philosophy even such a science as my Lord Bacon describes—a science of
general observations and axioms, such as do not belong properly to any
particular part of science, but are common to many, “and of an higher
stage,” as he expresses himself. He complains that philosophers have not
gone up to the “spring-head,” which would be of “general and excellent
use for the disclosing of Nature and the abridgment of art,” though they
“draw now and then a bucket of water out of the well for some particular
use.” I respect—no man more—this great authority; but I respect no
authority enough to subscribe on the faith of it, to that which appears
to me fantastical, as if it were real. Now this spring-head of science
is purely fantastical, and the figure conveys a false notion to the mind,
as figures employed licentiously are apt to do. The great author himself
calls these axioms, which are to constitute his first philosophy,
observations. Such they are properly; for there are some uniform
principles, or uniform impressions of the same nature, to be observed in
very different subjects, “una eademque naturæ vestigia aut signacula
diversis materiis et subjectis impressa.” These observations, therefore,
when they are sufficiently verified and well established, may be properly
applied in discourse, or writing, from one subject to another. But I
apprehend that when they are so applied, they serve rather to illustrate
a proposition than to disclose Nature, or to abridge art. They may have
a better foundation than similitudes and comparisons more loosely and
more superficially made. They may compare realities, not appearances;
things that Nature has made alike, not things that seem only to have some
relation of this kind in our imaginations. But still they are
comparisons of things distinct and independent. They do not lead us to
things, but things that are lead us to make them. He who possesses two
sciences, and the same will be often true of arts, may find in certain
respects a similitude between them because he possesses both. If he did
not possess both, he would be led by neither to the acquisition of the
other. Such observations are effects, not means of knowledge; and,
therefore, to suppose that any collection of them can constitute a
science of an “higher stage,” from whence we may reason _à priori_ down
to particulars, is, I presume, to suppose something very groundless, and
very useless at best, to the advancement of knowledge. A pretended
science of this kind must be barren of knowledge, and may be fruitful of
error, as the Persian magic was, if it proceeded on the faint analogy
that may be discovered between physics and politics, and deduced the
rules of civil government from what the professors of it observed of the
operations and works of Nature in the material world. The very specimen
of their magic which my Lord Bacon has given would be sufficient to
justify what is here objected to his doctrine.
Let us conclude this head by mentioning two examples among others which
he brings to explain the better what he means by his first philosophy.
The first is this axiom, “If to unequals you add equals, all will be
unequal.” This, he says, is an axiom of justice as well as of
mathematics; and he asks whether there is not a true coincidence between
commutative and distributive justice, and arithmetical and geometrical
proportion. But I would ask in my turn whether the certainty that any
arithmetician or geometrician has of the arithmetical or geometrical
truth will lead him to discover this coincidence. I ask whether the most
profound lawyer who never heard perhaps this axiom would be led to it by
his notions of commutative and distributive justice. Certainly not. He
who is well skilled in arithmetic or geometry, and in jurisprudence, may
observe perhaps this uniformity of natural principle or impression
because he is so skilled, though, to say the truth, it be not very
obvious; but he will not have derived his knowledge of it from any
spring-head of a first philosophy, from any science of an “higher stage”
than arithmetic, geometry, and jurisprudence.
The second example is this axiom, “That the destruction of things is
prevented by the reduction of them to their first principles.” This rule
is said to hold in religion, in physics, and in politics; and Machiavel
is quoted for having established it in the last of these. Now though
this axiom be generally, it is not universally, true; and, to say nothing
of physics, it will not be hard to produce, in contradiction to it,
examples of religious and civil institutions that would have perished if
they had been kept strictly to their first principles, and that have been
supported by departing more or less from them. It may seem justly matter
of wonder that the author of the “Advancement of Learning” should espouse
this maxim in religion and politics, as well as physics, so absolutely,
and that he should place it as an axiom of his first philosophy
relatively to the three, since he could not do it without falling into
the abuse he condemns so much in his “Organum Novum”—the abuse
philosophers are guilty of when they suffer the mind to rise too fast, as
it is apt to do, from particulars to remote and general axioms. That the
author of the “Political Discourses” should fall into this abuse is not
at all strange. The same abuse runs through all his writings, in which,
among many wise and many wicked reflections and precepts, he establishes
frequently general maxims or rules of conduct on a few particular
examples, and sometimes on a single example. Upon the whole matter, one
of these axioms communicates no knowledge but that which we must have
before we can know the axiom, and the other may betray us into great
error when we apply it to use and action. One is unprofitable, the other
dangerous; and the philosophy which admits them as principles of general
knowledge deserves ill to be reputed philosophy. It would have been just
as useful, and much more safe, to admit into this receptacle of axioms
those self-evident and necessary truths alone of which we have an
immediate perception, since they are not confined to any special parts of
science, but are common to several, or to all. Thus these profitable
axioms, “What is, is,” “The whole is bigger than a part,” and divers
others, might serve to enlarge the spring-head of a first philosophy, and
be of excellent use in arguing _ex prœcognitis et prœconcessis_.
If you ask me now what I understand then by a first philosophy, my answer
will be such as I suppose you already prepared to receive. I understand
by a first philosophy, that which deserves the first place on account of
the dignity and importance of its objects, natural theology or theism,
and natural religion or ethics. If we consider the order of the sciences
in their rise and progress, the first place belongs to natural
philosophy, the mother of them all, or the trunk, the tree of knowledge,
out of which, and in proportion to which, like so many branches, they all
grow. These branches spread wide, and bear even fruits of different
kinds. But the sap that made them shoot, and makes them flourish, rises
from the root through the trunk, and their productions are varied
according to the variety of strainers through which it flows. In plain
terms, I speak not here of supernatural, or revealed science; and
therefore I say that all science, if it be real, must rise from below,
and from our own level. It cannot descend from above, nor from superior
systems of being and knowledge. Truth of existence is truth of
knowledge, and therefore reason searches after them in one of these
scenes, where both are to be found together, and are within our reach;
whilst imagination hopes fondly to find them in another, where both of
them are to be found, but surely not by us. The notices we receive from
without concerning the beings that surround us, and the inward
consciousness we have of our own, are the foundations, and the true
criterions too, of all the knowledge we acquire of body and of mind: and
body and mind are objects alike of natural philosophy. We assume
commonly that they are two distinct substances. Be it so. They are
still united, and blended, as it were, together, in one human nature: and
all natures, united or not, fall within the province of natural
philosophy. On the hypothesis indeed that body and soul are two distinct
substances, one of which subsists after the dissolution of the other,
certain men, who have taken the whimsical title of metaphysicians, as if
they had science beyond the bounds of Nature, or of Nature discoverable
by others, have taken likewise to themselves the doctrine of mind; and
have left that of body, under the name of physics, to a supposed inferior
order of philosophers. But the right of these stands good; for all the
knowledge that can be acquired about mind, or the unextended substance of
the Cartesians, must be acquired, like that about body, or the extended
substance, within the bounds of their province, and by the means they
employ, particular experiments and observations. Nothing can be true of
mind, any more than of body, that is repugnant to these; and an
intellectual hypothesis which is not supported by the intellectual
phenomena is at least as ridiculous as a corporeal hypothesis which is
not supported by the corporeal phenomena.
If I have said thus much in this place concerning natural philosophy, it
has not been without good reason. I consider theology and ethics as the
first of sciences in pre-eminence of rank. But I consider the constant
contemplation of Nature—by which I mean the whole system of God’s works
as far as it lies open to us—as the common spring of all sciences, and
even of these. What has been said agreeably to this notion seems to me
evidently true; and yet metaphysical divines and philosophers proceed in
direct contradiction to it, and have thereby, if I mistake not,
bewildered themselves, and a great part of mankind, in such inextricable
labyrinths of hypothetical reasoning, that few men can find their way
back, and none can find it forward into the road of truth. To dwell
long, and on some points always, in particular knowledge, tires the
patience of these impetuous philosophers. They fly to generals. To
consider attentively even the minutest phenomena of body and mind
mortifies their pride. Rather than creep up slowly, _à posteriori_, to a
little general knowledge, they soar at once as far and as high as
imagination can carry them. From thence they descend again, armed with
systems and arguments _à priori_; and, regardless how these agree or
clash with the phenomena of Nature, they impose them on mankind.
It is this manner of philosophising, this preposterous method of
beginning our search after truth out of the bounds of human knowledge, or
of continuing it beyond them, that has corrupted natural theology and
natural religion in all ages. They have been corrupted to such a degree
that it is grown, and was so long since, as necessary to plead the cause
of God, if I may use this expression after Seneca, against the divine as
against the atheist; to assert his existence against the latter, to
defend his attributes against the former, and to justify his providence
against both. To both a sincere and humble theist might say very
properly, “I make no difference between you on many occasions, because it
is indifferent whether you deny or defame the Supreme Being.” Nay,
Plutarch, though little orthodox in theology, was not in the wrong
perhaps when he declared the last to be the worst.
In treating the subjects about which I shall write to you in these
letters or essays, it will be therefore necessary to distinguish genuine
and pure theism from the unnatural and profane mixtures of human
imagination—what we can know of God from what we cannot know. This is
the more necessary, too, because, whilst true and false notions about God
and religion are blended together in our minds under one specious name of
science, the false are more likely to make men doubt of the true, as it
often happens, than to persuade men that they are true themselves. Now,
in order to this purpose, nothing can be more effectual than to go to the
root of error, of that primitive error which encourages our curiosity,
sustains our pride, fortifies our prejudices, and gives pretence to
delusion. This primitive error consists in the high opinion we are apt
to entertain of the human mind, though it holds, in truth, a very low
rank in the intellectual system. To cure this error we need only turn
our eyes inward, and contemplate impartially what passes there from the
infancy to the maturity of the mind. Thus it will not be difficult, and
thus alone it is possible, to discover the true nature of human
knowledge—how far it extends, how far it is real, and where and how it
begins to be fantastical.
Such an inquiry, if it cannot check the presumption nor humble the pride
of metaphysicians, may serve to undeceive others. Locke pursued it; he
grounded all he taught on the phenomena of Nature; he appealed to the
experience and conscious knowledge of every one, and rendered all he
advanced intelligible. Leibnitz, one of the vainest and most chimerical
men that ever got a name in philosophy, and who is often so
unintelligible that no man ought to believe he understood himself,
censured Locke as a superficial philosopher. What has happened? The
philosophy of one has forced its way into general approbation, that of
the other has carried no conviction and scarce any information to those
who have misspent their time about it. To speak the truth, though it may
seem a paradox, our knowledge on many subjects, and particularly on those
which we intend here, must be superficial to be real. This is the
condition of humanity. We are placed, as it were, in an intellectual
twilight, where we discover but few things clearly, and none entirely,
and yet see just enough to tempt us with the hope of making better and
more discoveries. Thus flattered, men push their inquiries on, and may
be properly enough compared to Ixion, who “imagined he had Juno in his
arms whilst he embraced a cloud.”
To be contented to know things as God has made us capable of knowing them
is, then, a first principle necessary to secure us from falling into
error; and if there is any subject upon which we should be most on our
guard against error, it is surely that which I have called here the first
philosophy. God is hid from us in the majesty of His nature, and the
little we discover of Him must be discovered by the light that is
reflected from His works. Out of this light, therefore, we should never
go in our inquiries and reasonings about His nature, His attributes, and
the order of His providence; and yet upon these subjects men depart the
furthest from it—nay, they who depart the furthest are the best heard by
the bulk of mankind. The less men know, the more they believe that they
know. Belief passes in their minds for knowledge, and the very
circumstances which should beget doubt produce increase of faith. Every
glittering apparition that is pointed out to them in the vast wild of
imagination passes for a reality; and the more distant, the more
confused, the more incomprehensible it is, the more sublime it is
esteemed. He who should attempt to shift these scenes of airy vision for
those of real knowledge might expect to be treated with scorn and anger
by the whole theological and metaphysical tribe, the masters and the
scholars; he would be despised as a plebeian philosopher, and railed at
as an infidel. It would be sounded high that he debased human nature,
which has a “cognation,” so the reverend and learned Doctor Cudworth
calls it, with the divine; that the soul of man, immaterial and immortal
by its nature, was made to contemplate higher and nobler objects than
this sensible world, and even than itself, since it was made to
contemplate God and to be united to Him. In such clamour as this the
voice of truth and of reason would be drowned, and, with both of them on
his side, he who opposed it would make many enemies and few converts—nay,
I am apt to think that some of these, if he made any, would say to him,
as soon as the gaudy visions of error were dispelled, and till they were
accustomed to the simplicity of truth, “Pol me occidistis.” Prudence
forbids me, therefore, to write as I think to the world, whilst
friendship forbids me to write otherwise to you. I have been a martyr of
faction in politics, and have no vocation to be so in philosophy.
But there is another consideration which deserves more regard, because it
is of a public nature, and because the common interests of society may be
affected by it. Truth and falsehood, knowledge and ignorance,
revelations of the Creator, inventions of the creature, dictates of
reason, sallies of enthusiasm, have been blended so long together in our
systems of theology that it may be thought dangerous to separate them,
lest by attacking some parts of these systems we should shake the whole.
It may be thought that error itself deserves to be respected on this
account, and that men who are deluded for their good should be deluded
on.
Some such reflections as these it is probable that Erasmus made when he
observed, in one of his letters to Melancthon, that Plato, dreaming of a
philosophical commonwealth, saw the impossibility of governing the
multitude without deceiving them. “Let not Christians lie,” says this
great divine: “but let it not be thought neither that every truth ought
to be thrown out to the vulgar.” (“Non expedit omnem veritatem prodere
vulgo.”) Scævola and Varro were more explicit than Erasmus, and more
reasonable than Plato. They held not only that many truths were to be
concealed from the vulgar, but that it was expedient the vulgar should
believe many things that were false. They distinguished at the same
time, very rightly, between the regard due to religions already
established, and the conduct to be held in the establishment of them.
The Greek assumed that men could not be governed by truth, and erected on
this principle a fabulous theology. The Romans were not of the same
opinion. Varro declared expressly that if he had been to frame a new
institution, he would have framed it “ex naturæ potius formula.” But
they both thought that things evidently false might deserve an outward
respect when they are interwoven into a system of government. This
outward respect every good citizen will show them in such a case, and
they can claim no more in any. He will not propagate these errors, but
he will be cautious how he propagates even truth in opposition to them.
There has been much noise made about free-thinking; and men have been
animated in the contest by a spirit that becomes neither the character of
divines nor that of good citizens, by an arbitrary tyrannical spirit
under the mask of religious zeal, and by a presumptuous factious spirit
under that of liberty. If the first could prevail, they would establish
implicit belief and blind obedience, and an Inquisition to maintain this
abject servitude. To assert antipodes might become once more as
heretical as Arianism or Pelagianism; and men might be dragged to the
jails of some Holy Office, like Galilei, for saying they had seen what in
fact they had seen, and what every one else that pleased might see. If
the second could prevail, they would destroy at once the general
influence of religion by shaking the foundations of it which education
had laid. These are wide extremes. Is there no middle path in which a
reasonable man and a good citizen may direct his steps? I think there
is.
Every one has an undoubted right to think freely—nay, it is the duty of
every one to do so as far as he has the necessary means and
opportunities. This duty, too, is in no case so incumbent on him as in
those that regard what I call the first philosophy. They who have
neither means nor opportunities of this sort must submit their opinions
to authority; and to what authority can they resign themselves so
properly and so safely as to that of the laws and constitution of their
country? In general, nothing can be more absurd than to take opinions of
the greatest moment, and such as concern us the most intimately, on
trust; but there is no help against it in many particular cases. Things
the most absurd in speculation become necessary in practice. Such is the
human constitution, and reason excuses them on the account of this
necessity. Reason does even a little more, and it is all she can do.
She gives the best direction possible to the absurdity. Thus she directs
those who must believe because they cannot know, to believe in the laws
of their country, and conform their opinions and practice to those of
their ancestors, to those of Coruncanius, of Scipio, of Scævola—not to
those of Zeno, of Cleanthes, of Chrysippus.
But now the same reason that gives this direction to such men as these
will give a very contrary direction to those who have the means and
opportunities the others want. Far from advising them to submit to this
mental bondage, she will advise them to employ their whole industry to
exert the utmost freedom of thought, and to rest on no authority but
hers—that is, their own. She will speak to them in the language of the
Soufys, a sect of philosophers in Persia that travellers have mentioned.
“Doubt,” say these wise and honest freethinkers, “is the key of
knowledge. He who never doubts, never examines. He who never examines,
discovers nothing. He who discovers nothing, is blind and will remain
so. If you find no reason to doubt concerning the opinions of your
fathers, keep to them; they will be sufficient for you. If you find any
reason to doubt concerning them, seek the truth quietly, but take care
not to disturb the minds of other men.”
Let us proceed agreeably to these maxims. Let us seek truth, but seek it
quietly as well as freely. Let us not imagine, like some who are called
freethinkers, that every man, who can think and judge for himself, as he
has a right to do, has therefore a right of speaking, any more than of
acting, according to the full freedom of his thoughts. The freedom
belongs to him as a rational creature; he lies under the restraint as a
member of society.
If the religion we profess contained nothing more than articles of faith
and points of doctrine clearly revealed to us in the Gospel, we might be
obliged to renounce our natural freedom of thought in favour of this
supernatural authority. But since it is notorious that a certain order
of men, who call themselves the Church, have been employed to make and
propagate a theological system of their own, which they call
Christianity, from the days of the Apostles, and even from these days
inclusively, it is our duty to examine and analyse the whole, that we may
distinguish what is divine from what is human; adhere to the first
implicitly, and ascribe to the last no more authority than the word of
man deserves.
Such an examination is the more necessary to be undertaken by every one
who is concerned for the truth of his religion and for the honour of
Christianity, because the first preachers of it were not, and they who
preach it still are not, agreed about many of the most important points
of their system; because the controversies raised by these men have
banished union, peace, and charity out of the Christian world; and
because some parts of the system savour so much of superstition and
enthusiasm that all the prejudices of education and the whole weight of
civil and ecclesiastical power can hardly keep them in credit. These
considerations deserve the more attention because nothing can be more
true than what Plutarch said of old, and my Lord Bacon has said since:
one, that superstition, and the other, that vain controversies are
principal causes of atheism.
I neither expect nor desire to see any public revision made of the
present system of Christianity. I should fear an attempt to alter the
established religion as much as they who have the most bigot attachment
to it, and for reasons as good as theirs, though not entirely the same.
I speak only of the duty of every private man to examine for himself,
which would have an immediate good effect relatively to himself, and
might have in time a good effect relatively to the public, since it would
dispose the minds of men to a greater indifference about theological
disputes, which are the disgrace of Christianity and have been the
plagues of the world.