general observations, which are meant to show that it is a necessary
and very laudable undertaking to attempt to prove that the belief in
religion, considered as a mere persuasion apart from the question
of its truth, may be advantageously dispensed with, any benefits
which flow from the belief being local, temporary, and such as may
be otherwise obtained, without the very large amount of alloy always
contained in religion. Yet we are told that "an argument for the
utility of religion is an appeal to unbelievers to induce them to
practise a well-meant hypocrisy; or to semi-believers to make them
avert their eyes from what might possibly shake their unstable belief;
or, finally, to persons in general to abstain from expressing any
doubts they may feel, since a fabric of immense importance to mankind
is so insecure at its foundations, that men must hold their breath in
its neighbourhood for fear of blowing it down." An argument for the
utility of religion is "moral bribery." An argument for its uselessness
is highly to be commended. Mr Mill further tells us that "little
has been written, at least in the way of discussion or controversy,
concerning the usefulness of religion;" and likewise, that "religious
writers have not neglected to celebrate to the utmost the advantage
both of religion in general and of their own religious faith in
particular." The inference must be, that what religious writers urge
for the utility of religion is not to be reckoned as reasoning; that
only what writers like Mr Bentham and Mr Mill urge against its utility
is to be thus regarded. The charity of this view is capped by the
assertion that "the whole of the prevalent metaphysics of the present
century is one tissue of suborned evidence in favour of religion;"
an assertion which is made amusing by following a sentence in which
Mr Mill speaks of "the intolerant zeal" of intuitionists. After his
general considerations, he professes to inquire what religion does for
society, but in reality never enters on the investigation. He devotes
two pages to insisting on "the enormous influence of authority on the
human mind;" three to emphasising "the tremendous power of education;"
and ten to enlarging on "the power of public opinion." He might as
relevantly have dwelt on the influence of reason, speech, the press,
machinery, clothes, marriage, and thousands of other things which
undoubtedly affect the intellectual and moral condition of society.
It is as unreasonable to infer that religion is useless because
authority, education, and public opinion are powerful, as it would
be to infer that the fire in a steam-engine might be dispensed with
because water is necessary. Any person who assumes, as Mr Mill assumed,
that authority, education, or public opinion may be contrasted with
religion--who does not see, as Mr Mill did not see, that all these
powers are correlatives, which necessarily intermingle with, imply,
and supplement one another--is, _ipso facto_, unable intelligently to
discuss the question, What does religion do for society? In the second
part of his essay, Mr Mill ought, in order to have kept his promise,
to have considered what influence religion in the sense of belief in
and love of God is naturally calculated to exert on the character and
conduct of the individual; but instead of this he applies himself to
the very different task of attempting to prove that "the idealisation
of our earthly life, the cultivation of a high conception of what it
may be made, is capable of supplying a poetry, and, in the best sense
of the word, a religion, equally fitted to exalt the feelings, and
(with the same aid from education) still better calculated to ennoble
the conduct, than any belief respecting the unseen powers." He forgets
to inquire whether there is any opposition between "the idealisation
of our earthly life" and "belief respecting the unseen powers," or
whether, on the contrary, religious belief is not the chief source of
the idealisation of our earthly life. That this logical error is as
serious as it is obvious, appears from the fact that ten years later
Mr Mill himself confessed that "it cannot be questioned that the
undoubting belief of the real existence of a Being who realises our
own best ideas of perfection, and of our being in the hands of that
Being as the ruler of the universe, gives an increase of force to our
aspirations after goodness beyond what they can receive from reference
to a merely ideal conception" (Theism, p. 252). His proof that the
worship of God is inferior to the religion of humanity rests mainly on
these three assertions: (1) That the former, "what now goes by the name
of religion," "operates merely through the feeling of self-interest;"
(2) That "it is impossible that any one who habitually thinks, and who
is unable to blunt his inquiring intellect by sophistry, should be able
without misgiving to go on ascribing absolute perfection to the author
and ruler of so clumsily made and capriciously governed a creation as
this planet and the life of its inhabitants;" and (3), That "mankind
can perfectly well do without the belief in a heaven." "It seems to me
not only possible, but probable, that in a higher, and, above all, a
happier condition of human life, not annihilation but immortality may
be the burdensome idea; and that human nature, though pleased with the
present, and by no means impatient to quit it, would find comfort and
not sadness in the thought that it is not chained through eternity to a
conscious existence which it cannot be assured that it will always wish
to preserve." On this last point more mature reflection brought him to
a different and wiser conclusion (see Theism, pp. 249, 250).
Those who wish to study the important subject of the relations of
religion and morality will find the following references useful: the
last chapter of M. Janet's 'La Morale;' the _étude_ on "La Morale
indépendante" in M. Caro's 'Problèmes de Morale Sociale;' many articles
and reviews in M. Renouvier's 'Critique Philosophique;' Martensen's
'Christian Ethics,' §§ 5-14; O. Pfleiderer's 'Moral und Religion;'
Luthardt's 'Apologetic Lectures on the Moral Truths of Christianity;'
and Bradley's 'Ethical Studies,' pp. 279-305.
NOTE III., page 18.
ETHICS OF RELIGIOUS INQUIRY.
Much has been written regarding the spirit and temper in which
religious truth should be pursued and defended. In a large number of
the general treatises both of apologetic and systematic theology,
the subject is considered, and not a few essays, lectures, &c., have
been specially devoted to it. The greater portion of this literature
may, I believe, be forgotten without loss, but there is a part of it
which will well repay perusal. The "Oratio de recto Theologi zelo" in
the first volume of the 'Opuscula' of Werenfels, is worthy of that
tolerant and philosophical divine. Archbishop Leighton's 'Exhortations
to Students' exhale from every line a heavenly ether and fragrance. It
will be long before Herder's 'Letters on the Study of Theology' are out
of date.
Dr Chalmers attached high value to the distinction between the ethics
of theology and the objects of theology, and expatiated with great
eloquence on the duty which is laid upon men by the probability or
even the imagination of a God (Nat. Theol., B. i. ch. i. ii.) "Man is
not to blame, if an atheist, because of the want of proof. But he is
to blame, if an atheist, because he has shut his eyes. He is not to
blame that the evidence for a God has not been seen by him, if no such
evidence there were within the field of his observation. But he is to
blame if the evidence have not been seen, because he turned away his
attention from it. That the question of a God may be unresolved in his
mind, all he has to do is to refuse a hearing to the question. He may
abide without the conviction of a God, if he so choose. But this his
choice is matter of condemnation. To resist God after that He is known,
is criminality towards Him; but to be satisfied that He should remain
unknown, is like criminality towards Him. There is a moral perversity
of spirit with him who is willing, in the midst of many objects of
gratification, that there should not be one object of gratitude. It is
thus that, even in the ignorance of God, there may be a responsibility
towards God. The Discerner of the heart sees whether, for the blessings
innumerable wherewith he has strewed the path of every man, He be
treated like the unknown benefactor who was diligently sought, or like
the unknown benefactor who was never cared for. In respect at least of
desire after God, the same distinction of character may be observed
between one man and another--whether God be wrapt in mystery, or stand
forth in full development to our world. Even though a mantle of deepest
obscurity lay over the question of His existence, this would not efface
the distinction between the piety on the one hand which laboured and
aspired after Him, and the impiety upon the other which never missed
the evidence that it did not care for, and so grovelled in the midst of
its own sensuality and selfishness. The eye of a heavenly witness is
upon all these varieties; and thus, whether it be darkness or whether
it be dislike which hath caused a people to be ignorant of God, there
is with Him a clear principle of judgment that He can extend even to
the outfields of atheism."--(Pp. 72, 73.)
The Rev. Alexander Leitch, in the First Part of his 'Ethics of Theism'
(1868), discusses in a thoughtful and suggestive manner the following
subjects: the reality and universality of the antithesis between
truth and error, the legitimate dependence in all cases of belief on
knowledge, the responsibility of man for his whole system of belief,
the distinction between mystery and contradiction, the distinction
between speculative and practical knowledge, the distinction between
certainty and probability, the standard of morality, and the claims of
reason and faith.
Mr Venn's 'Hulsean Lectures' for 1869 "are intended to illustrate,
explain, and work out into some of their consequences, certain
characteristics by which the attainment of religious belief is
prominently distinguished from the attainment of belief upon most other
subjects. These characteristics consist in the multiplicity of the
sources from which the evidence for religious belief is derived, and
the fact that our emotions contribute their share towards producing
conviction."
What I have said in the text ought not to be understood as implying any
doubt that men are largely responsible for their beliefs. This I accept
as an indubitable truth, although there is great room for difference of
opinion as to the limits of the responsibility; but it is a truth which
no one party in a discussion has a right to urge as against another
party. It is a law over all disputants, and is abused when severed from
tolerance and charity. Perhaps it has never been better expounded and
enforced than in Dr Pusey's 'Responsibility of the Intellect in Matters
of Faith' (1873).
That religious belief is in a great measure conditioned and determined
by character is implied in the whole argument of my third lecture.
In this fact lies the main reason why the highest evidence may not
produce belief even where there is no conscious dishonesty in those
who reject it. A person desirous of working himself fully into the
truth in this matter, will find excellent thoughts and suggestions in
Dr Newman's 'Fifteen Sermons preached before the University of Oxford,
between A.D. 1826 and 1843,' and in Principal Shairp's 'Culture and
Religion.'
NOTE IV., page 23.
TRADITIVE THEORY OF RELIGION.
Mr Fairbairn makes the following remarks on the theory which traces
religion to a primitive revelation: "Although often advanced in the
supposed interests of religion, the principle it assumes is most
irreligious. If man is dependent on an outer revelation for his idea
of God, then he must have what Schelling happily termed 'an original
atheism of consciousness.' Religion cannot, in that case, be rooted
in the nature of man--must be implanted from without. The theory that
would derive man's religion from a revelation is as bad as the theory
that would derive it from distempered dreams. Revelation may satisfy or
rectify, but cannot create, a religious capacity or instinct; and we
have the highest authority for thinking that man was created 'to seek
the Lord, if haply he might feel after and find Him'--the finding being
by no means dependent on a written or traditional word. If there was
a primitive revelation, it must have been--unless the word is used in
an unusual and misleading sense--either written or oral. If written,
it could hardly be primitive, for writing is an art, a not very early
acquired art, and one which does not allow documents of exceptional
value to be easily lost. If it was oral, then either the language for
it was created or it was no more primitive than the written. Then an
oral revelation becomes a tradition, and a tradition requires either
a special caste for its transmission, becomes therefore its property,
or must be subjected to multitudinous changes and additions from the
popular imagination--becomes, therefore, a wild commingling of broken
and bewildering lights. But neither as documentary nor traditional can
any traces of a primitive revelation be discovered, and to assume it is
only to burden the question with a thesis which renders a critical and
philosophic discussion alike impossible."--Studies in the Philosophy of
Religion and History, pp. 14, 15.
There is an examination of the same theory in the learned and able work
of Professor Cocker of Michigan on 'Christianity and Greek Philosophy'
(1875). He argues: 1. "That it is highly improbable that truths so
important and vital to man, so essential to the wellbeing of the human
race, so necessary to the perfect development of humanity as are the
ideas of God, duty, and immortality, should rest on so precarious and
uncertain a basis as tradition." 2. "That the theory is altogether
incompetent to explain the _universality_ of religious rites, and
especially of religious ideas." 3. "That a verbal revelation would be
inadequate to convey the knowledge of God to an intelligence purely
passive and utterly unfurnished with any _a priori_ ideas or necessary
laws of thought."--Pp. 86-96.
A good history of the traditive theory of the diffusion of religion is
a desideratum in theological literature.
NOTE V., page 29.
NORMAL DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY.
The truth that social development ought to combine and harmonise
permanence and progress, liberty and authority, the rights of
the individual and of the community, has been often enforced and
illustrated. The earnestness with which Comte did so in both of his
chief works is well known. A philosopher of a very different stamp, F.
v. Baader, has in various of his writings given expression to profound
thoughts on the subject. His essay entitled 'Evolutionismus und
Revolutionismus des gesellschaftlichen Lebens' merits to be specially
mentioned. Alexander Vinet has often been charged with a one-sided
individualism, and perhaps not altogether without justice; but he
always maintained that he was merely the advocate of individuality.
"Individualism and individuality are two sworn enemies; the first
being the obstacle and negation of all society--the second, that to
which society owes all it possesses of savour, life, and reality.
Nowhere does individualism prosper more easily than where there is an
absence of individuality; and there is no more atomistic policy than
that of despotism." Vinet has probably not held the balance exactly
poised between the individual and society; but his dissertations, 'Sur
l'individualité et l'individualisme' and 'Du rôle de l'individualité
dans une réforme sociale,' would have been far less valuable than they
are if he had forgotten that, although it is the individual who thinks,
the thought of the individual cannot form itself outside of society
nor without its aid. But he did not, as words like the following
sufficiently prove:--"It is better to connect ourselves with society
than to learn to dispense with it, or rather to persuade ourselves
that we are able to dispense with it. It is only given to the brute to
suffice to itself. Man has been chained to man. We hardly give more
credit to spontaneous generation in the intellectual sphere than in the
physical world; the most individual work is to a certain point the work
of all the world; everywhere _solidarity_ reappears, without, however,
any prejudice to liberty: God has willed it so." "It is with the soul
engaged in the life of religion, or that of thought, as with the vessel
launched upon the waters, and seeking beyond the ocean for the shores
of a new world. This ocean is society, religious or civil. It bears
us just as the ocean does--fluid mass, on which the vessel can indeed
trace furrows, but may nowhere halt. The ocean bears the ship, but the
ocean may swallow it up, and sometimes does so; society swallows us
up still more often, but yet it is what upbears us; nor can we arrive
without being upborne by it, for it is like the sea, which, less fluid
than the air, and less dense than the earth, just yields to and resists
us enough to sustain without impeding our progress towards the desired
goal." There are no finer pages in Martensen's 'Christian Ethics' than
those in which he treats of "individualism and socialism," "liberty
and authority in the development of society," and "conservatism and
progress." The most adequate historical proof and illustration of the
truth in question as to the nature of social evolution will be found in
the Earl of Crawford's 'Progression by Antagonism' and 'Scepticism and
the Church of England.'
NOTE VI., page 32.
DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION BY THE HIGHEST TYPE.
Dr Whewell maintained that in natural history groups are fixed not by
definition, but by type. "The class," he wrote, "is steadily fixed,
though not precisely limited; it is given, though not circumscribed; it
is determined not by a boundary-line without, but by a central point
within; not by what it strictly excludes, but by what it eminently
includes; by an example, not by a precept; in short, instead of
Definition we have a Type for our director. A type is an example of
any class--for instance, a species of a genus--which is considered
as eminently possessing the characters of the class. All the species
which have a greater affinity with this type-species than with any
others form the genus, and are ranged about it, deviating from it
in various directions and different degrees."--Philosophy of the
Inductive Sciences, vol. i. pp. 476, 477. Dr Whewell, it will be
observed, was more cautious in his language than the theologians to
whom I have referred. He did not speak of defining by type, but only
of classifying, not by definition, but by type. His motive, however,
for entertaining the view he laid down, was obviously the same which
has led so many theologians to give definitions of religion which are
only applicable to its highest forms. Probably it was insufficient.
Prof. Huxley (Lay Sermons, pp. 90-92) very justly, it seems to me,
argues that classification by type is caused by ignorance, and that as
soon as the mind gets a scientific knowledge of a class it defines.
Nothing which is not precisely limited is steadily fixed; nothing
which is not circumscribed is exactly given: if the boundary-line is
not determined, the central point cannot be accurately ascertained;
what is eminently included cannot be known so long as what is strictly
excluded is unknown. While assenting to the view of Prof. Huxley in
the passage indicated, I may remark that he falls into one error which
rather forcibly illustrates what is said in the page to which this
note refers regarding the necessary poverty of the significance of a
strictly scientific definition of an extensive class. He instances as
a definition which is of a truly scientific kind and "rigorous enough
for a geometrician," the following: "Mammalia are all animals which
have a vertebrated skeleton and suckle their young." But clearly this
definition says too much if we are to criticise it rigorously. Were
it true, there would be no males among mammalia. The definition is in
strictness applicable to females only.
NOTE VII., page 38.
PSYCHOLOGICAL NATURE OF RELIGION.
In this note I shall briefly summarise three class lectures on the
psychological nature of religion.
1. Investigations into the psychological nature of religion date only
from about the end of last century.
For ages previously men sought to know what religion was; but they
attempted to find an answer merely by reflection on positive or
objective religion. Kant opened up to them a new path--that of
investigation into the nature of religion as an internal or mental
fact. O. Pfleiderer's account (Die Religion, pp. 5-124) of the
researches thus started characterised, and criticised.
2. The testimony of consciousness is sufficient to establish the
existence of religion as a subjective or mental state, but cannot
certify whether, as such, it be simple or complex, primary or
derivative, coextensive with human consciousness, or wider or narrower,
or whether there be anything objectively corresponding to it.
3. In order to analyse religion, the ultimate genera of consciousness
must be ascertained, which has only been slowly done. History of
the process: Plato, Aristotle, their followers, Descartes, Spinoza,
the English philosophers from Bacon to Dugald Stewart, Kant and the
German psychologists, Brown, Hamilton, and Bain. Establishment of the
threefold division of mental phenomena into cognitions, emotions, and
volitions. Difficulties of the division shown by the author in 'Mind,'
No. V.
Religion must be a state of intellect, sensibility, or will, or some
combination of two or all of these factors.
4. Religion may be held to consist essentially and exclusively of
knowledge; but this mistake is too gross to have been frequently
committed.
The Gnostics, the earlier and scholastic theologians, the rationalists,
Schelling and Cousin, have been charged with this error. The grounds of
the charge indicated. Shown to be in all these cases exaggerated.
5. Schleiermacher refutes the theory by the consideration that the
measure of our knowledge is not the measure of our religion.
Vindication and illustration of his argument. Service rendered by
Schleiermacher to religion and theology in this connection.
6. Hegel came nearest to the identification of religion and thought,
maintaining that sentiment was the lowest manifestation of religion,
while the comprehension of the absolute, the highest knowledge,
was its complete realisation, as also that religion was the
self-consciousness of God through the mediation of the finite spirit.
Exposition and criticism of this theory. Examination of Vera's defence
of it. Worship supposes two persons morally and spiritually as well as
intellectually related.
7. While no mere intellectual act constitutes religion, the exercise of
reason is an essential part of religion.
The denial of this an error prevalent among the modern theologians of
Germany, owing to their accepting Kant's argumentation against the
possibility of apprehending God by the speculative or pure reason as
conclusive. If religion have no rational foundation, it has no real
foundation. Reason does not apprehend merely what is finite. True place
of reason in religion.
8. Religion has often been resolved into feeling or sentiment,
but erroneously, since whatever feeling is fixed on requires some
explanation of its existence, and this can only be found in some act or
exercise of intellect.
9. Epicurus, Lucretius, and Hume have traced religion to fear.
10. Fear explains atheism better than it explains religion, and in
order even to be feared God must be believed in.
Men fear a great many things. Mere fear founds nothing, but only causes
efforts to avoid the presence or thought of its object. Fear enters
into religion, and is filial in the higher, and servile in the lower,
forms of religion.
11. Feuerbach resolves religion into desire--into an ignorant and
illusive personification of man's own nature as he would wish it to be.
12. This view presupposes the truth of atheism, does not explain why
man should refer to supramundane ends or objects, and is contradicted
by the historical facts, which show that reason and conscience have at
least co-operated with desire in the origination and development of
religion.
13. Schleiermacher resolves religion into a feeling of absolute
dependence--of pure and complete passiveness.
Statement of his theory. Shown to rest on a pantheistic conception of
the Divine Being. His reduction of the Divine attributes into _power_.
14. No such feeling can exist, the mind being incapable of experiencing
a feeling of nothingness--a consciousness of unconsciousness.
15. Could it be supposed to exist, it would have no religious
character, because wholly blind and irrational.
16. The theory of Schleiermacher makes the moral and religious
consciousness subversive of each other, the former affirming and the
latter denying our freedom and responsibility.
17. Mansel supposes the religious consciousness to be traceable to
the feeling of dependence and the conviction of moral obligation; but
the latter feeling implies the perception of moral law, and is not
religious unless there be also belief in a moral lawgiver.
18. Schenkel represents conscience as 'the religious organ of the
soul,' but this is not consistent with the fact that conscience is the
faculty which distinguishes right from wrong.
Schenkel's view of conscience shown to make its religious testimony
contradict its ethical testimony.
19. Strauss combines the views of Epicurus, Feuerbach, and
Schleiermacher; but three errors do not make a truth.
Account of the criticism to which the Straussian theory of religion has
been subjected by Vera, Ulrici, and Professor H. B. Smith.
20. Although there can be no true religion without love, and although
to love the true God with the whole heart is the ideal of religion,
religion cannot be resolved exclusively into love; since love
presupposes knowledge, and is not the predominant feeling, if present
at all, in the lower forms of religion.
21. Religion includes will, implying the free and deliberate surrender
of the soul to God,--the making self an instrument where it might,
although wrongfully, have been made an end,--but it is not merely will,
since all volition, properly so called, presupposes reason and feeling.