SUPERSTITION.
I had, almost from the first, suspected Mr. Merton’s conclusion, and
should never for a moment have doubted it, had I not grown up in the
disbelief of evil spirits. Science, or what passes for science, had long
denied all supernatural and all superhuman intervention in the affairs
of mankind; and I, like the majority of my contemporaries, had grown up
a complete Epicurean. There was, perhaps, a God who had created the
world, but having created it, and impressed upon it certain fixed and
invariable laws, he left it to take care of itself. I denied his
providence, or, what is the same thing, resolved it into the uniform and
inflexible laws of nature, and like my friends of the French Eclectic
school, saw the Divine intervention only in the necessary and immutable
elements of human history. God was for me simply Fate, Invincible
Necessity, and therefore no free person, no object of reverence, love,
or worship.
Having excluded Providence, I necessarily rejected the ministry of
angels. I resolved all nature into a collection of forces operative by
intrinsic and necessary laws. Man is one of these forces, neither the
strongest nor the weakest. In his own intrinsic strength he is not much,
but by placing himself in a right position with regard to the other
forces of nature, he may make them work in him and for him, and thus
increase his strength by the whole of theirs, as the millwright makes
use of the force of the stream to turn his mill, the inventor of the
magnetic telegraph of the lightning to convey his messages, or as the
sailor avails himself of the wind to propel his ship.
Belief in the free or voluntary intervention of the Divinity in human
affairs, I had been taught by received science to regard as
superstition. Religion, Christian or Mahometan, Jewish or Pagan,
inasmuch as it always presupposes the supernatural, or the intervention
of God _extra naturam_, or otherwise than in and through the laws of
nature, was superstition. The ministry of angels was superstition. The
assertion of Satanic interposition was, beyond all doubt, superstition.
The facts which had led to the supposition of Divine providence, and of
the ministry of good and evil angels, were, no doubt, real; but ignorant
of the laws of nature, men had misinterpreted them, and assigned them
causes which are unreal. All religion has, I said, its origin in
ignorance, and necessarily recedes as science advances. Hence I felt
that it would be only a proof of my ignorance and superstition to
ascribe the mysterious phenomena to any spiritual or supernatural
agency.
Even after the explanations of Mr. Merton, and after my reason was
silenced, I was unwilling to abandon my prejudices, and accept his
conclusion. What, should I, in this nineteenth century, in this age of
genuine science, which has done so much to roll back the clouds and
dissipate the darkness which enveloped past ages, consent to adopt the
vulgar belief of the sixteenth century, when men were but just escaping
from the thraldom of Romanism—of the thirteenth century, when they were
but just beginning to emerge from barbarism—of the first century, when
still buried in the night of heathenism? My pride of science, my pride
of intellect, revolted at the thought. What ridicule would not be
showered upon me by the wits and free-thinkers of the age, should it be
known, or even suspected!
I hesitated long, for I saw at once, that if I admitted the existence
and influence of Satan, I must go farther, and concede the Christian
mysteries. I must abandon liberal Christianity, deny the supposed
progress of recent times in religious notions, and return to
old-fashioned orthodoxy. Perhaps I should find it necessary to go even
further back than the orthodoxy of my own country. This was no pleasant
thought. To unlearn all I had learned, to regard all my most cherished
convictions as so many delusions, to become in reality as a little
child, and to commence life anew, as Jesus Christ taught we must do, if
we would enter into the kingdom of heaven, was too humiliating to be
contemplated with pleasure even on my dying bed, and when the world was
fast disappearing from my view. What would have been the result of my
internal struggle, if I had been left wholly to myself, I will not
pretend to say. But I was not so left. Mr. Merton was with me almost
daily, and seemed always to read my thoughts before I expressed them,
and to comprehend my difficulties.
“Your great mistake,” said he to me one day, when the subject came up,
“is in supposing that religion is the offspring of ignorance, and stands
opposed to science. Your assumption that man began in ignorance, and has
attained to science only by long and patient research and laborious
experiment, is at best gratuitous. Some things, of course, have been
acquired only in process of time. Man has made progress in the knowledge
of all that which he himself has done, or has suffered; but nothing
requires you to assume that his progress in knowledge is any thing more
than progress in the knowledge of his own doing and suffering. It is not
likely that Adam knew the history of the battle of Pharsalia, of
Hastings, Bovines, or Waterloo; it is not probable that he was
acquainted with the steam-engine, the cotton-gin, the spinning-jenny,
the power-loom, or the lightning telegraph. But he may have received
from his Maker, as religion teaches, a knowledge of the nature and
causes of things, and of his moral relations and duties, equal to that
possessed by the most enlightened of his posterity.
“Historically considered,” proceeded Mr. Merton, “the earliest belief of
mankind was the existence, unity, and free providence of God—a belief in
strict accordance with the deductions of genuine science in every age.
Every language under heaven bears indelible traces of that belief, and
would be unintelligible, absolutely insignificant, if it were denied.
Yet all languages are radically one and the same, and must, in some
form, have been given supernaturally to man, for man speaks only as he
has learned to speak; and it would have required language to invent
language.”
“But if all languages are radically the same, how do you explain their
manifest differences?” I asked.
“That is a question which I leave to the philologists; but they, I
believe, very easily prove that these differences are not radical, and
that they are due principally to the differences of pursuits, of
circumstances, temperaments, and pronunciation of different tribes
having little or no intercourse with one another. However great or small
they may be, or whatever their causes, it has been proved that they are
only modifications of one and the same original tongue.”
“But you know,” said I, “that religion is progressive, and that the
earliest religion of mankind was a gross fetichism, a worship of animals
and inanimate things. From that gross superstition we can trace its
gradual purification and progress towards the sublime monotheism of
Moses, Socrates, Plato, and Jesus, moulded by the Church fathers into
Christian theology.”
“I know no such thing,” replied Mr. Merton, “and St. Paul, who was a
good philosopher as well as an inspired apostle, tells us that men left
the true God to worship creeping things and four-footed beasts. The
monotheism you speak of is historically older than the fetichism of
which you would make it a development. What you are pleased to call the
monotheism of Moses, was older than that lawgiver. Moses, under Divine
inspiration and direction, founded the Jewish state, or commonwealth,
and instituted the Jewish worship, but he did not introduce a new faith
or theology. The faith or doctrine he taught concerning God and moral
duty, was that of the old patriarchs, and the same which had been held
from Adam. Christian faith and theology have come down to us through the
line of the patriarchs and the Jews, not through that of the Gentiles,
and, if a development at all, is not a development of heathenism, but of
the earlier patriarchal religion preserved in the synagogue. Hence St.
Augustine says, that faith has not changed; as believed the fathers, so
we believe—only they believed in a Christ who was to come, and we
believe in a Christ who has come.
“Then, again, the monotheism, if monotheism it was, of Socrates and
Plato, was not a development or gradual purification of fetichism or of
the gross forms of nature-worship. They themselves tell you as much, and
always claim to be restorers, not innovators. In asserting the unity of
God, they profess always to revive the belief or the wisdom of the
ancients. No one can have studied the various forms of heathenism
without finding in them ample evidence that they are not primitive
formations. They all bear witness to a type which is not in themselves—a
type from which they have departed, not a type which they are
approaching or realizing. They bear the deep traces of corruption, and
are evidently travesties of the old patriarchal or primitive religion,
without a knowledge of which they are absolutely inexplicable. The
memory of the loss of its primitive perfection, all heathenism retains
in its heart. All heathenism is imprinted with profound grief for a lost
good, and never does it show signs of a true joy. There is sadness in
all its rites, gay and joyous as it tries to make them. Its joy is a
drunken joy, and its boisterous mirth is the wild laugh of the maniac.
But over the whole of heathenism, even in its grossest forms, there
hovers always the primitive monotheism. It retains always some
reminiscence of the belief in one supreme God, Father of gods and men.
Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, and others, acquainted with the Jewish
belief, and meditating on this reminiscence, undoubtedly rose to
sublimer and more rational views of the Divinity than those which were
entertained by the vulgar; but this says nothing in favor of that
gradual development and purification of heathenism, which you and a well
known modern school assert, and assert without one single fact to
support you.
“You must rely on history,” continued Mr. Merton, “for your theory
professes to be historical, and to sustain itself by facts. But history
has been tolerably authentic for some thousands of years. How happens
it, if your theory be correct, that we find no instance of this gradual
development and purification of heathenism? In all the cases where the
history can be traced, it is undeniable that the purest or the least
deformed state of any heathen superstition is its earliest; and the
grossest, the most corrupt and revolting, is always its latest. Nothing
in this world ever reforms itself, and the inevitable tendency of all
error, as of all vice, is from bad to worse. Compare the popular
religion of Rome under the kings, with the popular religion under the
pagan emperors, and you will find this proved.
“Indeed, my friend, your whole theory is false. Never yet has religion
receded before the advance of true science, and religion, as you well
say, has always asserted the supernatural, the interposition of God in
human affairs, _extra naturam_. Always, too, has it asserted the
existence of good and bad angels, and their intervention on the one hand
by Divine command, and on the other by Divine permission, in the affairs
of mankind. This belief of all ages is itself a phenomenon to be
explained, accounted for; and you will find it impossible to explain it,
or account for it, without admitting its substantial truth. Men may err
in supposing a supernatural or superhuman intervention where none takes
place, and undoubtedly they have so erred time and again; but they could
not have so erred if they had not already had the idea or belief of such
interposition. Whence comes that idea or belief? If that is false,
explain whence comes the general error before the particular? A general
_à priori_ error is impossible. All error is in the misapplication of
truth. A general error is nothing but a generalization by way of
induction of particular errors, or misapplications of truth to
particulars, and is therefore necessarily subsequent to them. If there
were in reality no true religion, there could be no false religion, as
if there were no genuine, there could be no counterfeit coin. Always is
the true prior to the false; and how then could mankind come to assert a
false supernatural interposition, if they had no prior belief in a true
supernatural interposition, or believe in such an interposition, if no
such interposition had ever taken place?”
“But how will you clear this belief in Satanic interposition from the
charge of superstition?” I asked.
“Superstition, my friend, is a word oftener used,” replied Mr. Merton,
“than understood. The heathen religions were all superstitions, I grant,
because they all ascribed effects to unreal or inadequate causes. To
believe in the existence of good and bad angels is not superstition, if
good and bad angels really exist, any more than it is to believe in the
existence of men and women, horses or oxen. Where there is no error,
there is no superstition. Suppose a fairy really to exist, there is no
superstition in believing the fact. Suppose the ministry of angels to be
a fact, there is nothing superstitious, unreasonable, or unscientific in
believing it, or in ascribing to that ministry real effects. Suppose
fallen angels or wicked spirits do really exist, do really tempt us, and
by Divine permission, do really besiege or possess us, there is no
superstition in believing it, in taking the proper precautions against
them, or the proper measures to disperse or expel them. If the real
origin of the phenomena we have been considering is diabolical, nothing
is more reasonable than to believe it; and to ascribe them to natural
causes, would be unscientific, and itself a sort of superstition.
Undoubtedly, the spirit-rappers, or spiritualists, as they call
themselves, are superstitious. What they call spiritualism is rank
superstition, because they believe the phenomena are produced by the
_shades_ or spirits of the dead, and the word _superstition_ was
originally used, I believe, to imply a belief in, and a dread of, the
influence of the departed on the living; but to ascribe them to fallen
angels, if such they are, is no superstition at all, for then they are
ascribed to an adequate cause, and to their real cause.
“There are two opposite errors,” concluded Mr. Merton, “both equally
hostile to religion and to good sense,—superstition and irreligion. Each
is an abuse, as the schoolmen say, an _excess_ in a contrary direction;
and unhappily, the tendency of most men is to one or the other. Nothing
is more certain than that in every age much superstition has been
connected with the doctrine I have contended for.”
“That,” said I, “is what makes me dread and hesitate to accept it.”
“I know,” Mr. Merton replied, “all that you would say on that score. I
have myself read history, and, no less than you, been shocked by its
abuses. But there is no truth that cannot be or that has not been
abused. I am as much opposed to these abuses as you are. It will not do
to suppose that every event a little out of the range of our ordinary
experience, is a miracle, or effected, if good, by Angelic, if bad, by
Satanic agency. Every time a murrain prevails among the cattle, it will
not do to ascribe it to sorcery, or when the butter will not come, to
lay the blame upon Robin Goodfellow. The tendency to do so is
undoubtedly a superstitious tendency. But the contrary, or Sadducean
tendency, to believe in neither angel nor spirit, is even more
dangerous. I do not believe every tale of witchcraft I hear, and I am
slow to believe in actual Satanic invasion in any particular case that
may be alleged. The Church has always asserted the possibility of such
invasion, but she does not permit a resort to exorcism on every apparent
instance of it. She demands previous consultation, long examination, and
the judgment of the most rigid science. While the greatest caution
should be exercised as to every case of supposed actual Satanic
invasion, we should guard equally against running into the contrary
error of denying that such invasion ever takes place. An unreasonable
scepticism is as far removed from true wisdom and virtue, as an
unreasonable belief. Modern science is sceptical; and it is more
important just now to guard against scepticism and its irreligion, than
it is to guard against superstition.
“Yet we deceive ourselves, if we suppose that the scepticism of science
has penetrated far into the popular mind, even in our own country.
Science can never root out popular superstitions. While the few laugh at
the superstition of the vulgar, that superstition, though modified
perhaps as to its forms, continues to thrive, and attains, not
unfrequently, even a more vigorous growth. The old popular
superstitions, brought hither by our ancestors, still live in the heart
of the people, and in forms as gross and as revolting as in the
seventeenth century. Superstition is cured, not by a sceptical science,
denying altogether the spirit-world, but by religion, which, while it
recognizes that world, teaches us to draw accurately the line of
demarcation between genuine and counterfeit spirit-manifestations. The
people cannot live in absolute irreligion; and where they have not
religion, they will have superstition. The tendency of modern science is
to destroy all religious faith, and therefore to promote, indirectly,
the very evil it proposes to cure,—the common effect of all unbaptized
science, as of all unbaptized philanthropy.”
“There is some truth in that, I must own,” I remarked. “I know not why
it is so, but every effort made, although with the purest and best
intentions in the world, outside of Christianity, seem always to fail,
or to end only in aggravating the very evils they were intended to cure.
There is less real liberty in France to-day than there was before the
meeting of the States-General in May, 1789. The revolutions which,
during the last sixty or seventy years, have so terribly raged on
European soil, though made in behalf of liberty or of popular
representation, have resulted only in depriving each nation in which
they have taken place of its former too feeble checks on power, and in
rendering the monarchy more absolute. The same may be said in principle
of all our efforts at philanthropic reform on a smaller scale.”
“Undoubtedly,” replied Mr. Merton; “and the reason is, that the glory of
whatever is good is due to God, and he will suffer no plans to succeed
that would rob him of his due. He has himself given us his law, and
provided us the means of salvation, temporal and eternal; and whosoever
seeks salvation by any other means, or in contempt of that law, must
fail, and shamefully fail.”