CHAPTER VII.

Mr. Spencer's agnosticism--His theory of the origin of religious

beliefs--The mode in which mankind are to lose the consciousness of a

personal God.

In a former chapter I had occasion to advert to one of Mr. Spencer's

favorite dogmas, namely, the impossibility of an intellectual

conception of creation, which he thinks is made apparent by the

statement that one term of the relation, the thing created, is

something, and the other term of the relation, that out of which the

thing was created, is nothing. When I wrote the chapter in which I

commented on this extraordinary kind of logic, I felt a little disposed

to apologize to my readers for answering it. I had not then met with

the fuller statement of Mr. Spencer's peculiar agnosticism which I

am now about to quote. The controversy recently carried on between

Mr. Spencer and Mr. Harrison was closed by the former in an article

entitled "Last Words about Agnosticism and the Religion of Humanity,"

which appeared in the "Nineteenth Century" for November, 1884. This

drew my attention to a passage in Mr. Spencer's "Essays," which he

has reproduced in his late article for the purpose of repeating his

position against some of the misrepresentations which he complains

had been made of it by Mr. Harrison. I have nothing to do with the

controversy between these two gentlemen, or with any of the arguments

which Mr. Spencer's opponents, be they churchmen or laymen, have

employed against him. I take the passage as he has quoted it from his

"Essays," for the purpose of making his agnostic views the subject of

a more extended commentary than I had bestowed on them in my previous

chapter, in writing which I had before me only a passage contained in

his "Biology." There is no occasion, however, for altering a word of

what I had previously written; for, on a comparison of his position as

given in the "Biology," and that given in the "Essays," it appears very

plainly that I had not misunderstood him. But as the passage in the

"Essays" displays much more fully the peculiar reasoning by which he

supports his agnostic philosophy, I should not do justice to him or to

my readers if I did not notice it. The passage is the following:

Always implying terms in relation, thought implies that both terms

shall be more or less defined; and as fast as one of them becomes

indefinite, the relation also becomes indefinite, and thought becomes

indistinct. Take the case of magnitudes. I think of an inch; I think

of a foot; and having tolerably definite ideas of the two, I have a

tolerably definite idea of the relation between them. I substitute

for the foot a mile; and being able to represent a mile much less

definitely, I can not so definitely think of the relation between an

inch and a mile--can not distinguish it in thought from the relation

between an inch and two miles, as clearly as I can distinguish in

thought the relation between an inch and one foot from the relation

between an inch and two feet. And now, if I endeavor to think of the

relation between an inch and the 240,000 miles from here to the moon,

or the relation between an inch and the 92,000,000 miles from here to

the sun, I find that while these distances, practically inconceivable,

have become little more than numbers to which I frame no answering

ideas, so too has the relation between an inch and either of them

become practically inconceivable. Now this partial failure in the

process of forming thought relations, which happens even with finite

magnitudes when one of them is immense, passes into complete failure

when one of them can not be brought within any limits. The relation

itself becomes unrepresentable at the same time that one of its terms

becomes unrepresentable. Nevertheless, in this case it is to be

observed that the almost blank form of relation preserves a certain

qualitative character. It is still distinguishable as belonging to

the consciousness of extensions, not to the consciousnesses of forces

or durations; and in so far remains a vaguely identifiable relation.

But now suppose we ask what happens when one term of the relation has

not simply magnitude having no known limits, and duration of which

neither beginning nor end is cognizable, but is also an existence

not to be defined? In other words, what must happen if one term

of the relation is not only quantitatively but also qualitatively

unrepresentable? Clearly in this case the relation does not simply

cease to be thinkable except as a relation of a certain class, but it

lapses completely. When one of the terms becomes wholly unknowable,

the law of thought can no longer be conformed to; both because one

term can not be present, and because relation itself can not be framed

... In brief, then, to Mr. Martineau's objection I reply that the

insoluble difficulties he indicates arise here, as elsewhere, when

thought is applied to that which transcends the sphere of thought;

and that just as when we try to pass beyond phenomenal manifestations

to the Ultimate Reality manifested, we have to symbolize it out of

such materials as the phenomenal manifestations give us; so we have

simultaneously to symbolize the connection between this Ultimate

Reality and its manifestations, as somehow allied to the connections

among the phenomenal manifestations themselves. The truth Mr.

Martineau's criticism adumbrates is that the law of thought fails

where the elements of thought fail; and this is a conclusion quite

conformable to the general view I defend. Still holding the validity

of my argument against Hamilton and Mansel, that in pursuance of

their own principle the Relative is not at all thinkable _as such_,

unless in contradiction to some existence posited, however vaguely,

as the other term of a relation, conceived however indefinitely; it

is consistent on my part to hold that in this effort which thought

inevitably makes to pass beyond its sphere, not only does the product

of thought become a dim symbol of a product, but the process of

thought becomes a dim symbol of a process; and hence any predicament

inferable from the law of thought can not be asserted.[93]

In judging of the soundness of this reasoning, the first thing to be

done is to determine what we are thinking about when we compare the

finite with the infinite, or when, to put it as Mr. Spencer does, we

have two terms of a relation, one of which is a thing open to the

observation of our senses, and the other of which lies beyond them.

In this case, does all thinkable relation lapse, or fade into an

impossible conception, when we undertake to conceive of that which

lies beyond what we see? Does the relation between the two supposed

terms cease to be a continuously existing relation? Or, to quote Mr.

Spencer's words, is it true that "insoluble difficulties arise, because

thought is applied to that which is beyond the sphere of thought"?

We must be careful to distinguish between the "insoluble difficulties"

which arise out of the imperfection of language adequate to give

a formal description of a thing, and which may lead us to suppose

ourselves involved in contradictions, and the "insoluble difficulties"

which may arise out of the impossibility of having a mental

representation of that thing. The latter is the only difficulty about

which we need concern ourselves; and the best way to test the supposed

difficulty as an insuperable one is to take one of the illustrations

used by Mr. Spencer--the idea of space. We measure a foot or a mile

of space, and then compare it with the idea of endless or (to us)

immeasurable space. Figures afford us the means of expressing in

language a certain definite number of miles of space, but, beyond the

highest figures of which we have definite forms of expression, we can

not go in definite descriptions of space. But when we have exhausted

all the expressions of number that our arithmetical forms of expression

admit, does it follow that we can not conceive of extension beyond

that number? On the contrary, the very measure which we are able to

express in figures, to a certain extent, in regard both to space and

time, gives us the idea of space and time, and shows us that there

must be an extension of both beyond and forever beyond the portion of

either which language will allow us definitely to describe. This to

us immeasurable and indescribable extent of space or time becomes a

thinkable idea, because we are all the while thinking of space or time,

whether it is a measurable portion of either, or an immeasurable and

endless existence.

Take as another illustration a purely moral idea. We know that there is

a moral quality which we call goodness; an attribute of human character

of which we have a clear conception, and which we can describe because

it is manifested to us in human lives. When we speak of the moral

phenomena to which we give the name of goodness, or virtue, all mankind

know what is meant. But human virtue is imperfect, limited, measurable.

It may be idealized into something approaching to perfection, but the

ideal character thus drawn must fall short of perfection if it is made

consistent with human nature. But from human character we derive the

idea of goodness or virtue as a thinkable idea. Is the idea of absolute

perfection of this quality any less thinkable? Absolute perfection

of moral character can not be described by a definition; but, as we

know that a measurable goodness which we can describe exists, wherein

consists the failure or lapse of a thinkable relation, when we reason

from that which exists in a measurable degree to that which transcends

all degree? We are all the while thinking of goodness or virtue,

whether we think of it as limited and imperfect, or as unlimited and

perfect. Take another quality--power. We know that there is such a

quality as power, wielded by human beings, and guided by their will.

But human power is limited, measurable, and therefore finite. When we

reason from the finite power of man to the idea of an infinite and

immeasurable power held and wielded by another being, do we strive to

conceive of something that is unthinkable because we can only say that

the power of that other being is without limit? We are all the while

thinking of power, of the quality of power, whether we think of it

as measurable or immeasurable. All qualities and all faculties which

are manifested to us in a limited degree, when we conceive of them

as unlimited and without degree, become proofs that what exists in a

measurable and limited degree may exist without limitation and without

degree. Although we can only define the finite, the infinite is not

the less a subject of true thinking, because, whether we think of the

finite or the infinite, what we are all the time thinking about is the

quality of power, and nothing else. In the one case it is limited, in

the other it is unlimited, but it is all the time the quality itself of

which we are thinking.[94]

But now let us attend a little more closely to Mr. Spencer's grand

objection to this mode of thinking. The reader will be careful to note

that what he needs to ascertain is, whether Mr. Spencer's agnostic

theory is really sound. To test it, he must inquire just where the

supposed difficulty lies. Translated into other language, Mr. Spencer's

position is this: In order to keep within the sphere of possible

thought, there must be a definite relation between any two ideas, which

must not lapse, but the two ideas must be equally capable of mental

representation. When one term of the relation is an idea capable of

mental representation, as when we think of a thing cognizable by our

senses, and the other term of the relation is something that lies

beyond them, the law of thought, according to Mr. Spencer, can no

longer be conformed to; the relation lapses; the latter term can not

be present to the mind; we pass out of the sphere of thought into that

which can not be a subject of thought, the unknown and the unknowable.

What takes place in this process is assumed to be this: We take

certain phenomenal manifestations which we are able to observe and to

describe. Out of the materials which these phenomenal manifestations

give us, we "symbolize the Ultimate Reality." We do this, by arguing

from the phenomenal manifestations which convince us of the existence

of a being whom we know and can observe, to the existence of a being

in whom we "symbolize" qualities and faculties which the phenomenal

manifestations show us to belong to human beings. At the same time we

represent to ourselves by the same symbolizing process a connection

between the Ultimate Reality and its manifestation, which is allied to

the connections among the phenomenal manifestations which we observe in

man, or in nature. In other words, we reason from what we see and can

measure and describe, to that which we can not see or describe, and we

end in a term of the relation which can not be present to the mind, and

thus no thinkable relation can be framed.

Whatever may be said of the rational force of the evidence derived from

phenomenal manifestations which we can observe when we reason about

other phenomenal manifestations which we can not measure, it can not

be said that we have reached a term in the relation that is beyond

the sphere of thought. What I understand Mr. Spencer to mean when he

speaks of "symbolizing" out of the materials which the phenomenal

manifestations give us, may be a process liable to error, but it does

not involve or lead to the "insoluble difficulties" that are supposed

to arise. For example, when, from the existence and power of man, a

being whom we know, and whose phenomenal manifestations lead us to a

knowledge of his limited faculties, we reason to the existence of a

being whose faculties are boundless, we may be in danger of conclusions

into which imperfection will find its way; but it certainly is not

true that in thinking of unlimited power or goodness, or any other

unlimited quality, we transcend the sphere of thought. When we have

expressed in figures the greatest measurable idea of space that can

be so expressed, what do we "symbolize," when we say that beyond that

measured space there stretches a space that we can not measure, and to

which there is of necessity no limit? Does a thinkable relation cease

to exist, because one of the terms is immeasurable to us? As soon as we

have formed an idea of a measurable portion of space, we necessarily

have an idea of endless and immeasurable space; and in this deduction

we have employed no "symbol" formed out of the materials which the

measurable manifestations have given us. We have simply reached a

conclusion that is inevitable. We are all the while thinking of space,

whether it is definite space that we can measure, or indefinite space

that we can not measure.

When the moral and intellectual qualities of men constitute one part

of the phenomenal manifestations which we adopt as the basis of

reasoning to the existence of God, we are in danger of assigning to

that being attributes of character which would be far from perfection.

Nearly all the religions that have existed, and of which we have much

knowledge--perhaps all of them but one--have displayed more or less of

this tendency. It is only necessary to instance the Hebrew Scriptures,

for there are parts of that narrative in which the Deity is represented

as actuated by something very much like human passions and motives, and

these representations are among the hardest things to be reconciled

with the idea that those books were inspired writings. Every one knows

with what effect these passages of the Hebrew Scriptures are used by

those who reject both the Old and the New Testaments as inspired books.

But is philosophy therefore to shrink from the use of materials with

which the world is filled, and which lead to the conception of a being

of infinite faculties and perfect goodness? Grant all that may be said

of the stupid and fatal errors into which men have been led by likening

the Deity to man: there remains a vast store-house of materials on

which to reason to the existence of God, which philosophy can not

afford to reject, which can be freed from the peril that has often

attended their use, and which involve no "symbolizing" process of the

kind which Mr. Spencer imagines.

Let us again translate Mr. Spencer's language, and endeavor to analyze

his position. There is, he says, a law of thought, which requires and

depends upon certain elements of thought. By "thought" he means a

conceivable idea, or one which the mind can represent to itself. By

the elements of thought he means, I suppose, the data which enable us

to have an idea of a product. The process of reaching this product

is supposed to be conducted according to a law which requires us to

have the data or elements by which the process is to be conducted. For

example, in the process of reaching an idea of definite space as a

product of thought, we take certain data or elements, by conceiving of

space as divided into successive portions to which we give the name of

feet or miles. The product of thought is the number of feet or miles

into which we divide the definite space of which we form an idea. In

this process we have conformed to Mr. Spencer's law of thought, because

we have data or elements by which to conduct the process and reach the

product.

But now, says Mr. Spencer, when thought undertakes to have as its

product the idea of endless space, it makes an effort to pass beyond

its sphere; the elements of thought fail, and therefore the law of

thought fails; the product is nothing but a dim symbol of a product;

the process becomes nothing but a dim symbol of a process; and no

predicament, that is, no fact, is here inferable from the law of

thought as a fact or predicament that can be asserted. But what, in the

case supposed, is the fact or predicament that is asserted, when we

speak or think of endless space, or of space that transcends all our

powers of measurement? Is it correct to say that the law of thought

fails, because we can not express endless space in feet or miles? Is it

true that we have only "symbolized" the product of endless space out

of the data or elements of measurable space? Here it is necessary to

inquire what the learned philosopher means by "symbolizing" a product

or a process. I understand him to mean, in the case supposed, that

whereas in reference to the idea or product of a measurable space we

have certain data or elements out of which to form that idea, when

we undertake to think of endless space we transfer the notion of a

measurable space to that of which no measure can be predicated, and

therefore we can have no conception of endless space, but only a

"formless consciousness of the inscrutable." Let us see if this is

sound.

Take as a convenient idea of a measurable space the 92,000,000 miles

from the earth to the sun, and lay it down on paper. If, after having

measured this space, we could transport ourselves to the sun, we could

extend the line in the same direction beyond the sun, by laying down

a further measurement of 92,000,000 miles from the sun to any object

that we could observe beyond the sun. This process we could repeat

indefinitely and forever, if we could be successively removed to the

different stages at each point of departure. But when an aggregate of

such multiplied measurements had been reached greater than could be

expressed in figures, we should still have the intellectual power of

thinking of an extension of space indefinitely beyond that which we

have measured. Nothing would have failed us but the power of expressing

in figures the endless extent of space which lies beyond the utmost

limit that we can so express.

It is precisely here, as I suppose, that Mr. Spencer's "symbolizing

process" and his "symbolized product" come in. We have taken as the

elements of thought the idea of successive measurements of space; and

the law of thought permits us to have as a definite product whatever

extent of space can be marked off by such successive measurements.

But when we undertake to have, as the product of thought, a

consciousness, or conception, of endless space, we have merely used

the idea of a definite space as a "symbol," or _simulacrum_, of that

which is without form, and is only a "formless consciousness of the

inscrutable"--whatever that means.

Let us see what has happened. The power of measuring, or describing

in form, a definite extent of space, has given us an idea of space.

The product of our thought is extension between two given points. Such

extensions must be capable of indefinite multiplication, although we

can not express in figures an indefinite multiplicand. The product is

then something beyond what we can express in a definite form; but is

it beyond the sphere of thought? What is it? It is an idea which we

deduce by a strict process of reasoning, and to which we do not need to

give and can not give expression in figures. The process of reasoning

is this: Measurement has given us an idea of space; our faculty of

applying measurement is limited; but our faculty of conceiving of space

through which we could go on forever multiplying such measurements,

if we had the means, is certainly a faculty of which all men are

conscious who are accustomed to analyze the processes of thought. In

this process we may reach that which in one sense is "inscrutable." It

is inscrutable, inasmuch as we can not understand how eternity of space

or time came to exist. Our experience of phenomena enables us to have

an idea of space and time, and from the fact that we have measured off

portions of space or time, we deduce the fact that there must be an

eternity of both. It is immaterial whether we call this a "symbolizing"

process, or call it something else. The product is an idea at which we

arrive by a strict process of reasoning. Eternity of space or time is

an inscrutable idea, when we attempt to inquire how it came to be. That

it exists, is an idea from which the human mind can not escape, and

which it reaches by a perfectly sound deduction. We are all the while

thinking of space or time, whether we are thinking of that which is

measurable, or of that which is immeasurable.

I now come to a passage in Mr. Spencer's recent article which it is

necessary to attempt to explain to the unlearned reader, and to bring

it, if possible, within the reach of ordinary minds. This passage,

which follows in his recent article immediately after his quotation

from his "Essays," is the following:

Thus, then, criticisms like this of Mr. Martineau, often recurring in

one shape or other, and now again made by Mr. Harrison, do not show

the invalidity of my argument, but once more show the imbecility of

human intelligence when brought to bear on the ultimate question.

Phenomenon without noumenon is unthinkable; and yet noumenon can not

be thought of in the true sense of thinking. We are at once obliged

to be conscious of a reality behind appearance, and yet can neither

bring this consciousness of reality into any shape, nor can bring into

any shape its connection with appearance. The forms of our thought,

molded on experience of phenomena, as well as the connotations of our

words formed to express the relations of phenomena, involve us in

contradictions when we try to think of that which is beyond phenomena;

and yet the existence of that which is beyond phenomena is a necessary

datum alike of our thoughts and our words. We have no choice but to

accept a formless consciousness of the inscrutable.

Some definitions must now be given. The word "phenomenon" has become

naturalized in our English tongue. Derived as a noun from the Greek

verb Φαίνομαι, _to appear_, it means anything visible; whatever

is presented to the eye by observation or experiment, or what is

discovered to exist; as the phenomena of the natural world, the

phenomena of the heavenly bodies, of terrestrial substances, the

phenomena of heat and color.[95] In this application the word denotes

what appears to us, or what we discover by our senses. It is also used,

in the plural, more loosely, to denote occurrences or things which we

observe to happen; as when, speaking of physical occurrences, we mean

physical facts the happening of which we observe. Moral phenomena, on

the other hand, are the appearances exhibited by the action of mind.

The word _noumenon_ has not become naturalized in our language, and

did not exist in Greek.[96] It can convey no intelligible meaning to

common readers without tracing its derivation, and when it is analyzed

we can attribute to it no meaning but a purely arbitrary one, even if

we can arrive at that arbitrary signification. In fact, it is a word

made by and for the school of Kant. Its first syllable is the Greek

noun νοῦς or νόος, which corresponds to our English word _thought_ or

_intelligence_. The Greek verb νοέω, _to think_, was primarily used as

_I perceive_; the act of the mind in seeing. This idea was distinct

from εἴδω, which conveyed the plain meaning of I _see_. But so subtile

were the Greeks in their use of words, that εἴδω was sometimes used

specifically to mean _to see with the mind's eye_, or, as we sometimes

say, to _realize_, or to have a mental perception of. In the Greek

use of the two words νοεω and εἴδω, no distinction was made between

_phenomenon_ and _noumenon_. To a cultivated Greek, _phenomenon_

would mean something perceived, and _noumenon_, if he had possessed

the word, would have had the same meaning. He would have used the two

words interchangeably, to express either sight by the visual organs or

mental perception. Mr. Spencer uses them as if they meant different

things, as if _phenomenon_ were something different from _noumenon_.

But _noumenon_, according to its derivation (for it is coined as the

participle of nοεων), means a thing, subject, or object, _perceived by

the mind_. The root idea is mind-action, the verb νοεω meaning to do

what the mind does in apprehending a subject or object. So that the

derivation of _noumenon_ does not help us to understand the Kantian or

Spencerian use of the word.

As this use of the word is, then, purely arbitrary, we must try to

understand, as well as we can, what this arbitrary meaning is. As well

as I can fathom it, in contrast with _phenomenon_, the meaning is that

_phenomenon_ is something that we see, and _noumenon_ is the ghost or

double of what we see. We see a thing with our eyes; but our mind does

not see it--it perceives its ghostly double. This is _noumenon_.

Penetrating, or trying to penetrate, a little further into Mr.

Spencer's meaning, it would seem that when he says that _phenomenon_

without _noumenon_ is unthinkable, he means that, although we can see a

thing with our corporeal eye, we can not think of it without the mental

act of seeing its image with the mind's eye; and then he adds that

_noumenon_ can not be thought of in the true sense of thinking, because

_noumenon_ is an abstraction or a mere ghost of a subject or an object.

What is all this but a kind of play upon words? We are so constituted

that the impressions which a thing external to us produces upon our

nerves of perception are instantly transmitted to the brain, and the

mind has an instantaneous perception of that object. The phenomenon

which we see with our eyes, or become sensible of by touch, thus

becomes a thing perceived by the mind, and when we think of it we do

not think of its ghost, but we think of the thing itself. Did Laura

Bridgman, who had neither eye-sight nor hearing nor speech, but who

acquired all her ideas of external objects by the sense of touch,

conceive of a round or a square, a rough or a smooth surface, by

contemplating the ghost or double of what she touched? And had she no

thinking in the true sense of thinking, because the double, or _imago_

of the thing which she touched--the so-called _noumenon_--was at once

necessary to her mental perception, and yet could not be thought of

without seeing the object by the corporeal eye? She had no corporeal

eye in which there was any vision. All her mental perceptions of

external objects were acquired by the sense of touch alone; and we

may well believe that she did not need the supposed _noumenon_ to

give her an idea of _phenomenon_. She perceived many phenomena by the

simple transmission to her brain, along her nerves of touch, of the

impressions produced upon them by external objects; and there is every

reason to believe that many of her perceptions were as accurate and

true as those which we derive from all our senses. We may now dismiss

Mr. Spencer's distinction between _phenomenon_ and _noumenon_ as a

distinction quite needless for the elucidation of what takes place in

thinking of that which is behind appearance, and may proceed with the

discussion of what remains of the passage above quoted.

At the risk of wearying by repetition, I will again resort to the

illustration before employed, and will again describe how we reach the

conception, for example, of endless space. According to Mr. Spencer,

space, or extension, as a thinkable idea, or a subject of thought,

is confined to a measurable extent of space. This is the phenomenon,

or appearance. All our forms of thought are, it is said, molded on

our experience of phenomena that are measurable, or capable of being

definitely described; and the connotations of our words which express

the relations of phenomena relate to phenomena that we measure, or see,

and can definitely describe. Therefore, we can not think of a reality

that is behind appearance; can not bring the consciousness of such a

reality into any shape, nor bring into any shape its connection with

appearance.

If mankind are never to think of that which is behind appearance--can

never think of a reality that is behind what they see--because their

forms of thought are molded on experiences of phenomena that they see,

and because the connotations of their words express the relations of

those phenomena and no others, a vast domain of thinking is necessarily

closed to them. This is not the experience of our minds. Every day of

our lives we go on in search of that which is beyond appearance, and we

find it. Take again, for example, the phenomena of a measurable portion

of space or time. What appears to us gives an idea of space and time.

We measure as great a portion of either as our forms of expression

admit of our describing by definite terms, but we are immediately

conscious of another reality, an endless extension or duration, because

we are conscious that we have not exhausted and can not exhaust, by our

measurements and descriptions, the whole possible existence of space or

time. This new reality behind appearance is just as truly thinkable,

just as true a consciousness, as is the measurable portion of time or

space; for it is time or space of which we are constantly thinking,

whether it is an extent or duration which we can describe in words, or

whether we can only say that it is extent or duration without beginning

and without end. Our minds are so constituted that the existence which

is manifested to us by observable phenomena leads us to go behind

the appearance in search of another reality beyond that which is

manifested by the phenomena that we see. All that is inscrutable about

this other reality that lies behind appearance is that we can not

understand how it came to be, any more than we can understand how the

phenomenon which we see and can measure and describe in a definite

form came to exist. We do not bring, and do not need to bring, this

other reality into connection with appearance. We first have an idea of

space and time from observable and measurable phenomena. The reality

of extension without limit, and duration without end, follows of

necessity, by a process of thought which we can not escape.

But now it becomes needful to answer a further objection. I have said

that we are all the while thinking of space, whether it is a measurable

and limited or an immeasurable and illimitable space. Mr. Spencer,

anticipating this obvious statement, admits that the form of relation

between the two ideas, although "almost blank," preserves a certain

qualitative character; that is, it is of the quality of space of which

we think, whether it is measurable or immeasurable, and therefore it

remains "a vaguely identifiable relation." But when, in place of one

of the terms of the relation qualitatively the same as the other, we

substitute an existence that can not be defined, and is therefore both

quantitatively and qualitatively unrepresentable, the relation, he

asserts, lapses entirely; one of the terms becomes wholly "unknowable."

I will not again repeat that extension or magnitude having no known

limits is a thinkable term, because the subject of thought is the

quality of extension or magnitude; quantity not being essential to

the idea of extension or magnitude. But I will pass to the idea of an

existence which can not be defined. I suppose that by an existence is

meant a being. If we undertake to think of a being whose quality we

do not know to be the same as the quality of another being whom we

do know, and the quantity of whose powers and faculties we can not

measure, we propose, says Mr. Spencer, a term of impossible thought,

because the law of thought can not be conformed to; the term can not be

present to the mind, and no thinkable relation can be framed. Let this

supposed difficulty be tested by a plain inquiry into that which we

undertake to make the subject of thought when we think of a being who

is said to be "unknowable."

"Agnosticism" is a doctrine which eludes a definite grasp. I have

seen it defined by one of its most distinguished professors in this

way: "Agnosticism is of the essence of science, whether ancient or

modern. It simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes

that which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or

believe.... Agnosticism simply says that we know nothing of what may

be beyond phenomena."[97] Mankind are apt to be rather practical in

their habits of thinking: experience teaches them that there is a

well-founded distinction between knowledge and belief, when it comes to

be a question of asserting the one or the other.[98] They find, too,

by experience that, in regard to what they speak of when they say that

they know a thing, there is a distinction to be observed in respect to

the means of knowledge. No one hesitates to say that he knows there

was such a man as Napoleon Bonaparte, although he never saw him, and

although our knowledge of him is now derived from hearsay. But when we

speak of knowing that a certain living person was at a certain spot on

a certain day, we become immediately aware that in order to justify the

assertion we or some one ought to have seen the person at the time and

place, especially if anything important depends upon the assertion.

There are a great many things that we say we know without scientific or

other rigorous proof, and there are a great many other things which we

do not say that we know without the kind of proof which is required.

All our actions in life proceed upon this distinction, and we could

not live in this world with any comfort if we did not act upon the

assumption that we know things of which we have no scientific proof.

A very clever _jeu d'esprit_ went the rounds of the periodical press

some time ago, in which a well-born and highly educated young agnostic

was represented as losing his birthright, his _fiancée_, and all his

prospects in life, because he demanded rigorous proof of everything

that affected him. As he would not admit that he was the son of his own

parents, without having better proof of it than their assertion, he was

turned out-of-doors and disinherited. He would not accept the bloom on

the cheek of his mistress as natural unless she gave him her word that

she did not paint; and he would not admit that they loved each other

without some better proof than their mutual feelings, about which they

might be mistaken. The young lady indignantly dismissed him, but he

consoled himself as a martyr to the truth of agnosticism. He became

tutor to the son of a nobleman, whose belief in the boy's extraordinary

talents, although justified by his progress in his studies, the tutor

would not admit had the requisite proof. He propounded his denial of

what the father had no proper grounds for maintaining, in an offensive

way, and of course he lost his place. He retired to a sort of agnostic

brotherhood, glorying in his adhesion to truth. Some of his companions

remained long enough in the brotherhood to find out that they were

making fools of themselves, and at the first opportunity for acting on

the ordinary grounds of knowing a fact without rigorous demonstration

of it they left him in solitude, went into the world, and achieved

success.

"A man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no

scientific grounds for professing to know or believe." By "scientific

grounds," I presume is meant, in the case of a fact or occurrence,

proper proof of the fact or occurrence. This varies with the nature of

the thing which one professes to know. We constantly act upon proofs

which do not amount to demonstration, and there could be no practical

enjoyment of our lives and no safety if we did not. If a government

were to receive information that a foreign army was on the border of

the country and about to invade it, and the information fell short of

being the testimony of eye-witnesses, what would be thought of the

rulers if they were to fold their hands and say that they did not know

the fact because they had no "scientific grounds for professing to know

it"? On the other hand, if in a court of justice the question to be

determined were the presence of an individual at a certain place and at

a certain time, the established rules of evidence require certain kinds

of proof of the fact.

Belief, however, is a conviction of something which may or may not

require what are called "scientific grounds" before we can be permitted

to profess that we believe. It depends upon the thing which we profess

to believe, and upon the grounds on which we rest the belief, whether

we have or have not safe and sufficient means of belief. Belief in

the law of gravitation as a force operating throughout the universe

is arrived at as a deduction from scientific data. Belief in an

existence beyond phenomena, in a being who is the producing agent

of the phenomena, depends upon a great variety of grounds, some of

which are scientific data and some of which are the elements of moral

reasoning. We may not say that we "_know_" that God or any other

supernatural being exists, but we may say that we "_believe_" in his

existence. Here knowledge is one thing; belief is another. Knowledge

of the existence of God, like knowledge of the existence of any other

being, might come to us through the testimony of a competent witness

commissioned and authorized to inform us. Belief in the existence of

God may be founded on many and various grounds without the direct

testimony of the competent witness; and these grounds may be perfectly

satisfactory without being mathematical or scientific demonstration. It

is a very remarkable fact that some of the most eminent of the school

of agnosticism profess to have, and probably have, the most undoubting

faith in the theory and actual occurrence of animal evolution, without

any data, scientific or other, which can enable other men to arrive

at the same conviction, whatever may be the character of the supposed

proofs. They certainly have no grounds for professing to know that

an evolution of species out of species has ever taken place; and the

grounds of their belief in the fact, whether denominated "scientific"

or called something else, do not satisfy the rules of belief on

which mankind must act, in accordance with their mental and moral

constitutions; and this belief does not rise any higher in the scale of

moral probabilities than the belief in special creations, nor does it

rise so high. But to return to Mr. Spencer.

If we did not act upon the process of thinking of another reality than

that which appearance gives, act upon it fearlessly and by a mode of

thinking to which we can safely trust ourselves, science would stand

still, there would be no progress in physics, discoveries would cease,

there would be no improvement in morals, the world would remain

stationary. What did Columbus do, when, going behind the phenomena

that made the earth appear to be a flat surface, he thought of it as a

sphere? Did he break the law of thought? He formed an idea of a reality

behind appearance, not by employing the phenomenal manifestations to

help him to the new conception, but by going away from them in search

of a reality that lay behind them, and which they seemed to contradict.

This conception of a sphere as the reality of the earth's condition

proved to be the truth. He did not bring it, and did not need to bring

it, into connection with appearance. He did not use, and did not need

to use, the relations of the visible phenomena to help him to attain

his conception of a spherical form of the earth. He contradicted them

all.

Did all the moral lawgivers who have reformed the world break the law

of thought, when, going behind the phenomena of human conduct, with

their relations pointing to one idea of right and wrong, they conceived

the idea of a new and a better rule of life? When it was said, in place

of the old law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, "Love your

enemies and pray for those who persecute you"--when for the old rule

of revenge there was substituted forgiveness of injuries--something

was inculcated that contradicted all the appearances of the social

phenomena, and that lay beyond them. Did the consciousness of this new

reality become "a formless consciousness of the inscrutable"? What

is there about it that is inscrutable? There is nothing inscrutable

about it, or in the consciousness of it, excepting the mode in which

the being who promulgated it came to exist. The idea of forgiveness is

clearly within the compass of human thought and of human endeavor.

When we are in the process of making a new physical discovery, or of

forming a new rule of moral action, we work away from the materials

which the phenomenal manifestations give us, to a new conception.

We become conscious of a new reality behind appearance, and of an

existence beyond the relations of the phenomena with which we have

heretofore been familiar. It is to this striving after realities behind

appearances--striving by an entirely true process of thinking--that the

world owes its progress.

When the phenomenal manifestations of an intellectual and moral nature

in man have given us the idea of an existence of an intellectual and

moral being as a reality of which we become conscious, what is to

prevent us from thinking of another intellectual and moral being as a

reality, with faculties and powers immeasurably superior to ours? It

is true that the phenomenal manifestations of man's intellectual and

moral nature give us an idea of a being of very limited faculties and

very imperfect moral qualities. But what is the "insoluble difficulty"

in which we become involved, when we think of a being whose faculties

are boundless, and whose moral nature is perfect? Does the "insoluble

difficulty" consist in the impossibility of thinking of that which

transcends all our powers of measurement? All that we have done, in the

case of man, is to have a consciousness of a being whose phenomenal

manifestations evince the existence of an intellectual and moral

nature. He happens to be a being of very limited faculties and very

imperfect moral characteristics. What prevents us from thinking, in

the true sense of thinking, of another being, whose powers are without

limit, and whose moral nature is perfect? Is it said that we can

not bring into any shape the idea of unlimited power or of perfect

goodness, or bring into any shape its connection with appearance,

because all our ideas of power and goodness, all our forms of thought

and expression, are molded on experiences of limited power and

imperfect goodness? The truth is that we do not and need not strive

to bring into connection with appearance the idea of any quality

which we conceive of as unlimited. What we derive from the phenomenal

manifestations of human power and goodness is a consciousness of the

qualities of power and goodness. It is perfectly correct thinking to

reason that these qualities, whose phenomenal manifestations, in the

case of man, show that in him they exist only in a limited degree, may

exist in another being in unlimited perfection and without degree.

Our minds are so constituted that we reason from the finite to the

infinite, by observing that one class of phenomena evince the existence

of the finite and another class of phenomena evince the existence of

the infinite.

When, therefore, we pass from the phenomenal manifestations of human

power and goodness, we come into the presence of other phenomena which

we know could not be and were not produced by such a limited and

imperfect being as man, but which must yet have had an author, a maker,

an originator, a creator. We thus contemplate and investigate facts

which show that the phenomena were the products of a skill, wisdom, and

power that transcend all measurement. Is it said that the phenomena of

nature, stupendous and varied and minute and wonderful as they are,

evince only that a certain degree of power and wisdom was exerted in

their production, even if their production is attributed to a being

competent to bring them about? And therefore that the idea of a being

of unlimited faculties and perfect goodness is as far as ever from our

reach by any true process of thought? This assumption begs something

that should not be taken for granted. It assumes that the production

of the phenomena of nature does not evince unlimited power and perfect

goodness; did not call for the existence of boundless faculties and

inexhaustible benevolence; involved only a degree of such qualities,

although a vastly superior degree to that possessed by us. The

correctness of this assumption depends upon the force of the evidence

which nature affords of the character of the Deity. It is an assumption

which has led to enormous errors--errors of conception and belief

which impute to the Supreme Being only a superior degree of power and

wisdom, greater than our own, but still limited and imperfect, liable

to error, and acting in modes which distress us with contradictions and

inconsistencies.

It may without rashness be asserted that the phenomena of the universe

could not have been produced by a power and wisdom that were subject to

any limitations. While all the researches of science, from the first

beginnings of human observation to the present moment, show that in

the production of the phenomena of nature there has been exerted a

certain amount of power and wisdom, they also show that it is an amount

which we can not measure; that there is, moreover, a power and wisdom

that have not been exhausted; that the reserved force and skill and

benevolence are without limit. For, in every successive new discovery

that we make, in every new revelation of the power and goodness

which our investigations bring forth, we continuously reach proofs

of an endless capacity, an inexhaustible variety of methods and of

products. So that, if we conceive of the whole human race, with all its

accumulated knowledge, as ending at last in one individual possessed

of all that has been learned on earth, and imagine him to be then

translated to another state of existence, with all his faculties of

observation and study preserved, and new fields of inquiry to be opened

to him, his experience on earth would lead him to expect to find, and

we must believe that in his new experience he will find, that the

physical and the moral phenomena of the universe are an inexhaustible

study; that search and discovery must go on forever; and that forever

new revelations of power and goodness will be made to the perceptions

whose training began in a very limited sphere. His experience in

that limited sphere has taught him that there was no end to the

discoveries which were here partially within his reach. His experience

in the new sphere will be a continuation of his experience in the old

one; for there is a law by which we judge of the future by the past.

This law is one of the conditions of our intellectual existence; an

inevitable habit of our minds; imposed upon us by an inexorable but

familiar authority. Our experience in this life has taught us that,

in the investigation of the phenomena of nature that are open to our

observation here, we have never reached the end of possible discovery;

that every fresh discovery has evinced that there are still new things

to be learned, new manifestations of power to be revealed, new products

and new methods to be seen. However long we may suppose the human race

to exist on earth and its researches to be prosecuted here, we must

suppose an endless accumulation of knowledge hereafter, because the

law which compels us to judge of the future by the past obliges us to

accept as the fruition of the future that which has been the fruition

of the past.[99]

Is there in this any violation of the true law of thought? Does the

relation between our past experience and the experience which we

forecast for the future fade into a dim symbol of a relation? On the

contrary, both are equally capable of mental representation; for

we are mentally so constituted that the consciousness of what has

happened to us in the past--the unending succession of new discoveries,

the constant accumulation of knowledge, which we have experienced

here--gives us the conception of the same endless progress hereafter,

compels us to believe in it, and enables us to grasp it as a product of

true thought.

Mr. Spencer has much to say of "the imbecility of human intelligence

when brought to bear on the ultimate question." What is the ultimate

question? The ultimate question with which science and philosophy are

concerned is the existence of the Supreme Being. It is of the utmost

consequence for us to understand wherein consists the imbecility of

human intelligence when brought to bear upon this question of the

existence of God. How does our imbecility manifest itself? What is

the point beyond which thought can not go? We become conscious of the

existence of the being called man, because, from the phenomena which we

know that he produces by the exercise of his will and power, and which

we know must have had an author and producer, we deduce an existence

beyond the phenomena, an actor in their production. What more, or

what that is different, do we do or undertake to do, when, from the

phenomena of nature which we know that man did not produce, we think

of another existence beyond the phenomena? In both cases, we study

the phenomena by our senses and powers of observation; in both cases

we reason that there is an actor who produces the phenomena; yet the

existence of the actor who produces the phenomena is inscrutable in the

case of the Deity in the same sense and for the same reason that it

is inscrutable in the case of man. How the human mind came to exist,

by what process it was made to exist, by what means it was created,

what was the genesis of the human intellect, is just as inscrutable,

no more and no less so, as the mode in which the Deity came to exist.

In both cases the existence of a being is what we think of; and when

we think of either being we think of that which is beyond phenomena

but which we deduce from phenomena. In neither case do we "accept a

formless consciousness of the inscrutable"; for what we accept is the

consciousness of a being, and it is not a consciousness of the mode in

which he came to exist. The latter consciousness is the inscrutable

problem. The existence is what we think of, and we think of it by a

perfectly true process of thought, deducing it from the simple truth

that the phenomena must have had an actor in their production. We do

not undertake to think of the process by which man was created, or of

the mode in which that other existence came to be without beginning and

without end.

I have thus discriminated between what we do and what we do not think

of, when we think of an existence beyond phenomena, but which we deduce

from phenomena. This is a most necessary discrimination; for, in

thinking of the existence, we do not try to think how it came to be an

existence. We think only of the existence; and we deduce it from our

observation and study of phenomena, which teach us that they must have

had an actor, an author, a producer, and that they did not produce or

create themselves.

It remains for me to advert to Mr. Spencer's theory of the origin of

the religious consciousness, or the origin of the idea of supernatural

beings, and hence of one highest supernatural being. This is his

ghost-theory. He has recently told us that in his "Descriptive

Sociology"--a work commenced in 1867, and which preceded his

"Principles of Sociology" (written in 1874)--he caused to be gathered

adequate materials for generalization, consisting of a great number

of excerpts from the writings of travelers and historians who have

given accounts of the religious beliefs of the uncivilized races. He

numbers 697 of these extracts which refer to the ghost-theory, and

only 87 which refer to fetichism. This great ratio of eight to one

he considers overwhelming proof that the ghost-theory, as opposed

to fetichism, is sustained by the beliefs of a vast majority of the

uncivilized races. What if it is? What is the ghost-theory, and

what is fetichism, as the chief source and origin of religion? Mr.

Spencer, in his recent article, explains fetichism as most persons

understand it, namely, the worship of inanimate objects, or belief in

their supernatural powers. The ghost-theory, which his 697 extracts

illustrate, is "the belief in a wandering double, which goes away

during sleep, or fainting, and deserts the body for a longer period

at death; a double which can enter and possess other persons, causing

disease, epilepsy, insanity, etc., which gives rise to ideas of

spirits, demons, etc., and which, originates propitiation and worship

of ghosts."[100] Further on, he reiterates his ghost-theory as the

origin of religious beliefs, and explains it thus:

Setting out with the statement that "unlike the ordinary

consciousness, the religious consciousness is concerned with that

which lies beyond the sphere of sense," I went on to show that the

rise of this consciousness begins among primitive men with the

belief in a double belonging to each individual, which, capable of

wandering away from him during life, becomes his ghost or spirit after

death; and that from this idea of a being eventually distinguished

as supernatural, there develop, in course of time, the ideas of

supernatural beings of all orders up to the highest. Mr. Harrison has

alleged that the primitive religion is not belief in and propitiation

of the ghost, but is worship of "physical objects treated frankly as

physical objects" (p. 498). That he has disproved the one view and

proved the other, no one will, I think, assert. Contrariwise, he has

given occasion for me to cite weighty authorities against him.

Next it was contended that in the assemblage of supernatural beings

thus originating in each tribe, some, derived from chiefs, were

superior to others; and that, as the compounding and recompounding

of tribes gave origin to societies having social grades and rulers

of different orders, there resulted that conception of a hierarchy

of ghosts or gods which polytheism shows us. Further it was argued

that while, with the growth of civilization and knowledge, the

minor supernatural agents became merged in the major supernatural

agent, this single great supernatural agent, gradually losing the

anthropomorphic attributes at first ascribed, has come in our days to

retain but few of them; and, eventually losing these, will then merge

into a consciousness of an Omnipresent Power to which no attributes

can be ascribed. This proposition has not been contested.

Without entering into any consideration of what Mr. Harrison has

disproved or proved, as between fetichism and the ghost-theory, I will

now ask why the beliefs of the uncivilized races, or of the primitive

men, should be regarded as important evidence of the origin of beliefs

among civilized and cultivated men? Is modern philosophy, in accounting

for or justifying the belief in a Supreme Being which is held to-day

by most of the cultivated and educated part of mankind, to assign its

origin to the primitive and uncivilized men? Is the whole idea of a

supernatural being to be regarded as traditionally handed down from our

barbarian ancestors? Is there no other source from which we can derive

that idea? Are we none of us capable of finding for ourselves rational

grounds of belief in a supernatural agent, deducing his existence from

a study of nature? Or must we trace this belief back through the ages

until we arrive at an origin which we shall of course despise? What has

philosophy to do now with "the primitive religion"? Is there nothing

that science and reason and disciplined methods of thought and sound

deduction can teach us? Are we to throw away all the proofs which

nature spreads before us, and for the investigation of which we have

accumulated so many facilities, and turn to the beliefs of uncivilized

men? Are the conceptions of supernatural beings, to which a barbarian

attained, to be taken as the origin of the conception of a personal

God to which an educated philosopher can now attain? And because of the

inadequate and childish superstitions of the past, and of their growth

into a belief of one supreme supernatural agent--whatever that idea of

him may have been--is the consciousness which we have of a personal God

to be hereafter merged into a consciousness of an Omnipresent Power to

which no attributes can be ascribed?

It should seem that the mode in which philosophy, after it came to be

cultivated by civilized thinkers and observers, freed itself first

from fetichism and the ghost-theory and all the beliefs of polytheism,

next from physical agents as the causes of all phenomena, and finally

attained an independent conception of a First Cause as a supreme

personal intelligence and power, is worthy of some consideration.

In the first chapter of this work, borrowing from the English scholar

and critic, Mr. Grote, I have given a condensed account of some of

the systems of Greek philosophy which began in the first half of the

sixth century before Christ, and extended down to Plato, whose life

was embraced in 427-347 of the ante-Christian era. About 150 B.

C., the Greek philosophy, and especially the speculations of

Plato, encountered at Alexandria the monotheism of the Hellenizing

Jews.[101] This history of Greek philosophy, as developed by Mr. Grote,

shows that the struggle against polytheistic agencies, as the causes of

natural phenomena, began with efforts to find purely physical agencies;

that this struggle, in spite of the surrounding beliefs in a multitude

of supernatural beings of different orders, was long continued, and

gave rise to a most remarkable variety of scientific explanations:

that it passed through an extraordinary number of physical theories,

until at length in Plato there was developed the idea of a distinct

personal constructive actor, the Demiurgus, a being to whom, whether

intended by Plato as a philosophical myth, or as an entity in which

he had something of faith or conviction, he assigned the formation of

his Kosmos. With characteristic acumen, the English commentator points

out Plato's skill in eluding the possible charge of infidelity to the

established religion of Athens, while he at the same time propounded

the existence of a personal First Cause that was in a striking degree

inconsistent with the popular faith. The whole course of this history

of Greek speculation evinces that from an early period the Greek

philosophers were utter skeptics in regard to the popular religion and

the poetic traditions; that they not only did not derive anything from

the primitive religion, from fetichism, from the ghost-beliefs of their

barbarian ancestors--if their ancestors had such beliefs--or from their

heroic ages, or from the multitudinous gods of the popular theology and

the popular worship, or from the old poetical imagery, but that they

strove to get away from all these sources, and to construct theories

of the universe that would explain the ultimate cause or causes in a

very different manner. The earliest Greek speculators got no further in

their theories than the construction of systems of physical agencies,

or agencies that stood to them in the quality of physical actors.

Plato, on the other hand, resorted to the conception of a supreme

personal actor.

Mr. Grote has further mentioned a very striking fact, which is, that

before the Christian era, the Demiurgus of Plato was received by the

Hellenizing Jews at Alexandria as a conception kindred to the God of

Moses. His statement, in substance the same as that previously made by

a Continental critic, Gfrörer, is so interesting and important that

I quote his words: "But though the idea of a pre-kosmic Demiurgus

found little favor among the Grecian schools of philosophy before

the Christian era, it was greatly welcomed among the Hellenizing Jews

at Alexandria, from Aristobulus (about B. C. 150) down to

Philo. It formed the suitable point of conjunction between Hellenic

and Judaic speculation. The marked distinction drawn by Plato between

the Demiurgus, and the constructed or generated Kosmos, with its

in-dwelling gods, provided a suitable place for the Supreme God of the

Jews, degrading the pagan gods by comparison. The 'Timæus' was compared

with the book of Genesis, from which it was even affirmed that Plato

had copied. He received the denomination of the Atticising Moses--Moses

writing in Attic Greek. It was thus that the Platonic 'Timæus' became

the medium of transition from the polytheistic theology, which served

as philosophy among the early ages of Greece, to the omnipotent

monotheism to which philosophy became subordinated after the Christian

era."[102]

Perhaps there is no more remarkable fact than this in the whole history

of philosophical speculation. Possibly Mr. Spencer would say that it

adds another proof to his ghost-theory. But the important fact is that

Plato's Demiurgus partakes in no degree of the ghost idea, and, instead

of being a modification of that idea, is an original and perfectly

independent conception. The Demiurgus of Plato is not a chief spirit

evolved in imagination out of a hierarchy of spirits. He is himself the

originator and fashioner of the gods, of whom he makes use as ministers

in the formation of the bodies of the primitive men, after he has

himself formed the souls which are to inhabit them for a season.

It appears, by Mr. Grote's citations from Gfrörer, that the latter had

previously noted what Aristobulus maintained one hundred and fifty

years earlier than Philo, namely, that "not only the oldest Grecian

poets, Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, etc., but also the most celebrated

thinkers, especially Plato, had acquired all their wisdom from a

very old translation of the Pentateuch." Neither of these modern

critics appears to have accepted the assertion of Aristobulus, and

its intrinsic improbability is very great. Certainly the internal

evidence of the "Timæus" negatives the assumption that Plato had seen

the Pentateuch, for his Demiurgus is not the God of Moses, although

it was very natural for the Alexandrian Jews to think they recognized

a resemblance. Mr. Grote, moreover, seems to put this matter beyond

doubt, for he says that the Platonic "Timæus" _became the medium of

transition_ from the polytheism of early Greece to the monotheism

of the Christian era. This implies very clearly that Mr. Grote did

not consider the Demiurgus of Plato to be either derived from the

polytheism of the early Grecian ages, on the one hand, or from the

Mosaic Jehovah, on the other hand, but that he considered it a

conception which stood between them. The point of resemblance is in

the idea of a divine and supreme personal actor in the production of

phenomena.

It does not seem, therefore, that a philosopher at the present day is

confined to the source of the primitive religion, be that source what

it may. The primitive religion, whether its origin was fetichism or a

belief in ghosts, has imposed no shackles upon our minds. The beliefs

of the primitive men may have originated as Mr. Spencer supposes, but

the question for us--revelation being laid aside--is just what it was

for Plato, the difference being that our means of investigation are

superior to his. The grounds of our belief in a personal God are not

the same as those on which the uncivilized races formed first the idea

of a wandering double emanating from the human body, then conceived

of spirits or ghosts, next of different orders of spirits or ghosts,

and finally of a chief and supreme spirit. Our materials for sound

deduction are not the same as those of the primitive races of mankind,

or of the uncivilized tribes of the present day. I have before remarked

that the intellectual effort of a savage in striving for the idea of a

deity is the same kind of effort as that of the civilized and educated

man; but that the difference between them is in the growth and activity

of the reasoning power, and in the materials on which it is exercised.

While our barbarian predecessors lived in an age of ignorance, we live

in an age of knowledge. We are surrounded by extraordinary discoveries,

and are possessed of the means of still further research. They had

almost no means for investigating physical phenomena. We are, or ought

to be, disciplined reasoners. They, on the contrary, while able to

reason correctly on a very few subjects, could not reason correctly

on all subjects. We are, or ought to be, capable of subjecting the

materials which the phenomena of nature spread before us, to sound

processes of thought and to logical deductions. We are, or ought to

be, capable of discriminating between that which is really inscrutable

and that which is not so. We are, or ought to be, able to know when we

are within the bounds of possible thought, and when we transcend them.

We are, or ought to be, able to see that the existence of phenomena

necessarily implies a causing power; that when the phenomena are such

as we know that man produces, the idea of an intelligent personal actor

is both a legitimate deduction and a perfectly appreciable subject

of thought. Are we not entitled to apply the same reasoning to the

phenomena of nature which we know that man did not produce? And when

we so reason, do we borrow anything whatever from the primitive idea

of ghosts or spirits, whether they are supposed to have first emanated

from human bodies, or to reside in inanimate objects?

There are two distinct values to be assigned to the researches of

science. One of them consists in the practical improvement of the

material condition of society; the lessening of physical evil, the

increase of physical good; the advancement of our power over matter.

In an age intensely devoted to this materialistic improvement, there

will be a great accumulation of physical knowledge. At the same

time there are accumulating in the same ratio new materials for

philosophical speculation concerning the causes of the phenomena that

are investigated. The specialists who carry on the investigations

may not always be the best reasoners in the application of the new

materials to the purpose of philosophical inquiry into the producing

causes of the phenomena. But the other distinct value of their

investigations consists in the accumulation of materials from which the

philosopher can deduce the existence of an actor in the production of

the phenomena. When, from these materials, constantly accumulating and

constantly to be used in a uniform process of reasoning to which the

human mind is both able and obliged to resort, the philosopher deduces

the conception of a supreme, personal, intelligent being, he assigns

to that being just those attributes which the phenomena of nature

compel him to believe in, because if the attributes did not exist the

phenomena of nature could not have become what they are. There can be

no reason to suppose that as the materials increase, as the researches

of science, for whatever purpose carried on, lead to greater and still

greater accumulations of knowledge, the law of thought by which we

deduce the idea of an actor in the production of phenomena will change,

or that the logical necessity for conceiving, or the intellectual

capacity to conceive of, the attributes of that actor will either

diminish or fade away. An Omnipotent Power without attributes, or one

to which no attributes can be assigned, is not likely to be the end of

all philosophical speculation about the ultimate cause. Power without

attributes, power without a determining will, power without guidance,

or purposes, or objects, is not a conception to which a well-trained

intellect is now likely to attain; and the greater the accumulation of

physical knowledge becomes, the greater will be the necessity to such

an intellect for recognizing attributes, and for assigning them to the

power which is manifested by the phenomena.

According to Mr. Spencer, the process by which mankind are ultimately

to lose the consciousness of a personal Deity is the following:

Anthropomorphic attributes were at first ascribed to the single great

supernatural agent of whom the primitive men conceived. But in our

days, the idea of such a supreme supernatural agent has come to retain

but a few of these attributes. These few will eventually be lost,

and there will be nothing left but a consciousness of an Omnipotent

Power to which no attributes can be ascribed. The probability of

this result depends upon the necessity for ascribing what are called

anthropomorphic attributes to the Supreme Being; or, in other words, it

depends upon the inquiry whether, in order to ascribe to the Supreme

Being any attributes at all, we are necessarily confined to those which

are anthropomorphic.

"Anthropomorphism," a term compounded from the Greek ἄνθρωπος, man,

and μορφή, form, has come to signify the representation of the Deity

under a human form, or with human attributes and affections. It is

therefore important to know what we in fact do, when reasoning on the

phenomena of nature, we reach the conclusion that they must have had

an author or producer, and then ascribe to him certain attributes. The

fact that the ancient religious beliefs ascribed to the Supreme Being

grossly anthropomorphic attributes, is unimportant. So is the fact that

the anthropomorphic attributes have been slowly diminishing in the

conceptions of the reasoning and cultivated part of mankind. The really

important question is whether there can be no conception of a Supreme

Being without ascribing to him attributes which liken him to man; or

whether, when the anthropomorphic attributes are lost, the idea of a

personal God will be lost.

The essential character of any anthropomorphic or human

attribute--power for example, or wisdom, or goodness--is that it is

limited, imperfect, and liable to error. But when we conceive of these

qualities as existing in absolute perfection and boundless capacity,

while we retain the idea that they are personal qualities, we in fact

divest them of their anthropomorphic or human character. It is a

contradiction in terms to say that an imperfect human capacity is the

same attribute as a divine and unlimited capacity. The difficulty with

the ancient religious beliefs, the whole error of anthropomorphism,

was that the conceptions stopped short of the idea of unlimited power,

wisdom, and benevolence. The attributes ascribed to the Deity likened

him to man in form, character, powers, dispositions, passions. He was

an exaggerated human being, with vastly more power, more skill, more

wisdom, but still with the same kind of power, skill, and wisdom,

actuated by like motives and governed by like passions. Now the truth

is, that the difference between a limited and imperfect attribute of

character and one that is boundless--power, for example--is more than

a difference of degree. It is a difference in kind; for while in both

cases we conceive of a personal capacity to act and a will to guide

the act, in the one case we are thinking of that which is inferior,

limited, and feeble, and in the other case we are thinking of that

which knows no limitations and is absolutely inexhaustible. It is

not true, therefore, that there can be no conception of a Supreme

Being without ascribing to him human attributes. When we reason from

phenomena to the conclusion that they must have had an author--when

we reach the conviction that phenomena must have had a cause, that

there must have been an actor, a process, and a product--we have

to deal with two classes of phenomena. One is the class in which we

know, from the observations of our senses and our experience, that the

author and actor was man. It becomes verified to us with irresistible

certainty that the phenomena of human society were produced by an

actor, and that that actor was man; a personal agent with a limited and

imperfect power. When we turn to the phenomena of nature which we know

that man did not produce, we are led by the same irresistible logical

sequence of thought to the conviction that these phenomena must have

been caused to exist, for human reason revolts at the idea that the

phenomena which exist were not caused to exist. We come immediately

to perceive that the phenomena of nature are of such a character that

the power which has produced them must not only have been superhuman,

but it must have been absolutely boundless. At the moment we depart

from the investigation of phenomena which belong in the department of

human efforts, and come to the phenomena which belong in the department

of nature alone, while the necessity for a personal actor continues,

the character and capacities of the actor become entirely changed.

We see that the phenomena of nature required for their production

power without limitation, skill incapable of error, benevolence that

was inexhaustible. We thus pass entirely away from anthropomorphic

attributes, to the conception of attributes that are not human. We

may go on to divest the idea of a Supreme Being of all the attributes

that can appropriately be classed as anthropomorphic, and there will

still remain the conception of a Supreme Being to whom we not only may

but must ascribe attributes that are forced upon our convictions, not

because some of them belong in an inferior degree to man, but because

all of them are of such a character that if they did not exist in

boundless perfection the phenomena of nature could not have existed.

Among the origins which have been assigned to religious beliefs,

there is one remarkable hypothesis which may be contrasted with the

ghost-theory, and which, so far as the beliefs of cultivated men at

the present day are concerned, is about as important as the origin of

the belief in ghosts, or as fetichism. It seems that some of the Greek

philosophers and historians, entirely regardless of the ghost-theory as

the origin of beliefs in supernatural beings, considered that they were

fictions invented by the first lawgivers, and promulgated by them for

useful purposes. Belief in the gods was thus imposed by the authority

of those who organized society and dictated what men were to believe in

order to exercise a useful restraint. Plato himself regarded this as

the origin of what the communities around him believed respecting the

attributes and acts of the gods; the matters believed being fictions

prescribed by the lawgivers. In his "Republic," in which he sketches

the entire political, social, ethical, and religious constitution of

an ideal city, assuming it to be planned and put in operation by an

absolute and unlimited authority, he laid it down as essential for

the lawgiver to determine what the fictions were to be in which his

own community were to be required to believe. Some fictions there

must be; for in the community there would be originally nothing but a

vague emotional tendency to belief in supernatural beings, and this

tendency must be availed of by some positive mythical inventions which

it was for the lawgiver to produce and the citizens to accept. Such

fictions were the accredited stories about the gods and heroes, which

formed the religious beliefs among Plato's contemporaries, and were

everywhere embodied in the works of poets, painters, and sculptors,

and in the religious ceremonies. But the ancient fictions were, in

Plato's opinion, bad, inasmuch as they gave wrong ethical ideas of the

characters of the gods. They did not rest upon traditionary evidence,

or divine inspiration, being merely pious frauds, constructed by

authority and for an orthodox purpose. But they did not fulfill the

purpose as well as they should have done. Accordingly, Plato directs

in his "Republic" the coinage of a new body of legends, for which he

claims no character of veracity, but which will be more in harmony

with what he conceives to be the true characters of the gods, and

will produce a more salutary ethical effect upon those who are to

be the efficient rulers of the commonwealth after it is founded. As

the founder of his ideal city, he claims and exercises an exclusive

monopoly of coining and circulating such fictions, and they are to

be absolutely accepted by those who are to constitute its rulers,

and who are to promulgate and teach them to the community, as the

physician administers wholesome remedies. To prevent the circulation of

dissenting narratives, he establishes a peremptory censorship. There is

thus no question of absolute truth or absolute falsehood. That is true

which is stamped at the mint of the lawgiver, and that is false which

he interdicts.[103]

Nowhere has orthodoxy been rested more distinctly upon the basis of

absolute human authority--authority acting upon the highest motives of

the public good, for the most salutary purposes, but without claiming

anything in the nature of divine inspiration, or even pretending to any

other truth than conformity to preconceived ideas of the characters

of the gods. As evidence of what Plato regarded as the origin of the

religious beliefs which were held by his contemporaries, his "Republic"

is an important testimony; for he assigns almost nothing to mankind in

general, but an emotional tendency to believe in invisible quasi-human

agents, of whom they had no definite conceptions, and at the same time

they were entirely ignorant of recorded history, past and present.

They needed distinct legendary fictions and invented narratives; these

were furnished to them by those who could coin them, and were accepted

upon the authority of those who promulgated them. Those who first

embodied the fictions as narratives were the oldest poets; in progress

of time the authority which dictated belief in them came to be the

state. Plato rejected the fictions of the state, and in his "Republic"

proposed to substitute fictions of his own. The testimony of Plato,

therefore, in respect to the origin of religious beliefs in the early

ages of Greece is decidedly against the ghost-theory, whatever support

may be found for that theory in the beliefs of the uncivilized races

of our own day, or in the beliefs of other nations of antiquity. But

neither the ghost-theory, as the origin of beliefs in supernatural

beings, nor the origin of such beliefs in the will of the lawgiver,

which Plato clearly held in his "Republic" to be the foundation of

orthodoxy, is any test or measure of what philosophy may attain to as a

rational conception at the present day.[104]

I propose, therefore, to imagine a man of mature years, without any

religious prepossessions whatever, a perfectly independent thinker,

furnished with the knowledge that is now within the easy reach of human

acquisition, capable of correct reasoning, and with no bias to any kind

of belief. It is only necessary to personify in one individual the

intellectual capacity of the cultivated and educated part of mankind,

but without the religious ideas instilled into them by education, in

order to have a valuable witness to the mental processes and results

which can be followed and attained by a right employment of our

faculties. And, the better to exhibit the processes and results, I

propose to let this imaginary person discuss in the form of dialogue,

in which another imaginary interlocutor shall be a modern disciple of

the evolution school, whatever topics would be likely to come into

debate between such persons.

FOOTNOTES:

[93] "Essays," vol. iii, pp. 293-296.

[94] For the answer to the objection that we thus ascribe

anthropomorphic attributes to the Supreme Being, see _infra._

[95] Webster's Dictionary, "Phenomenon."

[96] Our other American lexicographer, Worcester, who was pretty

strict in regard to the words which he admitted into the English

language, gives the word "noumenon," but he was careful to designate

its arbitrary use. His definition is this:

"Noumenon, _n._ [Gr. νοῦς, the mind.] In the philosophy of Kant, an

object in itself, not relatively to us; opposed to _phenomenon_.

_Fleming_."

[97] Prof. Huxley, who claims a sort of patent right or priority of

invention in the term and doctrine "agnosticism."

[98] "There are some things I know and some things I believe," said

the Syrian; "I know that I have a soul, and I believe that it is

immortal." ...

"I wish I could assure myself of the personality of the Creator," said

Lothair; "I cling to that, but they say it is unphilosophical!" "In

what sense," asked the Syrian, "is it more unphilosophical to believe

in a personal God, omnipotent and omniscient, than in natural forces,

unconscious and irresistible? Is it unphilosophical to combine power

with intelligence?"--_Disraeli's "Lothair."_

[99] The practice of judging of the future by the past is sometimes

treated as if it were a mere habit of the uncultivated and

undisciplined part of mankind--a kind of mental weakness. Undoubtedly,

our past experience is not always an infallible guide to what is to

be our experience in the future. We often have to correct our past

experience, by carefully separating the accidental from the essential;

by more comprehensive analysis of the facts which constitute our

former experience. But when we have full, comprehensive, and accurate

views of that which has happened to us heretofore, our beliefs in what

is to happen to us hereafter are not only attained by a safe process

of reasoning, but that process is imposed upon us by a law of our

mental constitution.

[100] "Nineteenth Century" for November, 1884, p. 827.

[101] Grote's "Plato," iii, pp. 284, 285.

[102] Grote's "Plato," iii, p. 285, and notes.

[103] Grote's "Plato," iii, p. 181 _et seq._

[104] The contradictions between Plato's ideas of the origin of

beliefs in the gods, as given in his various writings, are of course

unimportant in reference to the present discussion. In the "Timæus,"

as Mr. Grote has pointed out, Plato "accepts the received genealogy

of the gods, upon the authority of the sons and early descendants of

the gods. These eons must have known their own fathers; we ought,

therefore, to 'follow the law and believe them,' though they spoke

without either probable or demonstrative proof.... That which Plato

here enjoins to be believed is the genealogy of Hesiod and other

poets, though he does not expressly name the poets." (Grote, iii, p.

189, note.) In other words, the sons of the gods are authoritative

witnesses to their genealogy, whose _ipsi diximus_ must be believed.

On the other hand, in his "Republic" and "Leges," Plato rejects the

authority of those witnesses, and boldly proclaims that their legends

are fictions, which must be displaced by better fictions, more

consonant to a true ethical conception of the characters of the gods.

It is the province of the lawgiver to supply these better legends, but

they are all the while fictions, although the multitude do not know

that they are so. Mr. Grote accounts for these and other discrepancies

in the writings of Plato by explaining that his different dialogues

are not interdependent productions, but separate disquisitions. (See

his admirable and critical examination of the Platonic canon, in

Chapters IV, V, VI, of his first volume.)