Bain's interpretation of them is incorrect. "True, it is inseparable
from the very nature of a desire, that there must be some enjoyment or
other at the time of its gratification; but, in the case of these evil
affections, it is not unmixed enjoyment." The following passage is,
however, still more explicit: "There is a certain species of enjoyment
common to all our affections. It were a contradiction in terms to
affirm otherwise; for it were tantamount to saying, that an affection
may be gratified without the actual experience of a gratification.
There must be some sensation or other of happiness at the time when a
man attains that which he is seeking for; and if it be not a positive
sensation of pleasure, it will at least be the sensation of a relief
from pain, as when one meets with the opportunity of wreaking upon its
object that indignation which had long kept his heart in a tumult of
disquietude. We therefore would mistake the matter if we thought that a
state even of thorough and unqualified wickedness was exclusive of all
enjoyment, for even the vicious affections must share in that enjoyment
which inseparably attaches to every affection at the moment of its
indulgence. And thus it is that even in the veriest Pandemonium might
there be lurid gleams of ecstasy and shouts of fiendish exultation--the
merriment of desperadoes in crime, who send forth the outcries of their
spiteful and savage delight when some deep-laid villany has triumphed,
or when, in some dire perpetration of revenge, they have given full
satisfaction and discharge to the malignity of their accursed nature.
The assertion, therefore, may be taken too generally, when it is stated
that there is no enjoyment whatever in the veriest hell of assembled
outcasts; for even there, might there be many separate and specific
gratifications. And we must abstract the pleasure essentially involved
in every affection at the instant of its indulgence, and which cannot
possibly be disjoined from it, ere we see clearly and distinctively
wherein it is that, in respect of enjoyment, the virtuous and vicious
affections differ from each other. For it is true that there is a
common resemblance between them; and that, by the universal law and
nature of affection, there must be some sort of agreeable sensation
in the act of their obtaining that which they are seeking after. Yet
it is no less true that, did the former affections bear supreme rule
in the heart, they would brighten and tranquillise the whole of human
existence; whereas, had the latter the entire and practical ascendancy,
they would distemper the whole man, and make him as completely wretched
as he was completely worthless." Dr Chalmers, then, did not call in
question the pleasures of malevolence.
NOTE XXX., page 232.
HISTORY OF THE MORAL PROOF.
Conscience has from the earliest times and among the rudest peoples
exercised great influence in the formation of religious belief. Moral
reasons weighed with men in their origination and elaboration of
religion long before they expressed them in abstract propositions and
logical forms. The historical proof of this truth is so ample that it
would require a volume to do it justice: all literatures might be made
to yield contributions to it.
The simplest form of the moral argument, and the one which has been
most generally employed, is that of an inference from the moral law to
a moral lawgiver. Closely associated with it are those forms which rest
on the emotions involved in or accompanying virtue and guilt. These
are the directest modes of exhibiting what Chalmers calls "the theology
of conscience, which is not only of wider diffusion but of far more
practical influence than the theology of academic demonstration."
Raymond of Sebonde, in a work which I have previously had occasion to
mention, was perhaps the first to present it in a more artificial form.
He argues thus: Man is a responsible being who can neither reward nor
punish himself, and who must consequently be under a superior being
who will reward and punish him, unless his life is to be regarded as
vain and purposeless--unless even the whole of external nature, which
is subject to man and exists for his sake, is to be pronounced aimless
and useless. External nature, however, is seen to be throughout orderly
and harmonious; how can we suppose the moral world to be disorderly
and chaotic? As the eye corresponds to things visible, the ear to
things audible, the reason to things intelligible, so conscience must
correspond to a judgment which implies some one to pronounce it, and to
a retribution which implies some one to inflict it. But this some one
must be absolutely just; he must be omniscient, as possessing a perfect
knowledge of all human actions, and a thorough insight into their moral
character; omnipotent, to execute his judgments; and, in a word, must
be the most perfect of all beings--_i.e._, God.
Kant's argument is thus summarised by the Archbishop of York: "The
highest good of man consists of two parts, the greatest possible
morality and happiness. The former is the demand of his spiritual, the
latter of his animal nature. The former only, his morality, is within
his own power; and while, by persevering virtue, he makes this his
personal character, he is often compelled to sacrifice his happiness.
But since the desire of happiness is neither irrational nor unnatural,
he justly concludes either that there is a Supreme Being who will so
guide the course of things (the natural world, not of itself subject to
moral laws) as to render his holiness and happiness equal, or that the
dictates of his conscience are unjust and irrational. But the latter
supposition is morally impossible; and he is compelled, therefore, to
receive the former as true."
Akin to this argument are those which are based on man's desire of
good. Proclus, in his 'Theology of Plato,' argues to the following
effect: All beings desire the good; but this good cannot be identical
with the beings which desire it, for then these beings would be
themselves the good, and would not desire what they already possessed.
The good is antecedent, therefore, to all the beings who desire it.
Since the time of Proclus to the present many have argued that there
must be a God because the heart demands one to satisfy its desire
of love, or holiness, or happiness; few, perhaps, have done so with
more ingenuity of logic or fervour of belief than John Norris in
"Contemplation and Love, or the Methodical Ascent of the Soul to God
by steps of Meditation," and in "An Idea of Happiness" ('Collection of
Miscellanies').
A contemporary theologian, Principal Pirie of Aberdeen, has laid great
stress on an argument which we may assign to this class. "No argument,"
he says, "can be valid which founds on innate ideas, or which embraces
considerations so entirely beyond the range of human apprehension that
we cannot positively be assured whether they be true or false. Yet
we have no hesitation in saying that there is an argument _a priori_
for the existence and attributes of a God, which is involved in
the very nature of our feelings, and which therefore tells upon the
faith of the whole human race, even when they are altogether ignorant
of it logically, as existing in the form of a proposition. It makes
no appeal, however, to profound metaphysical speculations, and is
consequently plain and intelligible to any one capable of exercising
reason at all. It rests on the principle which both our feelings
and our experience demonstrate to be true, that every primary and
essential desire of the human mind has a co-relative--or, in other
words, a something to gratify it--existing in the nature of things.
The mode in which the development of this principle constitutes an
argument _a priori_ for the existence and attributes of a God we now
proceed to explain. Every human being feels from the moment in which
he comes into existence, and through his whole subsequent history,
that he is in himself a weak, helpless creature. As we have said, this
feeling begins from the very beginning of our conscious existence.
The appeals of the infant for aid are made continually.... As we
advance to childhood, youth, and manhood, our sense of power gradually
increases. We are conscious that under certain circumstances we can do
something for ourselves. Yet this capability, we are also conscious
in its very exercise, does not depend on us for its continuance. We
cannot preserve to ourselves fortune, health, or even life, for _a
single moment_. Yet all these things we desire, and desire with the
utmost earnestness, and desire as a primary tendency of our minds. We
may not indeed always clothe such desire in words--we may not put it
into the form of a proposition; but that it exists in every mind as a
feeling, and practically operates upon every individual, is as certain
as our existence itself, and is indeed manifest every moment in the
efforts which we make to preserve these and all other forms of what we
believe to involve happiness. In this desire, consequently, we have the
voice of nature speaking, and commanding us to use such efforts. Of
ourselves we know that they would be insufficient. The results depend
upon causes over which we have no control. Our own efforts, we are
conscious, are only means which nature has appointed us to employ, but
their success depends on circumstances altogether beyond our power. It
is, as has been said, the voice of nature telling us that each of our
desires has a co-relative, through which it may be fully gratified by
the use of the proper means. This co-relative, in the case of intense
and permanent happiness, can only be found in the existence of a God,
omnipotent, omniscient, true, just, benevolent, and eternal, _in whom
we repose entire confidence_. No other assumption could by possibility
satisfy our desire for the highest and permanent happiness now and for
ever. For to realise thoroughly the argument, it is to be observed
that our desire is for the highest and permanent happiness. It is not
imperfect or temporary happiness merely which we desire, though we may
be compelled to be content with this, if we cannot procure more. It
is the highest happiness possible for our natures, and that without
end. Now, if such happiness is to be attained at all, it can only
be obtained through a God possessed of the attributes which we have
enumerated."--Natural Theology, pp. 71-74.
Prof. Wace, in the second course of his Boyle Lectures--Christianity
and Morality (1876)--has exhibited, with considerable detail, and in
an ingenious and eloquent manner, the testimony which conscience bears
to a personal God, a moral Creator, and a moral Governor. A glimpse
of his general idea may be obtained from the following words: "In our
endeavour to trace in the conscience, and in the personal experience
of individuals, the roots of our faith in a God of infinite power,
wisdom, and goodness, we have now advanced two considerable steps
beyond our first and simplest sense of right and wrong. We have seen
that this sense, when allowed to speak with its full imperative and
personal force, arouses in us, as it aroused in the Psalmist, a sense
of our being in contact with a personal and righteous Will. This
conviction necessarily involves, as it involved in the writer of the
139th Psalm, the further belief that an authority which has this claim
upon our obedience in every particular of our conduct, in all our
thoughts and acts, must at the same time be the author and source of
our whole constitution; that the righteous eyes which now penetrate,
whether through darkness or through light, to the very depths of our
souls, must also have seen our 'substance, yet being imperfect,' and
that in their book must all our members have been written. If it be
the imperative and paramount law of our nature to obey our conscience,
and to make moral perfection, or spiritual excellence, our ultimate
aim, we cannot but conclude that our whole nature, and the whole order
of things in which we are placed, is in the hands of a moral power;
and that, as we are fearfully and wonderfully made for righteous and
reasonable ends, it must be by a righteous and reasonable Will that we
are made. The conscience of man must never be omitted from our view of
the design of man; and it is only when we contemplate the adjustment of
his whole nature to the purposes of the loftiest moral development,
that the argument from design acquires its full strength.... The
apprehension of a Power which establishes righteousness as the law of
life, involves also the conviction that it is able to enforce that
law, and to render it finally and everywhere supreme. The conviction,
indeed, is one of faith and not of demonstration; and the Scriptures,
no less than life, are full of instances in which this faith is
tried by the bitterest experience. Even prophets, as I have before
observed, are at times driven to the cry that 'the law is slacked,
and that judgment doth never go forth.' But the deepest instincts and
necessities of conscience forbid the toleration of any such instinct of
despair. If right were not essentially and ultimately might, I do not
say--God forbid--that it would not still claim the supreme allegiance
of the soul; but life would be a bitter mockery and an inexplicable
cruelty. Not merely to be under an imperative law to pursue that
which cannot be realised, but to be bound to such a fruitless pursuit
by every noble and lovely influence--to be condemned in moral and
spiritual realities to the torments of a Tantalus--this is a conception
of human life against which the whole soul rebels. Accordingly, a God
of all righteousness must of necessity be regarded as a God of all
power.... That 'categorical imperative' of the conscience, on which the
German philosopher insisted, is imperative in demanding not only a God,
but an Almighty God."
NOTE XXXI., page 235.
DEFECTS IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD.
Lucretius (ii. 177-v. 196) has dwelt on the arrangements which render
one zone of the earth torrid and others frigid--on the extent of barren
heaths and rocks, of sands and seas--on the prevalence of unseasonable
weather, storms, and tempests--and on the abundance of noxious herbs
and destructive animals, &c.--as evidences that the earth was faulty
and ill made, and could not be the work of a Divine Intelligence.
Whether it was well or ill made appears to have been a favourite
subject of dispute between the Epicureans and Stoics. Lactantius (De
Ira Dei, c. xiii.) reports, and attempts to answer, the objections
which the Epicureans and Academics were accustomed to urge against
the constitution of the physical world. In Cudworth's 'Intellectual
System,' vol. iii., pp. 464-8, Bentley's 'Folly of Atheism,' pt.
i., Serm. 8; Derham's 'Astro-Theology,' book vii., c. 2, &c., such
objections are discussed. In the remarks which I made on the subject in
the lecture, I have had chiefly in view the opinions of Comte, J. S.
Mill, and J. J. Murphy (Scientific Bases of Faith, c. xvi.)
Mr Mill's charges against nature are very vigorously and graphically
expressed. "Next to the greatness of these cosmic forces, the quality
which most forcibly strikes every one who does not avert his eyes
from it, is their perfect and absolute recklessness. They go straight
to their end, without regarding what or whom they crush on the road.
Optimists, in their attempts to prove that 'whatever is, is right,'
are obliged to maintain, not that Nature ever turns one step from
her path to avoid trampling us into destruction, but that it would
be very unreasonable in us to expect that she should. Pope's 'Shall
gravitation cease when you go by?' may be a just rebuke to any one who
should be so silly as to expect common human morality from Nature. But
if the question were between two men, instead of between a man and
a natural phenomenon, that triumphant apostrophe would be thought a
rare piece of impudence. A man who should persist in hurling stones
or firing cannon when another man 'goes by,' and, having killed him,
should urge a similar plea in exculpation, would very deservedly be
found guilty of murder. In sober truth, nearly all the things which
men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another, are Nature's
everyday performances. Killing, the most criminal act recognised by
human laws, Nature does once to every being that lives, and in a
large proportion of cases after protracted tortures, such as only
the greatest monsters whom we read of ever purposely inflicted on
their living fellow-creatures. If, by an arbitrary reservation, we
refuse to account anything murder but what abridges to a certain term
supposed to be allotted to human life, Nature also does this to all
but a small percentage of lives, and does it in all the modes, violent
or insidious, in which the worst human beings take the lives of one
another. Nature impales men, breaks them as if on the wheel, casts
them to be devoured by wild beasts, burns them to death, crushes them
with stones like the first Christian martyr, starves them with hunger,
freezes them with cold, poisons them by the quick or slow venom of her
exhalations, and has hundreds of other hideous deaths in reserve, such
as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed.
All this Nature does with the most supercilious disregard both of
mercy and of justice, emptying her shafts upon the best and noblest
indifferently with the meanest and worst--upon those who are engaged
in the highest and worthiest enterprises, and often as the direct
consequence of the noblest acts,--and it might almost be imagined as
a punishment for them. She mows down those on whose existence hangs
the wellbeing of a whole people, perhaps the prospects of the human
race for generations to come, with as little compunction as those
whose death is a relief to themselves, or a blessing to those under
their noxious influence. Such are Nature's dealings with life. Even
when she does not intend to kill, she inflicts the same tortures in
apparent wantonness. In the clumsy provision which she has made for
that perpetual renewal of animal life, rendered necessary by the
prompt termination she puts to it in every individual case, no human
being ever comes into the world but another human being is literally
stretched on the rack for hours or days, not unfrequently issuing in
death. Next to taking life (equal to it, according to a high authority)
is taking the means by which we live; and Nature does this, too, on
the largest scale and with the most callous indifference. A single
hurricane destroys the hopes of a season; a flight of locusts, or an
inundation, desolates a district; a trifling chemical change in an
edible root starves a million of people. The waves of the sea, like
banditti, seize and appropriate the wealth of the rich and the little
all of the poor with the same accompaniments of stripping, wounding,
and killing, as their human antitypes. Everything, in short, which the
worst men commit either against life or property, is perpetrated on a
larger scale by natural agents. Nature has _noyades_ more fatal than
those of Carrier; her explosions of fire-damp are as destructive as
human artillery; her plague and cholera far surpass the poison-cups
of the Borgias. Even the love of 'order,' which is thought to be a
following of the ways of Nature, is, in fact, a contradiction of them.
All which people are accustomed to deprecate as 'disorder' and its
consequences, is precisely a counterpart of Nature's ways. Anarchy and
the Reign of Terror are overmatched in injustice, ruin, and death, by a
hurricane and a pestilence."--Three Essays, pp. 28-31.
The opinion that the world would be either physically or morally
improved were gravitation to cease when men went by, were fire not
always to burn and were water occasionally to refuse to drown, were
laws few and miracles numerous, may safely be left to refute itself.
Therefore, let me simply set over against Mr Mill's censure of Nature
Wordsworth's praise:--
"Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy; for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore, let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure, when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me
And these my exhortations!"
NOTE XXXII., page 241.
NO BEST POSSIBLE CREATED SYSTEM.
Dante has given magnificent expression to the truth that no created
system can be absolutely perfect:--
"Colui che volse il sesto
Allo stremo del mondo, e dentro ad esso
Distinse tanto occulto e manifesto,
Non poteo suo valor si fare impresso
In tutto l'universo, che il suo verbo
Non rimanesse in infinito eccesso.
E ciò fa certo, che il primo Superbo,
Che fu la somma d'ogni creatura,
Per non aspettar lume, cadde acerbo:
E quinci appar ch' ogni minor natura
È corto recettacolo a quel bene
Che non ha fine, e se in se misura.
Dunque nostra veduta, che conviene
Essere alcun de' raggi della mente
Di che tutte le cose son ripiene,
Non può di sua natura esser possente
Tanto, che suo principio non discerna
Molto di là, da quel ch' egli è, parvente.
Però nella giustizia sempiterna
La vista che riceve il vostro mondo,
Com' occhio per lo mare, entro s' interna;
Che, benchè dalla proda veggia il fondo,
In pelago nol vede; e nondimeno
Egli è; ma cela lui l'esser profondo."
--_Del Paradiso_, cant. xix. 40-63.
"He his compasses who placed
At the world's limit, and within the line
Drew beauties, dimly or distinctly traced--
Could not upon the universe so write
The impress of his power, but that His Word
Must still be left in distance infinite:
And hence 'tis evident that he in heaven
Created loftiest his fate incurred
Because he would not wait till light was given.
And hence are all inferior creatures shown
Scant vessels of that Goodness unconfined
Which nought can measure save Itself alone.
Therefore our intellect--a feeble beam,
Struck from the light of the Eternal Mind,
With which all things throughout creation teem,--
Must by its nature be incapable,
Save in a low and most remote degree,
Of viewing its exalted principle.
Wherefore the heavenly Justice can no more
By mortal ken be fathomed than the sea:
For though the eye of one upon the shore
May pierce its shallows, waves unfathomed bound
His further sight, yet under them is laid
A bottom, viewless through the deep profound."
--WRIGHT.
NOTE XXXIII., page 245.
DEFECTS IN THE ORGANIC WORLD.
The objections to final causes from alleged defects in the organic
world have been answered with wisdom and success by M. Janet, in his
'Causes Finales,' pp. 313-348.
The views of Professor Helmholtz as to the defects of the eye will be
found stated at length in his popular lectures on scientific subjects.
The chief defects enumerated are: 1. Chromatic aberration, connected
with 2. Spherical aberration and defective centring of the cornea
and lens, together producing the imperfection known as astigmatism;
3. Irregular radiation round the images of illuminated points; 4.
Defective transparency; 5. Floating corpuscles, and 6. The "blind spot"
with other gaps in the field of vision. "The eye has every possible
defect that can be found in an optical instrument, and even some
which are peculiar to itself." "It is not too much to say that if an
optician wanted to sell me an instrument which had all these defects, I
should think myself quite justified in blaming his carelessness in the
strongest terms, and giving him back his instrument. Of course I shall
not do this with my eyes, and shall be only too glad to keep them as
long as I can--defects and all. Still, the fact that, however bad they
may be, I can get no others, does not at all diminish their defects, so
long as I maintain the narrow but indisputable position of a critic on
purely optical grounds."