which I am setting before you, to imagine what cannot be. I say, let us
imagine a project for organizing a system of scientific teaching, in which
the agency of man in the material world cannot allowably be recognized,
and may allowably be denied. Physical and mechanical causes are
exclusively to be treated of; volition is a forbidden subject. A
prospectus is put out, with a list of sciences, we will say, Astronomy,
Optics, Hydrostatics, Galvanism, Pneumatics, Statics, Dynamics, Pure
Mathematics, Geology, Botany, Physiology, Anatomy, and so forth; but not a
word about the mind and its powers, except what is said in explanation of
the omission. That explanation is to the effect that the parties concerned
in the undertaking have given long and anxious thought to the subject, and
have been reluctantly driven to the conclusion that it is simply
impracticable to include in the list of University Lectures the Philosophy
of Mind. What relieves, however, their regret is the reflection, that
domestic feelings and polished manners are best cultivated in the family
circle and in good society, in the observance of the sacred ties which
unite father, mother, and child, in the correlative claims and duties of
citizenship, in the exercise of disinterested loyalty and enlightened
patriotism. With this apology, such as it is, they pass over the
consideration of the human mind and its powers and works, “in solemn
silence,” in their scheme of University Education.
Let a charter be obtained for it; let professors be appointed, lectures
given, examinations passed, degrees awarded:—what sort of exactness or
trustworthiness, what philosophical largeness, will attach to views formed
in an intellectual atmosphere thus deprived of some of the constituent
elements of daylight? What judgment will foreign countries and future
times pass on the labours of the most acute and accomplished of the
philosophers who have been parties to so portentous an unreality? Here are
professors gravely lecturing on medicine, or history, or political
economy, who, so far from being bound to acknowledge, are free to scoff at
the action of mind upon matter, or of mind upon mind, or the claims of
mutual justice and charity. Common sense indeed and public opinion set
bounds at first to so intolerable a licence; yet, as time goes on, an
omission which was originally but a matter of expedience, commends itself
to the reason; and at length a professor is found, more hardy than his
brethren, still however, as he himself maintains, with sincere respect for
domestic feelings and good manners, who takes on him to deny psychology
_in toto_, to pronounce the influence of mind in the visible world a
superstition, and to account for every effect which is found in the world
by the operation of physical causes. Hitherto intelligence and volition
were accounted real powers; the muscles act, and their action cannot be
represented by any scientific expression; a stone flies out of the hand
and the propulsive force of the muscle resides in the will; but there has
been a revolution, or at least a new theory in philosophy, and our
Professor, I say, after speaking with the highest admiration of the human
intellect, limits its independent action to the region of speculation, and
denies that it can be a motive principle, or can exercise a special
interference, in the material world. He ascribes every work, every
external act of man, to the innate force or soul of the physical universe.
He observes that spiritual agents are so mysterious and unintelligible, so
uncertain in their laws, so vague in their operation, so sheltered from
experience, that a wise man will have nothing to say to them. They belong
to a different order of causes, which he leaves to those whose profession
it is to investigate them, and he confines himself to the tangible and
sure. Human exploits, human devices, human deeds, human productions, all
that comes under the scholastic terms of “genius” and “art,” and the
metaphysical ideas of “duty,” “right,” and “heroism,” it is his office to
contemplate all these merely in their place in the eternal system of
physical cause and effect. At length he undertakes to show how the whole
fabric of material civilization has arisen from the constructive powers of
physical elements and physical laws. He descants upon palaces, castles,
temples, exchanges, bridges, causeways, and shows that they never could
have grown into the imposing dimensions which they present to us, but for
the laws of gravitation and the cohesion of part with part. The pillar
would come down, the loftier the more speedily, did not the centre of
gravity fall within its base; and the most admired dome of Palladio or of
Sir Christopher would give way, were it not for the happy principle of the
arch. He surveys the complicated machinery of a single day’s arrangements
in a private family; our dress, our furniture, our hospitable board; what
would become of them, he asks, but for the laws of physical nature? Those
laws are the causes of our carpets, our furniture, our travelling, and our
social intercourse. Firm stitches have a natural power, in proportion to
the toughness of the material adopted, to keep together separate portions
of cloth; sofas and chairs could not turn upside down, even if they would;
and it is a property of caloric to relax the fibres of animal matter,
acting through water in one way, through oil in another, and this is the
whole mystery of the most elaborate _cuisine_:—but I should be tedious if
I continued the illustration.
6.
Now, Gentlemen, pray understand how it is to be here applied. I am not
supposing that the principles of Theology and Psychology are the same, or
arguing from the works of man to the works of God, which Paley has done,
which Hume has protested against. I am not busying myself to prove the
existence and attributes of God, by means of the Argument from design. I
am not proving anything at all about the Supreme Being. On the contrary, I
am assuming His existence, and I do but say this:—that, man existing, no
University Professor, who had suppressed in physical lectures the idea of
volition, who did not take volition for granted, could escape a one-sided,
a radically false view of the things which he discussed; not indeed that
his own definitions, principles, and laws would be wrong, or his abstract
statements, but his considering his own study to be the key of everything
that takes place on the face of the earth, and his passing over
anthropology, this would be his error. I say, it would not be his science
which was untrue, but his so-called knowledge which was unreal. He would
be deciding on facts by means of theories. The various busy world, spread
out before our eyes, is physical, but it is more than physical; and, in
making its actual system identical with his scientific analysis, formed on
a particular aspect, such a Professor as I have imagined was betraying a
want of philosophical depth, and an ignorance of what an University
Teaching ought to be. He was no longer a teacher of liberal knowledge, but
a narrow-minded bigot. While his doctrines professed to be conclusions
formed upon an hypothesis or partial truth, they were undeniable; not so
if they professed to give results in facts which he could grasp and take
possession of. Granting, indeed, that a man’s arm is moved by a simple
physical cause, then of course we may dispute about the various external
influences which, when it changes its position, sway it to and fro, like a
scarecrow in a garden; but to assert that the motive cause _is_ physical,
this is an assumption in a case, when our question is about a matter of
fact, not about the logical consequences of an assumed premiss. And, in
like manner, if a people prays, and the wind changes, the rain ceases, the
sun shines, and the harvest is safely housed, when no one expected it, our
Professor may, if he will, consult the barometer, discourse about the
atmosphere, and throw what has happened into an equation, ingenious, even
though it be not true; but, should he proceed to rest the phenomenon, in
matter of fact, simply upon a physical cause, to the exclusion of a
divine, and to say that the given case actually belongs to his science
because other like cases do, I must tell him, _Ne sutor ultra crepidam_:
he is making his particular craft usurp and occupy the universe. This then
is the drift of my illustration. If the creature is ever setting in motion
an endless series of physical causes and effects, much more is the
Creator; and as our excluding volition from our range of ideas is a denial
of the soul, so our ignoring Divine Agency is a virtual denial of God.
Moreover, supposing man can will and act of himself in spite of physics,
to shut up this great truth, though one, is to put our whole encyclopædia
of knowledge out of joint; and supposing God can will and act of Himself
in this world which He has made, and we deny or slur it over, then we are
throwing the circle of universal science into a like, or a far worse
confusion.
Worse incomparably, for the idea of God, if there be a God, is infinitely
higher than the idea of man, if there be man. If to plot out man’s agency
is to deface the book of knowledge, on the supposition of that agency
existing, what must it be, supposing it exists, to blot out the agency of
God? I have hitherto been engaged in showing that all the sciences come to
us as one, that they all relate to one and the same integral
subject-matter, that each separately is more or less an abstraction,
wholly true as an hypothesis, but not wholly trustworthy in the concrete,
conversant with relations more than with facts, with principles more than
with agents, needing the support and guarantee of its sister sciences, and
giving in turn while it takes:—from which it follows, that none can safely
be omitted, if we would obtain the exactest knowledge possible of things
as they are, and that the omission is more or less important, in
proportion to the field which each covers, and the depth to which it
penetrates, and the order to which it belongs; for its loss is a positive
privation of an influence which exerts itself in the correction and
completion of the rest. This is a general statement; but now as to
Theology in particular, what, in matter of fact, are its pretensions, what
its importance, what its influence upon other branches of knowledge,
supposing there be a God, which it would not become me to set about
proving? Has it vast dimensions, or does it lie in a nutshell? Will its
omission be imperceptible, or will it destroy the equilibrium of the whole
system of Knowledge? This is the inquiry to which I proceed.
7.
Now what is Theology? First, I will tell you what it is not. And here, in
the first place (though of course I speak on the subject as a Catholic),
observe that, strictly speaking, I am not assuming that Catholicism is
true, while I make myself the champion of Theology. Catholicism has not
formally entered into my argument hitherto, nor shall I just now assume
any principle peculiar to it, for reasons which will appear in the sequel,
though of course I shall use Catholic language. Neither, secondly, will I
fall into the fashion of the day, of identifying Natural Theology with
Physical Theology; which said Physical Theology is a most jejune study,
considered as a science, and really is no science at all, for it is
ordinarily nothing more than a series of pious or polemical remarks upon
the physical world viewed religiously, whereas the word “Natural” properly
comprehends man and society, and all that is involved therein, as the
great Protestant writer, Dr. Butler, shows us. Nor, in the third place, do
I mean by Theology polemics of any kind; for instance, what are called
“the Evidences of Religion,” or “the Christian Evidences;” for, though
these constitute a science supplemental to Theology and are necessary in
their place, they are not Theology itself, unless an army is synonymous
with the body politic. Nor, fourthly, do I mean by Theology that vague
thing called “Christianity,” or “our common Christianity,” or
“Christianity the law of the land,” if there is any man alive who can tell
what it is. I discard it, for the very reason that it cannot throw itself
into a proposition. Lastly, I do not understand by Theology, acquaintance
with the Scriptures; for, though no person of religious feelings can read
Scripture but he will find those feelings roused, and gain much knowledge
of history into the bargain, yet historical reading and religious feeling
are not science. I mean none of these things by Theology, I simply mean
the Science of God, or the truths we know about God put into system; just
as we have a science of the stars, and call it astronomy, or of the crust
of the earth, and call it geology.
For instance, I mean, for this is the main point, that, as in the human
frame there is a living principle, acting upon it and through it by means
of volition, so, behind the veil of the visible universe, there is an
invisible, intelligent Being, acting on and through it, as and when He
will. Further, I mean that this invisible Agent is in no sense a soul of
the world, after the analogy of human nature, but, on the contrary, is
absolutely distinct from the world, as being its Creator, Upholder,
Governor, and Sovereign Lord. Here we are at once brought into the circle
of doctrines which the idea of God embodies. I mean then by the Supreme
Being, one who is simply self-dependent, and the only Being who is such;
moreover, that He is without beginning or Eternal, and the only Eternal;
that in consequence He has lived a whole eternity by Himself; and hence
that He is all-sufficient, sufficient for His own blessedness, and
all-blessed, and ever-blessed. Further, I mean a Being, who, having these
prerogatives, has the Supreme Good, or rather is the Supreme Good, or has
all the attributes of Good in infinite intenseness; all wisdom, all truth,
all justice, all love, all holiness, all beautifulness; who is omnipotent,
omniscient, omnipresent; ineffably one, absolutely perfect; and such, that
what we do not know and cannot even imagine of Him, is far more wonderful
than what we do and can. I mean One who is sovereign over His own will and
actions, though always according to the eternal Rule of right and wrong,
which is Himself. I mean, moreover, that He created all things out of
nothing, and preserves them every moment, and could destroy them as easily
as He made them; and that, in consequence, He is separated from them by an
abyss, and is incommunicable in all His attributes. And further, He has
stamped upon all things, in the hour of their creation, their respective
natures, and has given them their work and mission and their length of
days, greater or less, in their appointed place. I mean, too, that He is
ever present with His works, one by one, and confronts every thing He has
made by His particular and most loving Providence, and manifests Himself
to each according to its needs: and has on rational beings imprinted the
moral law, and given them power to obey it, imposing on them the duty of
worship and service, searching and scanning them through and through with
His omniscient eye, and putting before them a present trial and a judgment
to come.
Such is what Theology teaches about God, a doctrine, as the very idea of
its subject-matter presupposes, so mysterious as in its fulness to lie
beyond any system, and in particular aspects to be simply external to
nature, and to seem in parts even to be irreconcileable with itself, the
imagination being unable to embrace what the reason determines. It teaches
of a Being infinite, yet personal; all-blessed, yet ever operative;
absolutely separate from the creature, yet in every part of the creation
at every moment; above all things, yet under every thing. It teaches of a
Being who, though the highest, yet in the work of creation, conservation,
government, retribution, makes Himself, as it were, the minister and
servant of all; who, though inhabiting eternity, allows Himself to take an
interest, and to have a sympathy, in the matters of space and time. His
are all beings, visible and invisible, the noblest and the vilest of them.
His are the substance, and the operation, and the results of that system
of physical nature into which we are born. His too are the powers and
achievements of the intellectual essences, on which He has bestowed an
independent action and the gift of origination. The laws of the universe,
the principles of truth, the relation of one thing to another, their
qualities and virtues, the order and harmony of the whole, all that
exists, is from Him; and, if evil is not from Him, as assuredly it is not,
this is because evil has no substance of its own, but is only the defect,
excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance. All we see,
hear, and touch, the remote sidereal firmament, as well as our own sea and
land, and the elements which compose them, and the ordinances they obey,
are His. The primary atoms of matter, their properties, their mutual
action, their disposition and collocation, electricity, magnetism,
gravitation, light, and whatever other subtle principles or operations the
wit of man is detecting or shall detect, are the work of His hands. From
Him has been every movement which has convulsed and re-fashioned the
surface of the earth. The most insignificant or unsightly insect is from
Him, and good in its kind; the ever-teeming, inexhaustible swarms of
animalculæ, the myriads of living motes invisible to the naked eye, the
restless ever-spreading vegetation which creeps like a garment over the
whole earth, the lofty cedar, the umbrageous banana, are His. His are the
tribes and families of birds and beasts, their graceful forms, their wild
gestures, and their passionate cries.
And so in the intellectual, moral, social, and political world. Man, with
his motives and works, his languages, his propagation, his diffusion, is
from Him. Agriculture, medicine, and the arts of life, are His gifts.
Society, laws, government, He is their sanction. The pageant of earthly
royalty has the semblance and the benediction of the Eternal King. Peace
and civilization, commerce and adventure, wars when just, conquest when
humane and necessary, have His co-operation, and His blessing upon them.
The course of events, the revolution of empires, the rise and fall of
states, the periods and eras, the progresses and the retrogressions of the
world’s history, not indeed the incidental sin, over-abundant as it is,
but the great outlines and the results of human affairs, are from His
disposition. The elements and types and seminal principles and
constructive powers of the moral world, in ruins though it be, are to be
referred to Him. He “enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world.”
His are the dictates of the moral sense, and the retributive reproaches of
conscience. To Him must be ascribed the rich endowments of the intellect,
the irradiation of genius, the imagination of the poet, the sagacity of
the politician, the wisdom (as Scripture calls it), which now rears and
decorates the Temple, now manifests itself in proverb or in parable. The
old saws of nations, the majestic precepts of philosophy, the luminous
maxims of law, the oracles of individual wisdom, the traditionary rules of
truth, justice, and religion, even though imbedded in the corruption, or
alloyed with the pride, of the world, betoken His original agency, and His
long-suffering presence. Even where there is habitual rebellion against
Him, or profound far-spreading social depravity, still the undercurrent,
or the heroic outburst, of natural virtue, as well as the yearnings of the
heart after what it has not, and its presentiment of its true remedies,
are to be ascribed to the Author of all good. Anticipations or
reminiscences of His glory haunt the mind of the self-sufficient sage, and
of the pagan devotee; His writing is upon the wall, whether of the Indian
fane, or of the porticoes of Greece. He introduces Himself, He all but
concurs, according to His good pleasure, and in His selected season, in
the issues of unbelief, superstition, and false worship, and He changes
the character of acts by His overruling operation. He condescends, though
He gives no sanction, to the altars and shrines of imposture, and He makes
His own fiat the substitute for its sorceries. He speaks amid the
incantations of Balaam, raises Samuel’s spirit in the witch’s cavern,
prophesies of the Messias by the tongue of the Sibyl, forces Python to
recognize His ministers, and baptizes by the hand of the misbeliever. He
is with the heathen dramatist in his denunciations of injustice and
tyranny, and his auguries of divine vengeance upon crime. Even on the
unseemly legends of a popular mythology He casts His shadow, and is dimly
discerned in the ode or the epic, as in troubled water or in fantastic
dreams. All that is good, all that is true, all that is beautiful, all
that is beneficent, be it great or small, be it perfect or fragmentary,
natural as well as supernatural, moral as well as material, comes from
Him.
8.
If this be a sketch, accurate in substance and as far as it goes, of the
doctrines proper to Theology, and especially of the doctrine of a
particular Providence, which is the portion of it most on a level with
human sciences, I cannot understand at all how, supposing it to be true,
it can fail, considered as knowledge, to exert a powerful influence on
philosophy, literature, and every intellectual creation or discovery
whatever. I cannot understand how it is possible, as the phrase goes, to
blink the question of its truth or falsehood. It meets us with a
profession and a proffer of the highest truths of which the human mind is
capable; it embraces a range of subjects the most diversified and distant
from each other. What science will not find one part or other of its
province traversed by its path? What results of philosophic speculation
are unquestionable, if they have been gained without inquiry as to what
Theology had to say to them? Does it cast no light upon history? has it no
influence upon the principles of ethics? is it without any sort of bearing
on physics, metaphysics, and political science? Can we drop it out of the
circle of knowledge, without allowing, either that that circle is thereby
mutilated, or on the other hand, that Theology is really no science?
And this dilemma is the more inevitable, because Theology is so precise
and consistent in its intellectual structure. When I speak of Theism or
Monotheism, I am not throwing together discordant doctrines; I am not
merging belief, opinion, persuasion, of whatever kind, into a shapeless
aggregate, by the help of ambiguous words, and dignifying this medley by
the name of Theology. I speak of one idea unfolded in its just
proportions, carried out upon an intelligible method, and issuing in
necessary and immutable results; understood indeed at one time and place
better than at another, held here and there with more or less of
inconsistency, but still, after all, in all times and places, where it is
found, the evolution, not of half-a-dozen ideas, but of one.
9.