to do altogether without religion; a need for something more than bread
alone being ingrained in his nature. Thus even the professedly
materialistic societies try to afford something in the way of religious
exercises. I have recently seen a notice of one of the so-called Ethical
Societies in which the members (at their meetings, I take it) are
"requested to silently meditate for five minutes on the good life."[22]
It would seem to be quite as beneficial and more practical to meditate
on split infinitives. A substitute for religion has to be found; what is
it to be? In the years before the war Mr. Masefield published a very
interesting book called _Multitude and Solitude_, which narrates the
trials and troubles of two young Englishmen who make a perilous journey
to Africa in search of the secret of the sleeping-sickness. In all their
trials they never seem to have thought of prayer, in which it may be
assumed they did not believe, but when they returned to England it
occurred to one of them that there was something wanting in their life,
and he propounded to his friend the view that "the world is just coming
to see that science is not a substitute for religion," which is one of
the things urged in this paper. He then proceeded to the rather
startling conclusion that science _is_ "religion of a very deep and
austere kind." One is reminded of a well-known passage in the Bible:
"_Inveni et aram in qua scriptum erat_ IGNOTO DEO." To set up science as
an "unknown God" seems a curious choice, even more curious than the
choice of humanity, which--pitiable object as it is--was at least made
in the image of God. Not to pile up instance upon instance, let us
content ourselves with remembering that Mr. Wells, who in his earlier
novels had certainly not displayed any marked affection for religion, in
the last published before the war (_Marriage_) brings his hero face to
face with the great realities, and makes him exclaim to his wife that he
may "die a Christian yet," and urge upon her the need for prayer, if
only out into the darkness. Of course, as all the reading world knows,
since the war commenced, Mr. Wells has set up his own altar "IGNOTO
DEO," not with much more satisfactory results than those attained by Mr.
Masefield. It is an historical fact that times of war have also been
times of religious awakening, and it is natural that they should be so,
for even the most careless must be brought to contemplate something more
than the day's enjoyment. It is not then wonderful that the terrible war
which has raged with Europe as the cockpit, and practically all the
nations of the world as participants, should turn the minds of those who
are in the righting line towards thoughts which in times of peace may
never have found entrance there. From all sides one hears that this is
so, yet here again it is too often the case that an "unknown God" is
sought, and from want of proper direction not always found. In a
recently published memoir of one of the many splendid young fellows by
whose death the world has been made poorer during this calamitous war,
there is this moving passage: "I know that many hearts are turning
towards _something_, but cannot find satisfaction in what the Christian
sects offer. And many, failing to find what they need, fall back sadly
into vague uncertainties and disbelief, as I often do myself." We badly
need a St. Paul who will say to these and other anxious hearts, "_Quod
ergo ignorantes colitis, hoc ego annuntio vobis_."
However, it is much more with those who only "stand and wait" than with
those who were actually in the trenches that we are concerned; what
about the lamentable army of wives and mothers, widows and orphans,
people bereft of those they loved or rising every morning in dread of
the news which the day might bring forth; what about these and their
attitude towards the things unseen? That many such have turned to some
genuine form of religion is happily beyond dispute, but it is also
unquestionably true that thousands have turned aside to the attractions
of spiritualism. A recent article in the Literary Supplement of the
_Times_ commenced with the statement that "Among the strange, dismaying
things cast up by the tide of war are those traces of primitive
fatalism, primitive magic, and equivocal divination which are within
general knowledge." The writer of the article in question thinks that
as we have taken a huge and lamentable step backwards in civilisation,
we need not be surprised that we should also have receded in the
direction of those primitive instincts to which he calls attention. This
process had, however, begun long before the war.
The late Dr. Ryder, Provost of the Birmingham Oratory, was a very shrewd
observer of public affairs and a very close and dear friend of the
present writer. It must be more than twenty years ago since he remarked
to me that he thought that materialism had shot its bolt and that the
coming danger to religion was spiritualism, a subject on which, if I
remember right, he had written more than one paper. I asked him what led
him to that conclusion, and his reply was to ask me whether I had not
noticed the great increase in number of the items in second-hand book
catalogues--a form of literature to which we were both much
addicted--under the heading "OCCULT." Since the war, however, there can
be no doubt about the fact that spiritualism has made great strides. A
thousand pieces of evidence prove it. Look, for example, at the enormous
vogue of _Raymond_, a book of which I say nothing, out of personal
regard for its author and genuine respect for his honesty and
fearlessness. But I return to Sir Arthur Doyle's book, and we find him
assuring us that he is personally "in touch with thirteen mothers who
are in correspondence with their dead sons," and adds that in only one
of these cases was the individual concerned with psychic matters before
the war. Further, he explains that it was the war which induced him to
take an active interest in a subject which had been before no more than
one of passing curiosity. "In the presence of an agonised world," he
writes, "hearing every day of the deaths of the flower of our race in
the first promise of their unfulfilled youth, seeing around one the
wives and mothers who had no clear conception whither their loved one
had gone to, I seemed suddenly to see that this subject with which I had
so long dallied was not merely a study of a force outside the rules of
science, but that it really was something tremendous, a breaking down of
the walls between the two worlds, a direct undeniable message from
beyond, a call of hope and of guidance to the human race at the time of
its deepest affliction." Perhaps it is not wonderful that spiritualism
should have won the success which it has, for it offers a good deal to
those who can believe in it. It offers definite intercourse with the
departed; positive knowledge as to the existence of a future state, and
even as to its nature--the last-named intelligence not always very
attractive. Further, it requires no particular creed and, it would
appear, no special code of morals; for one of its teachings, I gather,
is that it does not greatly matter what a man thinks or even does, so
far as his future welfare is concerned.
Sir A. Doyle's book is the least convincing exposition of spiritualism I
have yet read--and I have studied many of them--but it may be taken to
include the latest views on the subject. Amongst the revelations which
he gives, there is one purporting to come from a spirit who "had been a
Catholic and was still a Catholic, but had not fared better than the
Protestants; there were Buddhists and Mahommedans in her sphere, but all
fared alike." Another spirit informed Sir A. Doyle that he had been a
freethinker, but "had not suffered in the next life for that reason."
This is not the occasion, and in no way am I the man, to tackle the
subject of spiritualism, but this at least I think may be said, that the
person who argues that the whole thing is a fraud and deception does not
know what he is talking about. Look at the history of the world--_Quod
semper_, _quod ubique_, almost _quod ab omnibus_. The records of early
missionaries--Jesuits especially--teem with accounts of the same kind of
phenomena as we read of in connection with séances to-day, occurring in
all sorts of places and amongst widely separated races of mankind. We
have it in the _Odyssey_; we have it in Cicero and in Pliny; we have it
in the Bible. All this is not a mere matter of imposition.
In a very curious book recently published (_Some Revelations as to
"Raymond_," by a Plain Citizen; London, Kegan Paul), to which some
attention may now be devoted, the writer, himself a firm believer in
spiritualism and one obviously in a position to write about it, points
out that the old term "magic" has been relegated to the performances of
conjurers, and the terminology so altered as to make spiritualism appear
to be a new gospel, whereas the contrary is the case. "The impression
prevailed that civilised people were in presence of a new order of
phenomena, and were acquiring a new outlook into the regions of the
Unknown; whereas the truth was that they were merely repeating, under
new social conditions and in a new environment, the same experiences
that had happened to their ancestors during some thousands of years."
Here I may interject the remark that as far as my reading and knowledge
go, no spirit has ever had a good word to say for the Catholic religion.
What that Church thinks about spiritualism has been made quite clear,
and that is enough for Catholics. Before leaving the Plain Citizen, we
must not omit to notice one strange hypothesis of his, all the stranger
as coming from a professed spiritualist. He maintains--perhaps it would
be fairer to say that he lays down as a working hypothesis--the
following thesis: Spiritualism involves the existence of mediums, and
mediums for the most part have to make their living by their operations.
They will not be averse to making their incomes as large as possible.
For the purpose of acquiring information as to the affairs of possible
clients, they have, so he asserts, an almost Freemasonic Association by
which all sorts of pieces of intelligence concerning persons of
importance are collected and disseminated amongst the brotherhood. It
did not require much imagination to suppose that the war would add to
the number of their clients, whether their claims had real foundation or
not; what they wanted above all things was some one of undoubted
position who would "boom the movement," in the slang of the day. They
laid all their plans to get their man in the author of _Raymond_, and
they got him. Such is his thesis for what it is worth.
However, it is time to conclude. What I wanted to show was that
Theophobia was the Nemesis of a dreadful type of Protestantism, and that
spiritualism was the Nemesis of the materialism associated with that
Theophobia. There is no need to point out to Catholic readers where the
remedy lies, and where the real Communion of the saints is to be found.
They are not likely to be drawn aside by the "Lo here!" of the "false
Christs" whom we were promised and whom we are getting. It is for those
who have themselves experienced the consolations of the Catholic
religion to do their best, each in his own way, to make known to others
outside our body what things may be found within.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 21: An excellent example may be found in Butler's own
career. Destined for the ministry of the Church of England
(with his own full consent), he was set to teach a class in a
Sunday school. Finding that some of his pupils were unbaptized,
yet no worse-behaved than the others, and obviously quite
ignorant of what baptism meant, he abandoned all belief. His
biographer, equally ignorant, in narrating, with approval, this
change of opinion, says, "Paley had produced evidence of
Christianity, but none so unmistakable as this to the
contrary."]
[Footnote 22: Dr. Johnson once remarked that "to find a
substitution for violated morality was the leading feature in
all perversions of religion."]
III. WITHIN AND WITHOUT THE SYSTEM
Exclusive and long-continued devotion to any special line of study is
liable to lead to forgetfulness of other, even kindred, lines--almost,
in extreme cases, to a kind of atrophy of other parts of the mind. There
is the example of Darwin and his self-confessed loss of the æsthetic
tastes he once possessed. Nor are scientific studies the only ones to
produce such an effect. The amusing satire in _The New Republic_ has,
perhaps, lost some of its tang now that the prototype of its Professor
of History is almost forgotten, but it has not lost its point. Lady
Ambrose tells the tale: "He said to me in a very solemn voice, 'What a
terrible defeat that was which we had at Bouvines!' I answered
timidly--not thinking we were at war with anyone--that I had seen
nothing about it in the papers. 'H'm!' he said, giving a sort of grunt
that made me feel dreadfully ignorant, 'why, I had an excursus on it
myself in the _Archæological Gazette_ only last week.' And, do you know,
it turned out that the Battle of Bouvines was fought in the Thirteenth
Century, and had, as far as I could make out, something to do with Magna
Charta."
It is, however, among writers on biological subjects that we find the
most salient instances of this contraction. With extraordinary
self-abnegation they seem, in the contemplation of the problem with
which they are concerned, to forget that they themselves are living
things, and, more than that, the living things of whom they ought to
know and could know most, however little that most may be. When the
biologist begins to philosophise as, after the manner of his kind, he
often does, he should leave his microscope and look around him; whereas
he often forgets even to change the high for the low power. Thus he
limits his field of vision and forgets, when attempting his explanation,
that it is only _within a system_ that he is working. Professor Ward, in
_Naturalism and Agnosticism_, says:
"From the strict premisses of Positivism we can never prove
the existence of other minds or find a place for such
conceptions as cause and substance; for into these premisses
the existence of our own mind and its self-activity have not
entered. And accordingly we have seen Naturalism led on in
perfect consistency to resolve man into an automaton that
goes of itself as part of a still vaster automaton, Nature
as mechanically conceived, which goes of itself. True, this
mechanism goes of itself because it _is_ going, and being
altogether inert, cannot stop or change. How it ever started
is indeed a question which science cannot answer, but which,
on the other hand, it has no occasion to ask: time, its one
independent variable, extends indefinitely without hint of
either beginning or end. Such a system of knowledge, _once
we are inside it_, so to say, is entirely self-contained and
complete."
"_Once we are inside it!_" what so many writers forget or ignore is that
they _are_ inside it, and that their explanations do not explain the
system or how it came to be there or to be in operation. Everybody is
familiar with Paley's example of the watch found on the heath. Let us
carry it a little further. Suppose some student, after devoting years of
patient examination to the watch, were to come forward and say: "I have
discovered the secret of this watch. There is a spring in it which
possesses resiliency, and it is that which drives the wheels. I think I
have heard people say that there must have been a watchmaker to design
and construct this piece of machinery, but, in face of my discoveries,
any such explanation is wholly unnecessary and may be altogether
abandoned."
Perhaps this analogy may be regarded as exaggerated; but, before thus
condemning it, let the following passage be studied. It is from a very
important book recently published, which claims (and has had its claim
supported by many periodicals) to have done away with any need for an
explanation of life beyond that which can be given by chemistry and
physics, Jacques Loeb's _Organism as a Whole, from a Physico-Chemical
Viewpoint_.
It would be hard to find a worse example of confused thinking than that
of the following passage:
"The idea that the organism as a whole cannot be explained
from a physico-chemical viewpoint rests most strongly on the
existence of animal instincts and will. Many of the
instinctive actions are 'purposeful,' _i.e._ assisting to
preserve the individual and the race. This again suggests
'design' and a designing 'force,' which we do not find in
the realm of physics. We must remember, however, that there
was a time when the same 'purposefulness' was believed to
exist in the cosmos where everything seemed to turn
literally and metaphorically around the earth, the abode of
man. In the latter case, the anthropo- or geo-centric view
came to an end when it was shown that the motions of the
planets were regulated by Newton's law, _and that there was
no room left for the activities of a guiding power_.
Likewise, in the realm of instincts, when it can be shown
that these instincts may be reduced to elementary
physico-chemical laws, the assumption of design becomes
superfluous." (_Italics mine._)
In the first place the "purposefulness" of the movements of the planets
is not affected in the very least by the question of heliocentricism.
What the author is probably thinking of is an exaggerated and obsolete
teleology, but that is not what seems to be the purport of the passage.
Let that pass. The main confusion lies in the application of the term
"Law." The Ten Commandments, and our familiar friend D.O.R.A., are laws
we must obey or take the consequences of our disobedience. The "laws"
which the writer is dealing with are not anything of this kind. Newton's
Law is not a thing made by Newton, but an orderly system of events which
was in existence long before Newton's time, but was first demonstrated
by him. It tells us how a certain part of the system works--when we are
"_inside it_." It does not in the least explain the system any more than
the discovery of the resiliency of the spring of the watch explains the
watch itself. So far from dispensing with "the activities of a guiding
power," Newton's law is positively clamant for a final explanation,
since it does not tell us, nor does it pretend to tell us, how the "law"
came into existence, still less how the planets came to be there, or how
they happen to be in a state of motion at all. Writers of this kind
never seem to have grasped the significance of such simple matters as
the different kinds of causes, or to be aware that a formal cause is not
an efficient cause, and that neither of them is a final cause. Coming to
the latter part of the paragraph, it is in no way proved that instincts
can be reduced to physico-chemical laws, and, suppose it were proved,
the assumption of design would be exactly where it is at this moment. It
is the old story of St. Thomas Aquinas and Avicenna and their discussion
on abiogenesis, and surely biologists might be expected to have heard of
that. The same confusion of thought is to be met with elsewhere in this
book, and in other similar books, and a few instances may now be
examined.
Samuel Butler, in _Life and Habit_, warns his readers against the dicta
of scientific men, and more particularly against his own dicta, though
he made no claim to be a scientist. If his reader _must_ believe in
something, "let him believe in the music of Handel, the painting of
Giovanni Bellini, and in the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul's first
Epistle to the Corinthians." And he exclaims: "Let us have no more 'Lo,
here!' with the professor; he very rarely knows what he says he knows;
no sooner has he misled the world for a sufficient time with a great
flourish of trumpets than he is toppled over by one more plausible than
himself." That is a somewhat unkind way of putting it; but undoubtedly
theory after theory is put forward, and often claimed to be final, only
to disappear when another explanation takes its place. Thus at the
moment we are in the full flood of the chemical theory which is employed
to explain inheritance. That heredity exists we all know, but so far we
know nothing about its mechanism. Darwin, with "Pangenesis," and others,
using other titles, argued in favour of a "particulate" explanation, but
the number of particles which would be necessary to account for the
phenomena involved, this and other difficulties, have practically put
this explanation out of court. Then we had the Mnemic theory of Hering,
Butler, and others, by which the unconscious memory of the embryo--even
the germ--is the explanation. Quite lately the mnemic theory has been
claimed by Rignano in his _Scientific Synthesis_ as a complete
explanation, in forgetfulness of the fact that even the all-powerful
protozoon can only remember what has passed and could certainly not
_remember_ that it was some day going to breed a man. At the moment,
things are explained on a chemical basis, though that basis is far from
firm; is of a shifting nature, and a little hazy in details. Some time
ago, colloids were the cry. A President of the British Association
almost led one to imagine that "the homunculus in the retort" might be
expected in a few weeks. But the chemists would have none of this, and
denied that the colloids, about which they ought to know more than do
the biologists, had that promise in them which had been claimed. We had
Leduc and his "fairy flowers," as now we have Loeb and others with their
metabolites and hormones. As to these last, there seems to be no kind of
doubt that the internal secretions of many organs and structures have
effects which were, even a few years ago, quite unsuspected. Those of
the thyroid and adrenals are excellent examples.
It seems to be the fate, however, of all supporters of new theories to
run into extravagances. Darwin had to remind his enthusiastic disciples
that Natural Selection could not create variations, and we may feel some
confidence that Hering, were he alive, would urge his followers to bear
in mind that memory cannot create a state of affairs which never
existed. So far we may certainly say that these internal secretions do
produce certain physical effects, some of them effects not to be
suspected by the uninformed reader. There seems to be very good evidence
that the growth of antlers in deer depends upon an internal secretion
from the sex-gland and from the interstitial tissue of that gland; for
it is apparently upon the secretions of this portion of the gland that
the secondary sexual characters depend, and not merely these, but also
the normal sexual instincts. And this takes us a stage further. The
extreme claim is that all instincts, in fact all thoughts and
operations, are in the last analysis chemical or chemico-physical. Let
us examine this claim for a moment. The adrenals are two inconspicuous
ductless bodies situated immediately above the kidneys. Not many years
ago, when the present writer was a medical student, all that was known
about these organs was that when stricken with a certain disease, known
as Addison's disease from the name of its first describer, the
unfortunate possessor of the diseased glands became of a more or less
rich chocolate colour. To-day we know that the internal secretion of
these organs is a very powerful styptic, and there is good reason to
believe that a copious discharge accompanies an unusual exhibition of
rage. When we are told things of this kind we must first of all remember
that the adrenalin does not cause the rage, though it may produce its
concomitant phenomena. If a man flies into a violent passion because
someone has trodden upon his corns, and there is a copious flow of
adrenalin from the glands, it is not that flow which has caused his
rage. It may be the flow from the interstitial tissue of the sex-glands
which engenders sexual feelings, but then those are almost wholly
physical, and only in a very minor sense--if even if any true
sense--psychical. Persons who take the extreme view have never yet
suggested that there is a characteristic hormone connected with those
psychical attributes alluded to in the chapter of the Corinthians
recommended to our notice by Butler. In fact they seem to ignore all but
the lower or vegetable characters when dealing with psychology from the
chemico-physical point of view.
Finally, we come again to the fatal and fundamental defect of this as of
other "explanations"; it is an explanation "_within the system_," and
therefore unphilosophical in so far as it fails to explain the facts
through their ultimate or deepest reasons.