[1889]
Within the last few months, the public has received much and varied
information on the subject of agnostics, their tenets, and even their
future. Agnosticism exercised the orators of the Church Congress at
Manchester.[51] It has been furnished with a set of "articles" fewer,
but not less rigid, and certainly not less consistent than the
thirty-nine; its nature has been analysed, and its future severely
predicted by the most eloquent of that prophetical school whose Samuel
is Auguste Comte. It may still be a question, however, whether the
public is as much the wiser as might be expected, considering all the
trouble that has been taken to enlighten it. Not only are the three
accounts of the agnostic position sadly out of harmony with one
another, but I propose to show cause for my belief that all three
must be seriously questioned by any one who employs the term
"agnostic" in the sense in which it was originally used. The learned
Principal of King's College, who brought the topic of Agnosticism
before the Church Congress, took a short and easy way of settling the
business:--
But if this be so, for a man to urge, as an escape from this
article of belief, that he has no means of a scientific
knowledge of the unseen world, or of the future, is
irrelevant. His difference from Christians lies not in the
fact that he has no knowledge of these things, but that he
does not believe the authority on which they are stated. He
may prefer to call himself an Agnostic; but his real name is
an older one--he is an infidel; that is to say, an
unbeliever. The word infidel, perhaps, carries an unpleasant
significance. Perhaps it is right that it should. It is, and
it ought to be, an unpleasant thing for a man to have to say
plainly that he does not believe in Jesus Christ.[52]
So much of Dr. Wace's address either explicitly or implicitly concerns
me, that I take upon myself to deal with it; but, in so doing, it must
be understood that I speak for myself alone. I am not aware that there
is any sect of Agnostics; and if there be, I am not its acknowledged
prophet or pope. I desire to leave to the Comtists the entire monopoly
of the manufacture of imitation ecclesiasticism.
Let us calmly and dispassionately consider Dr. Wace's appreciation of
agnosticism. The agnostic, according to his view, is a person who says
he has no means of attaining a scientific knowledge of the unseen
world or of the future; by which somewhat loose phraseology Dr. Wace
presumably means the theological unseen world and future. I cannot
think this description happy, either in form or substance, but for the
present it may pass. Dr. Wace continues, that it is not "his
difference from Christians." Are there then any Christians who say
that they know nothing about the unseen world and the future? I was
ignorant of the fact, but I am ready to accept it on the authority of
a professional theologian, and I proceed to Dr. Wace's next
proposition.
The real state of the case, then, is that the agnostic "does not
believe the authority" on which "these things" are stated, which
authority is Jesus Christ. He is simply an old-fashioned "infidel" who
is afraid to own to his right name. As "Presbyter is priest writ
large," so is "agnostic" the mere Greek equivalent for the Latin
"infidel." There is an attractive simplicity about this solution of
the problem; and it has that advantage of being somewhat offensive to
the persons attacked, which is so dear to the less refined sort of
controversialist. The agnostic says, "I cannot find good evidence that
so and so is true." "Ah," says his adversary, seizing his opportunity,
"then you declare that Jesus Christ was untruthful, for he said so and
so;" a very telling method of rousing prejudice. But suppose that the
value of the evidence as to what Jesus may have said and done, and as
to the exact nature and scope of his authority, is just that which the
agnostic finds it most difficult to determine. If I venture to doubt
that the Duke of Wellington gave the command "Up, Guards, and at 'em!"
at Waterloo, I do not think that even Dr. Wace would accuse me of
disbelieving the Duke. Yet it would be just as reasonable to do this
as to accuse any one of denying what Jesus said, before the
preliminary question as to what he did say is settled.
Now, the question as to what Jesus really said and did is strictly a
scientific problem, which is capable of solution by no other methods
than those practised by the historian and the literary critic. It is a
problem of immense difficulty, which has occupied some of the best
heads in Europe for the last century; and it is only of late years
that their investigations have begun to converge towards one
conclusion.[53]
That kind of faith which Dr. Wace describes and lauds is of no use
here. Indeed, he himself takes pains to destroy its evidential value.
"What made the Mahommedan world? Trust and faith in the declarations
and assurances of Mahommed. And what made the Christian world? Trust
and faith in the declarations and assurances of Jesus Christ and His
Apostles" (l.c. p. 253). The triumphant tone of this imaginary
catechism leads me to suspect that its author has hardly appreciated
its full import. Presumably, Dr. Wace regards Mahommed as an
unbeliever, or, to use the term which he prefers, infidel; and
considers that his assurances have given rise to a vast delusion which
has led, and is leading, millions of men straight to everlasting
punishment. And this being so, the "Trust and faith" which have "made
the Mahommedan world," in just the same sense as they have "made the
Christian world," must be trust and faith in falsehoods. No man who
has studied history, or even attended to the occurrences of everyday
life, can doubt the enormous practical value of trust and faith; but
as little will he be inclined to deny that this practical value has
not the least relation to the reality of the objects of that trust and
faith. In examples of patient constancy of faith and of unswerving
trust, the "Acta Martyrum" do not excel the annals of Babism.[54]
* * * * *
The discussion upon which we have now entered goes so thoroughly to
the root of the whole matter; the question of the day is so
completely, as the author of "Robert Elsmere" says, the value of
testimony, that I shall offer no apology for following it out somewhat
in detail; and, by way of giving substance to the argument, I shall
base what I have to say upon a case, the consideration of which lies
strictly within the province of natural science, and of that
particular part of it known as the physiology and pathology of the
nervous system.
I find, in the second Gospel (chap. v.), a statement, to all
appearance intended to have the same evidential value as any other
contained in that history. It is the well-known story of the devils
who were cast out of a man, and ordered, or permitted, to enter into a
herd of swine, to the great loss and damage of the innocent Gerasene,
or Gadarene, pig owners. There can be no doubt that the narrator
intends to convey to his readers his own conviction that this casting
out and entering in were effected by the agency of Jesus of Nazareth;
that, by speech and action, Jesus enforced this conviction; nor does
any inkling of the legal and moral difficulties of the case manifest
itself.
On the other hand, everything that I know of physiological and
pathological science leads me to entertain a very strong conviction
that the phenomena ascribed to possession are as purely natural as
those which constitute small-pox; everything that I know of
anthropology leads me to think that the belief in demons and
demoniacal possession is a mere survival of a once universal
superstition, and that its persistence, at the present time, is pretty
much in the inverse ratio of the general instruction, intelligence,
and sound judgment of the population among whom it prevails.
Everything that I know of law and justice convinces me that the wanton
destruction of other people's property is a misdemeanour of evil
example. Again, the study of history, and especially of that of the
fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, leaves no shadow of
doubt on my mind that the belief in the reality of possession and of
witchcraft, justly based, alike by Catholics and Protestants, upon
this and innumerable other passages in both the Old and New
Testaments, gave rise, through the special influence of Christian
ecclesiastics, to the most horrible persecutions and judicial murders
of thousands upon thousands of innocent men, women, and children. And
when I reflect that the record of a plain and simple declaration upon
such an occasion as this, that the belief in witchcraft and possession
is wicked nonsense, would have rendered the long agony of mediæval
humanity impossible, I am prompted to reject, as dishonouring, the
supposition that such declaration was withheld out of condescension to
popular error.
"Come forth, thou unclean spirit, out of the man" (Mark v. 8),[55] are
the words attributed to Jesus. If I declare, as I have no hesitation
in doing, that I utterly disbelieve in the existence of "unclean
spirits," and, consequently, in the possibility of their "coming
forth" out of a man, I suppose that Dr. Wace will tell me I am
disregarding the testimony "of our Lord." For, if these words were
really used, the most resourceful of reconcilers can hardly venture to
affirm that they are compatible with a disbelief "in these things." As
the learned and fair-minded, as well as orthodox, Dr. Alexander
remarks, in an editorial note to the article "Demoniacs," in the
"Biblical Cyclopædia" (vol. i. p. 664, note):--
... On the lowest grounds on which our Lord and His Apostles
can be placed they must, at least, be regarded as _honest_
men. Now, though honest speech does not require that words
should be used always and only in their etymological sense,
it does require that they should not be used so as to affirm
what the speaker knows to be false. Whilst, therefore, our
Lord and His Apostles might use the word [Greek: daimonizesthai],
or the phrase, [Greek: daimonion echein] as a popular
description of certain diseases, without giving in to the
belief which lay at the source of such a mode of expression,
they could not speak of demons entering into a man, or being
cast out of him, without pledging themselves to the belief of
an actual possession of the man by the demons. (Campbell,
_Prel. Diss._ vi. 1, 10.) If, consequently, they did not hold
this belief, they spoke not as honest men.
The story which we are considering does not rest on the authority of
the second Gospel alone. The third confirms the second, especially in
the matter of commanding the unclean spirit to come out of the man
(Luke viii. 29); and, although the first Gospel either gives a
different version of the same story, or tells another of like kind,
the essential point remains: "If thou cast us out, send us away into
the herd of swine. And He said unto them: Go!" (Matt. viii. 31, 32).
If the concurrent testimony of the three synoptics, then, is really
sufficient to do away with all rational doubt as to a matter of fact
of the utmost practical and speculative importance--belief or
disbelief in which may affect, and has affected, men's lives and their
conduct towards other men, in the most serious way--then I am bound to
believe that Jesus implicitly affirmed himself to possess a "knowledge
of the unseen world," which afforded full confirmation of the belief
in demons and possession current among his contemporaries. If the
story is true, the mediæval theory of the invisible world may be, and
probably is, quite correct; and the witch-finders, from Sprenger to
Hopkins and Mather, are much-maligned men.
On the other hand, humanity, noting the frightful consequences of this
belief; common sense, observing the futility of the evidence on which
it is based, in all cases that have been properly investigated;
science, more and more seeing its way to inclose all the phenomena of
so-called "possession" within the domain of pathology, so far as they
are not to be relegated to that of the police--all these powerful
influences concur in warning us, at our peril, against accepting the
belief without the most careful scrutiny of the authority on which it
rests.
I can discern no escape from this dilemma: either Jesus said what he
is reported to have said, or he did not. In the former case, it is
inevitable that his authority on matters connected with the "unseen
world" should be roughly shaken; in the latter, the blow falls upon
the authority of the synoptic Gospels. If their report on a matter of
such stupendous and far-reaching practical import as this is
untrustworthy, how can we be sure of its trustworthiness in other
cases? The favourite "earth," in which the hard-pressed reconciler
takes refuge, that the Bible does not profess to teach science,[56] is
stopped in this instance. For the question of the existence of demons
and of possession by them, though it lies strictly within the province
of science, is also of the deepest moral and religious significance.
If physical and mental disorders are caused by demons, Gregory of
Tours and his contemporaries rightly considered that relics and
exorcists were more useful than doctors; the gravest questions arise
as to the legal and moral responsibilities of persons inspired by
demoniacal impulses; and our whole conception of the universe and of
our relations to it becomes totally different from what it would be on
the contrary hypothesis.
The theory of life of an average mediæval Christian was as different
from that of an average nineteenth-century Englishman as that of a
West African negro is now, in these respects. The modern world is
slowly, but surely, shaking off these and other monstrous survivals of
savage delusions; and, whatever happens, it will not return to that
wallowing in the mire. Until the contrary is proved, I venture to
doubt whether, at this present moment, any Protestant theologian, who
has a reputation to lose, will say that he believes the Gadarene
story.
The choice then lies between discrediting those who compiled the
Gospel biographies and disbelieving the Master, whom they, simple
souls, thought to honour by preserving such traditions of the exercise
of his authority over Satan's invisible world. This is the dilemma. No
deep scholarship, nothing but a knowledge of the revised version (on
which it is to be supposed all that mere scholarship can do has been
done), with the application thereto of the commonest canons of common
sense, is needful to enable us to make a choice between its
alternatives. It is hardly doubtful that the story, as told in the
first Gospel, is merely a version of that told in the second and
third. Nevertheless, the discrepancies are serious and irreconcilable;
and, on this ground alone, a suspension of judgment, at the least, is
called for. But there is a great deal more to be said. From the dawn
of scientific biblical criticism until the present day, the evidence
against the long-cherished notion that the three synoptic Gospels are
the works of three independent authors, each prompted by Divine
inspiration, has steadily accumulated, until, at the present time,
there is no visible escape from the conclusion that each of the three
is a compilation consisting of a groundwork common to all three--the
threefold tradition; and of a superstructure, consisting, firstly, of
matter common to it with one of the others, and, secondly, of matter
special to each. The use of the terms "groundwork" and "superstructure"
by no means implies that the latter must be of later date than the
former. On the contrary, some parts of it may be, and probably are,
older than some parts of the groundwork.[57]
The story of the Gadarene swine belongs to the groundwork; at least,
the essential part of it, in which the belief in demoniac possession
is expressed, does; and therefore the compilers of the first, second,
and third Gospels, whoever they were, certainly accepted that belief
(which, indeed, was universal among both Jews and pagans at that
time), and attributed it to Jesus.
What, then, do we know about the originator, or originators, of this
groundwork--of that threefold tradition which all three witnesses (in
Paley's phrase) agree upon--that we should allow their mere statements
to outweigh the counter arguments of humanity, of common sense, of
exact science, and to imperil the respect which all would be glad to
be able to render to their Master?
Absolutely nothing.[58] There is no proof, nothing more than a fair
presumption, that any one of the Gospels existed, in the state in
which we find it in the authorised version of the Bible, before the
second century, or, in other words, sixty or seventy years after the
events recorded. And, between that time and the date of the oldest
extant manuscripts of the Gospels, there is no telling what additions
and alterations and interpolations may have been made. It may be said
that this is all mere speculation, but it is a good deal more. As
competent scholars and honest men, our revisers have felt compelled to
point out that such things have happened even since the date of the
oldest known manuscripts. The oldest two copies of the second Gospel
end with the 8th verse of the 16th chapter; the remaining twelve
verses are spurious, and it is noteworthy that the maker of the
addition has not hesitation to introduce a speech in which Jesus
promises his disciples that "in My name shall they cast out devils."
The other passage "rejected to the margin" is still more instructive.
It is that touching apologue, with its profound ethical sense, of the
woman taken in adultery--which, if internal evidence were an
infallible guide, might well be affirmed to be a typical example of
the teachings of Jesus. Yet, say the revisers, pitilessly, "Most of
the ancient authorities emit John vii. 53-viii. 11." Now let any
reasonable man ask himself this question. If, after an approximate
settlement of the canon of the New Testament, and even later than the
fourth and fifth centuries, literary fabricators had the skill and the
audacity to make such additions and interpolations as these, what may
they have done when no one had thought of a canon; when oral
tradition, still unfixed, was regarded as more valuable than such
written records as may have existed in the latter portion of the first
century? Or, to take the other alternative, if those who gradually
settled the canon did not know of the existence of the oldest codices
which have come down to us; or if, knowing them, they rejected their
authority, what is to be thought of their competency as critics of the
text?
People who object to free criticism of the Christian Scriptures forget
that they are what they are in virtue of very free criticism; unless
the advocates of inspiration are prepared to affirm that the majority
of influential ecclesiastics during several centuries were safeguarded
against error. For, even granting that some books of the period were
inspired, they were certainly few amongst many; and those who selected
the canonical books, unless they themselves were also inspired, must
be regarded in the light of mere critics, and, from the evidence they
have left of their intellectual habits, very uncritical critics. When
one thinks that such delicate questions as those involved fell into
the hands of men like Papias (who believed in the famous millenarian
grape story); of Irenæus with his "reasons" for the existence of only
four Gospels; and of such calm and dispassionate judges as Tertullian,
with his "Credo quia impossibile": the marvel is that the selection
which constitutes our New Testament is as free as it is from obviously
objectionable matter. The apocryphal Gospels certainly deserve to be
apocryphal; but one may suspect that a little more critical
discrimination would have enlarged the Apocrypha not inconsiderably.
At this point a very obvious objection arises and deserves full and
candid consideration. It may be said that critical scepticism carried
to the length suggested is historical pyrrhonism; that if we are
altogether to discredit an ancient or a modern historian, because he
has assumed fabulous matter to be true, it will be as well to give up
paying any attention to history. It may be said, and with great
justice, that Eginhard's "Life of Charlemagne" is none the less
trustworthy because of the astounding revelation of credulity, of lack
of judgment, and even of respect for the eighth commandment, which he
has unconsciously made in the "History of the Translation of the
Blessed Martyrs Marcellinus and Paul." Or, to go no further back than
the last number of the _Nineteenth Century_, surely that excellent
lady, Miss Strickland, is not to be refused all credence, because of
the myth about the second James's remains which she seems to have
unconsciously invented.
Of course this is perfectly true. I am afraid there is no man alive
whose witness could be accepted, if the condition precedent were proof
that he had never invented and promulgated a myth. In the minds of all
of us there are little places here and there, like the indistinguishable
spots on a rock which give foothold to moss or stonecrop; on which, if
the germ of a myth fall, it is certain to grow, without in the least
degree affecting our accuracy or truthfulness elsewhere. Sir Walter
Scott knew that he could not repeat a story without, as he said,
"giving it a new hat and stick." Most of us differ from Sir Walter
only in not knowing about this tendency of the mythopoeic faculty to
break out unnoticed. But it is also perfectly true that the mythopoeic
faculty is not equally active in all minds, nor in all regions and
under all conditions of the same mind. David Hume was certainly not so
liable to temptation as the Venerable Bede, or even as some recent
historians who could be mentioned; and the most imaginative of
debtors, if he owes five pounds, never makes an obligation to pay a
hundred out of it. The rule of common sense is _primâ facie_ to trust
a witness in all matters, in which neither his self-interest, his
passions, his prejudices, nor that love of the marvellous, which is
inherent to a greater or less degree in all mankind, are strongly
concerned; and, when they are involved, to require corroborative
evidence in exact proportion to the contravention of probability by
the thing testified.
Now, in the Gadarene affair, I do not think I am unreasonably
sceptical, if I say that the existence of demons who can be
transferred from a man to a pig, does thus contravene probability. Let
me be perfectly candid. I admit I have no _à priori_ objection to
offer. There are physical things, such as _tæniæ_ and _trichinæ_,
which can be transferred from men to pigs, and _vice versâ_, and which
do undoubtedly produce most diabolical and deadly effects on both.
For anything I can absolutely prove to the contrary, there may be
spiritual things capable of the same transmigration, with like
effects. Moreover I am bound to add that perfectly truthful persons,
for whom I have the greatest respect, believe in stories about spirits
of the present day, quite as improbable as that we are considering.
So I declare, as plainly as I can, that I am unable to show cause why
these transferable devils should not exist; nor can I deny that, not
merely the whole Roman Church, but many Wacean "infidels" of no mean
repute, do honestly and firmly believe that the activity of such like
demonic beings is in full swing in this year of grace 1889.
Nevertheless, as good Bishop Butler says, "probability is the guide of
life;" and it seems to me that this is just one of the cases in which
the canon of credibility and testimony, which I have ventured to lay
down, has full force. So that, with the most entire respect for many
(by no means for all) of our witnesses for the truth of demonology,
ancient and modern, I conceive their evidence on this particular
matter to be ridiculously insufficient to warrant their
conclusion.[59]
After what has been said I do not think that any sensible man, unless
he happen to be angry, will accuse me of "contradicting the Lord and
His Apostles" if I reiterate my total disbelief in the whole Gadarene
story. But, if that story is discredited, all the other stories of
demoniac possession fall under suspicion. And if the belief in demons
and demoniac possession, which forms the sombre background of the
whole picture of primitive Christianity, presented to us in the New
Testament, is shaken, what is to be said, in any case, of the
uncorroborated testimony of the Gospels with respect to "the unseen
world"?
I am not aware that I have been influenced by any more bias in regard
to the Gadarene story than I have been in dealing with other cases of
like kind the investigation of which has interested me. I was brought
up in the strictest school of evangelical orthodoxy; and when I was
old enough to think for myself, I started upon my journey of inquiry
with little doubt about the general truth of what I had been taught;
and with that feeling of the unpleasantness of being called an
"infidel" which we are told, is so right and proper. Near my
journey's end, I find myself in a condition of something more than
mere doubt about these matters.
In the course of other inquiries, I have had to do with fossil remains
which looked quite plain at a distance, and became more and more
indistinct as I tried to define their outline by close inspection.
There was something there--something which, if I could win assurance
about it, might mark a new epoch in the history of the earth; but,
study as long as I might, certainty eluded my grasp. So had it been
with me in my efforts to define the grand figure of Jesus as it lies
in the primary strata of Christian literature. Is he the kindly,
peaceful Christ depicted in the Catacombs? Or is he the stern Judge
who frowns upon the altar of SS. Cosmas and Damianus? Or can he be
rightly represented by the bleeding ascetic, broken down by physical
pain, of too many mediæval pictures? Are we to accept the Jesus of the
second, or the Jesus of the fourth Gospel, as the true Jesus? What did
he really say and do; and how much that is attributed to him, in
speech and action, is the embroidery of the various parties into which
his followers tended to split themselves within twenty years of his
death, when even the threefold tradition was only nascent?
If any one will answer these questions for me with something more to
the point than feeble talk about the "cowardice of agnosticism," I
shall be deeply his debtor. Unless and until they are satisfactorily
answered, I say of agnosticism in this matter, "_J'y suis, et j'y
reste_."
But, as we have seen, it is asserted that I have no business to call
myself an agnostic; that, if I am not a Christian I am an infidel; and
that I ought to call myself by that name of "unpleasant significance."
Well, I do not care much what I am called by other people, and if I
had at my side all those who, since the Christian era, have been
called infidels by other folks, I could not desire better company. If
these are my ancestors, I prefer, with the old Frank, to be with them
wherever they are. But there are several points in Dr. Wace's
contention which must be elucidated before I can even think of
undertaking to carry out his wishes. I must, for instance, know what a
Christian is. Now what is a Christian? By whose authority is the
signification of that term defined? Is there any doubt that the
immediate followers of Jesus, the "sect of the Nazarenes," were
strictly orthodox Jews differing from other Jews not more than the
Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes differed from one another;
in fact, only in the belief that the Messiah, for whom the rest of
their nation waited, had come? Was not their chief, "James, the
brother of the Lord," reverenced alike by Sadducee, Pharisee, and
Nazarene? At the famous conference which, according to the Acts, took
place at Jerusalem, does not James declare that "myriads" of Jews,
who, by that time, had become Nazarenes, were "all zealous for the
Law"? Was not the name of "Christian" first used to denote the
converts to the doctrine promulgated by Paul and Barnabas at Antioch?
Does the subsequent history of Christianity leave any doubt that, from
this time forth, the "little rift within the lute" caused by the new
teaching, developed, if not inaugurated, at Antioch, grew wider and
wider, until the two types of doctrines irreconcilably diverged? Did
not the primitive Nazarenism, or Ebionism, develop into the
Nazarenism, and Ebionism, and Elkasaitism of later ages, and finally
die out in obscurity and condemnation, as damnable heresy; while the
younger doctrine throve and pushed out its shoots into that endless
variety of sects, of which the three strongest survivors are the Roman
and Greek Churches and modern Protestantism?
Singular state of things! If I were to profess the doctrine which was
held by "James, the brother of the Lord," and by every one of the
"myriads" of his followers and co-religionists in Jerusalem up to
twenty or thirty years after the Crucifixion (and one knows not how
much later at Pella), I should be condemned, with unanimity, as an
ebionising heretic by the Roman, Greek, and Protestant Churches! And,
probably, this hearty and unanimous condemnation of the creed, held by
those who were in the closest personal relation with their Lord, is
almost the only point upon which they would be cordially of one mind.
On the other hand, though I hardly dare imagine such a thing, I very
much fear that the "pillars" of the primitive Hierosolymitan Church
would have considered Dr. Wace an infidel. No one can read the famous
second chapter of Galatians and the book of Revelation without seeing
how narrow was even Paul's escape from a similar fate. And, if
ecclesiastical history is to be trusted, the thirty-nine articles, be
they right or wrong, diverge from the primitive doctrine of the
Nazarenes vastly more than even Pauline Christianity did.
But, further than this, I have great difficulty in assuring myself
that even James, "the brother of the Lord," and his "myriads" of
Nazarenes, properly represented the doctrines of their Master. For it
is constantly asserted by our modern "pillars" that one of the chief
features of the work of Jesus was the instauration of Religion by the
abolition of what our sticklers for articles and liturgies, with,
unconscious humour, call the narrow restrictions of the Law. Yet, if
James knew this, how could the bitter controversy with Paul have
arisen; and why did not one or the other side quote any of the various
sayings of Jesus, recorded in the Gospels, which directly bear on the
question--sometimes, apparently, in opposite directions?
So, if I am asked to call myself an "infidel," I reply: To what
doctrine do you ask me to be faithful? Is it that contained in the
Nicene and the Athanasian Creeds? My firm belief is that the
Nazarenes, say of the year 40, headed by James, would have stopped
their ears and thought worthy of stoning the audacious man who
propounded it to them. Is it contained in the so-called Apostle's
Creed? I am pretty sure that even that would have created a
recalcitrant commotion at Pella in the year 70, among the Nazarenes of
Jerusalem, who had fled from the soldiers of Titus. And yet, if the
unadulterated tradition of the teachings of "the Nazarene" were to be
found anywhere, it surely should have been amidst those not very aged
disciples who may have heard them as they were delivered.
Therefore, however sorry I may be to be unable to demonstrate that, if
necessary, I should not be afraid to call myself an "infidel," I
cannot do it. "Infidel" is a term of reproach, which Christians and
Mahommedans, in their modesty, agree to apply to those who differ from
them. If he had only thought of it, Dr. Wace might have used the term
"miscreant," which, with the same etymological signification, has the
advantage of being still more "unpleasant" to the persons to whom it
is applied. But why should a man be expected to call himself a
"miscreant" or an "infidel"? That St. Patrick "had two birthdays
because he was a twin" is a reasonable and intelligible utterance
beside that of the man who should declare himself to be an infidel on
the ground of denying his own belief. It may be logically, if not
ethically, defensible that a Christian should call a Mahommedan an
infidel and _vice versâ_; but, on Dr. Wace's principles, both ought to
call themselves infidels, because each applies the term to the other.
Now I am afraid that all the Mahommedan world would agree in
reciprocating that appellation to Dr. Wace himself. I once visited the
Hazar Mosque, the great University of Mohammedanism, in Cairo, in
ignorance of the fact that I was unprovided with proper authority. A
swarm of angry undergraduates, as I suppose I ought to call them, came
buzzing about me and my guide; and if I had known Arabic, I suspect
that "dog of an infidel" would have been by no means the most
"unpleasant" of the epithets showered upon me, before I could explain
and apologise for the mistake. If I had had the pleasure of Dr. Wace's
company on that occasion, the undiscriminative followers of the
Prophet would, I am afraid, have made no difference between us; not
even if they had known that he was the head of an orthodox Christian
seminary. And I have not the smallest doubt that even one of the
learned mollahs, if his grave courtesy would have permitted him to say
anything offensive to men of another mode of belief, would have told
us that he wondered we did not find it "very unpleasant" to disbelieve
in the Prophet of Islam.
From what precedes, I think it becomes sufficiently clear that Dr.
Wace's account of the origin of the name of "Agnostic" is quite wrong.
Indeed, I am bound to add that very slight effort to discover the
truth would have convinced him that, as a matter of fact, the term
arose otherwise. I am loath to go over an old story once more; but
more than one object which I have in view will be served by telling it
a little more fully than it has yet been told.
Looking back nearly fifty years, I see myself as a boy, whose
education has been interrupted, and who, intellectually, was left, for
some years, altogether to his own devices. At that time, I was a
voracious and omnivorous reader; a dreamer and speculator of the first
water, well endowed with that splendid courage in attacking any and
every subject, which is the blessed compensation of youth and
inexperience. Among the books and essays, on all sorts of topics from
metaphysics to heraldry, which I read at this time, two left indelible
impressions on my mind. One was Guizot's "History of Civilization,"
the other was Sir William Hamilton's essay "On the Philosophy of the
Unconditioned," which I came upon, by chance, in an odd volume of the
"Edinburgh Review." The latter was certainly strange reading for a
boy, and I could not possibly have understood a great deal of it;[60]
nevertheless, I devoured it with avidity, and it stamped upon my mind
the strong conviction that, on even the most solemn and important of
questions, men are apt to take cunning phrases for answers; and that
the limitation of our faculties, in a great number of cases, renders
real answers to such questions, not merely actually impossible, but
theoretically inconceivable.
Philosophy and history having laid hold of me in this eccentric
fashion, have never loosened their grip. I have no pretension to be an
expert in either subject; but the turn for philosophical and
historical reading, which rendered Hamilton and Guizot attractive to
me, has not only filled many lawful leisure hours, and still more
sleepless ones, with the repose of changed mental occupation, but has
not unfrequently disputed my proper work-time with my liege lady,
Natural Science. In this way I have found it possible to cover a good
deal of ground in the territory of philosophy; and all the more easily
that I have never cared much about A's or B's opinions, but have
rather sought to know what answer he had to give to the questions I
had to put to him--that of the limitation of possible knowledge being
the chief. The ordinary examiner, with his "State the views of
So-and-so," would have floored me at any time. If he had said what do
_you_ think about any given problem, I might have got on fairly well.
The reader who has had the patience to follow the enforced, but
unwilling, egotism of this veritable history (especially if his
studies have led him in the same direction), will now see why my mind
steadily gravitated towards the conclusions of Hume and Kant, so well
stated by the latter in a sentence, which I have quoted elsewhere.
"The greatest and perhaps the sole use of all philosophy of pure
reason is, after all, merely negative, since it serves not as an
organon for the enlargement [of knowledge], but as a discipline for
its delimitation; and, instead of discovering truth, has only the
modest merit of preventing error."[61]
When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I
was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an
idealist; a Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I
learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last,
I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of
these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of
these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed
from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain
"gnosis,"--had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of
existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong
conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on
my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that
opinion. Like Dante,
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
but, unlike Dante, I cannot add,
Che la diritta via era smarrita.
On the contrary, I had, and have, the firmest conviction that I never
left the "verace via"--the straight road; and that this road led
nowhere else but into the dark depths of a wild and tangled forest.
And though I have found leopards and lions in the path; though I have
made abundant acquaintance with the hungry wolf, that "with privy paw
devours apace and nothing said," as another great poet says of the
ravening beast; and though no friendly spectre has even yet offered
his guidance, I was, and am, minded to go straight on, until I either
come out on the other side of the wood, or find there is no other
side to it, at least, none attainable by me.
This was my situation when I had the good fortune to find a place
among the members of that remarkable confraternity of antagonists,
long since deceased, but of green and pious memory, the Metaphysical
Society. Every variety of philosophical and theological opinion was
represented there, and expressed itself with entire openness; most of
my colleagues were _-ists_ of one sort or another; and, however kind
and friendly they might be, I, the man without a rag of a label to
cover himself with, could not fail to have some of the uneasy feelings
which must have beset the historical fox when, after leaving the trap
in which his tail remained, he presented himself to his normally
elongated companions. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived
to be the appropriate title of "agnostic." It came into my head as
suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who
professed to know so much about the very things of which I was
ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it at our
Society, to show that I, too, had a tail, like the other foxes. To my
great satisfaction, the term took; and when the _Spectator_ had stood
godfather to it, any suspicion in the minds of respectable people,
that a knowledge of its parentage might have awakened was, of course,
completely lulled.
That is the history of the origin of the terms "agnostic" and
"agnosticism"; and it will be observed that it does not quite agree
with the confident assertion of the reverend Principal of King's
College, that "the adoption of the term agnostic is only an attempt to
shift the issue, and that it involves a mere evasion" in relation to
the Church and Christianity.[62]
* * * * *
The last objection (I rejoice as much as my readers must do, that it
is the last) which I have to take to Dr. Wace's deliverance before the
Church Congress arises, I am sorry to say, on a question of morality.
"It is, and it ought to be," authoritatively declares this official
representative of Christian ethics, "an unpleasant thing for a man to
have to say plainly that he does not believe in Jesus Christ" (_l.c._
p. 254).
Whether it is so depends, I imagine, a good deal on whether the man
was brought up in a Christian household or not. I do not see why it
should be "unpleasant" for a Mahommedan or Buddhist to say so. But
that "it ought to be" unpleasant for any man to say anything which he
sincerely, and after due deliberation, believes, is, to my mind, a
proposition of the most profoundly immoral character. I verily believe
that the great good which has been effected in the world by
Christianity has been largely counteracted by the pestilent doctrine
on which all the Churches have insisted, that honest disbelief in
their more or less astonishing creeds is a moral offence, indeed a sin
of the deepest dye, deserving and involving the same future
retribution as murder and robbery. If we could only see, in one view,
the torrents of hypocrisy and cruelty, the lies, the slaughter, the
violations of every obligation of humanity, which have flowed from
this source along the course of the history of Christian nations, our
worst imaginations of Hell would pale beside the vision.
A thousand times, no! It ought _not_ to be unpleasant to say that
which one honestly believes or disbelieves. That it so constantly is
painful to do so, is quite enough obstacle to the progress of mankind
in that most valuable of all qualities, honesty of word or of deed,
without erecting a sad concomitant of human weakness into something to
be admired and cherished. The bravest of soldiers often, and very
naturally, "feel it unpleasant" to go into action; but a court-martial
which did its duty would make short work of the officer who
promulgated the doctrine that his men _ought_ to feel their duty
unpleasant.
I am very well aware, as I suppose most thoughtful people are in these
times, that the process of breaking away from old beliefs is extremely
unpleasant; and I am much disposed to think that the encouragement,
the consolation, and the peace afforded to earnest believers in even
the worst forms of Christianity are of great practical advantage to
them. What deductions must be made from this gain on the score of the
harm done to the citizen by the ascetic other-worldliness of logical
Christianity; to the ruler, by the hatred, malice, and all
uncharitableness of sectarian bigotry; to the legislator, by the
spirit of exclusiveness and domination of those that count themselves
pillars of orthodoxy; to the philosopher, by the restraints on the
freedom of learning and teaching which every Church exercises, when it
is strong enough; to the conscientious soul, by the introspective
hunting after sins of the mint and cummin type, the fear of
theological error, and the overpowering terror of possible damnation,
which have accompanied the Churches like their shadow, I need not now
consider; but they are assuredly not small. If agnostics lose heavily
on the one side, they gain a good deal on the other. People who talk
about the comforts of belief appear to forget its discomforts; they
ignore the fact that the Christianity of the Churches is something
more than faith in the ideal personality of Jesus, which they create
for themselves, _plus_ so much as can be carried into practice,
without disorganising civil society, of the maxims of the Sermon on
the Mount. Trip in morals or in doctrine (especially in doctrine),
without due repentance or retractation, or fail to get properly
baptized before you die, and a _plébiscite_ of the Christians of
Europe, if they were true to their creeds, would affirm your
everlasting damnation by an immense majority.
Preachers, orthodox and heterodox, din into our ears that the world
cannot get on without faith of some sort. There is a sense in which
that is as eminently as obviously true; there is another, in which, in
my judgment, it is as eminently as obviously false, and it seems to me
that the hortatory, or pulpit, mind is apt to oscillate between the
false and the true meanings, without being aware of the fact.
It is quite true that the ground of every one of our actions, and the
validity of all our reasonings, rest upon the great act of faith,
which leads us to take the experience of the past as a safe guide in
our dealings with the present and the future. From the nature of
ratiocination, it is obvious that the axioms, on which it is based,
cannot be demonstrated by ratiocination. It is also a trite
observation that, in the business of life, we constantly take the most
serious action upon evidence of an utterly insufficient character. But
it is surely plain that faith is not necessarily entitled to dispense
with ratiocination because ratiocination cannot dispense with faith as
a starting-point; and that because we are often obliged, by the
pressure of events, to act on very bad evidence, it does not follow
that it is proper to act on such evidence when the pressure is absent.
The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews tells us that "faith is the
assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things not seen." In the
authorised version, "substance" stands for "assurance," and "evidence"
for "proving." The question of the exact meaning of the two words,
[Greek: hypostasis] and [Greek: elegchos] affords a fine field of
discussion for the scholar and the metaphysician. But I fancy we shall
be not far from the mark if we take the writer to have had in his mind
the profound psychological truth, that men constantly feel certain
about things for which they strongly hope, but have no evidence, in
the legal or logical sense of the word; and he calls this feeling
"faith." I may have the most absolute faith that a friend has not
committed the crime of which he is accused. In the early days of
English history, if my friend could have obtained a few more
compurgators of a like robust faith, he would have been acquitted. At
the present day, if I tendered myself as a witness on that score, the
judge would tell me to stand down, and the youngest barrister would
smile at my simplicity. Miserable indeed is the man who has not such
faith in some of his fellow-men--only less miserable than the man who
allows himself to forget that such faith is not, strictly speaking,
evidence; and when his faith is disappointed, as will happen now and
again, turns Timon and blames the universe for his own blunders. And
so, if a man can find a friend, the hypostasis of all his hopes, the
mirror of his ethical ideal, in the Jesus of any, or all, of the
Gospels, let him live by faith in that ideal. Who shall or can forbid
him? But let him not delude himself with the notion that his faith is
evidence of the objective reality of that in which he trusts. Such
evidence is to be obtained only by the use of the methods of science,
as applied to history and to literature, and it amounts at present to
very little.
It appears that Mr. Gladstone some time ago asked Mr. Laing if he
could draw up a short summary of the negative creed; a body of
negative propositions, which have so far been adopted on the negative
side as to be what the Apostles' and other accepted creeds are on the
positive; and Mr. Laing at once kindly obliged Mr. Gladstone with the
desired articles--eight of them.
If any one had preferred this request to me, I should have replied
that, if he referred to agnostics, they have no creed; and, by the
nature of the case, cannot have any. Agnosticism, in fact, is not a
creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous
application of a single principle. That principle is of great
antiquity; it is as old as Socrates; as old as the writer who said,
"Try all things, hold fast by that which is good;" it is the
foundation of the Reformation, which simply illustrated the axiom that
every man should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in
him; it is the great principle of Descartes; it is the fundamental
axiom of modern science. Positively the principle may be expressed: In
matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take
you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In
matters of the intellect do not pretend that conclusions are certain
which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the
agnostic faith, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not
be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may
have in store for him.
The results of the working out of the agnostic principle will vary
according to individual knowledge and capacity, and according to the
general condition of science. That which is unproven to-day may be
proven by the help of new discoveries to-morrow. The only negative
fixed points will be those negations which flow from the demonstrable
limitation of our faculties. And the only obligation accepted is to
have the mind always open to conviction. Agnostics who never fail in
carrying out their principles are, I am afraid, as rare as other
people of whom the same consistency can be truthfully predicated. But,
if you were to meet with such a phoenix and to tell him that you had
discovered that two and two make five, he would patiently ask you to
state your reasons for that conviction, and express his readiness to
agree with you if he found them satisfactory. The apostolic
injunction to "suffer fools gladly" should be the rule of life of a
true agnostic. I am deeply conscious how far I myself fall short of
this ideal, but it is my personal conception of what agnostics ought
to be.
However, as I began by stating, I speak only for myself; and I do not
dream of anathematizing and excommunicating Mr. Laing. But, when I
consider his creed and compare it with the Athanasian, I think I have
on the whole a clearer conception of the meaning of the latter.
"Polarity," in Article VIII, for example, is a word about which I
heard a good deal in my youth, when "Naturphilosophie" was in fashion,
and greatly did I suffer from it. For many years past, whenever I have
met with "polarity" anywhere but in a discussion of some purely
physical topic, such as magnetism, I have shut the book. Mr. Laing
must excuse me if the force of habit was too much for me when I read
his eighth article.
And now, what is to be said to Mr. Harrison's remarkable deliverance
"On the future of agnosticism "?[63] I would that it were not my
business to say anything, for I am afraid I can say nothing which
shall manifest my great personal respect for this able writer, and for
the zeal and energy with which he ever and anon galvanises the weakly
frame of Positivism until it looks, more than ever, like John Bunyan's
Pope and Pagan rolled into one. There is a story often repeated, and I
am afraid none the less mythical on that account, of a valiant and
loud-voiced corporal in command of two full privates who, falling in
with a regiment of the enemy in the dark, orders it to surrender under
pain of instant annihilation by his force; and the enemy surrenders
accordingly. I am always reminded of this tale when I read the
positivist commands to the forces of Christianity and of Science; only
the enemy show no more signs of intending to obey now than they have
done any time these forty years.
The allocution under consideration has a certain papal flavour. Mr.
Harrison speaks with authority and not as one of the common scribes of
the period. He knows not only what agnosticism is and how it has come
about, but what will become of it. The agnostic is to content himself
with being the precursor of the positivist. In his place, as a sort of
navvy levelling the ground and cleansing it of such poor stuff as
Christianity, he is a useful creature who deserves patting on the
back, on condition that he does not venture beyond his last. But let
not these scientific Sanballats presume that they are good enough to
take part in the building of the Temple--they are mere Samaritans,
doomed to die out in proportion as the Religion of Humanity is
accepted by mankind. Well, if that is their fate, they have time to be
cheerful. But let us hear Mr. Harrison's pronouncement of their doom.
"Agnosticism is a stage in the evolution of religion, an entirely
negative stage, the point reached by physicists, a purely mental
conclusion, with no relation to things social at all" (p. 154). I am
quite dazed by this declaration. Are there, then, any "conclusions"
that are not "purely mental"? Is there "no relation to things social"
in "mental conclusions" which affect men's whole conception of life?
Was that prince of agnostics, David Hume, particularly imbued with
physical science? Supposing physical science to be non-existent, would
not the agnostic principle, applied by the philologist and the
historian, lead to exactly the same results? Is the modern more or
less complete suspension of judgment as to the facts of the history of
regal Rome, or the real origin of the Homeric poems, anything but
agnosticism in history and in literature? And if so, how can
agnosticism be the "mere negation of the physicist"?
"Agnosticism is a stage in the evolution of religion." No two people
agree as to what is meant by the term "religion"; but if it means, as
I think it ought to mean, simply the reverence and love for the
ethical ideal, and the desire to realise that ideal in life, which
every man ought to feel--then I say agnosticism has no more to do
with it than it has to do with music or painting. If, on the other
hand, Mr. Harrison, like most people, means by "religion" theology,
then, in my judgment, agnosticism can be said to be a stage in its
evolution, only as death may be said to be the final stage in the
evolution of life.
When agnostic logic is simply one of the canons of thought,
agnosticism, as a distinctive faith, will have spontaneously
disappeared (p. 155).
I can but marvel that such sentences as this, and those already
quoted, should have proceeded from Mr. Harrison's pen. Does he really
mean to suggest that agnostics have a logic peculiar to themselves?
Will lie kindly help me out of my bewilderment when I try to think of
"logic" being anything else than the canon (which, I believe, means
rule) of thought? As to agnosticism being a distinctive faith, I have
already shown that it cannot possibly be anything of the kind, unless
perfect faith in logic is distinctive of agnostics; which, after all,
it may be.
Agnosticism as a religious philosophy _per se_ rests on an
almost total ignoring of history and social evolution (p.
152).
But neither _per se_ nor _per aliud_ has agnosticism (if I know
anything about it) the least pretension to be a religious philosophy;
so far from resting on ignorance of history, and that social evolution
of which history is the account, it is and has been the inevitable
result of the strict adherence to scientific methods by historical
investigators. Our forefathers were quite confident about the
existence of Romulus and Remus, of King Arthur, and of Hengist and
Horsa. Most of us have become agnostics in regard to the reality of
these worthies. It is a matter of notoriety of which Mr. Harrison, who
accuses us all so freely of ignoring history, should not be ignorant,
that the critical process which has shattered the foundations of
orthodox Christian doctrine owes its origin, not to the devotees of
physical science, but, before all, to Richard Simon, the learned
French Oratorian, just two hundred years ago. I cannot find evidence
that either Simon, or any one of the great scholars and critics of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who have continued Simon's work,
had any particular acquaintance with physical science. I have already
pointed out that Hume was independent of it. And certainly one of the
most potent influences in the same direction, upon history in the
present century, that of Grote, did not come from the physical side.
Physical science, in fact, has had nothing directly to do with the
criticism of the Gospels; it is wholly incompetent to furnish
demonstrative evidence that any statement made in these histories is
untrue. Indeed, modern physiology can find parallels in nature for
events of apparently the most eminently supernatural kind recounted
in some of those histories.
It is a comfort to hear, upon Mr. Harrison's authority, that the laws
of physical nature show no signs of becoming "less definite, less
consistent, or less popular as time goes on" (p. 154). How a law of
nature is to become indefinite, or "inconsistent," passes my poor
powers of imagination. But with universal suffrage and the coach-dog
theory of premiership in full view; the theory, I mean, that the whole
duty of a political chief is to look sharp for the way the social
coach is driving, and then run in front and bark loud--as if being the
leading noise-maker and guiding were the same things--it is truly
satisfactory to me to know that the laws of nature are increasing in
popularity. Looking at recent developments of the policy which is said
to express the great heart of the people, I have had my doubts of the
fact; and my love for my fellow-countrymen has led me to reflect, with
dread, on what will happen to them, if any of the laws of nature ever
become so unpopular in their eyes, as to be voted down by the
transcendent authority of universal suffrage. If the legion of demons,
before they set out on their journey in the swine, had had time to
hold a meeting and to resolve unanimously "That the law of gravitation
is oppressive and ought to be repealed," I am afraid it would have
made no sort of difference to the result, when their two thousand
unwilling porters were once launched down the steep slopes of the
fatal shore of Gennesaret.
The question of the place of religion as an element of human
nature, as a force of human society, its origin, analysis,
and functions, has never been considered at all from an
agnostic point of view (p. 152).
I doubt not that Mr. Harrison knows vastly more about history than I
do; in fact, he tells the public that some of my friends and I have
had no opportunity of occupying ourselves with that subject. I do not
like to contradict any statement which Mr. Harrison makes on his own
authority; only, if I may be true to my agnostic principles, I humbly
ask how he has obtained assurance on this head. I do not profess to
know anything about the range of Mr. Harrison's studies; but as he has
thought it fitting to start the subject, I may venture to point out
that, on evidence adduced, it might be equally permissible to draw the
conclusion that Mr. Harrison's other labours have not allowed him to
acquire that acquaintance with the methods and results of physical
science, or with the history of philosophy, or of philological and
historical criticism, which is essential to any one who desires to
obtain a right understanding of agnosticism. Incompetence in
philosophy, and in all branches of science except mathematics, is the
well-known mental characteristic of the founder of positivism.
Faithfulness in disciples is an admirable quality in itself; the pity
is that it not unfrequently leads to the imitation of the weaknesses
as well as of the strength of the master. It is only such
over-faithfulness which can account for a "strong mind really
saturated with the historical sense" (p. 153) exhibiting the
extraordinary forgetfulness of the historical fact of the existence of
David Hume implied by the assertion that
it would be difficult to name a single known agnostic who
has given to history anything like the amount of thought and
study which he brings to a knowledge of the physical world
(p. 153).
Whoso calls to mind what I may venture to term the bright side of
Christianity--that ideal of manhood, with its strength and its
patience, its justice and its pity for human frailty, its helpfulness
to the extremity of self-sacrifice, its ethical purity and nobility,
which apostles have pictured, in which armies of martyrs have placed
their unshakable faith, and whence obscure men and women, like
Catherine of Sienna and John Knox, have derived the courage to rebuke
popes and kings--is not likely to underrate the importance of the
Christian faith as a factor in human history, or to doubt that if that
faith should prove to be incompatible with our knowledge, or necessary
want of knowledge, some other hypostasis of men's hopes, genuine
enough and worthy enough to replace it, will arise. But that the
incongruous mixture of bad science with eviscerated papistry, out of
which Comte manufactured the positivist religion, will be the heir of
the Christian ages, I have too much respect for the humanity of the
future to believe. Charles the Second told his brother, "They will not
kill me, James, to make you king." And if critical science is
remorselessly destroying the historical foundations of the noblest
ideal of humanity which mankind have yet worshipped, it is little
likely to permit the pitiful reality to climb into the vacant shrine.
That a man should determine to devote himself to the service of
humanity--including intellectual and moral self-culture under that
name; that this should be, in the proper sense of the word, his
religion--is not only an intelligible, but, I think, a laudable
resolution. And I am greatly disposed to believe that it is the only
religion which will prove itself to be unassailably acceptable so long
as the human race endures. But when the Comtist asks me to worship
"Humanity"--that is to say, to adore the generalised conception of men
as they ever have been and probably ever will be--I must reply that I
could just as soon bow down and worship the generalised conception of
a "wilderness of apes." Surely we are not going back to the days of
Paganism, when individual men were deified, and the hard good sense of
a dying Vepasian could prompt the bitter jest, "Ut puto Deus fio." No
divinity doth hedge a modern man, be he even a sovereign ruler. Nor is
there any one, except a municipal magistrate, who is officially
declared worshipful. But if there is no spark of worship-worthy
divinity in the individual twigs of humanity, whence comes that
godlike splendour which the Moses of Positivism fondly imagines to
pervade the whole bush?
I know no study which is so unutterably saddening as that of the
evolution of humanity, as it is set forth in the annals of history.
Out of the darkness of prehistoric ages man emerges with the marks of
his lowly origin strong upon him. He is a brute, only more intelligent
than the other brutes, a blind prey to impulses, which as often as not
lead him to destruction; a victim to endless illusions, which make his
mental existence a terror and a burden, and fill his physical life
with barren toil and battle. He attains a certain degree of physical
comfort, and develops a more or less workable theory of life, in such
favourable situations as the plains of Mesopotamia or of Egypt, and
then, for thousands and thousands of years, struggles, with varying
fortunes, attended by infinite wickedness, bloodshed, and misery, to
maintain himself at this point against the greed and the ambition of
his fellow-men. He makes a point of killing and otherwise persecuting
all those who first try to get him to move on; and when he has moved
on a step, foolishly confers post-mortem deification on his victims.
He exactly repeats the process with all who want to move a step yet
farther. And the best men of the best epochs are simply those who make
the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.
That one should rejoice in the good man, forgive the bad man, and pity
and help all men to the best of one's ability, is surely indisputable.
It is the glory of Judaism and of Christianity to have proclaimed this
truth, through all their aberrations. But the worship of a God who
needs forgiveness and help, and deserves pity every hour of his
existence, is no better than that of any other voluntarily selected
fetish. The Emperor Julian's project was hopeful in comparison with
the prospects of the Comtist Anthropolatry.
When the historian of religion in the twentieth century is writing
about the nineteenth, I foresee he will say something of this kind:
The most curious and instructive events in the religious history of
the preceding century are the rise and progress of two new sects
called Mormons and Positivists. To the student who has carefully
considered these remarkable phenomena nothing in the records of
religious self-delusion can appear improbable.
The Mormons arose in the midst of the great Republic, which, though
comparatively insignificant, at that time, in territory as in the
number of its citizens, was (as we know from the fragments of the
speeches of its orators which have come down to us) no less remarkable
for the native intelligence of its population than for the wide extent
of their information, owing to the activity of their publishers in
diffusing all that they could invent, beg, borrow, or steal. Nor were
they less noted for their perfect freedom from all restraints in
thought, or speech, or deed; except, to be sure, the beneficent and
wise influence of the majority, exerted, in case of need, through an
institution known as "tarring and feathering," the exact nature of
which is now disputed.
There is a complete consensus of testimony that the founder of
Mormonism, one Joseph Smith, was a low-minded, ignorant scamp, and
that he stole the "Scriptures" which he propounded; not being clever
enough to forge even such contemptible stuff as they contain.
Nevertheless he must have been a man of some force of character, for a
considerable number of disciples soon gathered about him. In spite of
repeated outbursts of popular hatred and violence--during one of which
persecutions Smith was brutally murdered--the Mormon body steadily
increased, and became a flourishing community. But the Mormon
practices being objectionable to the majority, they were, more than
once, without any pretence of law, but by force of riot, arson, and
murder, driven away from the land they had occupied. Harried by these
persecutions, the Mormon body eventually committed itself to the
tender mercies of a desert as barren as that of Sinai; and after
terrible sufferings and privations, reached the Oasis of Utah. Here it
grew and flourished, sending out missionaries to, and receiving
converts from, all parts of Europe, sometimes to the number of 10,000
in a year; until, in 1880, the rich and flourishing community numbered
110,000 souls in Utah alone, while there were probably 30,000 or
40,000 scattered abroad elsewhere. In the whole history of religions
there is no more remarkable example of the power of faith; and, in
this case, the founder of that faith was indubitably a most despicable
creature. It is interesting to observe that the course taken by the
great Republic and its citizens runs exactly parallel with that taken
by the Roman Empire and its citizens towards the early Christians,
except that the Romans had a certain legal excuse for their acts of
violence, inasmuch as the Christian "sodalitia" were not licensed, and
consequently were, _ipso facto_, illegal assemblages. Until, in the
latter part of the nineteenth century, the United States legislature
decreed the illegality of polygamy, the Mormons were wholly within the
law.
Nothing can present a greater contrast to all this than the history of
the Postivists. This sect arose much about the same time as that of
the Mormons, in the upper and most instructed stratum of the
quick-witted, sceptical population of Paris. The founder, Auguste
Comte, was a teacher of mathematics, but of no eminence in that
department of knowledge, and with nothing but an amateur's
acquaintance with physical, chemical, and biological science. His
works are repulsive, on account of the dull diffuseness of their
style, and a certain air, as of a superior person, which characterises
them; but nevertheless they contain good things here and there. It
would take too much space to reproduce in detail a system which
proposes to regulate all human life by the promulgation of a Gentile
Leviticus. Suffice it to say, that M. Comte may be described as a
syncretic, who, like the Gnostics of early Church history, attempted
to combine the substance of imperfectly comprehended contemporary
science with the form of Roman Christianity. It may be that this is
the reason why his disciples were so very angry with some obscure
people called Agnostics, whose views, if we may judge by the account
left in the works of a great Positivist controversial writer, were
very absurd.
To put the matter briefly, M. Comte, finding Christianity and Science
at daggers drawn, seems to have said to Science, "You find
Christianity rotten at the core, do you? Well, I will scoop out the
inside of it." And to Romanism: "You find Science mere dry light--cold
and bare. Well, I will put your shell over it, and so, as schoolboys
make a spectre out of a turnip and a tallow candle, behold the new
religion of Humanity complete!"
Unfortunately neither the Romanists, nor the people who were something
more than amateurs in science, could be got to worship M. Comte's new
idol properly. In the native country of Positivism, one distinguished
man of letters and one of science, for a time, helped to make up a
roomful of the faithful, but their love soon grew cold. In England, on
the other hand, there appears to be little doubt that, in the ninth
decade of the century, the multitude of disciples reached the grand
total of several score. They had the advantage of the advocacy of one
or two most eloquent and learned apostles, and, at any rate, the
sympathy of several persons of light and leading; and, if they were
not seen, they were heard, all over the world. On the other hand, as a
sect, they laboured under the prodigious disadvantage of being
refined, estimable people, living in the midst of the worn-out
civilisation of the old world; where any one who had tried to
persecute them, as the Mormons were persecuted, would have been
instantly hanged. But the majority never dreamed of persecuting them;
on the contrary, they were rather given to scold and otherwise try the
patience of the majority.
The history of these sects in the closing years of the century is
highly instructive. Mormonism ...
But I find I have suddenly slipped off Mr. Harrison's tripod, which I
had borrowed for the occasion. The fact is, I am not equal to the
prophetical business, and ought not to have undertaken it.
* * * * *
[It did not occur to me, while writing the latter part of this essay,
that it could be needful to disclaim the intention of putting the
religious system of Comte on a level with Mormonism. And I was unaware
of the fact that Mr. Harrison rejects the greater part of the
Positivist Religion, as taught by Comte. I have, therefore, erased one
or two passages, which implied his adherence to the "Religion of
Humanity" as developed by Comte, 1893.]