_Editor Popular Science Monthly_:
SIR: Will you permit me to say a few words supplementing your review
of Through Nature to God? To those who have perused Mr. Fiske’s latest
three scientifico-theological booklets, and also his Cosmic Philosophy,
it can not be new that their author has become entangled in hopeless
contradictions of himself. The limited space of a letter does not allow
of adducing more than one remarkable passage from Cosmic Philosophy,
demonstrating the antithesis between the arguments of this work and
Mr. Fiske’s latest opinions, these new thoughts having been developed,
as he tells us, by “carrying such a subject about in his mind for”
twenty-five years. We are told in Through Nature to God (page 12)
that “it has usually been found necessary to represent the Creator
as finite either in power or in goodness, although the limitation is
seldom avowed, except by writers who have a leaning toward atheism
and take a grim pleasure in pointing out flaws in the constitution
of things. Among modern writers” Comte and Mill are conspicuous for
such a “leaning toward atheism.” Then we are informed (page 20) that
the “shock which such a clear, bold statement gives to our religious
feelings is no greater than the shock with which it strikes counter
to our modern scientific philosophy.” And a little further on we find
that “the God which Mr. Mill offers us, shorn of the attribute of
omnipotence, is no God at all.”
If the reader will now open Cosmic Philosophy, he is told in vigorous
language (vol. ii, p. 405) that “if there exist a personal Creator of
the universe who is infinitely intelligent and powerful, he can not be
infinitely good; if, on the other hand, he be infinite in goodness,
then he must be lamentably finite in power or in intelligence. By this
two-edged difficulty, theology has ever been foiled.” Then (vol. ii,
p. 406) Mr. Fiske, quoting from Mill, expresses his entire concurrence
with the views of this eminent thinker, and adds (vol. ii, p. 407),
“With Mr. Mill, therefore, ‘I will call no being good who is not what
I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures.’ And, going a
step further, I will add that it is impossible to call that being good
who, existing prior to the phenomenal universe and creating it out of
the plenitude of infinite power and foreknowledge, endowed it with such
properties that its material and moral development must inevitably be
attended by the misery of untold millions of sentient creatures for
whose existence their Creator is ultimately alone responsible.”
No comment of mine can show more clearly than the passages cited above
the “conversion” of Mr. Fiske, against which imputation so much subtle
ingenuity is expended in the preface to The Idea of God.
That Mr. Fiske is merely reviving gross anthropocentric views he
himself admits. To him, man is “the goal toward which Nature’s work
has been tending from the first.” But might not also some pithecoid
ancestors of ours have deemed themselves the “goal toward which Nature
had been tending from the first”? What is Nature’s goal in the endless
cycle of evolution in which life is but an infinitesimal part? But with
Huxley I believe that “it would be a new thing in history if _a priori_
philosophers were daunted by a factious opposition of experience.” Mr.
Fiske’s latest writings, as all theodicies, bear testimony to the truth
of Huxley’s scathing remark.
But granting, for the sake of the argument, that “in the deepest sense
it is as true as it ever was held to be, that the world was made for
man,” there is an objection to be raised on moral grounds stronger than
any that could be founded on scientific arguments. Had this world been
created for man, entailing, as it does, the “misery of untold millions
of sentient creatures,” who but the crassest egotist could worship this
Fiskean God of iniquity?
The careful student of Thomas Huxley’s works may be surprised to find
Through Nature to God “consecrated” to the memory of him whose life
work was devoted to “untiring opposition to that ecclesiastical spirit”
that shines through every page of Mr. Fiske’s latest writings. I echo
Mr. Fiske’s words: “I can never cease to regret that Huxley should have
passed away without seeing my [Mr. Fiske’s] arguments and giving me the
benefit of his comments.” The last stroke of Huxley’s pen was giving
Mr. Balfour “the benefit of his comments”; would that he could have
given them to the author of the excursion Through Nature to God!
B. A. BEHREND.
ERIE, PA., _December 5, 1899_.
_Editor Popular Science Monthly_:
SIR: Your trenchant criticism of Mr. John Fiske’s discussion of the
mystery of evil recalls Mr. Spencer’s reminder that “there is a soul of
truth in all things erroneous.”
Mr. Fiske certainly has not made it plain that the meaning of the
universe is to be found (exclusively) in the higher developments
of love and self-sacrifice; but is it not equally a mistake to say
inferentially that “on a broad view of the world-wide struggle for life
there are no moral elements to be seen”? If we define morality as the
equivalent merely of love and self-sacrifice, the ever-present love
of mother and, in a degree, of father for the offspring imperatively
negatives such a conclusion.
But morality is something more than love and self-sacrifice. Morality
is right conduct, and right conduct in the last analysis is conformity
to the conditions of existence. The nearer the conformity, the more
complete the life, and life approaches completeness only as the
activities of men cease to be impeded by each other’s aggressions, the
highest life being reached when men help to complete one another’s
lives.
Conversely, evil must be defined as nonconformity to the conditions of
existence. Slowly but surely man is learning these conditions, and
as he learns it is not to be doubted that “evil” will lessen. If we
affirm acquisition of knowledge by man, we must postulate a precedent
or “necessary” condition of ignorance. Hence it may be truthfully said
that evil is a necessary correlative, and in a manner the necessary
condition of good; and also, I think, that a broad view of the
worldwide struggle for life shows not an absence of moral elements,
but rather that the ethical is inherent in the very nature of animate
things.
We may not all share Mr. Fiske’s exuberant optimism, and many can not
accept his teleological implications, but of the ultimate triumph of
good over evil, of knowledge over ignorance, we may not doubt.
FRANK M. LOOMIS.
BUFFALO, _November 10, 1899_.