belief in conscience and belief in God--belief in the moral order
of the universe and belief in a moral Governor and Judge--are most
intimately connected and mutually support each other. Many of you
will remember how Robertson of Brighton,--when describing the crisis
of the conflict between doubt and faith in the awful hour in which,
as he says, life has lost its meaning, and the grave appears to be
the end of all, and the sky above the universe is a dead expanse,
black with the void from which God has disappeared,--tells us that he
knows but of one way in which a man may come forth from this agony
scatheless--namely, by holding fast to those things which are certain
still, the grand, simple landmarks of morality. "In the darkest hour,"
are his words, "through which a human soul can pass, whatever else
is doubtful, this at least is certain,--If there be no God, and no
future state, even then, it is better to be generous than selfish,
better to be chaste than licentious, better to be brave than to be
a coward. Blessed, beyond all earthly blessedness, is the man who in
the tempestuous darkness of the soul has dared to hold fast to these
venerable landmarks. Thrice blessed is he who, when all is drear and
cheerless within and without, when his teachers terrify him and his
friends shrink from him, has obstinately clung to moral good. Thrice
blessed, because his night shall pass into clear bright day." Now there
is a great truth, a most sacred and solemn truth, in these words. But
it is only a half truth, and it should not be mistaken for the whole
truth. It is not less true, and it is true, perhaps, of a far greater
number of human souls, that there are dark and dreadful hours when
they are tempted to believe that virtue is but a name, that generosity
is not better than selfishness, truth not better than falsehood, and
the courage which defends a post of dangerous duty not better than the
cowardice which abandons it; and in these hours I know not how the soul
is to regain its trust in human goodness, except by holding fast its
faith in Divine goodness; or how it can be strengthened to cling to
what is right, except by cleaving to God. It is as possible to doubt of
the authority of conscience as to doubt of the existence of God. There
are few souls which have not their Philippi, when they are tempted
to cry like Brutus, "O virtue, thou art but an empty name!" Blessed
in such an hour is he who, feeling himself to be sinking in gloomy
waters, cries to that God who is able to rescue him from the abyss,
and clings to that justice in heaven which is the pledge that justice
will be done on earth below. Thrice blessed, because he will be guided
through the darkness of a sea of doubts even thus terrible to a haven
of light and safety. Faith in duty helps us to faith in God: faith in
God helps us to faith in duty. Duty and God, God and duty, that is the
full truth.[46]
[46] See Appendix XXXV.
LECTURE IX.
_A PRIORI_ THEISTIC PROOF.
I.
The arguments which we have been considering are not merely proofs
that God is, but indications of what He is. They testify to the Divine
existence by exhibiting the Divine character. They are expressions
of how He manifests Himself, and expositions of how we apprehend His
self-manifestations. We have seen that against each of them various
objections have been urged, but that these objections when examined
do not approve themselves to reason; they leave the arguments against
which they have been thrown quite unshaken. These arguments, however,
although perfectly conclusive so far as they go, do not, even in
combination, yield us the full idea of God which is entertained
wherever theism prevails. They show Him to be the First Cause of the
world--the Source of all the power, wisdom, and goodness displayed
therein. They do not prove Him to be infinite, eternal, absolute in
being and perfection. Yet it cannot be questioned that the cultivated
human mind thinks of God as the absolute, infinite, eternal, perfect
First Cause, and that no lower idea of God can satisfy it. The
intellect cannot accept, and the heart also revolts against, the
thought that God is dependent on any antecedent or higher Being; that
He is limited to a portion either of time or space; or that He is
devoid of any excellence, deficient in any perfection. Such a thought
is rejected as at once utterly unworthy of its object, and inherently
inconsistent.
Are we, then, rationally warranted to assign to God those attributes
which are called absolute or incommunicable? This is the question we
have now to answer. What has been proved makes it comparatively easy
to establish what is still unproved. We have ascertained that there
is a God, the First Cause of the universe, the powerful, wise, good,
and righteous Author of all things. We are conscious, also, that we
have ideas of infinity, eternity, necessary existence, perfection, &c.
We may be doubtful as to whence we got these ideas--we may feel that
there is very much which is vague and perplexing in them; but we cannot
question or deny that we have them. Having them, no matter how or
whence we have got them, and knowing that God is, as also in a measure
what He is, the remaining question for us is, Must these ideas apply to
God or not? Must the First Cause be thought of as eternal or not--as
infinite or finite, as perfect or imperfect? Reason, after it has
reached a certain stage of culture, has never found this a difficult
question. Indeed, often even before freeing itself from polytheism, it
has been internally constrained to ascribe to some of the objects of
adoration those very attributes of eternity, infinity, and perfection
which polytheism implicitly denies. Once it has come to believe that
the universe has its origin in a rational and righteous creative Will,
it can hardly refuse to admit that that Will must be infinite and
eternal. Where it has rejected polytheism without accepting theism,
it has been forced to acknowledge the world itself to be infinite and
eternal. When it has risen beyond the world, when it has reached an
intelligent cause of the world, it cannot, of course, refuse to that
cause the perfections which it would have granted to the effect--to the
Creator what it would have attributed to the creation. The first and
ultimate Being, and not any derived and dependent Being, must obviously
be the infinite, eternal, and perfect Being.
The proof that God is absolute in being and perfection should, it
seems to me, not precede but follow the proofs that there is a cause
sufficiently powerful, wise, and good to account for physical
nature, the mind of man, and the course of history. The usual mode
of conducting the theistic argumentation has been the reverse; it
has been to begin by endeavouring to prove, from principles held to
be intuitive and ideas held to be innate, the necessary existence,
absolute perfection, infinity, and eternity of God; or, in other words,
with what is called the _a priori_ or ontological arguments. This mode
of procedure seems to me neither judicious nor effective. If we have
not established that there is a God by reasoning from facts, we must
demonstrate His existence from ideas: but to get from the ideal to the
actual may be impossible, and is certain to be difficult; whereas, if
we have allowed facts to teach us all that they legitimately can about
the existence, power, wisdom, and righteousness of God, it may be easy
to show that our ideas of absolute being and perfection must apply to
Him, and can only apply to Him.
Theism, according to the view now expressed, is not vitally interested
in the fate of the so-called _a priori_ or ontological arguments.
There may be serious defects in all these arguments, considered as
formal demonstrations, and yet the conclusion which it is their aim to
establish may be in no way compromised. It may be that the principles
on which they rest do not directly involve the existence of God, and
yet that they certainly, although indirectly, imply it, so that
whoever denies it is rationally bound to set aside the fundamental
conditions of thought, and to deem consciousness essentially delusive.
It may be that the _a priori_ arguments are faulty as logical
evolutions of the truth of the Divine existence from ultimate and
necessary conceptions, and yet that they concur in manifesting that if
God be not, the human mind is of its very nature self-contradictory;
that God can only be disbelieved in at the cost of reducing the whole
world of thought to a chaos. Whether this be the case or not, some of
the _a priori_ proofs are so celebrated that I cannot pass them over in
entire silence.[47]
[47] See Appendix XXXVI.
There is a charge which has been very often brought against the _a
priori_ proofs, but which may be at once set aside as incorrect. It has
been alleged that they proceed on forgetfulness of the truth that the
Divine existence is the first and highest reality, and therefore cannot
be demonstrated from anything prior to or higher than itself. But in
no case that I know of have those who adopted what they supposed to be
the _a priori_ line of argument been under the delusion that the ground
of the existence of God was not in Himself, but in something outside
of or above Himself, from which His existence could be deduced. Such
a notion is, in fact, so self-contradictory, that no sane mind could
deliberately entertain it. It would imply that theism could be founded
on atheism. Whatever _a priori_ proof of the Divine existence may be,
it has certainly never been imagined by those who employed it to be
demonstration from an antecedent necessary cause.[48]
[48] See Appendix XXXVII.
_A priori_ proof is proof which proceeds from primary and necessary
principles of thought. From its very nature it could only appear at
a comparatively late period in the history of intelligence. It is
only a profound study of the constitution of thought, only a refined
reflective analysis of consciousness into its elements, which can
bring to light the principles which necessarily underlie and govern
all intellectual activity; and it is only on these principles that
_a priori_ proof is based. As these principles never exist in an
absolutely pure form, as what is universal and necessary in thought
is never found wholly apart from what is particular and contingent,
no absolutely pure _a priori_ argumentation need be looked for,
and certainly none such can be discovered in the whole history of
speculation.
Plato was, perhaps, the first to attempt to prove the existence of God
from the essential principles of knowledge. He could not consistently
reason from the impressions of sense or the phenomena of the visible
world. He denied that sense is knowledge, and that visible things
can be more than images and indications of truth. He maintained,
however, that besides the visible world there is an intelligible
world, with objects which reason sees and not sense. These objects
are either conceptions or ideas, either hypothetical principles or
absolute principles, either scientific assumptions and definitions or
necessary and eternal truths which have their reality and evidence in
themselves. The mathematical sciences deal with conceptions; but their
chief value, according to Plato, is that they help the mind to rise
to that absolute science--dialectics--which is conversant with ideas.
The apprehension of ideas is the apprehension of the common element in
the manifold, the universal in the individual, the permanent in the
mutable. Reason contemplates ideas, and participates in ideas, and
ideas are at once the essences of things and the regulative principles
of cognition. By communion with them the reason reaches objective
reality and possesses subjective certainty. They are not isolated and
unconnected, but so related that each higher idea comprehends within
it several lower ones, and that all combined constitute a graduated
series or articulated organism, unified and completed by an idea which
has none higher than itself, which is ultimate, which conditions all
the others while it is conditioned by none. The supreme idea, which
contains in itself all other ideas, is absolute truth, absolute beauty,
absolute good, absolute intelligence, and absolute being. It is the
source of all true existence, knowledge, and excellence. It is God. In
this part of its course the dialectic of Plato is simply a search for
God. It is _a priori_ inasmuch as it rests on necessary ideas, but _a
posteriori_ inasmuch as it proceeds from these ideas upwards to God
in a manner which is essentially analytic and inductive. Only when
God--the principle of principles--is reached, can it become synthetic
and deductive.
The question, Is the Platonic proof of the Divine existence
substantially true? is precisely equivalent to the question, Is the
Platonic philosophy substantially true? Of course, I cannot here
attempt to argue a theme so vast as Spiritualism _versus_ Empiricism,
Platonism _versus_ Positivism. My belief, however, is, that Platonism
is substantially true; that the objections which the empiricism and
positivism at present prevalent urge against its fundamental positions
are superficial and insufficient; that what is essential in its
theory of ideas, and in the theism inseparable from that theory, must
abide with our race for ever as a priceless possession. The Platonic
argument--by which is meant not a particular argument incidentally
employed by Plato, but the reasoning which underlies and pervades his
entire philosophy as a speculative search for certainty--has been
transmitted from age to age down to the present day by a long series
of eminent thinkers. Augustine, for example, argues for the existence
of God from the very nature of truth. It is impossible to think that
there is no truth. If there were none, to affirm that there was none
would be itself true; or, in other words, the denial of the existence
of truth is a self-contradiction. But what is truth? It is not mere
sensuous perception, not a something which belongs to the individual
mind and varies with its moods and peculiarities, but a something
which is unsensuous, unchangeable, and universal. The human reason
changes and errs in its judgments; but ideas, necessary truths, are not
the products, but the laws and conditions, of the human reason--they
are over it, and it is only through apprehending, realising, and
obeying them, that it enlightens and regulates our nature. These
ideas--the laws of our intellectual and moral constitution--cannot
have their source in us, but must be eternally inherent in an eternal,
unchangeable, and perfect Being. This Being--the absolute truth and
ultimate ground of all goodness--is God. Anselm reasoned in altogether
the same spirit and in nearly the same manner. In one of his works he
institutes an inquiry as to whether the goodness in good actions is
or is not the same thing present in all; and when he has convinced
himself that it is the same thing, he asks, What is it? and where has
it a real existence? Ascending upwards by these stages, Good _is_; Good
is _perfect_; Good is _one_; the one perfect Good is God,--he comes
to the conclusion that the goodness constitutive of good actions has
necessarily its source in God, and that the absolutely and essentially
good is identical with God. In another of his works he similarly
inquires whether there is any truth except mere actual existence. He
holds that there is, and argues, as he had done before in regard to the
good, that the absolute and ultimate truth must be God. Thomas Aquinas
was at one with Anselm thus far. The very nature of knowledge seemed to
him to show that it was in man only through the dependence of the human
intelligence on an underived and perfect intelligence.
Among the many modern philosophers who have adopted and enforced the
same doctrine I shall refer only to a few. Lord Herbert of Cherbury,
the founder of English deism, is very explicit on the subject.
He thought of the human mind as united in the closest and most
comprehensive way to the Divine mind through the universal notions of
what he called the rational instinct. These notions are the laws which
every faculty is meant to conform to and obey--the laws of all thought,
affection, and action. As to nature and origin, they are, in Herbert's
view, Divine; thoughts of God present in the mind of man; true
revelations of the Father of spirits to His children. In apprehending
one of them we have truly an intuition of a Divine attribute, of
some feature of the Divine character. It is through contact, through
communion with the Divine Intelligence, Love, and Will, that we know
and feel and act. The Divine is the root and the law of human thought,
emotion, and conduct. Not afar off, not to be realised by great stretch
of intellect, not separated by innumerable existences which intervene
between Him and us, but close around us, yea, with nothing between Him
and our inmost souls, is the Being with whom we have to do. "In Him,"
really and without any figure of speech, "we live, and move, and have
our being."
Among the various metaphysical proofs of Divine existence employed
by Cudworth, one is in like manner founded on the very nature of
knowledge. Knowledge, it is argued, is possible only through ideas
which have their source in an eternal reason. Sense is not only not
the whole of knowledge, but is in itself not at all knowledge; it
is wholly relative and individual, and not knowledge until the mind
adds to it what is absolute and universal. Knowledge does not begin
with what is individual, but with what is universal. The individual
is known by being brought under a universal, instead of the universal
being gathered from a multitude of individuals. And these universals
or ideas which underlie all the knowledge of all men, which originate
it and do not originate in it, have existed eternally in the only mode
in which truths can be said to be eternal, in an eternal mind. They
come to us from an eternal mind, which is their proper home, and of
which human reason is an emanation. "From whence it cometh to pass,
that all minds, in the several places and ages of the world, have ideas
or notions of things exactly alike, and truths indivisibly the same.
Truths are not multiplied by the diversity of minds that apprehend
them; because they are all but ectypal participations of one and the
same original or archetypal mind and truth. As the same face may be
reflected in several glasses; and the image of the same sun may be in a
thousand eyes at once beholding it; and one and the same voice may be
in a thousand ears listening to it: so when innumerable created minds
have the same ideas of things, and understand the same truths, it is
but one and the same eternal light that is reflected in them all ('that
light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world,') or the
same voice of that one everlasting Word that is never silent, re-echoed
by them."
Malebranche's celebrated theory of "seeing all things in God" is but an
exaggeration of the doctrine that "God is the light of all our seeing."
It found a zealous English defender in John Norris of Bemerton.
According to Malebranche and Norris, all objects are seen or understood
through ideas, which derive their existence neither from the senses nor
from the operations of the mind itself but are created in us by the
Deity; and which are not drawn from contemplation of the perfections
of the soul, but are inherent in the Divine nature. Better guarded
statements of the Platonic argument from necessary ideas will be found
in Leibnitz, and Bossuet, and Fenelon.
In the hands of Cousin more was again attempted to be deduced from it
than it could legitimately yield. We may reject, however, his opinion
that reason is not individual or personal, without rejecting with it
the substance at least of what he has so eloquently said regarding the
necessary ideas which govern the reason, or the reasoning by which he
seeks to show that truth is incomprehensible without God, and that all
thought implies a spontaneous faith in God. The most recent defenders
of theism employ in one form or another the same argument. In the works
of Ulrici, Hettinger, and Luthardt, of Saisset and Simon, of Thompson
and Tulloch, it still holds a prominent place.
I pass from it to indicate the character of some other arguments, which
are of a much more formal nature, but which have by no means commanded
so wide an assent. In fact, the arguments to which I now refer have
never laid hold of the common reason of men. They are the ingenious
constructions of highly-gifted metaphysicians, and have awakened much
interest in a certain number of speculative minds, but they have not
contributed in any considerable degree either to the maintenance or the
diffusion of theistic belief, and have had no lengthened continuous
history. They obviously stand, therefore, on a very different footing
from the proofs which have already been adduced--proofs which are
as catholic as the conclusions which they support, or as any of the
doctrines of the Christian system.
The Stoic philosopher Cleanthes, author of the famous Hymn to Zeus,
argued that every comparison, in affirming or denying one thing to
be better than another, implied and presupposed the existence of
a superlative or an absolutely good and perfect Being. Centuries
later, Boethius had recourse to nearly identical reasoning. It is
only, he maintained, through the idea of perfection that we can
judge anything to be imperfect; and the consciousness or perception
of imperfection leads reason necessarily to believe that there is a
perfect existence--one than whom a better cannot be conceived--God.
Cleanthes and Boethius were thus the precursors of Anselm, who was,
however, the first to endeavour to show that from the very idea of God
as the highest Being His necessary reality may be strictly deduced.
In consequence, Anselm was the founder of that kind of argumentation
which, in the opinion of many, is alone entitled to be described as
_a priori_ or ontological. He reasoned thus: "The fool may say in his
heart, There is no God; but he only proves thereby that he is a fool,
for what he says is self-contradictory. Since he denies that there is
a God, he has in his mind the idea of God, and that idea implies the
existence of God, for it is the idea of a Being than which a higher
cannot be conceived. That than which a higher cannot be conceived
cannot exist merely as an idea, because what exists merely as an idea
is inferior to what exists in reality as well as in idea. The idea
of a highest Being which exists merely in thought, is the idea of a
highest Being which is not the highest even in thought, but inferior
to a highest Being which exists in fact as well as in thought." This
reasoning found unfavourable critics even among the contemporaries of
Anselm, and has commended itself completely to few. Yet it may fairly
be doubted whether it has been conclusively refuted, and some of the
objections most frequently urged against it are certainly inadmissible.
It is no answer to it, for example, to deny that the idea of God is
innate or universal. The argument merely assumes that he who denies
that there is a God must have an idea of God. There is also no force,
as Anselm showed, in the objection of Gaunilo, that the existence of
God can no more be inferred from the idea of a perfect being, than the
existence of a perfect island is to be inferred from the idea of such
an island. There neither is nor can be an idea of an island which is
greater and better than any other that can ever be conceived. Anselm
could safely promise that he would make Gaunilo a present of such an
island when he had really imagined it. Only one being--an infinite,
independent, necessary being--can be perfect in the sense of being
greater and better than every other conceivable being. The objection
that the ideal can never logically yield the real--that the transition
from thought to fact must be in every instance illegitimate--is merely
an assertion that the argument is fallacious. It is an assertion which
cannot fairly be made until the argument has been exposed and refuted.
The argument is that a certain thought of God is found necessarily to
imply His existence. The objection that existence is not a predicate,
and that the idea of a God who exists is not more complete and perfect
than the idea of a God who does not exist, is, perhaps, not incapable
of being satisfactorily repelled. Mere existence is not a predicate,
but specifications or determinations of existence are predicable.
Now the argument nowhere implies that existence is a predicate; it
implies only that reality, necessity, and independence of existence
are predicates of existence; and it implies this on the ground that
existence _in re_ can be distinguished from existence _in conceptu_,
necessary from contingent existence, self-existence from derived
existence. Specific distinctions must surely admit of being predicated.
That the exclusion of existence--which here means real and necessary
existence--from the idea of God does not leave us with an incomplete
idea of God, is not a position, I think, which can be maintained. Take
away existence from among the elements in the idea of a perfect being,
and the idea becomes either the idea of a nonentity or the idea of an
idea, and not the idea of a perfect being at all. Thus, the argument
of Anselm is unwarrantably represented as an argument of four terms
instead of three. Those who urge the objection seem to me to prove only
that if our thought of God be imperfect, a being who merely realised
that thought would be an imperfect being; but there is a vast distance
between this truism and the paradox that an unreal being may be an
ideally perfect being.