the teaching of Philo's contemporary, Jesus of Nazareth, is one upon which
it is not germane to my present purpose to enter. I take it simply as an
unquestionable fact that his immediate disciples, known to their countrymen
as "Nazarenes," were regarded as, and considered themselves to be,
perfectly orthodox Jews belonging to the puritanic or pharisaic section of
their people, and differing from the rest only in their belief that {204}
the Messiah had already come. Christianity, it is said, first became
clearly differentiated at Antioch, and it separated itself from orthodox
Judaism by denying the obligation of the rite of circumcision and of the
food prohibitions, prescribed by the law. Henceforward theology became
relatively stationary among the Jews,[59] and the history of its rapid
progress in a new course of evolution is the history of the Christian
Churches, orthodox and heterodox. The steps in this evolution are obvious.
The first is the birth of a new theological scheme arising out of the union
of elements derived from Greek philosophy with elements derived from
Israelitic theology. In the fourth Gospel, the Logos, raised to a somewhat
higher degree of personification than in the Alexandrian theosophy, is
identified with Jesus of Nazareth. In the Epistles, especially the later of
those attributed to Paul, the Israelitic ideas of the Messiah and of
sacrificial atonement coalesce with one another and with the embodiment of
the Logos in Jesus, until the apotheosis of the Son of man is almost, or
quite, effected. The history of Christian dogma, from Justin to Athanasius,
is a record of continual progress in the same direction, until the fair
body of religion, revealed in almost naked purity by the prophets, is {205}
once more hidden under a new accumulation of dogmas and of ritual practices
of which the primitive Nazarene knew nothing; and which he would probably
have regarded as blasphemous if he could have been made to understand them.
As, century after century, the ages roll on, polytheism comes back under
the disguise of Mariolatry and the adoration of saints; image-worship
becomes as rampant as in old Egypt; adoration of relics takes the place of
the old fetish-worship; the virtues of the ephod pale before those of holy
coats and handkerchiefs; shrines and calvaries make up for the loss of the
ark and of the high places; and even the lustral fluid of paganism is
replaced by holy water at the porches of the temples. A touching
ceremony--the common meal originally eaten in pious memory of a loved
teacher--was metamorphosed into a flesh-and-blood sacrifice, supposed to
possess exactly that redeeming virtue which the prophets denied to the
flesh-and-blood sacrifices of their day; while the minute observance of
ritual was raised to a degree of punctilious refinement which Levitical
legislators might envy. And with the growth of this theology, grew its
inevitable concomitant, the belief in evil spirits, in possession, in
sorcery, in charms and omens, until the Christians of the twelfth century
after our era were sunk in more debased and brutal superstitions than are
recorded of the Israelites in the twelfth century before it.
The greatest men of the Middle Ages are unable to escape the infection.
Dante's "Inferno" would be {206} revolting if it were not so often sublime,
so often exquisitely tender. The hideous pictures which cover a vast space
on the south wall of the Campo Santo of Pisa convey information, as
terrible as it is indisputable, of the theological conceptions of Dante's
countrymen in the fourteenth century, whose eyes were addressed by the
painters of those disgusting scenes, and whose approbation they knew how to
win. A candid Mexican of the time of Cortez, could he have seen this
Christian burial-place, would have taken it for an appropriately adorned
Teocalli. The professed disciple of the God of justice and of mercy might
there gloat over the sufferings of his fellow-men depicted as undergoing
every extremity of atrocious and sanguinary torture to all eternity, for
theological errors no less than for moral delinquencies; while, in the
central figure of Satan,[60] occupied in champing up souls in his
capricious and well-toothed jaws, to void them again for the purpose of
undergoing fresh suffering, we have the counterpart of the strange
Polynesian and Egyptian dogma that there were certain gods who employed
themselves in devouring the ghostly flesh of the spirits of the dead. {207}
But, in justice to the Polynesians, it must be recollected that, after
three such operations, they thought the soul was purified and happy. In the
view of the Christian theologian the operation was only a preparation for
new tortures continued for ever and aye.
With the growth of civilisation in Europe, and with the revival of letters
and of science in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the ethical and
intellectual criticism of theology once more recommenced, and arrived at a
temporary resting-place in the confessions of the various reformed
Protestant sects in the sixteenth century; almost all of which, as soon as
they were strong enough, began to persecute those who carried criticism
beyond their own limit. But the movement was not arrested by these
ecclesiastical barriers, as their constructors fondly imagined it would be;
it was continued, tacitly or openly, by Galileo, by Hobbes, by Descartes,
and especially by Spinoza, in the seventeenth century; by the English
Freethinkers, by Rousseau, by the French Encyclopaedists, and by the German
Rationalists, among whom Lessing stands out a head and shoulders taller
than the rest, throughout the eighteenth century; by the historians, the
philologers, the Biblical critics, the geologists, and the biologists in
the nineteenth century, until it is obvious to all who can see that the
moral sense and the really scientific method of seeking for truth are once
more predominating over false science. Once more ethics and theology are
parting company.
It is my conviction that, with the spread of true scientific culture,
whatever may be the medium, {208} historical, philological, philosophical,
or physical, through which that culture is conveyed, and with its necessary
concomitant, a constant elevation of the standard of veracity, the end of
the evolution of theology will be like its beginning--it will cease to have
any relation to ethics. I suppose that, so long as the human mind exists,
it will not escape its deep-seated instinct to personify its intellectual
conceptions. The science of the present day is as full of this particular
form of intellectual shadow-worship as is the nescience of ignorant ages.
The difference is that the philosopher who is worthy of the name knows that
his personified hypotheses, such as law, and force, and ether, and the
like, are merely useful symbols, while the ignorant and the careless take
them for adequate expressions of reality. So, it may be, that the majority
of mankind may find the practice of morality made easier by the use of
theological symbols. And unless these are converted from symbols into
idols, I do not see that science has anything to say to the practice,
except to give an occasional warning of its dangers. But, when such symbols
are dealt with as real existences, I think the highest duty which is laid
upon men of science is to show that these dogmatic idols have no greater
value than the fabrications of men's hands, the stocks and the stones,
which they have replaced.
* * * * *
{209}
V
SCIENCE AND MORALS
In spite of long and, perhaps, not unjustifiable hesitation, I begin to
think that there must be something in telepathy. For evidence, which I may
not disregard, is furnished by the last number of the _Fortnightly Review_
that, among the hitherto undiscovered endowments of the human species,
there may be a power even more wonderful than the mystic faculty by which
the esoterically Buddhistic sage "upon the farthest mountain in Cathay"
reads the inmost thoughts of a dweller within the homely circuit of the
London postal district. Great indeed is the insight of such a seer; but how
much greater is his who combines the feat of reading, not merely the
thoughts of which the thinker is aware, but those of which he knows
nothing; who sees him unconsciously drawing the conclusions which he
repudiates, and supporting the doctrines which he detests. To reflect upon
the confusion which the working of such a power as this may introduce into
one's ideas of personality and responsibility is perilous--madness lies
that way. But truth is truth, and I am almost fain to believe in {210} this
magical visibility of the non-existent when the only alternative is the
supposition that the writer of the article on "Materialism and Morality" in
vol. xl. (1886) of the _Fortnightly Review_, in spite of his manifest
ability and honesty, has pledged himself, so far as I am concerned, to
what, if I may trust my own knowledge of my own thoughts, must be called a
multitude of errors of the first magnitude.
I so much admire Mr. Lilly's outspokenness, I am so completely satisfied of
the uprightness of his intentions, that it is repugnant to me to quarrel
with anything he may say; and I sympathise so warmly with his manly scorn
of the vileness of much that passes under the name of literature in these
times, that I would willingly be silent under his by no means unkindly
exposition of his theory of my own tenets, if I thought that such personal
abnegation would serve the interest of the cause we both have at heart. But
I cannot think so. My creed may be an ill-favoured thing, but it is mine
own, as Touchstone says of his lady-love; and I have so high an opinion of
the solid virtues of the object of my affections that I cannot calmly see
her personated by a wench who is much uglier and has no virtue worth
speaking of. I hope I should be ready to stand by a falling cause if I had
ever adopted it; but suffering for a falling cause, which one has done
one's best to bring to the ground, is a kind of martyrdom for which I have
no taste. In my opinion, the philosophical theory which Mr. Lilly
attributes to me--but which I have over and over again {211} disclaimed--is
untenable and destined to extinction; and I not unreasonably demur to being
counted among its defenders.
After the manner of a mediaeval disputant, Mr. Lilly posts up three theses,
which, as he conceives, embody the chief heresies propagated by the late
Professor Clifford, Mr. Herbert Spencer, and myself. He says that we agree
"(1) in putting aside, as unverifiable, everything which the senses cannot
verify; (2) everything beyond the bounds of physical science; (3)
everything which cannot be brought into a laboratory and dealt with
chemically" (p. 578).
My lamented young friend Clifford, sweetest of natures though keenest of
disputants, is out of reach of our little controversies, but his works
speak for him, and those who run may read a refutation of Mr. Lilly's
assertions in them. Mr. Herbert Spencer, hitherto, has shown no lack either
of ability or of inclination to speak for himself; and it would be a
superfluity, not to say an impertinence, on my part, to take up the cudgels
for him. But, for myself, if my knowledge of my own consciousness may be
assumed to be adequate (and I make not the least pretension to acquaintance
with what goes on in my "Unbewusstsein"), I may be permitted to observe
that the first proposition appears to me to be not true; that the second is
in the same case; and that, if there be gradations in untrueness, the third
is so monstrously untrue that it hovers on the verge of absurdity, even if
it does not actually flounder in that logical limbo. Thus, to all three
theses, I reply in {212} appropriate fashion, _Nego_--I say No; and I
proceed to state the grounds of that negation, which the proprieties do not
permit me to make quite so emphatic as I could desire.
Let me begin with the first assertion, that I "put aside, as unverifiable,
everything which the senses cannot verify." Can such a statement as this be
seriously made in respect of any human being? But I am not appointed
apologist for mankind in general; and confining my observations to myself,
I beg leave to point out that, at this present moment, I entertain an
unshakable conviction that Mr. Lilly is the victim of a patent and enormous
misunderstanding, and that I have not the slightest intention of putting
that conviction aside because I cannot "verify" it either by touch, or
taste, or smell, or hearing, or sight, which (in the absence of any trace
of telepathic faculty) make up the totality of my senses.
Again, I may venture to admire the clear and vigorous English in which Mr.
Lilly embodies his views; but the source of that admiration does not lie in
anything which my five senses enable me to discover in the pages of his
article, and of which an orang-outang might be just as acutely sensible.
No, it lies in an appreciation of literary form and logical structure by
aesthetic and intellectual faculties which are not senses, and which are not
unfrequently sadly wanting where the senses are in full vigour. My poor
relation may beat me in the matter of sensation; but I am quite confident
that, when style and syllogisms are to be dealt with, he is nowhere. {213}
If there is anything in the world which I do firmly believe in, it is the
universal validity of the law of causation; but that universality cannot be
proved by any amount of experience, let alone that which comes to us
through the senses. And when an effort of volition changes the current of
my thoughts, or when an idea calls up another associated idea, I have not
the slightest doubt that the process to which the first of the phenomena,
in each case, is due stands in the relation of cause to the second. Yet the
attempt to verify this belief by sensation would be sheer lunacy. Now I am
quite sure that Mr. Lilly does not doubt my sanity; and the only
alternative seems to be the admission that his first proposition is
erroneous.
The second thesis charges me with putting aside "as unverifiable"
"everything beyond the bounds of physical science." Again I say, No.
Nobody, I imagine, will credit me with a desire to limit the empire of
physical science, but I really feel bound to confess that a great many very
familiar and, at the same time, extremely important phenomena lie quite
beyond its legitimate limits. I cannot conceive, for example, how the
phenomena of consciousness, as such and apart from the physical process by
which they are called into existence, are to be brought within the bounds
of physical science. Take the simplest possible example, the feeling of
redness. Physical science tells us that it commonly arises as a consequence
of molecular changes propagated from the eye to a certain part of the
substance of the brain, when vibrations of the luminiferous ether of a
certain character fall upon {214} the retina. Let us suppose the process of
physical analysis pushed so far that one could view the last link of this
chain of molecules, watch their movements as if they were billiard balls,
weigh them, measure them, and know all that is physically knowable about
them. Well, even in that case, we should be just as far from being able to
include the resulting phenomenon of consciousness, the feeling of redness,
within the bounds of physical science, as we are at present. It would
remain as unlike the phenomena we know under the names of matter and motion
as it is now. If there is any plain truth upon which I have made it my
business to insist over and over again it is this--and whether it is a
truth or not, my insistence upon it leaves not a shadow of justification
for Mr. Lilly's assertion.
But I ask in this case also, how is it conceivable that any man, in
possession of all his natural faculties, should hold such an opinion? I do
not suppose that I am exceptionally endowed because I have all my life
enjoyed a keen perception of the beauty offered us by nature and by art.
Now physical science may and probably will, some day, enable our posterity
to set forth the exact physical concomitants and conditions of the strange
rapture of beauty. But if ever that day arrives, the rapture will remain,
just as it is now, outside and beyond the physical world; and, even in the
mental world, something superadded to mere sensation. I do not wish to crow
unduly over my humble cousin the orang, but in the aesthetic province, as in
that of the intellect, I am afraid he is {215} nowhere. I doubt not he
would detect a fruit amidst a wilderness of leaves where I could see
nothing; but I am tolerably confident that he has never been awestruck, as
I have been, by the dim religious gloom, as of a temple devoted to the
earthgods, of the tropical forest which he inhabits. Yet I doubt not that
our poor long-armed and short-legged friend, as he sits meditatively
munching his durian fruit, has something behind that sad Socratic face of
his which is utterly "beyond the bounds of physical science." Physical
science may know all about his clutching the fruit and munching it and
digesting it, and how the physical titillation of his palate is transmitted
to some microscopic cells of the gray matter of his brain. But the feelings
of sweetness and of satisfaction which, for a moment, hang out their signal
lights in his melancholy eyes, are as utterly outside the bounds of physics
as is the "fine frenzy" of a human rhapsodist.
Does Mr. Lilly really believe that, putting me aside, there is any man with
the feeling of music in him who disbelieves in the reality of the delight
which he derives from it, because that delight lies outside the bounds of
physical science, not less than outside the region of the mere sense of
hearing? But, it may be, that he includes music, painting, and sculpture
under the head of physical science, and in that case I can only regret I am
unable to follow him in his ennoblement of my favourite pursuits.
The third thesis runs that I put aside "as unverifiable" "everything which
cannot be brought into a {216} laboratory and dealt with chemically;" and,
once more, I say No. This wondrous allegation is no novelty; it has not
unfrequently reached me from that region where gentle (or ungentle) dulness
so often holds unchecked sway--the pulpit. But I marvel to find that a
writer of Mr. Lilly's intelligence and good faith is willing to father such
a wastrel. If I am to deal with the thing seriously, I find myself met by
one of the two horns of a dilemma. Either some meaning, as unknown to usage
as to the dictionaries, attaches to "laboratory" and "chemical," or the
proposition is (what am I to say in my sore need for a gentle and yet
appropriate word?)--well--unhistorical.
Does Mr. Lilly suppose that I put aside "as unverifiable" all the truths of
mathematics, of philology, of history? And if I do not, will he have the
great goodness to say how the binomial theorem is to be dealt with
"chemically," even in the best appointed "laboratory"; or where the
balances and crucibles are kept by which the various theories of the nature
of the Basque language may be tested; or what reagents will extract the
truth from any given History of Rome, and leave the errors behind as a
residual calx?
I really cannot answer these questions, and unless Mr. Lilly can, I think
he would do well hereafter to think more than twice before attributing such
preposterous notions to his fellow-men, who, after all, as a learned
counsel said, are vertebrated animals.
The whole thing perplexes me much; and I am {217} sure there must be an
explanation which will leave Mr. Lilly's reputation for common sense and
fair dealing untouched. Can it be--I put this forward quite
tentatively--that Mr. Lilly is the victim of a confusion, common enough
among thoughtless people, and into which he has fallen unawares? Obviously,
it is one thing to say that the logical methods of physical science are of
universal applicability, and quite another to affirm that all subjects of
thought lie within the province of physical science. I have often declared
my conviction that there is only one method by which intellectual truth can
be reached, whether the subject-matter of investigation belongs to the
world of physics or to the world of consciousness; and one of the arguments
in favour of the use of physical science as an instrument of education
which I have oftenest used is that, in my opinion, it exercises young minds
in the appreciation of inductive evidence better than any other study. But
while I repeat my conviction that the physical sciences probably furnish
the best and most easily appreciable illustrations of the one and
indivisible mode of ascertaining truth by the use of reason, I beg leave to
add that I have never thought of suggesting that other branches of
knowledge may not afford the same discipline; and assuredly I have never
given the slightest ground for the attribution to me of the ridiculous
contention that there is nothing true outside the bounds of physical
science. Doubtless people who wanted to say something damaging, without too
nice a regard to its truth or falsehood, have often enough misrepresented
{218} my plain meaning. But Mr. Lilly is not one of these folks at whom one
looks and passes by, and I can but sorrowfully wonder at finding him in
such company.
So much for the three theses which Mr. Lilly has nailed on to a page of
this Review. I think I have shown that the first is inaccurate, that the
second is inaccurate, and that the third is inaccurate; and that these
three inaccurates constitute one prodigious, though I doubt not
unintentional, misrepresentation. If Mr. Lilly and I were dialectic
gladiators, fighting in the arena of the _Fortnightly_, under the eye of an
editorial lanista, for the delectation of the public, my best tactics would
now be to leave the field of battle. For the question whether I do, or do
not, hold certain opinions is a matter of fact, with regard to which my
evidence is likely to be regarded as conclusive--at least until such time
as the telepathy of the unconscious is more generally recognised.
However, some other assertions are made by Mr. Lilly which more or less
involve matters of opinion whereof the rights and wrongs are less easily
settled, but in respect of which he seems to me to err quite as seriously
as about the topics we have been hitherto discussing. And the importance of
these subjects leads me to venture upon saying something about them, even
though I am thereby compelled to leave the safe ground of personal
knowledge.
Before launching the three torpedoes which have so sadly exploded on board
his own ship, Mr. Lilly says that with whatever "rhetorical ornaments I may
{219} gild my teaching," it is "Materialism." Let me observe, in passing,
that rhetorical ornament is not in my way, and that gilding refined gold
would, to my mind, be less objectionable than varnishing the fair face of
truth with that pestilent cosmetic, rhetoric. If I believed that I had any
claim to the title of "Materialist," as that term is understood in the
language of philosophy and not in that of abuse, I should not attempt to
hide it by any sort of gilding. I have not found reason to care much for
hard names in the course of the last thirty years, and I am too old to
develop a new sensitiveness. But, to repeat what I have more than once
taken pains to say in the most unadorned of plain language, I repudiate, as
philosophical error, the doctrine of Materialism as I understand it, just
as I repudiate the doctrine of Spiritualism as Mr. Lilly presents it, and
my reason for thus doing is, in both cases, the same; namely, that,
whatever their differences, Materialists and Spiritualists agree in making
very positive assertions about matters of which I am certain I know
nothing, and about which I believe they are, in truth, just as ignorant.
And further, that, even when their assertions are confined to topics which
lie within the range of my faculties, they often appear to me to be in the
wrong. And there is yet another reason for objecting to be identified with
either of these sects; and that is that each is extremely fond of
attributing to the other, by way of reproach, conclusions which are the
property of neither, though they infallibly flow from the logical {220}
development of the first principles of both. Surely a prudent man is not to
be reproached because he keeps clear of the squabbles of these
philosophical Bianchi and Neri, by refusing to have anything to do with
either?