 1999 complete answer to all the questions, personal and public, political and religious which worried him. The second figure in our list is the American, TS. Eliot. Born in St Louis, he came of a family of Unitarian affiliations. He was received into the Church of England in 1927. lt is stated by one biographer that he could not take the further step into the Roman church because 'for one thing, it smacked of republicanism and the Boston Irish'. Although clearly of the right, perhaps of the far right, he did not make many strong political statements in his later years.

Ronald Knox comes into this brief list not so much because of his own writing, although he did achieve distinction in different ways but chiefly because of his close contacts with others in the list. Thus. Waugh wrote a biography of Knox in 1959 and when he was a young priest, Knox had had close relations with Chesterton. He was a convert to the Roman faith but biographies do not make his position clear to the unsubtle mind of the non-believer.

Lewis and Muggeridge C.S. Lewis is the second of the of the non-Catholics in the list before us. He has achieved a certain amount of adventitious fame in the last few years in connection with his personal life rather than with his considerable reputation as a scholar and writer on literary subjects, nor with his greater fame as a writer of stories for children and least of all with his writings of a confessional, semi-religious nature. Of his literary scholarship, there is no need or occasion to speak here. When in later years, Lewis was asked to be specific about his religious allegiances and the influences of different thinkers on his own attitudes, he tended to be, if not evasive, certainly far from direct. When asked by a correspondent why he should not be a Roman Catholic, he replied that he did not like discussing such questions because 'it emphasises differences and endangers charity'.

The next writer in our list may be hard for some to accept as a serious religious thinker, worth considering in the present context. It is Malcolm Muggeridge, born in 1903. Muggeridge may be said to have run through a large variety of religious, non- religious or semi-religious stances before ending in, as some might have expected, the Church of Rome. He was essentially a creature, almost a creation of the television age. For many years, it was not possible to discern any positive values in his views, whether expressed in print or in his own strange dismissive, rather bored tone of voice. On one occasion, he was asked whether he thought that the private sexual lives of politicians were more interesting and/or more important than the political views they expressed, whether in public or private. 'Oh, yes!' he replied in his lazy crackling drawl, 'Infinitely more important!' In later years, as perhaps he became aware of the approach of the end, he turned to the Roman Catholic Church and was received in 1982, on the eve of his eightieth birthday. From then on, his health, physical and mental declined. He was praised by, among others, President Ronald Reagan and an adulatory biographer declared that 'as a twentieth-century Christian apologist Malcolm Muggeridge stands beside G.K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis'. That could be true, of course, but it depends on the value placed on the three writers in question. As a, to use the jargon of the day, 'television personality' Muggeridge might be thought to outshine both but the term is capable of different interpretations.

Waugh and Greene The last two in this brief parade of prominent Catholics or near-Catholics are writers of such distinction that it hardly matters whether the reader shares their religious views and allegiances or not. The first is Evelyn Waugh. Waugh's diaries and letters Ethical Record, JulylAugust, 1999 7 have been published but there is far less than readers might like to read about the processes of his move toward the Roman faith that he finally espoused in 1930. His father, an Anglican, was not best pleased at his son's move, but his mother appears to have been phlegmatic. She is reported to have noted the event in her diary: 'Evelyn told me he was being received into the Roman Church next week. Shopped with Janet'. It is possible to see the effect in striking ways in some of his work. There is time to mention one novel only, Brideshead Revisited, written toward the end of Evelyn Waugh's service in the Army. It is a strange book, attractive even to non- Catholics, although one discriminating friend of mine dismissed it as 'rancid'. A book marked by dark tinges of sadness, the novel traces the story of a Catholic family and the effect on a non-Catholic who becomes involved with them. Waugh was, himself, as man and writer, a strange advertisement for Christian virtues. If he abandoned the sexual promiscuity of his youth, he never gave up his addiction to strong drink and his attitude to family, friends and foes alike never seems to have shown an overplus of what might loosely be described as the virtues of Christian charity and tolerance... An incident which some might find amusing is recorded in a biography. At a Foyle's literary luncheon, in Waugh's honour in 1957, the address was to be given by Malcolm Muggeridge, whom Waugh considered 'a ludicrous figure'. Waugh has become very deaf and used an car-trumpet. When Muggeridge rose to speak 'the trumpet was removed from Evelyn's ear and not replaced until Muggeridge sat down at the end of his speech'. It is reported that Muggeridge was hurt, but could do nothing.

The final figure in our brief parade of Christian luminaries is another novelist, Graham Greene. If Waugh may be described as a novelist who became a Catholic, Greene may more accurately be called a Catholic who established himself as a novelist. Waugh had made a name for himself before entering the church. Greene's fame as a novelist did not come until later. His Catholicism was of a different type from that of Waugh. Greene, who espoused the faith because he fell in love with a Catholic, who became his first wife, seems never to have been as convinced and devoted as Waugh was. His heroes struggle between faith and the demands of the flesh, to an extent that Waugh's do not. In one of his books, one character describes another as 'a bad Catholic'. The narrator dismisses this remark as meaningless.

Chesterton After these all too brief references to a selection of Catholic and near Catholic writers, it remains to look at the one, whose name appears in the title given to these remarks: G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton was born in Kensington in 1874 (and the name may still be seen prominently displayed on the boards of the family firm of estate agents in that part of London). He went to St Paul's school and then to University College, London, where for a time he studied under A.E. Housman, the poet, who was professor of Latin. He did not complete the degree course but instead went to the Slade school of art, as his interests were equally divided between literature and the visual arts. In later years, he declared that the practice of writing, into which he drifted, was 'very much easier than the practice of drawing and painting'. This saying, indeed, even if made half in jest, may be taken as a text for much of his life. He found writing easy. Some of his admirers refer to an incident, perhaps legendary, in which he is said to have dictated an article to a secretary while he was actually writing an entirely different article at the same time. This may seem as of equal value as the ability to walk across Niagara Falls on a tight-rope but it throws light on a feature of Chesterton that has escaped the attention that it deserves. Fle did not really push himself... Of course, he wrote a great deal but what he wrote was substantially what he could write without exerting himself to the ultimate 8 Ethical Record, JulylAugust 1999 extent. His early novels are among his best. He wrote one play with moderate success but, despite persuasion, he would not really apply himself to take the drama seriously enough to try to write any more. Instead he devoted himself to journalism, at which he excelled. It might be thought that when he was engaged in 1905 to contribute a weekly article of about 2000 words to the magazine, the Illustrated London News and he did this for over thirty years, this was the worst thing that could possibly have happened. To contribute about 2000 words a week of 'light discussion on matters of the moment.., without political bias' was the kind of thing that Chesterton could do standing on his head. It is hard, however, to imagine Chesterton standing on his head. His liking for food and drink and his convivial nature which found an ideal setting in the taverns of his beloved Fleet Street, contributed to a rapidly developing obesity and when still comparatively young, he swelled to immense proportions. He was tall, six feet, but he became impossibly heavy, at least twenty stone and his addictions, especially to drink, together with indulgence in tobacco must undoubtedly have contributed to his death at the relatively early age of sixty-one.

After a life devoted to writing of one kind or another, and to the advancement of a political creed, called Distributism which did not, in fact, make many advances, Chesterton left a reputation which, although it has faded to a very great extent, still has adherents, some of which are even now trying to have him canonised. We should now pay some attention, therefore, to what, in the eyes of his more fervent admirers were his greatest achievements, the contributions he made to the advancement of the Catholic faith. This can be traced in a number of his outstanding books. In 1905, a work appeared called Heretics. In this, Chesterton examined some of the leading writers and thinkers of the time, including Kipling, Shaw and Wells and did so in the light of a Christian, if not yet a Catholic philosophy. The book aroused much interest and attention.

One reader of Heretics had said that he would begin to worry about his own philosophy, 'when Chesterton has given us his'. The result was Orthodoxy in which Chesterton tried to set out the philosophy in which he had come to believe. In what was to become a characteristic Chestertonian style he wrote on the opening page: 'I will not call it my Philosophy: for I did not make it. God and humanity made it and it made me'. The book was well received by the orthodox, as well it might be. Some Catholic reviewers treated Chesterton as if he were already one of them. In fact, he did not become a Catholic until 1922. Soon after he was received, he wrote a book which some of his admirers consider his most important and of which they write with almost unlimited praise. This is The Everlasting Man published in 1925. It is difficult to obtain from libraries and, in preparation for this occasion recourse had to be had to the desperate step of buying a copy. The book proved something of a disappointment. It leaves little room for doubt or argument. The first part has the title 'On the Creature called Man' and the second part is entitled 'On the Man called Christ'. Before we reach these two sections, however, we are told in some introductory pages that the Church is still 'rushing through the ages as the winged thunderbolt of thought and everlasting enthusiasm: a thing without rival or resemblance: and still as new as it is old'.

Did The Everlasting Man Refute Evolution? Briefly the former part is a refutation of theories of evolution. He declares in assertions that arc almost so strident as to destroy any impression of conviction, that the fact that primitive man drew pictures on the wall of his cave was enough to prove that he was not just one more stage in an evolutionary process. Thus, it seems Ethical Record, JulylAugust, 1999 9 Chesterton has refuted the theories of H.G. Wells as to the ascent of man from primitive beginnings. In the second part, instead of the man in a cave, we now have the God in the cave, Chesterton being able to substitute another cave for the stable at Bethlehem. The thesis of the book, firmly based on these opening propositions is that Man is Man, Christ is God and by necessary implication and deduction, the Catholic Church is the only church, charged with the duty of spreading the knowledge of God. There are passages, of course when without thc oxygen of conviction it is not easy for the non-believer to keep his attention at its sharpest, however hard he tries. Chesterton could not write really badly, although he is near it at times. Too often he floats up and away as in such a passage as this:

We are meant to feel that death was the bride of Christ as Poverty was the bride of St Francis. We are meant to feel that his life was in that sense a sort of love-affair with death, a romance of the pursuit of the ultimate sacrifice. From the moment when the star goes up like a birthday rocket to the moment when the sun is-extinguished like a funeral torch, the whole story moves on wings with the speed and direction of a drama, ending in an act beyond words.

Too often also, Chesterton is prepared to assert quite baldly that as man is unique among the world's creatures, so his God is unique but this is the Christian God: all the others are false. Their adherents, well-meaning of course, are mistaken. Man is unique: His God is unique and his Church is unique, refuse all others: they are imitations and, even if good in their way, the way is limited and they are not the genuine article. This, in brief is the thesis of The Everlasting Man which, among the other authors we have mentioned earlier, C.S. Lewis and Evelyn Waugh mention most highly as having affected them deeply. Lewis said that, after reading The Everlasting Man he saw for the first time 'the whole Christian outline of history set out in a form that seemed to me to make sense'. Evelyn Waugh wrote that 'It is a great popular book, one of the few really great popular books of the century... And it needs no elucidation. It is brilliantly clear. It met a temporary need and survives as a permanent monument'.

One remarkable fact is very striking in even a cursory study of Chesterton. It is this. He is mentioned frequently as having had a great influence on other writers, some of whom it is suggested were led to Catholicism by his teaching and influence, yet, there is rarely any sign of this in the work of the authors themselves. One example will suffice. The editions of the diaries and letters of Evelyn Waugh contain 820 and 664 pages respectively. In the latter, there is one reference only to Chesterton, in the former, there are two, one of which is a misprint as clearly Lord Chesterfield is intended. There is often a tendency to exaggerate when writing about a favourite author. An example with which to end is the comment by a recent biographer of Chesterton who said:

One can but wonder to what extent the course of twentieth century literature would have altered had The Everlasting Man not been written. If this one link in the chain had not materialised, would the world have been blessed with the Chronicles of Manila or Brideshead Revisited? It is, of course, impossible to say, but one can at least be a witness to the fact that from Wells and the shallows of his Outline of History emerged Chesterton and the depths of The Everlasting Man.

It is indeed impossible to say but it is hard to believe that the loss of a book for children, however impressive or a novel, valuable if not in the very first rank, could indeed have seriously affected the course of twentieth century literature. 0 Ethical Record, JulylAugust 1999 GEORGE ELIOT: A BRIDESMAID AT SOUTH PLACE OR, WHO FIRST TRANSLATED STRAUSS'S LIFE OF JESUS?

Daniel O'Hara Illustrated Lecture to the Ethical Society, II July 1999

On 30 October 1994 I gave a lecture to the South Place Ethical Society at Conway Hall on David Friedrich Strauss and the Discrediting of Christianity. It was published in The Ethical Record for November 1994 (Vol.99, No.10) and reprinted, with extended footnotes, in the Spring 1997 issue of The Journal .Thr the Critical Study of Religion, Ethics and Society (Vol.2, No.1). This version was drawn on extensively by Ludovic Kennedy in his recent book All in the Mind: A Farewell to God (Hodder and Stoughton, 1999).

When I prepared that lecture, I was still under the impression, unquestioned in all the standard reference books and biographies, that Mary Ann Evans, over a decade before she started to write novels under the name of George Eliot, was the first to translate Strauss's The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined into English, a version published by Chapman Brothers in 1846. Immediately before my lecture, however, the SPES librarian placed in front of me an early copy of Strauss's work in English, belonging to the Society, and clearly not published by Chapman. Someone had written in pencil on the title-page 'translated by George Eliot', but I had my doubts. It was only after the lecture that I had an opportunity to examine this edition. My brief report on it appeared in the December 1994 Ethical Record.

To recapitulate, this version was jointly published by Henry Hetherington of London and Joseph Taylor of Birmingham in four volumes, though the SPES copy is bound as two. Hetherington's name appears first in Volume Onc (undated, xix + 284pp), whereas Taylor's takes precedence in the other three. Volume Two (338pp) is dated 1842, Volume Three (275pp) 1843 and Volume Four (406pp) 1844. Furthermore, this is derived from the third German edition of 1838/9, whereas Mary Ann Evans' translation, published on 15 June 1846 in three volumes, was of the definitive fourth German edition of 1840. The British Library copy of what I will call the FITT edition has a different title-page to Volume One, giving Birmingham as the place and 1842 as the date of publication. Dr. Williams's Library, one of the most extensive collections of such material, does not possess a copy.

Rival Translations of Strauss There are thus two English translations of Strauss's Leben Jesu from the 1840s - both published anonymously - though the earlier of these is virtually unknown. J.M. Robertson mentions it in his History of Freethought in the Nineteenth Century (p. 149) where he says: 'the translation appears to have been made from the French version of Littré 0839y. He derived this information from the Unitarian divine, J.R. Beard (1800-1876), who in 1845 edited and contributed to a volume entitled Voices of the Church in Reply to Strauss. In its preface, Beard describes the translation as having 'not the slightest literary value whatever, being obviously brought out to supply food to the unhappily depraved appetite for sceptical productions.' He accuses the translator of being 'ignorant of the most ordinary facts and circumstances connected with his subject', but cites only a single, trivial example of a place-name which has suffered by being doubly translated. Beard - who clearly wished the work had not appeared at all - continues to abuse the hapless translator, whose greatest sin appears to be that he is a mere 'handicraftsman'. J.M. Robertson

Ethical Record, JulylAugust, 1999 finds the translator's work at least adequate, and no more guilty of error or solecism than Beard himself.

The translation is also mentioned in a footnote (Volume 1, p.171) to Gordon Haight's edition of George Eliot's letters. Flaight explicitly says 'there is no evidence that G.E. knew of it', and Rosemary Ashton (biographer of G.E.) has privately confirmed that she knows of nothing to the contrary. I have found no indication in the published correspondence of George Eliot and her circle that any of them were even aware of the H/T edition.*

Can all these people really have been so ignorant? On the other hand, why would they have thought it worthwhile to prepare so soon a second translation, entailing two years' hard labour, with little prospect of any significant financial return? And why would the radical Birmingham politician, Joseph Parkes - grandson-in-law of Joseph Priestley and grandfather of Hilaire Belloc - have contributed £150 (or even £300) towards such a project, if it were known that another translation had already appeared in recent years'? Before tackling these intriguing questions, we shall briefly review the events surrounding the original appearance of Strauss's work in Germany, and its early reception in Britain.

The Origins of Strauss's Leben Jesu David Friedrich Strauss was born in Ludwigsburg, north of Stuttgart, on 27 January 1808. Young Fritz (as he was known to his family) proved to be an extremely gifted child. At 13 he entered the prestigious lower seminary in Blaubeuren, one of an exceptional intake, five of whom (including Strauss) obtained maximum marks. Strauss went on to the Evangelische Stift at the University of Tubingen, where he graduated top of his class in 1830. After ordination and a brief curacy in the Lutheran Church. plus a spell of seminary teaching, Strauss took his Doctorate in 1831 and went that autumn to Berlin, where he was just in time to hear Hegel's last two lectures, given the week before his sudden death from cholera. Strauss then attended the lectures of Schleiermacher, whose psychologising of religious questions, including the person of David F. Strauss. author of The Life of Jesus Jesus, initially intrigued him, but soon left him determined to pursue his own thoroughly scientific inquiry into Christian origins.

In 1832 Strauss was appointed tutor at the Evangelische Stift in Ttibingen. This also entitled him to lecture at the University, where his course on Hegel's philosophy attracted a large and enthusiastic audience. But he gave up public lecturing in 1833 to concentrate on writing his Leben Jesu, a massive, epoch-making work which ran to almost fifteen-hundred pages. It was published in two volumes, the first of which appeared on 1 lune 1835, and quickly caused such an uproar -

*There is, however, reference in a letter from Cara Bray to Sara Hennell dated 22.2.43 to GE's half-sister Fanny Houghton. She had read Hennell's Inquiry', but preferred Strauss's ideas. As it is unlikely she knew German, if she had read the Leben Jesu, it seems it must have been in the H/T translation. (Letters, 1.157) 12 Ethical Record. July/August, 1999 costing its author his job - that the second volume, not due until early in 1836 (the date it bears), was rushed out in October.

Das Leben Jestt, kritisch bearbenet has been nirily described by Albert Schweitzer as 'one of the most perfect things in the whole range of learned literature' (Quest. p.78) and by Horton Harris (1975, p.2811) as 'the most intellectually reasoned attack... ever.., mounted against Christianity'. It immediately created enormous interest, both among those who applauded its radical way of dealing with the presence of myth in the Gospels and by those who regarded it as an impertinent challenge to the authority of the Bible, or as marking the death-knell of supernatural religion. Strauss wrote in his introduction:

/t is not by any means that the whole history of Jesus is to be represented as mythical, but only that every part of it is to be subjected to a critical examination, to ascertain whether it have not some admixture of the mythical. The exegesis of the ancient church set out from the double presupposition: first, that the gospels contained a history; and secondly, that this history was a supernatural one. Rationalism rejected the latter of these presuppositions, but only to cling the more tenaciously to the former, maintaining that these books present unadulterated, though only natural, history. Science cannot rest satisfied with this half-measure: the other presupposition must also be relinquished, and the inquiry must first be made whether in fact, and to what extent, the ground on which we stand is historical.

The first printing rapidly sold out and a second edition appeared in the autumn of 1836. The egregious Albert Schweitzer states that this second edition was 'unaltered' (ibid.), but had he bothered to look, he would have read in the preface:

'I have submitted the whole work to repeated and attentive inspection, and in every point I have amended it when it appeared necessary, from the objections of adversaries, the suggestions of friends, or from my own private researches. I have •filled up visible gaps, retracted that which was no longer sustainable, and insisted more strongly upon that which still appears correct; I hope this good-will on my part will not be mistaken.' (H/T translation)

As with the third edition which followed in 1838/39. where Strauss made a number of concessions to his critics, particularly. in relation to the historicity of the fourth gospel, that he came to regret and withdrew in the definitive fourth edition of 1840, such 'good-will' was taken by some Christian apologists as mere vacillation. Nevertheless, Strauss's work was widely discussed, not only in Germany but throughout Europe and America, especially France, Britain and Scandinavia. In 1837 he published three volumes of answers to his critics (the Streitschriften) which have never appeared in English translation.

Strauss is Discussed at South Place Chapel In February 1840, the colourful minister of South Place Chapel in Finsbury, William J. Fox (1786-1864), a leading figure in the Anti-Corn Law League, and becoming increasingly involved in political life - he was to enter Parliament in 1847 - appointed Philip Harwood (1809-1887) as his assistant. Harwood had studied with Thomas Chalmers in Scotland, gave up believing in miracles and became a Unitarian. From 1835 to 1839 he was a Unitarian minister in Bridport, Dorset. In 1839 he caused a furore by giving a rationalistic account of St. Paul's conversion from the pulpit of St. Mark's Chapel in Edinburgh. Harwood remained at South Place only until September 1841, when he moved to Barber Beaumont's Ethical Record, July/August, 1999 13 Philosophical Institute in Stepney. He went on to forge a career in journalism, becoming assistant editor of The Spectator, and from 1868 to 1883, editor of the Saturday Review

Harwood is credited by S.K. Ratcliffe, in The Story of South Place, as the first person in England publicly to discuss and commend Strauss's work from the pulpit in a series of lectures at South Place Chapel. These were published by Charles Fox, tinder the title German Anti-Supernaturalism: Six Lectures on Strauss's 'Life of Jesus'. Reading them today, one is struck by their calm moderation. Yet Moncure Conway could write in 1894 (Centenmy of South Place, p.83) that 'Harwood... made even South Place shudder by his studies of Christian mythology'. His reasoned advocacy of Strauss's views was strong meat, even for those who had passed beyond Unitarianism!

It is interesting to speculate about who was in Harwood's audience. S.K. Ratcliffe, drawing on a remark of Moncure Conway, states that Harwood's lectures 'turned the attention of an able member of the congregation, Rufa Brabant, to Strauss's Life of Jesus.' It seems doubtful, however, that Rufa Brabant (1811-1898), who was just starting on a translation, was part of the congregation at the time of Harwood's 1840 lectures. It seems she was then still living with her parents in the West Country. It is, however, extremely likely that the lectures were heard by her future husband, Charles Christian Hennell (1809-1850). He lived nearby in Hackney, and his staunchly Unitarian family were prominent members of the local Gravel Pit Chapel, then nearing the end of the 40-year leadership of its well-known minister, Robert Aspland (1782-1845), after whom a road in Hackney is still named. These congregations had close links and the Hackney Unitarians often shared activities at the Finsbury Chapel. W.J. Fox himself lived in Hackney, and S.K. Ratcliffe (op. cit., p.I5) notes that hc had 'many nonconformist neighbours who looked upon South Place and the Gravel Pit Chapel as twin centres of free religion'.

In December 1838 Charles Hennell had published a radical, scholarly book entitled An Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity before he was even aware of Strauss's Lehen Jesm though he came to remarkably similar conclusions. His work alienated Robert Aspland. Early in 1840 the Inquiry appeared in a German translation with a generous foreword by Strauss, dated November 1839. Hennell would thus have had a particular interest in the subject of Harwood's lectures. In the preface to their published version, dated 'Pancras Vale, December 1841', Harwood expressed the hope that 'the time may come when English Literature will be enriched with a well-executed translation both of thc Leben Jesu and the Streitschrifien.'

The first volume of the 11/T edition of the Life of Jesus must by then have been on the verge of publication. Was Harwood perhaps intimating he knew it was forthcoming, or was he rather suggesting that Hennell (to whose Inquiry, on its 'recent re-appearance, in an enlarged form', he directs his readers), or someone close to him, might be producing a translation? Rufa Brabant had embarked on a translation of Strauss at some time between 1840 and 1841, but had completed only about one-sixth of it by the lime she handed the work on to Mary Ann Evans in January 1844. In voicing his hope for a 'well-executed translation', Philip Harwood, I was inclined to think, should not be seen as casting a slight on the wr version, as this had not yet appeared. However, as we shall see, it was in fact already publishing in weekly numbers and monthly parts.

14 Ethical Record, JulylAugust, 1999 Strauss is Discussed in The Oracle of Reason There is an early reference to Strauss in 7he Oracle of Reason, the first openly atheist paper in Britain. This began weekly publication in 1841 and continued until December 1843. In the first issue, dated 6 November 1841, Charles Southwell agrees with a review in the Quarterly (presumably of Strauss's 1840-41 Glaubenslehre) that Strauss, 'from the Deist. which the Lehen Jesu (Life of Jesus) demonstrated him to be, ... has, by an easy mutation, passed into an atheist.' A review by 'M.Q.R.' (Maltus Ryall) appeared in the issue of 9 July 1842, where The Life of Jesus is described as 'flow publishing in weekly numbers'. Ryall's acutely perceptive comments on the work are worth repeating:

'The Life of Jesus ... is certainly the most extraordinary production that has issued from the press. The perseverance and research that must have been required to produce such a work is astonishing. The learned Doctor shows that the writers of the New Testament disagree and flatly and plainly contradict each other in the relation of every event of Jesus' life. His criticisms prove the utter impossibility of those disagreements ever being reconciled. This celebrated work will undoubtedly introduce a new mode of thinking and reasoning upon all the questions connected with christian theology; for it must become evident to all who study it that the evangelical writings can not be founded in truth..."

It seems certain that its serialisation in weekly numbers and monthly parts started before the appearance of the first of the four volumes. Gordon Haight refers to John Sterling telling Thomas Carlyle in a letter dated 6 July 1841, `... the oddest sign of the times I know is a cheap translation of StraUSS:5 Leben JeSU, now publishing in numbers by Hetherington.' (The George Eliot Letters, 1.171 n). If this date is correct, it was a full five months before Philip Harwood wrote his preface to the published version of his lectures.

By the time three of the four volumes had appeared, it was again mentioned by Ryall in The Oracle of Reason for 4 February 1843, where he hailed it as 'well timed, and a valuable auxiliary.., placing within reach of the hardworking mechanic an amount of historical research and philosophical investigation, in the right direction, hardly ever attained but in the theological schools of Germany'.

The question still remains: would Hennell and others have continued to want another translation, if they knew of the H/T edition? It is clear from Strauss's Preface to the GE translation that he, at least, thought hers the first to appear in English. And from the time he had brought out his definitive fourth edition - which appeared in December 1840 - he would certainly have wanted any foreign-language version to be based on that, rather than the redundant third edition. Before progressing further, we will pause to review Mary Ann Evans' relations with the Hennells.

Mary Ann Evans' Introduction to Radical Theology As is widely known, Mary Ann (or Marian) Evans (1819-1880) had become an experienced translator, editor and literary critic before she started to live with G.H. Lewes, under whose influence she began to write novels and assumed the name 'George Eliot' in 1857. She was born the younger daughter of the second marriage of her father, Robert Evans (1773-1849), a respected land agent in the service of the Newdigate family in rural Warwickshire. Following the death of her distant mother in 1836, and the marriage of her sister Chrissie in 1837, Mary Ann became housekeeper to her adored father at Griff House near Chilvers Coton, where they had lived since she was a few months old.

Ethical Record, JulylAugust, 1999 15 Mary Ann had been sent away to board at Miss Lathom's School in Attleborough at the tender age of five, and later to Mrs Wallington's School in Nuneaton. and finally the Miss Frankfins' School in Coventry. A shy but deeply intellectual child, much influenced by the Evangelical piety of her Nuneaton governess. Maria Lewis, she excelled in all subjects and became a competent pianist with an attractive alto voice. After finishing her formal schooling in 1835, she continued to educate herself at home. To provide the intellectual stimulation that she obviously craved, Robert Evans paid for Mary Ann to have German and Italian lessons from Joseph Brezzi, a visiting tutor from Leamington. She also studied Greek with a local cleric, and had the run of the Newdigate family library at Arbury Hall.

When her father retired they moved, in March 1841, to Bird Grove at Foleshill on the northern edge of Coventry, and it was here that Mary Ann soon became friendly with their new neighbours. Abijah and Elizabeth Pears. Mr Pears - who had also attended the school run by the Miss Franklins - was a wealthy industrialist and shortly to become Mayor of Coventry. His wife was much involved in good works and promoting self-help among the poor of Coventry, in which she soon enlisted Mary Ann's assistance.

It was in May 1841 that Mary Ann first fleetingly met Elizabeth's brother and sister-in-law, Charles Bray and his wife Caroline ('Cara', née Hennell) at the Pears' home, but it was not until November of that year that she first visited the Brays' home a mile away at Rosehill. This meeting marked the true start of their long and close relationship. Elizabeth Pears hoped that Mary Ann's educated piety would draw her brother away from unbelief; but young Miss Evans already had doubts of her own, and these were simply confirmed by her concourse with Charles Bray, author of The Philosophy of Necessity.

The Brays and the Hennells An indiscriminate enthusiast for then-fashionable nostrums like phrenology and mesmerism, as well as an active promoter of various radical causes, like non- sectarian education and sanitary reform, Charles Bray (1811-1884) came from one of the prominent ribbon-making families in Coventry - the Hennell family was another. Bray had spent part of his youth in London, where he had contact with the Hackney branch of the Hennell framily. Back in Coventry, he abandoned the Evangelical religion of his upbringing to embrace Unitarianism. But it was not a lasting refuge, and he veered further towards freethought and atheism.

In due course Bray fell in love with Cara Hennell and they were married in 1836. On their honeymoon, he shocked his bride by revealing just how far from religious belief he had moved. She, hoping to find evidence confirming the historical basis of Christianity, appealed to her brother Charles Christian (known as 'C.C.') for support. The research he now embarked upon, resulting in his 1838 book, however, did not provide the under-pinning his sister hoped for, but rather demonstrated - to his and her regret - that Christian claims about the historicity of the gospels and the supernatural origins of the faith were unsupportable. Hennell came to the view that Christianity originated in entirely natural phenomena, though he remained impressed by its ethical and emotional appeal.

A copy of Hennell's Inquiry soon came into the enthusiastic hands of Dr. Robert Herbert Brabant (1781?-1866), a retired G.P. living in Devizes and pursuing his abiding interest in modern philosophy and theology. He was in touch with

16 Ethical Record, July/August. 1999 German radical thought, and know H.E.G. Paulus and D.F. Strauss personally. He visited C.C. Hennell in the Spring of 1839, after discovering his address from his publisher, and said he was soon off to visit Strauss in Germany and would take him a copy of the Inquiry. In September, following the visit to Strauss, he invited Hennell to stay in Devizes, where C.C. soon fell in love with Dr. Brabant's auburn-haired daughter, Elizabeth Rebecca, known as `Rufa' since her father's patient, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, had given her the riame as a child.

Hennell's feelings were reciprocated by Ruth, and they were both keen to marry. But Dr. Brabant suspected incipient tuberculosis in Charles C. Hennell. author of An Enquiry this potential son-in-law, and subjected him to Concerning the Origth of Christionily0 838) a thorough medical examination which did nothing to dispel his suspicions. He thus forbade their engagement. The intervention of Charles and Cara Bray failed to change his mind, but when Rufa in due course received a legacy which rendered her father's veto ineffectual, the two were finally married with his blessing on 1 November 1843 by W.I. Fox at South Place Chapel, with Mary Ann Evans as a bridesmaid. The Doctor's fears were justified, however, and Hennell was sadly to die of tuberculosis at the early age of 41. Their only son, Frank Spencer Hennell, born in 1846, lived until 1935.

It is of more than passing interest to note that in 1857, after seven years of widowhood, Rufa Hennell married the Cambridge scholar and poet Wathen Mark Wilks Call (1817-1890), who had been an Anglican clergyman for fourteen years before recently resigning his orders. He went on to contribute to the South Place Hymnal what Moncure Conway later described as 'some of our most beautiful hymns' (op.cii., p.84n).

English, German and Italian Editions of Hennell's Inquiry By early 1839 Dr. Brabant had introduced C.C. Hennell to Strauss's work, and in June took to Strauss a copy of his Inquiry, which so impressed him that he arranged for the Englishman's work to be translated into German and published in Stuttgart early in 1840. Strauss contributed a glowing foreword. Both Hennell's book and Strauss's introduction are rather chauvinistically dismissed by Albert Schweitzer in his Quest of the Historical Jesus. J.M. Robertson devotes a page to defending both, and demonstrating that Schweitzer had, once again, clearly not read a work he was so ready to impugn. The Inquiry appeared in an Italian translation, which the Vatican at once put on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Hennell brought out a second English edition of his Inquiry in August 1841. and he was here able to pay informed tribute to Strauss's great work, which he clearly hoped to see appear in a scholarly English translation. A third edition, coupled with the sequel Christian Theism, was posthumously brought out by his sister Sara in 1870.

Mary Ann Evans probably read the //why in the autumn of 1841, though her own copy of the second edition, now preserved in Dr. Williams's Library (which also has the first edition), was signed and dated by her on `Jany 1st 1842'. (This was, significantly, the day before she first upset her father by refusing to accompany him to church.). Bray claims she had read Hennell's Inquiry, which had a profound effect Ethical Record, July/August, 1999 17 on her, even before her first visit to them in November 1841. If so, the fact that its author was none other than Cara's brother would surely have eased the way into what were to become her first important adult relationships. We know from her letters that in April 1847 she re-read with renewed admiration the book that had earlier been of such seminal importance.

Charles and Cara Bray were the first people with whom Mary Ann could discuss her reading, her beliefs and intellectual enthusiasms, as an equal - without fearing she might offend them. Her rejection of orthodox Christianity and her increasing attraction to rationalism did, however, lead to a serious disruption of her family relationships and also alienated important early figures like Maria Lewis. But the Brays had not, as her religious friends imagined, led her away from the faith. They simply allowed her to voice the doubts she had harboured for some time, and to develop her own opinions. Through them she grew close to Cara's sister and brother, Sara and C.C. Mennen, and also to Rufa Brabant. They all visited Rosehill and joined in a series of holiday excursions organised by Bray.

Shortly after the Hennell-Brabant marriage in November 1843, Mary Ann went to stay with Dr. Brabant in Devizes. The inappropriate closeness that soon developed between the 62-year-old Doctor and the naive 24-year-old, whose emotional and social judgement had not kept pace with her prodigious intellectual development, led to an ultimatum from the Doctor's wife and Mary Ann's precipitate departure. However, a project close to the hearts of both Dr. Brabant and Charles Hennell, that marriage had forced Rufa to abandon, was almost immediately passed on to Mary Ann. In January 1844, she agreed to take over preparation of an English translation of Strauss's Leben iesu to be published in due course by John Chapman. Mary Ann finished her labours - for which she received the paltry sum of twenty pounds - in March 1846. Proof samples were rushed to Strauss in Heilbronn, and his obvious pleasure is reflected in the generous foreword he penned in April. For some reason, this was printed only in the original Latin! With the appearance of the three volumes in June, Hennell had at last repaid the compliment he felt he owed Strauss for arranging a German translation of his Inquiry six years earlier.

Who were Hetherington and Taylor? The name of Henry Hetherington (1792-1849) is an important one in the history of freethought publishing. A radical reformer and republican, much influenced by Robert Owen's socialism, he became a close associate of G.J. Holyoake, the founder of the Secularist movement. Although Beatrice and Sidney Webb's History of the Trade Union Movement does not even mention Hetherington, J.M. Robertson more generously describes him as: a strenuous democrat who in 1830 began the trade union movement and so became the founder of Chartism. [Hej fought for the right of publication in matters of freethought as in politics ... alongside of the Oracle of Reason there ran for two years a much more judiciously conducted and more widely educative (though equally small) periodical The Free-Thinkers' Information for the People, published by Hetherington, which contains more solid and scholarly matter than is to be found in any volume of the decade. Besides geological criticisms of Genesis, analyses of Christian Evidences, and of the argument from miracles and prophecies, it includes a notably learned history of The Struggles of Philosophy with Superstition and Priestcraft in ancient and modern times, and a remarkably effective reproduction of the gist of Hennell's byplay... (1838), thus placing its readers abreast of the rationalistic scholarship of the time. (op. cit, p.75.)

18 Ethical Record, JulylAugust, 1999 From Edward Royle's The Infidel Tradition, we learn that Hetherington had published The Poor Mails Guardian in defiance of the despised fourpenny newspaper tax, and for this was twice sentenced to six-months imprisonment at Clerkenwell - first in 1831 and again in 1832. He was partially successful in his campaign for an untaxed press in 1834, but was again imprisoned in 1840, on a blasphemy conviction, for publishing CI Haslam's Letters to the Clergy of All Denominations. On 19 June 1849, two months before he died of cholera. Hetherington gave a stirring address to a republican meeting at the Literary and Scientific Institution in John Street, off Tottenham Court Road (reported in Royle's The Infidel Tradition). G.J. Holyoake, who was with him when he died, gave a moving funeral oration at Kensal Green Cemetery. Hetherington's motto, 'We ought to endeavour to leave the world better than we found it', set in silver letters on puce silk, draped the hearse.

We know little ofJoseph Taylor, other than that he was a Birmingham printer and bookseller. He is listed in Southwell's The Investigator for 19 August 1843 among the contributors to a fund set up by the Scottish Anti-Persecution Union following the arrest of the Edinburgh bookseller, Thomas Paterson, whose seized stock included 59 numbers of Strauss's Life of Jesus. Such men - and their publications - would have been regarded as beyond the pale by respectable society, though it might seem strange if this was then considered sufficient reason for a further translation of the Leben desu to be undertaken.

Charles Bray, certainly, was a convinced Owenne and an early enthusiast for the Co-operative movement, who helped set up a short-lived Coventry Co-operative Society in 1843, a year before the Rochdale Pioneers. But though he boasted of entertaining every radical and oddball passing through Coventry, his autobiography betrays no association with the more militant and avowed atheists of his day, such as Hetherington. It seems almost inconceivable that C.C. Hennell was ignorant of the H/T edition, particularly as Hetherington had published a full and generous summary of his Inquiry. Was Hennell, perhaps, embarrassed or resentful that his work was publicised in such a 'seditious' organ?

Conclusion If Hennell and his associates did know of the H/T version, they must have thought it unsatisfactory. But I suspect this would have had little to do with the possibility that it derived from Littre's excellent French translation, albeit of the third German edition, or indeed because it dispensed with the Greek and Hebrew quotations, and scholarly footnotes, that were an important feature of the original, and duly included by Mary Ann Evans. After all, the Translator's Preface of the HIF edition had made this generous offer:

'The numerous notes in the original, in various languages, have not been inserted separately, because they would only have added to the expense of the work, without adding to its general utility; but, where needed, they have been embodied in the work itself As many parties, however, may wish them, who possess learning and leisure, it is under consideration to publish them separately; so that the work will be quite complete without them, but they may be had by those to whom they may be of service'.

It is, however, unsurprising that these notes were apparently never published separately. The expense of setting up a supplementary text, including Greek and Hebrew characters, and for such a small potential demand, would clearly have been prohibitive. Ethical Record, JulylAugust, 1999 19 Class and sociopolitical considerations would have made it difficult for 'respectable' folk to accept a product originating from a 'disreputable' source, and those responsible for the second translation understandably wanted Strauss's ideas to have the widest possible circulation, which they would not receive so long as the I-I/T version was the only one available. As Herbert Spencer was to observe (Autobiography II, 33), Chapman was 'the only respectable publisher through whom could be issued books which were tacitly or avowedly rationalistic.' Furthermore, Hennell wished to repay Strauss's compliment to him.

Althouth not the first, George Eliot's excellent translation of Strauss was the one that captured the market and impressed posterity. Nevertheless, the working man of the early 1840s will have benefited from the first translation - whether in weekly numbers at PAd., monthly parts at 6d. or as four four-shilling volumes. This pioneering edition should not be overlooked, even though it was soon superseded by the definitive version inspired by Philip Harwood, Robert Brabant, Charles Hennell and Joseph Parkes, begun by Rufa Brabant, brought to a triumphant conclusion by Mary Ann Evans with the editorial help and encouragement of Sara Hennell, published by John Chapman and praised by Strauss.

Many of those associated with this second translation were also associated with South Place Chapel, and their modern successors may take some vicarious pride in their achievement. But we should not forget the - in many ways even more remarkable - achievement of those who, in more difficult circumstances and under constant pressure of police surveillance, prosecution, imprisonment and distraint of goods. managed to produce the earlier translation and make it available to the working man at a reasonable price. It is high time that those pioneering atheists were given the recognition that is their due, even though the identity of the anonymous translator is apparently now beyond discovery.

Select Bibliography Ashton, Rosemary. George Eliot, A Life. London, 1996 Beard, 1.R. Voices of the Church in Reply to Strauss. London, 1845 Bray, Charles. Phases of Opinion and Experience (Autobiography). London, 1884 Conway, Moncure. Centenary Histoty of South Place Society. London, 1894 Haight. Gordon. George Eliot, A Biography. Oxford, 1968 Haight, Gordon (Ed). The George Eliot Letters. London and New Haven, 1954 Harris, Horton. David Friedrich Strauss and his Theology. Oxford, 1975 Harwood, Philip. German Anti-Supernaturalism. London, 1841 Hennell. Sara S. Memoir of Charles Christian Hennell. Privately printed. 1899 Holyoake, G.J., The Life and Character of Henry Hetherington. London, 1849 Ratcliffe. S.K. The Story of South Place. London, 1955 Robertson, J.M. A History of Freethought in the Nineteenth Century. London, 1929 Royle. Edward. Victorian Infidels. Manchester, 1974 Royle. Edward (Ed.). The Infidel Tradition. London. 1976 Schweitzer, Albert. The Quest of the Historical Jesus. London, 1910 Taylor, Ina. George Eliot, Woman of Contradictions. London, 1989 The Oracle of Reason (1841-43); The Free- Thinkeris Infornuaion for the People (1842-43); The Investigator (1843); The Holyoake Collection at the Bishopsgate Institute. Acknowledgements I am grateful to Professor Rosemary Ashton, Norman Bacrac, Audrey Russell and Nicolas Walter who have read an earlier draft of this lecture and offered useful suggestions; and to the librarians and staff of South Place Ethical Society, Dr. Williams's Library, the British Library and the Bishopsgate Institute for their courtesy and helpfulness.

20 Ethical Record, July/August, 1999 ETHICS AS LOGIC - The Form of Moral Judgements - according to Immanuel Kant

Christopher Bratcher The second of a series of articles on major ethical thinkers to be followed by Sunday discussions, in this case on Sunday, 26 September at I I am.

Hobbes, and Butler [April 99 ER article, 'Ethics as Psychologyl, grounded Ethics on features of human nature that they considered universal: respectively, inherently selfish desires (the satisfactions, and selected objects of which, we term good); and benevolent urges, which happened to accord both with 'Christian' ethics, and our own best interests.

Kant was not concerned with our psychology, but, in C2Oth terms, with what moral language logically implies when we use it ['practical reasoning' in his terminology]. Not surprisingly, he came up with a different foundation for Ethics as a result. We judge our actions in terms of Ive ought, and what it is right or wrong, to do. For Kant. discovering the facts of what we actually hold to be good, etc 'might be called practical anthropology'; philosophy should concern itself with what makes rules for behaviour morally valid; 'that is, as a ground of obligation'.

Before getting on to Kant's answer. I should mention something of his life and place in philosophy. He was born in Koningsberg [Kaliningrad under Soviet rule] in East Prussia, in the S.E. corner of the Baltic, in 1724, and barely left it, becoming a professor at the university in 1770. A convivial [and surprisingly amusing] bachelor, he was noted for his regularity of daily routine. Politically, he was a passionate supporter of the American War of Independence, and of the 'separation of powers' in an ideal state: which Prussia was not. His major work, The Critique of Pure Reason, was ignored when published in 1781; he died in 1804.

His greatness as a philosopher lies in his attempt to systematically distinguish between the form and content of our experience. To take an imperfect computer analoay, the document I type is in 'Word'. Its formatting is hidden. and - for the purposes of the analogy - I have no control over it; but without knowing anything of the program, I may be able to infer its form. Kant considered the seemingly very different fields of factual, moral and aesthetic experience. Both the recognition of moral directives, and our notions of space and time [by which our experience comes categorised], seemed to him self-evidently to convey information that was not derived from any particular experience. That extra information was about the nature of the world (including a world in which obligations are recognised). as it has to be experienced - or rather categorised - by rational beings. The task of philosophy is. to Kant's mind, to discover it, by reasoning. Obviously, this overview is both brief, and questionable. But we do not need to explore Kant's general thought, as the construction he put on morality, in The Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals [1785: (title of the translation by Hi. Paton in 1948)] stands on its own.

That Kant is, in the words of Monty Python, 'Something completely different', is evident from his remarks at the beginnings of the preface to the book [as below], and of the book itself - which runs to some 128 small pages in German [bold number references are to it], and 70 in English. He seemingly rhetorically asks: 'Do we not think it a matter of utmost necessity to work out for once a pure moral philosophy completely cleansed of everything that can only be empirical? That there must be Ethical Record, July/August, 1999 such a philosophy is already obvious from the common concept of duty and of the laws of morality. Everyone must admit that a law has to carry with it absolute necessity if it is to be valid morally'. The 'must', and the 'absolute' about this is not obvious. We can accept that to recognise that one is obliged to do something, is to acknowledge a necessity; but Kant's almost driven search for pure and certain foundations for Ethics goes beyond this.

His aim is 'to seek out and establish the supreme principle of moralhy% 'the source of practical [i.e. moral] principles which are present a priori [implicit] in our reason'. Kant takes his example the command "Fhou shalt not lie'. He considered it must apply to all rational beings, and not just humans; and that it was a 'genuine moral law'. He then states, without argument, that all such laws will have the same universality of application, and that therefore their validity must lie in an appeal solely to reason, and therefore will not be based on facts of human nature, or the particular circumstances of the person subject to the moral law in question.

What do you think is appealing, and wrong, about this? What other commonly acknowledged moral principles could make sense, without presumption, to -non humans? Why must rational beings tell the truth? 'Thou shalt not lie' is a speeial injunction. Rational discourse is based on words (or other signifiers) carrying agree'd meaning, and depends on assenions being, in general, takeable at face value. A lie inherently undercuts the basis on which it relies for its effect, irrespective of the contents of the lie. But what has that to do with Ethics? Kant returns to the example of lying to illustrate, in the main text of the book, the development of his principle of Ethics, and I discuss it further below. Kant's discussions of moral topics repeat (rather like the digestive processes of a cow, through separate stomachs!) as he develops his grounding of moral principles, as follows.

The book itself starts with a famously bold statement: 1 It is impossible to conceive anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without qualification, except a good trill.' Then, 'An action done from duty has its moral worth, not in the purpose to be attained by it, but from the maxim (subjective principle) in accordance with which it is decided... where every material principle is taken away from it.' This, for Kant, leaves only what gives a maxim its potential status as a law: potential universality of application. He expresses this in his famous Categorical Imperative 17: 'I ought never to act except in such a way that my maxim should become a universal law'. [further version at 521

You may well ask whether the satisfaction of the imperative is not itself a purpose: but the notion that part of what we understand by a principle is that it should apply to everyone, including oneself, in [exactly] similar circumstances, is surely right. But what practical use can one make of this, to rule out immoral principles purely on grounds of form? Kant seems to confuse adopting a principle absolutely (without exception) with adopting an absolutely general proposition: i.e., one with the widest application. The following example may explain.

The proposition, that all Ethnic Albanians should be killed [including myself, if I were one] is arguably universal in form. (It has, incidentally, been argued that the Incas' principle of killing then eating the vanquished - including themselves, if in that position - made perfect rational sense, given their dietary deficiencies!) Let us assume that one could define Albanians, or whoever, carefully enough to make them a separate class of persons in the logical sense. Our objection to adopting the principle of a licence to kill (only) a set class of persons, is that there are insufficient Ethical Record, JulylAugust, 1999 differences between that class of person and another; they are all people. Principles of vegetarianism and anti-vivisection are based on exactly the same type of argument: you can distinguish between animals and humans, but not as 'creatures with a nervous system'. The question is, what differences do you have to recognise, and which justify a distinction? Are all moral arguments of principle like this? Is morality purely about levels of taxonomy? Please discuss. Kant has an answer of sorts, as we shall see in the end.

Kant's use of his categorical imperative is largely limited to defending the injunctions against lying 18, and suicide 47, which in turn defend his developing principle. A propos lying, [given your thoughts on the above], can one not rationally adopt the principle that certain kinds of lie are acceptable, and some not(irrespective of the advantages and consequences to oneself)? Only inveterate, or pathological, liars may have their rationality brought into question by the practice. There are many circumstancq; in which it is rational - and right, intuitively - to tell a lie. Do I tell the mad axeman where his victim is hiding? Or, one may feel a greater obligation not to hurt someone's feelings.

This brings up the questions of how should I rank conflicting moral principles - or the edicts of morality, as narrowly conceived, against kindness. Kant has no conception of someone acting morally beyond the call of duty; rather he extends duty beyond mere conformance, to doing something for the sake of the moral law, - kom the moiive of duty alone. 'Duty to whom?' is not a question he raises: the duty is to the status of the principle. As a rational being, one should have 'reverence' for rationality, above all else. His example 10 is preserving one's life as a duty, when in a condition of hopeless misery! - the issue of suicide.

His argument 47/53/67 is all too brief. In conformity with his principles, he does not attempt to base the argument on any possible changes to one's state - or potential sources of personal satisfaction in living. He brings in the notion of a law of nature - Nature's function is to preserve life; and Ihence?] suicide is in- universaliseable as a principle. The immediate objection is that, if nature has a function, it is to preserve life only to the point of self-renewal (the selfish gene, etc). Willing something as a law of Nature is the penultimate extension of the Categorical imperative: but is this not bringing in content to form, at last? \Vhat is rational (and hence compelling) about a law of Nature?

Kant's answer is that the law of our nature is special. The convoluted argument is highly circular, and here, of necessity, compressed. Willing something for its [rather than one's own] sake, as an end in itself, is the mark of rationality in his sense of the term. 'Rational nature exists as an end in itself' 166] - and so human beings are ends in themselves. 'This is the way in which a man [and any other rational being] necessarily conceives his own existence'. The practical imperative [i.e., that applying to human beings] becomes: 'Act in such a way that you always trem humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other; never shnply as ineans, but always as an end'. Kant may therefore be seen as a father of Humanism - and pacifism.

His argument against discriminate killing, [and also against vegetarianismi would be that the one 'natural kind' that matters, is humanity ,as a whole: it is an indivisible class of persons. You can distinguish [perhaps] between Serbs and Albanians, but you cannot, as a rational person, treat them differently.

Ethical Record, JulylAugust, 1999 His final version of his argument against suicide, is thus that it [as with any other killing] ceases to treat a person as an end in itself. As to the mercy killing argument that people in a 'persistent vegetative state' have ceased to be a person; I suspect his reply would have to be that we have no moral interest in them. Kant ought to have been susceptible to the argument that the right to suicide is about self- determination: i.e. precisely treating people as ends in themselves. In Kant's view, however, this does not amount amount to respecting or advancing their desires. The issue for him is what they ought to desire i.e., as ends in themselves. This comes perilously close to preservation for preservation's sake! 'Inclinations themselves, as sources of needs, are so far from having an absolute value that it must rather be the universal wish of every rational being to be wholly free of them' I65]. In his logical distaste for matters of personal desire, Kant can be seen as putting Buddhism on a rationalist foundation, and the non philosopher may get most personal satisfaction from reading him this way - even though Kant would disapprove of such a motive!

What can we salvage from this? You tell me. Perhaps, the recognition that our actions are not only instigated by desires and impulses, we may decide to do or desist purely on principle, whether or not it is only the latter which conveys rationality and potential moral status to our actions. Later philosophers, in particular Richard Hare, have fastened on to Kant's notions of the imperative and universal form of moral judgements. In this respect, he is the father of modern moral philosophy, as well.

VIEWPOINTS

South Place Sunday Concerts I should like to put in print the sense of my congratulatory telephone call to you immediately after reading the editorial in the May issue of the ER. It seemed to me to be a succinct and admirably clear account of the situation vis-a-vis SPES and the Concerts Society. Thank you. Marion Granville

Sadly, Marion has since died. Her obituary is on page 35. [Ed.]

I write with regard to the wish of the South Place Sunday Concerts to secede from SPES and proceed as an autonomous body.

Clearly the SPSC owes a considerable debt to SPES in its lengthy support and obviously when entrance to the concerts was free the SPSC could not have been continued after 1888 without this support. But times have changed and, as I understand it, the SPSC, due to the application and energy of its committee, is now an organisation that wishes - and is financially able - to stand on its own feet. I put it to you that SPES should now, like a well-intentioned parent. let its protegée go with its blessing.

As someone who has attended the Sunday Concerts for almost 50 years I should like to think that my financial support will benefit SPSC in the most direct and positive way. Mr H. Erenberg - London 5W9

24 Ethical Record, July/August, 1999 Currently there is little if any interest in the chamber music performed at Conway Hall by those who attend SPES lectures and other events. The same can be said of those who attend the concerts... They too infrequently, if ever, show up on a Sunday morning to a lecture or discussion. Music appeals essentially to the emotions whilst argument and debate are cerebral activities. At an extremely well attended concert last January. when the audience was asked from the platform how many had ever been to a SPES event, just nine people raised their hands to indicate their joint involvement. A little like oil and water which simply do not mix. It may be as our editor asserts that at the end of the last century things were different, but I feel sure that SPES itself was a very different organisation then, as indeed was the whole social scene. Therefore to compare the relationship then with that which obtains today is perhaps of little value.

The last paragraph in the June editorial enunciates a fine sentiment, which is quite easily attainable. The present situation is that there now exists a separate charity known as the London Chamber Music Society which will promote the South Place Sunday Concerts at Conway Hall. The objects of this charity are both laudable and are in harmony with those of SPES. The committee running and organising these concerts is able, honourable and enthusiastic. The only decision that still requires settling is the question of the assets formally administered by the SPSC Sub committee. As these assets were raised entirely by the Concerts Subcommittee, which received no monies from SPES, there is surely no real problem of 'gifting' these assets to the new charity. It is simply a matter of ethical consideration. As such, therefore, it will cause SPES little problem in finding a solution which will be to mutual advantage.

Mutual advantage is the key to this situation; however, it must again be stressed to all members of SPES as it has to those members of the General Committee.recently, that whatever decision is finally taken, it must be to the long term advaniage of SPES which essentially means, that the decision must in no way damage or even tarnish the integrity and good reputation of the Society. No one denies that SPES nurtured the concerts by encouraging those involved in promoting them, providing an acoustically acceptable home for them and subsequently giving subsidies by reducing the hall rental for about 90 years. Since the 1987/88-season, rental has been paid to SPES amounting to over £71,000 and from the hire of the new Bosendorfer grand piano a further not inconsiderable sum of money has made its way into the SPES coffers. Long may this happy situation continue, and if sense and a little good will prevail this will be the case in the future. Finally it must again be stressed that the reason behind the decision to become a charity was simply that it was vital for the future of the concerts to make this change. This opens up the music society to membership with the many advantages which an active and enthusiastic membership will confer on such a body. In seeking independence we merely reflect the views of SPES itself. Would SPES happily seek an amalgamation with a kindred humanist society and thus lose its identity?

It is extremely good news that a delegation from the GC has sought a meeting with the Charity Commission to clarify the situation in the light of the recent changes. It will be interesting to hear what advice was given on that occasion. Next season should be the finest musical offering we have arranged, and in keeping with the move to the millennium and the Concert Society's entry into its third century, we must hope that the right decision is made and morality and honour prevails. Lionel Elton, GC member, 'fixer' of the London Chamber Music Society Ethical Record, July/August, 1999 Members may be interested in this view of the place of the concerts within the SPES by George Hutchinson, member of the SPES General Committee and organiser of the concerts for many years. This announcement of the centenary appeared in The Ethical Record (Oct. 86): One Hundred Years of Concerts This season we celebrate a thrilling occasion, the Centenary of our Concerts - concerts started on February 20, 1887. The South Place Ethical Society is famed the world over for two things, first of all for its Sunday morning meetings coupled with the Ethical Record, which stand for freedom of speech and belief within the law, and next for its Sunday Concerts - the best Chamber Music, the finest of artists - directed at first towards the under-privileged and run entirely voluntarily by members of the Society. Although they have always been wholly public - open to anyone - they were in the main for the so-called working classes of the east end. Nowadays their low cost of admission makes them readily available to the students and pensioners who like to come week by week to live music and not just for an occasion. George Hutchinson, Honorary Secretary, South Place Ethical Society Concert Sub-Committee

As enthusiastic Sunday Concert goers we do hope that they continue to enchant and enrich the lives of so many people. Any future developments between SPES and the Sunday Concerts must not jeopardise this valuable source of musical enjoyment and education. April Langdon - Prestwood HP16

Having been given some copies of your magazine by a member of the Ethical Society, I feel I must comment on the last two editorials and the article entitled 'Putting the Record Straight'. Over the years my friends and I have been regulars at the Conway Hall chamber music concerts; few, if any of us ever realised we were supporting an atheistic organisation. Indeed, I'm sure that the majority of the audience hold spiritual views at variance with yours and, like myself, would consider this irrelevant.

Conway Hall is central and provides an important part of the London music scene. Not only does it maintain a high standard of music, it is also affordable both to the young and old. I've no doubt that most of the regulars would endorse the view that a new Music Society should be formed with the sole aim of providing music lovers with a friendly place with fine performers that is within our means. From what I read, this would not result in any loss of income to the Ethical Society. I think your Society should encourage this fresh venture for the benefit of all. PA. Lavell - London N3

Oh dear, that poor correspondent who has regularly attended the concerts and did not realise atheists were involved! It is our credulity regarding religious myth we have dispensed with - not our appreciation of the finer things in life, whether aesthetic or cerebral. It is a misapprehension about the nature of the Ethical Society not to realise that it is essentially concerned to foster cultural activities generally, whether lectures or concerts, as aspects of a rational and humane way of life (see page 2). JR.11 Ethical Record, JulylAugust, 1999 I write as both a member of SPES and an attendee at the concerts at Conway Hall. I joined SPES because I was interested in trying to shift our culture from one that judges people 'by what they believe' to 'how they behave'. Isn't that fundamental to Huinanism?

We have two organisations joined solely by historical coincidence. It's time for them to separate a little more. Is SPES content to be judged on the arguments published in the Record on the concerts issue? If we are to concentrate on how SPES might flourish, then surely not by holding on to a few pennies actually earnt by dedicated voluntary work of the concert people.

I would appreciate an ethical defence of the Society's behaviour in this issue, (not the hair splitting legalities we have had to date), but am fearful that it would he very equivocal. This is the test - whcn it comes to our own interest do we act ethically - if not, everything else we do should be treated with derision! Roger Eden - Harrow, Middlesex

It seems perfectly reasonable for the Sunday music organisation to be a separate charity considering the diversity of its objectives. No doubt the Charity Commissioners understood this when they granted to London Chamber Music Society charitable status. With goodwill there is no reason why the two Societies cannot run in tandem.

It should now be the duty of the SPES to discuss freely with the Charity Commissioners the relationship between themselves and the new Society and to inform members of the outcome. Members need a clear statement of the advice of the Charity Commission and the direction in which SPES should go forward. NI. Serjeant - London NWI

You invite comment on Miriam Elton's Viewpoint and as one of the remaining octogenarians haunting Conway Hall I am tempted to respond.

A child of a poverty-stricken family, I was introduced to the concerts in the old chapel in 1925 and have been a devotee ever since. These concerts, with the Proms and the Vic-Wells opera were crucial to my education when the Royal Opera House and West End 'Celebrity' concerts were quite out of reach. They still are. In my late twenties I took an interest in the Ethical Society and in 1937 became a member when it seemed to me that church dogma had become more important than Christian Ethics. Sadly over the intervening years it has been borne in on me that Rationalist societies have fallen into the same trap. They are more interested in academic argument than in being humanitarian and ethical.

However, one must not look back. The format of the concerts has changed to feed the greater awareness arising from the post war expansion in musical education, though sadly, this is contracting again under the erosion of resources; the need for the concerts continues. But artists have to be paid and running expenses met. No treasurer should have to face a season of 27 concerts without the assurance of having enough money in the kitty to sce the series out. Do we want to hear the Hon. Secretary every week appealing to the audience for more money and SPES having to foot the deficit bill? Surely a friendly and ETHICAL solution is possible. Mary Lincé - Southfields SWIS

Ethical Record, JulyRugust, 1999 My husband (deceased June 1998) and I have regularly attended the South Place Concerts for 50 years; my parents-in-law were season ticket holders for many years before that. I am 69 years of age, healthy, and look forward to quite a few years more enjoyment of wonderful chamber music at prices which Senior Citizens are able to afford.

It has come to my notice through a friend who is a member of SPES (and also a devoted South Place Sunday Concert-goer), that changes have occurred in the relationship of the two bodies, and that the SPSC is now a registered and independent charity. This seems to me a right and proper evolutionary development, since, on the one hand, SPES members seem to have little interest in chamber music and even less expertise in promoting it; and on the other hand, the marvellously competent and devoted committee members of the SPSC have done such a splendid job over the last several years in promoting and running the concerts. I should mention that I have an especial interest here as I was deeply involved in planning and running a local Philharmonic successfully for several years, and am thus well aware that this can only be done by people to whom music is their life-blood, and who have intimate connections in the musical world.

Now, to come to a very important point. I learn that SPES have what I regard as the temerity to lay claim to the considerable funds which have been accumulated in recent years by the SPSC through their exceptionally efficient management, and even to the Bosendorfer piano, acquired solely through their efforts.

My Concise Oxford dictionary tells me that ETHICS relate to morals - 'morally correct, honourable, moral principles, rules of conduct, etc'. What it appears that you are proposing seems to me in direct contradiction to all that is implied by the foregoing definition, and I beg you, in the name of morality, to reconsider all your proposals and renounce any claim to funds and property which rightly belong to the South Place Sunday Concerts. Any other course would be traitorous to their loyal and appreciative following, many of whom have made donations and bequests - not, I may add, to the SPES - and would put the future of the concerts in jeopardy. Not to even speak of the South Place Ethical Society's reputation! Jean Langdon - Hemel Hempstead, Ilerts

It is time for SPES to look to the future and stop dwelling on the past. Priorities should include how to re-vitalise the society, increase membership and make the whole operation more dynamic. An interesting programme of lectures is organised and yet attendances are poor. SPES in terms of its aims is moribund.

The linkage between the activities of SPES as an ethical society and chamber music is at best tenuous and separation of the two operations would have happened anyway in the fullness of time. SPES itself must undergo change to attract younger audiences and to generate a healthier cashflow; costs will increase. SPES must now concentrate on increasing its appeal and membership base. It must increase revenues and margins to improve the fabric of Conway Hall and put its future on a firm basis.

Let there be an amicable parting of the ways and a fair and ethical resolution of financial matters.

Let SPSC remain at Conway Hall as an important client but as a stand-alone charity devoted to chamber music. SPES can and sometimes does promote musical evenings. That activity could be extended. However, very few SPES members 28 Ethical Record, JulylAugust, 1999 support musical events - hcnce my plea that SPES 'get back to basics' and put all efforts to the promotion of the excellent programme and the three main aims of the society. Paul Rhodes - London 5W19

A Reply to Some Critical Comments Although I have now retired from all the offices I formerly held in SPES, I feel I must reply to the foregoing letters, as their authors have not had the opportunity to acquire the requisite knowledge of the history of the Concerts over the years.

Though Jean Langdon's praise for the high musical standards maintained over more than a century is itself music to our ears, she, in common with Roger Eden and others, is obviously under the misapprehension that this series on concerts is run at a profit. For most of its history, admission was entirely free of charge, as a cultural gift to the general public, being organised by a sub-committee of SPES (known as SPSC) in our purpose-built hall.

When we began charging for tickets, the prices were kept very low, and are still well below the break-even point. It was the general funds of the Society that subsidised the concerts and paid most of the cost of the grand-piano and of the two published histories of the Concerts. Only since more generous grants have been available from the Arts Council and other public bodies has SPSC been able to stand on its own feet. Unfortunately, Mr Elton has been giving the impression that he runs the Concerts at a profit, so the Charity Commission is now questioning whether we are 'trading' - which might make us liable for corporation tax.

Why Should the New Society Destroy Ours? In reply to RA. LaveII, there is no reason, of course, why any members of SPSC should not form a new chamber music society - but why should it destroy ours? For fear of competition? And do those setting up the new society really think they would be legally and morally entitled to take our assets with them and expect to hire our Flall on the cheap? In any case, they obviously could not use it on Sunday evenings, as that is when our own concerts will continue to be held, as they have been since 1887 - at that time providing a daring alternative to Christian Evensong, and making them now the longest series of concerts in the world.

Lionel Elton has undoubtedly done a marvellous job of organising the Concerts sub-committee in the past few years, but that does not give him and his friends the right now to purloin the SPES funds. And, needless to say, those members of the General Committee who are also members of the Concerts consortium will not be eligible to vote on this issue, on grounds of vested interest, and of course, the law of the land does not permit new charities to take over the funds of an existing one that is still active in the same field. Barbara Smoker - Bromley, Kent

Comment is Free but Facts are Sacred (C.P. Scott, Manchester Guardian, 6 May 1926) I would welcome the opportunity to shed more light upon the difficulty prevailing between the Concerts Subcommittee and the Society's General Committee which has led to the 'schism' and the decision of the concerts' organisers to set up their own music charity.

Ethical Record. July/August, 1999 29 It is an historical fact that the South Place Sunday Concerts have been omanised by a Subcommittee of SPES since 1887, led by Alfred J. Clements, subsequently George 1-lutchinson and more recently, Lionel Elton.

Miriam's letter, (Viewpoints, ER, June 99) however, explains as nothing else could, why this 'schism' has arisen. Fler use of terms such as 'symbiotic relationship', 'kindred organisation' and even 'separate organisation' highlights a lack of understanding and acceptance of the STATUS of a subcommittee. Miriam and Lionel are both members of SPES, they are both currently elected members of the SPES General Committee and both are formally nominated to serve upon the Concerts Subcommittee. Until recently Lionel chaired the General Committee; Miriam is a Holding Trustee. It is quite illogical to perceive or describe their own or the Concerts Subcommittee's relationship as 'symbiotic', 'kindred' or 'separate. By sheer force of personality and in total denial of this basic premiss, they have fought the General Committee every step of the way.

I will explain: in paragraph 7 Miriam describes the degeneration of the relationship and the acrimonious correspondence between not, as she suggests, two separate organisations, but in fact, between the Concerts Subcommittee and the General Committee of the Society. During, I believe, the mid-80s the government of the day, concerned by a series of scandals involving charities, instructed the Commissioners to devise, introduce and monitor more stringent procedures. Subsequently, we were advised a Statement of Recommended Practice (S.O.R.P) would be phased in. We were required to review and if necessary, revise our procedures in order to comply. This exercise revealed many anomalies in the manner in which the Concerts Subcommittee was administered and its relationship with its governing body, the General Committee. The Concerts Season began and ended at a different time of the year from that of the Society's annual accounting year. It was agreed that the Society's accounting year be changed in order to meet the Subcommittee's difficulties and to facilitate the formal incorporation of the Concerts Subcommittee's funds and the harmonisation of the Society's accounts.

The General Committee passed a resolution requiring all Subcommittees to operate within the Rules of the Society. The Society's Appointed Auditor and various lion. Treasurers experienced considerable difficulties in obtaining all necessary information and explanation from the Concerts Subcommittee's Auditor. Despite the Society's Rules and the Standing Orders governing the audit of subcommittee finances, the Concerts Subcommittee retain a separate auditor to this day (see para 4).

Sometime around 1986/7, the Concerts Subcommittee dealing directly with the hall I3ooking Staff negotiated a special rate to hire the hall, made a block booking and paid for it. It has done so ever since (see SPSC History sheet). This action, however well-intentioned, resulted in the ludicrous situation whereby the Society's Subcommittee used its chequebook to pay SPES for the use of its own facilities. This in accounting terms is known as 'trading with oneself' and is not acceptable in tax terms. This action was the unilateral decision of the Concerts Subcommittee and not because the General Committee so determined or indeed could have justified, showing as it does a charge upon the Society's own charitable activities. This recalcitrance of the Concerts Subcommittee delays the General Committee's full compliance with S.O.R.P. The Concerts have never been threatened.

30 Ethical Record, JulylAugust, 1999 In reply to Miriam's plea for 'identity, individuality and control over all actions and decisions' (see para. 10) such autonomy is not within the gift of the General Committee, however competently the concerts are organised within SPES. However, the Subcommittee has always enjoyed complete artistic autonomy.

The Society is the sum of its parts and one of its parts for the last 111 years has been the prestigious South Place Sunday Concerts. Since their beginning the Society has always supported them enthusiastically; it has never wavered in this support and it does not now. Legally and morally the Society owns the funds, assets, records and archives pertaining to the Concerts. I submit their financial independence is due not only to the stalwart efforts of the Subcommittee organisers and volunteers but also in no small measure to the generosity (see SPSC History Sheet) of the Arts Council, Camden Borough Council and the London Arts Board. Grant aid awarded, I suggest, upon the long history of endeavour and success achieved in those early years, coupled with the good name and charitable status of the South Place Ethical Society.

In order to resolve the crisis that the Society now faces, we require cool heads.

The present General Committee is severely depleted, a matter for the AGM in October. In order to act in the interests of the Society and our concert-going public, I understand three officers are meeting the Charity Commissioners in order to seek advice. I am sure when the situation we face is clear, when the various options for action have been considered, the membership will be advised and consulted.

In the meantime, any suggestion from inside or outside the Society that these matters have not been dealt with, or may not be dealt with, in an ethical and moral manner is insulting and counter-productive. Diane Murray - Bromley, Kent

David Nash on Dwindling Rationality David Nash's article 'And we are for the night?' (Ethical Record June 1999) makes for interesting, if rather dismal, reading. As rationalists I think we should bring our reason to bear on the problem, not simply sit back and observe a world sliding apparently inexorably towards irrationality and chaos. Why are we in a situation where Eco's hero is waiting in the beautiful Tuscan countryside for the forces of 'mysticism and irrational darkness to overwhelm him'? What went wrong, which led to dada, other kinds of irrational art, the 'century of the common (irrational man)', fascism. Chernobyl, postmodernism, etc? Obviously there must have been some fundamental defeat for reason along the way. What was this defeat? Or perhaps there were several, and we should be looking for those crucial battles which reason lost during the last 100 years.

When Reason Lost the Plot My candidates for these fundamental moments of truth when reason lost the plot are:

(a) Russell's discovery of his famous paradox in 1901. It doesn't sound like a world-shattering event, but it amounted to the catastrophic discoverv of an unexplained logical error of some sort in the very foundations of mathematical reasoning. It was compounded by the fact that Russell never subsequently discovered a commonsense explanation for the paradox. In the end he descended to fudging the issue. His fudge gave the green light to other fudges like Zermelo- Fraenkel set theory. The fudges amounted to a 'cover up' for the platonic view of

Ethical Record, July/August, 1999 31 mathematics, which managed to survive in a chastened quasi-formalist fashion. But you couldn't put the spring back in its step after such a humiliating defeat. Planck's discovery of quantum theory. It led to the realisation that there were physical events in the universe we could never know. This fundamentally contradicted the Cartesian research programme for science which said that the physical world was in principle mathematically knowable. Einstein's discovery of relativity theory. It had the consequence that every observer saw the physical world differently. This too contradicted the Cartesian research programme.

These were probably the key moments during the 20th century when intellectual demoralisation began.

Can we do anythingabout these catastrophes for reason? Yes, some of us have developed a new quasi-platonic constructivist view of mathematics which explains Russell's and the other paradoxes in a commonsense way. We have recently gone on to create a new rational post-Cartesian research programme for science. Some people may think this is daft, but it is not half as daft as sitting on your hands and waiting for mysticism and irrational darkness to overwhelm us. Christopher Ormell - Blackheath

You can read about the new approaches in Some Varieties of Superparadox (MAG 1993) and Some Reflections on Predictive Impossibility (MAG 1999). For details go to: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/chrisormell.

The Role of the KLA in Kosovo I could hardly believe my eyes when I read Peter Cadogan's 'solution' to Kosovo - 'Back the KLA' (Ethical Record, June 1999 p. IS). Although deciding who started the whole business. Serbian nationalists or the KLA, is a chicken and egg question, the KLA have a fair claim to the dubious privilege. The KLA is an organisation which has from the beginning drawn up death lists and, according to a limes article a month ago, has executed over 600 civilians (not only Serbs but also ethnic Albanian 'collaborators' and rivals) during the last ten years. According to the German police the KLA is partly financed by drug-trafficing and prostitution in Europe - and this accusation has also been made by Hill, a high-ranking White House official. At this very moment the KLA is carrying out revenge killings - we don't hear so much about that in the press - and I have read of a Serb nun being raped (doubtless there are other cases). The idea of handing over Kosovo to this 'army' horrifies me, as doubtless it horrifies many ethnic Albanians.

Do Western supporters of the KLA really think that every time an ethnic group becomes a majority in a region, it has the 'right' to independence, and the right to kill those who stand in its way? On this argument Hispanics have the right to pull California out of the United States since they are said to be in a majority in this state.

Sebastian Ilayes - London SW18

In Defence of Logical Positivism Many thanks for Chris Ormell's stimulating lecture 'A New Analysis of the Force of Words' (El?, April 99). Of particular interest to me was the insight he provided during the talk into the reasons for the spurning of logical positivism/empiricism by intellectual culture in general, and the philosophical community in particular. It is evident that the reasons behind this rejection were not philosophically respectable 32 Ethical Record, JulylAugust, 1999 ones, but rather the fact that the verification principle, specifically, 'got people's back up'. I'd like to devote this letter to laying to rest a few hoary and persistent misunderstandings.

Firstly, the matter of the verification of historical events. As Ayer made clear, it is not the case that the logical positivists (hereafter, l.p.!) rejected historical claims as meaningless. Rather they regarded such claimed events as hypotheses, to be judged against a backdrop of plausible and parsimonious assumptions about the world; to be considered as explanations for the existence of data in the present such as what appear to be records, descriptions, testimony, archaeological artefacts, myths, and personal recollection (including one's own). This theory of a past reality is to be judged in the same light as the theory of one's own existence, inductively inferred (but never proved) on the basis of rational rcflection upon the apparent evolution of the Humean flux of sensation. Assumptions taken to be so basic as one's own existence and the reality of historical fact are generally considered to be 'given' rather than inferential, by a generally epistemologically unreflective culture but I. p. (as with some other schools of analytical philosophy) could afford to leave no hostages to fortune. In modern philosophical parlance, 'the evidence underdetermines the theory', and there is no datum corresponding to the historical past, any more than there is on examination of what appears to be 'one's own experience'. This view is entirely consistent with Popper's famous dictum: 'All statements are theory-laden'.

Secondly, the contentious issue of ethics. They are not 'hot air' but they are unverifiable (since equally admissible internally consistent axioms of purportedly ethical character are implicit in all sincerely advanced ethical imperatives - whether by Hitler, Stalin, some Pope, Peter Rabbit, or maybe even Peter Sutcliffe). It is a 'psychological' (for want of an equally concise but less misleading term) necessity that one must regard one's own ethical imperatives as absolutely binding - upon both oneself and others.

Mathematics as Tautology Indeed! And what is wrong with that? Wittgenstein concurred exactly. If it were not tautological, we would remain unconvinced of both its subject neutrality and its absolute certainty. It is precisely the absolutely empty character of mathematics which guarantees the universal success of its applicability in all quantitatively exacting domains. What, after all, is an equation but a tautology?

Thirdly, why, is it absurd to make any 'assault' - rhetorical or otherwise - on the claims of religion? You would after ail surely expect an assault on the claim that any part of the Moon not thus far examined is in fact made of green cheese!

To parody the dismissal of conversation as 'meaningless' is entirely to miss the point of the verification principle. Outside professional, vocational, and pedagogical contexts, the overwhelming bulk of conversation is phatic, i.e. performed in order to facilitate a rapport between the interlocutors. Other than in an incidental and occasional sense, no one seriously claims that its primary concern is with the establishment of facts.

The 'solipsistic' practice referred to (p8, para 8) was - as Carnap made clear - entirely methodological, its lineage stemming from Descartes, the emphasis however being rather on first-person description as a basis for drafting phenomenological report statements. It was thus an epistemological device intender] to prevent the lamentable situation so notoriously well-described by computer professionals: GIGO Garbage In, Garbage Out). Ethical Record, JulylAugust, 1999 33 Chris laments the I .p dismissal of the 'mind of another'. In fact, the positivists did not regard the 'mind' as anything other than a colloquial descriptive fiction, not to be taken seriously. This is an entirely accurate perception in my view. Of course, people were regarded as the 'input stage' in the drafting of phenomenal reports, and thus one of the claims of I.p's much-to-be-desired Unified Science was the description of qualia in physical terms (the term 'physicalism' was coined by Neurath himself). Indeed, a memorable phrase from one of Carnap's later essays from the 1930s was: 'Carnap is in a state of green-seeing'.

The dismissal of I.p. on statistical grounds ( Positivists were at most 1% of the population. They couldn't force their view on what had meaning onto the other 99%) - as a mathematician such as Chris surely must acknowledge - simply won't do. Such a procedure would have meant, for instance, that in mediaeval times, the Schoolmen were utterly to be condemned on the ground of their anomalous literacy.

Chris is unfortunately absolutely right about philosophical `hot air' coming back onto the agenda.by the mid-1970s. We are still wallowing in the wake of Paul Feyerabend's 'anything goes' recommendation - i.e. rampant intellectual 'political correctness' - a form of group indulgence recently lamented at a humorous and informed address given at King's College by Anthony (Lord) Quinton.

Chris is also (almost) spot-on in his observation: `The commonest mistake in philosophy is that people acquire ridiculous caricature notions of some school of thought which they dislike and which they are then able.., to rubbish.' However. I suggest that, rather than being merely mistaken, philosophers often deliberately engage in a strategic offensive. By this means, the eviction of I.p. from serous philosophical discourse was - as Chris suggests - effected by the mid '70s.

• Chris quotes from the 1997 Voltaire Lecture by Prof. Robert Hinde (BHA 1997): 'Religious beliefs depend in large measure on consensual validation from others and religion totally without social influences is almost impossible to imagine'. In view of this, one is inevitably driven to the conclusion that since the aim of any sincerely political secular movement is essentially the privatisation of religion then our aim must in fact be religion's actual destruction. Well, that's fine by me, but - given the statistical realities - how are we to achieve this awesome feat?

Finally (para 2, p.I4), it manifestly does not follow that the mere postulation of (currently unobserved) explanatory entities can possible guarantee their existence(!). Sadly, the history of mankind and a large part of current experience precisely demonstrate that '... we can't know (x), (so) we are in the business of raising expectations and simultaneously dashing them'. Accurate and relevantly complete information beforehand is essential to all parties who contemplate any venture which significantly arouses expectations, I advance this simply as a moral precept, which naturally therefore does not - and could not - admit of 'verification'. Ian Buxton - London El

A hard disc containing 10 years of Cambridge research on the Wittgenstein archive was stolen and no back-up of it had been made.

Our Librarian (JRJ) wrote in the Independent (7/8/99): `I think that the researchers have been neither Logical nor Positive'.

34 Ethical Record, JulylAugust, 1999 MARION GRANVILLE 6.4.1925 - 28.5.1999

Marion Granville, SPES Member, Holding Trustee, former Registrar and Occasional Lecturer, died suddenly and unexpectedly on 28 May, having just posted a complimentary letter to the Editor (page 24).

The very moving Funeral, at Golders Green Crematorium on 12 June, was conducted by Norma Haemerle who, as is usual in Humanist ceremonies, included some biographical reflections in the Tributes section: Marion was born in Manchester. She could not take up her grammar school place and trained as a secretary after leaving school. While working at Shell she met her husband. Richard, whom she was to thank for introducing her to classical music and theatre. After Kati and Sally were born the couple went to Borneo with Shell but later divorced.

Marion thus had to rebuild her life. A good start was to join Chester Humanist Group. She had always been an omnivorous reader and was inspired to train as a teacher at college through reading Freud and George Kelly. the founder of Personal Construct Psychology. One of Marion's gifts was making friends across the generations and in her usual hospitable way, she welcomed the friends of her daughters as well as her own to the house - books everywhere, lively talk, cooking and glasses of red wine (an invaluable adjunct to good health Marion always believed). Secondary modern school teaching proved not to be her fone but in 1981 she moved south and enjoyed working for Professor Bill Watson of the Perceval David Foundation of Chinese Art at SOAS.

For the last 11 years she had lived at Davina House in Kilburn. NW2 forever adding yet more books to the crowded shelves - psychology, philosophy, novels and science fiction. Having gained the Diploma in Personal Construct Psychology she worked as a PCP counsellor and as an evening course tutor in PCP for London University Extra Mural Department.

After Nigel Barnes, friend and Secretary of Hampstead Humanist Society, paid tribute, I was very pleased to speak on behalf of the Ethical Society which she joined as soon as she ventured south. I think it was not long before the Society recognised her talents and she was elected onto the General Committee. She had been an obliging Registrar in the mid 90s and a conscientious Holding Trustee for the last few years. Like many of our members who attend the lectures I now organise, she did not feel that age should be a bar to learning something new. She was one of our occasional lecturers and spoke in the programme two years ago on PCP. She utilised her knowledge of science fiction to speak to us in March on Science Fiction - What Has Come True? After the talk, an enjoyable discussion ensued; Marion was pleased Kati had accompanied her.

Afterwards, she kindly wrote to say she had enjoyed the afternoon and to thank me for chairing. That was typical of Marion and no doubt why the Director of the British Humanist Association which she had also joined, tells me she was his favourite SPES member.

Marion was notable for her ability to relate to everyone in a warm and affectionate way. This is not so common, sad to say, among Humanists and for this quality in particular. her memory will be cherished. J.R.J.

Ethical Record, July/August, 1999 35 PROGRAMME OF EVENTS AT THE ETHICAL SOCIETY The Library, Conway Hall Humanist Centre, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, WC1R 4RL. Tel: 0171 242 8037/8034 Registered Charity No. 251396 Website address: www.ethicalsoc.org.uk email: [email protected] SEPTEMBER 1999 Saturday 11 SPECIAL GUEST LECTURE 2.30 pm SCHOPENHAUER VERSUS NIETZSCHE ON THE VALUE OF COMPASSION Timothy J. Madigan. Chair of Free Inquiry Editorial Board, analyses the differing attitudes to compassion of these two philosophers and shows their relevance to contemporary Humanism.

ANNUAL REUNION OF KINDRED SOCIETIES Sunday 19 September 2.30 pm Small Hall

KEYNOTE ADDRESS: Nicolas Walter commemorates A Centenary of Reunions Members and friends of all the Humanist Organisations are welcome Representatives will bring fraternal greetings. Entertainment, refreshments.

, Sunday 26. . . 11.00 am Major Ethical Thinkers. ETHICS AS LOGIC= THE FORM OF MORAL JUDGEMENTS - According to Immanuel Kant. Christopher Bratcher gives the second in the series of lectures to be read in advance (see page 21)

3.00 pm SELFISHNESS AS AN ETHICAL PRECEPT. Donald Rooum discusses the Conscious Egoism of Max Stirner.

OCTOBER Sunday 3 11.00 am TOPICAL DISCUSSION with Terry Mullins

2.30 pm ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING. Members only. (Registration at 2.00 pm)

SOUTH PLACE SUNDAY CONCERTS AT CONWAY HALL

110th Season 6.30 pm Tickets £4. Season Ticket £50.

October 3 SORREL STRING QUARTET: Haydn: Op.77 No.2; Shostakovich: Op.92; Dvorak: Op.96 'American'.

Season's programme from D. Morris, PO Box 17635, London N12 8WN (send S.A.E.) Published by the South Place Ethical Society% Conway Hall. 25 Red Lion Square, WC IR 4RL Printed by J.G. Bryson (Printer) Ltd. 156-162 High Road, London N2 9AS ISSN 0014 - 1690