CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

No subjects of thought have ever been proposed more essential to the

culture and happiness of mankind than the two following inquiries.

Upon the first, human minds dwell unweariedly through every change of

circumstance from childhood to advanced age. It is this:--What reason

have we to look for a future life after that hour of dissolution which

inevitably awaits us all?

The second question unites itself closely, as by indissoluble links,

to the first. We always proceed to ask, Is there sufficient ground for

believing in the existence of a Supreme Moral Being, to whose righteous

care and kindness we can calmly commit ourselves when we come to die?

Suppose any man to maintain that the universe we inhabit,--and we who

are a portion of its occupants--came into existence by chance, he

renounces at once every right and title to expect a life succeeding

his bodily death. Chance--if the word means anything--means absolute

uncertainty; and from that which is in its own nature uncertain, what

continuing effects, what conclusive expectation, can be drawn?

Neither is the prospect improved by Materialists[a], in whose opinion

the being of man comprehends no element differing essentially, and in

kind, from the natural world he rules over. We see actually consequent

upon every death-bed the decay of our material frame; if, therefore,

that frame be not the casket of a brighter jewel, we can assuredly

affirm no hope higher or happier than corruption.

The feelings of most human beings revolt from a destiny so ignoble. And

many persons are satisfied that this revolt of feeling is in itself a

sufficient ground for some belief in Immortality. Why, they ask, should

so powerful an instinct dwell in the breast of our race with only a

misleading issue? The higher instincts of creatures below us do not

mislead them regarding that which is to come. Insects innumerable make

provision for the certain sustenance of a progeny they never can live

to behold. They also anticipate for themselves a futurity of life and

development. The caterpillar invests himself with the web he has spun,

and sinks into a chrysalid-sepulchre, to emerge from it in sun-lighted

beauty. Can any valid reason be assigned why the intuitive aspirations

of man should be more fallacious than such practical foresights of the

merely animal world below him?

So far as the writer of these pages is aware, no one has ever alleged

a reason why mankind should be thus deluded. And without going

further than our own country, it seems probable that this instinctive

persuasion is seldom wanting amongst the greater part of our people.

Although the moral consequences of such a persuasion, sometimes merely

passive, may be far less than good men could desire, yet they are

frequently strong enough to assist the weak and wavering when exposed

to sudden temptations. In the "short and simple annals of the poor,"

may be read countless instances of the fact. Neglected men and women,

the scorned outcasts of society, have been often held back by it from

greater criminality. They have found themselves unable to acquiesce

in the belief of _their_ world's opinion--the opinion of their evil

friends and companions--that death must be to all creatures the certain

end of all things.

If, on the other hand, absolute knowledge of a future state were the

natural gift of each person's understanding, there are thousands

amongst our educated classes to whom the trial and terror of their own

hearts would be incalculably mitigated. Numbers feel that speculative

doubts concerning the Being of a God, and life after death, are sources

of a continual perplexity and distress, under which they find little

or no sympathy. In every fresh affliction or anxiety, such a mind has

to sustain a double burden of sorrow, and concerning such it seems

emphatically true, that "the heart knoweth his own bitterness." There

may, however, be suggested one alleviation for every similar instance

of despondency. The same rule holds in this respect as in all human

pursuits,--labour is, and will always continue, the appointed path

by which we must attain. The more noble the object sought, the more

arduous the task and toil,--and what can be nobler than a well-grounded

belief in God and Immortality?

Another very large class of educated persons bear their doubts with

stoical composure, account them an inevitable burden, and consider it

lost time to ask questions concerning "the Unknowable." This class is

sustained in its attitude by the prevalence[b] of really sceptical

writings;--writings (that is) which deny the possibility of knowledge

beyond the circle of positive phenomena. Maxims to this effect are

not uncommonly disseminated through the periodical press, books of

fiction, and other kinds of light literature. The rapidity of modern

life leads men to take opinions upon trust, and keeps them back from

serious investigation. An ephemeral satirist becomes in their eyes

as valuable an authority as the most deeply-thinking reasoner. Much

work is saved by this valuation, to say nothing of the great gain

in self-complacency. And, no doubt, many persons feel particularly

complacent in taking their tone from minds which are evidently no

better informed, and no more finely strung than their own[c].

The class of sceptics just described, cannot be reckoned in figures.

They make up multitudes never enumerated apart in any religious

census. They live and die and make no sign,--and how can quiet

unavowed disbelief obtain a separate place in the columns of the

Registrar-General? Among the audible tones of respectable people it

finds no utterance, and therefore occupies no position. Every one

experienced in the world knows that this species of Indifferentism

is usually regular at public worship, and reticent where sceptical

phrases pass current. The only sure test is a moral one--of very slow

application, since it takes time for a decent sceptic to balance the

pleasures against the risks of immorality. Meantime, there remains some

possible hope for a happier choice during the period of indecision.

Far fewer, because far more strongly declared, are the literary

lodestars of that harbourless sea, where all beyond the horizon of

cloud and billow seems veiled and uncertain. Some amongst them may,

after all, be but wandering lights themselves[d], floating and drifting

like meteors which glimmer at nightfall across shadowy waters. Others

appear really fixed in a dim and joyless firmament where the Present

only is true, the remote Past a conjecture, and the Future altogether

inscrutable. According to them this bounded prospect is the true goal

and real aim of our transitory life,--within it the trials and griefs

of humanity assume their proper dimensions and pale their ineffectual

terrors, while peace, like a river of Eden, flows out over the once

martyred but now ransomed race of man. Even in our own imperfect

struggling day, the human creature may be happy who certainly knows

that this mixed existence is his All--that outside it he can live no

life except in the memory of his fellow-men--that there is no God,

no futurity of individual progress or perfection; but that one thing

happens equally to the good and the bad--the wise and the unwise.

This knowledge brings happiness, because it chases from the breast

self-centred hope and fear: the man who accepts this blank beholds

himself, as he really is, an atom of the Universal Whole--borne now by

the irresistible tide of force into sunlight--borne soon by the same

irresistible tide into a darkness of the shadow of death.

Compared with this creed, the martyrs of Monotheism were

self-loving--for did not they hope? Compared with this simple creed,

all who have stopped short on the threshold of frightful crimes, and

hesitated to stain their souls, were also self-loving--for did they not

fear?

A great variety of remonstrances have been addressed to writers of

this latter type[e]. Social consequences have been eloquently urged

against hypotheses which, if realised, would weaken, or perhaps

destroy, self-control, foresight, and self-improvement. In reply we

are told that these objects of pursuit still appear good and useful

to benevolent eyes. But it should be remembered that our age is one

of transition--half-developed as it were in Doubt. Our benevolent

men have not yet been fully disciplined in the coming school. Who,

therefore, shall safely predict for us the effects of its proposed

discipline? Add that, looking at the civilised world in general,

certain ideas (illusions, as they are sometimes called) respecting

a Futurity influenced by our present right and wrong-doing, are

ingrained in cultured man, and may perhaps be described as connate

with his nineteenth-century existence[f]. Is it possible, then, for

any one to say beforehand what may or may not be the consequence of

uprooting cherished principles fitted in their own nature to exercise

so practical an influence?

Remonstrances of this kind, however truthful and valuable in

themselves, would be out of place in the ensuing pages. A contribution

to the constructive science of Natural Theology must rest its

arguments upon the reason of the case, to the exclusion of many

interesting and persuasive considerations. All questions of Sociology,

have, however, a special fascination for numerous thinkers who are

unlikely to overlook negative conclusions lying close upon the confines

of their own science, and to them the treatment of such questions must

be remitted.

That these phases of thought have not, in fact, escaped the

consideration of benevolent observers, may be inferred from the special

circumstances under which this Essay is composed. Into every condition

(each being required by the exigencies of the subject) the present

writer enters with honest cordiality. His wish and aim is to place

before those who, while they doubt, still debate, certain reasonable

considerations which have appeared convincing to other speculative

minds. And he may defend himself from any possible charge of causeless

intermeddling with other men's concerns, in the words of one amongst

our most genuinely English poets:--

"'Twere well, says one sage, erudite, profound,

Terribly arch'd and aquiline his nose,

And overbuilt with most impending brows,

'Twere well could you permit the World to live

As the World pleases: what's the World to you?

Much. I was born of woman, and drew milk

As sweet as charity from human breasts.

I think, articulate, I laugh and weep,

And exercise all functions of a man.

How then should I and any man that lives

Be strangers to each other?"[3]

There are, however, doubters whom the writer can scarcely desire

to address--human beings in whose hearts to deny God kindles a

vivid delight, because belief in Him would compel the renunciation

of some darling wickedness. The true spring of their Materialism,

Pantheism,--or whatever else happens to be the adopted form of

Negation--lies within the will[g] itself. And, therefore, the wish

to be better must precede the wish to hear any one who reasons of

righteousness, temperance, or judgment to come.

To those who doubt, yet desire that Truth--whichever way Truth may

incline--shall distinctly prevail, the ensuing pages are dedicated.

And one main endeavour to be kept in view by both writer and reader

is, that, laying aside passion and prejudice, these questions may be

discussed under the _siccum lumen_--the purified ray--of Right Reason.

To argue for victory may be allowed an advocate who pleads subject to

the intervention of a judge. But here we have no arbiter to say what

is or is not allowable; here, too, the matter is in itself something

graver than corporeal life, or death, or all else beneath the sky;

here, finally, the case is personal, since each reasoner first settles

an account with his own heart; next, tries and decides a conclusive

issue, and by his own sentence, accepts more than any human foresight

can declare. Here, then, special pleading[4] is altogether out of place

on either side, and we must, if we aim at what is best, argue for

nothing more or less than the plain and simple truth.

There must, of course, be difficulties in keeping this straight and

honest road. Few men like making admissions apparently at variance with

their own conclusions; fewer still like to forego pleas which, though

in their own judgment unsound, are certainly specious, and to many

minds persuasive. Such, however, is the wish and aim of the present

essayist. And, that he may bind himself the more firmly to his own

resolution, he requests his readers to believe that any over-statement

or other error of which he may fairly be found guilty, is occasioned

by the unpleasantly common cause of ignorance,--a cause which Dr.

Johnson confessed was his reason for defining "_pastern_" as a "horse's

knee." "Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance," he replied, to the surprise

of his fair critic, who expected an elaborate defence. _Per contra_,

the essayist may equitably claim that he shall not be convicted by a

too summary and inconsiderate process. At the first blush, there will

certainly appear in the eyes of many readers numerous seeming mistakes,

which, if carefully scrutinized, may afterwards be held the reverse. At

all events, plain dealing and honest purpose demand that, when Truth is

the issue truly sought, those who approach it from opposite sides must

(if they desire to do right) sift their objections and difficulties as

well as their favourite arguments.

Reasoning on Natural Theology falls necessarily into two divisions. The

_first_ is made up of arguments drawn from the world without us. The

_second_, of arguments drawn from the world within[h]. Each path of

reasoning is subject to a cross division. We may argue affirmatively to

a definite conclusion. We may also argue negatively with the same end

in view;--we may show how much more difficult and less tenable is the

contradictory hypothesis.

It would be an awkward and almost impracticable task to keep these

kinds of reasoning far apart. The natural procedure of thought, is to

combine, rather than to dissever, when we marshal facts for the purpose

of a full and wide generalization. Yet it does seem practicable to mark

every transition of thought distinctly; and, if clearly marked, the

distinction may easily be kept in mind.

With this precaution, it may appear allowable to treat Natural Theology

in a more discursive manner than could otherwise be permitted. The

object of so doing will be to divest discussion as much as possible of

a dry, logical stiffness; and, by ranging round each topic[i] to look

at it in various lights; a process which generally discovers both the

weakness and the strength of reasoning. Any one who has read Plato will

understand the advantage of Dialogue in this respect. A more familiar

book, Coleridge's "Friend," is another apt illustration. Each of its

series of essays takes a sweep of the kind; and each "landing-place"

affords a rest to the reader, and a fresh beginning to the intellectual

tour. Without venturing to copy the quaint invention of landing-places,

the present writer intends making every Chapter the occasion of a

fresh _start_. The separate trains of thought will thus proceed from

distinct points, and travel by separate routes, so as to admit of full

inspection in their progress. Each argument allowed by the reader to be

valid, will finally link itself to its neighbours; and all thoughtful

persons know how to estimate the strength of convergent conclusions.

The writer trusts, also, that he may be allowed to escape the two

alternatives,--either circumlocution, or the use of an objectionable

pronoun _singular_, by employing the plural "_we_." This word may

perhaps have a further good effect; it may remind both reader and

writer that they are engaged as pilgrim-companions on a journey of

joint exploration.

At the head of all their reasonings, Natural Theologians usually

place the celebrated argument from Design. It would be impossible, in

discussing it, to reproduce here the many illustrative examples of

Design which have been collected. It would likewise be useless; partly,

because they are all easily accessible and mostly well known; partly,

because their appositeness as _illustrations_ is now fully admitted;

and the controversy turns upon questions of another and more abstract

kind. It is asked whether the analogy founded on these instances is

relevant?--whether it proves too little, or too much?--and, how far

the inferences drawn from such examples really go? Our plan will,

therefore, be to devote our second Chapter to the examination of

such objections; to the review and elucidation of the argument from

Design. But if the reader wishes really to study the various questions

closely connected with this celebrated line of thought, and to view

the reasoning in a shape so complete as to be at once relevant and

satisfactory, he may be pleased to bestow a leisure hour on the

consecutive perusal of Chapters II., V., and VI., with their appended

notes and illustrations.

The _third_ Chapter is intended as a critical propædeutic or foundation

for the constructive science of Natural Theology. So far as our

experience of men in great cities teaches anything with respect to the

speculative difficulties which keep them from God, it seems to teach

one undoubted fact. There is grounded in their minds a persuasion

(underlying all further objections), that, whatever else we can know,

little or nothing is to be learned concerning God. The idea of Theism

is thus isolated from every other idea; and there is a presumption

against all reasoning which in any way leads up to a determinate

thought of the Divine Being or the Divine attributes.

Some such doubters allege the necessary limitation of human knowledge

in general:--

"Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;

The proper study of mankind is man."

But, is not one chief object in knowing man, to acquaint ourselves with

God? In this spirit Quarles says:--

"Man is man's A B C; there's none that can

Read God aright, unless he first spell man."

We may be perfectly sure that every human being, who (as Pope

continues) hangs between the sceptic and the stoic,--

"In doubt to deem himself a god or beast,"

will never arrive at any knowledge of God whatsoever.

Others, again, who suppose mankind to know a great deal, conceive

all special thought which transcends the every-day human circle, to

be encompassed by a number of difficulties exceptionally its own.

If, it is said, there are angelic natures, they must needs pity our

poor attempts to survey _super_-human or _extra_-human spheres of

existence:--

"Superior beings, when of late they saw

A mortal man unfold all nature's law,

Admir'd such wisdom in an earthly shape,

And show'd a Newton as we show an ape."[5]

Pope's cynicism has been lately re-echoed in various comparisons. A

death-watch has been supposed to speculate on the final end of a clock;

a timepiece on the nature of its makers. Writers who use similitudes

may be asked to remember that if Man really possesses reason (to say

nothing of an immortal spirit), he cannot be ranged in analogy with

apes, death-watches, and timepieces. The moment brute organisms, or

inorganic constructions, are represented as _reasoning_, they cease to

be what they are--a Thing suddenly becomes a Person. If this were all,

the speech and faculties of Man would be represented as intact, though

veiled beneath some shape worthy of the invention of a Babrias or an

Æsop. But this is not all. The monstrous shape is at once both Thing

and Person, and its thinkings in this double character are supposed to

show by their grotesque failures the absurdity of our human endeavour

to reason concerning God or Immortality.

To this whole kind of preoccupation the third Chapter is addressed.

There are really no special difficulties in the way of Theism. It

argues from the known to the unknown; so do all the inductive sciences.

It accepts more than it can explain; so do we, each and all, in

accepting the truth of our own individuality and personal identity,

of the world outside us, and the mind within, which scrutinizes that

changing world. The more thoroughly questions relating to our first

sources of knowledge are debated, the more surely shall we perceive how

safe is the starting-point of Natural Theology.

Against Materialism, on the other hand, there may be urged a series

of difficulties properly its own, and this may be most easily seen

by placing it in contrast with pure Idealism. The Materialistic

starting-point is from an unauthorized postulate--in common parlance,

an unfounded assumption; each step it takes is attended with a fresh

need of postulation, amounting at last to the gravest burden of

improbability. And when the materializing goal is reached we gain

nothing--no treasure is discovered--no vista opened into new realms

of intellectual or moral empire. We are only told that our supposed

insight was but a dream. We are only warned to dream no more.

Materialism has murdered insight.

With the argument of this Chapter there arises a very important

question, which the reader is entreated to put to himself more than

once, and bestow upon it from time to time a pause of serious thought.

In a negative form the question runs thus: Since the difficulties

supposed to bar the _first_ march of Natural Theology are in no wise

peculiar to it, but attach themselves equally to a multitude of our

daily grounds of thinking and acting, must we not, _if_, on account of

such difficulties, we deny Natural Theism, also deny those persuasions

of ordinary life? How else can we maintain our critical consistency?

Let no man henceforward be confident that there exists an outward world

of either men or things--let him not carelessly suppose that he has

even an individual mind to speak of as his own--let all that concerns

_other_ness--all that concerns _self_ness be relegated along with the

Divine Being to the region of the Unknown and the Unknowable.

But we may imagine that, instead of denying these truths of common

life, many men will be hardy enough to affirm them. If so, in accepting

these they clearly accept a great deal more. To be consistent they must

accept also the reasonable beliefs and first principles upon which

reposes Theism.

The question thus put is therefore a dilemma or choice between two

alternatives. And there may seem to remain no great doubt as to which

alternative most practical reasoners will accept. This kind of dilemma

will recur at many several steps of our inquiry, but having been

illustrated in one instance at considerable length, its examination

on other occasions may be safely left to the intelligence of the

thoughtful reader.

The _four_ following chapters argue for the truth of Theism on

four several and independent grounds. These arguments are purely

constructive; and each is so far apart from the other three as to stand

or fall upon its own merits. But, when each of these four arguments

has been separately examined, if admitted either wholly or in a

modified shape, their consilient and conjoint effect must be taken into

consideration[j].

To minimize impediments in the way of true knowledge; and to rise into

clearness;--_these_ should be the hopes and aims of us all. Life is

full of foiled endeavours; but let us onward now with the hopeful!

ADDITIONAL NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER I.

A.--THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE AND OTHERS ON MODERN SCEPTICISM.

_Extract from Mr. Gladstone's Address delivered at the Liverpool

Collegiate Institution, December 21st, 1872._

"It is not now only the Christian Church, or only the Holy Scripture,

or only Christianity, which is attacked. The disposition is boldly

proclaimed to deal alike with root and branch, and to snap utterly the

ties which, under the still venerable name of Religion, unite man with

the unseen world, and lighten the struggles and the woes of life by the

hope of a better land.

"These things are done as the professed results and the newest

triumphs of Modern Thought and Modern Science; but I believe that

neither Science nor Thought is responsible, any more than Liberty is

responsible, for the misdeeds committed in their names. Upon the ground

of what is termed evolution, God is relieved of the labour of creation;

in the name of unchangeable laws, He is discharged from governing the

world; and His function of judgment is also dispensed with, as justice

and benevolence are held to forbid that men should hereafter be called

to strict account for actions, which under these unchangeable laws

they may have committed. But these are only the initial stages of the

process. Next we are introduced to the doctrine of the Absolute and

the Unconditioned; and under the authority of these phrases (to which,

and many other phrases, in their proper places, I have no objection)

we are instructed that we can know nothing about God, and therefore

can have no practical relations with Him. One writer--or, as it is now

termed, thinker--announces with pleasure that he has found the means

of reconciling Religion and Science. The mode is in principle most

equitable. He divides the field of thought between them. To Science he

awards all that of which we know, or may know, something; to Religion

he leaves a far wider domain,--that of which we know, and can know,

nothing. This sounds like jest, but it is melancholy earnest; and I

doubt whether any such noxious crop has been gathered in such rank

abundance from the press of England in any former year of our literary

history as in this present year of our redemption, eighteen hundred and

seventy-two." (pp. 22-3.)

The writer, or thinker, mentioned by Mr. Gladstone is thus described

at the end of the address, p. 33:--"My reference is to Mr. Herbert

Spencer. See his 'First Principles,' and especially the chapter on

the 'Reconciliation of Science and Religion.' It is needless to cite

particular passages. It would be difficult to mistake its meaning, for

it is written with great ability and clearness, as well as with every

indication of sincerity. Still it vividly recalls to mind an old story

of the man who, wishing to be rid of one who was in his house, said,

'Sir, there are two sides to my house, and we will divide them; you

shall take the outside.'

"I believe Mr. Spencer has been described in one of our daily journals

as the first thinker of the age."

To some people the Premier will appear more than reasonably disturbed

by the journal's description. There is (as we have remarked) a very

advanced type of the genus journalist in England, and its anonymous

zealots are liberal in distributing titles of honour--that is, among

their friends. _Per contra_, upon authors of Mr. Gladstone's calibre

and lofty mode of thought they bestow epithets very much the reverse of

complimentary. They seem, in fact, somewhat to resemble those critics

of whom Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote, that "though excellent fellows in

their way, there are no gentlemen in the world less sensible of any

sanctity in a book, or less likely to recognize an author's heart in

it." So far, however, as Mr. Herbert Spencer is concerned, the journal

censured might observe in justification of its approval that his system

seems a good deal read by the students of more than one school in our

Premier's own University--a proud distinction shared by Mr. Spencer

with several other eminent thinkers of the same speculative tendencies

as himself.

The eloquent speaker next passes under brief review two other typical

books,--one by a German, the second by an Englishman. Respecting the

opinions of the former author (Strauss[6]) Mr. Gladstone writes thus

(Authentic Report, p. 24):--"In his first chapter he puts the question,

'Are we still Christians?' and, after a detailed examination, he

concludes, always speaking on behalf of Modern Thought, that if we

wish our yea to be yea, and our nay nay, if we are to think and speak

our thoughts as honourable, upright men, we must reply that we are

Christians no longer. This question and answer, however, he observes,

are insufficient. The essential and fundamental inquiry is, whether we

are or are not still to have a Religion?

"To this inquiry he devotes his second chapter. In this second chapter

he finds that there is no personal God; there is no future state; the

dead live in the recollection of survivors--this is enough for them.

After this he has little difficulty in answering the question he has

put. All religious worship ought to be abolished. The very name of

'Divine Service' is an indignity to man. Therefore, in the sense in

which religion has been heretofore understood, his answer is that

we ought to have no religion any more. But proceeding, as he always

does, with commendable frankness, he admits that he ought to fill with

something the void which he has made. This he accordingly proceeds to

do. Instead of God, he offers to us the All, or Universum. This All, or

Universum, possesses, he tells us, neither consciousness nor reason.

But it presents to us order and law. He thinks it fitted, therefore,

to be the object of a new and true piety, which he claims for his

Universum, as the devout of the old style did for their God. If any one

repudiates this doctrine, to Dr. Strauss's reason the repudiation is

absurdity, and to his feelings blasphemy."[7]

Many readers will agree with the Premier in calling these "astonishing

assertions." Many will also speak of Strauss's positions as something

worse than astonishing when they read in the Illustrative Passages

(Address, p. 34) a declaration which he holds it his duty as well as

his right to make without any kind of reserve.[8]

Most persons will likewise agree with the Premier's further observation

(p. 38):--"I have made a statement that these ideas are not a mere

German brood, though I fear that we owe much of their seed to Germany,

as France owed to England the seed of her great Voltairian movement, so

far as it was a movement grounded in the region of thought."

In illustration of the statement that "there are many writers of

kindred sympathies in England, and some of as outspoken courage"

(Address, p. 26), Mr. Gladstone quotes four passages from Mr. Winwood

Reade's "Martyrdom of Man." The three first cited possess a painful

interest for the Natural Theologian. They are as follows:--(1.) "When

the faith in a personal God is extinguished; when prayer and praise are

no longer to be heard; when the belief is universal that with the body

dies the soul; then the false morals of theology will no longer lead

the human mind astray." (2.) "We teach that the soul is immortal; we

teach that there is a future life; we teach that there is a Heaven in

the ages far away: but not for us single corpuscles, not for us dots of

animated jelly, but for the One of whom we are the elements, and who,

though we perish, never dies." (3.) "God is so great that He does not

deign to have personal relations with us human atoms that are called

men. Those who desire to worship their Creator must worship Him through

mankind. Such, it is plain, is the scheme of Nature." (pp. 38-9.)

On account of his Address and _pièces justificatives_, Mr. Gladstone

has been already (like a prophet of old) "wounded in the house of his

friends." It may therefore be well to support his judgment by some

additional testimony. Now the _Pall Mall Gazette_, whatever faults may

be imputed to it by its adversaries, cannot be justly charged with

harshness or discourtesy towards materializing writers. And it so

happens that both Dr. Strauss and Mr. Reade have lately been criticised

in its columns. From these notices, therefore, I shall venture on

making some extracts.

Strauss's "Der Alte und der Neue Glaube" was reviewed at considerable

length in the number for November 27, 1872. I quote two passages only.

After an interesting introduction the reviewer proceeds thus:--

"As the title of the book indicates, the work to be effected divides

itself into two main parts. First, it is necessary to settle the

relations to be adopted towards the old Church faith, or Christianity.

That accomplished, the outlines at least of the new views that take

its place must be sketched out. Of course, before that can be done

it must be settled whether or not there is anything to put in place

of Christianity. It is logically correct to ask, first, whether

'we'--meaning 'the thinking minority,' who have grown dissatisfied with

'the old faith'--'are still Christians' in any sense. Having answered

that question in the negative, it is in order to ask next 'whether we

have any religion,'--which cannot be answered by a simple negative

or affirmative, or without further explanations as to the nature of

religion. We must see 'how we regard the world,' or the system of

existing things; what results we are led to by modern researches as

to its origin, purpose, and destiny. Although in the light that flows

from these, Strauss maintains that the old idea of a personal God must

disappear, he finds a Divinity in the All or totality of nature, whose

forces and course exhibit purpose or design--subjectively speaking--and

order, and to which we are bound, recognizing the wisdom that regulates

them, piously to resign ourselves, seeking to fulfil that order of

which we ourselves are a part." The following extract concludes the

notice:--"We have seen that Strauss refuses to acknowledge Christianity

because on examination its assertions appear to him incredible, and its

claims therefore inadmissible. That is the result of an examination

of the nature of Christianity, in which we have nothing new, as it is

substantially a synopsis of the fuller process of reasoning contained

in 'The Life of Jesus.' But it is not Christianity alone that must be

dispensed with. In accordance with the old declaration that miracles

are impossible, the supernatural also disappears. It is not merely

relegated, as by Herbert Spencer and Comte, to the sphere of the

Unknowable; it is not recognized in any manner whatsoever. In place of

creation, we have in these pages a process of continuous development

through immense periods of time; instead of God, as the source of law

and authority and order, nature proceeding harmoniously in an unending

process; instead of individual immortality, the conclusion that every

individual fulfils his destiny in this world. The divinities and the

after life of man are, as with Feuerbach, declared to be simply his

own desires. 'What man might be but is not, he makes his god; what he

might possess but cannot win for himself, that shall his god bestow

upon him.' In reference to the argument that man must somewhere

realize all the possibilities that are in him, and as he does not do

so in this life there must be a future one, Strauss asks whether all

seeds in nature come to maturity. Having dispensed, then, with the

supernatural, are we necessarily without any religion? We have seen

that Strauss answers in the negative, though not very confidently.

The fundamental views on human life, the existence of the world, and

so forth, are without doubt a religion, or the theoretical side of

one. If in order to a religion it be necessary to believe that the

universe fulfils a rational purpose through a rational order, we

have that presented to us. There is constant process and continuous

development. There is an ascent, as it were, of the forces of nature

which perform their mighty cycles through the ages, and a consequent

descent and vanishing away. The All remains ever the same, is at no

moment more complete than in the preceding, nor _vice versâ_, but there

is a process of becoming and disappearing which goes on, or may go on

_ad infinitum_. The design or purpose of every part is being fulfilled

at every moment, for at every moment there is the richest possible

unfolding of life in the total system of things. The highest idea to

which we can attain is that of the universe.

"Many people were scandalized when a few years ago Mr. Mill maintained

that the idea of a God was not indispensable to a religion. Comte's

'Religion of Humanity' was then in view. Strauss's religion, though

equally without a God, is deformed by no such crudities of thought

and feeling as Comte's. Rather is his book a representation in brief

compass of the views to which, whether we regret it or not, the

majority of educated and thinking men are in our day more and more

attracted."

One remarkable circumstance dwelt upon in this notice, as well as

in Mr. Gladstone's Address, is that Strauss, like Comte, finds a

substitute for the worship of a Deity--a something which both are

pleased to call a Religion. Strauss takes the theoretical, Comte the

sentimental view. According to the Frenchman, men are to worship

"Humanity" with a leaning to the female side. The un-deformed

religion of the German centres upon an Optimistic theory of the All

or Universum.[9] Both would seem practically to confess the real

necessity of some Religion to mankind, and the question naturally

occurs whether these _succedanea_ are more wholesome and elevating than

Theism, or whether (it may be added) they are as likely to be true

after all.

Mr. Winwood Reade's "Martyrdom of Man" had been criticised four days

earlier (_Pall Mall Gazette_, Nov. 23). As he is an English writer, I

take the liberty of making more copious extracts, but would recommend

such of my readers as have not perused the article to bestow half an

hour's steady thought upon it.

"Mr. Reade," writes the critic, "puts forth his book as a sort of

review, or survey, or abridgement of the general history of the human

race, and he has given to it the strange title it bears because he is

of opinion that 'the supreme and mysterious Power by whom the universe

has been created, and by whom it has been appointed to run its course

under fixed and invariable law; that awful One to whom it is profanity

to pray, of whom it is idle and irreverent to argue and debate, of

whom we should never presume to think save with humility and awe; that

Unknown God has ordained that mankind should be elevated by misfortune,

and that happiness should grow out of misery and pain.' But, although

the work is in the main historical, it is also partly cosmological,

partly physiological, and partly polemical. It deals with the past, the

present, and the future of the world as well as of humanity....

"In what he has to say on the present occasion Mr. Reade lays no

claim to originality. On the contrary, he warns us that he has

borrowed, 'not only facts and ideas, but phrases and even paragraphs

from other writers.' The purpose he has in view is to illustrate the

investigations and enforce the conclusions within a moderate compass

of higher and more voluminous authorities. But still there is quite

enough of his own handiwork in the volume to entitle him to be regarded

as far more than a mere compiler; and we venture to think that many

readers will find those portions of it which are the fruits of Mr.

Reade's personal experience as an African explorer, and his reflections

upon that which he has himself seen, among the most interesting and

instructive of all.

"In the writings of Mr. Darwin, Mr. Mill, Dr. Draper, and Mr. Herbert

Spencer, the authors to whom Mr. Reade seems to be chiefly indebted,

the assumed antagonism between the conclusions of modern science and

the premisses of popular theology is latent rather than manifest. With

them it is left as a matter of inference, and is nowhere forced upon

the attention as a matter of fact. Mr. Reade endeavours to supply

this deficiency, and he does so distinctly and abruptly enough....

In order to build we must destroy. Not only the Syrian superstition

must be attacked, but the belief in a 'personal God,' which engenders

a slavish and oriental condition of the mind, and the belief in a

posthumous reward which engenders a selfish and solitary condition

of the heart.... What Mr. Reade is pleased to designate 'the Syrian

superstition' is still the direct or indirect source of all the really

practical sympathy existing both between the higher and lower classes

of society and the higher and lower races of mankind. As to the belief

in a personal God, the passage we have quoted above from Mr. Reade

seems to show that he shares it, or the language he uses is mere

nonsense. It would be absurd to talk about anything except a personal

God creating the universe, appointing fixed and invariable laws, and

ordaining the destiny of mankind. And if Mr. Reade is referring merely

to force collectively or in the abstract, we cannot perceive why it

'should be idle and irreverent to argue and debate about' it, or why

'we should never presume to think, save with humility and awe' about

it, more than about its particular and concrete manifestations; for

instance, light, heat, or electricity. Moreover, if we admit that the

universe is in any sense the work of a supreme and mysterious Power who

has in any sense predestined an unalterable course for it to run, we

cannot understand how such a belief is fitted to remove the 'slavish

and oriental condition of mind' of which Mr. Reade complains. We should

have thought rather that the unmitigated fatalism it implies would be

far likelier to generate such an intellectual state than reliance on

providential superintendence and interposition carried to no matter

what extravagant lengths. Mr. Reade's proposition that the belief in

a posthumous reward engenders a selfish and solitary condition of the

heart appears to us likewise wide of the mark. As long as we continue

to be individual beings, our conduct will continue to be the result of

our individual feelings, present or anticipated. Practically, at all

events, the Stoic, the Sadducee, and the Christian equally will fulfil

instead of neglecting their duty--first, because they are conscious

that it is their duty, and secondly, because they know that fulfilling

it will bring them satisfaction, and that to neglect it will bring them

remorse. The only difference is that the Christian trusts that his

satisfaction in the one case, and fears that his remorse in the other

case, will be infinitely prolonged."

Mr. Reade's reviewer concludes his critique with a piece of wit from

Voltaire, which he views as enunciating a pretty fair summary of the

moral contained in the "Martyrdom of Man." Voltaire compares the

Creator of the world to the builder of a great house, and men to the

mice who inhabit its chinks and crannies. The Divine builder has not

enlightened us mice. This comparison has often since been repeated in

new and improved shapes by sceptical moderns, who treat a considerate

Death-watch as a typical thinker on problems of reason, such as Design

and Final Causation.

As author of a Lecture on Positivism in 1871, I cannot but be gratified

to perceive that Mr. Gladstone's views of Comte's character and system

are coincident with my own. (Authentic Report, pp. 25 and 36.)

This note began with extracts furnished by one Premier--it may not

inaptly close with quotations from the writings of another.

Mr. Disraeli, in his preface to the new edition of "Lothair," expresses

himself as follows (p. xv., seq.):--

"It cannot be denied that the aspect of the world and this country, to

those who have faith in the spiritual nature of man, is at this time

dark and distressful. They listen to doubts, and even denials, of an

active Providence; what is styled Materialism is in the ascendant.

To those who believe that an atheistical society, though it may be

polished and amiable, involves the seeds of anarchy, the prospect is

full of gloom.

"This disturbance in the mind of nations has been occasioned by two

causes: firstly, by the powerful assault on the divinity of the Semitic

literature by the Germans; and, secondly, by recent discoveries of

science, which are hastily supposed to be inconsistent with our

long-received convictions as to the relations between the Creator and

the created."

On the first cause of disturbance, Mr. Disraeli continues:--"Man brings

to the study of the oracles more learning and more criticism than of

yore: and it is well that it should be so. The documents will yet bear

a greater amount both of erudition and examination than they have

received; but the word of God is eternal, and will survive the spheres."

On the second, he observes:--"Scientific, like spiritual truth, has

ever from the beginning been descending from Heaven to man. He is a

being who organically demands direct relations with his Creator, and

he would not have been so organised if his requirements could not be

satisfied. We may analyse the sun and penetrate the stars, but man is

conscious that he is made in God's own image, and in his perplexity he

will ever appeal to 'our Father which art in Heaven.'"

Both these sources of doubt and denial have been exemplified in the

preceding note. I might indeed have hesitated to exemplify them so

fully were it not for the considerations mentioned in my preface to

this essay.

B.--ON CORRUPTION OF THE JUDGMENT BY MISDIRECTED MORAL SENTIMENTS.

Talfourd--then Mr. Serjeant Talfourd--thus describes what passed in his

own mind when viewing the site of Gibbon's abode at Lausanne:--"That

garden in which the Historian took his evening walk, after writing the

last lines of the work to which many years had been devoted;--a walk

which alone would have hallowed the spot, if, alas! there had not been

those intimations in the work itself of a purpose which, tending to

desecrate the world, must deprive all associations attendant on its

accomplishment of a claim to be dwelt on as holy! How melancholy is

it to feel that intellectual congratulation which attends the serene

triumph of a life of studious toil chilled by the consciousness that

the labour, the research, the Asiatic splendour of illustration,

have been devoted, in part at least, to obtain a wicked end--not in

the headlong wantonness of youth, or the wild sportiveness of animal

spirits, but urged by the deliberate, hearted purpose of crushing

the light of human hope--all that is worth living for, and all that

is worth dying for--and substituting for them nothing but a rayless

scepticism. That evening walk is an awful thing to meditate on; the

walk of a man of rare capacities, tending to his own physical decline,

among the serenities of loveliest nature, enjoying the thought that,

in the chief work of his life, just accomplished, he had embodied a

hatred to the doctrines which teach men to love one another, to forgive

injuries, and to hope for a diviner life beyond the grave; and exulting

in the conviction that this work would survive to teach its deadly

lesson to young ingenuous students, when he should be dust. One may

derive consolation from reflecting that the style is too meretricious,

and the attempt too elaborate and too subtle, to achieve the proposed

evil; and in hoping that there were some passages in the secret history

of the author's heart, which may extenuate its melancholy error; but

our personal veneration for successful toil is destroyed in the sense

of the strange malignity which blended with its impulses, and we feel

no desire to linger over the spot where so painful a contradiction is

presented as a charm."--_Vacation Rambles._ Ed. 2, p. 238.

We may gladly give Gibbon the benefit of the doubt with which the great

judge closes. But surely most attempts to address the mental state

depicted must needs be found impotent. There is great force in a dictum

of Schelling's ("Idealismus der Wissenschaftslehre") to the following

effect--"The medium by which spirits understand each other is not the

ambient air, but the deep-stirred sympathetic vibrations propagated

by a community of spiritual freedom. When a soul is not pervaded by

this atmosphere of conscious freedom, all inward communion with self

or with another is broken,--what wonder, then, if such a one remain

unintelligible to himself and to others, and in his fearful wilderness

of spirit wearies himself by idle words, to which no friendly echo

responds, either from his own or from another's breast?

"To remain unintelligible to such an one is glory and honour before

God and man. _Barbarus huic ego sim, nec tali intelligar ulli._ This,"

concludes Schelling, "is a wish and prayer from which no man can keep

himself."--_Sämmtliche Werke_, I. 443.

C.--ON SPECIAL PLEADING IN HISTORY AND MORALS.

A few emphatic sentences from Lord Macaulay's strictures on

historical special pleading will repay perusal:--"This species of

misrepresentation abounds in the most valuable works of modern

historians. Herodotus tells his story like a slovenly witness,

who, heated by partialities and prejudices, unacquainted with the

established rules of evidence, and uninstructed as to the obligations

of his oath, confounds what he imagines with what he has seen and

heard, and brings out facts, reports, conjectures, and fancies in

one mass. Hume is an accomplished advocate. Without positively

asserting much more than he can prove, he gives prominence to all the

circumstances which support his case; he glides lightly over those

which are unfavourable to it; his own witnesses are applauded and

encouraged; the statements which seem to throw discredit on them are

controverted; the contradictions into which they fall are explained

away; a clear and connected abstract of their evidence is given.

Everything that is offered on the other side is scrutinised with the

utmost severity; every suspicious circumstance is a ground for comment

and invective; what cannot be denied is extenuated, or passed by

without notice; concessions even are sometimes made; but this insidious

candour only increases the effect of the vast mass of sophistry.

"We have mentioned Hume as the ablest and most popular writer of his

class; but the charge which we have brought against him is one to which

all our most distinguished historians are in some degree obnoxious.

Gibbon, in particular, deserves very severe censure."--_Macaulay's

Miscellaneous Writings--History._

The reader may very advantageously carry along with him the above

quoted just remarks, if he has occasion to travel into Hume's sceptical

writings. Respecting these, where every feature of the author's

character appears with intensified distinctness of expression, it is

not too much to say that their influence, which had suffered suspended

animation,[10] is now felt in almost every cultivated circle in Europe.

Checked for a time under the empire of Kant and his successors, it has

been revived by the German Darwinists (so-called), who are bent on

evolving all that can be got from the theory of Evolution. Comte speaks

of Hume as his own master--an intellectual debt all the more readily

acknowledged, because Hume's treatment of most subjects leans towards

the French, rather than the Teutonic, side of English speculation. The

master's influence over numbers who, without being Comte's disciples,

are addicted to thinking Positively upon questions connected with Mind

and Morality, was never greater than at present.

Here, therefore, the disciplined inquirer will obtain a prolific field

of discovery, if he wishes to convince himself how little originality

pervades the set of opinions just now in fashion.

But the student of Hume ought surely to be a disciplined inquirer.

Many senior residents at our Universities will, therefore, join me in

regretting that his sceptical treatises should be so commonly found in

the hands of very young men. So far as such readers are concerned, it

does not much signify whether Hume's fallacies are due to onesidedness

of intellect or (as has been said by a critic, once himself a doubter)

whether he was influenced "by vanity, appetite, and the ambition of

forming a sect of _arguescents_." An opinion scarcely libellous,

considering what Hume has said respecting the validity of his own

paradoxes. However this may appear, the fallacies remain fallacies,

and are less easy of detection than they would have been were their

author a systematic thinker, instead of a philosophical _dilletante_.

Under any circumstances, it is not every aspirant to the "Round Table"

for whom the quest after secret spells is fitted. The youthful knight

has his own ward to keep, and needs help--not hindrance, much less

betrayal--inasmuch as:--

"Tis his to struggle with that perilous age

Which claims for manhood's vice the privilege

Of boyhood;--when young Dionysus seems

All glorious as he burst upon the east,

A jocund and a welcome conqueror;

And Aphrodite, sweet as from the sea

She rose and floated in her pearly shell,

A laughing girl;--when lawless will erects

Honour's gay temple on the mount of God,

And meek obedience bears the coward's brand;

While Satan, in celestial panoply,

With Sin, his lady, smiling by his side,

Defies all heaven to arms!"

_Hartley Coleridge's Poems_, Vol. II., p. 202.

D.--ON THE METHOD EMPLOYED IN THIS ESSAY.

The advantages which ensue from this mode of "ranging round each

topic" are well described by the late Sir B. Brodie (Psychological

Inquiries, 1st series, p. 18). "Our minds are so constructed that we

can keep the attention fixed on a particular object until we have,

as it were, looked all around it; and the mind that possesses this

faculty in the greatest degree of perfection will take cognisance of

relations of which another mind has no perception. It is this, much

more than any difference in the abstract power of reasoning, which

constitutes the vast difference which exists between the minds of

different individuals; which distinguishes the far-sighted statesman

from the shallow politician; the sagacious and accomplished general

from the mere disciplinarian. Such also is the history, not only of the

poetic genius, but also of the genius of discovery in science. 'I keep

the subject,' said Sir Isaac Newton, 'constantly before me, and wait

until the first dawnings open by little and little into a full light.'

It was thus that, after long meditation, he was led to the invention

of fluxions, and to the anticipation of the modern discovery of the

combustibility of the diamond. It was thus that Harvey discovered the

circulation of the blood; and that those views were suggested to Davy,

which are propounded in the Bakerian lecture of 1806, and which laid

the foundation of that grand series of experimental researches which

terminated in the decomposition of the earths and alkalies."

Dr. Tyndall also considers the case of Newton ("Fragments of Science,"

p. 60). "Newton pondered all these things. He had a great power of

pondering. He could look into the darkest subject until it became

entirely luminous. How this light arises we cannot explain; but, as

a matter of fact, it does arise." Dr. Tyndall had before remarked

on the question thus suggested, that "There is much in this process

of pondering and its results which it is impossible to analyse. It

is by a kind of inspiration that we rise from the wise and sedulous

contemplation of facts to the principles on which they depend. The

mind is, as it were, a photographic plate, which is gradually cleansed

by the effort to think rightly, and which when so cleansed, and not

before, receives impressions from the light of truth. This passage from

facts to principles is called induction, which in its highest form is

inspiration; but, to make it sure, the inward sight must be shown to be

in accordance with outward fact. To prove or disprove the induction, we

must resort to deduction and experiment."--Ibid, p. 57-8.

This last remark concerns the process of verification which the

accomplished writer discusses through several subsequent pages.

Notwithstanding a passing observation of Dr. Tyndall's that "this

power of pondering facts is one with which the ancients could be but

imperfectly acquainted," some readers will be struck by the thought

that it forms the nearest approach which can be made by any inductive

discoverer to the old philosophical method of Dialectic. Janet says, in

a volume to which those who have not encountered it will thank me for

introducing them, "La dialectique logique dans Platon est parfaitement

conforme aux lois de la raison. Elle ne sert qu'à réfuter les idées

fausses, ou à éclaircir les idées données antérieurement par une

sorte de synthèse, qui, suivant les uns, n'est que le progrès de la

généralisation, et, selon nous, est le progrès de l'intuition." (Études

sur la Dialectique dans Platon et dans Hegel, p. 393.) For a more

complete appreciation of what is here stated in few words, the student

should peruse pp. 244, seq. The account given by Janet appears in some

measure to coincide with Dr. Tyndall's idea, though perhaps the word

"Intuition" might be more entirely approved by Schelling or Coleridge

than by any Physicist.

Be this as it may, Dr. Tyndall's outline of the Inductive process in

its highest form is evidently one which describes the prerogative of

Genius--the exercise of Imagination as distinguished from Fancy--the

child, that is, of Reason, rather than a stray bantling of sportive wit.

To bring his general conception within the grasp of every-day workers,

and describe a procedure which may be adopted as a kind of practical

rule or maxim, let us look at this subject in the following manner.

Suppose we take the example of a great idea; that, for instance, of

the constitution of Great Britain, or any other nation which subsists

in tolerable freedom from revolutionary change. There are clearly two

elements involved--one, Permanence; the other, Progress. These, in the

actual working constitution, form its factors, or moments (as they may

be better termed); and in the idea or mental representation of the

same, we may liken them to complementary colours in the spectrum, which

appear separately contrasted in tint, but blend together in a wave of

white light. Now, our analysing faculty of mind is, in point of fact,

our intellectual prism. It separates each bright and strong idea into

elements so antagonistic as to be apparently incompatible. Like clear

yellow and shadowy violet, one component seems excellent in beauty,

another its foil or opposite. To one class of minds truth consists

in Permanence, and Progress is a note of evil omen. Of another class

the contradictory is true. The real statesman alone knows that their

blending is a question of measure and degree, of human affairs,--time,

circumstance, and opportunity.

We may ask with reason what gain accrues to the statesman by looking

at his country's constitution from this point of sight? Evidently a

good deal. He will soon discern that practically it cannot exist in

vigour if either factor be eliminated. Each is given in the analysis

of his prolific idea, and, however great may seem the apparent

incompatibility, both must be capable of co-existence and correlation.

Now, there could be no synthesis if, on the one hand, Progress did not

imply a something which remains identical and in unity with itself,

while it flourishes and grows;--or, on the other hand, if Permanence

were not safest, when its strength is manifested by its vital increase.

Consequently, to grow is to continue essentially the same;--to be

permanent is to live and bear fresh fruit every passing year.

A precisely similar advantage accrues to the Ethical Philosopher from a

process of the like description. He considers (it may be) the concrete

idea of moral activity. Obviously, there must be found in it an

unfettered power of choice, and a conformity to the rule of moral law.

Submitted to the analytic prism, the two elements come out at opposite

poles in very decided contrast. At the pole of necessary conformity

we find what looks like Determinism;--at the pole of choice appears

its irreconcilable antagonist, a sense of Responsibility, logically

unexplained, but inalienable from our moral nature. And our Ethical

inquirer finds the only possible synthesis of his two contrasted

moments of morality in the deep truth that each righteous man is a Law

unto himself. And hence it is, that the righteous shines out over the

lower world of mechanical arrangement--a faint, it may be, but still a

visible image of the God who made him what he is.[11]

By the same process of analysis and reconstruction the Natural

Theologian arrives (as may be shown) at a synthesis of Faith and

Reason. Yet these two are antagonistic in the eyes both of the sceptic

and the superstitious. _Les extrêmes se touchent_, and by both extremes

faith is relegated to the region of sentimental æsthetics.

Reason, say both, is Faith's natural enemy; and must fail to yield

any expectation of future happiness in the presence of a righteous

God, together with its long train of present hopes and fears. Our

plain answer is that the true synthesis of Natural Theism lies in

the chief primary fact of our human nature--the undeniable existence

of its Reasonable Beliefs. They originate deep down, and we may

affirm respecting the birth of each and all, as Dr. Tyndall affirms

of the inward vision which dawns upon the philosophic mind when

photographically cleansed by its own efforts to think rightly,--"how

this light arises we cannot explain, but as a matter of fact it does

arise." In its degree it may be (to use Dr. Tyndall's word) "a kind

of inspiration." And what endowment has a higher claim to such a

representative kinship?--what nobler gift can be conceived from God

to man than a Belief of Reason? Dr. Tyndall's further requirement

that "the inward sight must be shown to be in accordance with the

outward fact," a Natural Theologian may hope to meet by a sufficient

verification. He may meet it in the case of this particular Belief by

showing, as we shall try to show, our actual human experience of its

working and its worth.

We might pursue similar examples through the regions of Discovery

and Production, but the three instances already adduced may fairly

suffice. It is, perhaps, more interesting to observe the real gains

which accrue from pondering over an idea in the manner exemplified.

How much political _charlatanerie_ is at once disposed of when men

distinctly acknowledge that two reputed incompatibilities, however

useful as war-cries, are essentially conjoint elements in all truly

statesmanlike action: what countless angry controversies die in the

moral principle that each righteous man is a Law unto himself! And not

only to Natural Theology, but to other parts of knowledge, it is of the

greatest utility to perceive with equal distinctness that Reason has

its beliefs as well as Unreason; and that when we accept reasonable

beliefs as the basis of scientific investigation, we affirm their value

for the conduct and government of life. The true amount of that value

as a mainspring of our hopeful activities is estimated on another page.

Meantime, we may remark from the three examples above discussed, how

regularly an idea of Reason, analysed into its complementary factors,

resumes a concrete form when we employ it as a maxim of practical

life. The politician who separates progress from stability is really

preparing his country for revolution. The man on whose heart the law

is not written (like the necessity laid upon St. Paul[12]) is as yet

imperfectly righteous. And so too, if in our Beliefs we lose sight of

the gift that makes us human, we are likely to ring the changes between

superstition, atheism, and effeminate sentimentality.

When, from results, we pass to the easiest method for attaining them,

there seems but little to add to the extracts with which this note

commenced. And if the object be clearly defined, the labour of the

mental workshop need not be a severe discouragement. It is true that no

man can take his Thought--the offspring of his inward Light--pull it to

pieces, and reconstruct it, as he would deal with a thing of brass or

iron. But every earnest ponderer may keep his prolific idea steadily in

view, and hold conversations with himself respecting it. This is the

well-known method by which Aristotle virtually obtains his conclusions

before he finally proceeds to deduce them. From the same conception of

Method, real thinking appears to Plato as a Dialogue without speech.

And, doubtless, actual discussion between two or more living men would

be the surest way of arriving at the goal of insight, provided those

most uncommon of all endowments, common sense and common honesty, could

be assured to the dialecticians.[13]

Thus much, then, may serve as an illustration of the task we are

attempting, and of the means by which we hope to accomplish it.

If achieved, it will form a contribution to the great work thus

characterised by the Rector of Lincoln College from the University

pulpit, as reported in the _Oxford Undergraduates' Journal_ for October

26, 1871: "The Natural Theology of the last century is no longer

found to be satisfactory in presence of the geological and biological

sciences as they now stand. The answer that the sciences are wrong

and the theologians are right does not admit of being discussed or

refuted, for it is the answer of ignorance. The answer of the Catholic

Church, which is to take refuge in its own authority, can only be

practically tendered where there is an infallible living authority, as

in the chair of S. Peter. It seems to be the business of the English

Church especially--a Church which has never yet broken with reason or

proscribed education--to fairly face these questions, to resume the

Natural Theology of the past age, and to re-establish the synthesis of

Science and Faith."

E.--ON THE EFFECT OF CONSILIENT PROOFS.

The expressive word "_Consilience_" has been adopted on the authority

of Dr. Whewell and Professor Pritchard, both of whom employ it in

preference to the commoner expression _convergence_. Upon the force of

consilient proofs, Dr. Whewell writes thus:--

"The cases in which inductions from classes of facts altogether

different have _jumped together_, belong only to the best established

theories which the history of science contains. And as I shall have

occasion to refer to this peculiar feature in their evidence, I will

take the liberty of describing it by a particular phrase, and will term

it the _Consilience of Inductions_.

"It is exemplified principally in some of the greatest discoveries.

Thus it was found by Newton that the doctrine of the attraction of the

sun varying according to the inverse square of the distance, which

explained Kepler's _Third Law_ of the proportionality of the cubes of

the distances to the squares of the periodic times of the planets,

explained also his _First_ and _Second Laws_ of the elliptical motion

of each planet; although no connexion of these laws had been visible

before. Again, it appeared that the force of universal gravitation,

which had been inferred from the _perturbations_ of the moon and

planets by the sun and by each other, also accounted for the fact,

apparently altogether dissimilar and remote, of the _precession of the

equinoxes_. Here was a most striking and surprising coincidence, which

gave to the theory a stamp of truth beyond the power of ingenuity to

counterfeit....

... The theory of universal gravitation, and of the undulatory

theory of light, are indeed full of examples of this consilience of

inductions. With regard to the latter, it has been justly asserted by

Herschel, that the history of the undulatory theory was a succession

of _felicities_. And it is precisely the unexpected coincidences of

results drawn from distant parts of the subject which are properly thus

described." ("Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences," B. XI., chap. v.,

s. 3.)

And again, "It is true, the explanation of one set of facts may be

of the same nature as the explanation of the other class; but then,

that the cause explains _both_ classes, gives it a very different

claim upon our attention and assent from that which it would have

if it explained one class only. The very circumstance that the two

explanations coincide, is a most weighty presumption in their favour.

It is the testimony of two witnesses in behalf of the hypothesis; and

in proportion as these two witnesses are separate and independent,

the conviction produced by their agreement is more and more complete.

When the explanation of two kinds of phenomena, distinct, and not

apparently connected, leads us to the same cause, such a coincidence

does give a reality to the cause, which it has not while it merely

accounts for those appearances which suggested the supposition. This

coincidence of propositions inferred from separate classes of facts, is

exactly what we noticed in the last book, as one of the most decisive

characteristics of a true theory, under the name of _Consilience of

Inductions_.

"That Newton's first rule of philosophizing, so understood, authorizes

the inferences which he himself made, is really the ground on which

they are so firmly believed by philosophers. Thus, when the doctrine

of a gravity varying inversely as the square of the distance from

the body, accounted at the same time for the relations of times and

distances in the planetary orbits and for the amount of the moon's

deflection from the tangent of her orbit, such a doctrine became most

convincing: or, again, when the doctrine of the universal gravitation

of all parts of matter, which explained so admirably the inequalities

of the moon's motions, also gave a satisfactory account of a phenomenon

utterly different--the precession of the equinoxes. And of the same

kind is the evidence in favour of the undulatory theory of light, when

the assumption of the length of an undulation, to which we are led by

the colours of thin plates, is found to be identical with that length

which explains the phenomena of diffraction; or when the hypothesis of

transverse vibrations, suggested by the facts of polarization, explains

also the laws of double refraction. When such a convergence of two

trains of induction points to the same spot, we can no longer suspect

that we are wrong. Such an accumulation of proof really persuades us

that we have to do with a _vera causa_. And if this kind of proof be

multiplied,--if we again find other facts of a sort uncontemplated in

framing our hypothesis, but yet clearly accounted for when we have

adopted the supposition,--we are still further confirmed in our belief,

and by such accumulation of proof we may be so far satisfied as to

believe without conceiving it possible to doubt. In this case, when the

validity of the opinion adopted by us has been repeatedly confirmed by

its sufficiency in unforeseen cases, so that all doubt is removed and

forgotten, the theoretical cause takes its place among the realities of

the world, and becomes _a true cause_." (Ibid. B. XII., chap. xiii.,

art. 10.)

The reader of this Essay will be pleased to remark as he proceeds that

its argument is made up of a diversity of proofs (very many among them

being inductive), and that they all lend each other mutual support and

become consilient at last.

FOOTNOTES:

[a] The language of this paragraph is the language of ordinary

life. In Coleridge's "Table Talk," for example, the subject of

Man's distinguishing prerogative of Immortality is discussed by the

great speaker, and his nephew's note of the discussion is headed

"Materialism." There appears, indeed, considerable difficulty in

finding a precise expression for the form of belief, or unbelief,

commonly called Materialism. Most people speak of it as of some clear

and well-defined theory until they begin seriously to investigate

its _rationale_. Investigators are then apt to become loud in their

complaints of its inexactness. Take by way of instance the following

example. Speaking of "the doctrines of Materialism," Lord Brougham

remarks: "The vague and indistinct form of the propositions in which

they are conveyed affords one strong argument against their truth.

It is not easy to annex a definite meaning to the proposition that

mind is inseparably connected with a particular arrangement of the

particles of matter; it is more difficult to say what they mean who

call it a modification of matter; but to consider it as consisting in

a combination of matter, as coming into existence the instant that

the particles of matter assume a given arrangement, appears to be a

wholly unintelligible collocation of words."--(_Discourse of Natural

Theology_, p. 102).

Under such circumstances it may seem difficult for many a Materialist

to describe himself as the adherent of a distinct or closely reasoned

system. The main point we would submit for his earnest consideration

is the question whether his hypothesis lands him in certain subtle

refinements concerning the nature and connection of Force, Mind, and

those generalized facts which have been called the primary properties

of Matter,--or whether it leads him onward to the opinions described in

the text. Looking at the subject in this light, we might feel inclined

to draw a broad distinction between mere scientific Materialism and the

Materialistic doctrines of sceptical philosophy.

[b] "I doubt," said Mr. Gladstone at Liverpool on December 21,

1872,--"I doubt whether any such noxious crop has been gathered in such

rank abundance from the press of England in any former year of our

literary history as in this present year of our redemption, eighteen

hundred and seventy-two." The Premier had before remarked: "I believe

that neither Science nor Thought is responsible, any more than Liberty

is responsible, for the misdeeds committed in their names."

The passage from which these brief extracts are made is given at

greater length in the additional note to this Section (A).

[c] Since writing the above, my attention has been called to Paley's

censure of the "disingenuous _form_" under which Scepticism was placed

before the public in his day. He says (_Moral Philosophy_, B. v. Sect.

9): "Infidelity is served up in every shape that is likely to allure,

surprise, or beguile the imagination; in a fable, a tale, a novel, a

poem; in interspersed and broken hints, remote and oblique surmises;

in books of travels, of philosophy, of natural history; in a word, in

any form rather than the right one,--that of a professed and regular

disquisition. And because the coarse buffoonery and broad laugh of the

old and rude adversaries of the Christian faith would offend the taste,

perhaps, rather than the virtue of this cultivated age, a graver irony,

a more skilful and delicate banter, is substituted in their place."

[d] "Atheists," says the _Pall Mall Gazette_ of January 18, 1873,

"write Atheism because they are Atheists, but Alexandre Dumas writes

Atheism, though a good Catholic, who goes to church every Sunday."

[e] Pre-eminent amongst these remonstrants is Mr. Gladstone. In the

speech before cited, he says, p. 25: "It is to be hoped that they

will cause a shock and a reaction, and will compel many, who may

have too lightly valued the inheritance so dearly bought for them,

and may have entered upon dangerous paths, to consider, while there

is yet time, whither those paths will lead them. In no part of his

writings, perhaps, has Strauss been so effective, as where he assails

the inconsistency of those who adopt his premises, but decline to

follow him to their conclusions. Suffice it to say, these opinions are

by no means a merely German brood; there are many writers of kindred

sympathies in England, and some of as outspoken courage." (Compare the

extracts from this class of writers given along with the Premier's

remarks in Note A.)

[f] Die Zustände eines Volkes hängen hauptsächlich von seiner Denkweise

ab: diese ist der wichtigste und einflussreichste Zustand. Alle andern

können nur nach und in ihr begriffen werden. Sie ist es, die den

Menschen zu einem solchen macht; und in ihrer Ausbildung entwickelt

sich erst die Menschlichkeit.--(Wilhelm H. J. Bleek, "Ueber den

Ursprung der Sprache," p. 12).

[3] Cowper, "The Task," B. III.--It must be confessed that the

honest-minded humanitarian may often find in the reception

he encounters ample reason and motive enough for taking up

Teufelsdroeckh's parable:--"'In vain thou deniest it,' says the

Professor; 'thou _art_ my Brother. Thy very hatred, thy very envy,

those foolish lies thou tellest of me in thy splenetic humour: what

is all this but an inverted sympathy? Were I a steam-engine, wouldst

thou take the trouble to tell lies of me? Not thou! I should grind all

unheeded, whether badly or well,'"--(_Sartor Resartus_, B. III. c. 7).

And when the bigotry of Unbelief is not content with persecuting the

honest-minded humanitarian--when he hears some shallow, half-animalized

specimen of humanity shouting for a red-handed communism and the blood

of the innocent--_then_ he may not irrationally exclaim with the same

philosopher:--"Wert thou, my little Brotherkin, suddenly covered up

within the largest imaginable glass-bell,--what a thing it were, not

for thyself only, but for the world!"

[g] I am indebted to Mr. Gladstone's appendix (p. 40) for the following

apposite quotations from Sir George Cornewall Lewis's very scarce

work, "On the Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion." Speaking

of "Authority, and its place not as an antagonist of Reason, but as

an instrument of Reason for the attainment of Truth," Sir George

remarks, in page 35 of his book: "'It is commonly said that the

belief is independent of the will,' and that no man can change it 'by

merely wishing it to be otherwise.' But 'the operation of a personal

interest may cause a man insensibly to adopt prejudices or partial and

unexamined opinions.' In page 38 he adds: 'Napoleon affords a striking

instance of the corruption of the judgment in consequence of the

misdirection of the moral sentiments.'"

All friends, and many casual readers, of S. T. Coleridge will

remember that he asserted the same, or perhaps a stronger, conclusion

upon metaphysical grounds, and with a force of language not easily

surpassed. This--one of Coleridge's bursts of gorgeous eloquence and

imagery--will be found in "The Friend," a book which, according to C.

Lamb, contains "his best talk." The subject commences on page 260 of

Vol. III., Ed. 2, and page 211, seq., Vol. III., Ed. 4. In the latter

place it is amplified by a summary of his arguments, pages 213, 214.

The position propounded, that true insight cannot exist apart from

moral rectitude, receives considerable light from the doctrine of

philosophical postulates maintained in the "Biographia Literaria,"

Vol. I. c. 12, and chiefly borrowed from Schelling, to whom there

is an honest reference in the first Edition, I. 250. I mention this

circumstance because Coleridge has been held guilty of unjustifiable

pillage by writers who have noted his borrowing, but omitted to observe

such acknowledgments as he makes, together with the additions and

alterations which he introduces.

The corruption of a naturally acute understanding has seldom been more

graphically painted than by Judge Talfourd. (See Additional Note,

B.)

[4] Compare Lord Macaulay on "Special Pleading in History," Additional

Note, C.

[h] These divisions have been sometimes called Physico-Theology and

Ethico-Theology; but the latter designation is far too restricted for

the line of thought pursued in the latter portion of this Essay.

[i] See Additional Note, D.

[5] Pope, "Essay on Man," Ep. II. Compare Mr. Pattison's notes, pp.

87, 88, and 90. We may remark that the Aphorism "Know thyself" has

been often employed to convey a lesson the most distant possible from

Pope's,--_e.g._, "Know thyself; and so shalt thou know God, as far as

is permitted to a creature, and in God all things."

[j] See Additional Note, E.

[6] The work referred to, "Der alte und der neue Glaube," appeared in

the latter half of 1872.

[7] Compare an illustrative passage, B. III. p. 34. "We have been

seeking to determine, whether our point of view, from which the

law-governed All, full of life and intelligence, is the summit of

thought (die höchste Idee), can still be called a religious point

of view, and we have animadverted upon Schopenhauer, who loses no

opportunity of flying in the face of this which is our Idea. As I have

said, such outbreaks impress our understanding as absurdities; to our

feelings, they are blasphemies. It appears to us rash and reckless,

on the part of a mere human individual, so boldly to set himself up

against the All, out of which he grows, and from which he has the

morsel of intelligence that he misuses. We see in this an abnegation

of that feeling of dependence, which we admit to belong to all men. We

demand the same piety towards our Universum, as the devout man of the

old fashion did for his God."

[8] This declaration we quote in its native German. Its first sentence,

together with the sentences immediately preceding, are those passages

selected for translation by Mr. Gladstone.

"Historisch genommen, d. h. die ungeheuren Wirkungen dieses Glaubens

mit seiner völligen Grundlosigkeit zusammengehalten, lässt sich die

Geschichte von der Auferstehung Jesu nur als ein weit historischer

Humbug bezeichnen. Es mag demüthigend sein für den menschlichen Stolz,

aber es ist so; Jesus könnte all das Wahre und Gute, auch all das

Einseitige und Schroffe das ja doch auf die Massen immer den stärksten

Eindruck macht, gelehrt und im Leben bethätigt haben; gleichwohl würden

seine Lehren wie einzelne Blätter im Winde verweht und zerstreut

worden sein, wären diese Blätter nicht von dem Wahnglauben an seine

Auferstehung als von einem derben handfesten Einbände zusammengefasst

und dadurch erhalten worden." (p. 72.)

[9] As a consequence of the difference in standpoint, the use made by

the two men of their several conclusions is marked by very considerable

contrast. Comte's Humanity was to be served by a ritual as well as a

social set of ordinances. Strauss looks quite another way. Considering

the outrage which would be committed upon philosophy and feeling should

his Universum find irreverent treatment in the words and writings

of men; our emotion, he says, on such occasions becomes thoroughly

religious. If then it be asked in express terms whether he and his

fellow-thinkers really have a Religion or no, they cannot answer

roundly as they will when questioned on Christianity; they must rather

say yes or no according to the meaning of the word Religion in the mind

of their questioner. (See Strauss, p. 143.)

[10] In the Livraison of the Deux Mondes for November, 1856, M.

Cucheval-Clarigny wrote thus: "Personne plus que David Hume n'a éprouvé

l'inconstance des jugemens humains. Après avoir été mis au rang des

esprits qui ont fait le plus d'honneur à l'humanité, on le compte

volontiers aujourd'hui parmi les corrupteurs de la raison et les

apôtres du mal." That another kind of interest has been more recently

felt in Hume is evidenced by the republication of his works in America

and England. While writing this note I learn that a new edition of the

seldom-read Treatise on Human Nature will shortly appear, with notes by

two well-known members of Balliol College.

[11] Compare with this the subjoined orison for a special gift of

moral rectitude penned by Professor Huxley (Lay Sermons, p. 373). "I

protest that if some great power would agree to make me always think

what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into

a sort of clock and wound up every morning before I got out of bed, I

should instantly close with the offer. The only freedom I care about

is the freedom to do right; the freedom to do wrong I am ready to part

with on the cheapest terms to any one who will take it of me." It

seems wonderful that the talented writer fails to perceive that should

his terms be granted the bargain would be dear indeed--it must take

place at the expense of his Personality. He would have no choice left,

consequently no rightness of choice. With the loss of his volition his

manhood would be forfeited; and the Huxley of our praise and blame must

needs sink at once and for ever from a Person to a Thing--

"Rolled round in Earth's diurnal course

With rocks, and stones, and trees."

After all, we may trust that this outpouring of soul after mechanical

goodness, is neither more nor less than a fresh rehearsal of the

popular fallacy or fable of a learned and intelligent, but somewhat

over-hasty, death-watch. The difference between the two myths is not

great, and both owe their existence to the prolific fancy of Professor

Huxley. About three years ago the teleological beetle speculated in

a manner which would have grieved the soul of Aldrich or Whately

respecting the purpose of a kitchen clock. The death-watch concluded,

like a death-watch, and not like a logician, that the clock's final end

was to tick. Man, as Bacon tells us, is the servant and interpreter

of nature. Does any one feel sure that a death-watch is the servant

and interpreter of kitchen timepieces? Yet his inconsequent thinking

served as an implement of Fate to "quail, crush, conclude, and quell"

Teleology in general, and the Design argument for Natural Theism in

particular. _Now_, a human Huxley clock always going morally right

_because it must_, is equally conclusive against all freedom and all

Conscience. Equally conclusive, we know, because equally true to Nature

and to Fact. As conclusive as arguments against received biological

tenets drawn from those great natural curiosities the Gorgon, the

dragon of St. George, and the fire-breathing Chimæra, who united in her

own fair person a lion, a dragon, and a goat. This latter well-known

phenomenon may seem nearly as striking as any right-minded clock

imaginable, and not much more incongruous.

Many readers may be reminded of Amurath's Ring. But few probably will

know, and fewer still recollect, Miss Edgeworth's clever comment upon

it in "Rosamond." The book is unfortunately scarce, not having been

reprinted along with "Early Lessons," therefore we add the extract

("Rosamond," vol. i., p. 148):--

"Do you remember, brother," said Laura, "your wish when you were

reading that story in the 'Adventurer,' last week?"

"Not I. What wish?" said Godfrey. "What story?"

"Don't you remember," said Laura, "when you were reading the story of

Amurath and his ring, which always pressed his finger when he was going

to do anything wrong?"

"Yes; I wished to have such a ring," said Godfrey.

"Well, a friend is as good as such a ring," said Rosamond; "for a

friend is, as somebody observed, a _second conscience_; I may call

Laura my _second conscience_."

"Mighty fine! but I don't like secondary conscience; a first conscience

is, in my opinion, a better thing," said Godfrey.

"You may have that too," said Rosamond.

"Too! but I'd rather have it alone," said Godfrey. "There is something

so cowardly in not daring to stand alone."

The lesson seems to be that second-hand goodness falls short of

true goodness, and that the impulse to moral action must arise from

within--so unmanly is every endeavour at shaking off, either by

cowardice or by unreflectiveness, the human burden and birthright of

Responsibility.

Amurath's ring was a mechanical conscience. Professor Huxley's clock

is a mechanism in the outward form of a man. These two imaginations

convey the useful lessons that neither Conscience nor Mankind are mere

machines. A clock goes because it must go its hourly round; a man

chooses which way, when, and whither he will go.

[12] 1 Corinthians ix. 16.

[13] For a useful account of Plato's Dialogue in connection with

Plato's philosophy, see "Introduction to the Republic," by Davies and

Vaughan, pp. xxi.-xxiv. Cambridge, 1852.