THE PROBLEM OF PAIN.
The problem of how to harmonise the existence of a God as believers
picture him to be with a world such as experience discloses, is as old
as theology. And the problem will disappear only when theology is given
up as an aggregate of question begging words and gratuitous hypotheses
based upon a foundation of primitive ignorance and inherited delusion.
For the majority of those questions that are properly called theological
are not of the necessary order. Questions such as those connected with
the mutations of matter, the development of life, the growth of society,
or the nature and clash of human passions cannot be evaded. They are
present in the facts themselves. But the problems of theology are
self-created; they arise out of certain beliefs, and have no existence
apart from those beliefs. They are the joint product of beliefs which
are wholly useless, in conflict with facts with which they cannot be
squared.
What is known as "The Problem of Evil" is an apt illustration of the
truth of what has been said. Here there is created a problem which is
not alone quite gratuitous, but it succeeds in inverting the real
question at issue. For unless we accept the world as the product of a
good and wise God, there is no problem of evil for us to explain. The
problem of evil is, given such a deity, how to account for the existence
of evil, or, if it exists, how account for its continuance. The problem
is created by the theory. Dismiss the theory and no problem is left.
And it is in line with what is done in other directions, that, having
created the difficulty, the theist should present it to the non-theist
as one of the questions that he must answer.
In reality there is no problem of evil in connection with ethics. The
ethical problem is not the existence of evil, but the emergence of good;
not, that is, why do men do wrong, but why do they do right. That life
should cease to be is not at all wonderful, but that with so many
potential dangers around the organism, the actions of living beings
should become so automatically adapted to their surroundings as to shun
the actions which destroy life, and perform such actions as maintain
it--at least, to such an extent as secures the preservation of the
species--may well arouse surprise and give birth to enquiry. So with the
question of evil and suffering in the world. That these exist is
undeniable, but the enquiry they suggest is only on all fours with the
enquiry suggested by any other natural fact, while the ethical problem
centres, not around the existence of wrong action, but around the
emergence of right conduct. It is the evolution of happiness that forms
the kernel of the ethical problem, not the evolution of pain.
The earlier form of the Christian apologetic took the form of a
dualistic theory of the world. There were two powers, God and the devil,
and between them they shared the responsibility for all good and evil.
So far, good. But this was clearly saving the goodness of God at the
expense of his omnipotence. Moreover, if God was to be thought of as the
creator of the universe, the theory, as Mill said, paid him the
doubtful compliment of making him the creator of Satan, and, therefore,
the creator of evil once removed. Or, if not, God and the devil were
left as rival monarchs quarrelling over a territory that appeared to
exist apart from and independent of either.
But nowadays the devil has gone out of fashion. Very few of the clergy
ever mention him, and although an attempt was made to reinstate him some
years ago by the author of "Evil and Evolution," the endeavour was a
failure. And bereft of the convenient scapegoat, the devil, the present
day theist is compelled to attempt an apology for evil that will appeal
to natural and verifiable facts for confirmation, or which must, at
least, not be in conflict with them. If theism is to stand, a place and
a meaning must be found for the evil in the world, and found in such a
way that it either relieves God of the responsibility for its existence
or its being can be shown to harmonise with his assumed character. It is
no longer possible to fall back on Paul's position that the potter is at
liberty to doom one pot to honour and the other to dishonour. The moral
responsibility for the kind of pots he turns out cannot be so easily
evaded. As Professor Sorley says, "If ethical theism is to stand, the
evil in the world cannot be referred to God in the same way as the good
is referred to him." Somehow, he must be relieved of the responsibility
for its existence, or a purpose for it must be found.
Now, curiously enough, modern theists hover between the two positions.
Professor Sorley, representing one position, says that the only way to
avoid referring evil to God is by "the postulate of human freedom."
("Moral Values and the Idea of God," p. 469.) This is also the way out
adopted by Canon Green in "The Problem of Evil," and it turns upon a
mere play on words. Thus, Canon Green says that there is one thing God
could not do. "He could not force him to be good, i.e., to choose virtue
freely, for the idea of forcing a free being to choose involves a
contradiction." And Professor Sorley says more elaborately that "things
occur in the universe which are not due to God's will, although they
must have happened with his permission ... a higher range of power and
perfection is shown in the creation of free beings than in the creation
of beings whose every thought and action are pre-determined by their
Creator," and while he admits there is limitations to man's power of
choice, he holds that there is one form of choice that is always there,
and that is the choice of good and evil. ("Moral Values and the Idea of
God," pp. 469-70.)
In all this one can see little more than verbal confusion. To commence
with Canon Green, which will also cover much that Prof. Sorley says on
the same point. When we are told man must choose virtue freely in order
that what he does shall partake of the character of morality, it is
plain that he is using the word "forced" in two senses. In the one sense
force may mean no more than a determinant. Thus we may say that our
sympathies _force_ us to act in such and such a way. Or the religious
man may say that the love of God forces him to act in such and such a
manner. Force here means any consideration that will lead to action, and
no one can object to its use in this sense.
A second meaning of force is that of compulsion from without, as when a
strong man gets hold of a weak one and by exertion of physical strength
compels him to do something that he is disinclined to do, or when one
forces another by threat of punishment. In this latter sense no one
dreams of harmonising force with moral action. Neither law nor common
sense does so. But compulsion in the sense of one's actions being forced
by a mental or moral disposition no one outside an asylum would dispute.
And what Canon Green does is to ask us to reject the idea of a moral
action being forced, in the sense of external compulsion, and then uses
it in the sense of an absence of dispositions that will lead to certain
courses of conduct.
It is probable that the Canon would reject this interpretation of his
statement, but if it does not mean this, then his argument is
unintelligible. For if it is admitted that what man does is the product
of his mental or moral dispositions, in other words, of his nature, and
if, as is undeniable, the nature with which he fronts the world is the
product of heredity and environment, he would no more be "forced" to do
good had God given him impulses strong enough to overcome all tendency
to evil than he is now when his impulses come to him from his ancestors
and his general social heredity.
All that is implied in a moral act is free choice. But choice is free,
not when it is independent of organic promptings; that is absurd; but
when those organic promptings are allowed to find expression. There is
no other rational meaning to "choice" than this. Choice does not tell us
how it is determined, on that point it can say nothing, any more than a
child can say why it chooses sugar in preference to cayenne pepper. Its
choice, we say, is determined by its taste. And its taste is determined
by--? To answer that question we must call in the chemist and the
physiologist, and they probably will tell us why our choice moves in one
direction rather than in another.
When men like Canon Green talk of the morality of an action being
dependent upon our _choice_ between right and wrong, what they probably
have in their minds is the perception of right and wrong. For we may
perceive the possibility of one course while we are performing another.
But the power of choice is clearly limited. A man cannot choose to be a
mathematician, however much he may see the desirability of becoming one.
And many a man may in the moral sphere see the advisability of his being
different in character from what he is, but may altogether lack the
capacity of becoming such. And the power of choice differs not only with
each individual, but with the same individual at different times.
Finally, the more fixed the character of the individual the less
conscious he is of choice, or of a sense of freedom to do differently
from what he actually does, and as this applies with equal force to
character, whether it be good or bad, we reach, finally, the suicidal
position that the more fundamentally moral a man becomes, the less moral
he is.[5]
Now seeing that all our educational processes aim at making the good
character, so to speak, automatic, that is, to quite fill the mind with
worthy motives and wise power of choice, and seeing also that a
character is good so far as this is done, will some one explain in what
way moral character would have suffered had God so made man that he
would have had intelligence enough to always choose the good and reject
the bad? For, be it noted, the apology put forward for the present state
of affairs is that man is in a state of probation, he is passing through
a course of moral discipline, and it is essential that he should
experience the possibility to do wrong, and even to occasionally do the
wrong. And the end of the process of tuition is, what? The production of
a perfect being in whom there shall not be a proneness to do wrong, to
whose purified moral nature wrong doing shall be quite foreign. That is
to say that we are to reach as a result of this long roundabout process,
with all its waste and bungling, just what might have been established
at the beginning. For either the perfect moral being is without the
quality which we have just been assured is essential to morality, or the
whole argument is reduced to nonsense.
For it is impossible to assume that the bad man chooses to be bad with a
full perception of the consequences of his actions, and at the same time
with the power to do otherwise. We all agree that the _right_ choice is
ultimately a _wise_ choice, and that if we could all trace out the
consequences of all we do, we should realise that it was to our real
interest to act rightly. And if that is admitted, it follows that the
"choice" to do evil is the product of short-sightedness, or of some
defect of temperament which prevents our standing up against the
temptations of the moment. And our ethical education is mainly directed
to making good this defect in our make up. But suppose that amount of
wisdom or strength had been an endowment of our nature from the outset,
is there any conceivable way in which we should have been the worse for
it? For even as it is there are some people who do make a fairly wise
and right choice, and whose high-water mark of excellence is not reached
through the crime and folly of the revival meeting convert. Are they the
worse because they have never yielded to evil? Is the naturally good man
really a less worthy character than the one whose comparative goodness
is only reached through and after a lengthy course of evil living? And
if not, in what way would the race have been worsened had we all been as
fortunately circumstanced? If it was really God's purpose to have a race
of men and women who should be both good and wise, it remains for the
theist to show in what way the plan would not have been as well served
by making them at once with a sufficiency of intelligence to act in the
real interests of themselves and of all around them.
Coming closer to earth the theist attempts to find a justification for
the existing order of things by finding a use for pain and suffering in
their educational influence on human nature, and in the impossibility of
altering for the better the consequences of natural law.
The real question at issue, says one of the most eloquent of modern
theists, the late Dr. Martineau, is "whether the laws of which complaint
is made work such harm that they ought never to have been enacted; or
whether, in spite of occasional disasters in their path, the sentient
existence of which they are the conditions has in its history a vast
excess of blessing." (Study of Religion II., p. 91.) And Canon Green,
who uses some of Dr. Martineau's ideas without the latter's eloquence or
power of reasoning, asks, "If God were to say, 'You condemn me for this
suffering! Well, take my creative power and re-create the world to
please yourself and to suit your own sense of justice and mercy'" could
we think out a world that should be better than this one? (Problem of
Evil, p. 48.)
Now both these methods of raising the question--and they are
representative of a whole group--serve but to confuse the issue. For no
one denies that some benefit may result from the present cosmical
structure. But that does not touch the complaint that the structure is
not such as fits in with the existence of a presiding intelligence such
as theism asks us to accept. And the question of Canon Green's whether
we could turn out a better universe than the one that actually exists,
is wide of the mark also. If I purchase a motor car as the work of a
genius in car-building, and find when I get my purchase home that it
cannot be made to run, it does not destroy the justice of my complaint
to ask whether I could build a better one or not. The important thing is
that the car is not what it should be, and judging by the product the
builder is not what he is represented to be either. Dr. Martineau was
far too keen a controversialist to adopt Canon Green's foolish retort,
but he does seek to parry the force of the atheist criticism by saying
that God "if once he commits his will to any determinate method, and for
the realisation of his ends selects and institutes a scheme of
instrumental rules, he thereby shuts the door on a thousand things that
might have been done before." (_Study_, p. 85). To that one may reply,
so much the worse for his judgment; while if the fact of his having once
adopted a "determinate method" caused him to resolve to stick to it, in
spite of its consequences in practice, and irrespective of the
beneficial results that might have followed its modification, we can
only regret that the deity was not acquainted with Emerson's opinion
that "a foolish consistency is the bugbear of little minds." Even what
is said to be the greatest mind of all might easily have benefited from
the warning.
Canon Green tries another line of reply, which is not in the least more
convincing. He pictures to us a father who, by misappropriating trust
funds, brings disgrace to the whole of his family. The mother is driven
to despair and drink. The sister dies for want of food, the brother
finds his career ruined. The disaster is complete, and Canon Green says
it is inevitable because we cannot have a world in which the relations
of parents and children exist without having them suffer from each
other's faults. So far as the present world goes that is true. But it is
certainly a strange reply to the complaint that an arrangement is unjust
to say that as the injustice results from the arrangement, therefore, we
have no cause for complaint. And that _we_ are unable to make a better
world is beside the mark. Between the perception of an injustice, and
the ability to remove it there is a world of difference, and although we
may be unable to remedy the defect the defect remains.
But, indeed, human nature does try to produce a world in which such
happenings as those depicted shall either not occur or their
consequences shall be reduced to a minimum. We do not hang a son for
his parents' crime, nor do humane people blame children for the
shortcomings of their parents. To some extent we try to correct the
consequences that follow, and even though the endeavour be futile, that
is in itself an indictment of the existing order. Man does at least try
to correct the injustices his God is said to have created.
It is overlooked also that the evils which follow from wrong actions are
not confined to those immediately connected, and who may conceivably
have their resentment to some extent dulled, if not lessened, by that
fact. People in no way connected, and who can have no perception of the
cause of their suffering, who are unconscious of everything, save the
one fact that they are suffering, feel its consequences. When a great
war spreads devastation all over the world, can it be said that any
useful purpose is served by the sufferings of millions who are not in
the slightest degree aware of the cause of their agony? When a shady
financial operation brings an innocent man to ruin, and effects all the
consequences which Canon Green imagines resulting from the defaulting
parent, how can it be said that the catastrophe admits of ethical
justification? In many cases the thought of the injury experienced acts
itself as a fresh cause of degradation. It creates a rankling and a
bitterness which depresses and inhibits the power to struggle, unless it
be the desire to struggle for revenge against a condition of things of
which the evil results are only too apparent. People are not merely
punished for the evil they do; they are punished for the evil that
others do, and the punishment, so far as we can see, bears no observable
relation to the wrong done. There is no _ethical_ relation between
actions and consequences. Not alone is the incidence of an action
dependent upon personal qualities--some will suffer more from having
accidentally told an untruth than others will suffer from having
committed gross and deliberate fraud--but nature is absolutely careless
of whether what I do is motived by good or bad intentions. If I get a
wetting through going out to help some one in distress, the consequences
will be exactly the same as though I had got wet going out to commit a
burglary or a murder. And when Dr. Martineau talks of the "natural
penalties for guilt," and adds that "sin being there, it would be simply
monstrous that there should be no suffering and would fully justify the
despair which now raises its sickly cry of complaint against the
retributory wretchedness of human transgression" (_Study_ II., p. 106),
the reply is that there are no such things as "_natural_ penalties for
guilt." There are only consequences of actions, and they are the same
whatever be the moral quality of the actions performed. In the same way
that nature may in the course of an earthquake destroy the homes of a
dozen worthy families and leave a gambling hell untouched, so it will in
other directions punish where a man, from good intentions, places
himself in the path of punishment, and refrain from afflicting one whose
selfishness or greed has guarded him against attack. There are natural
consequences of actions, there are no natural penalties for guilt, and
there are no natural rewards for innocence. Rewards and penalties are
the creation of man, and it is only in the form of a figure of speech
that we can apply them to nature.
It is equally idle to speak of pain as a form of discipline. Professor
Sorley says that if the pain in the world can be turned to the increase
of goodness, then its existence offers no insuperable objection to "the
ethical view of reality." So Dr. Martineau says that suffering is "the
moral discipline" through which our nature arrives at its "true
elevation." It is needless to multiply quotations; such statements are
the commonplaces of theistic controversy, and almost any book that one
cares to pick up will supply further illustrations, if they be required.
None can reject them, because no theist can afford to candidly admit
that the world we know offers no justification for his belief. The
belief in the goodness of God, as Canon Green says, is a belief that is
"absolutely fundamental to all religion," and if the facts as we see
them do not support the belief, some apology must be found that will
marry the theory to the fact.
Nevertheless, the belief in the disciplinary power of pain or suffering
is, if not quite illusory, so nearly so that it is useless for the
purpose for which it is brought forward. In the first place, it does not
require very profound study to see that whatever are the lessons taught
by suffering they are seldom proportionate to the conduct which cause
them, nor do those who suffer reap the alleged disciplinary benefit of
their suffering. Let us take a common case. A mother goes out and leaves
a child near an unguarded fire. The mother returns to find the child
burned to death. Where is the discipline here? Certainly the child
cannot have gained any. But there is, of course, the mother. The mother
has learned such a lesson that she will never forget it, and will never
again commit the same blunder. There we have it. A child is allowed to
die by a hideously cruel death in order that a mother may learn a lesson
in carefulness. It is good to learn from other sources that God's ways
are not our ways. A man who tried to imitate them, and who burned one of
his children in order to teach its mother how to look after the rest,
would soon find himself in the criminal court, or in an asylum. But what
would be insanity or criminal cruelty in the case of man, becomes, in
the alembic of religious apologetic, goodness and wisdom in God.
The theory that it is the function of pain to elevate and to discipline
is simply not true. One has only to look to see that in countless cases
the effect of pain is disaster. The world's best work is not born of
pain but of pleasure. There is no pain and no suffering, there is hardly
even toil, in the work of a genius. In all the higher walks of music, of
art, of literature, the work is perfect in proportion as the worker
finds himself in agreeable and pleasant surroundings. And what is true
of the higher aspect of art is true also of life in general. Life may be
lived in spite of pain, as good work may be done in spite of
discouraging circumstances, but one might as well talk of a plant
flourishing because of poor soil, or sharp frosts, as to speak of life
becoming better because of pain.
The normal function of pain is to depress, that of pleasure is to
heighten. As Spencer said, every pain lowers the tide of life; every
pleasure raises the tide of life. It is one of the commonest of sights
to see those suffering from illness becoming more self-centred, less
careful of others, and to see the disintegrating consequences of
disease on character. Here and there one may find a character that has
had its rough edges smoothed down by suffering, but for every case of
that kind one may find a score of an opposite order. It is not the
underfed, badly clothed, neglected child that is likely to make the best
citizen, but the one that has the best chance of developing itself in
healthy surroundings. And it is a curious commentary, if it were true,
to argue that a good and wise God so arranged things that pain and
suffering, even undeserved suffering, should be the main way for the
development of character.
A strange but not uncommon argument is used by Canon Green in dealing
with the suffering incidental to the various disasters that overtake
mankind from time to time. Suffering, he says, has a certain element of
martyrdom about it. Even evils due to human greed and carelessness bring
some benefit in their train. Thus, apropos of the _Titanic_ disaster:--
Every such disaster tends to produce some improvement for future
generations. Shipowners are forced to supply more boats, wireless
instalment is required on all ships; the idle rich are led to think
less of saving useless time and more of saving lives, their own and
those of men in the stokeholds. In a sense those who perish may be
said to be unwilling martyrs who by their deaths purchase some
advantage for others. It will be said that it is a great price to
pay for a small advantage, and one which might have been cheaply
gained in some other ways. That is so. But so too the ways of
nature are cruel. So many seeds must be sown, so many young animals
or birds or fishes born, so many must be trampled out of existence,
that only the best may survive. (_Problem of Evil_; pp. 163-4).
That certainly puts all the owners of slum property, all the grasping
shipowners, all those who batten and fatten on other people's welfare in
a most favourable light. We have been thinking them almost criminals
when they were in reality public benefactors. They lead to many
improvements, and even though the improvements come too late to benefit
those who suffer from the evils, yet they do come--sometimes. Certainly
it might give some comfort if the sufferers knew what it was they were
being sacrificed for, and that others would be benefited by their death.
But they do not, and we are therefore bound to conclude that whatever
satisfaction is felt is by those who survive. When a _Titanic_ sinks it
must be the people on shore who see the element of goodness in it since
it makes travelling easier for _them_. And the kindness developed in one
who can excuse the brutalities of nature because it brings some benefit
to himself is of a rather startling nature.
The fundamental fault in all reasoning of this order lies in the
assumption that pain ceases to be pain if it can be shown to bring good
to _some_ one. But that it not so. Pleasure and pain are not
quantitative things, increments of which can be carried on from
generation to generation and a balance struck at the end, much as one
strikes a balance between the profits and losses of a year's trading.
All suffering and all enjoyment are of necessity personal. Suffering is
not increased by extending it over a million instances. There was not
more pain because a larger number happened to be be killed in the
European war than are killed in a borderland skirmish. There were a
larger _number_ of people involved in the one case than in the other,
but that is all. Multiplying the number of cases makes a greater appeal
to a sluggish imagination, but it adds nothing substantial to the fact.
Feeling, whether it be pleasant or painful, is a matter of individual
experience, and that being so it is not the number of people who suffer
through no fault of their own, and, so far as one can see, without any
benefit proportionate to the suffering experienced, but the fact of
there being this suffering at all. That is the point the theist must
face; it is the one point he systematically avoids.
Another form of the same argument meets us in the familiar plea that
bodily pain "sounds the alarm bell of disease in time for its removal."
In some sense it may be admitted that a painful feeling, in certain
circumstances, does act as a warning that persistence will lead to
disaster. But it is not universally true in the sense and in the degree
that is needed to justify the argument, and it is a "warning" out of all
proportion to the danger faced. In the first place, pain cannot be a
warning against disease, it can only be an indication of its presence.
It does not warn us against the dangers of a contemplated course of
conduct, nor can it tell us what conduct has led to the pain
experienced. And in the case of contagious diseases, what amount of
warning is there given? In some case the victim is stricken and is dead
in so short a time as not to know with what it is he has been afflicted,
and certainly without any chance of being warned. What warning is there
in the case of a violent poison? Or what relation is there between pains
felt and dangers run? The most dangerous diseases may have painless
beginnings, and be well rooted in the system before the victim is
driven by discomfort to seek medical advice. On the other hand, a corn
or a toothache, neither of them very deadly ailments, create pain out of
all proportion to their gravity. And if we take the case of excessive
cold we have here an instance where instead of pain acting as a warning,
the danger just acts as an anaesthetic. The victim is oppressed by
drowsiness, sinks into insensibility, finally death. Here it is not the
approach of death that is painful, but the return to life, the pain of
restoring circulation being very severe indeed.
Fear, which may be classed as a species of pain, appears to act, in the
majority of instances, as an enemy, rather than as a friend to the
animal experiencing it. Thus Professor Mosso points out that in the
animal organism there exists a number of harmful reactions that increase
in number the graver the peril becomes. We have all read of the
"fascination" of the bird by the serpent, and there are other animals
that in the presence of an enemy become so palsied with fear as to
become incapable of defence, even that of flight. And with man it is not
as the danger becomes most acute that his nerves become steadier and his
courage firmer. The opposite is probably more often the case. In all
these cases it is as though nature had lured the animal or man into a
position of grave danger, and then does its best to divest him of
adequate means of defence against it.
Common sense revolts against the doctrine that pain is a good thing, and
the fact of this is everywhere seen in the attempt of man to get rid of
it. No one trusts it as a sure warning against disease, no one turns to
it as a means of purifying character. All these pleas are the mere
platitudes of a religious apologetic trying to harmonise a primitive
theory of things with a larger knowledge and a more developed moral
sense. Pain and suffering in the world remain facts whether we believe
in the existence of a God or not, but we are at least freed from the
paralysing horror of the belief that all the suffering and pain in
nature is part of a plan. If man realised all that that belief involved
it might indeed rob his mind of all strength to struggle against the
forces that make for his destruction. Fortunately no race of people
could act upon the logical implications of the theistic theory and
maintain its existence. In practice, as well as in theory, theism has
had to come to terms with facts. And now the series of adjustments have
almost reached their end. The belief in God has been traced to its
origin, and we know it to have issued in an altogether discredited view
of the world and of man. We know that man does not discover God, he
invents him, and an invention is properly discarded when a better
instrument is forthcoming. To-day the hypothesis of God stands in just
the same relation to the better life of to-day as the fire drill of the
savage does to the modern method of obtaining a light. The belief in God
may continue awhile in virtue of the lack of intelligence of some, of
the carelessness of others, and of the conservative character of the
mass. But no amount of apologising can make up for the absence of
genuine knowledge, nor can the flow of the finest eloquence do aught but
clothe in regal raiment the body of a corpse.
FOOTNOTE:
[5] I have discussed this question at length in my "Determinism or Free
Will."
Part II.
SUBSTITUTES FOR ATHEISM.
CHAPTER X.
A QUESTION OF PREJUDICE.
It affords some ground for surprise that there should be so great a
resentment shown against religious disbelief in general and against
Atheism in particular. We have here more than the mere rejection of a
theory or view of life. There is a certain emotional resentment, a
shrinking from the one who is guilty of disbelief, such as is not
explainable on ordinary grounds. The attitude is ridiculous, so
ridiculous that many who adopt it are ashamed to openly acknowledge it,
but it is there, and its existence calls for explanation.
We believe this is to be found in the peculiar history of the god-idea
combined with primitive theories of social life. Like many frames of
mind that persist in civilised society, this attitude towards disbelief
has its roots in a conception of the world that has been generally
discarded and in social conditions that have ceased to exist among
civilised people. To begin with, we have the fact that religion
dominates the life of primitive man to a degree that is almost
inconceivable to the modern mind. The anger of the tribal gods has to be
always reckoned with. What they desire must be done, what they do not
desire must be avoided. In the next place there exists a very strong
sense of collective responsibility. What one member of a tribe does the
whole of the tribe is responsible for, both to the members of other
tribes and to the gods. We see a survival of this in the reversion to a
more primitive state of things that takes place during a war. In some
circumstances hatred of the whole of a people with whom a nation is at
war becomes a duty, and all are responsible for the offences of each. So
in primitive times an offence against the gods became an act of treason
against the tribe. It might expose the whole of the tribe to disaster.
It is not, it must be noted, that primitive man is fond of the gods, or
jealous of their honour; he is not any more fond of them than is the
modern citizen of the tax-collector. And no one will ever really
understand the question of religion until he rids himself of the notion
that primitive man spends his time _looking_ for gods or that he is
happy in their company. He is simply afraid that a single unruly member
may get the whole tribe into a serious difficulty. The savage is
severely practical; his conduct rests upon grounds of, to him, the most
obvious utility, and his treatment of the heretic leaves little to be
desired on the score of effectiveness. The unbeliever is a dangerous
person, and he is promptly suppressed. The first heretic died a martyr
to the tribe; the last heretic will die a martyr to the race.
Primitive conditions die out, but primitive feelings linger, and
although in theory we have reached the stage of believing that each
person must bear the consequences of his own religious opinions, the
deeply rooted dislike to the man who rejects the rule of the gods
remains.
Historically we have also to reckon with the operations of an interested
priesthood, but leaving that on one side as a secondary development it
would seem that one must trace to some such cause as the one above
indicated the deep and widespread dislike to such a term as atheism,
even by many who to all intents and purposes are atheist in their
opinion. Certainly in this country, where compromise is more fashionable
than in many other places, the dislike to the word is partly due to its
uncompromising character. It is clear cut and definite. Its connotations
cannot be misunderstood by any one who takes the word in its literal
meaning. The Theist is one who believes in a personal God. The Atheist
is one who is without belief in a personal God. The meaning is clear,
and the implied mental attitude is plain. It is opposed to theism, and
has no significance apart from Theism. And, as will be seen, when
non-theists quarrel with it, it is only because it is mis-stated or
misunderstood.
But most people dislike clear cut terms. They prefer to exist in an
atmosphere of mental ambiguity and intellectual fog which blurs outlines
and obscures differences. Unbeliever is preferable to some,
sceptic--presumably because of its age and philosophical associations,
is a greater favourite, and Agnostic is more beloved than either--the
latter has indeed been pressed into the service of a more or less
nebulous "religion." As it is said, "We are all Socialists nowadays," so
it is said that we are unbelievers or Agnostics nowadays. But no one
says we are all Atheists nowadays. Timidity can find no use for a word
of that character. Of course, if a man believes that some word other
than Atheism best describes his state of mind, he has a perfect right to
select the one that seems fittest. But when one finds non-theists
repudiating the name of Atheist with as much moral indignation as though
they had been accused of shoplifting, one cannot help the suspicion
that the heat displayed is not unconnected with some lurking fear of the
"respectabilities." It does seem that while many may have outgrown all
fear of the God of orthodoxy, the fear of the god of social pressure
remains.
So far as the Theist is concerned it is quite understandable that his
objection to Atheism should involve a certain moral element. That would
result from what has already been said concerning the cause of the fear
of heresy. Still one would have thought that in these days it would
require a person of almost abnormal stupidity to assume that disbelief
in God has its roots in a defective moral character. The facts would
warrant a quite opposite conclusion. In the first place, the rejection
of any well-established belief argues a degree of independence of mind
that is, unfortunately, not common. The ordinary mind follows the common
route. It is the extraordinary mind that strikes out from the beaten
path. The heretic, whether in politics or in religion, may be wrong, but
there is always with him the guarantee of a certain measure of mental
strength that is not, on the face of the matter, present with one who
follows the orthodox path. And that in itself represents a type of mind
of no little social value. Moreover, I for one, am quite ready to assert
that, class for class, the Freethinker does represent a type of mind
considerably above the average. That this is not more generally
recognised is due to the policy of the religious advocate in contrasting
the uneducated Freethinker with the educated believer.
Secondly, it strikes one as almost insane to assume that in a Christian
country Atheism should be professed as a cloak or as an excuse for
misconduct. They who talk in this strain greatly undervalue the
accommodating power of religion. Is there a single form of rascality
known to man for which religion has not been able to provide a sanction?
If there is I have failed to come across it. The use of religion made by
tyranny in all ages and in all countries is proof of how accommodating
it is to man's passions and interests. The picture of the dying murderer
meeting his end, filled with the consolation of religion, and certain of
his speedy salvation, contains a lesson that all may read if they will.
Error there may be in any case where opinion is concerned, but
profession of an opinion that paves the way for suspicion and
persecution provides a _prima facie_ guarantee of honesty that cannot be
furnished by the advocacy of one that stands high in the public favour.
For aught I know to the contrary, every one of England's Bishops may be
quite honest men. But there can be no certainty about it so long as the
profession carries with it all it does. The dice are loaded in favour of
conviction. But the man who faces social ostracism, and even loss of
liberty in defence of an opinion, is giving a hostage to truth such as
none other can give.
This association of heresy with a defective moral character is a very
old game. It has been played by all religions, and, it must be admitted,
with considerable success. Writing in the second century Lucian shows us
the same policy at work in his day. In one of his dialogues, when the
Atheist has refuted one after another the theistic arguments of his
opponent, the defender of the gods turns on his opponent with--
You god robbing, shabby, villainous, infamous, halter-sick
vagabond! Does not everybody know that your father was a
tatterdemalion, and your mother no better than she should be? that
you murdered your brother and are guilty of other execrable crimes?
You lewd, lying, rascally, abominable varlet.
That type of disputant is still with us, and is still supporting his
beliefs with the same tactics. And it is successful with some. There is
a certain snobbishness in human nature that makes it seek the
association of well-known names and shun all of those with an
unfashionable reputation. To observe the way in which some people will
introduce into their conversation, speeches, or writings, the names of
well-known men, is a revelation of this mental snobbery. And the moral
equivalent of this is the fear of being found in the company of an
opinion that has been branded as immoral. Such people have all the fear
of an unpopular opinion that a savage has of a tribal taboo--it is, in
fact, a survival of the same spirit that gave the tribal taboo its
force. It is, thus, not a very difficult matter to warn people off an
undesirable opinion. Samuel Taylor Coleridge relates how the clergy
raised the cry of Atheism against him, although he had never advanced
further than Deism. And it is to his credit that in referring to this
charge he said:--
Little do these men know what Atheism is. Not one man in a thousand
has either strength of mind or goodness of heart to be an Atheist.
I repeat it. Not one man in a thousand has either strength of mind
or goodness of heart to be an Atheist.
And we have also the oft-quoted testimony of the late Professor
Tyndall:--
It is my comfort to know that there are amongst us many whom the
gladiators of pulpit would call Atheists and Materialists, whose
lives, nevertheless, as tested by any accessible standard of
morality would contrast more than favourably with the lives of
those who seek to stamp them with this offensive brand. When I say
"offensive," I refer merely to the intention of those who use such
terms, and not because Atheism or Materialism, when compared with
many of the notions ventilated in the columns of religious
newspapers has any particular offensiveness to me. If I wish to
find men who are scrupulous in their adherence to engagements,
whose words are their bond, and to whom moral shiftiness of any
kind is subjectively unknown, if I wanted a loving father, a
faithful husband, an honourable neighbour, and a just citizen, I
would seek him among the band of Atheists to which I refer. I have
known some of the most pronounced amongst them, not only in life,
but in death--seeing them approaching with open eyes the inexorable
goal, with no dread of a "hangman's whip," with no hope of a
heavenly crown, and still as mindful of their duties, as if their
eternal future depended upon their latest deeds.
Still the moral cry is too useful with the crowd to lead to the
conviction that anything one could say would lead to its disuse. In the
dialogue of Lucian's to which we have referred, and after the theist has
been refuted by the Atheist, Hermes consoles the chief deity, Zeus, by
telling him that even though a few may have been won over by the
arguments of the Atheist, the vast majority, "the whole mass of
uneducated Greeks and the Barbarians everywhere," still remain firm in
their faith. And although Zeus replies that he would prefer one sensible
man to a thousand fools, when a case depends upon the adherence of the
relatively foolish, numbers will always bring some consolation to the
champions of an intellectually distressed creed.
CHAPTER XI.
WHAT IS ATHEISM?
Between Atheism and Theism there is no logical halting place. But there
are, unfortunately, many illogical ones. Few possess the capacity for
pushing their ideas to a logical conclusion, and some position is
finally discovered which has the weakness of both extremes with the
strength of neither. With many there is vague talk of a "Power"
manifested in the universe, and by giving this the dignity of capital
letters it is evidently hoped that ether people will recognise it as an
equivalent for God. But power, with or without capitals, is not God. It
is not the existence of a "Power" that forms the kernel of the dispute
between the Theist and the Atheist, but what that power is like. The
issue arises on the point of whether it is personal or not. That it is,
is what the religious man believes. As Mr. Balfour says, when the plain
man speaks of God he means "a God whom men can love, to whom men can
pray, who takes sides, who has purposes and preferences, whose
attributes, however conceived, leaves the possibility of a personal
relation between Himself and those whom he has created." ("Theism and
Humanism," p. 21.) What the genuine believer has in view is not the
worthless abstraction of a rationalised metaphysic, but the personal
being of historic theology.
It is now my purpose to take a few of these substitutes for Atheism by
the aid of which some persons seek to mark themselves off from a
declared and reasoned unbelief. As outstanding examples of this one may
take two men of no less eminence than Herbert Spencer and Professor
Huxley. Both of these men have rendered great service to advanced
thought, but both have only succeeded in repudiating Atheism by
misstating and misrepresenting it. In addition to the service that
Spencer unwittingly rendered the current religion by his use of the
"Unknowable" (with which we deal fully later), a further help was given
by his destruction of an Atheism that had no existence. This remarkable
performance will be found in the first part of his "First Principles."
Respecting the origin of the universe, he tells us, there are three
intelligible propositions--although neither of these, on his own
showing, is intelligible. We may assert that it is self-existent, that
it is self-created, or that it is created by an external agency. All
three propositions, he proceeds to show, are equally inconceivable. The
noticeable thing about the performance is that Atheism is identified
with the proposition that the universe is self-existent. A very slight
acquaintance with the writings of representative Atheists would have
shown Mr. Spencer that "the origin of the universe" is one of those
questions on which Atheism has wisely been silent, and it has also
insisted that all attempts to deal with such a question can only result
in a meaningless string of words. To the Atheist, "the universe"--the
sum of existence--is a fact that no amount of reasoning can get behind
or beyond. To think of the universe as a whole is an impossibility;
while to talk of its origin is to assume, first, that it did originate,
and, second, that we have some means by which we can transcend all the
known limits of the human mind. The Atheist can say, and has said, with
Mr. Spencer himself--whose final statement of Agnosticism differs in no
material respect from Atheism, that in discussing the "origin of the
universe," we can only succeed in multiplying impossibilities of thought
"by every attempt we make to explain its existence." No one has pointed
out more clearly than Mr. Spencer that "infinity" is not a conception,
but the negation of one. The pity is that he did not realise that in
taking up this position he was on exactly the same level of criticism
that Atheists have pursued. For them the universe is an ultimate fact;
all that we can do is to mark the ceaseless changes always going on
around us, and to develope our capacity for modifying their action in
the interests of human welfare. Farther than this our knowledge does not
and cannot go; and it may be added that even though our knowledge could
go beyond the world of phenomena, such knowledge would not be of the
slightest possible value.
It may also be pointed out that, just as it is not true that Atheism
attempts to explain the origin of the universe, so it is unfair to tie
the Atheist down to any particular theory of cosmic evolution. As a
mental attitude Atheism is quite independent of any theory of cosmic
working, so long as that theory does not involve an appeal to deity. As
we shall see, Atheism, from the point of view both of history and
etymology, stands for the negation of theism, and its final
justification must be found in the untenability of the theistic
position.
Rightly enough it may be argued that the acceptance of Atheism implies a
certain general mental attitude towards both cosmic and social
questions, but the Atheist, as such, is no more committed to a special
scientific theory than he is committed to a special theory of
government. Of course, it is convenient for the Theist to first of all
saddle his opponent with a set of social or scientific beliefs, and then
to assume that in attacking those beliefs he is demolishing Atheism, but
it is none the less fighting on a false issue. All that Atheism
necessarily involves is that all forms of Theism are logically
untenable, and consequently the only effective method of destroying
Atheism is to establish its opposite.
Professor Huxley's treatment of Atheism proceeds on similar lines to
that already dealt with, but is more elaborate in character. Discussing
the nature of his own opinions he repudiates all sympathy with Atheism,
because:
"the problem of the ultimate cause of existence is one which seems
to me to be hopelessly out of reach of my poor powers. Of all the
senseless babble I have ever had occasion to read, the
demonstrations of those philosophers who undertake to tell us about
the nature of God would be the worst, if they were not surpassed by
the still greater absurdities of the philosophers who try to prove
there is no God." (_On the Hypothesis the Animals are Automata._)
And on another occasion, replying to a correspondent, he expresses the
opinion that "Atheism is, on philosophical grounds, untenable, that
there is no evidence of the god of the theologians is true enough, but
strictly scientific reasoning can take us no further. When we know
nothing we can neither affirm nor deny with propriety." (_Life and
Letters_, p. 162.)
Here, again, we have the common error that Atheism seeks in some way to
explain the ultimate cause of existence. And this in spite of continuous
disclaimers that all search for a "first cause," or for a "cause of
existence" is midsummer madness. The fault here, we suspect, is that
both writers took their statement of Atheism, not from Atheistic writers
but from their opponents. But it is none the less surprising that it was
not recognised that both "a first cause" and an "ultimate cause of
existence," are, strictly speaking, theistic questions. I do not mean
that these questions may not suggest themselves to non-theists, but that
when they are raised clearly and definitely they are seen to belong to a
class of questions to which no rational answer is possible. To the
Theist, however, the questions arise from his primary assumptions. His
theory is one of final causes; his deity is postulated as the cause of
existence, and he cannot give up the questions as hopeless without
admitting his position to be indefensible. It is quite usual for the
theist to propound problems which only arise on his own assumptions, and
then call upon his opponents for answers to them, but there is no
justification whatever for non-theists playing the same game. Atheism
has nothing to do with final causes, and therefore is not concerned with
defending its illogicalities. Theism is a doctrine of final causes, and
in arguing that it is absurd to express an opinion upon the subject
Professor Huxley was adding a good reason in support of the position he
believed himself to be destroying.
Huxley's other objection to Atheism is that it perpetuates the absurdity
of trying to prove there is no God. How far is that true? Or in what
sense is it true? The danger in all discussion on this point lies in our
taking it for granted that "God" conveys a definite and identical
meaning to all people. But this is very far from being the case. What
anyone means by "God" it is impossible to say until some further
description has been given. When this has been done, and not until then,
"God" may become the subject of affirmation or denial. Until then we are
playing with empty words. By itself "God" means nothing. It offers the
possibility of neither negation nor affirmation.
Now Professor Huxley would have readily admitted that the truth of a
proposition may be denied whenever its terms involve a contradiction.
And the ground of this is the sheer impossibility of bringing the terms
together in thought. That a circle may be square, or that parallel lines
may enclose a space, are propositions the truth of which may be denied
offhand. The ground of this is that the conception of squareness and
circularity, of straight lines and an enclosed space are mutually
destructive, they cancel each other. And so far as Atheism may be said
to involve the denial of particular gods that denial is based upon
precisely similar grounds. When defined it is seen that the attributes
of this defined god cancel each other as effectually as squareness rules
out the idea of a circle; either this or they are simply unthinkable.
You cannot have an infinite personality any more than you can have a
six-sided octagon, nor can you posit an infinite personality without
divesting the terms of all meaning.
It may also be noted in passing that both the theist and the Agnostic
actually do deny the existence of particular gods without the least
hesitation. No rational Agnostic would hesitate to deny the existence of
Jupiter, Javeh, Allah, or Brahma. No Christian would hesitate to deny
the existence of the gods of a tribe of savages. Even believers in the
current theology have evolved beyond the stage of the primitive
Christians, who accepted the existence of the Pagan deities with the
proviso that they were demons. And it is a mere verbal quibble to say
that these people merely deny each other's conception of deity. Each
man's conception of god _is_ his god, and to say that no being answering
to that conception exists is to say that his god does not exist, and in
relation to the god denied the denier is in exactly the position in
which he places the Atheist.
So far then the Atheism of each is just a question of degree or of
relation. So far as Atheism involves the denial of deity the follower of
one religion is an Atheist in relation to the followers of every other
religion. Each religion--among civilised people--is atheistic from the
standpoint of the followers of other gods. The affirmation of one god
involves the denial of other gods. This would really seem to be the
historical significance of the term. The early Christians were called
atheists by the Pagans, and some of them accepted it without demur. At a
later date Spinoza, Voltaire, Paine, and others were called atheists,
and the epithet has lost its force to-day only because the evolution of
thought has broken down many religious barriers, and is rapidly dividing
people into two groups--those who believe in some god and who believe
in none at all. Now all that Atheism--conscious and reflective
Atheism--does is to carry a step further the restricted denial of the
ordinary religionist. The Christian theist denies every god but his own.
The Atheist, seeing no more evidence for the existence of the Christian
deity than for the existence of any of the deities discarded by the
Christian, seeing, further, that there are exactly the same
contradictions involved in assuming the existence of any one of the
world's deities, places the Christian deity on the list as among those
gods in whose existence he does not believe, and whose existence, so far
as it is defined, may be logically denied.
The really distinguishing feature of philosophic Atheism is its
comprehensiveness, the ranking of all known deities, big and little,
ancient and modern, savage and civilised, gross and subtle, upon the
same level. Historically, we see them all originating in the same
conditions, passing through substantially the same phases of
development, finally to meet with the same fate as civilisation
developes. In this respect Atheism has to be considered in its historic
developments. It begins, as we have seen in the rejection of a
particular god, in favour of some other deity. It is only at a very much
later stage that the whole idea of god is subjected to examination and
analysis in such a way as to lead to the rejection of the conception of
god as a whole. But with that aspect of the subject we shall be
concerned later.
But does Atheism deny the existence of any possible god? This question
might admit of a simple answer if one only knew precisely what it meant.
It is easy enough to understand what is meant by God so long as we keep
to any or all of the gods of the world's religions. But what is meant by
god standing alone and undefined? Historically "God" means a deity
believed in by some people, some where, at some time. And if we put on
one side these particular gods we have nothing left that can be either
affirmed or denied. God in the abstract is not a real existence any more
than tree in the abstract is a real existence. There is a pine tree, a
pear tree, an apple tree, etc., but there is and can be no "tree" apart
from some particular tree. So with "god." There are particular gods, but
if we do away with these, we have no god left as a separate existence.
"God" then becomes a mere word conveying no meaning whatever. Atheism
does not deny the existence of _a_ god for the same reason that it does
not deny the existence of Abracadabra--both terms mean as much, or as
little. And it is more than absurd for people who have rejected theism
to continue using the word "god" as though it had a quite definite
meaning apart from the gods of the various theologies. We have Professor
Huxley admitting that "there is no evidence of the existence of the god
of the theologians," and we imagine that he would have met the
affirmation of their existence with a flat contradiction. At any rate he
would have been quite justified in doing so. But when he asserts, with a
show of logical precision, but in reality with great looseness, that "it
is preposterous to assert that there is no god because he cannot be such
as we think him to be," he is using language for which no precise
meaning can be found. To be intelligible, the sentence implies that we
have some conception answering to the terms used, and this, as we have
pointed out with almost wearisome insistence, is not the case. It is not
a case of saying to the theist, "I fully understand your hypothesis, but
as at present I do not see enough evidence to convince me of its truth
or to demonstrate its error I must suspend judgment." We do _not_
understand it. And when we seek to we discover that the terms of the
proposition we are asked to accept refuse to be brought together within
the compass of a single conception. Suspended judgment where the subject
under discussion is understandable is right and proper, but it is quite
out of place, and indeed cannot exist, where the proposition before us
is void of meaning. In such circumstances suspended judgment is absurd,
and it may be added that the affirmation or negation of such a
proposition is absurd likewise.
Only one other word need be said on this point. It may be urged that
educated believers mean by "God" not the anthropomorphic deity of the
theologies, but a personal intelligence controlling things. But this is
really not less anthropomorphic than the form in which the god idea
meets us in the popular theologies. Its anthropomorphism is only, to
unobservant minds, less apparent. The conception of an intelligent,
personal being controlling nature is not fundamentally less
objectionable than the frankly man-like being of the early theologies.
Intelligence, as we know it (and to talk of an intelligence that is
unlike the intelligence we know is absurd) is as much a characteristic
of human, or animal, organisation, as arms and legs are. Mind, after
all, is only known to us as a function of an organism. That it is more
than this, or other than this, is a pure assumption. And to divest "God"
of all physical parts, while retaining his functions, is sheer nonsense.
There is the personal intelligence of Smith, or Brown, or Robinson, but
it is absurd to wipe out all the particular Smiths, and Browns, and
Robinsons, and then talk as though their qualities continue in
existence. So with God. If we reject all the gods of the theologies one
after another, what god have we left to talk about? All we have left is
the memory of a delusion.
It is equally fallacious to talk of "God" as an equivalent of force in
the abstract, or as the equivalent of some non-intelligent force. This
is not what people ever meant, or mean, by god. What religious folk
believe in, what they pray to, is a person who can hear them, and who
can do things. A god only dimly apprehended may be tolerated, but for
how long will faith continue to worship an existence that can neither do
nor hear nor sympathise? There is a limit to even religious folly. And
even a savage only worships "sticks and stones" _after_ he endows them
with life and intelligence.
Finally, if there is one thing clear to the modern mind it is that
science has no room in its theory of things for an over-ruling
intelligence. Sir Oliver Lodge well sums up the attitude of science in
the following sentences:--"Orthodox science shows us a self-contained
and self-sufficient universe, not in touch with anything above or beyond
itself--the general trend and outline of it known--nothing supernatural
or miraculous, no intervention of beings other than ourselves, being
conceived possible." (_Man and the Universe_, p. 14, Popular ed.)
Personally, we question whether there are any scientists of repute who
really believe in the existence of a personal intelligence above or
beyond nature. Some may make professions to the contrary, but it will
usually be found that the qualifications introduced rob their
professions of all value. Certainly their teaching is destitute of any
such conception. Modern scientific thought leaves no room for the
operations of deity. The miraculous is generally discarded. Response to
prayer is whittled down to a species of self-delusion, to be valued on
account of its subjective influence only. The scientific theory of
things, incomplete as it may be in many of its details, leaves no room
for the operations of a god. Not alone does it leave no room for a god,
but if the scientific conception of the world is to stand, then it would
be necessary to repeat Bakunine's _mot_, and to say, "If there were a
god it would be necessary to destroy him." You simply cannot have at one
and the same time a universe in which all that occurs is the consequence
of calculable and indestructible forces, the operations of which can be
foreseen and relied upon, and a universe controlled by a
self-determining deity, capable of modifying the action of these same
forces. You may have one or the other, but it is sheer lunacy to imagine
that you can have both. Either uniformity with invariable causation, or
a world in which every scientific calculation must be prefaced with the
"D.V." of a prayer meeting. And the Atheist, who accepts the principles
of modern science, says, not merely that he is without a belief in god,
but that he fails to see any necessity for his existence, or anything
for him to do if he did exist. He passes the gods of the world in review
and categorically dismisses each one as a myth. In doing this he has the
concurrence of all theists in discarding every god save one--his own.
The Atheist simply applies the same rule to each, and metes out the same
judgment to all.
CHAPTER XII.
SPENCER AND THE UNKNOWABLE.
We have already referred to the use made by religionists of Spencer's
"Unknowable." This theory was not without its forerunners, and in
England was already in the field in the teachings of Hamilton and
Mansel. Spencer gave it a still greater vogue. As he presented it, it
came before the world with all the prestige attaching to its association
with one of the most comprehensive of modern thinkers, and one of the
most influential in the schools of evolutionary philosophy. It was also
connected with a world theory that claimed to be strictly scientific in
its character. It became not only a fashion in certain circles, it
founded a school, and gained numerous followers in the religious world.
Its author propounded it as a basis on which to reconcile religion and
science, and many were ready to accept it as such. Printed in all the
glory of capital letters, appearing sometimes as "The Ultimate Reality,"
sometimes as the "Unconditioned," sometimes as an "Infinite and Eternal
Energy," it was equally impressive under all its forms. It provided just
that solemn kind of formula that the religious mind is accustomed to
hear, and if it was as meaningless as the Athanasian Creed, is was, for
that reason, quite as satisfying. It gave all the comfort of a religious
confession of faith, and it has been the parent of a whole host of more
recent apologies for God.
In itself the "Unknowable" was harmless enough. Its philosophic value
is not great, its scientific utility is nil. To say that everything
proceeds from an "Ultimate Reality" is not very helpful, and to follow
on with the declaration that we know nothing about it, and that it would
be of no use to us if we did, does not sound very encouraging. It
reminds one of the description of the horse that had only two
faults--one that it was hard to catch, and the other that it was no good
when it was caught. We repeat with all solemnity the formula that all
things proceed from an infinite and eternal energy, and that this is the
Ultimate Reality, and then find that in relation to any and every
question we are precisely where we were. Its acceptance in certain
religious circles, and its use later, may be taken as evidence of the
fact that what the pious mind longs for is not sense but satisfaction.
Still there remains cause for wonder that this "Unknowable" should ever
have been taken as affording foundation for the belief in deity. The
most extreme materialist or Atheist need not be in the slightest degree
disconcerted on being told things proceed from an "Infinite and Eternal
Energy." It is only what the Atheist has said, minus the capital
letters. He has affirmed his conviction, that all phenomena result from
the permutations of matter and force, which are eternal because no time
limit can be placed to their operations. And you do not add anything
material to the statement by printing it in capital letters. That the
Spencerian abstraction should have been taken as a substitute for deity
proves how desperate the situation is. Drowning men clutch at straws,
and a disintegrating deity hopes to renew his strength by the lavish
use of capital letters.
For, after all, what the theist needs is, not an eternal energy, but a
personality. An inscrutable existence will not do. There is no dispute
that something exists. There is no quarrel over mere existence. It is
with the nature of what exists and the mode of its operation that the
issue arises. The theist needs a special kind of energy, a special form
of existence, a special kind of "reality" if his case is to be
established. It will not do for Mr. Spencer to assure him that this
"Ultimate Reality" is higher than personal. How Mr. Spencer knows that
something, the nature of which is unknown, is higher than something
else, is more than one can tell. But that does not matter. Higher or
lower, it is all the same. Either way it is different from personal, and
if it is different it is not the same, it is not personal. Whatever
other qualities this "Ultimate Reality" has or lacks, it must have that
one if it is to be of use to the theist. And to say that it is higher
than personal is to say that it is not personal at all, and to repeat in
a roundabout manner what the Atheist has been saying all the time.
What now is Spencer's theory of an ultimate reality that must for ever
remain unknowable? Following a line of thought that had been steadily
gaining ground since Hume--although much older than Hume--Spencer holds
that in final analysis all our knowledge is a knowledge of mental states
and their relations. Beyond this we _know_ nothing, and can never know
anything. Nevertheless, while we cannot know anything beyond
consciousness, the conditions of thinking oblige us to assume that
something exists as the cause of our states of mind. Just as black
implies something that is not black, hard something that is not hard, so
we must conceive, as against the conditioned, relative existence of our
conscious states, an unconditioned, absolute existence as their cause.
It is this assumed, but completely unknown cause of our conscious
states, and of all else, that Spencer distinguishes as the Unknowable,
the Unconditioned, the Absolute, etc., and which appears to have brought
so much consolation to hard-pressed theists.
I have no intention of discussing here the philosophic value of the
"Unknowable." But one may say, in passing, that even from that point of
view Spencer is untrue to his own Agnosticism in speaking of the
Unconditioned as the _cause_ of phenomena. For causation is a category
of the conditioned, it belongs to the world we know. It is not something
that exists beyond consciousness, it is something that is supplied by
consciousness and which possesses validity only within the world of
phenomena. On Spencer's own theory of relativity a cause only exists in
relation to an effect. Destroy the one and you destroy the other. Thus,
if the Unknowable is a cause of phenomena it ceases to be the
unconditioned and becomes part of the phenomenal order. If, on the other
hand, it is not part of the phenomenal sequence, it cannot stand to
phenomena in a genuine casual relation. It is, however, only fair to
point out that between the Unknowable and the evolutionary philosophy of
Spencer the only connection between them is that they are both in the
same work. In all probability it is an unconscious survival of
Spencer's earlier theism, which was active at the time the Synthetic
Philosophy was originally planned, but which became more and more
attenuated as Spencer grew older, and disappears entirely from the more
important volumes of the series. And but for the help it has been
supposed to give the belief in god, the "Unknowable" would only have
ranked as a harmless speculation of no value to anyone or to anything.
This is substantially admitted in a postscript to the 1899 edition of
"First Principles." At the conclusion of the section entitled "The
Unknowable," he says:--
The reader is not called on to judge respecting any of the
arguments or conclusions contained in the foregoing five chapters
and in the above paragraphs. The subjects on which we are about to
enter are independent of the subjects thus far discussed; and he
may reject any or all of that which has gone before while leaving
himself free to accept any or all of that which is now to come.
In other words, the "Unknowable" is a pure abstraction, having no
organic connection with the Synthetic Philosophy, or indeed with any
philosophy of value. Mr. Spencer's warning to his readers seems to quite
justify Mr. Bradley's rather caustic comment, "I do not wish to be
irreverent, but Mr. Spencer's attitude towards his Unknowable strikes me
as a pleasantry, the point of which lies in its unconsciousness. It
seems a proposal to take something for God simply and solely because we
do not know what the devil it can be." (Note to p. 128 of _Appearance
and Reality_.)
The curious thing is that Mr. Spencer really offers his readers two
theories of the nature of religion. One is contained in his "Principles
of Sociology," and so far as it traces all religious ideas to the
delusions and illusions of the primitive savage is substantially that
held by all modern anthropologists. The other is contained in his "First
Principles," and the two theories, like parallel lines, never meet.
Though born in the same brain they are quite distinct, and even
contradictory.
The substance of this second theory may be summarised as follows:--
1. The conditions of human thought compel the recognition of an
unknowable reality of which all phenomena are the expression.
2. The function of religion, from the earliest time, has been the
assertion of the existence of an unknowable reality, and to keep alive a
consciousness of the insoluble mystery surrounding it.
3. The function of science is to deal with the known and the knowable,
with all that is presented in experience, with the world of phenomena
exclusively.
4. Religion having for its subject matter the unknown and unknowable,
while science has for its subject matter the known and the knowable,
religion and science are not antagonistic, but complementary. Conflicts
only arise when one trespasses on the other's department, and a
recognition of the true line of demarcation effectually reconciles these
hitherto hostile forces.
A very obvious criticism of number one is in affirming a consciousness
of an "Unknowable," its quality of unknowableness is annihilated.
Existence can only be predicated of that which affects consciousness in
some manner; and so far as I have the slightest apprehension or
consciousness of anything existing, to that extent it ceases to be the
unknowable. Our knowledge of it may be imperfect or altogether
erroneous; we may feel it impossible that we should ever rightly
understand it; but so far as we think about it we are bound to
assimilate it to the best of our knowledge, even though it be only under
the category of force. In brief, "unknowableness" is not a property or
quality by which a thing may be apprehended; it is a name for complete
mental vacuity. It does not refer to the thing itself, it refers only to
us. It is a pure negation which Spencer, by sheer verbal play converts
into a quasi-positive conception. A consciousness of things unknown can
never be more than a consciousness of ignorance. There is only one way
to prove the existence of an unknowable, and that is to know nothing
about it--not even to know that there is something about which we know
nothing.
But, says Spencer, "to say that we cannot know the absolute is, by
implication, to affirm that there is an absolute." Certainly, if we take
an infirmity of language to be the equivalent of a necessity of
existence, not otherwise. When I say that we cannot know a four-sided
triangle I do not affirm by implication that a four-sided triangle
exists. I am asserting that the phrase, a four-sided triangle, involves
conceptions that cannot be brought together in consciousness, and so
dismiss it as being without meaning.
The truth is that every one of Spencer's attempts to prove the existence
of an unknowable turns out on examination to be no more than a proof of
the existence of an unknown, and this is not disputed at any time or by
anyone. Thus, after being told that a known cannot be thought of apart
from an unknown, we are informed:--
Positive knowledge does not, and never can, fill the whole region
of possible thought. At the utmost reach of discovery there arises,
and must ever arise, the question, What lies beyond? As it is
impossible to think of a limit to space so as to exclude the idea
of space lying outside that limit, so we cannot conceive of any
explanation profound enough to exclude the question, What is the
explanation of the explanation?