I
One who has not lived a life of controversy, yet has some knowledge of
its laws and methods, would, I think, find a difficulty in conceiving
the infantile ignorance of the race in general as to what constitutes
argument, evidence and proof. Even lawyers and judges, whose profession
it is to consider evidence, to sift it and pass upon it, are but little
wiser in that way than others when the matter in hand is philosophy,
or religion, or something outside the written law. Concerning these
high themes, I have heard from the lips of hoary benchers so idiotic
argument based on so meaningless evidence as made me shudder at the
thought of being tried before them on an indictment charging me with
having swallowed a neighbor’s step-ladder. Yet doubtless in a matter
of mere law these venerable babes would deliver judgment that would be
roughly reasonable and approximately right. The theologian, on the
contrary, is never so irrational as in his own trade; for, whatever
religion may be, theology is a thing of unreason altogether, an edifice
of assumptions and dreams, a superstructure without a substructure, an
invention of the devil. It is to religion what law is to justice, what
etiquette is to courtesy, astrology to astronomy, alchemy to chemistry
and medicine to hygiene. The theologian can not reason, for persons who
can reason do not go in for theology. Its name refutes it: theology
means discourse of God, concerning whom some of its expounders say that
he has no existence and all the others that he can not be known.
I set out to show the folly of men who think they think—to give a few
typical examples of what they are pleased to call “evidence” supporting
their views. I shall take them from the work of a man of far more than
the average intelligence dealing with the doctrine of immortality. He
is a believer and thinks it possible that immortal human souls are on
an endless journey from star to star, inhabiting them in turn. And he
“proves” it thus:
“No one thinks of space without knowing that it can be traversed;
consequently the conception of space implies the ability to traverse
it.”
But how far? He could as cogently say: “No one thinks of the ocean
without knowing that it can be swum in; consequently the conception of
ocean implies the ability to swim from New York to Liverpool.” Here is
another precious bit of testimony:
“The fact that man can conceive the idea of space without beginning or
end implies that man is on a journey without beginning or end. In fact,
it is strong evidence of the immortality of man.”
Good—now observe the possibilities in that kind of “reasoning”: The
fact that a pig can conceive the idea of a turnip implies that the pig
is climbing a tree bearing turnips—which is strong evidence that the
pig is a fish. In each of the gentleman’s _dicta_ the first part
no more “implies” what follows than it implies a weeping baboon on a
crimson iceberg.
Of the same unearthly sort are two more of this innocent’s deliveries:
“The fact that we do not remember our former lives is no proof of our
never having existed. We would remember them if we had accomplished
something worth remembering.”
Note the unconscious _petitio principii_ involved in the first
“our” and the pure assumption in the second sentence.
“We all know that character, traits and habits are as distinct in young
children as in adults. This shows that if we had no pre-existence all
men would have the same character and traits and appearance, and would
be turned out on the same model.”
As apples are, for example, or pebbles, or cats. Unfortunately we do
not “all” know, nor does any of us know, nor is it true, that young
children have as much individuality as adults. And if we did all know
it, or if any of us knew it, or if it were true, neither the fact
itself nor the knowledge of it would “show” any such thing as that the
differences could be produced by pre-existence only. They might be due
to the will of God, or to some agency that no man has ever thought
about, or has thought about but has not known to have that effect.
In point of fact, we know that such peculiarities of character and
disposition as a young child has are not brought from a former life
across a gulf whose brinks are death and birth, but are endowments from
the lives of others here. They are not individual, but hereditary—not
vestigial, but ancestral.
The kind of “argument” here illustrated by horrible example is not
peculiar to religious nor doctrinal themes, but characterizes men’s
reasoning in general. It is the rule everywhere—in oral discussion,
in books, in newspapers. Assertions that mean nothing, testimony that
is not evidence, facts having no relation to the matter in hand,
and (everywhere and always) the sickening _non sequitur_: the
conclusion that has nothing to do with the premises. I know not if
there is another life, but if there is I do hope that to obtain it all
will have to pass a rigid examination in logic and the art of not being
a fool.