thing or Being, which has existed from eternity without any external
cause of its existence, must be self-existent; but of course that dogma
leaves the disputed question, namely, whether matter, or something not
matter, is self-existent, just where it found it.
The fourth dogma is not questioned by Atheists, as they are quite
convinced that it is not possible for us to comprehend the substance or
essence of an immaterial Being.
The other dogmas we need not enlarge upon, as they are little more than
repetitions or expansions of the preceding one. Indeed, much of the
foregoing would be superfluous, were it not that it serves to
illustrate, so completely and clearly, Theistical absurdities. The only
dogma worth overturning, of the eight here noticed, is the _first_, for
if that fall, the rest must fall with it. If, for example, the reader is
convinced that it is more probable matter is mutable as regards _form_,
but eternal as regards _essence_, than that it was willed into existence
by a Being said to be eternal and immutable, he at once becomes an
Atheist--for if matter always was, no Being could have been before it,
nor can any exist after it. It is because men in general are shocked at
the idea of matter without beginning and without end, that they so
readily embrace the idea of a God, forgetting that if the idea of
eternal matter shock our sense of the _probable_, the idea of an eternal
Being who existed _before_ matter, _if well considered_, is sufficient
to shock all sense of the _possible_.
The man who is contented with the universe, who stops at _that_ has at
least the satisfaction of dealing with something tangible--but he who
don't find the universe large enough for him to expatiate in, and whirls
his brains into a belief that there is a necessarily existing something
beyond the limits of a world _unlimited_, is in a mental condition no
reasonable man need envy.
Of the universe, or at least so much of it as our senses have been
operated upon by, we have conceptions clear, vivid, and distinct; but
when Dr. Clarke tells us of an intelligent Being, not _part_ but
_creator_ of that universe, we can form no clear, vivid, distinct, or,
in point of fact, _any_ conception of such a Being. When he explains
that it is infinite and omnipresent, like poor Paddy's famed ale, the
explanation 'thickens as it clears;' for being ourselves _finite_, and
necessarily present on one small spot of our very small planet, the
words _infinite_ and _omnipresent_ do not suggest to us either positive
or practical ideas--of course, therefore, we have neither positive nor
practical ideas of an infinite and omnipresent Being.
We can as easily understand that the universe ever did exist, as we now
understand that it does exist--but we cannot conceive its absence for
the millionth part of an instant--and really it puzzles one to conceive
what those people can be dreaming about who talk as familiarly about the
extinction of a universe as the chemist does of extinguishing the flame
of his spirit-lamp.
The unsatisfactory character of all speculations having for their object
'nonentities with formidable names,' should long ere this have opened
men's eyes to the folly of _multiplying causes without necessity_--
another rule of philosophising, for which we are indebted to
Newton, but to which no religious philosophiser pays due attention.
Newton himself, in his Theistical character, wrote and talked as though
most blissfully ignorant of that rule. The passages given above from his
'Principia' palpably violate it. But Theists, however learned, pay
little regard to any rules of philosophising, which put in peril their
fundamental crotchet. If they did, Atheism would need no apologist, and
Theism have no defenders; for Theism, in all its varieties, presupposes
a supernatural Causer of what experience pronounces natural effects.
The Author is aware that 'Natural Theologians' seek to justify their
rebellion against the rules of philosophising, to which the reader's
attention has been specially directed, by appealing to (what they call)
evidences of design in the universal fabric. But though they think so
highly of the design argument, it is not the less true that that
argument rests on mere assumption of a disputed fact; that even though
it were proved the universe was designed, still whether designed by one
God, two Gods, or two million of Gods, would be unshown; and that Paley,
'the most famous of natural Theologians'--Paley, who wrote as never man
wrote before on the design question, has been satisfactorily refuted _in
his own words_. [63:1]
A distinguished modern Fabulist [63:2] has introduced to us a
philosophical mouse who praised beneficent Deity because of his great
regard for mice: for one half of us, quoth he, received the gift of
wings, so that if we who have none, should by cats happen to be
exterminated, how easily could our 'Heavenly Father,' out of the bats
re-establish our exterminated species.
Voltaire had no objection to fable if it were symbolic of truth; and
here is fable, which, according to its author, is symbolic of the little
regarded truth, that our pride rests mainly on our ignorance, for, as he
sagely says, 'the good mouse knew not that there are also winged cats.'
If she had her speculations concerning the beneficence of Deity would
have been less orthodox, mayhap, but decidedly more rational. The wisdom
of this pious mouse is very similar to that of the Theologian who knew
not how sufficiently to admire God's goodness in causing large rivers
almost always to flow in the neighbourhood of large towns.
To jump at conclusions on no other authority than their own ignorant
assumptions, and to Deify errors on no other authority than their own
heated imaginations, has in all ages been the practice of Theologians.
Of that practice they are proud, as was the mouse of our Fabulist.
Clothed in no other panoply than their own conceits; they deem
themselves invulnerable. While uttering the wildest incoherencies their
self-complacency remains undisturbed. They remind one of that ambitious
crow who, thinking more highly of himself than was quite proper,
strutted so proudly about with the peacock's feathers in which he had
bedecked himself.--Like him, they plume themselves upon their own
egregious folly, and like him should get well _plucked_ for their pains.
Let any one patiently examine their much talked of argument from design,
and he will be satisfied that these are no idle charges. That argument
has for its ground-work beggarly assumptions and for its main pillar,
reasoning no less beggarly. Nature must have had a cause, because it
evidently is an effect. The cause of Nature must have been one God;
because two Gods, or two million Gods, could not have agreed to cause
it. That cause must be omnipotent, wise, and good, because all things
are double one against another, and He has left nothing imperfect. Men
make watches, build ships or houses, out of pre-existing metals, wood,
hemp, bricks, mortar, and other materials, therefore God made nature out
of no materials at all. Unassisted nature cannot produce the phenomena
we behold, therefore such phenomena clearly prove there is something
supernatural. Not to believe in a God who designed Nature, is to close
both ears and eyes against evidence, therefore Atheists are wilfully
deaf and obstinately blind.
These are samples of the flimsy stuff, our teachers of what nobody
knows, would palm upon us as argument for, yea demonstration of, the
Being and Attributes of God.
Design, said Shelley, must be proved before a designer can be
inferred--the matter in controversy, is the existence of design in the
universe, and it is not permitted to assume the contested premises and
thence infer the matter in dispute. Insidiously to employ the words
contrivance, design and adaptation, before these circumstances are
apparent in the universe, thence justly inferring a contriver, is a
popular sophism against which it behoves us to be watchful.
To assert that motion is an attribute of mind, that matter is inert,
that every combination is the result of intelligence, is also an
assumption of the matter in dispute.
Why do we admit design in any machine of human contrivance? simply
because innumerable instances of machines having been constructed by
human art are present to our mind--because we are acquainted with
persons who could construct such machines; but if having no previous
knowledge of any artificial contrivance, we had accidently found a watch
upon the ground, we should have been justified in concluding that it was
a thing of nature, that it was a combination of matter with whose cause
we were unacquainted, and that any attempt to account for the origin of
its existence would be equally presumptuous and unsatisfactory. [64:1]
The acuteness and, accuracy of this reasoning can only be disputed by
persons wedded to system, who either lack capacity to understand what is
advanced in opposition to it, or,
Being convinced against their will,
Are of the same opinion still.
Experience, the only safe guide on religious as well as other topics,
lends no sanction to belief in design apart from material agency. By
artfully taking for granted what no Atheist can admit and assuming cases
altogether dissimilar to be perfectly analogous, our natural theologians
find no difficulty in proving that God is, was, and ever will be; that
after contemplating His own perfections, a period sufficiently long for
'eternity to begin and end in,' He said, let there be matter, and there
was matter; that with Him all things are possible, and He, of course,
might easily have kept, as well as made, man upright and happy, but
could not consistently with his own wisdom, or with due regard to his
own glorification. Wise in their generation, these 'blind leaders of the
blind' ascribe to this Deity of their own invention, powers impossible,
acts inconceivable, and qualities incompatible; thus erecting doctrinal
systems on no sounder basis than their own ignorance; deifying their own
monstrous errors, and filling the earth with misery, madness, and crime.
The writer who declared theology _ignorance of natural causes reduced to
system_, did not strike wide of the true mark. It is plain that the
argument from design, so vastly favoured by theologians, amounts to
neither more nor less than ignorance of natural causes reduced to
system. An argument to be sound must be soundly premised. But here is an
argument whose primary premise is a false premise--a mere begging of the
very question in dispute. Did Atheists _admit_ the universe was
contrived, designed, or adapted, they could not _deny_ there must have
been at least one Being to contrive, design, or adapt; but they see no
analogy between a watch made with hands out of something, and a universe
made without hands out of nothing--Atheists are unable to perceive the
least resemblance between the circumstance of one intelligent body
re-forming or changing the condition of some other body, intelligent or
non-intelligent, and the circumstance of a bodiless Being creating all
bodies; of a partless Being acting upon all parts; and of a passionless
Being generating and regulating all passions. Atheists consider the
general course of nature, though strangely unheeded, does proclaim with
'most miraculous organ,' that dogmatisers about any such 'figment of
imagination,' would, in a rational community, be viewed with the same
feelings of compassion, which, even in these irrational days, are
exhibited towards confirmed lunatics.
The Author was recently passing an evening with some pleasant people in
Ashton-under-Lyne, one of whom related that before the schoolmaster had
much progress in that _devil dusted_ neighbourhood, a labouring man
walking out one fine night, saw on the ground a watch, whose ticking was
distinctly audible; but never before having seen anything of the kind he
thought it a living creature, and full of fear ran back among his
neighbours, exclaiming that he had seen a most marvellous thing, for
which he could conceive of no better name than CLICKMITOAD. After
recovering from their surprise and terror, this 'bold peasant' and his
neighbours, all armed with pokers or ether formidable weapons, crept up
to the ill-starred ticker, and smashed it to pieces.
The moral of this anecdote is no mystery. Our clickmitoadist had never
seen watches, knew nothing about watches, and hearing as well as seeing
one for the first time, naturally judged it must be an animal. Readers
who may feel inclined to laugh at his simplicity, should ask themselves
whether, if accustomed to see watches growing upon watch trees, they
would feel more astonished than they usually do when observing crystals
in process of formation, or cocoa-nuts growing upon cocoa-nut trees; and
if as inexperienced with respect to watches, or works of art, more or
less analogous to watches, they would not under his circumstances have
acted very much as he did. Admirably is it said in the unpublished work
before referred to, that the analogy which theologians attempt to
establish between the contrivances of human art and the various
existences of the universe is inadmissable. We attribute these effects
to human intelligence, because we know beforehand that human
intelligence is capable of producing them. Take away this knowledge, and
the grounds of our reasoning will be destroyed. Our entire ignorance
therefore of the Divine Nature leaves this analogy defective in its most
essential point of comparison.
Supposing, however, that theologians were to succeed in establishing an
analogy between 'the contrivances of human art and the various
existences of the universe,' is it not evident that Spinoza's axiom--of
things which having nothing in common one cannot be the cause of the
others--is incompatible with belief in the Deity of our Thirty-Nine
Articles, or, indeed, belief in _any_ unnatural Designer or Causer of
Material Nature. Only existence can have anything in common with
existence.
Now an existence, properly so called, must have at least two attributes,
and whatever exhibits two or more attributes is matter. The two
attributes necessary to existence are solidity and extension. Take from
matter these attributes, and matter itself vanishes. This fact was
specially testified to by Priestley, who acknowledged the primary truths
of Materialism though averse to the legitimate consequences flowing from
their recognition.
According to this argument, then, nothing exists which has not solidity
and extension, and nothing is extended and solid but matter, which in
one state forms a crystal, in another a blade of grass, in a third a
butterfly, and in other states other forms. The _essence_ of grass, or
the _essence_ of crystal, in other words, those native energies of their
several forms constituting and keeping them what they are, can no more
be explained than can the _essentiality_ of human nature.
But the Atheist, because he finds it impossible to explain the action of
matter, because unable to state why it exhibits such vast and various
energies as it is seen to exhibit, is none the less assured it
_naturally_ and therefore _necessarily_ acts thus energetically. No
Atheist pretends to understand how bread nourishes his frame, but of the
_fact_ that bread does nourish it he is well assured. He understands not
how or why two beings should by conjunction give vitality to a third
being more or less analogous to themselves, but the _fact_ stares him in
the face.
Our 'sophists in surplices,' who can no otherwise bolster up their
supernatural system than by outraging all such rules of philosophising
as forbid us to choose the greater of two difficulties, or to multiply
causes without necessity, are precisely the men to explain everything.
But unfortunately their explanations do for the most part stand more in
need of explanation than the thing explained. Thus they explain the
origin of matter by reference to an occult, immense, and immensely
mysterious phantasm without body, parts or passions, who sees though not
to be seen, hears though not to be heard, feels though not to be felt,
moves though not to be moved, knows though not to be known, and in
short, does everything, though not to be _done_ by anything. Well might
Godwin say the rage of accounting for what, like immortal Gibbs, is
obviously unaccountable, so common among 'philosophers' of this stamp,
has brought philosophy itself into discredit.
There is an argument against the notion of a Supernatural Causer which
the Author of this Apology does not remember to have met with, but which
he considers an argument of great force--it is this. Cause means change,
and as there manifestly could not be change before there was anything to
change, to conceive the universe caused is impossible.
That the sense here attached to the word cause is not a novel one every
reader knows who has seen an elaborate and ably written article by Mr.
G.H. Lewes, on 'Spinoza's Life and Works,' [68:1] where effect is
defined as cause realised, the _natura naturans_ conceived as _natura
naturata_; and cause or causation is defined as simply change. When,
says Mr. Lewis, the change is completed, we name the result effect. It
is only a matter of naming.
These definitions conceded accurate, the conclusion that neither cause
nor effect _exist_, seems inevitable, for change of being is not being
itself, any more than attraction is the thing attracted. One might as
philosophically erect attraction into reality and fall down and worship
_it_, as change, which is in very truth, a mere "matter of naming." Not
so the things changing or changed: _they_ are real, the prolific parent
of all appearance we behold, of all sensation we experience, of all
ideas we receive; in short, of all causes and of all effects, which
causes and effects, as shown by; Mr. Lewis, are merely notional, for "we
call the antecedent cause, and the sequent effect; but these are merely
relative conceptions; the sequence itself is antecedent to some
subsequent change, and the former antecedent was once only a sequent to
its cause, and so on." Now, to reconcile with this theory of causation,
the notion of an
Eternal, mighty, causeless God,
may be possible, but the Author of this Apology cannot persuade himself
that it is. His poor faculties are unequal to the mighty task of
conceiving the amazing Deity in question, whom Sir Richard Blackmore, in
his Ode to Jehovah, describes as sitting on an 'eternal throne'--
Above the regions of etherial space,
And far extended frontier of the skies;
Beyond the outlines of wide nature's face,
Where void, not yet enclosed, uncultivated lies;
Completely filling every place
And far outstretching all imaginary space.
Still less has he the right to pretend acquaintance with a process of
reasoning by which such
Eternal, mighty, causeless God
can be believed in consistently with the conviction that cause is effect
realised, and means only CHANGE.
Ancient Simonides, when asked by Dionysius to explain the nature of
Deity, demanded a day to 'see about it,' then an additional two days,
and then four days more, thus wisely intimating to his silly pupil, that
the more men think about Gods; the less competent they are to give any
rational account of them.
Cicero was sensible and candid enough to acknowledge that he found it
much easier to say what God was not, than what he was. Like Simonides,
he was _mere_ Pagan, and like him, arguing from the known course of
nature, was unable, with all his mastery of talk, to convey positive
ideas of Deity. But how should he convey to others what he did not,
could not, himself possess? To him no revelation had been vouchsafed,
and though my Lord Brougham is quite sure, without the proof of natural
Theology, revelation has no other basis than mere tradition, we have
even better authority than his Lordship's for the staggering fact that
natural Theology, without the prop of revelation, is a 'rhapsody of
words,' mere jargon, analogous to the tale told by an idiot, so happily
described by our great poet as 'full of sound and fury, signifying
nothing.' We have a Rev. Hugh M'Neil 'convinced that, from external
creation, no right conclusion can be drawn concerning the _moral_
character of God,' and that 'creation is too deeply and disastrously
blotted in consequence of man's sin, to admit of any satisfactory result
from an adequate contemplation of nature.' [69:1] We have a Gillespie
setting aside the Design Argument on the ground that the reasonings by
which it is supported are 'inapt' to show such attributes as infinity,
omnipresence, free agency, omnipotency, eternality, or unity,' belong in
any way to God. On this latter attribute he specially enlarges, and
after allowing 'the contrivances we observe in nature, may establish a
unity of _counsel_, desires to be told' how they can establish a unity
of _substance_. [69:2] We have Dr. Chalmers and Bishop Watson, whose
capacities were not the meanest, contending that there is no natural
proof of a God, and that we must trust solely to revelation.' [69:3] We
have the Rev. Mr. Faber in his 'Difficulties of Infidelity,' boldly
affirming that no one ever did, or ever will 'prove without the aid of
revelation, that the universe was designed by a single designer.'
Obviously, then, there is a division in the religious camp with respect
to the sufficiency of natural Theology, unhelped by revelation. By three
of the four Christian authors just quoted, the design argument is
treated with all the contempt it merits. Faber says, 'evident design
must needs imply a designer,' and that 'evident design shines out in
every part of the universe.' But he also tells us 'we reason
exclusively, if with the Deist we thence infer the existence of one and
_only_ one Supreme Designer.' By Gillespie and M'Neil, the same truth is
told in other words. By Chalmers and Watson we are assured that, natural
proof of a God there is none, and our trust must be placed _solely_ in
revelation; while Brougham, another Immense Being worshipper, declares
that revelation derives its chief support from natural Theology, without
which it has 'no other basis than vague tradition.'
Now, Atheists agree with Lord Brougham as to the traditionary basis of
Scripture; and as they also agree with Chalmers and Watson with respect
to their being no natural proof of a God, they stand acquitted to their
own consciences of 'wilful deafness' and 'obstinate blindness,' in
rejecting as inadequate the evidence that 'God is' drawn either from
Nature, Revelation, or both.