RELIGION
I. PHILIP BEAUCHAMP
The application of Mill's _Analysis_ to the views of orthodox
theologians required, one might have supposed, as little
interpretation as a slap in the face. But a respectable philosopher
may lay down what premises he pleases if he does not avowedly draw his
conclusions. Mill could argue in perfect safety against the
foundations of theology, while Richard Carlile was being sent to gaol
again and again for attacking the superstructure. The Utilitarians
thought themselves justified in taking advantage of the illogicality
of mankind. Whether it was that the ruling powers had no philosophical
principles themselves, or that they did not see what inferences would
follow, or that they thought that the average person was incapable of
drawing inferences, they drew the line at this point. You may openly
maintain doctrines inconsistent with all theology, but you must not
point out the inconsistency. The Utilitarians contented themselves
with sapping the fort instead of risking an open assault. If its
defenders were blind to the obvious consequences of the procedure, so
much the better. In private, there was obviously no want of plain
speaking. In Bentham's MSS. the Christian religion is nicknamed 'Jug'
as the short for 'Juggernaut.' He and his friends were as anxious as
Voltaire to crush the 'infamous,' but they would do it by indirect
means. They argued resolutely for more freedom; and Samuel Bailey's
essay upon the formation of opinions--a vigorous argument on behalf of
the widest possible toleration--was enthusiastically praised by James
Mill in the _Westminster Review_. For the present they carefully
abstained from the direct avowal of obnoxious opinions, which were
still legally punishable, and which would undoubtedly excite the
strongest hostility. Bentham, as we have seen, had ventured, though
anonymously, to assail the church catechism and to cross-examine St.
Paul. One remarkable manifesto gave a fuller utterance to his
opinions. A book called _The Analysis of the Influence of Natural
Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind_, by 'Philip Beauchamp,'
appeared in 1822. The publisher was Richard Carlile, who was then
'safe in Dorchester gaol.' No legal notice was taken of 'Philip
Beauchamp.' The reason may have been that the book excited very little
attention in general. Yet it is probably as forcible an attack as has
often been written upon the popular theology. The name of 'Philip
Beauchamp' covered a combination of Bentham and George Grote.[610] The
book, therefore, represents the view of representative Utilitarians of
the first and third generation, and clearly expressed the real
opinions of the whole party. In his posthumous essays J. S. Mill
speaks of it as the only explicit discussion known to him of the
question of the utility, as distinguished from the question of the
truth, of religion. Obviously, it was desirable to apply the universal
test to religious belief, and this very pithy and condensed statement
shows the result.
A short summary may indicate the essence of the argument. It is only
necessary to observe that the phrase 'natural religion' is part of the
disguise. It enables the author to avoid an explicit attack upon
revelation; but it is superabundantly obvious that the word 'natural'
is superfluous. Revelation is really a fiction, and all religions are
'natural.' A religion is called a 'superstition,' as 'Philip
Beauchamp' remarks at starting, when its results are thought to be
bad; and allowed to be a religion only when they are thought to be
good.[611] That device covers the familiar fallacy of distinguishing
between uses and abuses, and, upon that pretence, omitting to take bad
consequences into account. We must avoid it by defining religion and
then tracing all the consequences, good or bad. Religion is
accordingly taken to mean the belief in the existence of 'an Almighty
Being, by whom pains and pleasures will be dispensed to mankind during
an infinite and future state of existence.' The definition is already
characteristic. 'Religion' may be used in a far wider sense,
corresponding to a philosophy of the universe, whether that
philosophy does or does not include this particular doctrine. But
'Philip Beauchamp's' assumption is convenient because it gives a
rational reasoning to the problem of utility. Religion is taken to be
something adventitious or superimposed upon other beliefs, and we can
therefore intelligibly ask whether it does good or harm. Taking this
definition for granted, let us consider the results.
The first point is that we are of necessity in absolute ignorance as
to a posthumous state. Now, fear is from our earliest infancy the
'never-failing companion and offspring of ignorance.' Knowledge alone
can rescue us from perpetual suffering, because all security depends
upon knowledge. Pain, moreover, is far more 'pungent' and distinct
than pleasure. 'Want and pain are natural; satisfaction and pleasure
artificial and invented.' Pain, therefore, as the strongest, will
dictate our anticipations. The hope of immortality is by the orthodox
described as a blessing; but the truth, deducible from these
principles of human nature and verified by experience, is that natural
religion, instead of soothing apprehensions, adds fresh grounds of
apprehension. A revelation, as 'Philip Beauchamp' admits, might
conceivably dispel our fears; but he would obviously say that the
religion which is taken to be revealed gives a far more vivid picture
of hell than of heaven.[612] In the next place, it is 'obvious at
first sight' that natural religion can properly give 'no rule of
guidance.' It refers us to a region of 'desperate and unfathomable'
darkness.[613] But it nevertheless indirectly suggests a pernicious
rule. It rests entirely upon conjectures as to the character of the
invisible Being who apportions pain or pleasure for inscrutable
reasons. Will this Being be expected to approve useful or pernicious
conduct? From men's language we might suppose that he is thought to be
purely benevolent. Yet from their dogmas it would seem that he is a
capricious tyrant. How are we to explain the discrepancy? The
discrepancy is the infallible result of the circumstances already
stated.[614] The Deity has limitless power, and therefore is the
natural object of our instinctive fears. The character of the Deity is
absolutely incomprehensible, and incomprehensibility in human affairs
is identical with caprice and insanity.[615] The ends and the means of
the Deity are alike beyond our knowledge; and the extremes both of
wisdom and of folly are equally unaccountable. Now, we praise or blame
human beings in order to affect their conduct towards us, to attract
favours or repel injuries. A tyrant possessed of unlimited power
considers that by simple abstinence from injury he deserves boundless
gratitude. The weak will only dare to praise, and the strong will only
blame. The slave-owner never praises and the slave never blames,
because one can use the lash while the other is subject to the lash.
If, then, we regard the invisible Being as a capricious despot, and,
moreover, as a despot who knows every word we utter, we shall never
speak of him without the highest eulogy, just because we attribute to
him the most arbitrary tyranny. Hence, the invisible despot will
specially favour the priests whose lives are devoted to supporting his
authority, and, next to priests, those who, by the practice of
ceremonies painful or useless to themselves, show that their sole aim
is to give him pleasure. He will specially detest the atheists, and,
next to atheists, all who venture to disregard his arbitrary laws. A
human judge may be benevolent, because he is responsible to the
community. They give and can take away his power. But the invisible
and irresponsible ruler will have no motives for benevolence, and
approve conduct pernicious to men because it is the best proof of a
complete subservience to himself.[616] In spite of this, it has been
generally asserted that religion supplies a motive, and the only
adequate motive, to moral conduct. But the decay of religion would
leave the sources of pain and pleasure unchanged. To say, then, that
the conduct prescribed by religion would disappear if the religious
motives were removed is virtually to admit that it produces no
'temporal benefit.' Otherwise, the motives for practising such conduct
would not be affected. In fact, morality is the same in all countries,
though the injunctions of religion are various and contradictory. If
religion ordered only what is useful, it would coincide with human
laws, and be at worst superfluous. As a fact, it condemns the most
harmless pleasures, such as the worst of human legislators have never
sought to suppress. People have become tolerant, that is, they have
refused to enforce religious observances, precisely because they have
seen that such observances cannot be represented as conducive to
temporal happiness.
Duty, again, may be divided into duty to God and duty to man. Our
'duty to God' is a 'deduction from the pleasures of the individual
without at all benefiting the species.' It must therefore be taken as
a tax paid for the efficacy supposed to be communicated to the other
branch--the 'duty to man.'[617] Does religion, then, stimulate our
obedience to the code of duty to man? 'Philip Beauchamp' admits for
once that, in certain cases, it '_might possibly_' be useful. It might
affect 'secret crimes,' that is, crimes where the offender is
undiscoverable. That, however, is a trifle. These cases, he thinks,
would be 'uncommonly rare' under a well-conceived system. The extent
of evil in this life would therefore be trifling were superhuman
inducements entirely effaced from the human bosom, and if 'human
institutions were ameliorated according to the progress of
philosophy.'[618] On the other hand, the imaginary punishments are
singularly defective in the qualities upon which Bentham had insisted
in human legislation. They are remote and uncertain, and to make up
for this are represented as boundless in intensity and durability. For
that reason, they precisely reverse the admitted principle that
punishment should be so devised as to produce the greatest possible
effect by the smallest infliction of pain. Supernatural sanctions are
supposed to maximise pain with a minimum of effect. The fear of hell
rarely produces any effect till a man is dying, and then inflicts
great suffering, though it has been totally inefficient as a
preventive at the time of temptation. The influence of supernatural
penalties is therefore in 'an inverse ratio to the demand for
it.'[619] In reality, the efficacy of the sanctions is due to their
dependence upon public opinion. Our real motive for acting rightly is
our desire for the praise of our fellows and our interest in their
good conduct. We conceal this motive even from ourselves, because we
wish to have the credit of serving the Deity exclusively. This is
confirmed by the familiar instances of a conflict between public
opinion and religious sanctions. Duelling, fornication, and perjury
are forbidden by the divine law, but the prohibition is ineffectual
whenever the real sentiment of mankind is opposed to it. The divine
law is set aside as soon as it conflicts with the popular opinion. In
exceptional cases, indeed, the credit attached to unreasonable
practices leads to fanaticism, asceticism, and even insanity; but
superhuman terrors fail at once when they try to curb the action of
genuine substantial motives. Hence we must admit that they are useless
in the case even of 'secret crimes.' Religion, in short, prescribes
mischievous practices, becomes impotent except for the production of
misery, and is really, though not avowedly, dependent on the popular
sanction.[620]
We can now classify the evils actually produced. Religion injures
individuals by prescribing useless and painful practices: fasting,
celibacy, voluntary self-torture, and so forth. It suggests vague
terrors which often drive the victim to insanity, and it causes
remorse for harmless enjoyments.[621] Religion injures society by
creating antipathies against unbelievers, and in a less degree against
heretics and nonconformists. It perverts public opinion by making
innocent actions blameable; by distorting the whole science of
morality and sanctioning the heterogeneous dictates of a certain blind
and unaccountable impulse called the 'moral instinct or
conscience.'[622] Morality becomes a 'mere catalogue of reigning
sentiments,' because it has cast away the standard of utility. A
special aversion to improvement is generated, because whatever
changes our conceptions of the 'sequences of phenomena' is supposed to
break the divine 'laws of nature.' 'Unnatural' becomes a
'self-justifying' epithet forbidding any proposed change of conduct,
which will counteract the 'designs of God.' Religion necessarily
injures intellectual progress. It disjoins belief from its only safe
ground, experience. The very basis, the belief in an inscrutable and
arbitrary power, sanctions supernatural or 'extra-experimental'
beliefs of all kinds. You reject in the case of miracles all the tests
applicable to ordinary instruction, and appeal to trial by ordeal
instead of listening to witnesses. Instead of taking the trouble to
plough and sow, you expect to get a harvest by praying to an
inscrutable Being. You marry without means, because you hold that God
never sends a child without sending food for it to eat. Meanwhile you
suborn 'unwarranted belief' by making belief a matter of reward and
penalty. It is made a duty to dwell upon the arguments upon one side
without attending to those upon the other, and 'the weaker the
evidence the greater the merit in believing.'[623] The temper is
depraved not only by the antipathies generated, but by the 'fitful and
intermittent character' of the inducements to conduct.[624]
The final result of all this is still more serious. It is that
religion, besides each separate mischief, 'subsidises a standing army
for the perpetuation of all the rest.'[625] The priest gains power as
a 'wonder-worker,' who knows how to propitiate the invisible Being,
and has a direct interest in 'depraving the intellect,' cherishing
superstition, surrounding himself with mysteries, representing the
will of the Deity as arbitrary and capricious, and forming an
organised 'array of human force and fraud.'[626] The priesthood sets
up an infallible head, imposes upon the weak and dying, stimulates
antipathy, forms the mass of 'extra-experimental' beliefs into the
likeness of a science, and allies itself with the state. Heresy
becomes a crime. The ruler helps the priests to raise a tax for their
own comfort, while they repay him by suppressing all seditious
opinions. Thus is formed an unholy alliance between the authorities of
'natural religion' and the 'sinister interests of the earth.' The
alliance is so complete that it is even more efficient than if it had
been openly proclaimed. 'Prostration and plunder of the community is
indeed the common end of both' (priests and rulers). The only chance
of dissension is about the 'partition of the spoil.'[627]
The book is as characteristic of the Utilitarians in style as in
spirit. It is terse, vigorous reasoning, with no mere rhetorical
flourishes. The consequences of the leading principle are deduced
without flinching and without reserve. Had the authors given their
names, they would no doubt have excited antipathies injurious to the
propaganda of Utilitarianism. They held, for that reason presumably,
that they were not bound to point out the ultimate goal of their
speculations. No intelligent reader of their other writings could fail
to see what that goal must be; but an 'open secret' is still for many
purposes a real secret. Whatever might be the suspicions of their
antagonists, they could only be accused of a tendency. The book
amounts to an admission that the suspicions were well founded.
Utilitarianism, the Utilitarians clearly recognised, logically implied
the rejection of all theology. Religion--on their understanding of the
word--must, like everything else, be tested by its utility, and it was
shown to be either useless or absolutely pernicious. The aim of the
Utilitarians was, in brief, to be thoroughly scientific. The man of
science must be opposed to the belief in an inscrutable agent of
boundless power, interfering at every point with the laws of nature,
and a product of the fancy instead of the reason. Such a conception,
so far as accepted, makes all theory of human conduct impossible,
suggests rules conflicting with the supreme rule of utility, and gives
authority to every kind of delusion, imposture, and 'sinister
interest.'
It would, I think, be difficult to mention a more vigorous discussion
of the problem stated. As anonymous, it could be ignored instead of
answered; and probably such orthodox persons as read it assumed it to
be a kind of _reductio ad absurdum_ of the Utilitarian creed. It might
follow, they could admit, logically from the Utilitarian analysis of
human nature, but it could only prove that the analysis was
fundamentally wrong. Yet its real significance is precisely its
thorough applicability to the contemporary state of opinion.
Beauchamp's definition coincides with Paley's. The coincidence was
inevitable. Utilitarians both in ethical and philosophical questions
start from the same assumptions as Paley, and the Paley doctrine gave
the pith of the dominant theology. I have observed that the Scottish
philosophers had abandoned the _a priori_ argument, and laid the whole
stress of their theological doctrine upon Paley's argument from final
causes. The change of base was an inevitable consequence of their
whole system. They appealed to experience, to 'Baconian' methods, and
to 'inductive psychology.' The theory of 'intuitions,' effective where
it fell in with admitted beliefs, was idle against an atheist, who
denied that he had the intuition. The 'final causes' argument,
however, rested upon common ground, and supplied a possible line of
defence. The existence of the Deity could perhaps be proved
empirically, like the existence of the 'watchmaker.' Accordingly, this
was the argument upon which reliance was really placed by the average
theologian of the time. Metaphysical or ontological reasoning had been
discarded for plain common-sense. The famous _Bridgewater Treatises_
are the characteristic product of the period. It had occurred to the
earl of Bridgewater, who died in 1829, that L8000 from his estate
might be judiciously spent in proving the existence of a benevolent
creator. The council of the Royal Society employed eight eminent men
of science to carry out this design.[628] They wrote some interesting
manuals of popular science, interspersed with proper theological
applications. The arguments were sincere enough, though they now seem
to overlook with singular blindness the answer which would be
suggested by the 'evolutionist.' The logical result is, in any case, a
purely empirical theology. The religion which emerges is not a
philosophy or theory of the world in general, but corresponds to a
belief in certain matters of fact (or fiction). The existence of the
Deity is to be proved, like the existence of Caesar, by special
evidence.
The main results are obvious. The logical base of the whole creed is
'natural theology,' and 'natural theology' is simply a branch of
science, amenable to the ordinary scientific tests. It is intended to
prove the existence of an agent essential to the working of the
machinery, as from the movements of a planet we infer the existence of
a disturbing planet. The argument from design, in this acceptation, is
briefly mentioned by 'Philip Beauchamp.' It is, he argues, 'completely
extra-experimental'; for experience only reveals design in living
beings: it supposes a pre-existing chaos which can never be shown to
have existed, and the 'omnipotent will' introduced to explain the
facts is really no explanation at all, but a collection of meaningless
words.[629] The argument is briefly dismissed as concerning the truth,
not the utility, of religion, but one point is sufficiently indicated.
The argument from 'design' is always plausible, because it applies
reasoning undeniably valid when it is applied within its proper
sphere. The inference from a watch to a watchmaker is clearly
conclusive. We know sufficiently what is meant by the watchmaker and
by 'making.' We therefore reason to a _vera causa_--an agent already
known. When the inference is to the action of an inconceivable Being
performing an inconceivable operation upon inconceivable materials, it
really becomes illusory, or amounts to the simple assertion that the
phenomenon is inexplicable. Therefore, again, it is essentially
opposed to science though claiming to be scientific. The action of
the creator is supposed to begin where the possibility of knowledge
ends. It is just the inexplicable element which suggests the creative
agency. Conversely, the satisfactory explanation of any phenomenon
takes it out of the theological sphere. As soon as the process becomes
'natural' it ceases to demand the supernatural artificer. 'Making,'
therefore, is contradistinguished from 'growing.' If we see how the
eye has come into existence, we have no longer any reason to assume
that it was put together mechanically. In other words, 'teleology' of
this variety is dispelled by theories of evolution. The hypothesis of
interference becomes needless when we see how things came to be by
working out perfectly natural processes. As science, therefore,
expands, theology recedes. This was to become more evident at a later
period. For the present, the teleological argument in the Paley form,
triumphantly set forth in Bridgewater Treatises and the like, rested
the defence of theology on the proofs of the discontinuity of the
universe and the consequent necessity for admitting supernatural
interference. Science was therefore invoked to place absolute limits
on its own progress.
But other vital difficulties were already felt. The argument from
contrivance naturally implies limitation. The maker of a machine is
strictly limited by the properties of the matter upon which he works.
The inference might be verbally saved by saying that the maker was
'potentially' omnipotent; but the argument, so far as it goes, is more
easily satisfied by the hypothesis of a Being of great but still
limited powers. The Deity so proved, if the proof be valid, is not
himself the ground of the universe, the source from which nature
itself emanates, as well as the special laws of nature, but a part of
the whole system; interfering, guiding, and controlling, but still
only one of the powers which contribute to the formation of the whole.
Hence arise questions which theologians rather evaded than attempted
to answer. If with the help of Paley we can prove the existence of an
invisible Being--potentially omnipotent, though always operating as
though limited--there would still remain the question as to his
attributes. He is skilful, we may grant, but is he benevolent or is he
moral? The benevolence could of course be asserted by optimists, if
facts were amenable to rhetoric. But a theory which is essentially
scientific or empirical, and consistently argues from the effect to
the cause, must start from an impartial view of the facts, and must
make no presupposition as to the nature of the cause. The cause is
known only through the effects, and our judgment of them cannot be
modified by simply discovering that they are caused. If, then,
contrivance is as manifest in disease as in health, in all the
sufferings which afflict mankind as well as in the pleasures which
solace him, we must either admit that the creator is not benevolent,
or frankly admit that he is not omnipotent and fall into Manichaeism.
Nature, we are frequently told, is indifferent if not cruel; and
though Paley and his followers choose to shut their eyes to ugly
facts, it could be only by sacrificing their logic. They were bound to
prove from observation that the world was so designed as to secure the
'greatest happiness' before they could logically infer a purely
benevolent designer. It was of the very essence of their position that
observed facts should be the ultimate basis of the whole theory; and
to alter the primary data by virtue of deductions drawn from them
could obviously not be logically justifiable.
Such reflections, though sufficiently obvious, might be too far from
practical application to have much immediate effect. But the question
of the moral bearing of theology was of more interest; and, here, the
coincidence of the Utilitarianism with the accepted theology of the
day is especially important. The Deity regarded as the artificer
appears to be far from purely benevolent. In respect to morality, is
he not simply indifferent? Does he not make men fragile and place them
amidst pitfalls? Does he not constantly slay the virtuous and save the
wicked? How, indeed, from the purely empirical or scientific base, do
you deduce any moral attributes whatever? 'Natural theology,' as it
was called, might reveal a contriver, but could it reveal a judge or a
moral guide? Here the difficulty of a purely matter-of-fact theology
made itself felt on many sides. The remarkable influence of Butler
upon many minds was partly due to a perception of this omission.
Butler avowedly appeals to the conscience, and therefore at least
recognises God as directly revealed in a moral character. That seemed
to supply a gap in the ordinary theology. But in the purely empirical
view Butler's argument was untenable. It appealed to one of the
'intuitions' which were incompatible with its fundamental assumptions.
The compunctions of conscience were facts to be explained by
'association,' not to be regarded as intimations of wrath. Butler's
view might be inverted. The 'conscience' does, in truth, suggest the
divine wrath; but that only means that it suggests the quack remedies
upon which 'wonder-working' priests establish their power. Instead of
proving the truth of the religion, it explains the origin of
superstition. To James Mill, as we have seen, Butler's argument would
logically prove not a righteous governor but a cruel creator.
Theologians, again, of the Paley school, were bound in consistency to
the empirical or Utilitarian view of morality. Paley accepted the
consequences unreservedly; and if such philosophers as Brown and
Mackintosh persisted in regarding the coincidence between morality and
happiness as indicative of a pre-established harmony, not of an
identification of morality with the pursuit of general happiness, they
still admitted that 'utility' was the 'criterion' of morality. The
moral law, that is, coincides in its substance with the law, 'maximise
happiness,' and happiness means, as 'Philip Beauchamp' calls it,
'temporal' happiness--the happiness of actual men living in this world
and knowing nothing of any external world. How, then, is the moral law
related to theology? To know what is moral, we must appeal to
experience and 'utility.' We must discover what makes for happiness,
just as in medicine we must discover what makes for health or
pleasure, by the ordinary methods of observation. What place is left
for any supernatural intervention? The ostensible answer was that
though the moral code could be deduced from its utility, the motives
by which it was to be enforced required some supernatural agency. The
natural man might see what was right, but need not therefore do what
was right. Here 'Philip Beauchamp' comes to a direct issue with the
theologians. He denies that the supernatural motive will be on the
side of morality. When J. S. Mill remarked that there had been few
discussions of the 'utility' as distinguished from the truth of
religion, he scarcely recognises one conspicuous fact. The great
argument of divines had always been the absolute necessity of religion
to morality; and if morality be understood to mean utility, this is
simply an argument from utility. The point, indeed, was often taken
for granted; but it certainly represents one of the strongest
persuasives, if not one of the strongest reasons. The divines, in
fact, asserted that religion was of the highest utility as supplying
the motive for moral conduct. What motives, then, can be derived from
such knowledge of the Deity as is attainable from the 'Natural
theology' argument? How can we prove from it that he who puts the
world together is more favourable to the virtues than to the vices
which are its results; or, if more favourable, that he shows any other
favour than can be inferred from experience? He has, it is agreed, put
men, as Bentham had said, under the command of two sovereign masters,
Pleasure and Pain; and has enabled them to calculate consequences, and
therefore to seek future pleasure and avoid future pain. That only
proves that we can increase our happiness by prudence; but it suggests
no additional reasons either for seeking happiness or for altering our
estimate of happiness. As 'Philip Beauchamp' argues, we cannot from
the purely empirical ground get any motive for taking into account
anything beyond our 'temporal' or secular interests. This, again, was
in fact admitted by Paley. His mode of escape from the dilemma is
familiar. The existence of a supreme artificer is inferred from the
interventions in the general order of nature. The existence of a moral
ruler, or the fact that the ruler approves morality, is inferred from
his interference by the particular manifestations of power which we
call miraculous. We know that actions will have other consequences
than those which can be inferred from our own experience, because some
two thousand years ago a Being appeared who could raise the dead and
heal the sick. If sufficient evidence of the fact be forthcoming, we
are entitled to say upon his authority that the wicked will be damned
and the virtuous go to heaven. Obedience to the law enforced by these
sanctions is obviously prudent, and constitutes the true _differentia_
of moral conduct. Virtue, according to the famous definition, is doing
good 'for the sake of everlasting happiness.' The downright bluntness
with which Paley announced these conclusions startled contemporaries,
and yet it must be admitted that they were a natural outcome of his
position.
In short, the theological position of the Paley school and the
Utilitarian position of 'Philip Beauchamp' start from the common
ground of experience. Religion means the knowledge of certain facts,
which are to be inferred from appropriate evidence. It does not modify
the whole system of thought, but simply adds certain corollaries; and
the whole question is whether the corollaries are or are not proved by
legitimate reasoning. Can we discover heaven and hell as we discovered
America? Can observation of nature reveal to us a supernatural world?'
The first difficulty is that the argument for natural theology has to
rest upon interference, not upon order, and therefore comes into
conflict with the first principles of scientific procedure. The Deity
is revealed not by the rational but by the arbitrary; and the more the
world is explained, the less the proof that he exists, because the
narrower the sphere of his action. Then, as such a Deity, even if
proved, is not proved to be benevolent or moral, we have to rely for
the moral element upon the evidence of 'miracles,' that is, again, of
certain interruptions of order. The scientific tendency more or less
embodied in Protestantism, so far as it appealed to reason or to
'private judgment,' had, moreover, made it necessary to relegate
miracles to a remote period, while denying them at the present. To
prove at once that there are no miracles now, and that there were a
few miracles two thousand years ago, was really hopeless. In fact, the
argument had come to be stated in an artificial form which had no real
relation to the facts. If the apostles had been a jury convinced by a
careful legal examination of the evidence; if they had pronounced
their verdict, in spite of the knowledge that they would be put to
death for finding it, there would have been some force in Paley's
argument. But then they had not. To assume such an origin for any
religion implied a total misconception of the facts. Paley assumed
that the apostles resembled twelve respectable deans of Carlisle
solemnly declaring, in spite of the most appalling threats, that John
Wesley had been proved to have risen from the dead. Paley might
plausibly urge that such an event would require a miracle. But,
meanwhile, his argument appeared to rest the whole case for morality
and religion upon this narrow and perilous base. We can only know that
it is our interest to be moral if we know of heaven and hell; and we
only know of heaven and hell if we accept the evidence of miracles,
and infer that the worker of miracles had supernatural sources of
information. The moral difficulty which emerges is obvious. The Paley
conception of the Deity is, in fact, coincident with Bentham's
conception of the sovereign. He is simply an invisible sovereign,
operating by tremendous sanctions. The sanctions are 'external,' that
is to say, pains and pleasures, annexed to conduct by the volition of
the sovereign, not intrinsic consequences of the conduct itself. Such
a conception, thoroughly carried through, makes the relation between
religion and morality essentially arbitrary. Moreover, if with 'Philip
Beauchamp' we regard the miracle argument as obviously insufficient,
and consider what are the attributes really attributed to the
sovereign, we must admit that they suggest such a system as he
describes rather than the revelation of an all-wise and benevolent
ruler. It is true, as 'Philip Beauchamp' argues, that the system has
all the faults of the worst human legislation; that the punishment is
made atrociously--indeed infinitely--severe to compensate for its
uncertainty and remoteness; and that (as he would clearly add), to
prevent it from shocking and stunning the intellect, it is regarded as
remissible in consideration of vicarious suffering. If, then, the
religion is really what its dogmas declare, it is easier to assume
that it represents the cunning of a priesthood operating upon the
blind fears and wild imaginations of an inaccessible world; and the
ostensible proofs of a divine origin resting upon miraculous proofs
are not worth consideration. It professes to be a sanction to all
morality, but is forced to construct a mythology which outrages all
moral considerations. Taken as a serious statement of fact, the
anthropomorphism of the vulgar belief was open to the objections which
Socrates brought against the Pagan mythology. The supreme ruler was
virtually represented as arbitrary, cruel, and despotic.
If we ask the question, whether in point of fact the religion attacked
by 'Philip Beauchamp' fairly represented the religion of the day, we
should have, of course, to admit that it was in one sense a gross
caricature. If, that is, we asked what were the real roots of the
religious zeal of Wilberforce and the Evangelicals, or of the
philanthropists with whom even James Mill managed to associate on
friendly terms, it would be the height of injustice to assume that
they tried to do good simply from fear of hell and hope of heaven, or
that their belief in Christianity was due to a study of Paley's
_Evidences_. Their real motives were far nobler: genuine hatred of
injustice and sympathy for suffering, joined to the conviction that
the sects to which they belonged were working on the side of justice
and happiness; while the creeds which they accepted were somehow
congenial to their best feelings, and enabled them to give utterance
to their deepest emotions. But when they had to give a ground for that
belief they could make no adequate defence. They were better than
their ostensible creed, because the connection of their creed with
their morality was really arbitrary and traditional. We must always
distinguish between the causes of strong convictions and the reasons
officially assigned for them. The religious creed, as distinguished
from the religious sentiment, was really traditional, and rested upon
the simple fact that it was congenial to the general frame of mind.
Its philosophy meanwhile had become hopelessly incoherent. It wished
to be sensible, and admitted in principle the right of 'private
judgment' or rationalism so far as consistent with Protestantism. The
effect had been that in substance it had become Utilitarian and
empirical; while it had yet insisted upon holding on to the
essentially irrational element.
The religious tradition was becoming untenable in this sense at the
same time as the political tradition. If radicalism in both were to be
effectually resisted, some better foundation must be found for
conservatism. I should be tempted to say that a critical period was
approaching, did I not admit that every period can always be described
as critical. In fact, however, thoughtful people, perceiving on the
one hand that the foundations of their creed were shaking, and yet
holding it to be essential to their happiness, began to take a new
position. The 'Oxford movement,' started soon afterwards, implied a
conviction that the old Protestant position was as untenable as the
radical asserted. Its adherents attempted to find a living and visible
body whose supernatural authority might maintain the old dogmatic
system. Liberal thinkers endeavoured to spiritualise the creed and
prove its essential truths by philosophy, independently of the
particular historical evidence. The popular tendency was to admit in
substance that the dogmas most assailed were in fact immoral: but to
put them into the background, or, if necessary, to explain them away.
The stress was to be laid not upon miracles, but upon the moral
elevation of Christianity or the beauty of character of its founder.
The 'unsectarian' religion, represented in the most characteristic
writings of the next generation, in Tennyson and Browning, Thackeray
and Dickens, reflects this view. Such men detested the coarse and
brutalising dogmas which might be expounded as the true 'scheme of
salvation' by ignorant preachers seeking to rouse sluggish natures to
excitement; but they held to religious conceptions which, as they
thought, really underlay these disturbing images, and which, indeed,
could hardly be expressed in any more definite form than that of a
hope or a general attitude of the whole character. The problem seemed
to be whether we shall support a dogmatic system by recognising a
living spiritual authority, or frankly accept reason as the sole
authority, and, while explaining away the repulsive dogmas, try to
retain the real essence of religious belief.
II. CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT
If I were writing a general history of opinion, it would be necessary
to discuss the views of Mill's English contemporaries; to note their
attitude in regard to the Utilitarian position, and point out how they
prepared the way for the later developments of thought. The
Utilitarians were opposed to a vague sentiment rather than to any
definite system. They were a small and a very unpopular sect. They
excited antipathy on all sides. As advocating republicanism, they were
hardly more disliked by the Tories, who directly opposed them, than by
the Whigs, who might be suspected of complicity. As enthusiastic
political economists, they were equally detested by sentimental
Radicals, Socialists, and by all who desired a strong government,
whether for the suppression of social evils or the maintenance of
social abuses. And now, as suspected of atheism, they were hated by
theologians. But though the Utilitarians were on all sides condemned
and denounced, they were met by no definite and coherent scheme of
philosophy. The philosophy of Stewart and Brown had at least a strong
drift in their direction. Though 'political economy' was denounced in
general terms, all who spoke with authority accepted Adam Smith. Their
political opponents generally did not so much oppose their theories as
object to theory in general. The Utilitarian system might be both
imperfect and dogmatic; but it had scarcely to contend with any clear
and assignable rival. The dislike of Englishmen to any systematic
philosophy, whether founded upon the national character or chiefly due
to special conditions, was still conspicuous outside of the small
Utilitarian camp.
To discover, therefore, the true position of contemporary opinion, we
should have to look elsewhere. Instead of seeking for the philosophers
who did not exist, we should have to examine the men of letters who
expressed the general tendencies. In Germany, philosophical theories
may be held to represent the true drift of the national mind, and a
historian of German thought would inquire into the various systems
elaborated by professors of philosophy. He would at least be in no
want of materials for definite logical statements. In England, there
was no such intellectual movement. There we should have to consider
poetry and literature; to read Wordsworth and Coleridge, Scott and
Byron and Shelley, if we would know what men were really thinking and
feeling. The difficulty is, of course, that none of these men, unless
Coleridge be an exception, had any conscious or systematic philosophy.
We can only ask, therefore, what they would have said if they had
been requested to justify their views by abstract reasoning; and that
is a rather conjectural and indefinite enterprise. It lies,
fortunately, outside of my field; and it will be enough if I try to
suggest one or two sufficiently vague hints. In the first place, the
contrast between the Utilitarians and their opponents may almost be
identified with the contrast between the prosaic and the poetical
aspects of the world in general. Bentham frankly objected to poetry in
general. It proved nothing. The true Utilitarian was the man who held
on to fact, and to nothing but the barest, most naked and unadorned
fact. Poetry in general came within the sweep of his denunciations of
'sentimentalism' and 'vague generalities.' It was the 'production of a
rude age'; the silly jingling which might be suitable to savages, but
was needless for the grown-up man, and was destined to disappear along
with the whole rubbish of mythology and superstition in whose service
it had been enlisted. There is indeed a natural sympathy between any
serious view of life and a distrust of the aesthetic tendencies.
Theologians of many different types have condemned men for dallying
with the merely pleasurable, when they ought to be preoccupied with
the great ethical problems or the safety of their souls. James Mill
had enough of the old Puritan in him to sympathise with Carlyle's
aspiration, 'May the devil fly away with the fine arts!' To such men
it was difficult to distinguish between fiction and lying; and if some
concession might be made to human weakness, poets and novelists might
supply the relaxations and serve to fill up the intervals of life, but
must be sternly excluded if they tried to intrude into serious
studies. Somehow love of the beautiful only interfered with the
scientific investigation of hard facts.
Poets, indeed, may take the side of reform, or may perhaps be
naturally expected to take that side. The idealist and the dreamer
should be attracted most powerfully by the visions of a better world
and the restoration of the golden age. Shelley was among the most
enthusiastic prophets of the coming era. His words, he hoped, were to
be 'the trumpet of a prophecy' to 'unawakened earth.' Shelley had sat
at the feet of Godwin, and represented that vague metaphysical
dreaming to which the Utilitarians were radically hostile. To the
literary critic, Shelley's power is the more remarkable because from a
flimsy philosophy he span an imaginative tissue of such magical and
marvellous beauty. But Shelley dwelt in an ethereal region, where
ordinary beings found breathing difficult. There facts seemed to
dissolve into thin air instead of supplying a solid and substantial
base. His idealism meant unreality. His 'trumpet' did not in fact
stimulate the mass of mankind, and his fame at this period was
confined to a few young gentlemen of literary refinement. The man who
had really stirred the world was Byron; and if the decline of Byron's
fame has resulted partly from real defects, it is partly due also to
the fact that his poetry was so admirably adapted to his
contemporaries. Byron at least could see facts as clearly as any
Utilitarian, though fact coloured by intense passion. He, like the
Utilitarians, hated solemn platitudes and hypocritical conventions. I
have noticed the point at which he came into contact with Bentham's
disciples. His pathetic death shortly afterwards excited a singularly
strong movement of sympathy. 'The news of his death,' said Carlyle at
the time, 'came upon my heart like a mass of lead; and yet the thought
of it sends a painful twinge through all my being, as if I had lost a
brother.' At a later time he defines Byron as 'a dandy of sorrows and
acquainted with grief.'[630] That hits off one aspect of Byronism.
Byron was the Mirabeau of English literature, in so far as he was at
once a thorough aristocrat and a strong revolutionist. He had the
qualification of a true satirist. His fate was at discord with his
character. He was proud of his order, and yet despised its actual
leaders. He was ready alternately to boast of his vices and to be
conscious that they were degrading. He shocked the respectable world
by mocking 'Satanically,' as they held, at moral conventions, and yet
rather denounced the hypocrisy and the heartlessness of precisians
than insulted the real affections. He covered sympathy with human
suffering under a mask of misanthropy, and attacked war and oppression
in the character of a reckless outlaw. Full of the affectation of a
'dandy,' he was yet rousing all Europe by a cry of pure
sentimentalism. It would be absurd to attribute any definite doctrine
to Byron. His scepticism in religious matters was merely part of a
general revolt against respectability. What he illustrates is the
vague but profound revolutionary sentiment which indicated a belief
that the world seemed to be out of joint, and a vehement protest
against the selfish and stolid conservatism which fancied that the old
order could be preserved in all its fossil institutions and
corresponding dogmas.
What was the philosophy congenial to Conservatism? There is, of
course, the simple answer, None. Toryism was a 'reaction' due to the
great struggle of the war and the excesses of the revolution. A
'reaction' is a very convenient phrase. We are like our fathers; then
the resemblance is only natural. We differ; then the phrase 'reaction'
makes the alteration explain itself. No doubt, however, there was in
some sense a reaction. Many people changed their minds as the
revolutionary movement failed to fulfil their hopes. I need not argue
now that such men were not necessarily corrupt renegades. I can only
try to indicate the process by which they were led towards certain
philosophical doctrines. Scott, Wordsworth, and Coleridge represent it
enough for my purpose. When Mill was reproaching Englishmen for their
want of interest in history, he pointed out that Thierry, 'the
earliest of the three great French historians' (Guizot and Michelet
are the two others), ascribed his interest in his subject to
_Ivanhoe_.[631] Englishmen read _Ivanhoe_ simply for amusement.
Frenchmen could see that it threw a light upon history, or at least
suggested a great historical problem. Scott, it is often said, was the
first person to teach us that our ancestors were once as much alive as
ourselves. Scott, indeed, the one English writer whose fame upon the
Continent could be compared to Byron's, had clearly no interest in, or
capacity for, abstract speculations. An imaginative power, just
falling short of the higher poetical gift, and a masculine
common-sense were his most conspicuous faculties. The two qualities
were occasionally at issue; his judgment struggled with his
prejudices, and he sympathised too keenly with the active leaders and
concrete causes to care much for any abstract theory. Yet his
influence upon thought, though indirect, was remarkable. The vividness
of his historical painting--inaccurate, no doubt, and delightfully
reckless of dates and facts--stimulated the growing interest in
historical inquiries even in England. His influence in one direction
is recognised by Newman, who was perhaps thinking chiefly of his
mediaevalism.[632] But the historical novels are only one side of
Scott. Patriotic to the core, he lived at a time when patriotic
feeling was stimulated to the utmost, and when Scotland in particular
was still a province, and yet in many ways the most vigorous and
progressive part of a great empire. He represents patriotism
stimulated by contact with cosmopolitan movements. Loving every local
peculiarity, painting every class from the noble to the peasant,
loving the old traditions, and yet sharing the great impulses of the
day, Scott was able to interest the world at large. While the most
faithful portrayer of the special national type, he has too much sense
not to be well aware that picturesque cattle-stealers and Jacobite
chiefs were things of the past; but he loves with his whole heart the
institutions rooted in the past and rich in historical associations.
He transferred to poetry and fiction the political doctrine of Burke.
To him, the revolutionary movement was simply a solvent, corroding all
the old ties because it sapped the old traditions, and tended to
substitute a mob for a nation. The continuity of national life seemed
to him the essential condition; and a nation was not a mere aggregate
of separate individuals, but an ancient organism, developing on an
orderly system--where every man had his rightful place, and the
beggar, as he observes in the _Antiquary_, was as ready as the noble
to rise against foreign invasion. To him, the kings or priests who, to
the revolutionist, represented simple despotism, represented part of a
rough but manly order, in which many virtues were conspicuous and the
governing classes were discharging great functions. Though he did not
use the phrase, the revolutionary or radical view was hateful to him
on account of its 'individualism.' It meant the summary destruction of
all that he cherished most warmly in order to carry out theories
altogether revolting to his common-sense. The very roots of a sound
social order depend upon the traditions and accepted beliefs which
bind together clans or families, and assign to every man a
satisfactory function in life. The vivid realisation of history goes
naturally with a love--excessive or reasonable--of the old order; and
Scott, though writing carelessly to amuse idle readers, was
stimulating the historical conceptions, which, for whatever reason,
were most uncongenial to the Utilitarian as to all the revolutionists.
The more conscious philosophical application is illustrated by
Wordsworth and Coleridge. Both of them had shared the truly
revolutionary enthusiasm, and both came in time to be classed with the
Tories. Both, as will be seen, had a marked influence upon J. S. Mill.
Wordsworth has written in the _Prelude_ one of the most remarkable of
intellectual autobiographies. He was to be, though he never quite
succeeded in being, a great philosophical poet. He never succeeded,
because, in truth, he was not a great philosopher. But no one has
more clearly indicated the history of his mental evolution. His
sympathy with the revolution was perfectly genuine, but involved a
vast misconception. A sturdy, independent youth, thoroughly imbued
with the instincts of his northern dalesmen, he had early leaned to a
republican sentiment. His dislike of the effete conventionalism of the
literary creed blended with his aversion to the political rule of the
time. He caught the contagion of revolutionary enthusiasm in France,
and was converted by the sight of the 'hunger-bitten' peasant
girl--the victim of aristocratic oppression. 'It is against that,'
said his friend, 'that we are fighting,' and so far Wordsworth was a
convert. The revolution, therefore, meant to him the restoration of an
idyllic state, in which the homely virtues of the independent peasant
should no longer be crushed and deprived of reward by the instruments
of selfish despotism. The outbreak of war put his principles at issue
with his patriotism. He suffered keenly when called upon to triumph
over the calamities of his countrymen. But gradually he came to think
that his sympathies were misplaced. The revolution had not altered
human nature. The atrocities disturbed him, but for a time he could
regard them as a mere accident. As the war went on, he began to
perceive that the new power could be as tyrannical and selfish as the
old. Instead of reconstructing a simple social ideal, it was forming a
military despotism. When the French armies put down the simple Swiss
peasantry, to whom he had been drawn by his home-bred sympathies, he
finally gave up the revolutionary cause. He had gone through a mental
agony, and his distracted sympathies ultimately determined a change
which corresponded to the adoption of a new philosophy. Wordsworth,
indeed, had little taste for abstract logic. He had imbibed Godwin's
doctrine, but when acceptance of Godwin's conclusions involved a
conflict with his strongest affections--the sacrifice not only of his
patriotism but of the sympathies which bound him to his fellows--he
revolted. Godwin represents the extreme of 'individualism,' the
absolute dissolution of all social and political bonds. Wordsworth
escaped, not by discovering a logical defect in the argument, but by
yielding to the protest of his emotions. The system, he thought, was
fatal to all the affections which had made life dear to him; to the
vague 'intimations' which, whatever else they might be, had yet power
to give harmony to our existence.
By degrees he adopted a new diagnosis of the great political evils. On
one side, he sympathised with Scott's sense of the fatal effects upon
the whole social organism. Among his noblest poems are the 'Brothers'
and 'Michael,' to which he specially called the attention of Fox. They
were intended, he explained, to show the surpassing value of the
domestic affections conspicuous among the shepherds and 'statesmen' of
the northern dales. He had now come to hold that the principles of
Godwin and his like were destructive to the most important elements of
human welfare. The revolutionists were not simply breaking the fetters
of the simple peasant, but destroying the most sacred ties to which
the peasant owed whatever dignity or happiness he possessed.
Revolution, in short, meant anarchy. It meant, therefore, the
destruction of all that gives real value to life. It was, as he held,
one product of the worship of the 'idol proudly named the "wealth of
nations,"'[633] selfishness and greed replacing the old motives to
'plain living and high thinking.' Wordsworth, in short, saw the ugly
side of the industrial revolution, the injury done to domestic life by
the factory system, or the substitution of a proletariate for a
peasantry, and the replacement of the lowest social order by a vast
inorganic mob. The contemporary process, which was leading to
pauperism and to the evils of the factory system, profoundly affected
Wordsworth, as well as the impulsive Southey; and their frequent
denunciations gave colour to the imputations that they were opposed to
all progress. Certainly they were even morbidly alive to the evil
aspects of the political economy of Malthus and Ricardo, which to them
seemed to prescribe insensibility and indifference to most serious and
rapidly accumulating evils.
Meanwhile, Wordsworth was also impressed by the underlying
philosophical difficulties. The effect of the revolutionary principles
was to destroy the religious sentiment, not simply by disproving this
or that historical statement, but by making the whole world prosaic
and matter-of-fact. His occasional outbursts against the man of
science--the 'fingering slave' who would 'peep and botanise upon his
mother's grave'--are one version of his feeling. The whole scientific
method tended to materialism and atomism; to a breaking up of the
world into disconnected atoms, and losing the life in dissecting the
machinery. His protest is embodied in the pantheism of the noble lines
on Tintern Abbey, and his method of answering might be divined from
the ode on the 'Intimations of Immortality.' Somehow or other the
world represents a spiritual and rational unity, not a mere chaos of
disconnected atoms and fragments. We 'see into the heart of things'
when we trust to our emotions and hold by the instincts, clearly
manifested in childhood, but clouded and overwhelmed in our later
struggles with the world. The essential thing is the cultivation of
our 'moral being,' the careful preservation and assimilation of the
stern sense of duty, which alone makes life bearable and gives a
meaning to the universe.
Wordsworth, it is plain, was at the very opposite pole from the
Utilitarians. He came to consider that their whole method meant the
dissolution of all that was most vitally sacred, and to hold that the
revolution had attracted his sympathies on false pretences. Yet it is
obvious that, however great the stimulus which he exerted, and however
lofty his highest flights of poetry, he had no distinct theory to
offer. His doctrine undoubtedly was congenial to certain philosophical
views, but was not itself an articulate philosophy. He appeals to
instincts and emotions, not to any definite theory. In a remarkable
letter, Coleridge told Wordsworth why he was disappointed with the
_Excursion_.[634] He had hoped that it would be the 'first and only
true philosophical poem in existence.' Wordsworth was to have started
by exposing the 'sandy sophisms of Locke,' and after exploding Pope's
_Essay on Man_, and showing the vanity of (Erasmus) Darwin's belief in
an 'ourang-outang state,' and explaining the fall of man and the
'scheme of redemption,' to have concluded by 'a grand didactic swell
on the identity of a true philosophy with true religion.' He would
show how life and intelligence were to be substituted for the
'philosophy of mechanism.' Facts would be elevated into theory, theory
into laws, and laws into living and intelligent powers--true idealism
necessarily perfecting itself in realism, and realism refining itself
into idealism.'
The programme was a large one. If it represents what Coleridge
seriously expected from Wordsworth, it also suggests that he was
unconsciously wandering into an exposition of one of the gigantic but
constantly shifting schemes of a comprehensive philosophy, which he
was always proposing to execute. To try to speak of Coleridge
adequately would be hopeless and out of place. I must briefly mention
him, because he was undoubtedly the most conspicuous representative of
the tendencies opposed to Utilitarianism. The young men who found
Bentham exasperating imbibed draughts of mingled poetry and philosophy
from Coleridge's monologues at Hampstead. Carlyle has told us, in a
famous chapter of his _Life of Sterling_, what they went out to see:
at once a reed shaken by the wind and a great expounder of
transcendental truth. The fact that Coleridge exerted a very great
influence is undeniable. To define precisely what that influence was
is impossible. His writings are a heap of fragments. He contemplated
innumerable schemes for great works, and never got within measurable
distance of writing any. He poured himself out indefinitely upon the
margins of other men's books; and the piety of disciples has collected
a mass of these scattered and incoherent jottings, which announce
conclusions without giving the premises, or suggest difficulties
without attempting to solve them. He seems to have been almost as
industrious as Bentham in writing; but whereas Bentham's fragments
could be put together as wholes, Coleridge's are essentially
distracted hints of views never really elaborated. He was always
thinking, but seems always to be making a fresh start at any point
that strikes him for the moment. Besides all this, there is the
painful question of plagiarism. His most coherent exposition (in the
_Biographia Literaria_) is simply appropriated from Schelling, though
he ascribes the identity to a 'genial coincidence' of thought. I need
make no attempt to make out what Coleridge really thought for himself,
and then to try to put his thoughts together,--and indeed hold the
attempt to be impossible. The most remarkable thing is the apparent
disproportion between Coleridge's definite services to philosophy and
the effect which he certainly produced upon some of his ablest
contemporaries. That seems to prove that he was really aiming at some
important aspect of truth, incapable as he may have been of
definitively reaching it. I can only try to give a hint or two as to
its general nature. Coleridge, in the first place, was essentially a
poet, and, moreover, his poetry was of the type most completely
divorced from philosophy. Nobody could say more emphatically that
poetry should not be rhymed logic; and his most impressive poems are
simply waking dreams. They are spontaneous incarnations of sensuous
imagery, which has no need of morals or definite logical schemes.
Although he expected Wordsworth to transmute philosophy into poetry,
he admitted that the achievement would be unprecedented. Even in
Lucretius, he said, what was poetry was not philosophy, and what was
philosophy was not poetry. Yet Coleridge's philosophy was essentially
the philosophy of a poet. He had, indeed, great dialectical
ingenuity--a faculty which may certainly be allied with the highest
imagination, though it may involve certain temptations. A poet who has
also a mastery of dialectics becomes a mystic in philosophy. Coleridge
had, it seems, been attracted by Plotinus in his schooldays. At a
later period he had been attracted by Hartley, Berkeley, and
Priestley. To a brilliant youth, anxious to be in the van of
intellectual progress, they represented the most advanced theories.
But there could never be a full sympathy between Coleridge and the
forefathers of English empiricism; and he went to Germany partly to
study the new philosophy which was beginning to shine--though very
feebly and intermittingly--in England. When he had returned he began
to read Kant and Schelling, or rather to mix excursions into their
books with the miscellaneous inquiries to which his versatile
intellect attracted him.
Now, it is abundantly clear that Coleridge never studied any
philosophy systematically. He never acquired a precise acquaintance
with the technical language of various schemes, or cared for their
precise logical relations to each other. The 'genial coincidence' with
Schelling, though an unlucky phrase, represents a real fact. He dipped
into Plotinus or Behmen or Kant or Schelling, or any one who
interested him, and did not know whether they were simply embodying
ideas already in his own mind, or suggesting new ideas; or, what was
probably more accurate, expressing opinions which, in a general way,
were congenial to his own way of contemplating the world. His power of
stimulating other minds proves sufficiently that he frequently hit
upon impressive and suggestive thoughts. He struck out illuminating
sparks, but he never diffused any distinct or steady daylight. His
favourite position, for example, of the distinction between the Reason
and the Understanding is always coming up and being enforced with the
strongest asseverations of its importance. That he had adopted it more
or less from Kant is obvious, though I imagine it to be also obvious
that he did not clearly understand his authority.[635] To what,
precisely, it amounts is also unintelligible to me. Somehow or other,
it implies that the mind can rise into transcendental regions, and,
leaving grovelling Utilitarians and the like to the conduct of the
understanding in matters of practical expediency, can perceive that
the universe is in some way evolved from the pure reason, and the mind
capable of ideas which correspond to stages of the evolution. How this
leads to the conclusions that the Christian doctrines of the Logos and
the Trinity are embodiments of pure philosophy is a problem upon which
I need not touch. When we have called Coleridge a mystic, with flashes
of keen insight into the weakness of the opposite theory, I do not see
how we are to get much further, or attribute to him any articulate and
definite scheme.
Hopelessly unsystematic as Coleridge may have been, his significance
in regard to the Utilitarians is noteworthy. It is indicated in a
famous article which J. S. Mill contributed to the _Westminster
Review_ in March 1840.[636] Mill's concessions to Coleridge rather
scandalised the faithful; and it is enough to observe here that it
marks the apogee of Mill's Benthamism. Influences, of which I shall
have to speak, had led him to regard his old creed as imperfect, and
to assent to great part of Coleridge's doctrine. Mill does not discuss
the metaphysical or theological views of the opposite school, though
he briefly intimates his dissent. But it is interesting to observe how
Coleridge impressed a disciple of Bentham. The 'Germano-Coleridgian
doctrine,' says Mill, was a reaction against the philosophy of the
eighteenth century: 'ontological,' 'conservative,' 'religious,'
'concrete and historical,' and finally 'poetical,' because the other
was 'experimental,' 'innovative,' 'infidel,' 'abstract and
metaphysical,' and 'matter-of-fact and prosaic.' Yet the two
approximate, and each helps to restore the balance and comes a little
nearer to a final equilibrium. The error of the French philosophers
had been their negative and purely critical tendency. They had thought
that it was enough to sweep away superstition, priestcraft, and
despotism, and that no constructive process was necessary. They had
not perceived the necessity of social discipline, of loyalty to
rulers, or of patriotic feeling among the subjects. They had,
therefore, entirely failed to recognise the historical value of old
creeds and institutions, and had tried to remodel society 'without the
binding forces which hold society together.'[637] Hence, too, the
_philosophes_ came to despise history; and D'Alembert is said to have
wished that all record of past events could be blotted out. Their
theory, in its popular version at least, came to be that states and
churches had been got up 'for the sole purpose of picking people's
pockets.'[638] This had become incredible to any intelligent reasoner,
and any Tory could prove that there was something good in the past.
The peculiarity of the 'Germano-Coleridgian' school was that they saw
beyond the immediate controversy. They were the first to inquire with
any power into 'the inductive laws of the existence and growth of
human society'; the first to recognise the importance of the great
constructive principles; and the first to produce not a piece of party
advocacy, but 'a philosophy of society in the only form in which it is
yet possible, that of a philosophy of history.' Hence arose that
'series of great writers and thinkers, from Herder to Michelet,' who
have given to past history an intelligible place in the gradual
evolution of humanity.[639] This very forcible passage is interesting
in regard to Mill, and shows a very clear perception of some defects
in his own philosophy. It also raises an important question.
Accepting Mill's view, it is remarkable that the great error of his
own school, which professed to be based upon experience, was the
rejection of history; and the great merit of the _a priori_ and
'intuitionist' school was precisely their insistence upon history. To
this I shall have to return hereafter. Meanwhile, Mill proceeds to
show how Coleridge, by arguing from the 'idea' of church and state,
had at least recognised the necessity of showing that political and
social institutions must have a sufficient reason, and be justified by
something more than mere obstinate prejudice. Men like Pitt and Sir
Robert Peel, if they accepted Coleridge's support, would have to alter
their whole position. Coleridge's defence of his ideal church was at
once the severest satire upon the existing body and a proof, as
against Bentham and Adam Smith, of the advantages of an endowed class
for the cultivation and diffusion of learning. Coleridge, moreover,
though he objected to the Reform Bill, showed himself a better
reformer than Lord John Russell. He admitted what the Whigs refused to
see, the necessity of diminishing the weight of the landowner
interest. Landowners were not to be ultimate sources of power, but to
represent one factor in a reasoned system. In short, by admitting that
all social arrangements in some sense were embodiments of reason, he
admitted that they must also be made to conform to reason.
Coleridge and Bentham, then, are not really enemies but allies, and
they wield powers which are 'opposite poles of one great force of
progression.'[640] The question, however, remains, how the philosophy
of each leader is really connected with his practical conclusions.
Mill's view would apparently be that Coleridge somehow managed to
correct the errors or fill the gaps of the Utilitarian system--a very
necessary task, as Mill admits--while Coleridge would have held that
those errors were the inevitable fruit of the whole empirical system
of thought. The Reason must be restored to its rightful supremacy over
the Understanding, which had been working its wicked will since the
days of Locke and eighteenth century. The problem is a wide one. I
must be content to remark the inevitable antithesis. Whether enemies
or allies, the Utilitarians and their antagonists were separated by a
gulf which could not be bridged for the time. The men of
common-sense, who had no philosophy at all, were shocked by the
immediate practical applications of Utilitarianism, its hostility to
the old order which they loved, its apparent helplessness in social
questions, its relegation of all progress to the conflict of selfish
interests, its indifference to all the virtues associated with
patriotism and local ties. By more reflective minds, it was condemned
as robbing the world of its poetry, stifling the religious emotions,
and even quenching sentiment in general. The few who wished for a
philosophy found the root of its errors in the assumptions which
reduced the world to a chaos of atoms, outwardly connected and
combined into mere dead mechanism. The world, for the poet and the
philosopher alike, must be not a congeries of separate things, but in
some sense a product of reason. Thought, not fact, must be the
ultimate reality. Unfortunately or otherwise, the poetical sentiment
could never get itself translated into philosophical theory.
Coleridge's random and discursive hints remained mere hints--a
suggestion at best for future thought. Mill's criticism shows how far
they could be assimilated by a singularly candid Utilitarian. To him,
we see, they represented mainly the truth that his own party,
following the general tendency of the eighteenth century, had been led
to neglect the vital importance of the constructive elements of
society; that they had sacrificed order to progress, and therefore
confounded progress with destruction, and failed to perceive the real
importance in past times even of the institutions which had become
obsolete. Social atomism or individualism, therefore, implied a total
misconception of what Mill calls the 'evolution of humanity.' This
marks a critical point. The 'Germano-Coleridgians' had a theory of
evolution. By evolution, indeed, was meant a dialectical evolution;
the evolution of 'ideas' or reason, in which each stage of history
represents a moment of some vast and transcendental process of
thought. Evolution, so understood, seemed rightly or wrongly to be
mere mysticism or intellectual juggling. It took leave of fact, or
managed by some illegitimate process to give to a crude generalisation
from experience the appearance of a purely logical deduction. In this
shape, therefore, it was really opposed to science, although the time
was to come in which evolution would present itself in a scientific
form.[641] Meanwhile, the concessions made by J. S. Mill were not
approved by his fellows, and would have been regarded as little short
of treason by the older Utilitarians. The two schools, if Coleridge's
followers could be called a school, regarded each other's doctrines as
simply contradictory. In appealing to experience and experience alone,
the Utilitarians, as their opponents held, had reduced the world to a
dead mechanism, destroyed every element of cohesion, made society a
struggle of selfish interests, and struck at the very roots of all
order, patriotism, poetry, and religion. They retorted that their
critics were blind adherents of antiquated prejudice, and sought to
cover superstition and despotism either by unprovable dogmatic
assertions, or by taking refuge in a cloudy mystical jargon, which
really meant nothing.
They did not love each other.
FOOTNOTES:
[610] See _Dictionary of National Biography_, under 'George Grote.'
Bentham's MS. is in the British Museum, and shows, I think, that
Grote's share in the work was a good deal more than mere editing. I
quote from a reprint by Truelove (1875). It was also privately
reprinted by Grote himself in 1866.
[611] Cf. Hobbes's definition: 'Fear of power invisible feigned by the
mind, or imagined from tales publicly allowed, [is] Religion: not
allowed, Superstition. And when the power imagined is truly such as we
imagine, True Religion.'--_Works_ (Molesworth), iii. 45.
[612] 'Philip Beauchamp,' ch. ii. pp. 11-15.
[613] _Ibid._ p. 17.
[614] 'Philip Beauchamp,' p. 21.
[615] _Ibid._ pp. 22 and 104.
[616] 'Philip Beauchamp,' ch. iii.
[617] 'Philip Beauchamp,' ch. iv.
[618] _Ibid._ p. 45, ch. v.
[619] _Ibid._ p. 52, ch. vi.
[620] 'Philip Beauchamp,' ch. viii.
[621] _Ibid._ part ii. ch. i.
[622] _Ibid._ p. 80, part ii. ch. ii.
[623] 'Philip Beauchamp,' pp. 97, 99.
[624] _Ibid._ p. 101.
[625] _Ibid._ p. 103.
[626] 'Philip Beauchamp,' p. 163.
[627] _Ibid._ p. 122.
[628] The writers were Chalmers, Kidd, Whewell, Sir Charles Bell,
Roget, Buckland, Kirby, and Prout. The essays appeared from 1833 to
1835. The versatile Brougham shortly afterwards edited Paley's
_Natural Theology_.
[629] 'Philip Beauchamp,' p. 88.
[630] Froude's _Carlyle_, i. 215; ii. 93.
[631] Mill's _Dissertations_, i. 235; ii. 130.
[632] George Borrow's vehement dislike of Scott as the inventor of
Puseyism and modern Jesuitism of all kinds is characteristic.
[633] _Prelude_, bk. xiii.
[634] Coleridge's _Letters_ (1890), pp. 643-49.
[635] Mr. Hutchison Stirling insists upon this in the _Fortnightly
Review_ for July 1867. He proves, I think, that Coleridge's knowledge
of the various schemes of German philosophy and of the precise
relation of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling was altogether desultory and
confused. How far this is important depends upon whether we attach
much or little importance to precise combinations of words used by
these philosophers.
[636] _Dissertations_, i. 392-474.
[637] _Ibid._ i. 424.
[638] _Dissertations_, i. 437.
[639] _Ibid._ i. 425-27.
[640] _Dissertations_, i. 437.
[641] Coleridge's _Hints towards the Formation of a more Comprehensive
Theory of Life_, edited by S. B. Watson, in 1848, is a curious attempt
to apply his evolution doctrine to natural science. Lewes, in his
_Letters on Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences_, says that it is a
'shameless plagiarism' from Schelling's _Erster Entwurf_, etc. It
seems, as far as I can judge, that Coleridge's doctrines about
magnetism, reproduction, irritability, sensibility, etc., are, in
fact, adapted from Schelling. The book was intended, as Mr. E. H.
Coleridge tells me, for a chapter in a work on Scrophula, projected by
Gillman. As Coleridge died long before the publication, he cannot be
directly responsible for not acknowledging obligations to Schelling.
Unfortunately he cannot claim the benefit of a good character in such
matters. Anyhow, Coleridge's occasional excursions into science can
only represent a vague acceptance of the transcendental method
represented, as I understand, by Oken.
* * * * *
Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to her Majesty at the
Edinburgh University Press