[27] 'The _diaulos_ of the journey.' We recommend to the amateur in
words this Greek phrase, which expresses by one word an egress linked
with its corresponding regress, which indicates at once the voyage
outwards and the voyage inwards, as the briefest of expressions for what
is technically called '_course of post,' i.e._, the reciprocation of
post, its systole and diastole.
[28] Wordsworth.
_XX. THE PRINCIPLE OF EVIL._
We are not to suppose the rebel, or, more properly, corrupted
angels--the rebellion being in the result, not in the intention (which
is as little conceivable in an exalted spirit as that man should prepare
to make war on gravitation)--were essentially evil. Whether a principle
of evil--essential evil--anywhere exists can only be guessed. So gloomy
an idea is shut up from man. Yet, if so, possibly the angels and man
were nearing it continually.
Possibly after a certain approach to that Maelstrom recall might be
hopeless. Possibly many anchors had been thrown out to pick up, had
all dragged, and last of all came to the Jewish trial. (Of course,
under the Pagan absence of sin, _a fall was impossible_. A return was
impossible, in the sense that you cannot return to a place which you
have never left. Have I ever noticed this?) We are not to suppose that
the angels were really in a state of rebellion. So far from that, it
was evidently amongst the purposes of God that what are called false
Gods, and are so in the ultimate sense of resting on tainted
principles and tending to ruin--perhaps irretrievable (though it would
be the same thing practically if no restoration were possible but
through vast æons of unhappy incarnations)--but otherwise were as
real as anything can be into whose nature a germ of evil has entered,
should effect a secondary ministration of the last importance to man's
welfare. Doubt there can be little that without any religion, any
sense of dependency, or gratitude, or reverence as to superior
natures, man would rapidly have deteriorated; and that would have
tended to such destruction of all nobler principles--patriotism
(strong in the old world as with us), humanity, ties of parentage or
neighbourhood--as would soon have thinned the world; so that the
Jewish process thus going on must have failed for want of
correspondencies to the scheme--possibly endless oscillations which,
however coincident with plagues, would extirpate the human race. We
may see in manufacturing neighbourhoods, so long as no dependency
exists on masters, where wages show that not work, but workmen, are
scarce, how unamiable, insolent, fierce, are the people; the poor
cottagers on a great estate may sometimes offend you by too obsequious
a spirit towards all gentry. That was a transition state in England
during the first half of the eighteenth century, when few
manufacturers and merchants had risen to such a generous model. But
this leaves room for many domestic virtues that would suffer greatly
in the other state. Yet this is but a faint image of the total
independency. Oaths were sacred only through the temporal judgments
supposed to overtake those who insulted the Gods by summoning them to
witness a false contract. But this would have been only part of the
evil. So long as men acknowledged higher natures, they were doubtful
about futurity. This doubt had little strength on the side of hope,
but much on the side of fear. The blessings of any future state were
cheerless and insipid mockeries; so Achilles--how he bemoans his
state! But the torments were real. By far more, however, they,
through this coarse agency of syllogistic dread, would act to show man
the degradation of his nature when all light of a higher existence had
disappeared. That which did not exist for natures supposed capable
originally of immortality, how should it exist for him? And that man
must have observed with little attention what takes place in this
world if he needs to be told that nothing tends to make his own
species cheap and hateful in his eyes so certainly as moral
degradation driven to a point of no hope. So in squalid dungeons, in
captivities of slaves, nay, in absolute pauperism, all hate each other
fiercely. Even with us, how sad is the thought--that, just as a man
needs pity, as he is stript of all things, when most the sympathy of
men should settle on him, then most is he contemplated with a
hard-hearted contempt! The Jews when injured by our own oppressive
princes were despised and hated. Had they raised an empire, licked
their oppressors well, they would have been compassionately loved. So
lunatics heretofore; so galley-slaves--Toulon, Marseilles, etc. This
brutal principle of degradation soon developed in man. The Gods,
therefore, performed a great agency for man. And it is clear that God
did not discourage _common_ rites or rights for His altar or theirs.
Nay, he sent Israel to Egypt--as one reason--to learn ceremonies
amongst a people who sequestered them. In evil the Jews always clove
to their religion. Next the difficulty of people, miracles, though
less for false Gods, and least of all for the meanest, was _alike_ for
both. Astarte does not kill Sayth on the spot, but by a judgment.
Gods, no more their God, spake an instant law. Even the prophets are
properly no prophets, but only the mode of speech by God,--as clear as
He _can_ speak. Men mistake God's hate by their own. So neither could
He reveal Himself. A vast age would be required for seeing God.
But for the thought of man as evil (or of any other form of evil), as
reconcilable with their idea of a perfect God, a happy idea may, like
the categories, proceed upon a necessity for a perfect _inversion_ of
the _methodus conspiciendi_. Let us retrace, but in such a form as to be
apprehensible by all readers. Analytic and synthetic propositions at
once throw light upon the notion of a category. Once it had been a mere
abstraction; of no possible use except as a convenient cell for
referring (as in a nest of boxes), which may perhaps as much degrade the
idea as a relative of my own degraded the image of the crescent moon by
saying, in his abhorrence of sentimentality, that it reminded him of the
segment from his own thumb-nail when clean cut by an instrument called a
nail-cutter. This was the Aristotelian notion. But Kant could not
content himself with this idea. His own theory (1) as to time and space,
(2) the refutation of Hume's notion of cause, and (3) his own great
discovery of synthetic and analytic propositions, all prepared the way
for a totally new view. But, now, what is the origin of this necessity
applied to the category as founded in the synthesis? How does a
synthesis make itself or anything else necessary? Explain me that.
This was written perhaps a fortnight ago. Now, Monday, May 23 (day fixed
for Dan Good's execution), I _do_ explain it by what this moment I seem
to have discovered--the necessity of cause, of substance, etc., lies in
the intervening synthesis. This you _must_ pass through in the course
tending to and finally reaching the idea; for the analytical presupposes
this synthesis.
Not only must the energies of destruction be equal to those of creation,
but, in fact, perhaps by the trespassing a little of the first upon the
last, is the true advance sustained; for it must be an advance as well
as a balance. But you say this will but in other words mean that forces
devoted (and properly so) to production or creation are absorbed by
destruction. True; but the opposing phenomena will be going on in a
large ratio, and each must react on the other. The productive must meet
and correspond to the destructive. The destructive must revise and
stimulate the continued production.
_XXI. ON MIRACLES._
What else is the laying of such a stress on miracles but the case of 'a
wicked and adulterous generation asking a sign'?
But what are these miracles for? To prove a legislation from God. But,
first, this could not be proved, even if miracle-working were the test
of Divine mission, by doing miracles until we knew whether the power
were genuine; _i.e._, not, like the magicians of Pharaoh or the witch of
Endor, from below. Secondly, you are a poor, pitiful creature, that
think the power to do miracles, or power of any kind that can exhibit
itself in an act, the note of a god-like commission. Better is one ray
of truth (not seen previously by man), of _moral_ truth, _e.g._,
forgiveness of enemies, than all the powers which could create the
world.
'Oh yes!' says the objector; 'but Christ was holy as a man.' This we
know first; then we judge by His power that He must have been from God.
But if it were doubtful whether His power were from God, then, until
this doubt is _otherwise_, is independently removed, you cannot decide
if He _was_ holy by a test of holiness absolutely irrelevant. With other
holiness--apparent holiness--a simulation might be combined. You can
never tell that a man is holy; and for the plain reason that God only
can read the heart.
'Let Him come down from the cross, and we,' etc. Yes; they fancied so.
But see what would really have followed. They would have been stunned
and confounded for the moment, but not at all converted in heart. Their
hatred to Christ was not built on their unbelief, but their unbelief in
Christ was built on their hatred; and this hatred would not have been
mitigated by another (however astounding) miracle. This I wrote (Monday
morning, June 7, 1847) in reference to my saying on the general question
of miracles: Why these _dubious_ miracles?--such as curing blindness
that may have been cured by a _process_?--since the _unity_ given to the
act of healing is probably (more probably than otherwise) but the
figurative unity of the tendency to _mythus_; or else it is that unity
misapprehended and mistranslated by the reporters. Such, again, as the
miracles of the loaves--so liable to be utterly gossip, so incapable of
being watched or examined amongst a crowd of 7,000 people. Besides, were
these people mad? The very fact which is said to have drawn Christ's
pity, viz., their situation in the desert, surely could not have escaped
their own attention on going thither. Think of 7,000 people rushing to a
sort of destruction; for if less than that the mere inconvenience was
not worthy of Divine attention. Now, said I, why not give us (if
miracles _are_ required) one that nobody could doubt--removing a
mountain, _e.g._? Yes; but here the other party begin to _see_ the evil
of miracles. Oh, this would have _coerced_ people into believing! Rest
you safe as to that. It would have been no believing in any proper
sense: it would, at the utmost--and supposing no vital demur to popular
miracle--have led people into that belief which Christ Himself describes
(and regrets) as calling Him Lord! Lord! The pretended belief would have
left them just where they were as to any real belief in Christ.
Previously, however, or over and above all this, there would be the
demur (let the miracle have been what it might) of, By what power, by
whose agency or help? For if Christ does a miracle, probably He may do
it by alliance with some _Z_ standing behind, out of sight. Or if by His
own skill, how or whence derived, or of what nature? This obstinately
recurrent question remains.
There is not the meanest court in Christendom or Islam that would not
say, if called on to adjudicate the rights of an estate on such evidence
as the mere facts of the Gospel: 'O good God, how can we do this? Which
of us knows who this Matthew was--whether he ever lived, or, if so,
whether he ever wrote a line of all this? or, if he did, how situated as
to motives, as to means of information, as to judgment and
discrimination? Who knows anything of the contrivances or the various
personal interests in which the whole narrative originated, or when? All
is dark and dusty.' Nothing in such a case _can_ be proved but what
shines by its own light. Nay, God Himself could not attest a miracle,
but (listen to this!)--but by the internal revelation or visiting of the
Spirit--to evade which, to dispense with which, a miracle is ever
resorted to.
Besides the objection to miracles that they are not capable of
attestation, Hume's objection is not that they are false, but that they
are incommunicable. Two different duties arise for the man who witnesses
a miracle and for him who receives traditionally. The duty of the first
is to confide in his own experience, which may, besides, have been
repeated; of the second, to confide in his understanding, which says:
'Less marvel that the reporter should have erred than that nature should
have been violated.'
How dearly do these people betray their own hypocrisy about the divinity
of Christianity, and at the same time the meanness of their own natures,
who think the Messiah, or God's Messenger, must first prove His own
commission by an act of power; whereas (1) a new revelation of moral
forces could not be invented by all generations, and (2) an act of power
much more probably argues an alliance with the devil. I should gloomily
suspect a man who came forward as a magician.
Suppose the Gospels written thirty years after the events, and by
ignorant, superstitious men who have adopted the fables that old women
had surrounded Christ with--how does this supposition vitiate the report
of Christ's parables? But, on the other hand, they could no more have
invented the parables than a man alleging a diamond-mine could invent a
diamond as attestation. The parables prove themselves.
_XXII. 'LET HIM COME DOWN FROM THE CROSS.'_
Now, this is exceedingly well worth consideration. I know not at all
whether what I am going to say has been said already--life would not
suffice in every field or section of a field to search every nook and
section of a nook for the possibilities of chance utterance given to any
stray opinion. But this I know without any doubt at all, that it cannot
have been said effectually, cannot have been so said as to publish and
disperse itself; else it is impossible that the crazy logic current upon
these topics should have lived, or that many separate arguments should
ever for very shame have been uttered. Said or not said, let us presume
it unsaid, and let me state the true answer as if _de novo_, even if by
accident somewhere the darkness shelters this same answer as uttered
long ago.
Now, therefore, I will suppose that He _had_ come down from the Cross.
No case can so powerfully illustrate the filthy falsehood and pollution
of that idea which men generally entertain, which the sole creditable
books universally build upon. What would have followed? This would have
followed: that, inverting the order of every true emanation from God,
instead of growing and expanding for ever like a [symbol: <], it would
have attained its _maximum_ at the first. The effect for the half-hour
would have been prodigious, and from that moment when it began to flag
it would degrade rapidly, until, in three days, a far fiercer hatred
against Christ would have been moulded. For observe: into what state of
mind would this marvel have been received? Into any good-will towards
Christ, which previously had been defeated by the belief that He was an
impostor in the sense that He pretended to a power of miracles which in
fact He had not? By no means. The sense in which Christ had been an
impostor for them was in assuming a commission, a spiritual embassy with
appropriate functions, promises, prospects, to which He had no title.
How had that notion--not, viz., of miraculous impostorship, but of
spiritual impostorship--been able to maintain itself? Why, what should
have reasonably destroyed the notion? This, viz., the sublimity of His
moral system. But does the reader imagine that this sublimity is of a
nature to be seen intellectually--that is, insulated and _in vacuo_ for
the intellect? No more than by geometry or by a _sorites_ any man
constitutionally imperfect could come to understand the nature of the
sexual appetite; or a man born deaf could make representable to himself
the living truth of music, a man born blind could make representable the
living truth of colours. All men are not equally deaf in heart--far from
it--the differences are infinite, and some men never could comprehend
the beauty of spiritual truth. But no man could comprehend it without
preparation. That preparation was found in his training of Judaism;
which to those whose hearts were hearts of flesh, not stony and charmed
against hearing, had already anticipated the first outlines of Christian
ideas. Sin, purity, holiness unimaginable, these had already been
inoculated into the Jewish mind. And amongst the race inoculated Christ
found enough for a central nucleus to His future Church. But the natural
tendency under the fever-mist of strife and passion, evoked by the
present position in the world operating upon robust, full-blooded life,
unshaken by grief or tenderness of nature, or constitutional sadness, is
to fail altogether of seeing the features which so powerfully mark
Christianity. Those features, instead of coming out into strong relief,
resemble what we see in mountainous regions where the mist covers the
loftiest peaks.
We have heard of a man saying: 'Give me such titles of honour, so many
myriads of pounds, and then I will consider your proposal that I should
turn Christian.' Now, survey--pause for one moment to survey--the
immeasurable effrontery of this speech. First, it replies to a proposal
having what object--our happiness or his? Why, of course, his: how are
we interested, except on a sublime principle of benevolence, in his
faith being right? Secondly, it is a reply presuming money, the most
fleshly of objects, to modify or any way control religion, _i.e._, a
spiritual concern. This in itself is already monstrous, and pretty much
the same as it would be to order a charge of bayonets against
gravitation, or against an avalanche, or against an earthquake, or
against a deluge. But, suppose it were _not_ so, what incomprehensible
reasoning justifies the notion that not we are to be paid, but that he
is to be paid for a change not concerning or affecting our happiness,
but his?
_XXIII. IS THE HUMAN RACE ON THE DOWN GRADE?_
As to individual nations, it is matter of notoriety that they are often
improgressive. As a whole, it may be true that the human race is under a
necessity of slowly advancing; and it may be a necessity, also, that the
current of the moving waters should finally absorb into its motion that
part of the waters which, left to itself, would stagnate. All this may
be true--and yet it will not follow that the human race must be moving
constantly upon an ascending line, as thus:
B
/
/
/
/
/
/
A
nor even upon such a line, with continual pauses or rests interposed, as
thus:
[Illustration]
where there is no going back, though a constant interruption to the
going forward; but a third hypothesis is possible: there may be
continual loss of ground, yet so that continually the loss is more than
compensated, and the total result, for any considerable period of
observation, may be that progress is maintained:
[Illustration]
At O, by comparison with the previous elevation at A, there is a
repeated falling back; but still upon the whole, and pursuing the
inquiry through a sufficiently large segment of time, the constant
report is--ascent.
Upon this explanation it is perfectly consistent with a general belief
in the going forward of man--that this particular age in which we live
might be stationary, or might even have gone back. It cannot, therefore,
be upon any _à priori_ principle that I maintain the superiority of this
age. It is, and must be upon special examination, applied to the
phenomena of this special age. The last century, in its first thirty
years, offered the spectacle of a death-like collapse in the national
energies. All great interests suffered together. The intellectual power
of the country, spite of the brilliant display in a lower element, made
by one or two men of genius, languished as a whole. The religious
feeling was torpid, and in a degree which insured the strong reaction of
some irritating galvanism, or quickening impulse such as that which was
in fact supplied by Methodism. It is not with that age that I wish to
compare the present. I compare it with the age which terminated thirty
years ago--roused, invigorated, searched as that age was through all its
sensibilities by the electric shock of the French Revolution. It is by
comparison with an age so keenly alive, penetrated by ideas stirring and
uprooting, that I would compare it; and even then the balance of gain in
well-calculated resource, fixed yet stimulating ideals, I hold to be in
our favour--and this in opposition to much argument in an adverse spirit
from many and influential quarters. Indeed, it is a remark which more
than once I have been led to make in print: that if a foreigner were to
inquire for the moral philosophy, the ethics, and even for the
metaphysics, of our English literature, the answer would be, 'Look for
them in the great body of our Divinity.' Not merely the more scholastic
works on theology, but the occasional sermons of our English divines
contain a body of richer philosophical speculation than is elsewhere to
be found; and, to say the truth, far more instructive than anything in
our Lockes, Berkeleys, or other express and professional philosophers.
Having said this by way of showing that I do not overlook their just
pretensions, let me have leave to notice a foible in these writers which
is not merely somewhat ludicrous, but even seriously injurious to
truth. One and all, through a long series of two hundred and fifty
years, think themselves called upon to tax their countrymen--each
severally in his own age--with a separate, peculiar, and unexampled
guilt of infidelity and irreligion. Each worthy man, in his turn, sees
in his own age overt signs of these offences not to be matched in any
other. Five-and-twenty periods of ten years each may be taken,
concerning each of which some excellent writer may be cited to prove
that it had reached a maximum of atrocity, such as should not easily
have been susceptible of aggravation, but which invariably the _relays_
through all the subsequent periods affirm their own contemporaries to
have attained. Every decennium is regularly worse than that which
precedes it, until the mind is perfectly confounded by the _Pelion upon
Ossa_ which must overwhelm the last term of the twenty-five. It is the
mere necessity of a logical _sorites_, that such a horrible race of
villains as the men of the twenty-fifth decennium ought not to be
suffered to breathe. Now, the whole error arises out of an imbecile
self-surrender to the first impressions from the process of abstraction
as applied to remote objects. Survey a town under the benefit of a ten
miles' distance, combined with a dreamy sunshine, and it will appear a
city of celestial palaces. Enter it, and you will find the same filth,
the same ruins, the same disproportions as anywhere else. So of past
ages, seen through the haze of an abstraction which removes all
circumstantial features of deformity. Call up any one of those ages, if
it were possible, into the realities of life, and these worthy praisers
of the past would be surprised to find every feature repeated which they
had fancied peculiar to their own times. Meanwhile this erroneous
doctrine of sermons has a double ill consequence: first, the whole
chain of twenty-five writers, when brought together, consecutively
reflect a colouring of absurdity upon each other; separately they might
be endurable, but all at once, predicating (each of his own period
exclusively) what runs with a rolling fire through twenty-five such
periods in succession, cannot but recall to the reader that senseless
doctrine of a physical decay in man, as if man were once stronger,
broader, taller, etc.--upon which hypothesis of a gradual descent why
should it have stopped at any special point? How could the human race
have failed long ago to reach the point of _zero_? But, secondly, such a
doctrine is most injurious and insulting to Christianity. If, after
eighteen hundred years of development, it could be seriously true of
Christianity that it had left any age or generation of men worse in
conduct, or in feeling, or in belief, than all their predecessors, what
reasonable expectation could we have that in eighteen hundred years more
the case would be better? Such thoughtless opinions make Christianity to
be a failure.
_XXIV. BREVIA: SHORT ESSAYS (IN CONNECTION WITH EACH OTHER.)_