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ISSN 0014-1690 The Ethical Record Vol. 99 No. 3 £1 March 1994

THOUGHTS ON EVOLUTION. Cynthia Blezard 2 THE CONCEPT OF AN ETHICAL SOCIETY Peter Heeles 3 AND BERNARD SHAW. Barbara Smoker DANTE AND THE PURPOSE OF LIFE. Diane Webb 11 ETHICAL SOCIETY PROGRAMME 1 6

EDITORIAL — BLIND For all their much vaunted claims to objective truth and universality, ' readiest recruits are the children of existing believers. Richard Dawkins' Viruses of the Mind (BHA, 1992) reminds us of this endemic feature of . World maps of religious by country would not exist if all children could excercise an educated choice from among all the world's religions and philosophies.

This rationalist is perhaps achieved when the child of religious parents chooses to be an atheist. Is that why the government is so anxious to keep off the school syllabus? Of course, conversions from one religion to another also occur — we shall be examining this on 20 March (see page 16).

C> ' But why do young children automat- Lce= " ` ically adopt the parental religion? Dawkins notes that computers, which Qv° o do not understand the meaning of what they do, readily obey the instruction to COPY the material offered to them. Thus programmes (whether useful or mischievous!) can proliferate like

, viruses amongst the computer population. Similarly, young children copy, take as gospel and interiorise what is said by their parents, with whom they have a strong emotional co s Q;Ara bond.

An enhanced susceptibility to their parents' lore has (historically) been very useful, allowing fairly rapid (in geological terms) adaption to new conditions. However, is it now too conservative to cope with the even more rapid changes in thought demanded by the scientific revolution and an over- crowded planet? 0 0 Phil Gyford's illustration, prompted by Dawkins' thesis, asks Has blind faith thoughnow ye see him not outlived its utility? yet believing ye rejoice greatly SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY

Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, WC IR 4RL. Telephone: 071-831 7723

Appointed Lecturers Harold Blackham, T F. Evans, Peter Heales, Richard Scorer, Barbara Smoker, Harry Stopes-Roe, . Officers Honorary Representative: Nicolas Walter. General Committee Chairman: Barbara Smoker. Treasurer: Don Liversedge. Editor, The Ethical Record.- Norman Bacrac. Librarian: Edwina Palmer. Registrar: Marion Granville. Secretary to the Society: Nina Khare. Tel: 071-831 7723 Hall Staff Manager:Stephen Norley. Tel: 071-242 8032 for Hall bookings. Head Caretaker:David Wright. Obituary We regret to announce the death of Bill Keable; a memorial meeting was held on 7 March at Conway Hall; and Professor Leopold Kohr, Conway Memorial Lecturer in 1970.

THOUGHTS ON EVOLUTION by Cynthia Blezard

A grey February afternoon, an exhausting shopping expedition completed (tinned cat- victual gets heavier as the years pass), a pot of Assam tea, music on the radio and my hand strays to the poetry section of the bookcase. The American poet, Edna Vincent Millay seems an appropriate match for Rachmaninov's Second Symphony.

Recollecting that Mike Howgate (of TV and Radio dinosaur fame — step aside Spielberg!) will shortly begin his evening course, "The Challenge of Creationism", and will, from the programme details, include further debate on those pre-historic creatures; I know that SPES members will enjoy being re-acquainted with one of Millay's poems (written in 1934) from the sonnet sequence "Epitaph for the Race of Man".

Cretaceous bird, your giant claw no lime From bark of holly bruised or mistletoe Could have arrested, could have held you so Through fifty million years of jostling time; Yet cradled with you in the catholic slime Of the young ocean's tepid lapse and flow Slumbered an agent, weak in embryo, Should grip you straitly, in its sinewy prime. What bright collision in the zodiac brews, What mischief dimples at the planet's core For shark, for python, for the dove that coos Under the leaves? — what frosty fate's in store For the warm blood of man, — man, out of ooze But lately crawled, and climbing up the shore?

NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY ANNUAL DINNER, 16 April 1994. Main Speaker: Peter Atkins, author of Creation Revisited at the Bonnington Hotel, from 7.00 pm. Ticketsg20 from NSS, 47 Theobalds Road, WCI.

LONDON STUDENT SKEPTICS AGM. 7.30 pm Monday 14 March, Room 3C, ULU, Malet Street, WC1. 2 Ethical Record. March, 1994 THE CONCEPT OF AN ETHICAL SOCIETY: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Peter neatest Based on a lecture to Sowh Place Ethical Society. 24 October, 1993

As we advance through our bicentennial year we become aware of decisions which have to be taken which will influence our future. One of these decisions is: What kind of society should SPES seek to become in the future? Such a decision is intimately connected with our choice of a new name.

I am sure that all our members would agree that our future should evolve from our past; that in the future we should remain an "ethical society". The question is: what precisely do the words "ethical society" mean? Which features of our past should we build on and which should we abandon? All the practical decisions about our future, our name, how we operate, the basis on which we seek new members, seem to me to hang on the way we conceive ourselves.

Radical and Religious Evolution Our past seems to span two historical strands which have come together to create the current : radical atheism and religious evolution.

Radical atheism embraces both philosophical/scientific opposition to religious belief such as that pioneered by T.H. Huxley, and the fight against religion as an instrument of political oppression and social injustice for which men like Bradlaugh and Holyoake are justly famed. All forms of radical atheism sought to bring about change by confrontation with believers and, more especially, with their institutions. Much of what we applaud in Britain today owes much to the battles fought by the radical aiheists.

Evolution from religion was necessarily a quieter process, with a much lower profile. It was a slow, but inevitable, development among thinking people with religious affiliations. It was characterised by the progressive recognition of the inadequacies of religious dogma coupled with a reluctance to surrender what were felt to be the points of personal religious beliefi a sense of identity and communion with others at a "spiritual" level. The outmoded concept of a "rational religious sentiment" makes very good sense in this context.

The two paths moved in similar directions and had much common ground, but there was antagonism too. Both would claim to be atheistic in the literal sense of living without reference to God who might intervene in human affairs. The radical atheists were also agnostic in T.H. Huxley's original and powerful sense of that word. The religious evolutionists, by contrast were reluctant to surrender concepts of metaphysical or reality.

Most of the ethical societies which emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were evolutionary in concept. They attracted a membership that wanted to take a step away from conventional religion rather than to oppose it.

The BHA came into being as a regrouping of surviving societies in the old . It therefore has closer historical ties with the religious evolutionists than the radical atheists. Its present position is a synthesis, combining elements of radical atheist phiolosophy with an ethical society ethos.

Ethical Record, March, 1994 3 SPES was in litct the first to adopt the style "Ethical Society" in 1888. The adoption of the new title, under the leadership of , represented the culmination of years of dissatisfaction with religious affiliation and a slow shedding of the trappings of religious . There was no discernable change in its corporate life at the time. The "congregation" clearly wanted to preserve all those things which made the Institute at South Place a centre for their personal development. The Sunday morning meetings were probably the most important part of the activity, but there were other lectures, the newly emerging chamber concerts to feed emotional and "spiritual" needs and social activities. It supplied to its members exactly the congenial cocial and intellectual environment that churches provided for their believing members.

The London Ethical Society At about the same time as SPIES came into existence, moves were afoot to create another "ethical society" based on quite different ideals. The plans came to fruition in 1891 with the establishment of the London Ethical Society, at University Hall, the Unitarian College in Gordon Square. The key figures wereJohn Muirhead (1855-1940) and Bernard Bosanquet (1848-1923). This new concept had a very specific object, namely to propagate the ethical philosophy of T.H. Green and FAL. Bradley.

These noted Oxford philosophers derived their position from the metaphysical philosophy of Hegel. They were particularly impressed with his principle of the evolution of the human spirit. It provided the bedrock on which their theoretical and practical were built. They eschewed conventional religious affiliations and laid claim to a rational approach to religious questions. Their new philosophical thrust exercised a powerful influence in many aspects of public life in the late Victorian years. To some it was unwelcome. Naturally, they were strongly opposed by academic radical atheists.

The London Ethical Society functioned as a learned society. Its meetings consisted mainly of philosophical discussion. It had an 'educational' role in that it sought both to promote an understanding of a specific approach to ethics and to raise the intellectual level of ethical discussion. In practice its 'educational' success was limited because it became a somewhat elitist society for philosophers and academics. In 1897 it changed into the London School of Ethics and but lasted for only two or three years in its new form.

The Society advocated involvement in social and ethical concerns. Bernard Bosanquet put the principles of the society into vigorous practice by engaging in charitable work in London. These were personal activities, not activities of the Society per se.

The London Ethical Society, like SPES, remained somewhat apart from the rest of the ethical movement. The reasons were very different. SPES lacked clearly defined objects and wanted rather to follow its traditional path, whereas the London Ethical Society had objects which were too specific and inflexible to participate in developments beyond itself.

Stanton Coil and Ethical Culture When Stanton Coit came to South Place, he was looking for opportunities to promote a distinctive 'ethical' way of life. He had been fired by 's Society for Ethical Culture in New York and felt that London was ready for a similar initiative. He had a number of ardent supporters in SPES but the majority resisted. Coit found that he had to work outside the Society. The ethical movement in Britain was very largely the creation of this one man.

4 Ethical Record, March, 1994 By about 1906. some thirty ethical societies had been formed in various parts of Britain, all looking to Stanton Coit as a leading figure, and each working for his ideals in its own way. They were independent, but expressed a measure of solidarity by forming links through the Union of Ethical Societies and later the Ethical Union.

Coit played a personal role in the founding of many of the ethical societies, but the one with which he is most associated, and where he remained in charge into his old age was the West London Ethical Society founded in 1892. This was also the Society which in its history, beliefs and practices most clearly expressed his ideals.

Coit was both a religious evolutionist and a philosopher. He wished to proselytise, to teach, and to demonstrate the practical moral worth of his views. Superficially there was much common ground between Coit and the philosophers at University Hall. For a short while there were friendly links between the London and West London societies. The contact showed, however, that they were on radically different courses, and it was soon abandoned.

The differences were both philosophical and practical. Coit was a Platonist, and found that he had little sympathy for the more fluid and subtle concepts derived from Hegel. He also objected to the elitism of the London society. Philosophical enlightenment was important, but only went so far. Coit wanted to be out and about meeting ordinary people, helping them and, where appropriate bringing them into the fold. He showed this side of his character while still at South Place when, in 1889, he founded Leighton Hall in Kentish Town. It provided living accommodation for workers in the district as well as offering a congenial social environment and opportunities to hear lectures and take part in discussions.

Coles "Ethical " ended by Harold Blackham Coit's Platonism began to feature ever more strongly in his conduct of affairs at the West London society. He had a firm belief in a "spiritual" reality, albeit one which was not expressed adequately in any conventional religious . He also saw a great in as a part of the fabric of a fulfilling life. In 1909 he persuaded the members of the West London society to buy a disused church as their own premises for ethical 'worship', though it was not until 1914 that they finally accepted the title of "Ethical ChurEh". The result seems to have been encouraging, at least initially, with good fellowship and cultural activities taking place alongside the more serious ritual. One young man who was married there (Frank Dickinson, later of Little Holland House, Carshalton) appears to have enjoyed the occasion. He describes the "" — presumably Coit — joining in the dancing after the ceremony.

Coit remained "minister" until his retirement. The second, and last, "minister" of the church was the young Harold Blackham. Under his leadership the Church reverted to the West London Ethical Scoiety, and he later played a prominent role in the evolution of the BHA.

No ethical societies as such remain from Stanton Coit's initiative; but Humanist Groups are the current equivalent. Their most usual role is to provide a local forum at which topics of importance to Humanists can be discussed. The discussions frequently centre upon socio-ethical problems, and practical action features in the discussion alongside a more theoretical appreciation. Unfortunately, the membership of Humanist Groups is generally rather small, so that they have little resource with which to produce an impact on their communities. Some do, however, engage in philanthropic work.

Ethical Record, March, 1994 5 Humanist groups continue some of the work started by Coit, even if only in token form.

A Distinctive Character South Place Ethical Society is the only organisation in the Humanist movement which retains the words "Ethical Society" as part of its name. Since it was never part of Stanton Coit's Ethical movement, and has remained very much within its own tradition, the significance of those words in its name is not clear. Nonetheless, members feel that they now give us a distinctive character within the Humanist movement, and a role which is different from the other organisations within it. Certainly it would be pointless to duplicate roles within the movement. If SPES merits a place in the future of the movement, now is the time to work out what that place should be. In practice, that means deciding what an "ethical society" is to be in the future.

My brief appraisal of the history of ethical societies provides a background against which we might consider our future role. I am in no way suggesting a return to the ideals or formulae of the past. Nonetheless the following concepts at least suggest themselves as possibilities to be developed in the ethos of our own times:

I. A learned society, studying and promoting ethical theory. Such an ethical society need not be dedicated to onc view of ethics, as was the case with the old London Ethical Society; it could range over all the theoretical options, keep abreast of developments and contribute to them.

A society dedicated to 'practical philosophy' The concern would be less with deciding ethical theory than with its application to major ethical problems. Such a society would not itself become involved with the practical tasks of implementing solutions, but would present and publicise rational proposals for action. The example of the philosopher Richard Hare might be studied in this context. He sought to use his analytical skills in the role of an "ethical consultant", advising committees and other bodies on the ethical implications of their decisions.

An 'educational' society committed to teaching the public about secular morals. This option differs from the preceding two by placing emphasis on methods of reaching and influencing the public at large. Activities would be less concerned with investigation and study; more with public relations and communicating ideas. Repeated "entry level" and more advanced courses might feature in the programme of events.

A society committed to social action. The aim would be to use secular ethical principles to achieve social advance. Activities would consist of practical action intended to demonstrate the value of what we believe in and to give leads for others to follow.

A society committed to political action. Activities would centre around campaigns for policies and stances to be adopted by government and other agencies with the power to act.

A safe haven for Humanists. The least adventurous,exciting and demanding option, but perhaps Humanists do need a haven when not pursuing more onerous activities.

The options suggested above are not, of course, mutually exclusive. The list probably does not exhaust the possibilities. We cannot, however, become all things to all

6 Ethical Record, March, 1994 Humanists. so that some decision is essential.

The choice we make might depend upon whether we see ourselves as a society with a mission. If so we will choose from the more outgoing options. The choice might not promise a future as long as our past. societies often collapse when the initial enthusiasm dies. They can, however, produce a memorable impact on events. That might be preferable to mere longevity.

The alternative would be to remain a little in the background. meeting important needs of those who use it. Such a society is more likely to endure provided that it adapts to changes. It is always possible, though. that it might find itself unexpectedly redundant.

Some olthe choices we might make could conflict with our charitable status. We ought to guard that status jealously torso long as it proves to be an asset to us. It would be folly, however, to allow its conditions to dominate us completely. If we have a future, we should make it the best future we can. Boldness and conviction might carry us further than submission to authority.

Our Interdependence and The options I have outlined are suggested bv the past, but not rooted in it. They will be realised, if at all, in the circumstances which will prevail in the future. Our Society must keep abreast of the times both in the subjects to which it addresses itself and in the ways in which it operates.

We have little difficulty in recognising how times have changed since the Society developed. Change has certainly played a part in deciding our fortune in recent decades. Ease of travel and the growth of the media have rendered manv individuals less dependent on their localities. Most people try to maintain connections in other parts of the country and the world and so have less time and energy for activities in their locality. Even if they do not travel, their interest is likely to be more widely dispersed, with more concern for global events. Computers and the media allow access to a wide spectrum of ideas and initiatives. Concentration upon a single interest or line of enquiry is becoming more difficult, and to many less acceptable.

All this is part of the development towards personal autonomy which has been so much sought after in the recent past. More and more people are able to pursue their own ends and interests without the need to depend upon and owe obligations to people they know personally. We are probably more interdependent than ever, but the interdependence is anonymous and formal; we pay our money, benefit from the service and need to have little regard for whoever provides it. I make no judgement about this. All changes involve gains and losses. What it is important for us to understand is that each individual has only so much time, attention and energy to give. IS they are given in one quarter they must be withheld from another.

We cannot even predict on the basis of present trends, for we do not know whether they will continue, whether there will be reactions again them, or whether they will be overtaken by as yet unforeseen developments. As we think about the future, we need to be flexible and responsive in our thinking. Our past achievements are neither a guarantee nor a formula for success in the future.

It must be said that we do not at present have the resources or the membership to realise any of the options adequately (except, possibly, the last). They are offered only as

Ethical Record, March, 1994 7 concepts of what an "ethical society" might be. However. unless SPES is to decline into ultimate oblivion, we have to create a living concept of the future among the current membership. Only then would we have the right to ask others to join with us, or a realistic hope that they will do so.

NOTE For a comprehensive survey of the ethical movement, see The Brittsh Ethical .Vocielies (1986) by Ian MacK Mop.

GOD AND BERNARD SHAW

Barbara Smoker (SPITS Appointed Lecturer and Secretary of the Shaw SocieW Summarr of a ',Centre 10 /he Ethical Society, 20 February 1994

Most of von would probably call Shaw an atheist: but he was not an atheist. Sometimes he did call himself an atheist, but only when he was defending atheists against Christians —as. for instance, when he sided with Charles Bradlaugh in his fight Over the parliamentary oath. But Shaw was essentially a mvstic. and when addressing atheists he denied that he shared their philosophy.

In a long open letter to the Freethinker. published on its front page on I st November. 1908. GBS wrote:-

I cannot force any man to use my term Life Force to denote what he calls God: nut ir we both mean the same thing, and if the neo-Darwinian atheist means something profoundly different, I had better be taken to be on the theologian's side against the atheist.

An Abstract God Wha t Shaw meant by the word God was not, of' course, a personal supreme being like Jehovah, nor a god incarnate like Jesus. but an abstract god that was actually the creative urge in all organic matter. particularly in intelligent beings.

Asked by a journalist if his god had a conscious purpose. Shaw replied "He is a purpose. and nothing else."

This god:in which Shaw expressed belief, he called the Life Force—a direct translation from the French elan vital coined by Henri Bergson. though they seem to have thought of it independently. as Shaw used it in Man and Superman—which is basically an exposition of it — and that was published in 1903, while Bergson's book, Creative Evolution did not appear until I 907. The Life Force is a de-personalised god, rather like that of the modern or post-modern theologians. such as Don Cupitt or the late John Robinson.

Like these theologians, however, he somewhat confuses the issue by using the personal pronouns he, his, him, when calling it God, though he wou/d use the word it when calling the same concept the Life Force.

He was. of course, hardly a Christian in the traditional sense, and his u»orthodox religious views meant that he was often accused of blasphemy. In 1909 his delightful little Wild West play, The Shewing-up of Blanco Posner, in which the hero refers to God as "a sly one...a mean one", was refused a licence by the Lord Cha mberlain on grounds of blasphemy.

Ethical Record. March, 1994 As an example of the tone of Shaw's references to Jesus, he wrote in the Preface to Androeles and the Lion:-

You may deny the divinity ofJesus: you may doubt whether he ever existed; you may reject for , Mahometanism, Shintoism, or , and the iconolaters, placidly contemptuous, will only classify you as a freethinker or a heathen. But if you venture to wonder how Christ would have looked if he had shaved and had his hair cut, or what size in shoes he took, or whether he swore when he stood on a nail in the carpenter's shop, or could not button his robe when he was in a hurry, or whether he laughed over the repartees by which he baffled the priests when they tried to trap him into sedition and blasphemy, or even if you tell any part of his story in the vivid terms of modern colloquial slang, you will produce an extraordinary dismay and horror among the iconolaters.

Self- Shaw was deeply impressed by irrational self-sacrifice, and this is a major theme in several of his plays, including The Devil's Androcles and the Lion. and The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet. But he firmly rejected the dreary, moralistic pietism and hypocrisy of most of the churchgoers of his day, and his view of the cruel of vicarious atonement is clear enough in his word "Crosstianity".

He also rejected the certitude that is characteristic of so much religious belief. In a speech that he made at a dinner held at the Savoy Hotel in 1930, in honour of Einstein, he spoke up. for once, in favour of science at the expense of religion, and said, with superb irony:-

No‘v religion is always right; religion solves every problem, and thereby abolishes problems from the universe: because when you have solved the prohlem. the problem no longer exists. Religion gives us certainty, stability. peace: it gives us absolutes, which we so long for: it protects us against that progress which we all dread, almost more than anything else. Science is the very opposite of that: science is always wrong. and science never solves a problem without raising ten more problems.

However, Shaw felt drawn emotionally to those who sincerely dedicated their lives to religion. Hence his long passionate correspondence with the Benedictine Dame Laurentia McLachlan, who called him Brother Bernard. His wife, Charlotte, wrote in a letter to Nancy Astor in 1929, "He went off this morning with Sydney Cockerell — who is as bad as himself — to flirt with an 'enclosed' nun at Stanbrook Abbey."

It was a chaste flirtation, as most of Shaw's flirtations were; even his marriage. FOr puritanism was part of his religious character, as is evident both in his life and his writings — though, paradoxically, the drab, sanctimonious puritanism of his Victorian youth was one of his most frequent targets. That sort of puritanism was life-denying, while Shaw's was life-enhancing. He was a personification of the lively, bouncing extravagance that ushered in the new century.

At the same time, he loved the poetic English of the King James Bible and of John Bunyan, and in his creative writing he often chose to use theological Christian terms, including the word God, largely for the sake of their evocative associations.

In The Doctor's Dilemma, in the only death scene that Shaw wrote for the stage, he puts

Ethical Record, March, 1994 9 into the mouth of Dubedat an artist's version of the creed that is an avowal of the religion of beauty and is more than mere pastiche.

Idealism However, Shaw's use of theological language held meaning for him as well as resonance. He was basically anti-materialist and anti-rationalist. As G.K. Chesterton wrote of Shaw's creed: "If reason says that life is irrational, life must be content to reply that reason is lifeless; life is the primary thing, and if reason impedes it, then reason must be trodden down into the mire amid the most abject superstitions."

Shaw's temperament was deeply religious, in a mystical sense, and though he backed the scientist Einstein against the fundamentalist religionists who opposed science, Shaw really backed and ultimate purpose against scientific knowledge.

He held fast to a belief in progress towards some ultimate purpose in the universe; some sort of reality behind reality. In effect a religion, it goes back to the ancient Greeks and beyond. At the time that Shaw took it up, it was generally known as Vitalism, but later he used Bergson's new name for it: Creative Evolution.

Though in secular matters Shaw was a down-to-earth realist and pragmatist, his philosophy was that of an idealist. It is a philosophy that is surely incapable of intellectual clarity. Though Shaw could make it enjoyably acceptable through his infectious exuberance on the printed page and in the theatre, it does not, to my mind, bear close intellectual study.

Declaring his belief in an impersonal, yet purposive Life Force, Shaw nevertheless describes this allegedly impersonal force in terms of personal attributes of will and intent, seeking Dut means related to ends. But he did stop short of such divine attributes as omnipotence and perfection. As a creative artist himself, who could never have done less than his best, he asked how the Life Force could allow and to mar the work of its creation. Shaw provided the answer: the Life Force must be experimenting.

In theological terms, Shaw's god is good, but not perfect; powerful, but not all- powerful. Claiming that he had solved the problem of evil by positing a fallible god, Shaw naively invites us to perceive evil as having been brought into the world by an entirely benevolent designer that has not as yet discovered how to carry out its benevolent intention.

Darwinism Th us, Shaw's god is dot static, but is seen to be still evolving and operating through trial and error — but not through the Darwinian mechanism of Natural Selection.

It was in Shaw's childhood that Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, and in his youth The Descent of Man. At first the young Shaw was inclined to accept the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection, seeing it as part of the theory of the inevitability of gradualness, on which the was founded; but then he realised that in the biological sphere it would leave no room for design and purpose. Following Samuel Butler — who protested that Darwin had banished mind from the universe — Shaw then firmly rejected Darwinism in favour of the earlier ideas of evolution put forward by Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, and by the French naturalist Lamarck, who had based evolution on the inner, unconscious, creative urge and on the inheritance of acquired characteristics, rather than on chance genetic mutations that occasionally

I 0 Ethicdl Record, March, 1994 happen to have survival value in the prevailing conditions. Three years after Shaw's death, the discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule consolidated the victory of Natural Selection.

Creative Evolution is not a belief system that 1 can myself defend, but there have been many members of this Society who have clung to it, and some still do. An example was the late Fenner I3rockway. one of our Appointed Lecturers. He liked to recall a meeting that, as a young man about eiehty years ago, he had had with Shaw, whom he asked. " How would you advise we young people to set about living our lives?" Shaw's reply was: "Find out what the Life Force is aiming at, and help it along." It sounds almost Hegelian. To Fenner it meant something. and it served as his guide throughout his lone, fruitful life.

To my mind, however, it has no meaning. How can one find out about anything so nebulous? And how can there be will and purpose in the absence of a living brain? Besides, the most resilient of all cells are cancer cells.

Rapid advances of biological knowledge in our time leave no necessity for the idea of an extra principle of life to explain living processes and the struggle for genetic survival; nor the culmination of that struggle in human desires.

DANTE AND THE PURPOSE OF LIFE

Diane Webb* Lecture to the Ethical Society. 26 February 1994

Although Dame is indelibly identified as the author of the Divine Comedy, the epithet "Divine" was first attached to the Comedy in 1555,230 years after the completion of the work. To Dante it was the Comedy, although he does refer to it as "my sacred poem". The tendency to regard it as a sort of encyclopedia of Catholic doctrine has been contradicted by scholars who have seen it as an essentially personal composition. Some of Dante's contemporaries might have been surprised to see this unsparing critic of the church of his day held up as the perfection of . His treatise on Monarckv was condemned by the papacy and publicly burned in 1329, and placed upon the Index of Prohibited Books in 1554.

Critism of the church was abundant in Dante's time, and must be distinguished from the ability to unthink God, which marks European intellectual culture in and after the eighteenth century. But this depended upon earlier intellectual changes which have a prehistory. Blood spilt in the name of religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may have persuaded some people that the claims of religion had to be redefined. But still Catholicism and proclaimed competing universal truths, and earlier there was only, in western Europe, the one. Dante was undeniably a religious thinker. Is it not perverse to claim for him a place in the prehistory, if not the history proper, of the secularisation of the European mind?

Life and Works Dante was born in 1265 into an old, but not rich, Florentine family. The first landmark in his life was the death of Beatrice, who, whether she was a real Florentine girl or a spiritualised ideal, remained the lodestar of Dante's inner life. After her death Dante consoled himself with other women and with the study of philosophy. It was possible to get acquainted with new intellectual developments by frequenting the schools of the *or King's College, London

Ethical Record, March. 1991 I I Franciscan and Dominican friars in Florence. In 1295 Dante decided to enter into political life, and in 1300 held high office. Later he saw his life as having taken a wrong turning at this time. In late 1302 he and others were sent into perpetual exile after a coup engineered by the pope, whose policies they had opposed, and his sympathisers.

Most of his works belong to the years in exile. In about 1308 he left unfinished a treatise on philosophy, which was also a manifesto, written in Italian, for a lay audience not literate in Latin. The subject of the vernacular tongue interested him throughout his life. Language was the medium not only of and culture. but of all social contact; it was a human construct and like humanity itself changed over time, as the soul of Adam himself, in Paradise, instructs him.

Late in 1309, when he was probably already at work on the Infiyno. Dante learned of the election of a new Holy Roman Emperor. Henry of Luxembourg and of his imminent arrival in Italy. Dante pinned his hopes of a return to Florence on the Emperor's progress. hailing hint as the bringer of peace and to the peninsula. But Pope Clement V withdrew his support from Henry, to Dante's enraged disgust. in the summer of 1313. shortly before Henry in fact died. It is uncertain when Dante wrote his Latin treatise On Monarchy a philosophical justification of imperial power. Between 1314 and his own death in 1321, he composed Purgatorio and Paradiso, bringing his carefully planned masterpiece to a triumphant conclusion.

The Papal World View The church, with the pope at its head, had adumbrated a unitary theory of society. Christians formed a single society whose purpose was the pursuit of eternal salvation. A body with more than one head was a monstrosity, and the head of this society must be the vicar of St. Peter, to whom Christ had entrusted the direction of his Church. For a century, the popes had tended increasingly to call themselves vicars not merely of St. Peter but of Christ. In their own view, the popes could determine the limits of the powers of kings. even declare them deposed and their subjects released from their duty of obedience: uphold the immunity of the and church property from their jurisdiction; and use the weapon of crusade against any person or persons whom they judged to be enemies of the church. All other sources of authority were in principle absorbed into one single obedience to the church and its earthly head.

The doctrine was proclaimed in a bull issued in 1302 by a pope Dante cordially detested, Boniface VIII, who was engaged in a furious quarrel with the king of France, Philip IV, whom Dante also cordially detested. The mere earthly king was, it became clear, the more powerful in material terms and the better equipped to get his own way. Such brute facts had an obvious importance in undermining the papal world-view, but there were intellectual solvents at work as well.

The Reception of Dante was born in the century which felt the intellectual impact of the translation into Latin of Aristotle's philosophical writings, including the Ethics and the Politics. Most Greek literature was unknown, but, with the Bible and the Church Fathers, a substantial number of Latin classics provided the foundations of medieval learning. The fundamental problems that the pagan classics posed for Christian thinkers were already familiar. Did they offer anything of value to Christians? How was what truth there was in them to be distinguished from the falsehood?

A debate on these issues convulsed the university of Paris in the years of Dante's

12 Ethical Record, March. 1991 childhood. Its long-term legacy was a new intellectual climate. A working distinction was made between two types of subject-matter and their appropriate vocabularies. The business of was to guide man to salvation: its concerns were other-wordly. The concerns of philosophy were this-wordly; the language of politics, for example, had reference only to the life of man on earth.

Aristotle had described the state, the polls, as a necessity, which provided the conditions in which man could fulfil his potential as a rational and ethical being. That man was a social animal because he was a weak creature who could not supply his material needs without joining together with other men for mutual aid and protection, was a commonplace of medieval political thought. That the more powerful obviously ruled over the less was thought to be a consequence of sin, the loss of the primitive equality intended by God. For Aristotle, man was a political animal, a being with varying endowments of skill, strength and reason, who must dwell in a differentiated society in which some ruled, and others obeyed or participated to a limited degree in debate and decision-making. The state was natural.

Nothing was entirely new. The idea that nature was itself God's creation and the material in which he worked was a familiar one. Kings had never been eager to accept that the church had a veto over their actions or that the church constituted a body of men and property that they were not free to exploit as they wished. They had always claimed that they derived their power directly from God. Had not Christ himself said "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" and St. Paul, "Let every soul be subject to the higher powers, for the power that be are of God"? of coronation and anointing declared that royal power was divinely sanctioned, but looked uncomfortably dependent on the church. Now unmistakable possibilities were opened up to propagandists who wanted an up-to-the-minute rationalisation of the independent claims to authority of say, a Philip IV of France. Whatever the form of government, it could fulfil the fundamental requirements laid down by Aristotle. Governments bore the stamp of nature; they did not need to bear the seal of approval of an institution whose purposes lay beyond this life in the world to come.

Furthermore, Aristotle had described the state, before Christ. The Roman Empire had originated before Christ and exercised authority over much of the known world. Might this not of itself prove that political authority was not merely derivative from the authority of the Church? "There were kings in France", said one royal apologist, "before there were priests."

Life on Earth Intellectual shifts did not of themselves change reality; nor was the secularisation of the. nineteenth and twentieth centuries just an intellectual phenomenon.

In 1300, there were more people in Europe than, perhaps, there had ever been. A still overwhelmingly agricultural economy, powered by an unprecedentedly large labour force, had for two centuries been producing surpluses which made possible the growth of cities and of crafts other than agriculture. Mills of all sorts dotted Europe. The first accurate sea-charts appeared in the Mediterranean, reflecting the use of the compass in navigation. When Dante was about 20, a Tuscan Dominican friar invented spectacles for the correction of long sight. Dante himself refers to a clockwork mechanism, and in depicting the landscape of Hell used images of the dykes which held back the sea from the reclaimed lands of Flanders and the vats of boiling pitch with which the workers in the Arsenal at Venice caulked ships during the winter.

Ethical Record. March, 1994 13 Life was short and harsh (dying of fever at the age of 56, Dante didn't do too badly), but this was a society in which practical men were managing life on earth with a growing technical and material sophistication. The rewards were enticing, perhaps distracting some from the demands of salvation, and making them impatient of the strictures of the church. The Church itself was the greatest of European landowners and inextricably involved in an increasingly monetarised economy. Cupidity — which covered not only greed for money, avarice, but also greed for land and power — was for Dante the master-vice, and the Church led the way in cupidity.

Dante's Dualism Dante's world-view was a highly personal amalgam. Man was uniquely positioned between the angels and the brute beasts. This was not an original observation; but Dante also believed that the life lived on earth by man in his corruptible body had its own purposes which were conceptually distinct from the heavenly destiny of his immortal part, the soul. He declares in the Monarchy:

"Unerring Providence has therefore set man to attain two goals: the first is in this life, which consists in the exercise of his own powers and is typified by the earthly paradise: the second is the happiness of eternal life, which consists in the enjoyment of the divine countenance (which man cannot attain to of his own power but only by the aid of the divine illumination) and is typified by the heavenly paradise."

These ends are attained by different means: the first by the exercise of the moral and intellectual , the second by spiritual teachings and the exercise of the spiritual virtues — faith, hope and charity. Furthermore, Dante explained,

"Two guides have been appointed for man to lead him to his twofold goal: there is the Supreme Pontiff who is to lead mankind to eternal life in accordance with revelation; and there is the Emperor who, in accordance with philosophical teaching, is to lead mankind to temporal happiness."

Dante believed as passionately as any papalist in a single universal human society. The fulfilment of the intellectual potential of the species, which he saw as the purpose of earthly life, was a collective, not an individual enterprise. The Emperor's role was to guarantee for all men the peace and justice that were the essential preconditions of this fufilment; the popes should aid, not obstruct, him in the performance of his duty. Perhaps the greatest oddity of Dante's world-view was his unquestioning acceptance of the continuity of the so-called Roman Empire of his own day with the Empire whose authority, he believed, had been validated by Christ's birth and death as a subject of Rome.

But how was the individual baptised and believing Christian to relate his life on earth to his duty to prepare himself for the life eternal? At the end of the Monarchy Dante concedes that a true Emperor will defer to a true Pope, "since in a certain fashion our temporal happiness is subordinate to our eternal happiness." So convinced a Christian could in the last resort scarcely think otherwise. The junction between the earthly and heavenly in the life of the individual soul is dramatised at the end of the Purgatorio. The soul has been purged of the sins it has committed as a result of failing to practise the moral virtues (for example, intemperance results in the sins of gluttony and lust) and restored to the condition of natural exemplified by Adam and Eve before the Fall. In the earthly paradise on the summit of Mount Purgatory Virgil, who has guided Dante up to this

14 Ethical Record, March, 1994 point, symbolising the moral and intellectual virtues possible to natural man, vanishes: and Beatrice appears to Dante, robed in white, green and red, the colours of Faith, Hope and Charity. Representing revealed truth, she then guides him to the heights of heaven. Still in Paradise the Empire is hymned as the instrument of Providence, while St. Peter, glowing red with anger, denounces his successors for their betrayal of the papal ideal. Still in Paradise the ordered life of man on earth as a member of a functionally differentiated and ordered society is upheld on the authority of Aristotle.

Pagans and Christians Dante registers the significance of the classical past in many striking ways. Even more than Aristotle, Virgil was his master, as poetic stylist and as prophet of the Roman Empire. With Aristotle, "the master of those who know", and the other sages and heroes of antiquity, Virgil dwells eternally in Limbo — a not unpleasant antechamber to Hell, which was Dante's own invention — spared from torment. The seashore at the foot of Mount Purgatory is patrolled by the irascible Cato, who as a suicide might have been expected to be punished in Hell — but is in fact lauded for his willingness to die rather than sacrifice . Cato had exercised the which. Beatrice tells Dante, is the greatest of God's gifts to man.

But the natural man can only be perfected if he uses his free will to some purpose. In Hell Ulysses tells how he set out on a last journey with a few remaining companions, exhorting them to remember that they were not brute beasts, but born to pursue knowledge and virtue. Ulysses however has no idea where he is going. His ship founders in uncharted southern seas within sight of an immensely high mountain. Neither he nor the first-time reader knows it, but this is the Mount of Purgatory.

Dante was a profound religious thinker. But he has an obvious kinship with religious thinkers of much more recent date who have seen the church or churches of their days the most dangerous enemies of spiritual awareness, and who in effect have invoked God against the Church. A number of recent scholars have stressed that as the author of the Comedy he intended to be understood not as the creator of mere poetic fictions, but as a visionary. It is of some interest that another unquestioned visionary who lived in a period of the dissolution of traditional values, William Blake. was fascinated by Dante.

SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Registered Charity No. 251396 Founded in 1793, the Society is a progressive movement whose aim is the study and dissemination of ethical principles based on humanism, and the culthation of a rational and humane way of life. We invite to membership all those who reject supernatural and find themselves in sympathy with our views. At Conway Hall there are opportunities for participation in many kinds of cultural activities, including discussions, lectures, concerts and socials. The Sunday Evening Chamber Music Concerts founded in 1887 have achieved international renown. A reference and lending library is available, and all members receive the Society's journal. The Ethic& Record eleven tittles a year. Memorial and Services are available to members. Minimum subscriptions are lo p.a. Please apply to the Secretary at Conway Hall for Membership Application forms.

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Ethical Record, March, 1994 15 PROGRAMME OF EVENTS AT THE ETHICAL SOCIETY The Library, Conway Hall Humanist Centre, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, WC1 Tel: 071-831 7723 MARCH 1994 Tuesday 8 6.30 pm THE CHALLENGE OF CREATIONISM. Mike Hortgate's first of four weekly Lecture-discussions. Fee LI (inc. tea) per evening. Lecture I: A beginners guide to the history of modem 'scientific' creationism Sunday 13 11.00 am EGGS, EMBRYOS AND ETHICS. Dr. Jack Cohen, Reproductive Endocrinologist. 3.00 pm L. RON HUBBARD AND . Jon Atack. Tuesday 15 6.30 pm CHALLENGE OF CREATIONISM. Lecture 2: Untying the Creationist Gordian Knot. Attacking where the enemy is weakest. From Omphalos to Arkology. Thursday 17 7.30 pm WHAT USE IS THE MONARCHY TODAY? asks Prof. Stephen Haseler, author of The End of ihe House of Windsor. (arranged by the Central London Humanists and SPES). Sunday 20 11.00 am CHAOS THEORY — IS IT ANY USE? Prof. Richard Scorer. 3.00 pm ON THE ROAD TO CONWAY HALL — OR CAN ONE BE A CONVERT TO HUMANISM? Jennifer Jeynes & Anne Toy illustrate this with the help of a video of the recent Kilroy TV programme on Conversion. Tuesday 22 6.30 pm THE CHALLENGE OF CREATIONISM. Lecture 3: Young Earth Creationism: The age of the Earth and the impossible position of the Seventh Day Adventists. Thursday 24 7.00 pm NEIL KINNOCK, M.P. answers questions from the audience. Sunday 27 11.00 am ARE BRITISH INSTITUTIONS DYING? asks Geoff Mulgan, Director of the think-tank DEMOS. 3.00 pm How Natural Selection works in Humans. David Wedgwood. Tuesday 29 6.30 pm THE CHALLENGE OF CREATIONISM. Lecture 4: Duane T. Gish and the Dinosaurs. A creationist attempts to make dinosaurs and Man live happily together — nothing to do with 'Jurassic Park'. APRIL Sunday 3 No meetings. Sunday 10 HATO am BACK TO BASICS WITH TROLLOPE OR THE WAY WE LIVE NOW. T.F. Evans. 3.00 pm Debate: "That Prison is not a Cure for Social Ilk" Thursday 14 7.00 pm 'A WICKED AND SEDITIOUS PERSON' a dramatisation of the life and times of TOM PAINE by Martin Green, performed by Alan Penn. Tickets £3 from the SPES office.

SOUTH PLACE SUNDAY CONCERTS — 103rd SEASON 6.30 pm at Conway Hall. Tickets £3. Tel: 081-445 9958 for full programme. Registered Charity 2513% Published by the South Place Ethical Society. Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square. London WC1R 4RL A.. I er: ro.4.....A I a I CA_1141LEM. N/ Otkg