they can obtain a reasonable ground of assurance of the facts of
remote history,--so that, if any thing did or does depend on their
believing it, they are truly in possession of a warrant for acting
on that belief,--I say you then see whither our argument, Mr. Newman's
and yours and mine, is going; it vanishes,--oichetai, as Socrates
would say. If, for example, men can attain reasonable certainty in
relation to Alfred and Cromwell, alas! they may do the like in
reference to Christ; and many persons will say much more easily. Now,
with my too habitual scepticism, I confess to a feeling of difficulty
here. You know there are thousands and tens of thousands amongst us,
who, if you asked respecting the history of Alfred the Great or Oliver
Cromwell, would glibly repeat to you all the principal facts of the
story,--as they suppose; and if you ask them whether they have ever
investigated critically the sources whence they had obtained their
knowledge, they will say, No; but that they have read the things in
Hume's History; or, perhaps, (save the mark!) in Goldsmith's Abridgment!
But they are profoundly ignorant of even the names of the principal
authorities, and have never investigated one of the many doubtful
points which have perplexed historians; nay, as to most of them, are
not even aware that they exist. Yet nothing can be more certain,
than that their supposed knowledge would embrace by far the most
important conclusions at which the most accurate historians have
arrived. It would be principally in a supposed juster comprehension
of minor points--of details--that the latter would have an advantage
over them; compensated, however, by a 'plentiful assortment' of
doubts on other points, from which these simple souls are free;
doubts which are the direct result of more extensive investigation,
but which can scarcely be thought additions to our knowledge;--they
are rather additions to our ignorance. The impressions of the mass
of readers on all the main facts of the two memorable periods
respectively would be the same as those of more accurate critics. Now
what I want to know is, whether you would admit that these superficial
inquirers--the bulk of your decent countrymen, recollect--can be said
to have an intelligent belief in any such history; whether you think
them justified in saying that they are certain of the substantial
accuracy of their impressions, and that they may laugh in your face
(which they assuredly would do) if you told them that it is possible
that Alfred may have existed, and been a wise and patriotic prince;
and that probably Oliver Cromwell was Protector of England, and died
in 1658; but that really they know nothing about the matter."
"Of course they would affirm that they are as assured of the
substantial accuracy of their impressions as of their own existence,"
replied Fellowes.
"But what answer do you think they ought to give, my friend? Do you
think that they can affirm a reasonable ground of belief in
these things?"
"I confess I think they can."
"Ah! then I fear you are grossly inconsistent with Mr. Newman's
principles, and must so far distrust his argument against historic
religion. If you think that this ready assent to remote historic
events may pass for a reasonable conviction and an intelligent belief,
I cannot see why it should be more difficult to attain a similar
confidence in the general results of a religious history; and in that
case it may also become men's duty to act upon that belief. On the
other hand, if it be not possible to obtain this degree of satisfaction
in the latter case, neither for similar reasons will it be in the former.
If you hold Mr. Newman's principles consistently, seeing that neither
in the one case nor the other can the bulk of mankind attain that sort
of critical knowledge which he supposes necessary to certainty, you
ought to deny that any common man has any business to say that he
believes that he is certain of the main facts in the history either
of Alfred or Cromwell."
"You do not surely mean to compare the importance of a belief in
the one case with the importance of a belief in the other?"
rejoined Fellowes.
"I do not; and can as little disguise from myself that such a
question has nothing to do with the matter. The duty in the one case
depends entirely on the question whether such a conviction of the
accuracy of the main facts and more memorable events, as may pass
for moral certainty, and justify its language and acts, be possible
or not. If, from a want of capacity and opportunity for a thorough
investigation of all the conditions of the problem, it be not in
the one case, neither will it be in the other. If this be a fallacy,
be pleased to prove it such,--I shall not be sorry to have it so
proved. But at present you seem to me grossly inconsistent in this
matter. I have also my doubts (to speak frankly) whether we must
not apply Mr. Newman's principle (to the great relief of mankind)
in other most momentous questions, in which the notion of duty
cannot be excluded, but enters as an essential element. I cannot
help fancying, that, if his principle be true, mankind ought to be
much obliged to him; for he has exempted them from the necessity of
acting in all the most important affairs of life. For example, you
are, I know, a great political philanthropist; you plead for the
duty of enlightening the masses of the people on political questions,
--of making them intelligently acquainted with the main points of
political and economical science. You do not despair of all this?"
"I certainly do not," said Fellowes.
"A most hopeless task," said Harrington, "on Mr. Newman's principle.
The questions on which you seek to enlighten them are, many of them,
of the most intricate and difficult character,--are, all of them,
dependent on principles, and involve controversies, with which the
great bulk of mankind are no more competent to deal than with
Newton's 'Principia.' An easy, and often erroneous assent, on
ill-comprehended data, is all that you can expect of the mass; and
how can it be their duty, when it may often be their ruin, to act
upon this? A superficial knowledge is all that you can give them;
thorough investigation is out of the question. Most men, I fear, will
continue to believe it at least as possible for the common people
to form a judgment on the validity of Paley's 'Evidences,' as on
the reasonings of Smith's 'Political Economy.' They will say, if
the common people can be sufficiently sure of their conclusions in
the latter case to take action upon them,--that is, to render action
a duty,--the like is possible in the former. Should you not hold by
your principle, and say, that, as from the difficulty of the
investigation it is not possible for the bulk of mankind to attain
such a degree of certainty as to make belief in an 'historical religion'
a duty, so neither, for the like reason, can it be their duty to come
to any definite conclusion, or to take any definite action, in relation
to the equally difficult questions of politics, legislation, political
economy, and a variety of other sciences? I will take another case.
I believe you will not deny that you are profoundly ignorant of medicine,
nor that, though the most necessary, it is at the same time the most
difficult and uncertain of all the sciences. You know that the great
bulk of mankind are as ignorant as yourself; nay, some affirm that
physicians themselves are about as ignorant as their patients; it
is certain that, in reference to many classes of disease, doctors
take the most opposite views of the appropriate treatment, and even
treat disease in general on principles diametrically opposed! A more
miserable condition for an unhappy patient can hardly be imagined.
"Though our own life, or that of our dearest friend in the world, hangs
in the balance, it is impossible for us to tell whether the art of
the doctor will save or kill. I doubt, therefore, whether you ought
not to conclude, from the principle on which we have already said so
much, that God cannot have made it a poor wretch's duty to take any
step whatever; nay, since even the medical man himself often confesses
that he does not know whether the remedies he uses will do harm or
good, it may be a question whether he himself ought not to relinquish
his profession, at least if it be a duty in man to act only in cases
in which he can form something better than conjectures."
"Well," said Fellowes, laughing; "and some even in the profession
itself say, that perhaps it might not be amiss if the patient never
called in such equivocal aid, and allowed himself to die, not secundum
artem, but secundum naturam."
"And yet I fancy that, in the sudden illness of a wife or child, you
would send to the first medical man in your street, or the next,
though you might be ignorant of his name, and he might be almost as
ignorant of his profession; at least, that is what the generality
of mankind would do."
"They certainly would."
"But yet, upon your principles, how can it be their duty to act on
such slender probabilities, or, rather, mere conjectures, in cases
so infinitely important?"
"I know not how that may be, but it is assuredly necessary."
"Well, then, shall we say it is only necessary, but not a duty? But
then, if in a case of such importance God has made it thus necessary
for man to act in such ignorance, people will say he may possibly have
left them in something less than absolute certainty in the matter
of an 'historical religion.'--Ah! it is impossible to unravel these
difficulties. I only know, that, if the principle be true, then as
men in general cannot form any reasonable judgment, not only on the
principles of medical science, but even on the knowledge and skill of
any particular professor of it, (by their ludicrous mis-estimate of
which they are daily duped both of money and life to an enormous extent,)
it cannot be their duty to take any steps in this matter at all.
The fair application, therefore, of the principle in question would,
as I say, save mankind a great deal of trouble;--but, alas! it
involves us philosophers in a great deal."
"I cannot help thinking," said Fellowes, "that you have caricatured
the principle." And he appealed to me.
"However ludicrous the results," said I, "of Harrington's argument,
I do not think that his representation, if the principle is to be
fairly carried out, is any caricature at all. The absurdity, if anywhere,
is in the principle aimed; viz. that God cannot have constituted it
man's duty to act, in cases of very imperfect knowledge, and yet we see
that he has perpetually compelled him to do so; nay, often in a condition
next door to stark ignorance. To vindicate the wisdom of such a
constitution may be impossible; but the fact cannot be denied. The
Christian admits the difficulty alike in relation to religion and to the
affairs of this world. He believes, with Butler, that 'probability is
the guide of life';--that man may have sufficient evidence, in a
thousand cases,--varying, however, in different individuals,--to
warrant his action, and a reasonable confidence in the results,
though that evidence is very far removed from certitude;--that
similarly the mass of men are justified in saying that they know a
thousand facts of history to be true, though they never had the
opportunity, or capacitor, of thoroughly investigating them, and
that the great facts of science are true, though they may know no more
of science than of the geology of the moon;--that the statesman, the
lawyer, and the physician are justified in acting, where they yet
are compelled to acknowledge that they act only on most unsatisfactory
calculations of probabilities, and amidst a thousand doubts and
difficulties;--that you, Mr. Fellowes, are justified in endeavoring
to enlighten the common people on many important subjects connected
with political and social science, in which it is yet quite certain
that not one in a hundred thousand can ever go to the bottom of them;
of which very few can do more than attain a rough and crude notion,
and in which the bulk must act solely because they are persuaded that
other men know more about the matters in question than themselves;--all
which, say we Christians, is true in relation to the Christian religion,
the evidence for which is plainer, after all, than that on which man
in ten thousand cases is necessitated to hazard his fortune or his life.
If you follow out Mr. Newman's principle, I think you must with
Harrington liberate mankind from the necessity of acting altogether
in all the most important relations of human life. If it be thought
not only hard that men should be called perpetually to act on defective,
grossly defective evidence, but still harder that they should possess
varying degrees even of that evidence, it may be said that the
difference perhaps is rather apparent than real. Those whom we call
profoundly versed in the more difficult matters which depend on moral
evidence, are virtually in the same condition as their humbler neighbors;
they are profound only by comparison with the superficiality of these
last. Where men must act, the decisive facts, as was said in relation
to history, may be pretty equally grasped by all; and as for the rest,
the enlargement of the circle of a man's knowledge is, in a still
greater proportion, the enlargement of the circle of his ignorance;
for the circumscribing periphery lies in darkness. Doubts, in
proportion to the advance of knowledge, spring up where they were
before unknown; and though the previous ignorance of these was not
knowledge, the knowledge of them (as Harrington has said) is little
better than an increase of our ignorance."
"If, as you suppose, it cannot be our duty to act in reference to any
'historical religion' because a satisfactory investigation is impossible
to the mass of mankind, the argument may be retorted on your own theory.
You assert, indeed, that in relation to religion we have an internal
'spiritual faculty' which evades this difficulty; yet men persist in
saying, in spite of you, that it is doubtful,--1st, whether they have
any such; 2d, whether, if there be one, it be not so debauched and
sophisticated by other faculties, that they can no longer trust it
implicitly; 3d, what is the amount of its genuine utterances; 4th, what
that of its aberrations; 5th, whether it is not so dependent on
development, education, and association, as to leave room enough for
an auxiliary external revelation;--on all which questions the
generality of mankind are just as incapable of deciding, as about
any historical question whatever."
Here Fellowes was called out of the room. Harrington, who had been
glancing at the newspaper, exclaimed,--"Talk about the conditions on
which man is left to act indeed! Only think of his gross ignorance
and folly being left a prey to such quack advertisements as half
fill this column. Here empirics every day almost invite men to be
immortal for the small charge of half a crown. Here is a panacea for
nearly every disease under heaven in the shape of some divine elixir,
and, what is more, we know that thousands are gulled by it. How
satisfactory is that condition of the human intellect in which quack
promises can be proffered with any plausible chance of success!"
I told him I thought the science of medicine would yield an argument
against religious sceptics which they would find it very difficult
to reply to.
"How so?"
"Ah! it is well masked; but I know you too well to allow me to doubt
that you suspect what I am referring to."
"Upon my word, I am all in the dark."
"Is there not," said I, "a close analogy between the condition of men
in reference to the health of their bodies and the science by which
they hope to conserve or restore it, and the health of their souls and
the science by which they hope to conserve or restore that? Has not
God placed them in precisely the same difficulty and perplexity in both
cases,--nay, as I think, in greater in relation to medicine,--and yet
is not man most willing and eager to apply to its most problematic
aid, imparted even by the most ignorant practitioners, rather than
be without it altogether? The possession which man holds most valuable
in this world, and most men, alas! more valuable than aught in any
other world,--LIFE itself,--is at stake; it is subjected to a science,
or rather an art, proverbially difficult in theory and uncertain in
practice, about which there have been ten thousand varieties of opinion,
--whimsically corresponding to the diversity of sect, creed, and
priesthood, on which sceptics like you lay so much stress; in which
even the wisest and most cautious practitioners confess that their
art is at best only a species of guessing; while the patient can no
more judge of the remedies he consents, with so much faith, to swallow
on the knowledge of him who prescribes them, than he can of the
perturbations of Jupiter's satellites. Yet the moment he is sick,
away he goes to this dubious oracle, and trusts it with a most
instructive faith and docility, as if it were infallible. All his
doubts are mastered in an instant. I strongly suspect yours would
be. Ought you not in consistency to refuse to act at all in such
deplorable deficiency of evidence?"
"Well," said he, "consistent or inconsistent, it must be admitted
that the parallel is very complete,--and amusing." And he then went
on, as he was apt to do, when an analogy struck his fancy. "Let me
see,--yes, our unlucky race is condemned to put its most valued
possession on the hazard of a wise choice, without any of the
essential qualifications for wisely making it; a man cannot at all
tell whether his particular priest in medicine understands and can
skilfully apply even his own theory. Yes," he went on, "and I think
(as you say) we might find, not only in the partisans of different
systems of physic, the representatives of the various priesthoods,
but in their too credulous--or shall we say, too faithful patients?
--the representatives of all sects. There is, for example, the
superstitious vulgar in medicine,--the gross worshipper of the
Fetish, who believes in the efficacy of charm, and spell, and
incantation, of mere ceremonial and opus operatum; then there
is the polytheist, who will adore any thing in the shape of a drug,
and who is continually quacking himself with some nostrum or other
from morning to night; who not only takes his regular physician's
prescriptions, but has his household gods of empirical remedies,
to which he applies with equal devotion. Then there is the Romanist
in medicine, who swears by the infallibility of some papal Abernethy,
and the unfailing efficacy of some viaticum of a blue pill."
"And who," said I, "would represent our friend who has just left the
room, and who has tried every thing?"
"Why," he replied, "I think he is in the condition of a little boy
of whom I heard a little while ago, whose mother was a homoeopathist,
and kept a little chest, from which she dispensed to her family and
friends, perhaps as skilfully as the doctor himself could have
done. The little fellow, going into her dressing-room, opened this
box, and, thinking that he had fallen on a score of 'millions' (as
children call them), swallowed up his mother's whole doctor's shop
before he could be stopped. It was happy, said the doctor, when called
in, that the little patient had swallowed so many, or he would have
been infallibly killed. Or perhaps we may liken our friend to that
humorous traveller, Mr. Stephens, who tells us, that, having been
provided at Cairo, by a skilful physician there, with a number of
remedies for some serious complaint to which he was subject, found,
to his dismay, when suffering under a severe paroxysm in the fortress
of Akaba, that he had lost the directions which told him in what order
the medicines were to be taken. Whether pill, powder, or draught was
to come first, he knew not: 'on which,' says he, 'in a fit of
desperation, I placed them all in a row before me, and resolved to
swallow them all serialim till I obtained relief.' George has
equal faith."
"You have omitted," said I, "one character,--that of the sceptic, who
believes in no medicine at all; who sturdily dies with his doubts
unresolved, and unattended by any physician. But it must be confessed
that he is a still rarer character than the sceptic in religion. Nature,
my dear Harrington, everywhere decides against you."
"I acknowledge," he said, "that we are but a scanty flock in any
department of life; but, upon my word, the parallel you have suggested
is so striking, that I think I must in consistency, extend my scepticism
to physic at least, and, if I am ill, refrain from availing myself of
so uncertain an art, practised by such uncertain hands and which are
to be selected by one who cannot even guess whether they are ignorant
or skilful;--doctors, who may perhaps, as Voltaire said, put drugs of
which they know nothing into bodies of which they know still less."
"Act upon that resolution, Harrington," said I, "and you will at
least be consistent: but, depend upon it, nature will confute you."
"Why," said he, jestingly, "perhaps in the case of medicine, at all
events, I might face the consequences of scepticism'. I remember
reading, in some account of Madagascar, that the natives are absolutely
without the healing art; 'and yet,' says the author, with grave
surprise, 'it is not observed that the number of deaths is increased.'
Perhaps, thought I, that is the cause of it."
"The statistics," I replied, "of more civilized countries amply refute
you, and show you that, uncertain as is the evidence on which God
has destined and compelled men to act in this, the most important
affair of the present life, and absolute as is the faith they are
summoned to exercise, neither is the study of the art (uncertain as
it is in itself), nor the dependence of patients upon it (still more
precarious as that is), unjustified on the whole by the result; and
as to the abuses of downright quackery, a little prudence and common
sense are required, and are sufficient to preserve men from them."
He mused, and, I thought, seemed struck by this analogy between man's
temporal and spiritual condition I said no more, hoping that he
would ponder it.
____
July 25. I had been so much interested in the discussion between
Harrington and young Robinson on the fair application of the principle
of Strauss to history in general, that I could not resist the
temptation to tell the youth, in secret, that I thought the matter
would admit of further discussion, and that he would do well to
challenge Harrington plausibly to show that some undoubted modern
event might, when it became remote history, be rendered dubious to
posterity. He willingly acted on the hint the next morning. To some
remark of his, Harrington replied thus:--
"Assuming with you, that Strauss has really cast suspicion on the
historic character of the bulk of the transactions recorded in the
New Testament, I must suspect that there is not an event in history,
if at all remote, which, arguing exactly on the same principles, may
not be made doubtful; and that is--"
"Why, now," replied the other, "do you think it possible that the events
of the present year" (referring to the Papal Aggression), "which are
making such a prodigious noise in England, will ever stand a chance
of being similarly treated some centuries hence?"
"If they are ever treated at all," said Harrington; "but you must
have observed that it is the tendency of man to make ridiculous
miss-estimates of the importance of the transactions of his own age,
and to imagine that posterity will have nothing to do but to recount
them. He is much mistaken; they forget or care not a doit for nine
tenths of what he does; and misrepresent the tenth," continued
he, laughing.
"Well, then, upon the supposition that Pio Nono and Cardinal Wiseman
are of sufficient importance to be remembered at all eighteen hundred
and fifty years hence, that is, in the year 3700 of the Christian era,
--though in all probability some new and more rational epoch will have
jostled out both the Christian era the Mahometan hegira by that time--"
"Pray be sure," interrupted I, "before you predict a new epoch, that
it will be wanted; that Christianity is really dead before you bury
her. You will please remember that the experiment was tried in France
with much formality, but somehow came to a speedy ignominious conclusion;
the new era did not survive infancy. As Paulus thinks that Christ was
only in a trance when he seemed to be dead, so it certainly often
is (figuratively speaking) with his religion: it seems to be dead when
it is only in a trance. It is apt to rise again, and be more active
than ever; and never more so than when, as in the middle of the last
century, our infidel undertakers were providing for its funeral. But I
beg your pardon for interrupting your conversation; you were saying--"