of a divinely originated statement of "ethical truth"; nor will they
be neutralized by an objection which Mr. Newman is fond of urging,
--namely, that a book cannot express (as it is freely acknowledged
no book can) the limitations with which maxims of critical truth are
to be received and applied; that all it can do is to give general
principles, and leave them to be applied by the individual reason and
conscience. Such reasoning is refuted by fact. The same thing precisely
is done, and necessarily done, in every department in which men attempt
to convey instruction in any particular art or method. It is thus with
the general principles of mechanics, of law, of medicine. Yet men never
entertain a notion that the collection and inculcation of such maxims are
of no use, or of little, merely because they must be intelligently
modified and not blindly applied in action. If indeed there were any
force in the objection, it would put an end to all instruction,--that
of Mr. Newman's "spiritual faculty" amongst the rest, for that too can
only prompt us by general impulses, and leaves us in the same ignorance
and perplexity how far we are to obey them. That is still to be
otherwise determined. The genuine result of such reasoning, if it were
acted upon, would be that we need never, in any science or art whatever,
trouble ourselves to enunciate any general principle or maxim, because
perfectly useless! Similarly, we need never inculcate on children the
duty of obeying their honoring their superiors, of being frugal or
diligent, humble or aspiring, the particular circumstances and
limitations in which they are to be applied being indeterminate! But
is not the experience of every day and of all the world against it? Is
not the early and sedulous inculcation of just maxims of duty fell
to be a great auxiliary to its performance in the circumstances in
which it is necessary to apply them? Is not the possession of a general
rule, with the advantages of a clear and concise expression,--in the
form of familiar proverbs, or embodied in powerful imagery,--a potent
suggestive to the mind; not only whispering of duty, but, by perpetual
recurrence, aiding the habit of attending to it? Is not the early and
earnest iteration of such sententious wisdom in the ears of the young,
--the honor which has been paid to sages who have elicited it, or
felicitously expressed it,--the care with which these treasures of
moral wisdom have been garnered up,--the perpetual efforts to conjoin
elementary moral truth with the fancy and association,--is not all
this a standing testimony to a consciousness of the value of such
auxiliaries of virtue and duty? Is it not felt, that, however general
such truths may be, the very forms of expression,--the portable shape
in which the truth is presented,--have an immense value in relation
to practice? Admitting, therefore, as before,--but, as before, only
conceding it for argument's sake (for the limits of variation, even
as regards the elementary truths of morals, are, as experience shows,
very wide),--that each man in some shape could anticipate for himself
the more important ethical truth, there would be yet ample scope left
for the utility of a divinely constructed instrument for its exhibition
and enforcement, in perfect harmony with the modes in which it is
actually exhibited and enforced by man, in close analogy with the
form in which he attempts the same task, whenever he teaches any
practical art or method whatever.
Only may it not be again presumed here, that He who knows perfectly
"what is in man" would be able to perform the work with
correspondent perfection? Whether He has performed it in the Bible
or not, that book does, at all events, contain not merely a larger
portion of pure ethical truth than any other in the world, but ethical
truth expressed and exhibited (as Mr. Newman himself, and most other
persons, would admit) in modes incomparably better adapted than in
any other book to lay hold of the memory, the imagination, the
conscience, and the heart.
Even then, if we conceded that elementary "spiritual and moral truth"
is not only congruous to man's faculties, but in some shape universally
recognized and possessed, it might yet be contended, from the manner
in which such truth is dependent for its power and vitality on the
forms in which it comes in contact with the human spirit and stimulates
it, that ample space is left for such a divine instrument as the Bible;
and that it would be in perfect conformity with the laws of our nature,
--in analogy with the known modes in which external aids give efficacy
to such truth. At the same time, be pleased once more to remember, that
I concede so much only for argument's sake; I contend that in the
stricter sense, without some external aid,--and the Bible may be at
least as effectual,--the religious faculty will not expand at all; and
that, even where there are these indispensable external influences,
the recognition of the truth is obscure or bright, as those influences
vary in their degrees of appropriateness. Where they are rude and
imperfect, (as amongst barbarous nations) we have the spectacle of a
soul which struggles towards the light, like a plant to which but
small portion of the sun's rays is admitted; it depends on the free
admission of the light whether or not it shall arrive at its full
development,--its beauty, its fragrance, and its color. The most that
merely human culture can promise, even under the most favorable
circumstances, (witness ancient Greece!) is that men, in some few
favored instances, may possibly attain those truths which it may be
admitted are congenital to the soul, and easily recognized when once
propounded but which, in fact, few men, by nature's sole teaching,
ever do clearly attain. It is infinitely important that the path,
dimly explored by sages alone, should be thrown open to mankind. Is it
not even possible, then, that this task should be performed by a book
like the Bible? and if such a book were given, would it not be,
I once more ask, in analogy with the fundamental laws of the soul's
development,--its uniform dependence on external influences for any
result, and the variable nature of that result, as the influence
itself is more or less appropriate? To affirm that each man at once,
by in internal illumination alone, attains a clear recognition of
even elementary "moral and spiritual truth" is to ignore the laws
according to which the soul's activity is developed, and to contradict
universal experience, which tells us that the great majority of mankind
are but in partial possession of this "spiritual and moral truth,"
and hold it for the most part in connection with the most prodigious
and pernicious errors.
You will perceive that I have here chosen to argue the question of
the possibility and utility of a "revelation" on your own grounds; but
recollect what I have said, that, in fact, the principal reasons for a
revelation would still remain in force, even if all you demand were
conceded. It is a point which I do not find that Mr. Newman's dictum
affects.
There may obviously be other facts and other truths as intimately
connected with man's destinies and happiness as the elementary truths
of religious and moral science; facts and truths which may be necessary
to give efficacy to mere elementary principles, and to supply motives
to the performance of moral precepts. And how ample in this respect
are man's necessities, and how large the field for a "divine revelation,"
if we content ourselves with such a meagre theology as that of Mr. Parker
and Mr. Newman, you see plainly enough in the questions asked by
Harrington! How many of Mr. Newman's and Mr. Parker's assumptions--the
moment they step beyond such "spiritual and moral truth" as is
"elementary" indeed--does Harrington declare that he finds unverified
by his own consciousness, and needing, if true, an authority to
confirm them far more weighty than theirs! As to the terms of access
to the Supreme Being,--his aspects towards man,--man's duties towards
him,--the future destinies, even the future existence, of the soul
(a point on which these writers are themselves divided),--the boasted
"progress" of the race, which they "prophesy," indeed, but without any
credentials of their mission,--you see how on all these points
Harrington maintains--and oh! how many, if the Bible be untrue, must
maintain with him--that he is in total darkness!
III. But I must proceed to show yet further, if you will have patience
with me, that, supposing a divine external revelation to be given, it
is in striking analogy, not only with the primary laws of development
of our whole intellectual and spiritual being, but with the fact--
undeniable, however unaccountable--that our subjection to external
influence does, in truth, not only mould and modify, but usually
determine, our intellectual and religious position. We see not only
some external influence is necessary to awaken activity at all, but
that it is actually so powerful and so inevitable from the manner
in which man enters the world, and is brought up in it,--his long
years of dependence, absolute dependence, on the education which is
given him (and what an education it has ever been for the mass of the
race!),--that it makes all the difference, intellectually and morally,
between a New Zealand savage and an Englishman,--between the grossest
idolater and the most enlightened Christian. This fact affects alike
our intellectual and spiritual condition. The savage can use his
senses better than the civilized; but the interval is trifling
compared with that between the intellectual condition of a man can
appreciate Milton and Newman, and that of our Teutonic ancestors.
Its the sentiments of a nature there is the same wide gulf--or rather
wider--between a Hottentot and a Paul. Yet the same "susceptibilities"
and "potentialities" are in each human mind. The same remark applies
to the sense of the beautiful and sublime; the characteristic faculties
are in all mankind; it is education which elicits them. Nay, would you
not stare at a man who should affirm that education was not itself
a species of "revelation," simply because the truths thus communicated
were all "potentially" in the mind before? The fact is, that education
is of coordinate importance with the very faculties without which it
cannot be imparted.
Now we cannot break away from that law of development with which
our individual existence is involved, and which necessarily (as far
as any will of ours is concerned) is a most important, nay, the
most important, element in that tertium quid which man becomes in
virtue of the threefold elements which constitute him:--1st, a given
internal constitution of mind; 2d. the modifying effects of the
actual exercise of his faculties and their interaction with one another,
resulting in habits; and, 3d, that external world of influences which
supplies the materiel from which this strange plant extracts its
aliment, and ultimately derives its fair fruits or its poisonous
berries. All this is inevitable, upon the supposition that man was
to be a social, not a solitary being,--linked by an indissoluble chain
to those who came before and to those who come after him,--dependent,
absolutely dependent, upon others for his being, his training, his
whole condition, civil, social, intellectual, moral, and religious.
If, then, an external instrument of moral and religious culture were
Given by God to man, would it not be in strict analogy with this
tremendous and mysterious law of human development?
IV. I must be permitted to proceed yet one step further, and affirm
that the very form in which this presumed revelation has (as we say)
been given--that of a Book--is also in strict analogy with the law
by which God himself has made this an indispensable instrument of all
human progress. We have just seen that man is what he is, as much
(to say the least) by the influence of external influence as by the
influence of the internal principles of his constitution; it must be
added, that to make that external influence of much efficiency at all,
still more to render it either universally or progressively beneficial,
the world waits for a--BOOK. Among the varied external influences
amidst which the human race is developed, this is incomparably the
most important, and the only one that is absolutely essential. Upon
it the collective education of the race depends. It is the sole
instrument of registering, perpetuating, transmitting thought.
Yes, whatever trivial and vulgar associations may impair our due
conceptions of this grandeur of this material and artificial organon
of man's development, as compared with the intellectual and moral
energies, which have recourse to it, but which are almost impotent
without it. God has made man's whole career of triumphs dependent
upon this same art of writing! The whole progress of the world he
has created, he has made dependent upon the Alphabet! Without this
the progress of the individual is inconceivably slow, and with
him, for the most part, progress terminates. By this alone can we
garner the fruits of experience,--become wise by the wisdom of
others, and strong by their strength. Without this man everywhere
remains, age after age, immovably a savage; and, if he were to lose
it when he has once gained it, would, after a little ineffectual
flutter by the aid of tradition, sink into barbarism again. Till
this cardinal want is supplied, all considerable "progress" is
impossible. It may look odd to say that the whole world is dependent
on any thing so purely artificial; but, in point of fact, it is
only another way of stating the truth that God has constituted the
race a series of mutually dependent beings; and as each term of
this series is perishable and evanescent, the development and
improvement of the race must depend on an instrument by which an
inter-connection can be maintained between its parts; till then,
progress must not only be most precarious, but virtually impossible.
To the truth of this all history testifies. I say, then, not only
that, if God has given man a revelation at all, he has but acted
in analogy with that law by which he has made man so absolutely
dependent upon external culture, but that if he has given it in
the very shape of a book, he has acted also in strict analogy
with the very form in which he has imposed that law
on the world. He has simply made use of that instrument, which,
by the very constitution of our nature and of the world, he has
made absolutely essential to the progress and advancement of
humanity. May we not conclude from analogy, that if God has
indeed thus constituted the world, and if he busies himself at all
in the fortunes of miserable humanity, he has not disdained to take
part in its education, by condescendingly using that very instrument
which himself has made the condition of all human progress? I think,
even if you hesitate to admit that God has given us a "book-revelation,"
you must admit it would be at least in manifest coincidence with the
laws of human development and the "constitution and course of nature."
To conclude; I must say that Mr. Newman, in his account of the genesis
of religion, does himself in effect admit (as Harrington has remarked)
an "external revelation," though not in a book. For what else is that
apparatus of external influences by which the several preparatory or
auxiliary emotions are awakened, and the development of your "spiritual
faculty" effected?--contact with the outward world,--with visible and
material nature,--the instruction of the living voice! You acknowledge
all this without derogation, as you imagine, to the sublime and divine
functions of the indwelling "spiritual" power, why this rabid, this, I
might almost say, puerile (if I ought not rather to say fanatical),
hatred of the very notion of a "book-revelation"?
Let us confess that, if a revelation be possible at all, it cannot be
more worthy of God to give one even from "within" than in such a shape
as a "book"; since without a "BOOK" man remains an idolater, in spite of
his fine "spiritual faculties," and a barbarian, in spite of his
sublime intellect; in fact, not much better than the beasts, in spite
of all those noble capacities which, although they are in him, are as
it were hopelessly locked up till he has obtained this key to their
treasures.
Nor do I think that the invectives of the modern spiritualists on this
point are particularly becoming, when we reflect not only that they
freely give mankind what Harrington declares to be to him, and I must
say are equally to me, their "book-revelations," but in very deed, as
he truly affirms, have given us nothing else. It has been much the same
with all who have rejected historical Christianity, from Lord Herbert's
time downwards.
I paused, and Fellowes mused. At last he said, "I cannot feel convinced
that the 'absolute religion' is (as Mr. Parker says) essentially the
same in all men, and internally revealed. The want exists in all, and
there must, according to the arrangements of universal nature, be the
supply; just as the eye is for the light, and the light is for the eye.
As he says, 'we feel instinctively it must be so.'"
"Unhappily," said Harrington, "Mr. Parker says that many things must
be which we find are not, and this among the number. At least I, for
one, shall not grant that the sort of spiritual 'supply' which is
to the Calmuck, or the savage 'besmeared with the blood of human
sacrifices,' at all resembles that uniform light which is made
for all people's eyes."
Fellowes seemed still perplexed with his old difficulty. "I cannot
help thinking," he began again, "that the 'spiritual faculty' acts
by immediate 'insight,' and has nothing to do with 'logical
processes' or 'intellectual propositions,' or the sensational or
the imaginative parts of our nature; that it 'gazes immediately
upon spiritual truth.' Now in the argument you have constructed,
you have expressly implied the contrary. You have said, you know,
that, even if you granted men to be in possession of 'spiritual and
moral truth,' there might still be large space for a divinely
constructed book from the reflex operation of the intellect, the
imagination, and so forth, upon the products of the spiritual faculty;
both directly, and also indirectly, inasmuch as external influences
modify or stimulate them."
"But," said I, "does not Mr. Newman himself, in the first part of
his Treatise on the Soul, admit the reciprocal action of all these
on the too plastic spiritual products; and as to 'logical and
intellectual processes,' does he not continually employ them--for
his system of opinions, though he will not allow them to be employed
against it? And by what other means than through the intervention of
your senses, by which you read his pages,--your imagination, by which
you seize his illustrations,--your intellect, by which you comprehend
his arguments, did he reclaim you, as you say he has done, from many
of your ancient errors? How else, in the name of common sense, did he
get access to your soul at all?"
"I cannot pretend to defend Mr. Newman's consistency," said he, "in
his various statements on this subject. I acknowledge I am even puzzled
to find out how he did convince me, upon his hypothesis."
"Are you sure," said I, laughing, "that he ever convinced you at all?
However, all your perplexity seems to me to arise from supposing the
spiritual powers of man to act in greater isolation from his other
powers than is conceivable or even possible. Not apart from these,
but in intimate conjunction with them, are the functions of the soul
performed. The divorce between the 'spiritual faculties' and the
intellect, which your favorite, Mr. Newman, has attempted to effect,
is impossible. It is an attempt to sever phenomena which coexist in
the unity of our own consciousness. I am bound in justice to admit,
that there are others of our 'modern spiritualists' who condemn this
attempt to separate what God hath joined so inseparably. Even Mr. Newman
does practically contradict his own assertions; and outraged reason
and intellect have avenged his wrongs upon them by deserting him when
he has invoked them, and left him to express his paradoxes in endless
perplexity and confusion. But this conversation is no bad preface to
some observations on this important fallacy, (as I conceive,) which
I have appended to the paper I have read, and, with your leave, I
will finish with them." They assented, and I proceeded.
It is very common for philosophers, spiritual and otherwise, to be
guilty of two opposite errors, both exposed in the first book of the
Novum Organum. One is, that of supposing the phenomena which they
have to analyze more simple, more capable of being reduced to some
one principle, than is really the case; the other, that of
introducing a cumbrous complexity of operations unknown to nature.
It is unnecessary here to adduce examples of the last; quite as
frequently, at least, man apt to be guilty of the first. He imagines
that complex and generally deeply convoluted phenomena he is called
to investigate are capable of being more summarily analyzed than
they can be. The ends to be answered in nature by the same set of
instruments are in many cases so various, and in some respects
so limit and traverse one another, that though the same multiplicity
of ends is attained more completely, and in higher aggregate
perfection, than by any device which man's ingenuity could substitute
for them, yet those instruments are necessarily very complex at
the best. Look, for example, at the system of organs by which,
variously employed, we utter the infinite variety of articulate sounds,
perform the most necessary of all vital functions (that of respiration),
masticate solid food, and swallow fluids. The miracle is, that any one
set of organs in any conceivable juxtaposition should suffice to
discharge with such amazing facility and rapidity these different and
rapidly alternated functions; yet I suppose few who have studied
anatomy will deny, that, though relatively to the variety of purposes
it has to perform the apparatus is very simple, it is absolutely
very complex; and that its parts play into one another with great
facility indeed, but with endless intricacy.
To apply these observations to my special object. To one who attentively
studies man's immaterial anatomy, much the same complexity is, I think,
apparent; the philosopher is too apt to assume it to be much more simple
than it is. It is the very error, as I conceive, into which some of
you modern "spiritualists" fall when considering the phenomena of our
religious nature. You do not sufficiently regard man as a complicated
unity; you represent, if you do not suppose, the several capacities
of his nature,--the different parts of it, sensational, emotional,
intellectual, moral, spiritual,--as set off from one another by a
sharper boundary line than nature acknowledges. They all work for
immediate ends, indeed; but they all also work for, with, and upon
each other, for other ends than their own. Yet, as they all exist in
one indivisible mind, or rather constitute it, they form one most
intricate machine: and it can rarely happen that the particular
phenomena of our interior nature we happen to be investigating do
not involve many others. Throughout his book on the "Soul," we find
Mr. Newman employing expressions (though I admit there are others
which contradict them) which imply that the phenomena of religion, of
what he calls "spiritual insight," may be viewed in clearer distinction
from those of the intellect, than, as I conceive, they ever can be;
and that a much clearer separation can be effected between them than
nature has made possible. To hear him sometimes speak, one would
imagine that the logical, the moral, and the spiritual are held together
by no vital bond of connection; nay, from some expressions, one would
think that the "logical" faculty had nothing to do with religion, if
it is not to be supposed rather to stand in the way of it; that the
"intellect" and the "spiritual faculty" may each retire to its "vacant
interlunar cave," and never trouble its head about what the other
is doing. Thus he says in one place, "All the grounds of Belief
proposed to the mere understanding have nothing to do with Faith at
all." (Soul, p. 223.) In another, "The processes of thought have nothing
to quicken the conscience or affect the soul." (ibid. p. 245) "How,
then, can the state of the soul be tested by the conclusion to
which the intellect is led?" (ibid. p. 245.) And accordingly you see
he everywhere affirms that we ought not to have any better or worse
opinion of any man for his "intellectual creed"; and that "religious
progress" cannot be "anticipated" till intellectual "creeds
are destroyed." (Phases, p. 222.)
Here one would imagine that the intellectual, moral, and spiritual
had even less to do with the production of each other's results
than matter and mind reciprocally have with theirs. These last,
we see, in a thousand cases act and react upon one another; and
modify each other's peculiar products and operations in a most
important manner. How much more reasonably may we infer that the
elementary faculties of the same indivisible mind will not discharge
their functions without important reciprocal action; that in no case
can we have the process pure and simple as the result of the
operation of a single faculty!
If it were not so, I see not how we are to perform any of the functions
of a spiritual nature, even as defined by you and your favorite writers;
unless, indeed, you would equip the soul with an entire Sunday suit
of separate capacities of reasoning, remembering, imagining, hoping,
rejoicing, and so on, to be expressly used by the "soul" alone when
engaged in her spiritual functions; quite different from that old,
threadbare, much-worn suit of faculties, having similar functions
indeed, but exercised on other objects.