Our fabulist warns "those who in quarrels interpose" of the fate which
is probably in store for them; and, in venturing to place myself between
so powerful a controversialist as Mr. Gladstone and the eminent divine
whom he assaults with such vigour in the last number of this Review, [1]
I am fully aware that I run great danger of verifying Gay's prediction.
Moreover, it is quite possible that my zeal in offering aid to a
combatant so extremely well able to take care of himself as M. Reville
may be thought to savour of indiscretion.
Two considerations, however, have led me to face the double risk. The
one is that though, in my judgment, M. Reville is wholly in the right
in that part of the controversy to which I propose to restrict my
observations, nevertheless he, as a foreigner, has very little chance of
making the truth prevail with Englishmen against the authority and the
dialectic skill of the greatest master of persuasive rhetoric among
English-speaking men of our time. As the Queen's proctor intervenes, in
certain cases, between two litigants in the interests of justice, so
it may be permitted me to interpose as a sort of uncommissioned science
proctor. My second excuse for my meddlesomeness is, that important
questions of natural science--respecting which neither of the combatants
professes to speak as an expert--are involved in the controversy; and
I think it is desirable that the public should know what it is that
natural science really has to say on these topics, to the best belief
of one who has been a diligent student of natural science for the last
forty years.
The original "Prolegomenes de l'Histoire des Religions" has not come in
my way; but I have read the translation of M. Reville's work, published
in England under the auspices of Professor Max Muller, with very great
interest. It puts more fairly and clearly than any book previously known
to me, the view which a man of strong religious feelings, but at the
same time possessing the information and the reasoning power which
enable him to estimate the strength of scientific methods of inquiry and
the weight of scientific truth, may be expected to take of the relation
between science and religion.
In the chapter on "The Primitive Revelation" the scientific worth of
the account of the Creation given in the book of Genesis is estimated
in terms which are as unquestionably respectful as, in my judgment, they
are just; and, at the end of the chapter on "Primitive Tradition," M.
Reville appraises the value of pentateuchal anthropology in a way which
I should have thought sure of enlisting the assent of all competent
judges, even if it were extended to the whole of the cosmogony and
biology of Genesis:--
As, however, the original traditions of nations sprang up in an
epoch less remote than our own from the primitive life, it is
indispensable to consult them, to compare them, and to associate
them with other sources of information which are available.
From this point of view, the traditions recorded in Genesis
possess, in addition to their own peculiar charm, a value of the
highest order; but we cannot ultimately see in them more than a
venerable fragment, well-deserving attention, of the great
genesis of mankind.
Mr. Gladstone is of a different mind. He dissents from M. Reville's
views respecting the proper estimation of the pentateuchal traditions,
no less than he does from his interpretation of those Homeric myths
which have been the object of his own special study. In the latter case,
Mr. Gladstone tells M. Reville that he is wrong on his own authority,
to which, in such a matter, all will pay due respect: in the former, he
affirms himself to be "wholly destitute of that kind of knowledge which
carries authority," and his rebuke is administered in the name and by
the authority of natural science.