REPLY TO THE DEFENCE OF THE "ECLIPSE OF FAITH."
This small treatise was reviewed, unfavourably of course, in most of
the religious periodicals, and among them in the "Prospective Review,"
by my friend James Martineau. I had been about the same time attacked
in a book called the "Eclipse of Faith," written (chiefly against my
treatise on the Soul) in the form of a Platonic Dialogue; in which a
sceptic, a certain Harrington, is made to indulge in a great deal
of loose and bantering argumentation, with the view of ridiculing my
religion, and doing so by ways of which some specimen will be given.
I made an indignant protest in a new edition of this book, and added
also various matter in reply to Mr. Martineau, which will still
be found here. He in consequence in a second article[1] of the
"Prospective" reviewed me afresh; but, in the opening, he first
pronounced his sentence in words of deep disapproval against the
"Eclipse of Faith."
"The method of the work," says he, "its plan of appealing from what
seems shocking in the Bible to something more shocking in the world,
simply doubles every difficulty without relieving any; and tends to
enthrone a devil everywhere, and leave a God nowhere.... The whole
force of the writer's thought,--his power of exposition, of argument,
of sarcasm, is thrown, in spite of himself, into the irreligious
scale.... If the work be really written[2] in good faith, and be not
rather a covert attack on all religion, it curiously shows how the
temple of the author's worship stands on the same foundation with the
_officina_ of Atheism, and in such close vicinity that the passer-by
cannot tell from which of the two the voices stray into the street."
The author of the "Eclipse," buoyed up by a large sale of his work
to a credulous public, put forth a "Defence," in which he naturally
declined to submit to the judgment of this reviewer. But my readers
will remark, that Mr. Martineau, writing against me, and seeking to
rebut my replies to him--(nay, I fear I must say my _attack_ on him;
for I have confessed, almost with compunction, that it was I who first
stirred the controversy)--was very favourably situated for maintaining
a calmly judicial impartiality. He thought us both wrong, and he
administered to us each the medicine which seemed to him needed.
He passed his strictures on what he judged to be my errors, and he
rebuked my assailant for profane recklessness.
I had complained, not of this merely, but of monstrous indefensible
garbling and misrepresentation, pervading the whole work. The dialogue
is so managed, as often to suggest what is false concerning me, yet
without asserting it; so as to enable him to disown the slander, while
producing its full effect against me. Of the directly false statements
and garblings I gave several striking exhibitions. His reply to all
this in the first edition of his "Defence" was reviewed in a _third_
article of the "Prospective Review," Its ability and reach of thought
are attested by the fact that it has been mistaken for the writing of
Mr. Martineau; but (as clearly as reviews ever speak on such subjects)
it is intimated in the opening that this new article is from a new
hand, "at the risk of revealing _division of persons and opinions_
within the limits of the mystic critical _We_." Who is the author, I
do not know; nor can I make a likely guess at any one who was in more
than distant intercourse with me.
This third reviewer did not bestow one page, as Mr. Martineau had
done, on the "Eclipse;" did not summarily pronounce a broad sentence
without details, but dedicated thirty-four pages to the examination
and proof. He opens with noticing the parallel which the author of
the "Eclipse" has instituted between his use of ridicule and that
of Pascal; and replies that he signally violates Pascal's two rules,
_first_, to speak with truth against one's opponents and not with
calumny; _secondly_, not to wound them needlessly. "Neglect of the
first rule (says he) has given to these books [the "Eclipse" and its
"Defence"] their apparent controversial success; disregard of the
second their literary point." He adds, "We shall show that their
author misstates and misrepresents doctrines; garbles quotations,
interpolating words which give the passage he cites reference to
subjects quite foreign from those to which in the original they apply,
while retaining the inverted commas, which are the proper sign of
faithful transcription; that similarly, he allows himself the licence
of omission of the very words on which the controversy hangs, while
in appearance citing _verbatim_;... and that he habitually employs
a sophistry too artful (we fear) to be undesigned. May he not himself
have been deceived, some indulgent render perhaps asks, by the
fallacies which have been so successful with others? It would be as
reasonable to suppose that the grapes which deluded the birds must
have deluded Zeuxis who painted them."
So grave an accusation against my assailant's truthfulness, coming not
from me, but from a third party, and that, evidently a man who knew
well what he was saying and why,--could not be passed over unnoticed,
although that religious world, which reads one side only, continued
to buy the "Eclipse" and its "Defence" greedily, and not one in a
thousand of them was likely to see the "Prospective Review," In
the second edition of the "Defence" the writer undertakes to defend
himself against my advocate, in on Appendix of 19 closely printed
pages, the "Defence" itself being 218. The "Eclipse," in its 9th
edition of small print, is 393 pages. And how does he set about his
reply? By trying to identify the third writer with the second (who was
notoriously Mr. Martineau), and to impute to him ill temper, chagrin,
irritation, and wounded self-love, as the explanation of this third
article: He says (p. 221):--
"The third writer--if, as I have said, he be not the second--sets out
on a new voyage of discovery ... and still humbly following in the
wake of Mr. Newman's great critical discoveries,[3] repeats
that gentleman's charges of falsifying passages, garbling and
misrepresentation. In doing so, he employs language, and _manifests a
temper_, which I should have thought that respect for himself, if not
for his opponent, would have induced him to suppress. It is enough to
say, that he quite rivals Mr. Newman in sagacity, and if possible, has
more successfully denuded himself of charity.... If he be the same as
the second writer, I am afraid that the little Section XV." [_i.e._
the reply to Mr. Martineau in 1st edition of the "Defence"] "must have
offended the _amour propre_ more deeply than it ought to have done,
considering the wanton and outrageous assault to which it was a very
lenient reply, and that the critic affords another illustration of the
old maxim, that there are none so implacable as those who have done a
wrong.
"As the spectacle of the reeling Helot taught the Spartans sobriety,
so his _bitterness_ shall teach me moderation. I know enough of human
nature to understand that it is very possible for an _angry_ man--and
_chagrin and irritation are too legibly written on every page of this
article_--to be betrayed into gross injustice."
The reader will see from this the difficulty of _my_ position in this
controversy. Mr. Martineau, while defending himself, deprecated
the profanity of my other opponent, and the atheistic nature of
his arguments. He spoke as a bystander, and with the advantage of a
judicial position, and it is called "wanton and outrageous." A second
writer goes into detail, and exposes some of the garbling arts which
have been used against me; it is imputed[4] to ill temper, and is
insinuated to be from a spirit of personal revenge. How much less can
_I_ defend myself, and that, against untruthfulness, without incurring
such imputation! My opponent speaks to a public who will not read my
replies. He picks out what he pleases of my words, and takes care to
divest them of their justification. I have (as was to be expected) met
with much treatment from the religious press which I know cannot be
justified; but all is slight, compared to that of which I complain
from this writer. I will presently give a few detailed instances to
illustrate this. While my charge against my assailant is essentially
moral, and I cannot make any parade of charity, he can speak
patronizingly of me now and then, and makes his main attacks on my
_logic_ and _metaphysics_. He says, that in writing his first book,
he knew no characteristics of me, except that I was "a gentleman,
a scholar, and _a very indifferent metaphysician_" At the risk of
encountering yet more of banter and insult, I shall here quote what
the third "Prospective Reviewer" says on this topic. (Vol. x. p.
208):--
"Our readers will be able to judge how well qualified the author is
to sneer at Mr. Newman's metaphysics, which are far more accurate
than his own, or to ridicule his logic. The tone of contempt which he
habitually assumes preposterously reverses the relative intellectual
_status_, so far as sound systematic thought is concerned, of the two
men."
I do not quote this as testimony to myself but as testimony that
others, as well as I, feel the _contemptuous tone_ assumed by my
adversary in precisely that subject on which modesty is called for. On
metaphysics there is hitherto an unreconciled diversity among men who
have spent their lives in the study; and a large part of the endless
religious disputes turns on this very fact. However, the being told,
in a multitude of ingenious forms, that I am a wretched logician, is
not likely to raffle my tranquillity. What does necessarily wound me,
is his misrepresenting my thoughts to the thoughtful, whose respect
I honour; and poisoning the atmosphere between me and a thousand
religious hearts. That these do not despise me, however much contempt
he may vent, I know only too well through their cruel fears of me.
I have just now learned incidentally, that in the last number (a
supplementary number) of the "Prospective Review," there was a short
reply to the second edition of Mr. Rogers's "Defence," in which the
Editors officially _deny_ that the third writer against Mr. Rogers
is the same as the second; which, I gather from their statement, the
"British Quarterly" had taken on itself to _affirm_.
I proceed to show what liberties my critic takes with my arguments,
and what he justifies.
I. In the closing chapter of my third edition of the "Phases," I had
complained of his bad faith in regard to my arguments concerning the
Authoritative imposition of moral truth from without. I showed that,
after telling his reader that I offered no proof of my assertions,
he dislocated my sentences, altered their order, omitted an adverb
of inference, and isolated three sentences out of a paragraph of
forty-six lines: that his omission of the inferential adverb showed
his deliberate intention to destroy the reader's clue to the fact,
that I had given proof where he suppresses it and says that I have
given none; that the sentences quoted as 1,2,3, by him, with me have
the order 3, 2,1; while what he places first, is with me an immediate
and necessary deduction from what has preceded. Now how does he reply?
He does not deny my facts; but he justifies his process. I must set
his words before the reader. _(Defence, 2nd ed., p. 85.)
"The strangest thing is to see the way in which, after parading this
supposed 'artful dodge,'[5] which, I assure you, gentle reader, was
all a perfect novelty to my consciousness,--Mr. Newman goes on to
say, that the author of the 'Eclipse' has altered the order of his
sentences to suit a purpose. He says: 'The sentences quoted as 1, 2,
3, by him, with me have the order 3, 2, 1.' I answer, that Harrington
was simply anxious to set forth at the head of his argument, in the
clearest and briefest form, the _conclusions_[6] he believed Mr.
Newman to hold, and which he was going to confute. He had no idea of
any relation of subordination or dependence in the above sophisms, as
I have just proved them to be, whether arranged as 3, 2, 1, or 1,
2, 3, or 2, 3, 1, or in any other order in which the possible
permutations of three things, taken 3 and 3 together, can exhibit
them; _ex nihilo, nil fit_; and three nonentities can yield just as
little. Jangle as many changes as you will on these three cracked
bells, no logical harmony can ever issue out of them."
Thus, because he does not see the validity of my argument, he is to
pretend that I have offered none: he is not to allow his readers to
judge for themselves as to the validity, but they have to take his
word that I am a very "queer" sort of logician, ready "for any feats
of logical legerdemain."
I have now to ask, what is garbling, if the above is not? He admits
the facts, but justifies them as having been convenient from his point
of view; and then finds my charity to be "very grotesque," when I do
not know how, without hypocrisy, to avoid calling a spade a spade.
I shall here reprint the pith of my argument, somewhat shortened:--
"No heaven-sent Bible can guarantee the veracity of God to a man who
doubts that veracity. Unless we have independent means of knowing that
God is truthful and good, his word (if we be over so certain that it
is really his word) has no authority to us: _hence_ no book revelation
can, without sapping its own pedestal, deny the validity of our _a
priori_ conviction that God has the virtues of goodness and veracity,
and requires like virtues in us. _And in fact_, all Christian apostles
and missionaries, like the Hebrew prophets, have always confuted
Paganism by direct attacks on its immoral and unspiritual doctrines,
and have appealed to the consciences of heathens, as competent to
decide in the controversy. Christianity itself has _thus_ practically
confessed what is theoretically clear, that an authoritative external
revelation of moral and spiritual truth is essentially impossible to
man. What God reveals to us, he reveals within, through the medium of
our moral and spiritual senses. External teaching may be a training of
those senses, but affords no foundation for certitude."
This passage deserved the enmity of my critic. He quoted bits of
it, very sparingly, never setting before his readers my continuous
thought, but giving his own free versions and deductions. His fullest
quotation stood thus, given only in an after-chapter:--"What God
reveals to us, he reveals _within_, through the medium of our moral
and spiritual senses." "Christianity itself has practically confessed
what is theoretically clear, _(you must take Mr. Newman's word for
both,)_[7] that an authoritative external revelation of moral and
spiritual truth is essentially impossible to man." "No book-revelation
can, without sapping its own pedestal, &c. &c."
These three sentences are what Mr. Rogers calls the three cracked
bells, and thinks by raising a laugh, to hide his fraud I have
carefully looked through the whole of his dialogue concerning Book
Revelation in his 9th edition of the "Eclipse" (pp. 63-83 of close
print). He still excludes from it every part of my argument,
only stating in the opening (p. 63) as my conclusions, that a
book-revelation is impossible, and that God reveals himself from
within, not from without In his _Defence_ (which circulates far less
than the "Eclipse," to judge by the number of editions) he displays
his bravery by at length printing my argument; but in the "Eclipse" he
continues to suppress it, at least as far as I can discover by turning
to the places where it ought to be found.
In p. 77 (9th ed.) of the "Eclipse." he _implies_, without absolutely
asserting, that I hold the Bible to be an impertinence. He repeats
this in p. 85 of the "Defence." Such is his mode. I wrote: "_Without_
a priori _belief_, the Bible is an impertinence," but I say, man
_has_ this _a priori_ belief, on which account the Bible is _not_
an impertinence. My last sentence in the very passage before us,
expressly asserts the value of (good) external teaching. This my
critic laboriously disguises.
He carefully avoids allowing his readers to see that I am contending
fundamentally for that which the ablest Christian divines have
conceded and maintained; that which the common sense of every
missionary knows, and every one who is not profoundly ignorant of the
Bible and of history ought to know. Mr. Rogers is quite aware, that
no apostle ever carried a Bible in his hand and said to the heathen,
"Believe that there is a good and just God, _because_ it is written
in this book;" but they appealed to the hearts and consciences of
the hearers as competent witnesses. He does not even give his reader
enough of my paragraph to make intelligible what I _meant_ by saying
"Christianity has practically confessed;" and yet insists that I am
both unreasonable and uncharitable in my complaints of him.
I here reprint the summary of my belief concerning our knowledge of
morality as fundamental, and not to be tampered with under pretence of
religion. "If an angel from heaven bade me to lie, and to steal, and
to commit adultery, and to murder, and to scoff at good men, and usurp
dominion over my equals, and do unto others everything that I wish
_not_ to have done to me; I ought to reply, BE THOU ANATHEMA! This, I
believe, was Paul's doctrine; this is mine."
It may be worth while to add how in the "Defence" Mr. Rogers pounces
on my phrase "_a priori_ view of the Divine character," as an excuse
for burying his readers in metaphysics, in which he thinks he has a
natural right to dogmatize against and over me. He must certainly be
aware of the current logical (not metaphysical) use of the phrase _a
priori_: as when we say, that Le Verrier and Adams demonstrated _a
priori_ that a planet _must_ exist exterior to Uranus, before any
astronomer communicated information that it _does_ exist. Or again:
the French Commissioners proved by actual measurement that the earth
is an oblate spheroid, of which Newton had convinced himself _a
priori_.
_I_ always avoid a needless argument of metaphysics. Writing to the
general public I cannot presume that they are good judges of anything
but a practical and moral argument. The _a priori_ views of God, of
which I here speak, involve no subtle questions; they are simply those
views which are attained _independently of the alleged authoritative
information_, and, of course, are founded upon considerations
_earlier_ than it.
But it would take too much of space and time, and be far too tedious
to my readers, if I were to go in detail through Mr. Rogers's
objections and misrepresentations. I have the sad task of attacking
_his good faith_, to which I further proceed.
II. In the preface to my second edition of the "Hebrew Monarchy,"
I found reason to explain briefly in what sense I use the word
inspiration. I said, I found it to be current in three senses;
"first, as an extraordinary influence peculiar to a few persons, as
to prophets and apostles; secondly, _as an ordinary influence of the
Divine Spirit on the hearts of men, which quickens and strengthens
their moral and spiritual powers_, and is accessible to them all (in
a certain stage of development) _in some proportion to their own
faithfulness._ The third view teaches that genius and inspiration are
two names for one thing.... _Christians for the most part hold the two
first conceptions_, though they generally call the second _spiritual
influence_, not inspiration; the third, seems to be common in the
Old Testament. It so happens that the _second is the only inspiration
which I hold._" [I here super-add the italics] On this passage Mr.
Rogers commented as follows ("Defence" p. 156):--
"The latest utterance of Mr. Newman on the subject [of inspiration]
that I have read, occurs in his preface to the second edition of
his "Hebrew Monarchy," where he tells us, that he believes it is an
influence accessible to all men, _in a certain stage of development_!
[Italics.] Surely it will be time to consider his theory of
inspiration, when he has told us a little more about it. To my mind,
if the very genius of mystery had framed the definition, it could not
have uttered anything more indefinite."
Upon this passage the "Prospective" reviewer said his say as follows
(vol x. p. 217):--
"The writer will very considerately defer criticism on Mr. Newman's
indefinite definition, worthy of the genius of mystery, till its
author has told us a little more about it. Will anyone believe that he
himself deliberately omits the substance of the definition, and gives
in its stead a parenthetical qualification, which might be left out of
the original, without injury either to the grammatical structure,
or to the general meaning of the sentence in which it occurs?" He
proceeds to state what I did say, and adds: "Mr. Newman, in the very
page in which this statement occurs, expressly identifies his doctrine
with the ordinary Christian belief of Divine influence. His words are
exactly coincident in sense with those employed by the author of the
"Eclipse," where he acknowledges the reality of 'the ordinary, though
mysterious action, by which God aids those who sincerely seek him in
every good word and work.' The moral faithfulness of which Mr. Newman
speaks, is the equivalent of the sincere search of God in good word
and work, which his opponent talks of."
I must quote the _entire_ reply given to this in the "Defence," second
edition, p. 224:--
"And now for a few examples of my opponent's criticisms. 1. I said
in the "Defence" that I did not understand Mr. Newman's notions of
inspiration, and that, as to his very latest utterance--namely, that
it was an influence _accessible to all men in a certain stage of
development_ [italics], it was utterly unintelligible to me. 'Will any
one believe (says my critic) that he deliberately omits the
substance of the definition, and gives in its stead a parenthetical
qualification, which might be left out of the original without injury
either to the grammatical structure or to the general meaning of
the sentence in which it occurs? Was anything ever more amusing? A
parenthetical clause which might be left out of the original without
injury to the grammatical structure or to the general meaning! _Might_
be left out? Ay, to be sure it might, and not only 'without injury,'
but with benefit; just as the dead fly which makes the ointment of the
apothecary to stink might be left out of _that_ without injury. But
it was _not_ left out; and it is precisely because it was there, and
diffused so remarkable an odour over the whole, that I characterized
the definition as I did--and most justly. Accessible to all men in
a certain stage of development! When and how _accessible_? What
_species_ of development, I beseech you, is meant? And what is the
_stage_ of it? The very thing, which, as I say, and as everybody of
common sense must see, renders the definition utterly vague, is the
very clause in question."
Such is his _entire_ notice of the topic. From any other writer I
should indeed have been amazed at such treatment. I had made the
very inoffensive profession of agreeing with the current doctrine of
Christians concerning spiritual influence. As I was not starting any
new theory, but accepting what is notorious, nothing more than an
indication was needed. I gave, what I should not call definition, but
description of it. My critic conceals that I have avowed agreement
with Christians; refers to it as a theory of my own; complains that
it is obscure; pretends to quote my definition, and leaves out all
the cardinal words of it, which I have above printed in italics. My
defender, in the "Prospective Review," exposes these mal-practices;
points out that my opponent is omitting the main words, while
complaining of deficiency; that I profess to agree with Christians in
general; and _that I evidently agree with my critic in particular_.
The critic undertakes to reply to this, and the reader has before him
the whole defence. The man who, as it were, puts his hand on his
heart to avow that he anxiously sets before his readers, if not what
I _mean_, yet certainly what I have _expressed_,--still persists in
hiding from them the facts of the case; avoids to quote from the
reviewer so much as to let out that I profess to agree[8] with what
is prevalent among Christians and have no peculiar theory;--still
withholds the cardinal points of what he calls my definition; while
he tries to lull his reader into inattention by affecting to be
highly amused, and by bantering and bullying in his usual style, while
perverting the plainest words in the world.
I have no religious press to take my part. I am isolated, as my
assailant justly remarks. For a wonder, a stray review here and
there has run to my aid, while there is a legion on the other
side--newspapers, magazines, and reviews. Now if any orthodox man, any
friend of my assailant, by some chance reads these pages, I beg him to
compare my quotations, thus fully given, with the originals; and if he
find anything false in them, then let him placard me as a LIAR in the
whole of the religious press. But if he finds that I am right,
then let him learn in what sort of man he is trusting--what sort of
champion of _truth_ this religious press has cheered on.
III. I had complained that Mr. Rogers falsely represented me to make
a fanatical "divorce" between the intellectual and the spiritual, from
which he concluded that I ought to be indifferent as to the worship of
Jehovah or of the image which fell down from Jupiter. He has pretended
that my religion, according to me, has received nothing by traditional
and historical agencies; that it owes nothing to men who went before
me; that I believe I have (in my single unassisted bosom) "a spiritual
faculty so bright as to anticipate all essential[9] spiritual
verities;" that had it not been for traditional religion, "we should
everywhere have heard the invariable utterance of spiritual religion
in the one dialect of the heart,"--that "this divinely implanted
faculty of spiritual discernment anticipates all external truth,"
&c. &c. I then adduced passages to show that his statement was
emphatically and utterly contrary to fact. In his "Defence," he thus
replies, p. 75:--
"I say with an unfaltering conscience, that no controvertist ever more
honestly and sincerely sought to give his opponent's views, than I
did Mr. Newman's, after the most diligent study of his rather obscure
books; and that whether I have succeeded or not in giving what he
_thought_, I have certainly given what he _expressed_. It is quite
true that I supposed Mr. Newman intended to "divorce" faith and
intellect; and what else on earth could I suppose, in common even
with those who were most leniently disposed towards him, from such
sentiments as these? ALL THE GROUNDS OF BELIEF PROPOSED TO THE MERE
UNDERSTANDING HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH FAITH AT ALL. THE PROCESSES OF
THOUGHT HAVE NOTHING TO QUICKEN THE CONSCIENCE OR AFFECT THE SOUL.
_How then can the state of the soul be tested by the conclusion to
which the intellect is led?_ I was _compelled_, I say, to take these
passages as everybody else took them, to _mean_ what they obviously
_express_."
Here he so isolates three assertions of mine from their context, as
to suggest for each of them a false meaning, and make it difficult for
the reader who has not my book at hand to discover the delusion.
The first is taken from a discussion of the arguments concerning the
soul's immortality ("Soul," p. 223, 2nd edition), on which I wrote
thus, p. 219:--that to judge of the accuracy of a metaphysical
argument concerning mind and matter, requires not a pure conscience
and a loving soul, but a clear and calm head; that if the doctrine of
immortality be of high religious importance, we cannot believe it to
rest on such a basis, that those in whom the religious faculties are
most developed may be more liable to err concerning it than those
who have no religious faculty in action at all. On the contrary,
concerning truths which are really spiritual it is an obvious
axiom,[10] that "he who is spiritual judgeth all things, and he
himself is judged of no man." After this I proceeded to allude to the
history of the doctrine among the Hebrews, and quoted some texts of
the Psalms, the _argument_ of which, I urged, is utterly inappreciable
to the pure logician, "because it is spiritually discerned." I
continued as follows:--
"This is as it should be. Can a mathematician understand physiology,
or a physiologist questions of law? A true love of God in the soul
itself, an insight into Him depending on that love, and a hope rising
out of that insight, are prerequisite for contemplating this spiritual
doctrine, which is a spontaneous impression of the gazing soul,
powerful (perhaps) in proportion to its faith; whereas all the grounds
of belief proposed to the mere understanding have nothing to do with
faith at all."
I am expounding the doctrine of the great Paul of Tarsus, who indeed
applies it to this very topic,--the future bliss which God has
prepared for them that love him. Does Mr. Rogers attack Paul as making
a fanatical divorce between faith and intellect, and say that he is
_compelled_ so to understand him, when he avows that "the natural man
understandeth not the things of God; for they are foolishness unto
him." "When the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by
the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe." Here is
a pretended champion of Evangelical truth seeking to explode as
absurdities the sentiments and judgments which have ever been at the
heart of Christianity, its pride and its glory!
But I justify my argument as free from fanaticism--and free from
obscurity when the whole sentence is read--to a Jew or Mohammedan,
quite as much as to a Christian.
My opponent innocently asks, _how much_ I desire him to quote of me?
But is innocence the right word, when he has quoted but two lines and
a half, out of a sentence of seven and a half, and has not even given
the clause complete? By omitting, in his usual way, the connecting
particle _whereas_, he hides from the reader that he has given but
half my thought; and this is done, after my complaint of this very
proceeding. A reader who sees the whole sentence, discerns at once
that I oppose "the _mere_ understanding," to the whole soul; in short,
that by the man who has _mere_ understanding, I mean him whom Paul
calls "the natural man." Such a man may have metaphysical talents and
acquirements, he may be a physiologist or a great lawyer; nay, I
will add, (to shock my opponent's tender nerves), _even if he be an
Atheist_, he may be highly amiable and deserving of respect and love;
but if he has no spiritual development, he cannot have insight into
spiritual truth. Hence such arguments for immortality as _can_ be
appreciated by him, and _cannot_ be appreciated by religious men as
such, "have nothing to do with faith at all"
The two other passages are found thus, in p. 245 of the "Soul," 2nd
edition. After naming local history, criticism of texts, history of
philosophy, logic, physiology, demonology, and other important but
very difficult studies, I ask:--
"Is it not extravagant to call inquiries of this sort _spiritual_ or
to expect any spiritual[11] results from them? When the spiritual
man (as such) cannot judge, the question is removed into a totally
different court from that of the soul, the court of the critical
understanding.... How then can the state of the soul be tested by
the conclusion to which the intellect is led? What means the
anathematizing of those who remain unconvinced? And how can it be
imagined that the Lord of the soul cares more about a historical
than about a geological, metaphysical, or mathematical argument? The
processes of thought have nothing to quicken the conscience or affect
the soul."
From my defender in the "Prospective Review" I learn that in the first
edition of the "Defence" the word _thought_ in the last sentence above
was placed in italics. He not only protested against this and other
italics as misleading, but clearly explained my sense, which, as I
think, needs no other interpreter than the context. In the new edition
the italics are removed, but the unjust isolation of the sentences
remains. "_The_ processes of thought," of which I spoke, are not
"_all_ processes," but the processes _involved in the abstruse
inquiries to which I had referred_. To say that _no_ processes of
thought quicken the conscience, or affect the soul, would be a gross
absurdity. This, or nothing else, is what he imputes to me; and even
after the protest made by the "Prospective" reviewer, my assailant not
only continues to hide that I speak of _certain_ processes of thought,
not _all_ processes, but even has the hardihood to say that he takes
the passages as _everybody else_ does, and that he is _compelled_ so
to do.
In my own original reply I appealed to places where I had fully
expressed my estimate of intellectual progress, and its ultimate
beneficial action. All that I gain by this, is new garblings and
taunts for inconsistency. "Mr. Newman," says be, "is the last man
in the world to whom I would deny the benefit of having contradicted
himself." But I must confine myself to the garbling. "Defence," p.
95:--
"Mr. Newman affirms that my representations of his views on this
subject are the most direct and intense reverse of all that he has
most elaborately and carefully written!" He still says, "_what_
God reveals, he reveals within and not without," and "he _did_ say
(though, it seems, he says no longer), that 'of God we know everything
from within, nothing from without;' yet he says I have grossly
misrepresented him."
This pretended quotation is itself garbled. I wrote, ("Phases," 1st
edition, p. 152)--"Of _our moral and spiritual_ God we know nothing
without, everything within." By omitting the adjectives, the critic
produces a statement opposed to my judgment and to my writings;
and then goes on to say. "Well, if Mr. Newman will engage to prove
contradictions,... I think it is no wonder that his readers do not
understand him."
I believe it is a received judgment, which I will not positively
assert to be true, but I do not think I have anywhere denied, that
God is discerned by us in the universe as a designer, creator, and
mechanical ruler, through a mere study of the world and its animals
and all their adaptations, _even without_ an absolute necessity of
meditating consciously on the intelligence of man and turning the
eyes within. Thus a creative God may be said to be discerned "from
without." But in my conviction, that God is not _so_ discerned to be
_moral_ or _spiritual_ or to be _our_ God; but by moral intellect and
moral experience acting "inwardly." If Mr. Rogers chooses to deny the
justness of my view, let him deny it; but by omitting the emphatic
adjectives he has falsified my sentence, and then has founded upon it
a charge of inconsistency. In a previous passage (p. 79) he gave this
quotation in full, in order to reproach me for silently withdrawing it
in my second edition of the "Phases." He says:--
"The two sentences in small capitals are not found in the new edition
of the 'Phases.' _They are struck out_. It is no doubt the right of an
author to erase in a new edition any expressions he pleases; but
when he is about to charge another with having grossly garbled and
stealthily misrepresented him, it is as well to let the world know
_what_ he has erased and _why_. He says that my representation of his
sentiments is the most direct and intense reverse of all that he
has most elaborately and carefully written. It certainly is not the
intense reverse of all that he has most elaborately and carefully
_scratched out_."
I exhibit here the writer's own italics.
By this attack on my good faith, and by pretending that my withdrawal
of the passage is of serious importance, he distracts the reader's
attention from the argument there in hand (p. 79), which is, _not_
what are my sentiments and judgements, but whether he had a right
to dissolve and distort my chain of reasoning (see I. above) while
affecting to quote me, and pretending that I gave nothing but
assertion. As regards my "elaborately and carefully _scratching out_,"
this was done; 1. Because the passage seemed to me superfluous; 2.
Because I had pressed the topic elsewhere; 3. Because I was going to
enlarge on it in my reply to him, p. 199 of my second edition.[12]
When the real place comes where my critic is to deal with the
substance of the passage (p. 94 of "Defence"), the reader has seen how
he mutilates it.
The other passage of mine which he has adduced, employs the word
_reveals_, in a sense analogous to that of _revelation_, in avowed
relation to _things moral and spiritual_, which would have been seen,
had not my critic reversed the order of my sentences; which he does
again in p. 78 of the "Defence," after my protest against his doing so
in the "Eclipse." I wrote: (Soul, p. 59) "Christianity itself has
thus practically confessed, what is theoretically clear, that an
authoritative _external_ revelation of moral and spiritual truth is
essentially impossible to man. What God reveals to us, he reveals
_within_, through the medium of our moral and spiritual senses."
The words, "What God reveals," seen in the light of the preceding
sentence, means: "That portion of _moral and spiritual truth_ which
God reveals." This cannot be discovered in the isolated quotation; and
as, both in p. 78 and in p. 95, he chooses to quote my word _What_ in
italics, his reader is led on to interpret me as saying "_every thing
whatsoever_ which we know of God, we learn from within;" a statement
which is not mine.
Besides this, the misrepresentation of which I complained is not
confined to the rather metaphysical words of _within_ and _without_,
as to which the most candid friends may differ, and may misunderstand
one another;--as to which also I may be truly open to correction;--but
he assumes the right to tell his readers that my doctrine undervalues
Truth, and Intellect, and Traditional teaching, and External
suggestion, and Historical influences, and counts the Bible an
impertinence. When he fancies he can elicit this and that, by his own
logic, out of sentences and clauses torn from their context, he has
no right to disguise what I have said to the contrary, and claim to
justify his fraud by accusing me of self-contradiction. Against all
my protests, and all that I said to the very opposite previous to
any controversy, he coolly alludes to it (p. 40 of the "Defence")
as though it were my avowed doctrine, that: "_Each_ man, looking
exclusively within, can _at once_ rise to the conception of God's
infinite perfections."
IV. When I agree with Paul or David (or think I do), I have a right
to quote their words reverentially; but when I do so, Mr. Rogers
deliberately justifies himself in ridiculing them, pretending that he
only ridicules _me_. He thus answers my indignant denunciation in the
early part of his "Defence," p. 5:--
"Mr. Newman warns me with much solemnity against thinking that
'questions pertaining to God are advanced by boisterous glee.' I do
not think that the 'Eclipse' is characterised by boisterous glee; and
certainly I was not at all aware, that the things which _alone_[13]
I have ridiculed--some of them advanced by him, and some by
others--deserved to be treated with solemnity. For example, that an
authoritative external revelation,[14] which most persons have thought
possible enough, is _im_possible,--that man is most likely born for
a dog's life, and 'there an end'--that there are great defects in the
morality of the New Testament, and much imperfection in the character
of its founder,--that the miracles of Christ might be real, because
Christ was a _clairvoyant_ and mesmerist,--that God was not a Person,
but a Personality;--I say, I was not aware that these things, and such
as these, which alone I ridiculed, were questions 'pertaining to God,'
in any other sense than the wildest hypotheses in some sense pertain
to science, and the grossest heresies to religion."
Now first, is his statement true?
_Are_ these the _only_ things which he ridiculed?
I quoted in my reply to him enough to show what was the class of
"things pertaining to God" to which I referred. He forces me to
requote some of the passages. "Eclipse," p. 82 [1st ed.] "You shall be
permitted to say (what I will not contradict), that though _Mr. Newman
may be inspired_ for aught I know ... inspired as much as (say) _the
inventor of Lucifer matches_--yet that his book is not divine,--that
it is purely human."
Again: p. 126 [1st ed.] "Mr. Newman says to those who say they
are unconscious of these facts of spiritual pathology, that _the
consciousness of the spiritual man is not the less true, that_
[though?] _the unspiritual man is not privy to it_; and this most
devout gentleman quotes with unction the words: _For the spiritual man
judgeth all things, but himself is judged of no man_."
P. 41, [1st ed.], "I have rejected creeds, and I have found what the
Scripture calls, _that peace which passeth all understanding_." "I am
sure it passes mine, (says Harrington) if you have really found it,
and I should be much obliged to you, if you would let me participate
in the discovery." "Yes, says Fellowes:... '_I have escaped from the
bondage of the letter and have been introduced into the liberty of the
Spirit.... The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. The fruit
of the Spirit is joy, peace, not_--'" "Upon my word (said Harrington,
laughing), I shall presently begin to fancy that Douce Davie Deans has
turned infidel."
I have quoted enough to show the nature of my complaints. I charge the
satirist with profanity, for ridiculing sentiments which _he himself_
avows to be holy, ridiculing them for no other reason but that with
_me also_ they are holy and revered. He justifies himself in p. 5
of his "Defence," as above, by denying my facts. He afterwards, in