MORALITY AND NATURAL THEISM.
_Credo quia impossibile est._
If we look calmly at the possible future of human thought, it will
appear from what we have just seen, that physical science of itself can
do little to control or cramp it; nor until man consents to resign his
belief in virtue and his own dignity altogether, will it be able to
repress religious faith, should other causes tend to produce a new
outbreak of it. But the chief difficulties in the matter are still in
store for us. Let us see never so clearly that science, if we are moral
beings, can do nothing to weaken our belief in God and immortality, but
still leaves us free, if we will, to believe in them, it seems getting
clearer and yet more clear that these beliefs are inconsistent with
themselves, and conflict with these very moral feelings, of which they
are invoked as an explanation. Here it is true that reason does confront
us, and what answer to make to it is a very serious question. This
applies even to natural religion in its haziest and most compliant form;
and as applied to any form of orthodoxy its force is doubled. What we
have seen thus far is, that if there be a moral world at all, our
knowledge of nature contains nothing inconsistent with theism. We have
now to enquire how far theism is inconsistent with our conceptions of
the moral world.
In treating these difficulties, we will for the present consider them as
applying only to religion in general, not to any special form of it. The
position of orthodoxy we will reserve for a separate treatment. For
convenience' sake, however, I shall take as a symbol of all religion the
vaguer and more general teachings of Christianity; but I shall be
adducing them not as teachings revealed by heaven, but simply as
developed by the religious consciousness of men.
To begin then with the great primary difficulties: these, though they
take various forms, can all in the last resort be reduced to two--the
existence of evil in the face of the power of God, and the freedom of
man's will in the face of the will of God. And what I shall try to make
plain with respect to these is this: not that they are not
difficulties--not that they are not insoluble difficulties; but that
they are not difficulties due to religion or theism, nor by abandoning
theism can we in any way escape from them. They start into being not
with the belief in God, and a future of rewards and punishments, but
with the belief in the moral law and in virtue, and they are common to
all systems in which the worth of virtue is recognised.
The vulgar view of the matter cannot be better stated than in the
following account given by J.S. Mill of the anti-religious reasonings of
his father. He looked upon religion, says his son, '_as the greatest
enemy of morality; first, by setting up fictitious excellences--belief
in creeds, devotional feelings, and ceremonies, not connected with the
good of humankind, and causing them to be accepted as substitutes for
genuine virtues_; but above all _by radically vitiating the standard of
morals, making it consist in doing the will of a being, on whom, indeed,
it lavishes all the phrases of adulation, but whom, in sober truth, it
depicts as eminently hateful. I have a hundred times heard him say that_
all ages and nations have represented their gods as wicked _in a
constantly increasing progression; that mankind had gone on adding trait
after trait, till they reached the most perfect expression of wickedness
which the human mind can devise, and have called this God, and
prostrated themselves before it. The_ ne plus ultra _of wickedness he
considered to be embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as
the creed of Christianity. Think (he used to say) of a being who would
make a hell--who would create the human race with the infallible
foreknowledge, and therefore with the intention, that the great majority
of them, should be consigned to horrible and everlasting torment._'
James Mill, adds his son, knew quite well that Christians were not, in
fact, as demoralised by this monstrous creed as, if they were logically
consistent, they ought to be. '_The same slovenliness of thought (he
said) and subjection of the reason to fears, wishes, and affections,
which enable them to accept a theory involving a contradiction in terms,
prevent them from perceiving the logical consequence of the theory._'
Now, in spite of its coarse and exaggerated acrimony, this passage
doubtless expresses a great truth, which presently I shall go on to
consider. But it contains also a very characteristic falsehood, of which
we must first divest it. God is here represented as _making_ a hell,
with the express intention of forcibly putting men into it, and His main
hatefulness consists in this capricious and wanton cruelty. Such a
representation is, however, an essentially false one. It is not only not
true to the true Christian teaching, but it is absolutely opposed to it.
The God of Christianity does not _make_ hell; still less does He
deliberately put men into it. It is made by men themselves; the essence
of its torment consists in the loss of God; and those that lose Him,
lose Him by their own act, from having deliberately made themselves
incapable of loving Him. God never wills the death of the sinner. It is
to the sinner's own will that the sinner's death is due.
All this rhetoric, therefore, about God's malevolence and wickedness is
entirely beside the point, nor does it even touch the difficulty that,
in his heart, James Mill is aiming at. His main difficulty is nothing
more than this: How can an infinite will that rules everywhere, find
room for a finite will not in harmony with itself? Whilst the only
farther perplexity that the passage indicates, is the existence of those
evil conditions by which the finite will, already so weak and wavering,
is yet farther hampered.
Now these difficulties are doubtless quite as great as James Mill
thought they were; but we must observe this, that they are not of the
same kind. They are merely intellectual difficulties. They are not moral
difficulties at all. Mill truly says that they involve a contradiction
in terms. But why? Not, as Mill says, because a wicked God is set up as
the object of moral worship, but because, in spite of all the wickedness
existing, the Author of all existences is affirmed not to be wicked.
Nor, again, is Mill right in saying that this contradiction is due to
'_slovenliness of thought_.' Theology accepts it with its eyes wide
open, making no attempt to explain the inexplicable; and the human will
it treats in the same way. It makes no offer to us to clear up
everything, or to enable thought to put a girdle round the universe. On
the contrary, it proclaims with emphasis that its first axioms are
unthinkable; and its most renowned philosophic motto is, '_I believe
because it is impossible_.'
What shall it say, then, when assailed by the rational moralist? It will
not deny its own condition, but it will show its opponent that his is
really the same. It will show him that, let him give his morality what
base he will, he cannot conceive of things without the same
contradiction in terms. If good be a thing of any spiritual value--if it
be, in other words, what every moral system supposes it to be--that good
can co-exist with evil is just as unthinkable as that God can. The value
of moral good is supposed to lie in this--that by it we are put _en
rapport_ with something that is better than ourselves--some '_stream of
tendency_,' let us say, '_that makes for righteousness_,' But if this
stream of tendency be not a personal God, what is it? Is it Nature?
Nature, we have seen already, is open to just the same objections that
God is. It is equally guilty of all the evil that is contained in it. Is
it Truth, then--pure Truth for its own sake? Again, we have seen already
that as little can it be that. Is it Human Nature as opposed to
Nature?--Man as distinct from, and holier than, any individual men? Of
all the substitutes for God this at first sight seems the most
promising, or, at any rate, the most practical. But, apart from all the
other objections to this, which we have already been considering in such
detail, it will very soon be apparent that it involves the very same
inconsistency, the same contradiction in terms. The fact of moral evil
still confronts us, and the humanity to which we lift our hearts up is
still taxable with that. But perhaps we separate the good in humanity
from the evil, and only worship the former as struggling to get free
from the latter. This, however, will be of little help to us. If what we
call humanity is nothing but the good part of it, we can only vindicate
its goodness at the expense of its strength. Evil is at least an equal
match for it, and in most of the battles hitherto it is evil that has
been victorious. But to conceive of good in this way is really to
destroy our conception of it. Goodness is in itself an incomplete
notion; it is but one facet of a figure which, approached from other
sides, appears to us as eternity, as omnipresence, and, above all, as
supreme strength; and to reduce goodness to nothing but the higher part
of humanity--to make it a wavering fitful flame that continually sinks
and flickers, that at its best can but blaze for a while, and at its
brightest can throw no light beyond this paltry parish of a world--is to
deprive it of its whole meaning and hold on us. Or again, even were this
not so, and could we believe, and be strengthened by believing, that the
good in humanity would one day gain the victory, and that some higher
future, which even we might partake in by preparing, was in store for
the human race, would our conception of the matter then be any more
harmonious? As we surveyed our race as a whole, would its brighter
future ever do away with its past? Would not the depth and the darkness
of the shadow grow more portentous as the light grew brighter? And would
not man's history strike more clearly on us as the ghastly embodiment of
a vast injustice? But it may be said that the sorrows of the past will
hereafter be dead and done with; that evil will literally be as though
it had never been. Well, and so in a short time will the good likewise;
and if we are ever to think lightly of the world's sinful and sorrowful
past, we shall have to think equally lightly of its sinless and cheerful
future.
Let us pass now to the secondary points. Opponents of theism, or of
religion in general, are perpetually attacking it for its theories of a
future life. Its eternal rewards and punishments are to them permanent
stumbling-blocks. A future life of happiness they think an unmeaning
promise; and a future life of misery they think an unworthy and brutal
threat. And if reason and observation are to be our only guides, we
cannot say that they do not argue with justice. If we believe in heaven,
we believe in something that the imagination fails to grasp. If we
believe in hell, we believe in something that our moral sense revolts
at: for though hell may be nothing but the conscious loss of God, and
though those that lose Him may have made their own hell for themselves,
still their loss, if eternal, will be an eternal flaw and disease in the
sum of things--the eternal self-assertion against omnipotence of some
depraved and alien power.
From these difficulties it is impossible to escape. All we can do here,
as in the former case, is to show that they are not peculiar to the
special doctrines to which they are supposed generally to be due; but
that they are equally inseparable from any of the proposed substitutes.
We can only show that they are inevitable, not that they are not
insoluble. If we condemn a belief in heaven because it is unthinkable,
we must for the same reason, as we have seen already, condemn a Utopia
on earth--the thing we are now told we should fix our hopes upon,
instead of it. As to the second question--that of eternal punishment, we
may certainly here get rid of one difficulty by adopting the doctrine of
a final restitution. But, though one difficulty will be thus got rid of,
another equally great will take its place. Our moral sense, it is true,
will no more be shocked by the conception of an eternal discord in
things, but we shall be confronted by a fatalism that will allow to us
no moral being at all. If we shall all reach the same place in the
end--if inevitably we shall all do so--it is quite plain that our
freedom to choose in the matter is a freedom that is apparent only. Mr.
Leslie Stephen, it seems, sees this clearly enough. Once give morality
its spiritual and supernatural meaning, and there is, he holds, '_some
underlying logical necessity which binds_ [a belief in hell]
_indissolubly with the primary articles of the faith_.' Such a system of
retribution, he adds, is '_created spontaneously_' by the '_conscience.
Heaven and hell are corollaries that rise and fall together.... Whatever
the meaning of [Greek: aiônios], the_ fearful _emotion which is
symbolised, is eternal or independent of time, by the same right as the_
ecstatic _emotion_.' He sees this clearly enough; but the strange thing
is that he does not see the converse. He sees that the Christian
conception of morality necessitates the affirmation of hell. He does not
see that the denial of hell is the denial of Christian morality, and
that in calling the former a dream, as he does, he does not call the
latter a dream likewise.
We can close our eyes to none of these perplexities. The only way to
resist their power is not to ignore them, but to realise to the full
their magnitude, and to see how, if we let them take away from us
anything, they will in another moment take everything; to see that we
must either set our foot upon their necks, or that they will set their
feet on ours; to see that we can look them down, but that we can never
look them through; to see that we can make them impotent if we will, but
that if they are not impotent they will be omnipotent.
But the strongest example of this is yet to come: and this is not any
special belief either as to religion or morals, but a belief underlying
both of these, and without which neither of them were possible. It is a
belief which from one point of view we have already touched upon--the
belief in the freedom of the will. But we have as yet only considered it
in relation to physical science. What we have now to do is to consider
it in relation to itself.
What, then, let us ask, is the nature of the belief? To a certain extent
the answer is very easy. When we speak and think of free-will
ordinarily, we know quite well what we mean by it; and we one and all of
us mean exactly the same thing. It is true that when professors speak
upon this question, they make countless efforts to distinguish between
the meaning which they attach to the belief, and the meaning which the
world attaches to it. And it is possible that in their studies or their
lecture-rooms they may contrive for the time being to distort or to
confuse for themselves the common view of the matter. But let the
professor once forget his theories, and be forced to buffet against his
life's importunate and stern realities: let him quarrel with his
housekeeper because she has mislaid his spectacles, or his night-cap,
or, preoccupied with her bible, has not mixed his gruel properly; and
his conception of free-will will revert in an instant to the universal
type, and the good woman will discern only too plainly that her master's
convictions as to it are precisely the same things as her own.
Everywhere, indeed, in all the life that surrounds us--in the social and
moral judgments on which the fabric of society has reared itself, in the
personal judgments on which so much depends in friendship and
antipathies--everywhere, in conduct, in emotion, in art, in language,
and in law, we see man's common belief in will written, broad, and
plain, and clear. There is, perhaps, no belief to which, for practical
purposes, he attaches so important and so plain a meaning.
Such is free-will when looked at from a distance. But let us look at it
more closely, and see what happens then. The result is strange. Like a
path seen at dusk across a moorland, plain and visible from a distance,
but fading gradually from us the more near we draw to it, so does the
belief in free-will fade before the near inspection of reason. It at
first grows hazy; at last it becomes indistinguishable. At first we
begin to be uncertain of what we mean by it; at last we find ourselves
certain that so far as we trust to reason, we cannot possibly have any
meaning at all. Examined in this way, every act of our lives--all our
choices and refusals, seem nothing but the necessary outcome of things
that have gone before. It is true that between some actions the choice
hangs at times so evenly, that our _will_ may seem the one thing that at
last turns the balance. But let us analyse the matter a little more
carefully, and we shall see that there are a thousand microscopic
motives, too small for us to be entirely conscious of, which, according
to how they settle on us, will really decide the question. Nor shall we
see only that this is so. Let us go a little further, and reason will
tell us that it must be so. Were this not the case, there would have
been an escape left for us. Though admitting that what controlled our
actions could be nothing but the strongest motive, it might yet be
contended that the will could intensify any motive it chose, and that
thus motives really were only tools in its hands. But this does but
postpone the difficulty, not solve it. What is this free-will when it
comes to use its tools? It is a something, we shall find, that our minds
cannot give harbour to. It is a thing contrary to every analogy of
nature. It is a thing which is forever causing, but which is in itself
uncaused.
To escape from this difficulty is altogether hopeless. Age after age has
tried to do so, but tried in vain. There have been always metaphysical
experts ready to engage to make free-will a something intellectually
conceivable. But they all either leave the question where they found
it, or else they only seem to explain it, by denying covertly the fact
that really wants explaining.
Such is free-will when examined by the natural reason--a thing that
melts away inevitably first to haze, and then to utter nothingness. And
for a time we feel convinced that it really is nothing. Let us, however,
again retire from it to the common distance, and the phantom we thought
exorcised is again back in an instant. There is the sphinx once more,
distinct and clear as ever, holding in its hand the scales of good and
evil, and demanding a curse or a blessing for every human action. We are
once more certain--more certain of this than anything--that we are, as
we always thought we were, free agents, free to choose, and free to
refuse; and that in virtue of this freedom, and in virtue of this alone,
we are responsible for what we do and are.
Let us consider this point well. Let us consider first how free-will is
a moral necessity; next how it is an intellectual impossibility; and
lastly how, though it be impossible, we yet, in defiance of intellect,
continue, as moral beings, to believe in it. Let us but once realise
that we do this, that all mankind universally do this and have done--and
the difficulties offered us by theism will no longer stagger us. We
shall be prepared for them, prepared not to drive them away, but to
endure their presence. If in spite of my reason I can believe that my
will is free, in spite of my reason I can believe that God is good. The
latter belief is not nearly so hard as the former. The greatest
stumbling-block in the moral world lies in the threshold by which to
enter it.
Such then are the moral difficulties, properly so called, that beset
theism; but there are certain others of a vaguer nature, that we must
glance at likewise. It is somewhat hard to know how to classify these;
but it will be correct enough to say that whereas those we have just
dealt with appeal to the moral intellect, the ones we are to deal with
now appeal to the moral imagination. The facts that these depend on, and
which are practically new discoveries for the modern world, are the
insignificance of the earth, when compared with the universe, of which
it is visibly and demonstrably an integral but insignificant fragment;
the enormous period of his existence for which man has had no religious
history, and has been, so far as we can tell, not a religious being at
all; and the vast majority of the race that are still stagnant and
semi-barbarous. Is it possible, we ask, that a God, with so many stars
to attend to, should busy himself with this paltry earth, and make it
the scene of events more stupendous than the courses of countless
systems? Is it possible that of the swarms, vicious and aimless, that
breed upon it, each individual--Bushman, Chinaman, or Negro--is a
precious immortal being, with a birthright in infinity and eternity? The
effect of these considerations is sometimes overwhelming. Astronomy
oppresses us with the gulfs of space; geology with the gulfs of time;
history and travel with a babel of vain existence. And here as in the
former case, our perplexities cannot be explained away. We can only meet
them by seeing that if they have any power at all, they are
all-powerful, and that they will not destroy religion only, but the
entire moral conception of man also. Religious belief, and moral belief
likewise, involve both of them some vast mystery; and reason can do
nothing but focalise, not solve it.
All, then, that I am trying to make evident is this--and this must be
sufficient for us--not that theism, with its attendant doctrines,
presents us with no difficulties, necessitates no baffling
contradictions in terms, and confronts us with no terrible and piteous
spectacles, but that all this is not peculiar to theism. It is not the
price we pay for rising from morality to religion. It is the price we
pay for rising from the natural to the supernatural. Once double the sum
of things by adding this second world to it, and it swells to such a
size that our reason can no longer encircle it. We are torn this way and
that by convictions, each of which is equally necessary, but each of
which excludes the others. When we try to grasp them all at once, our
mind is like a man tied to wild horses; or like Phaeton in the Sun's
chariot, bewildered and powerless over the intractable and the terrible
team. We can only recover our strength by a full confession of our
weakness. We can only lay hold on the beliefs that we see to be needful,
by asking faith to join hands with reason. If we refuse to do this,
there is but one alternative. Without faith we can perhaps explain
things if we will; but we must first make them not worth explaining. We
can only think them out entirely by regarding them as something not
worth thinking out at all.