The Project Gutenberg EBook of Theism, by Robert Flint
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
Title: Theism
being the Baird Lecture of 1876
Author: Robert Flint
Release Date: May 31, 2014 [EBook #45850]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEISM ***
Produced by David Garcia, Les Galloway, Marilynda
Fraser-Cunliffe and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from
scanned images of public domain material from the Google
Print project.)
THEISM
BEING
The Baird Lecture for 1876
BY
ROBERT FLINT, D.D., LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH AUTHOR OF 'THE
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN EUROPE,' ETC.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCLXXVII
PREFATORY NOTE.
The Lectures in this volume have been delivered in Glasgow, St Andrews,
and Edinburgh, in connection with the Lectureship founded by the late
Mr James Baird of Auchmedden and Cambusdoon. They will be followed by a
volume on Anti-theistic Theories, containing the Baird Lectures for 1877.
The author has to thank the Baird Trustees for having twice appointed
him Lecturer, and for much indulgence extended to him during his tenure
of office. His special thanks are due to James A. Campbell, Esq.,
LL.D., of Stracathro, for kindly revising the sheets of this volume,
and for suggesting many corrections and improvements.
JOHNSTONE LODGE, CRAIGMILLAR PARK,
EDINBURGH, _22d August 1877_.
CONTENTS.
LECT. PAGE
I. ISSUES INVOLVED IN THE QUESTION TO BE DISCUSSED--WHENCE
AND HOW WE GET THE
IDEA OF GOD, 1
II. GENERAL IDEA OF RELIGION--COMPARISON OF
POLYTHEISM AND PANTHEISM WITH THEISM--THE
THREE GREAT THEISTIC RELIGIONS COMPARED--NO
RELIGIOUS PROGRESS BEYOND
THEISM, 30
III. THE NATURE, CONDITIONS, AND LIMITS OF THEISTIC
PROOF, 59
IV. NATURE IS BUT THE NAME FOR AN EFFECT
WHOSE CAUSE IS GOD, 96
V. THE ARGUMENT FROM ORDER, 131
VI. OBJECTIONS TO THE ARGUMENT FROM ORDER
EXAMINED, 169
VII. MORAL ARGUMENT--TESTIMONY OF CONSCIENCE
AND HISTORY, 210
VIII. CONSIDERATION OF OBJECTIONS TO THE DIVINE
WISDOM, BENEVOLENCE, AND JUSTICE, 233
IX. _A PRIORI_ THEISTIC PROOF, 264
X. MERE THEISM INSUFFICIENT, 302
APPENDIX.
NOTE PAGE
I. NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION, 323
II. INFLUENCE OF RELIGION ON MORALITY, 329
III. ETHICS OF RELIGIOUS INQUIRY, 335
IV. TRADITIVE THEORY OF RELIGION, 338
V. NORMAL DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY, 340
VI. DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION BY THE HIGHEST
TYPE, 342
VII. PSYCHOLOGICAL NATURE OF RELIGION, 343
VIII. ARGUMENT _E CONSENSU GENTIUM_, 348
IX. THE THEISTIC EVIDENCE COMPLEX AND COMPREHENSIVE, 350
X. INTUITION, FEELING, BELIEF, AND KNOWLEDGE IN
RELIGION, 355
XI. THE THEOLOGICAL INFERENCE FROM THE THEORY
OF ENERGY, 359
XII. THE HISTORY OF THE ÆTIOLOGICAL ARGUMENT, 364
XIII. MATHEMATICS AND THE DESIGN ARGUMENT, 367
XIV. ASTRONOMY AND THE DESIGN ARGUMENT, 369
XV. CHEMISTRY AND THE DESIGN ARGUMENT, 373
XVI. GEOLOGY, GEOGRAPHY, ETC., AND THE DESIGN
ARGUMENT, 375
XVII. THE ORGANIC KINGDOM AND DESIGN, 378
XVIII. EVIDENCES OF DESIGN IN ORGANISMS, 380
XIX. PSYCHOLOGY AND DESIGN, 383
XX. HISTORY AND DESIGN, 386
XXI. HISTORY OF THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT, 387
XXII. CREATION AND EVOLUTION, 390
XXIII. THEOLOGICAL INFERENCES FROM THE DOCTRINE
OF SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, 394
XXIV. DARWIN AND PALEY, 396
XXV. KANT'S MORAL ARGUMENT, 397
XXVI. DR SCHENKEL'S VIEW OF CONSCIENCE AS THE
ORGAN OF RELIGION, 400
XXVII. CHALMERS AND ERSKINE ON THE ARGUMENT
FROM CONSCIENCE, 401
XXVIII. ASSOCIATIONIST THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIENCE, 403
XXIX. CHALMERS AND BAIN ON THE PLEASURE OF MALEVOLENCE, 403
XXX. HISTORY OF THE MORAL PROOF, 406
XXXI. DEFECTS IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD, 413
XXXII. NO BEST POSSIBLE CREATED SYSTEM, 417
XXXIII. DEFECTS IN THE ORGANIC WORLD, 418
XXXIV. EPICUREAN DILEMMA, 420
XXXV. GOD AND DUTY, 422
XXXVI. HISTORIES OF THE THEISTIC PROOFS, 423
XXXVII. _A PRIORI_ PROOF NOT PROOF FROM A CAUSE, 424
XXXVIII. SOME _A PRIORI_ ARGUMENTS, 425
THEISM.
LECTURE I.
ISSUES INVOLVED IN THE QUESTION TO BE DISCUSSED--WHENCE AND HOW WE GET
THE IDEA OF GOD.
I.
Is belief in God a reasonable belief, or is it not? Have we sufficient
evidence for thinking that there is a self-existent, eternal Being,
infinite in power and wisdom, and perfect in holiness and goodness,
the Maker of heaven and earth, or have we not? Is theism true, or is
some antagonistic, some anti-theistic theory true? This is the question
which we have to discuss and to answer, and it seems desirable to
state briefly at the outset what issues are involved in answering it.
Obviously, the statement of these issues must not be so framed as
to create prejudice for or against any particular answer. Its only
legitimate purpose is to help us to realise aright our true relation
to the question. We can never in any investigation see too early or
too clearly the true and full significance, the general and special
bearings, of the question we intend to study; but the more important
and serious the question is, the more incumbent on us is it not to
prejudge what must be the answer.
* * * * *
It is obvious, then, in the first place, that the inquiry before us
is one as to whether or not religion has any reasonable ground, any
basis, in truth; and if so, what that ground or basis is. Religion,
in order to be reasonable, must rest on knowledge of its object. This
is not to say that it is exclusively knowledge, or that knowledge
is its one essential element. It is not to say that feeling and
will are not as important constituents in the religious life as
intellectual apprehension. Mere knowledge, however clear, profound,
and comprehensive it may be, can never be religion. There can be no
religion where feeling and affection are not added to knowledge. There
can be no religion in any mind devoid of reverence or love, hope or
fear, gratitude or desire--in any mind whose thinking is untouched,
uncoloured, uninspired by some pious emotion. And religion includes
more even than an apprehension of God supplemented by feeling--than the
love or fear of God based on knowledge. It is unrealised and incomplete
so long as there is no self-surrender of the soul to the object of its
knowledge and affection--so long as the will is unmoved, the character
and conduct unmodified. The importance of feeling and will in religion
is thus in no respect questioned or denied when it is maintained that
religion cannot be a reasonable process, a healthy condition of mind,
if constituted by either feeling or volition separate from knowledge.
Some have represented it as consisting essentially in the feeling of
dependence, others in that of love, and others in fear; but these are
all feelings which must be elicited by knowledge, and which must be
proportional to knowledge in every undisordered mind. We can neither
love nor fear what we know nothing about. We cannot love what we do
not think worthy of love, nor fear unless we think there is reason for
fear. We cannot feel our dependence upon what we do not know to exist.
We cannot feel trustful and confiding dependence on what we do not
suppose to have a character which merits trust and confidence. Then,
however true it may be that short of the action of the will in the
form of the self-surrender of the soul to the object of its worship
the religious process is essentially imperfect, this self-surrender
cannot be independent of reason and yet reasonable. In order to be
a legitimate act it must spring out of good affections,--and these
affections must be enlightened; they must rest on the knowledge of an
object worthy of them, and worthy of the self-sacrifice to which they
prompt. Unless there be such an object, and unless it can be known, all
the feeling and willing involved in religion must be delusive--must be
of a kind which reason and duty command us to resist and suppress.
But religion is certainly a very large phenomenon. It is practically
coextensive, indeed, with human life and history. It is doubtful if
any people, any age, has been without some religion. And religion has
not only in some form existed almost wherever man has existed, but
its existence has to a great extent influenced his whole existence.
The religion of a people colours its entire civilisation; its action
may be traced on industry, art, literature, science, and philosophy,
in all their stages. And the question whether there is a God or not,
whether God can be known or not, is, otherwise put, whether or not
religious history, and history so far as influenced by religion, have
had any root in reason, any ground in fact. If there be no God, or if
it be impossible to know whether there be a God or not, history, to
the whole extent of its being religious and influenced by religion,
must have been unreasonable. Perhaps religion might still be conceived
of, although it is difficult to see how it could be so conceived of on
consistent grounds, as having done some good: and one religion might
be regarded as better than another, in the sense of doing more good
or less evil than another; but no religion could be conceived of as
true, nor could one religion be conceived of as truer than another. If
there be no God to know, or if God cannot be known, religion is merely
a delusion or mental disease--its history is merely the history of a
delusion or disease, and any science of it possible is merely a part of
mental pathology.
Further, whether Christianity be a reasonable creed or not obviously
depends on whether or not certain beliefs regarding God are reasonable.
If there be no God, if there be more Gods than one, if God be not the
Creator and Upholder of the world and the Father of our spirits, if
God be not infinite in being and perfection, in power, wisdom, and
holiness, Christianity cannot possibly be a thing to be believed. It
professes to be a revelation from God, and consequently assumes that
there is a God. It demands our fullest confidence, on the ground of
being His word; and consequently assumes that He is "not a man that
He should lie," but One whose word may be trusted to the uttermost.
It professes to be a law of life, and therefore assumes the holiness
of its author; to be a plan of salvation, and therefore presupposes
His love; to be certain of final triumph, and so presupposes His
power. It presents itself to us as the completion of a progressive
process of positive revelation, and therefore presupposes a heavenly
Father, Judge, and King. The books in which we have the record of this
process--the books of the Old and New Testaments--therefore assume,
and could not but assume, that God is, and that He is all-powerful,
perfectly wise, and perfectly holy. They do not prove it, but refer us
to the world and our own hearts for the means and materials of proof.
They may draw away from nature, and from before the eyes of men, a veil
which covers and conceals the proof; they may be a record of facts
which powerfully confirm and largely supplement what proof there is in
the universe without and the mind within: but they must necessarily
imply, and do everywhere imply, that a real proof exists there. If what
they in this respect imply be untrue, all that they profess to tell us
of God, and as from God, must be rejected by us, if we are to judge and
act as reasonable beings.[1]
[1] See Appendix I.
For all men, then, who have religious beliefs, and especially for all
men who have Christian beliefs, these questions, What evidence is
there for God's existence? and, What is known of His nature? are of
primary importance. The answers given to them must determine whether
religion and Christianity ought to be received or rejected. There can
be no use in discussing other religious questions so long as these
fundamental questions have not been thoughtfully studied and distinctly
answered. It is only through their investigation that we can establish
a right to entertain any religious belief, to cherish any religious
feeling, to perform any religious act. And the result to which the
investigation leads us must largely decide what sort of a religious
theory we shall hold, and what sort of a religious life we shall lead.
Almost all religious differences of really serious import may be traced
back to differences in men's thoughts about God. The idea of God is
the generative and regulative idea in every great religious system and
every great religious movement. It is a true feeling which has led to
the inclusion of all religious doctrines whatever in a science which
bears the name of theology (discourse about God, [Greek: logos peri
tou theou]), for what is believed about God determines what will be
believed about everything else which is included either under natural
or revealed religion.
* * * * *
In the second place, the moral issues depending on the inquiry before
us are momentous. An erroneous result must, from the very nature of
the case, be of the most serious character. If there be no God, the
creeds and rites and precepts which have been imposed on humanity in
His name must all be regarded as a cruel and intolerable burden. The
indignation which atheists have so often expressed at the contemplation
of religious history is quite intelligible--quite natural; for to them
it can only appear as a long course of perversion of the conscience
and affections of mankind. If religion be in its essence, and in all
its forms and phases, false, the evils which have been associated with
it have been as much its legitimate effects as any good which can be
ascribed to it; and there can be no warrant for speaking of benefits
as its proper effects, or uses and mischiefs as merely occasioned by
it, or as its abuses. If in itself false, it must be credited with
the evil as well as with the good which has followed it; and all the
unprofitable sufferings and useless privations--all the undefined
terrors and degrading rites--all the corruptions of moral sentiment,
factitious antipathies, intolerance, and persecution--all the spiritual
despotism of the few, and the spiritual abjectness of the many--all
the aversion to improvement and opposition to science, &c., which
are usually referred to false religion and to superstition,--must be
attributed to religion in itself, if there be no distinction between
true and false in religion--between religion and superstition. In
that case, belief in God must be regarded as really the root of all
these evils. It is only if we can separate between religious truth
and religious error--only if we can distinguish religion itself from
the perversions of religion--that we can possibly maintain that the
evils which have flowed from religious error, from the perversions of
religion, are not to be traced to the religious principle itself.[2]
On the other hand, if there be a God, he who denies His existence,
and, in consequence, discards all religious motives, represses all
religious sentiments, and despises all religious practices, assuredly
goes morally far astray. If there be a God--all-mighty, all-wise, and
all-holy--the want of belief in Him must be in all circumstances a
great moral misfortune, and, wherever it arises from a want of desire
to know Him, a serious moral fault, necessarily involving, as it
does, indifference to one who deserves the highest love and deepest
reverence, ingratitude to a benefactor whose bounties have been
unspeakable, and the neglect of those habits of trust and prayer by
which men realise the presence of infinite sympathy and implore the
help of infinite strength. If there be a God, the virtue which takes
no account of Him, even if it were otherwise faultless, must be most
defective. The performance of personal and social duty can in that
case no more compensate for the want of piety than justice can excuse
intemperance or benevolence licentiousness.
[2] See Appendix II.
Besides, if God exist--if piety, therefore, ought also to exist--it
can scarcely be supposed that personal and social morality will not
suffer when the claims of religion are unheeded. It has seemed to
some that morality rests on religion, and cannot exist apart from it.
And almost all who believe that there are religious truths which men,
as reasonable beings, are bound to accept, will be found maintaining
that, although morality may be independent of religion for its mere
existence, a morality unsupported by religion would be insufficient to
satisfy the wants of the personal and social life. Without religion,
they maintain, man would not be able to resist the temptations and
support the trials of his lot, and would be cut off from the source
of his loftiest thoughts, his richest and purest enjoyments, and his
most heroic deeds. Without it nations, they further maintain, would
be unprogressive, selfish, diseased, corrupt, unworthy of life,
incapable of long life. They argue that they find in human nature and
in human history the most powerful reasons for thinking thus; and
so much depends upon whether they are right or wrong, that they are
obviously entitled to expect that these reasons, and also the grounds
of religious belief, will be impartially and carefully examined and
weighed.
It will be denied, indeed, by no one, that religious belief influences
moral practice. Both reason and history make doubt on this point
impossible. The convictions of a man's heart as to the supreme object
of his reverence, and as to the ways in which he ought to show his
reverence thereof, necessarily affect for good or ill his entire mind
and conduct. The whole moral life takes a different colour according
to the religious light which falls upon it. As the valley of the Rhone
presents a different aspect when seen from a summit of the Jura and
from a peak of the Alps, so the course of human existence appears very
different when looked at from different spiritual points of view.
Atheism, polytheism, pantheism, theism, cannot regard life and death
in the same way, and cannot solve in the same way the problems which
they present to the intellect and the heart. These different theories
naturally--yea, necessarily--yield different moral results. Now, doubt
may be entertained as to whether or not we can legitimately employ the
maxim, "By their fruits ye shall know them," in attempting to ascertain
the truth or falsity of a theory. The endeavour to support religion
by appealing to its utility has been denounced as "moral bribery and
subornation of the understanding."[3] But no man, I think, however
scrupulous or exacting, can doubt that when one theory bears different
moral and social fruits than another, that fact is a valid and weighty
reason for inquiring very carefully which of them is true and which
false. He who believes, for example, that there is a God, and he who
believes that there is no being in the universe higher than himself--he
who believes that material force is the source of all things, and he
who believes that nature originated in an intelligent, holy, and loving
Will,--must look upon the world, upon history, and upon themselves so
very differently--must think, feel, and act so very differently--that
for every man it must be of supreme importance to know which of these
beliefs he is bound in reason to accept and which to reject.
[3] By J. S. Mill, in the very essay in which he assailed religion by
trying to show that the world had outgrown the need of it.
* * * * *
Then, in the third place, the primary question in religion is
immediately and inseparably connected with the ultimate question of
science. Does the world explain itself, or does it lead the mind
above and beyond itself? Science cannot but suggest this question;
religion is an answer to it. When the phenomena of the world have
been classified, the connections between them traced, their laws
ascertained, science may, probably enough, have accomplished all that
it undertakes--all that it can perform; but is it certain that the
mind can ascend no further? Must it rest in the recognition of order,
for example, and reject the thought of an intelligence in which that
order has its source? Or, is this not to represent every science as
leading us into a darkness far greater than any from which it has
delivered us? Granting that no religious theory of the world can be
accepted which contradicts the results established by the sciences, are
we not free to ask, and even bound to ask--Do these results not, both
separately and collectively, imply a religious theory of the world, and
the particular religious theory, it may be, which is called theism? Are
these results not the expressions of a unity and order in the world
which can only be explained on the supposition that material nature,
organic existences, the mind and heart of man, society and its history,
have originated in a power, wisdom, and goodness not their own, which
still upholds them, and works in and through them? The question is one
which may be answered in various ways, and to which the answer may be
that it cannot be answered; but be the answer that or another--be the
answer what it may--obviously the question itself is a great one,--a
greater than any science has ever answered--one which all science
raises, and in the answering of which all science is deeply interested.
No scientific man can be credited with much insight who does not
perceive that religious theory has an intimate and influential bearing
on science. There are religious theories with which science cannot
consistently coexist at all. Where fetichism or polytheism prevails,
you cannot have science with its pursuit of general laws. A dualistic
religion must, with all the strength it possesses, oppose science
in the accomplishment of its task--the proof of unity and universal
order. Even when the conception of One Creative Being is reached, there
are ways of thinking of His character and agency which science must
challenge, since they imperil its life and retard its progress. The
medieval belief in miracles and the modern belief in law cannot be held
by the same mind, and still less by the same society.
We have no reason, however, to complain at present that our scientific
men are, as a class, wanting in the insight referred to, or that the
truth just indicated is imperfectly realised by them. Perhaps such
complaint was never less applicable. It is not long since it was the
fashion among men of science to avoid all reference to religion--to
treat religious theory and scientific theory as entirely separate
and unconnected. They either cared not or dared not to indicate how
their scientific findings were rationally related to current religious
beliefs. But within the last few years there has been a remarkable
change in this respect. The attitude of indifference formerly assumed
by so many of the representatives of science towards religion has been
very generally exchanged for one of aggression or defence. The number
of them who seem to think themselves bound to publish to the world
confessions of their faith, declarations of the religious conclusions
to which their scientific researches have led them, is great, perhaps,
beyond example in any age. They are manifesting unmistakably the most
serious interest in the inquiry into the foundation of religion, and
into the relationship of religion to science. The change is certainly
one for the better. It is not wholly good only because scientific men
in their excursions into the domain of religion are too frequently
chargeable with a one-sidedness of view and statement which their
scientific education might have been hoped to make impossible--only
because they too seldom give to religious truths the patient and
impartial consideration to which these are entitled. But most deserving
of welcome is every evidence on their part of the conviction that
when science goes deep enough it cannot but raise the questions to
which religion professes to be an answer; so that the mind, instead
of getting free from religious reflection by advancing in scientific
inquiry, finds such reflection only the more incumbent on it the
farther it advances--a conviction which falls short of, indeed, but is
closely allied to, the belief so aptly expressed by Lord Bacon, "that
while a slight taste of philosophy may dispose the mind to indifference
to religion, deeper draughts must bring it back to it; that while on
the threshold of philosophy, where second causes appear to absorb the
attention, some oblivion of the highest cause may ensue, when the mind
penetrates deeper, and sees the dependence of causes and the works of
Providence, it will easily perceive, according to the mythology of the
poets, that the upper link of nature's chain is fastened to Jupiter's
throne." Men of science are simply exercising a right to which they
are fully entitled when they judge of religion by what they find to be
ascertained in science; and no class of men is more likely than they
are to open up the way to points of view whence religious truth will be
seen with a clearness and comprehensiveness greater than any to which
professional theologians could hope of themselves to attain. He can be
no wise theologian who does not perceive that to a large extent he is
dependent on the researches of men of science for his data, and who,
firm in the faith that God will never be disgraced by His works, is
not ready to accept all that is truly discovered about these works, in
order to understand thereby God's character.
* * * * *
The greatest issues, then, are involved in the investigation on which
we enter. Can we think what these are, or reflect on their greatness,
without drawing this inference, that we ought, in conducting it, to
have no other end before us than that of seeking, accepting, and
communicating the truth? This is here so important that everything
beside it must be insignificant and unworthy. Any polemical triumphs
which could be gained either by logical or rhetorical artifices would
be unspeakably paltry. Nothing can be appropriate in so serious a
discussion but to state as accurately as we can the reasons for our own
belief in theism, and to examine as carefully and impartially as we
can the objections of those who reject that belief, and their reasons
for holding an opposite belief. It can only do us harm to overrate the
worth of our own convictions and arguments, or to underrate the worth
of those of others. We must not dare to carry into the discussion
the spirit of men who feel that they have a case to advocate at all
hazards. We must not try to conceal a weakness in our argumentation
by saying hard things of those who endeavour to point it out. There
is no doubt that character has an influence on creed--that the state
of a man's feelings determines to a considerable extent the nature of
his beliefs--that badness of heart is often the cause of perversity of
judgment; but we have no right to begin any argument by assuming that
this truth has its bright side--its side of promise--turned towards
us, and its dark and threatening side turned towards those who differ
from us. If we can begin by assuming our opponents to be wicked, why
should we not assume them at once to be wrong, and so spare ourselves
the trouble of arguing with them? It will be better to begin by
assuming only what no one will question--namely, that it is a duty to
do to others as we would have others do to us. When a man errs, it
is a kindness to show him his error--and the greater the error, the
greater the kindness; but error is so much its own punishment to every
ingenuous nature, that to convince a person of it is all that one
fallible person ought to do to another. The scoff and the sneer are out
of place in all serious discussion; especially are they out of place
when our minds are occupied with thoughts of Him who, if He exist, is
the Father and Judge of us all, who alone possesses the full truth, and
who has made us that we might love one another.[4]
[4] See Appendix III.
II.
Theism is the doctrine that the universe owes its existence, and
continuance in existence, to the reason and will of a self-existent
Being, who is infinitely powerful, wise, and good. It is the doctrine
that nature has a Creator and Preserver, the nations a Governor, men a
heavenly Father and Judge. It is a doctrine which has a long history
behind it, and it is desirable that we should understand how we are
related to that history.
Theism is very far from coextensive with religion. Religion is spread
over the whole earth; theism only over a comparatively small portion of
it. There are but three theistic religions--the Mosaic, the Christian,
and the Mohammedan. They are connected historically in the closest
manner--the idea of God having been transmitted to the two latter,
and not independently originated by them. All other religions are
polytheistic or pantheistic, or both together. Among those who have
been educated in any of these heathen religions, only a few minds
of rare penetration and power have been able to rise by their own
exertions to a consistent theistic belief. The God of all those among
us who believe in God, even of those who reject Christianity, who
reject all revelation, is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. From
these ancient Jewish fathers the knowledge of Him has historically
descended through an unbroken succession of generations to us. We
have inherited it from them. If it had not thus come down to us,
if we had not been born into a society pervaded by it, there is no
reason to suppose that we should have found it out for ourselves, and
still less that we should merely have required to open our eyes in
order to see it. Rousseau only showed how imperfectly he realised the
dependence of man on man, and the extent to which tradition enters
into all our thinking, when he pretended that a human being born on
a desert island, and who had grown up without any acquaintance with
other beings, would naturally, and without assistance, rise to the
apprehension of this great thought. The Koran well expresses a view
which has been widely held when it says, "Every child is born into
the religion of nature; its parents make it a Jew, a Christian, or
a Magian." The view is, however, not a true one. A child is born,
not into the religion of nature, but into blank ignorance; and, left
entirely to itself, it would probably never find out as much religious
truth as the most ignorant of parents can teach it. It is doubtless
better to be born into the most barbarous pagan society than it would
be to be born on a desert island and abandoned to find out a religion
for one's self.
The individual man left to himself is very weak. He is strong only
when he can avail himself of the strength of many others, of the
stores of power accumulated by generations of his predecessors, or
of the combined forces of a multitude of his contemporaries. The
greatest men have achieved what they have done only because they have
had the faculty and skill to utilise resources vastly greater than
their own. Nothing reaches far forward into the future which does not
stretch far back into the past. Before a tragedy like 'Hamlet,' for
example, could be written, it was requisite that humanity should have
passed through ages of moral discipline, and should be in possession
of vast and subtle conceptions such as could only be the growth of
centuries, of the appropriate language at the appropriate epoch of
its development, and of a noble style of literary workmanship. "We
allow ourselves," says Mr Froude, "to think of Shakespeare, or of
Raphael, or of Phidias as having accomplished their work by the power
of their individual genius; but greatness like theirs is never more
than the highest degree of perfection which prevails widely around it,
and forms the environment in which it grows. No such single mind in
single contact with the facts of nature could have created a Pallas,
a Madonna, or a Lear." What the historian has thus said as to art is
equally true of all other forms of thinking and doing. It is certainly
true of religious thought, which has never risen without much help to
the sublime conception of one God. It is, in fact, an indisputable
historical truth that we owe our theism in great part to our
Christianity,--that natural religion has had no real existence prior to
or apart from what has claimed to be revealed religion--and that the
independence which it now assumes is that of one who has grown ashamed
of his origin.
It does not in the least follow that we are to regard theism as
merely or even mainly a tradition--as a doctrine received simply
on authority, and transmitted from age to age, from generation to
generation, without investigation, without reflection. It does not
follow that it is not a truth the evidence of which has been seen in
some measure by every generation which has accepted it, and into the
depth and comprehensiveness and reasonableness of which humanity has
obtained a constantly-growing insight. There have, it is true, been
a considerable number of theologians who have traced all religious
beliefs to revelation, and who have assigned to reason merely the
function of passively accepting, retaining, and transmitting them.
They have conceived of the first man as receiving the knowledge of God
by sensible converse with Him, and of the knowledge thus received as
transmitted, with the confirmation of successive manifestations, to
the early ancestors of all nations. The various notions of God and a
future state to be found in heathen countries are, according to them,
broken and scattered rays of these revelations; and all the religious
rites of prayer, purification, and sacrifice which prevail among savage
peoples, are faint and feeble relics of a primitive worship due to
divine institution. This view was natural enough in the early ages of
the Christian Church and in medieval times, when the New World was
undiscovered and a very small part of either Asia or Africa was known.
It was consonant also to the general estimate of tradition as a means
of transmitting truth, entertained by the Roman Catholic Church; but
it is not consistent with the Protestant rejection of tradition, and
it is wholly untenable in the light of modern science, the geography,
ethnology, comparative mythology, &c., of the present day. A man who
should thus account for the phenomena of the religious history of
heathen humanity must be now as far behind the scientific knowledge
of his age regarding the subject on which he theorises, as a man who
should still ascribe, despite all geological proofs to the contrary,
the occurrence of fossils in the Silurian beds to the action of the
Noachian deluge.[5]
[5] See Appendix IV.
Theism has come to us mainly through Christianity. But Christianity
itself rests on theism; it presupposes theism. It could only manifest,
establish, and diffuse itself in so far as theism was apprehended. The
belief that there is one God, infinite in power, wisdom, and goodness,
has certainly not been wrought out by each one of us for himself, but
has been passed on from man to man, from parent to child: tradition,
education, common consent, the social medium, have exerted great
influence in determining its acceptance and prevalence; but we have
no right to conceive of them as excluding the exercise of reason and
reflection. We know historically that reason and reflection have not
been excluded from the development of theistic belief, but have been
constantly present and active therein; that by the use of his reason
man has in some countries gradually risen to a belief in one God; and
that where this belief existed, he has, by the use of his reason, been
continuously altering, and, it may be hoped, extending and improving
his views of God's nature and operations. We know that in Greece,
for example, the history of religion was not a merely passive and
traditional process. We know as a historical fact that reason there
undermined the polytheism which flourished when Homer sang; that it
discovered the chief theistic proofs still employed, and attained
in many minds nearly the same belief in God which now prevails. The
experience of the ancient classical world is insufficient to prove
that a purely rational philosophy can establish theism as the creed
of a nation; but it is amply sufficient to prove that it can destroy
polytheism, and find out all the principal arguments for theism. We
know, further, that in no age of the history of the Christian Church
has reason entirely neglected to occupy itself in seeking the grounds
on which the belief of God can be rested. We know that reason is
certainly not declining that labour in the present day. The theistic
belief, although common to the whole Christian world, is one which
every individual mind may study for itself, which no one is asked to
accept without proof, and which multitudes have doubtless accepted
only after careful consideration. It comes to us so far traditionally,
but not nearly so much so as belief in the law of gravitation. For
every one who has examined the evidences for belief in the law of
gravitation, thousands on thousands have examined the evidences for the
existence of God.
Tradition, then, does not necessarily exclude private judgment,
and private judgment does not necessarily imply the rejection of
tradition--that is, of transmitted belief. The one does not even
necessarily confine or restrict the activity of the other. They are
so far from being essentially antagonistic, that they may co-operate,
may support and help each other; nay, they must do, if religious
development is to be natural, easy, peaceful, and regular. This is
but saying in another form that religious development, when true and
normal, must combine and harmonise conservatism and progress. All
development must do that, or it will be of an imperfect and injurious
kind. In nature the rule of development is neither _revolution_ nor
_reaction_, but _evolution_--a process which is at once conservative
and progressive, which brings the new out of the old by the continuous
growth and elaboration of the germs of life into organic completeness.
All that is essential in the old is retained and perfected, while
the form is altered to accord with new circumstances and to respond
to new wants. It should not be otherwise in the moral and social
worlds. The only true progress there, also, is that continuous
and consistent development which can only be secured through true
conservatism--through retaining, applying, and utilising whatever
truth and goodness the past has brought down to the present; and the
only true conservatism is that which secures against stagnation and
death by continuous progress. Therefore it is that, alike in matters
of civil polity, of scientific research, and of religious life, wisdom
lies in combining the conservative with the progressive spirit, the
principle of authority with the principle of liberty, due respect to
the collective reason in history with due respect to the rights of
the individual reason. The man who has not humility enough to feel
that he is but one among the living millions of men, and that his
whole generation is but a single link in the great chain of the human
race--who is arrogant enough to fancy that wisdom on any great human
interest has begun with himself, and that he may consequently begin
history for himself,--the man who is not conservative to the extent
of possessing this humility, and shrinking from this arrogance, is no
truly free man, but the slave of his own vanity, and the inheritance
which his fathers have left him will be little increased by him. The
man, on the other hand, who always accepts what is as what ought to
be; who identifies the actual with the reasonable; who would have
to-morrow exactly like to-day; who would hold fast what Providence is
most clearly showing ought to pass away, or to pass into something
better,--the man, in a word, who would lay an arrest on the germs
of life and truth, and prevent them from sprouting and ripening--is
the very opposite of genuinely conservative--is the most dangerous
of destructives. There is nothing so conservative against decay and
dissolution as natural growth, orderly progress.
The truth just stated is, as I have said, of universal application.
But it is nowhere more applicable than in the inquiry on which we are
engaged. The great idea of God--the sublimest and most important of
all ideas--has come to us in a wondrous manner through the minds and
hearts of countless generations which it has exercised and sustained,
which it has guided in darkness, strengthened in danger, and consoled
in affliction. It has come to us by a long, unbroken tradition; and
had it not come to us, we should of a certainty not have found it out
for ourselves. We should have had to supply its place, to fill "the
aching void" within us caused by its absence, with some far lower idea,
perhaps with some wild fiction, some foul idol. Probably we cannot
estimate too humbly the amount or worth of the religious knowledge
which we should have acquired, supposing we acquired any, if we had
been left wholly to our own unaided exertions--if we had been cut off
from the general reason of our race, and from the Divine Reason, which
has never ceased to speak in and to our race.
While, however, the idea of God has been brought to us, and is not
independently wrought out by us, no man is asked to accept it blindly
or slavishly; no man is asked to forego in the slightest degree,
even before this the most venerable and general of the beliefs of
humanity, the rights of his own individual reason. He is free to
examine the grounds of it, and to choose according to the result of
his examination. His acceptance of the idea, his acquiescence in the
belief, is of worth only if it be the free acceptance of, the loving
acquiescence in, what his reason, heart, and conscience testify to be
true and good. Therefore, neither in this idea or belief itself, nor
in the way in which it has come to us, is there any restriction or
repression of our mental liberty. And the mere rejection of it is no
sign, as some seem to fancy, of intellectual freedom, of an independent
judgment. It is no evidence of a man's being freer from incredulity
than the most superstitious of his neighbours. "To disbelieve is to
believe," says Whately. "If one man believes there is a God, and
another that there is no God, whichever holds the less reasonable of
these two opinions is chargeable with credulity. For the only way to
avoid credulity and incredulity--the two necessarily going together--is
to listen to, and yield to the best evidence, and to believe and
disbelieve on good grounds." These are wise words of Dr Whately.
Whenever reason has been awakened to serious reflection on the subject,
the vast majority of men have felt themselves unable to believe that
this mighty universe, so wondrous in its adjustments and adaptations,
was the product of chance, or dead matter, or blind force--that the
physical, mental, and moral order which they everywhere beheld implied
no Supreme Intelligence and Will; and the few who can believe it,
have assuredly no right, simply on the ground of such ability, to
assume that they are less credulous, freer thinkers, than others. The
disbelief of the atheist must ever seem to all men but himself to
require more faith, more credulity, than the beliefs of all the legends
of the Talmud.[6]
[6] See Appendix V.
LECTURE II.
GENERAL IDEA OF RELIGION--COMPARISON OF POLYTHEISM AND PANTHEISM WITH
THEISM--THE THREE GREAT THEISTIC RELIGIONS COMPARED--NO RELIGIOUS
PROGRESS BEYOND THEISM.
I.
There are three great theistic religions. All of them can scarcely be
supposed to be perfect. It is most unlikely that they should all be
equal in rank and value. But to determine the position and worth of a
religion, whether theistic or non-theistic, it is indispensable that we
have some notion of what religion is in itself.
It is very difficult to give a correct definition or accurate
description of religion. And the reason is that religion is so wide
and diversified a thing. It has spread over the whole earth, and it
has assumed an almost countless variety of forms. Some sense of an
invisible power or powers ruling his destiny is manifested by man
alike in the lowest stages of barbarism and in the highest stages of
civilisation, but the rude savage and the cultured thinker conceive
very differently of the powers which they adore. The aspects of
religion are, in fact, numerous as the phases of human life and the
steps of human progress. It extends its sway over all lands, ages,
and peoples, and yet it is the same in no two countries, no two
generations, no two men even. There is, accordingly, of necessity a
great difficulty in finding an expression which will comprehend and
suit the vast variety of forms assumed by the religious life. Instead
of trying to find an expression of the kind, many, I might almost say
most, theologians are content silently to substitute for religion
the phases of it with which they are most familiar, and instead of a
definition of religion, to give us, say, a definition of theism, or
even of Christianity. It is the rule and not the exception to find the
same theologians who define religion as the communion of man with God,
or the self-surrender of the soul to God, arguing that religion is
common to all races and peoples. Of course, this is self-contradictory.
Their definitions identify religion with monotheism, and their
arguments assume it to include pantheism, polytheism, fetichism, &c.
Belief in the one God and the worship of Him are very far from being
universal even at the present day. If there be no other religion--if
nothing short of that be religion--there are still vast continents and
populous nations where religion is unknown.
A definition of religion must completely circumscribe religion; it must
not be applicable merely to one religion, or at the most to several out
of the vast host of religions which are spread over the earth; it must
draw a boundary line which includes all religions, the lowest as well
as the highest, and which excludes all things else.[7] A definition
thus extensive cannot be, in logical language, very comprehensive; to
include all religions, it must not tell us much about what any religion
is; in significance it can be neither rich nor definite. Perhaps if we
say that religion is man's belief in a being or beings, mightier than
himself and inaccessible to his senses, but not indifferent to his
sentiments and actions, with the feelings and practices which flow from
such belief, we have a definition of the kind required. I fear at least
that any definition less abstract and vague will be found to apply only
to particular forms or special developments of religion. Religion is
man's communion, then, with what he believes to be a god or gods; his
sense of relationship to, and dependence on, a higher and mysterious
agency, with all the thoughts, emotions, and actions which proceed
therefrom. The communion may be dark and gross, and find expression
in impure and bloody rites, or it may be in spirit and in truth, and
expressed in ways which educate and elevate both mind and heart. The
belief may rest on wild delusions, on authority blindly accepted, or
on rational grounds. The god may be some personified power of nature,
some monstrous phantom of the brain, some imaginary demon of lust or
cruelty; or it may be He in whom all truth, wisdom, goodness, and
holiness have their source. But whatever be the form or character which
religion presents, it always and everywhere involves belief in a god
or object of worship, and feelings and actions corresponding to that
belief. It is always and everywhere a consciousness of relationship to
a worshipped being.
[7] See Appendix VI.
Is there any truth which can be affirmed to belong universally to this
consciousness? If there be, it will hold good universally of religion,
and the recognition of it will advance us a step in the knowledge of
the nature of religion. One such truth at least, it appears to me,
there is--viz., that the religious consciousness, or the frame and
condition of spiritual life distinctive and essential in religion, is
not peculiar to some one province of human nature, but extends into all
its provinces. This truth has been often contradicted in appearance,
seldom in reality. The seat of religion, as I indicated in last
lecture, has been placed by some in the intellect, by others in the
affections, and by others still in the will. It has been represented
as knowing, or feeling, or doing. When we examine, however, the
multitude of, at first glance, apparently very conflicting views which
have originated in thus fixing upon some single mental faculty as the
religious faculty, the organ and seat of religion, we soon find that
they are not so discordant and antagonistic as they seem to be.
Those who represent religion as essentially knowledge or belief, do
not really mean to affirm that anything entitled to be called religion
is ever mere knowledge or mere belief; on the contrary, they proceed
on the supposition that feeling and volition will correspond to the
knowledge or belief. They define religion as knowledge or belief, and
not as affection or volition, because, regarding religious knowledge
or belief as the ground of religious feeling and willing, they think
they may treat the two latter, not as constituents, but as consequences
of religion. Then, although a few of those who have defined religion
as feeling have written as if they supposed that the feeling rested
upon no sort of apprehension or conviction, they have been very
few, and they have never been able to explain what they meant. In
presence of the Power which is manifested in the universe, or of the
moral order of the world, they have felt an awe or joy, it may be,
irresistibly raising them above themselves, above the hampering details
of earth, and "giving fulness and tone to their existence;" and being
unaccustomed to analyse states of consciousness, although familiar
with the mechanics and chemistry of matter, they have overlooked the
obvious fact, that but for an intellectual perception of the presence
of an all-pervading Power, and all-embracing order, the awe and joy
could never have been excited. Mere feeling cannot tell us anything
about what is out of ourselves, and cannot take us out of ourselves.
Mere feeling is, in fact, mere absurdity. It is but what we should
expect, therefore, that all those capable of reflecting in any measure
on mental processes who have placed the essence of religion in feeling,
have always admitted that the religious feeling could not be wholly
separated either from the power of cognition on the one hand, or the
exertion of will on the other. Men like Schleiermacher and Opzoomer
argue strenuously that religion is feeling and not knowledge or
practice; but it is expressly on the ground that, as there can be
what is called religious knowledge and practice without piety, the
knowledge is a mere antecedent, and the practice a mere consequent.
Those, again, who make religion consist essentially in an act of will,
in the self-surrender of the soul to the object of its worship, do so,
they tell us, because pious feeling, even though based on knowledge, is
only religiousness, not religion--the capacity of being religious, not
actually being so; and religion only exists as a reality, a completed
thing, when the will of man submits itself to the Divine Will. But
this is to acknowledge, you observe, that both thought and feeling are
present and presupposed wherever religion exists.
Now, if the facts be as I have just stated, obviously the controversy
as to whether religion is essentially knowing, feeling, or willing,
is mainly verbal. It turns on an undefined use of the term
essential. Thought, feeling, and will--knowledge, affection, and
self-surrender--are admitted to be indissolubly united, inseparably
present, in religion, even by those who will not admit them to be all
its equally essential constituents. But in these circumstances, they
should carefully explain what they mean by essential and non-essential,
and tell us how we are to distinguish among inseparable states those
which are essential from those which are non-essential. This they never
do; this they cannot do. All facts which always go together, and are
always equally found in any state or process, are its equally essential
components. When we always find certain elements together, and can
neither discover nor imagine them apart, we have no right to represent
some of them as essential to the compound into which they enter, and
others as non-essential. They are all essential.
The conclusion to which we are thus brought is, that religion belongs
exclusively to no one part or province, no one disposition or faculty
of the soul, but embraces the whole mind, the whole man. Its seat is
the centre of human nature, and its circumference is the utmost limit
of all the energies and capacities of that nature. At the lowest it has
something alike of intellect, affection, and practical obedience in it.
At its best it should include all the highest exercises of reason, all
the purest and deepest emotions and affections, and the noblest kind of
conduct. It responds to its own true nature only in the measure that
it fills the whole intellect with light, satisfies the reverence and
love of the most capacious heart, and provides an ideal and law for
practical life in all its breadth. There is, then, a general notion of
religion which includes all religions, and that notion both suggests
to us that the various religions of the world are of very different
values, and points us to a standard by which we may determine their
respective rank, and estimate their worth. The definition of religion,
in other words, though not to be confounded with the type or ideal of
religion, is connected with it, and indicates what it is. The type is
the normal and full development of what is expressed in the definition.
It is the type, of course, and not the definition, which is the
standard--the medium and measure of comparison. And the type or ideal
of religion is the complete surrender of the heart, and strength, and
soul, and mind of man to Deity. Only a religion which admits of a full
communion of the reason, affection, and will of the worshipper with
the object of his worship--only a religion which presents an object of
worship capable of eliciting the entire devotion of the worshipper's
nature, and at the same time of ennobling, enlarging, refining, and
satisfying that nature--fully realises the idea of religion, or, in
other words, can claim to be a perfect religion.[8]
[8] See Appendix VII.
II.
Applying the very general idea of religion which has now been reached,
it soon becomes apparent that no religion can possibly claim to conform
to it which does not present to man as the true and supreme object
of his adoration, love, and obedience, the One Infinite Personal
God--almighty, all-wise, and all-holy; or, in other words, that it is
only in a theistic religion that whatever in religion is fitted to
satisfy the reason and affections of man, and to strengthen and guide
his will, can find its proper development.
Look at polytheism--the worship of more gods than one. Clearly religion
can only be very imperfectly realised in any polytheistic form; and
still more clearly are most of the forms which polytheism has actually
assumed unspeakably degrading. Think for a moment of a human being
worshipping a stock or a stone, a plant or a tree, a fish or serpent,
an ox or tiger--of the negro of Guinea beating his gods when he does
not get what he wishes, or the New Zealander trying to frighten them by
threatening to kill and eat them--of the car of Juggernaut, the fires
of Moloch, the sacrifices to the Mexican war-god, the abominations
ascribed to Jupiter, the licentious orgies so widely practised by the
heathen in honour of their deities. Reflect on such a scene as is
brought before us in the forty-fourth chapter of Isaiah. The language
of the prophet is so graphic that one almost seems to see the man whom
he depicts choosing his tree in the forest and hewing it down--to see
the smith working at it with his tongs among the coals, and hear the
ring of his hammer--to see the carpenter with adze and line and compass
shape it into an ugly monstrous shape, bearing faint resemblance to
the human--to see the workman with one part of the tree kindling a
fire, and baking bread, and roasting roast, and eating it, and then
going up to the ugly, wooden, human shape that he has fashioned out of
another part of the same tree, prostrating himself before it, feeling
awed in its presence, and praying, "Deliver me; for thou art my god."
The prophet obviously painted from the life, and his picture is still
true to the life where polytheism prevails. But what could be more
calculated to inspire both horror and pity? How awful is it that man
should be able so to delude and degrade himself! As a rule, the gods
of polytheists are such that, even under the delusion that they are
gods, little improving communion with them is possible. As a rule, the
religion of polytheists consists of vague, dark, wild imaginations,
instead of true and reasoned convictions--of coarse, selfish desires,
fear and suspicion, instead of love, and trust, and joy--and of
arbitrary or even immoral rites and practices, instead of spiritual
worship, and the conformity of the will to a righteous law.
Then, at the very best, polytheism must be far from good,--at its
highest, it must be low. Were it much better than it has ever been--had
it all the merits of Greek polytheism, without any of its faults,
save those which are inherent in the very nature of polytheism--it
would still be but a poor religion, for its essential and irremediable
defects are such as to render it altogether incapable of truly
satisfying the nature of man. It is a belief in more gods than one.
This of itself is what reason cannot rest in--what reason is constantly
finding out more clearly to be false. The more the universe is examined
and understood, the more apparent does it become that it is a single,
self-consistent whole--a vast unity in which nothing is isolated or
independent. The very notion, therefore, of separate and independent
deities, and still more, of course, of discordant or hostile deities,
ruling over different departments of nature, is opposed to the
strivings and findings of reason. The heart will no less vainly seek
satisfaction in the belief of many gods. Its spiritual affections
need a single Divine object. To distribute them among many objects is
to dissipate and destroy them. The reverence, love, and trust which
religion demands are a whole-hearted, absolute, unlimited reverence,
love, and trust, such as can only be felt towards one God, with no
other beside Him. The will of man in like manner requires to be under
not a number of independent wills, but a single, all-comprehensive,
perfectly consistent, and perfectly righteous will. It cannot serve
many masters; it can only reasonably and rightly serve one. It can
only yield itself up unreservedly to be guided by One Supreme Will.
If there be no such will in the universe, but only a multitude of
independent and co-ordinate wills, that full surrender of the will of
the worshipper to the object of his worship, in which religion should
find its consummation, is impossible.
Further, polytheism is not only the belief in more gods than one, but
in gods all of which are finite. There can be no true recognition of
the infinity of God where there is no true recognition of His unity.
But the mind of man, although finite itself, cannot be satisfied with
any object of worship which it perceives to be finite. It craves an
infinite object; it desires to offer a boundless devotion; it seeks an
absolute blessedness. The aim of the religious life is the communion
of the finite with the infinite; and every religion, however otherwise
excellent, which suppresses the infinite, and presents to the finite
only the finite, is a failure.
Religion can no more attain to its proper development in pantheism
than in polytheism. For pantheism denies that the One Infinite Being
is a person--is a free, holy, and loving intelligence. It denies even
that we ourselves are truly persons. It represents our consciousness
of freedom and sense of responsibility as illusions. God, according
to pantheism, alone is. All individual existences are merely His
manifestations,--all our deeds, whether good or bad, are His actions;
and yet, while all is God and God is all, there is no God who can
hear us or understand us--no God to love us or care for us--no God
able or willing to help us. Such a view of the universe may have its
attractions for the poet and the philosopher in certain moods of mind,
but it assuredly affords little foundation for religion, if religion be
the communion of the worshipper and the worshipped. What communion of
reason can a man have with a being which does not understand him, or
of affection with a being which has no love, or of will with a being
which has no choice or freedom, and is the necessary cause both of good
and evil? Pantheism represents absorption in Deity, the losing of self
in God, as the highest good of humanity; but this is a mere caricature
of that idea of communion with God in which religion must find its
realisation, as pantheism leaves neither a self to surrender, nor a
personal God to whom to surrender it. The absorption of the finite
in the infinite which pantheism preaches is as different from that
surrender of the self to God, which is the condition of God dwelling in
us and we in God, as night is from day, as death is from life.
We find ample historical confirmation of what has just been said in the
very instructive fact, that widespread as pantheism is, it has never in
itself been the religion of any people. It has never been more than the
philosophy of certain speculative individuals. India is no exception,
for even there, in order to gain and retain the people, pantheism
has had to combine with polytheism. It is the personal gods of Hindu
polytheism and not the impersonal principle of Hindu pantheism that
the Hindu people worship. The Sankhya and Vedanta systems are no more
religions than the systems of Spinoza, Schelling, or Hegel. They are
merely philosophies. Buddhism has laid hold of the hearts of men to a
wonderful extent; not, however, in virtue of the pantheism, scarcely
dis-tinguishable from atheism, which underlies it, but because of the
attractiveness of the character and teaching of the Buddha Sakyamuni
himself, of the man-god who came to save men. The human heart cries out
for a living personal God to worship, and pantheism fails miserably as
a religion because it wholly disregards, yea, despises that cry.
* * * * *
We are compelled to pass onwards, then, to theism. And here, applying
the same view of religion as before, it soon becomes obvious that
of the three great theistic religions--Judaism, Christianity, and
Mohammedanism--the last is far inferior to the other two, and the first
is a transition to and preparation for the second. Although the latest
of the three to arise, Mohammedanism is manifestly the least developed,
the least matured. Instead of evolving and extending the theistic
idea which it borrowed, it has marred and mutilated it. Instead of
representing God as possessed of all spiritual fulness and perfection,
it exhibits Him as devoid of the divinest spiritual attributes.
Although the Suras of the Koran are all, with one exception, prefaced
by the formula, "In the name of Allah, the God of mercy, the merciful,"
there is extremely little in them of the spirit of mercy, while they
superabound in a fierce intolerance. Allah is set before us with
clearness, with force, with intense sincerity, as endowed with the
natural attributes which we ascribe to God, but only so as to exhibit
very imperfectly and erroneously His moral attributes. He is set
before us as God alone, beside whom there is none other; as the first
and the last, the seen and the hidden; as eternal and unchanging; as
omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient; as the Creator, the Preserver,
and the Judge of all;--but He is not set before us as truly righteous
or even as truly reasonable, and still less as Love. He is set before
us as an infinite and absolute arbitrary Will, the acts of which are
right simply because they cannot be wrong, and which ordains its
creatures and instruments to honour or dishonour, heaven or hell,
without love or hate, without interest or sympathy, and on no grounds
of fitness or justice.
His infinite exaltation above His creatures is recognised, but not His
relationship to and interest in His creatures. His almighty power is
vividly apprehended, but His infinite love is overlooked, or only seen
dimly and in stray and fitful glimpses. His character is thus most
imperfectly unveiled, and even seriously defaced; and, in consequence,
a whole-hearted communion with Him is impossible. As an unlimited
arbitrary Will He leaves man with no true will to surrender to Him.
Inaccessible, without sympathy, jealous, and egoistic, His appropriate
worship is servile obedience, blind submission--not the enlightened
reverence and loving affection of the true piety in which mind and
heart fully accord; unquestioning belief, passionless resignation,
outward observances, mere external works--not the free use of reason,
not the loving dependence of a child on its father, not an internal
life of holiness springing from a divine indwelling source. God and
man thus remain in this system, theistic although it be, infinitely
separate from each other. Man is not made to feel that his whole
spiritual being should live and rejoice in God; on the contrary, he
is made to feel that he has scarcely any other relation to God than
an inert instrument has to the hand which uses it. Submission to the
will of God, whatever it may be, without recognition of its being the
will of a Father who seeks in all things the good of His children, is
the Mussulman's highest conception either of religion or duty, and
consequently he ignores the central principle of religious communion
and the strongest motive to moral action.
The theism of the Old Testament is incomparably superior to that of
the Koran. It possesses every truth contained in Mohammedanism, while
it gives due prominence to those aspects of the Divine character which
Mohammedanism obscures and distorts. The unity and eternity of God, His
omniscience, omnipresence, and inscrutable perfections, the wonders of
His creative power, His glory in the heavens and on the earth, are
described by Moses and the author of the Book of Job, by the psalmists
and the prophets, in language so magnificent that all the intervening
centuries have been unable to surpass it. And yet far greater stress
is justly laid by them on the moral glory of God, which is reflected
in so dim and broken and disproportionate a way through the visions
of Mohammed. It is impossible to take a comprehensive view of the Old
Testament dispensation without perceiving that its main aim, alike in
its ceremonial observances, moral precepts, and prophetic teaching, was
to open and deepen the sense of sin, to give reality and intensity to
the recognition of moral law, to make known especially that aspect of
God's character which we call His righteousness, His holiness. At the
same time God is set forth as merciful, long-suffering, and gracious;
as healing our diseases, redeeming our life, and crowning us with
loving-kindnesses; as creating in us clean hearts, and desiring not
sacrifice but a broken spirit.
Before the close of the Old Testament dispensation, a view of God's
character had been attained as complete as could be reached through
mere spiritual vision and expressed through mere words. The character
of God was so disclosed that His people longed with their whole hearts
for the blessedness of true spiritual communion with Him, and worthily
apprehended what that communion ought to be. But with the widening of
their views and the deepening of their longings as to this the supreme
good, they realised the more how far they were from the attainment of
it. From the beginning Judaism looked beyond itself and confessed its
own preparatory and transitional character. And this consciousness grew
with its growth. In the days of the later prophets men knew far better
what spiritual communion with God ought to be than in the days of the
patriarchs, but they did not actually enjoy even the same measure of
childlike communion with Him. The law had done its work; it had made
men feel more than ever the need of being in communion with God, but
it had made them realise also the distance between God and them, and
especially the awful width of the gulf between them caused by sin.
That gulf no mere spiritual vision of man could see across, and no
mere declarations of love and mercy even from God Himself could bridge
over. The reason of man could only be enlightened--the heart of man
could only be satisfied--as to how God would deal with sin and sinners,
by an actual self-manifestation of God in humiliation, suffering, and
sacrifice, which would leave men in no doubt that high and holy as God
was, He was also in the deepest and truest sense their Father, and that
they were His ransomed and redeemed children. It was only when this was
accomplished that religion and theism were alike perfected. Then the
character of God was unveiled, the heart of God disclosed, and in such
a manner that the most childlike confidence in Him could be combined
with the profoundest sense of His greatness and righteousness. Perfect
communion with Him in trustful love no longer supposed, as it did in
earlier times, an imperfect knowledge, on the part of the worshipper,
either of God's character or of his own. It required no overlooking
of the evil of sin, for it rested on the certainty that sin had been
overcome. Only the life hid with God in Christ can completely realise
the idea of religion, for only in Christ can the heart of sinful man
be sincerely and unreservedly yielded to a holy God. "I am the way,
the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me,"
are words of the Lord Jesus which can only be denied by those who do
not understand what they mean--what the truth and the life are, what
fatherhood signifies, and what is involved in coming to a Father.
Christian theism alone gives us a perfect representation of God.
It precedes and surpasses reason, especially in the disclosure of
the depths of fatherly love which are in the heart of the infinite
Jehovah; but it nowhere contradicts reason--nay, it incorporates
all the findings of reason. It presents as one great and brilliant
light all the scattered sparks of truth which scintillated amidst
the darkness of heathendom; it combines into a living unity all the
separate elements of positive truth which are to be found in systems
like pantheism, deism, rationalism; it excludes all that is false
in views lower than or contrary to its own. Whenever it maintains a
truth regarding God, reason finds that it is defending a principle of
Christian theism; whenever it refutes an error regarding Him, it finds
itself assailing some one of the many enemies of Christian theism.
III.
Theism, I argued in last lecture, can never be reasonably rejected in
the name of religious liberty. I may now, I think, maintain that it
can never be reasonably thrown off in the name of religious progress.
It can never be an onward step in the spiritual life to pass away
from the belief which is distinctive and characteristic of theism.
The highest possible form of religion must be a theistic religion--a
religion in which the one personal and perfect God is the object of
worship. Fetichism, nature-worship, humanitarian polytheism, and
pantheism, are all very much lower forms of religion, and therefore to
abandon theism for any of them is not to advance but to retrograde,
is not to rise but to fall. We can turn towards any of them only by
turning our back on the spiritual goal towards which humanity has
been slowly but continuously moving through so many ages. There is no
hope or possibility of advance on the side of any of the old forms of
heathendom.
Shall we try, then, to get out of and beyond theism on that other
side to which some moderns beckon us? Shall we suppose that as men
have given up the lower for the higher forms of polytheism, and then
abandoned polytheism for theism, so they may now surrender theism
itself for systems like the positivism of Comte or the new faith
of Strauss? No. And for two reasons. First, so far as there is any
religion in these systems there is no advance on theism in them but the
reverse. Comte strives to represent humanity, and Strauss to represent
the universe, as a god, by imaginatively investing them with attributes
which do not inherently and properly belong to them; but with all their
efforts they can only make of them fetich gods; and Europeans, it is
to be hoped, will never fall down and worship fetiches, however big
these fetiches may be, and whoever may be willing to serve them as
prophets or priests. Humanity must be blind to its follies and sins,
insensible to its weakness and miseries, and given over to the madness
of a boundless vanity, before it can raise an altar and burn incense to
its own self. "Man," says an eloquent author, "is great is sublime,
with immortal hope in his heart and the divine aureole around his brow;
but that he may preserve his greatness let us leave him in his proper
place. Let us leave to him the struggles which make his glory, that
condemnation of his own miseries which does him honour, the tears shed
over his faults which are the most unexceptionable testimony to his
dignity. Let us leave him tears, repentance, conflict, and hope; but
let us not deify him; for no sooner shall he have said, 'I am God,'
than, deprived that instant of all his blessings, he shall find himself
naked and spoiled."[9] Man, I may add, if his eyes be open and capable
of vision, can still less worship the universe than he can worship
himself. Mind can never bow down to matter except under the influence
of delusion. Man is greater than anything he can see or touch; and
those who believe only in what they can see and touch, who have what
Strauss calls a feeling for the universe, but no true feeling for what
is spiritual and divine, must either worship humanity or something even
less worthy of their adoration. There is thus no advance on this side
either, even if the systems which we are invited to adopt could be
properly regarded as religious. But, secondly, we may safely say that
so far as they are theories based on science, there is no religion in
them; and that, consequently, to give up a religion for them would be
to give up not one form of religion for another, a lower for a higher,
but would be to give up religion for what is not religion, or, in other
words, would be to cast off religion altogether. And to cease to be
religious can surely never be to advance in religion. Positivism and
materialism are not stages beyond theism, for they are not on the same
road. They are not phases in the development of religion; they are
forms of the denial of religion. The grossest fetichism has more of
religion in it than either of them can consistently claim on scientific
grounds. There is nothing in science, properly so called, which
justifies the exaltation either of matter or man to the rank of gods
even of the lowest fetich order.
[9] E. Naville, 'The Heavenly Father,' pp. 283, 284.
It is only, then, by keeping within the limits of theism that further
religious progress is possible. If we would advance in religion, it
must be, not by getting rid of our belief in God, but by getting deeper
and wider views of His character and operations, and by conforming
our hearts and lives more sincerely and faithfully to our knowledge.
There is still ample room for religious progress of this kind. I do not
say, I do not believe indeed, that we shall find out any absolutely
new truth about God. Were a man to tell me that he had discovered a
Divine attribute which had never previously been thought of, I should
listen to him with the same incredulous pity as if he were to tell
me that he had discovered a human virtue which had escaped the notice
of all other men. In a real and important sense, the revelation of
God made in Scripture, and more particularly and especially the
revelation of God in Jesus Christ, is most justly to be regarded as
complete, and incapable of addition. But there may be no limits to the
growth of our apprehension and realisation of the idea of God there
set before us perfectly as regards general features. To perceive the
mere general outline and general aspect of a truth is one thing, and
to know it thoroughly, to realise it exhaustively--which is the only
way thoroughly to know it--is another and very different thing; and
centuries, yea, millenniums without number, may elapse between the
former and the latter of these two stages, between the beginning and
the end of this process. Thousands of years ago there were men who
said as plainly as could be done or desired that God was omnipotent;
but surely every one who believes in God will acknowledge, that the
discoveries of modern astronomy give more overwhelming impressions
of Divine power than either heathen sage or Hebrew psalmist can be
imagined as possessing. It is ages since men ascribed perfect wisdom
to God; but all the discoveries of science which help us to understand
how the earth is related to other worlds--how it has been brought into
its present condition--how it has been stocked, adorned, and enriched
with its varied tribes of plants and animals--and how these have been
developed, distributed, and provided for,--must be accepted by every
intelligent theist as enlarging and correcting human views as to God's
ways of working, and consequently as to His wisdom. The righteousness
of God has been the trust and support of men in all generations; but
history is a continuous unveiling of the mysteries of this attribute:
through the discipline of Providence individuals and nations are ever
being more thoroughly instructed in the knowledge of it. I have,
indeed, heard men say--I have heard even teachers of theology say--that
the knowledge of God is unlike all other knowledge, in being unchanging
and unprogressive. To me it seems that of all knowledge the knowledge
of God is, or at least ought to be, the most progressive. And that for
this simple reason, that every increase of other knowledge,--be it the
knowledge of outward nature, or of the human soul, or of history--be
it the knowledge of truth, or beauty, or goodness,--ought also to
increase our knowledge of Him. If it do not, it has not been used
aright; and the reason why it has not been so used must be that we have
looked upon God as if He were only one among many things, instead of
looking upon Him as the One Being of whom, through whom, and to whom
are all things; and that we have, in consequence, kept our knowledge
of Him wholly apart from our other knowledge, instead of centring all
our knowledge in it, because we feel it to be "the light of all our
seeing," as well as "a lamp to our feet." In other words, our knowledge
of God is in this case not a living, all-diffusive knowledge. Only a
dead knowledge of Him is an unprogressive knowledge. That, I admit, is
unprogressive. It may fade away and be effaced, but it does not grow,
does not absorb and assimilate, and thereby transmute and glorify all
our other knowledge.
Growth in the knowledge of God is a kind of progress which can have
absolutely no end, for the truth to be realised is infinite truth;
truth unlimited by time or space; truth involved in all actual
existence, and containing the fulness of inexhaustible possibilities.
It is, I shall conclude by adding, a kind of progress which underlies
and determines all other progress. Whenever our views of truth, of
righteousness, of love, of happiness rise above experience; whenever
we have ideals of existence and conduct which transcend the actual
world and actual life; whenever we have longings for a perfection and
blessedness which finite things and finite persons cannot confer upon
us,--our minds and hearts are really, although it may be unconsciously,
feeling after God, if haply they may find Him. It is only in and
through God that there is anything to correspond to these ideals and
longings. If man be himself the highest and best of beings, how comes
it that all the noblest of his race should be haunted and possessed
as they are by aspirations after what is higher and better than
themselves--by visions of a truth, beauty, and holiness which they have
not yet attained--by desires for a blessedness which neither earth
nor humanity can bestow? Must not, in that case, his ideals be mere
dreams--his longings mere delusions? Pessimists like Schopenhauer and
Hartmann and their followers, openly avow that they believe them to
be so; that the history of the world is but the series of illusions
through which these ideals and longings have impelled humanity; that
our ideals never have been and never will be realised; that our
longings never have been and never will be satisfied, for, "behold, all
is vanity." I believe them to be quite logical in thinking so, seeing
that they have ceased to believe in God, who is the ideal which alone
gives meaning to all true ideals, who can alone satisfy the deeper
spiritual longings of the heart, and likeness to whom is the goal of
all mental, moral, and religious progress. Of course, if the pessimists
can persuade mankind that the sources of progress are not the truths
and affections by which Infinite Goodness is drawing men to itself, but
mere fictions of their own brains and flatteries of their own hearts,
progress must soon cease. When a delusion is seen through, the power
of it is gone. But the pessimists will not, we may trust, succeed.
They will mislead for a time, as they are now misleading, certain
unstable minds; but the main result of their activity must be just the
opposite of what they anticipate. It must be that men will prize more
the doctrines the most opposite to the dreary view of life and history
which they propagate. Pessimism must send the philosophical few back
with deepened reverence and quickened insight to Plato, in order to
master more thoroughly, and take to heart more seriously, his great
message to the world, that the actual and the ideal meet and harmonise
in God, who is at once the First and the Final Cause, the Absolute
Idea, the Highest Good; and it must increase the gratitude of the many,
whether learned or unlearned, for the Gospel which has taught them
that to glorify God is an end in which there is no illusion, and to
enjoy Him a good which never disappoints. God, as the presupposition of
all elevating ideals, and the object of all ennobling desires, is the
primary source and the ultimate explanation of all progress.[10]
[10] See Appendix VIII.
LECTURE III.
THE NATURE, CONDITIONS, AND LIMITS OF THEISTIC PROOF.
I.
If we believe that there is one God--the Creator, Preserver, and
Ruler of all finite beings--we ought to have reasons or grounds for
this belief. We can have no right to believe it simply because we
wish or will to believe it. The grounds or reasons which we have for
our belief must be to us proofs of God's existence. Those who affirm
that God exists, and yet deny that His existence can be proved, must
either maintain a position obviously erroneous, or use the term proof
in some extraordinary sense, fitted only to perplex and mislead. True
and weighty, therefore, seem to me these words of one of the most
distinguished of living German philosophers: "The proofs for the
existence of God, after having long played a great part in philosophy
and theology, have in recent times, especially since Kant's famous
critique, fallen into disrepute. Since then, the opinion has been
widely spread, both among believers and unbelievers, that the existence
of God does not admit of being proved. Even theologians readily assent
to this opinion, deride the vain attempts, and imagine that in so doing
they are serving the faith which they preach. But the proofs for the
existence of God coincide with the grounds for the belief in God; they
are simply the real grounds of the belief established and expounded in
a scientific manner. If there be no such proofs, there are also no such
grounds; and a belief which has no ground, if possible at all, can be
no proper belief, but an arbitrary, self-made, subjective opinion. Yes,
religious belief must sink to the level of the mere illusion or fixed
idea of a mind which is insane, if contradicted by all reality, all
facts scientifically established, and the theory of the universe which
such facts support and justify."[11]
[11] Ulrici, Gott und die Natur, i.
The proofs of God's existence must be, in fact, simply His own
manifestations; the ways in which He makes Himself known; the phenomena
on which His power and character are imprinted. They can neither be,
properly speaking, our reasonings, nor our analyses of the principles
involved in our reasonings. Our reasonings are worth nothing except in
so far as they are expositions of God's modes of manifestation; and
even when our reasonings are correct, our analyses of them, supposing
we attempt to analyse them, may be erroneous. The facts,--the works
and ways of God--which are the real evidences of His existence and the
true indications of His character,--may raise countless minds to God
which can give no general description of the process by which they are
thus elevated, and are still less capable of resolving it into its
principles. It is late in the history both of the individual mind and
of the collective mind before they can so reflect on their own acts, so
distinguish them one from another, and so discern the characteristics
of each, as to be able even to give a clear and correct account of
them; and it is much later before they can detect their conditions and
laws. The minds of multitudes may therefore readily be supposed to rise
legitimately from perception of the visible universe to apprehension
of the invisible personal Creator, although either wholly unconscious
or only dimly and inaccurately aware of the nature of the transition,
and although, if called on to indicate the conclusion at which they had
arrived, they would employ far weaker reasons in words than those by
which they were actually convinced in thought. The principles of the
theistic inference may be very badly determined, and yet the theistic
inference itself may be perfectly valid.
If the real proofs of God's existence are all those facts which cannot
be reasonably conceived of as other than the manifestations of God--His
glory in the heavens, His handiwork on the earth, His operations in
the soul, His ways among the nations--and if the task of the theist
is to trace out these facts, and to show that they cannot reasonably
be denied to be marks or impressions of Divine agency, then must a
theist, when seeking or expounding the reasons for his belief, feel
that his mind is conversant not with mere thoughts of his own, but
with the manifested thoughts or acts of God Himself. He must carry
into his inquiry the consciousness that he is not simply engaged in
an intellectual process, but is trying to apprehend and actually
apprehending the Divine Being. To him, therefore, the inquiry as to the
ultimate source and reason of things must be an essentially solemn and
awe-inspired one. To the atheist it must, of course, be much less so;
but even he ought to feel it to be not only a most important inquiry,
but one which carries him into the presence of a vast, eternal, and
mysterious power--a power in darkness shrouded, yet on which hang all
life and death, all joy and woe.
According to the view just stated, the evidences or proofs of God's
existence are countless. They are to be found in all the forces, laws,
and arrangements of nature--in every material object, every organism,
every intellect and heart. At the same time, they concur and coalesce
into a single all-comprehensive argument, which is just the sum of the
indications of God given by the physical universe, the minds of men,
and human history. Nothing short of that is the full proof. There may
be points in space and instants in time where creative and sustaining
power appear to our narrow and superficial intellects to have been
strangely limited, but surely we ought not so to concentrate our
attention on any such points or instants as to be unable to take in
a general impression of the immeasurable power displayed throughout
the realms of space and the ages of time. It may be possible to show
that many things which have been regarded as evidences of intelligence
or wisdom are not really so, and yet the universe may teem with the
manifestations of these attributes. Faith in the righteousness and
moral government of God must be able to look over and to look beyond
many things calculated to produce doubt and disbelief. No man can judge
fairly as to whether or not there is a God, who makes the question turn
on what is the significance of a few particular facts, who is incapable
of gathering up into one general finding the results of innumerable
indications. A true religious view of the world must be a wide, a
comprehensive view of it, such as demands an eye for the whole and not
merely for a part--the faculties which harmonise and unify, and not
merely those which divide and analyse. A part, a point, the eye of an
insect, the seed of a fruit, may indeed be looked at religiously, but
it must be in the light of the universe as a whole, in the light of
eternity and infinity.
"Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies;
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower--but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is."
In another respect the theistic proof is exceedingly complex and
comprehensive. It takes up into itself, as it were, the entire wealth
of human nature. The mind can only rise to the apprehension of God
by a process which involves all that is most essential in its own
constitution. Thus the will is presupposed. Theistic inference clearly
involves the principle of causality. God can only be thought of in
the properly theistic sense as the cause of which the universe is the
effect. But to think of God as a cause--to apprehend the universe
as an effect,--we must have some immediate and direct experience of
causation. And such experience we have only in the consciousness
of volition. When the soul wills, it knows itself as an agent, as
a cause. This is the first knowledge of causation which the mind
requires, and the most perfect knowledge thereof which it ever
requires. It is a knowledge which sheds light over all the regions
of experience subsequently brought under the principle of causality,
which accompanies the reason in its upward search until it rests in
the cognition of an ultimate cause, and which enables us to think of
that cause as the primary, all-originating will. If we did not know
ourselves as causes, we could not know God as a cause; and we know
ourselves as causes only in so far as we know ourselves as wills.
But the principle of causality alone or by itself is quite insufficient
to lead the mind up to the apprehension of Deity; and an immediate and
direct consciousness of far more within us than will is required to
make that apprehension possible. The evidences of intelligence must
be combined with the evidences of power before we can be warranted
to infer more from the facts of the universe than the existence of
an ultimate force; and no mere force, however great or wonderful,
is worthy to be called God. God is not only the ultimate Cause, but
the Supreme Intelligence; and as it is only in virtue of the direct
consciousness of our volitions that we can think of God as a cause, so
is it only in virtue of the direct consciousness of our intellectual
operations that we can think of Him as an intelligence. It is not
from the mere occurrence of a change, or the mere existence of a
derivative phenomenon, that we infer the change or phenomenon to be
due to an intelligent cause, but from the mode of the occurrence
or the character of the phenomenon being such that any cause but an
intelligent cause must be deemed an insufficient cause. The inference
supposes, however, that we already have some knowledge of what an
intelligent cause is--that we have enough of knowledge of the nature of
intelligence to convince us that it alone can fully account for order,
law, and adjustment. Whence do we get this knowledge? We have not far
to seek it; it is inherent in self-consciousness. We know ourselves as
intelligences, as beings that foresee and contrive, that can discover
and apply principles, that can originate order and adjustment. It is
only through this knowledge of the nature of intelligence that we can
infer our fellow-men to be intelligent beings; and not less is it an
indispensable condition of our inferring God to be an intelligence.
Then, causality and design, and the will and intelligence within us
through which they are interpreted, cannot, even when combined, enable
us to think of the Creative Reason as righteous; although obviously,
until so thought of, that reason is by no means to be identified with
God. The greatest conceivable power and intelligence, if united with
hatred of righteousness and love of wickedness, can yield us only
the idea of a devil; and if separated from all moral principle and
character, good or bad, only that of a being far lower than man, which
might have reason for worshipping man, but which man cannot worship
without degrading himself. The existence, however, of a moral principle
within us, of a conscience which witnesses against sin and on behalf
of holiness, is of itself evidence that God must be a moral being, one
who hates sin and loves holiness; and the light of this, "the candle of
the Lord," in the soul, enables us to discover many other reasons for
the same conclusion in the constitution of society and the course of
history. But if we had no moral perceptions on the contemplation of our
own voluntary acts, we certainly would not, and could not, invest the
Divine Being with moral perfections because of His acts.
There is still another step to be taken in order to obtain an
apprehension of God; and it is one where the outward universe fails us,
where we are thrown entirely, or nearly so, on our internal resources.
The universe, interpreted by the human mind in the manner which has
been indicated, may warrant belief in a Being whose power is immense,
whose wisdom is inexpressibly wonderful, and whose righteousness is to
be held in profoundest admiration and reverence, notwithstanding all
the clouds and darkness which may in part conceal it from our view; but
not in a Being whose existence is absolute, whose power is infinite,
whose wisdom and goodness are perfect. We cannot infer that the author
of a universe which is finite, imperfect, and relative, and all the
phenomena of which are finite, imperfect, and relative, must be, in the
true and strict sense of the terms, infinite, perfect, and absolute.
We cannot deduce the infinite from the finite, the perfect from the
imperfect, the absolute from the relative. And yet it is only in the
recognition of an absolute Being of infinite power, who works with
perfect wisdom towards the accomplishment of perfectly holy ends, that
we reach a true knowledge of God, or, which is much the same thing,
a knowledge of the true God. Is there, then, any warrant in our own
nature for thinking of God as infinite, absolute, and perfect, since
there seems to be little or none in outward nature? Yes, there are
within us necessary conditions of thought and feeling and ineradicable
aspirations which force on us ideas of absolute existence, infinity,
and perfection, and will neither permit us to deny these perfections to
God nor to ascribe them to any other being.
Thus the mental process in virtue of which we have the idea of God
comprehends and concentrates all that is most essential in human
nature. It is through bearing the image of God that we are alone able
to apprehend God. Take any essential feature of that image out of a
human soul, and to apprehend God is made thereby impossible to it. All
that is divine in us meets, unites, co-operates, to lay hold of what is
divine without us. Hence the fuller and clearer the divine image is in
any man, the fuller and clearer will be his perception of the divine
original. Hence what is more or less true everywhere, is especially
and emphatically true in religion, that "the eye sees only what it
brings with it the power of seeing." Where the will, for example, is
without energy--where rest is longed for as the highest good, and
labour deemed the greatest evil--where extinction is preferred to
exertion,--the mind of a nation may be highly cultured, and subtle
and profound in speculation, and yet may manifest a marked inability
to think of God as a cause or will, with a consequently inveterate
tendency to pantheism. The Hindu mind, and the systems of religion
and philosophy to which it has given birth, may serve as illustration
and proof. Where the animal nature of man is strong, and his moral
and spiritual nature still undeveloped, as is the case among all rude
and undisciplined races, he worships not the pure and perfect supreme
Spirit, whose goodness, truth, and righteousness are as infinite as
His power and knowledge, but gods endowed in his imagination chiefly
with physical and animal qualities. "Recognition of Nature," says Mr
Carlyle, "one finds to be the chief element of Paganism; recognition of
Man and his Moral Duty--though this, too, is not wanting--comes to be
the chief element only in purer forms of religion. Here, indeed, is a
great distinction and epoch in Human Beliefs; a great landmark in the
religious development of Mankind. Man first puts himself in relation
with Nature and her Powers, wonders and worships over those; not till
a later epoch does he discern that all Power is Moral, that the grand
point is the distinction for him of Good and Evil, of _Thou shalt, and
thou shalt not_." The explanation of the historical truth thus stated
by Mr Carlyle is just that man is vividly alive to the wants and claims
of his body and merely natural life during long ages in which he is
almost dead to the wants and claims of his spirit or true self and the
moral life. So the ordinary mind is prone, even at present, in the most
civilised countries of the world, to think of God after the likeness
of man, or, in other words, as a vastly magnified man. Why? Because
the ordinary mind is always very feebly and dimly conscious of those
principles of reason which demand in God the existence of attributes
neither to be found in the physical universe nor in itself. Some
exercise in speculation, some training in philosophy, is needed to make
us reflect on them; and until we reflect on them we cannot be expected
to do them justice in the formation of our religious convictions.
Those who have never thought on what infinite and unconditioned
mean, and who have never in their lives grappled with a metaphysical
problem, will infer quite as readily as if they had spent their days in
philosophical speculation that all the power and order in the universe,
and all the wisdom and goodness in humanity, are the reflections of
a far higher power, wisdom, and goodness in their source--the Divine
Mind; but they must realise much less correctly in what respects
God cannot be imaged in His works: they may do equal or even fuller
justice to what is true in anthropomorphism, but they cannot perceive
as distinctly where anthropomorphism is false. It is only through the
activity of the speculative reason that religion is prevented from
becoming a degrading anthropomorphism, that the mind is compelled
to think of God not merely as a Father, King, and Judge, but as the
Absolute and Infinite Being. This is, perhaps, the chief service which
philosophy renders to religion; and it ought not to be undervalued,
notwithstanding that philosophy has often, in checking one error,
fallen into another as great, or even greater, denying that there is
any likeness between God and man.
While the mental process which has been described--the theistic
inference--is capable of analysis, it is in itself synthetic. The
principles on which it depends are so connected that the mind can
embrace them all in a single act, and must include and apply them all
in the apprehension of God. Will, intelligence, conscience, reason,
and the ideas which they supply; cause, design, goodness, infinity,
with the arguments which rest on these ideas,--all coalesce into this
one grand issue. The inferences are as inseparable as the principles
from which they spring. A very large number of the objections to theism
arise wholly from inattention to this truth. Men argue as if each
principle involved in the knowledge of God were to be kept strictly by
itself, as if each argument brought forward as leading to a theistic
conclusion were to be jealously isolated; and then, if the last result
of the principle, the conclusion of the argument, be not an adequate
knowledge of God, they pronounce the principle altogether inapplicable,
and the argument altogether fallacious. It is strange that this
procedure should not be universally seen to be sophistical in the
extreme--a kind of reasoning which, if generally adopted, would at once
arrest all science and all business; but obviously anti-theists think
differently, for they habitually have recourse to it. If you argue,
for example, that the universe is an event or effect which must have
an adequate cause, they will question your right to refer to the order
which is in the universe as a proof that it is an event or effect,
because order implies another principle, and is the ground of another
argument. They overlook that you are not making an abstract use of
the principle of causality, and that you are not arguing from the mere
terms universe and event, but from the universe itself; and that in
order to know whether it be an event or not--an effect or not--you
must study it as it is, and take everything into account which bears
on the question. They reason as if they supposed that a cause and an
intelligence must be two different things, and that a cause cannot be
an intelligence, nor an intelligence a cause. Similarly, the arguments
from the power, order, and goodness displayed in nature have often been
objected to altogether, have often been pronounced worthless, because
they do not in themselves prove God to be _infinitely_ powerful, wise,
and good. They are brought forward to show that the Author of the
universe must have the power, wisdom, and goodness required to create
and govern it; and forthwith many oppose them by declaring that they do
not show Him to be infinite. Now, no man who did not imagine nature to
be infinite ever adduced them to prove God infinite. Their not proving
that, is therefore no reason for denying them to prove what they
profess to prove. No argument can stand if we may reject it because it
does not prove more than it undertakes to prove.
It is clear that the evidences of design, instead of being wholly
distinct from the evidences of power, and independent of the principle
of causality, are evidences of a kind of power and manifestations of a
kind of causality--intelligent power and causality. In like manner the
evidences of goodness are also evidences of design, for goodness is a
form of design--morally, beneficent design. Although causality does
not involve design, nor design goodness, design involves causality,
and goodness both causality and design. The proofs of intelligence
are also proofs of power; the proofs of goodness are proofs both of
intelligence and power. The principles of reason which compel us to
think of the Supreme Moral Intelligence as a self-existent, eternal,
infinite, and unchangeable Being, supplement the proofs from other
sources, and give self-consistency and completeness to the doctrine of
theism. The various theistic arguments are, in a word, but stages in a
single rational process, but parts of one comprehensive argument. They
are naturally, and, as it were, organically related--they support and
strengthen one another. It is therefore an arbitrary and illegitimate
procedure to separate them any farther than may be necessary for the
purpose of clear and orderly exposition. It is sophistry to attempt to
destroy them separately by assailing each as if it had no connection
with the other, and as if each isolated fragmentary argument were bound
to yield as large a conclusion as all the arguments combined. A man
quite unable to break a bundle of rods firmly bound together may be
strong enough to break each rod separately. But before proceeding to
deal with the bundle in that way, he may be required to establish his
right to untie it, and to decline putting forth his strength upon it as
it is presented to him.[12]
[12] See Appendix IX.
II.
The theistic inference, although a complex process, is not a difficult
one. It looks, indeed, long and formidable when analysed in books
of evidences, and elaborated with perverse ingenuity into series of
syllogisms. But numerous processes, very simple and easy in themselves,
are toilsome and troublesome to analyse, or describe, or comprehend.
Vision and digestion are, in general, not difficult bodily functions,
but they have been the subjects of a great many very large treatises;
and doubtless physiologists have not even yet found out all that is
to be known about them. As a rule, the theistic process is as simple
and easy an operation for the mind as vision or digestion for the
body. The multitude of books which have been written in explanation
and illustration of it, and the subtle and abstruse character of the
researches and speculations contained in many of these books, are not
the slightest indications of its being other than simple and natural
in itself. The inferences which it involves are, in fact, like those
which Weber, Helmholtz, and Zöllner have shown to be implied in the
perceptions of sense, involuntary and unconscious. If not perfectly
instantaneous, they are so rapid and spontaneous as to have seemed to
many intuitive. And in a loose sense, perhaps, they may be considered
so. Not, however, strictly and properly, since the idea of Deity is no
simple idea, but the most complex of ideas, comprehending all that is
great and good in nature and man, along with perfections which belong
to neither nature nor man; and since the presence of Deity is not seen
without the intervention of any media--face to face, eye to eye--but
only as "through a glass darkly." The contemplation of nature, and
mind, and history is an indispensable stage towards the knowledge of
Him. Physical and mental facts and laws are the materials or data of
reason in its quest of religious truth. There is a rational transition
from the natural to the supernatural, wherever the latter is reached.
Our knowledge of God is obtained as simply and naturally as our
knowledge of our fellow-men. It is obtained, in fact, mainly in the
same way. In both cases we refer certain manifestations of will,
intelligence, and goodness--qualities which are known to us by
consciousness--to these qualities as their causes. We have no direct
or immediate knowledge--no intuitive or _a priori_ knowledge--of
the intelligence of our fellow-creatures, any more than we have
of the intelligence of our Creator; but we have a direct personal
consciousness of intelligence in ourselves which enables us confidently
to infer that the works both of God and of men can only have originated
in intelligences. We grow up into knowledge of the mind of God as we
grow in acquaintance with the minds of men through familiarity with
their acts. The Father in heaven is known just as a father on earth
is known. The latter is as unseen as the former. No human being has
really ever seen another. No sense has will, or wisdom, or goodness
for its object. Man must infer the existence of his fellow-men, for
he can have no immediate perception of it; he must become acquainted
with their characters through the use of his intelligence, because
character cannot be heard with the ear, or looked upon with the eye,
or touched with the finger. Yet a child is not long in learning to
know that a spirit is near it. As soon as it knows itself, it easily
detects a spirit like its own, yet other than itself, when the signs of
a spirit's activity are presented to it. The process of inference by
which it ascends from the works of man to the spirit which originates
them is not more legitimate, more simple, or more natural, than that
by which it rises from nature to nature's God.
In saying this, I refer merely to the process of inference in itself.
That is identical in the two cases. In other respects there are obvious
differences, of which one important consequence is, that while the
scepticism which denies the existence of God is not unfrequently to
be met with, a scepticism which denies the existence of human beings
is unknown. The facts which prove that there are men, are grouped
together within limits of space and of time which allow of their
being so easily surveyed, and they are in themselves so simple and
familiar, that all sane minds draw from them their natural inference.
The facts which prove that there is a God need, in order to be rightly
interpreted, more attention and reflection, more comprehensiveness,
impartiality, and elevation of mind. Countless as they are, they can be
overlooked, and often have been overlooked. Clear and conspicuous as
they are, worldliness and prejudice and sin may blind the soul to their
significance. True, the existence and possibility of atheism have often
been denied, but the testimony of history to the reality of atheism
cannot be set aside. Although many have been called atheists unjustly
and calumniously, and although a few who have professed themselves to
be atheists may have really possessed a religious belief which they
overlooked or were averse to acknowledge, we cannot reasonably refuse
to take at their own word the majority of those who have inculcated
a naked and undisguised atheism, and claimed and gloried in the name
of atheist. Incredible as it may seem that any intelligent being,
conscious of human wants and weaknesses, should be able to look upon
the wonders of the heavens and of the earth, of the soul within him and
of society around him, and yet say that there is no God, men have done
so, and we have no alternative but to accept the fact as we find it.
It is a fact which involves nothing inconsistent with the truth that
the process by which the mind attains to a belief in God is of the same
natural and direct, yet inferential, character as the process by which
it attains to belief in the existence of finite minds closely akin to
itself.
Our entire spiritual being is constituted for the apprehension of
God in and through His works. All the essential principles of mental
action, when applied to the meditative consideration of finite things,
lead up from them to Infinite Creative Wisdom. The whole of nature
external to us is a revelation of God; the whole nature within us has
been made for the reception and interpretation of that revelation. What
more would we have? Strange as it may seem, there are many theists at
the present day who represent it as insufficient, or as even worthless,
and who join with atheists in denying that God's existence can be
proved, and in affirming that all the arguments for His existence are
inconclusive and sophistical. I confess I deem this a most erroneous
and dangerous procedure. Such theists seem to me not only the best
allies of atheists, but even more effective labourers in the cause of
unbelief than atheists themselves. They shake men's confidence to a far
greater extent in the reasonable grounds of faith in God's existence,
and substitute for these grounds others as weak and arbitrary as any
atheist could possibly wish. They pronounce illegitimate and invalid
the arguments from effect to cause, from order and arrangement to
intelligence, from history to providence, from conscience to a moral
governor,--an assertion which, if true, infallibly implies that the
heavens do not declare the glory of God, and that the earth does not
show forth His handiworks--that the course of human events discloses no
trace of His wisdom, goodness, or justice--and that the moral nature
of man is wholly dissociated from a Divine law and a Divine lawgiver.
Then, in place of a universe revealing God, and a soul made in His
image, and a humanity overruled and guided by Him, they present to
us as something stronger and surer--an intuition or a feeling or an
exercise of mere faith. For it is a noticeable and certainly not a
promising circumstance, that there is no general agreement as to what
that state of mind is on which the weight of the entire edifice of
theism is proposed to be rested even among those who profess to possess
it. An intuition, a feeling, and a belief are very different things;
and not much dependence is to be put on the psychology which is unable
to distinguish between them.
Man, say some, knows God by immediate intuition; he needs no argument
for His existence, because he perceives Him directly--face to
face--without any medium. It is easy to assert this, but obviously
the assertion is the merest dogmatism. Not one man in a thousand
who understands what he is affirming will dare to claim to have an
immediate vision of God, and nothing can be more likely than that the
man who makes such a claim is self-deluded. It is not difficult to see
how he may be deluded. There is so much that is intuitive involved in
the apprehension of God that the apprehension itself may readily be
imagined to be intuitive. The intuitive nature of the conditions which
it implies may arrest the attention, and the fact that they are simply
conditions may be overlooked. The possibility, however, of analysing
the apprehension into simpler elements--of showing that it is a complex
act, and presupposes conditions that can be indicated--is a conclusive
proof that it is no intuition, that our idea of God is no more or
otherwise intuitive than our idea of a fellow-man. Besides, what seem
intuitions are often really inferences, and not unfrequently erroneous
inferences; what seem the immediate dictates of pure reason, or the
direct and unclouded perceptions of a special spiritual faculty, may
be the conceits of fancy or the products of habit and association,
or the reflections of strong feeling. A man must prove to himself,
and he must prove to others, that what he takes to be an intuition
is an intuition. Is that proof in this case likely to be easier or
more conclusive than the proof of the Divine existence? The so-called
immediate perception of God must be shown to be a perception and to be
immediate; it must be vindicated and verified: and how this is to be
done, especially if there be no other reasons for believing in God than
itself, it is difficult to conceive. The history of religion, which is
what ought to yield the clearest confirmation of the alleged intuition,
appears to be from beginning to end a conspicuous contradiction of
it. If all men have the spiritual power of directly beholding their
Creator--have an immediate vision of God--how happens it that whole
nations believe in the most absurd and monstrous gods? that millions
of men are ignorant whether there be one god or thousands? that even
a people like the Greeks could suppose the highest of their deities
to have been born, to have a body, and to have committed the vilest
actions? A true power of intuition is little susceptible of growth,
and its testimonies vary within narrow limits; any development of
which it admits is only slightly due to external conditions, and
mainly the necessary consequence of internal activity, of inherent
expansibility. It is thus, for example, with the senses of sight and
hearing, in so far as they are intuitive. But it is manifestly very
different with the religious nature. Its growth is mainly dependent,
not on the organic evolution of a particular faculty, but on the
general state of the soul, on the one hand; and on the influence of
external circumstances--education, example, law, &c.--on the other
hand. It is this difference in the character of their development
which explains why the deliverances of the senses are so uniform and
nearly infallible, while the most cursory survey of the religious
world shows us the greatest want of uniformity and truthfulness in
religious judgments. The various phases of polytheism and pantheism
are inexplicable, if an intuition of God be universally inherent in
human nature. Theism is perfectly explicable without intuition, as the
evidences for it are numerous, obvious, and strong.
The opinion that man has an intuition or immediate perception of God
is untenable; the opinion that he has an immediate feeling of God
is absurd. A man feels only in so far as he perceives and knows.
Feeling is in consciousness essentially dependent on, and necessarily
subsequent to, knowing. Mere feeling--feeling without knowing--is an
utterly inconceivable and impossible experience. Admit, however, not
only that there may be a mere feeling, but that there is a mere feeling
of God. What worth can it have? By supposition--by definition--no
knowledge of God underlies and explains it. But in that case, how can
any man pretend to get a knowledge of God out of it? What right can
any one have to represent it as a source of knowledge of God? I am not
aware that these questions have ever been answered except by the merest
verbal jugglery. The very men who tell us that we cannot know God, but
that we feel Him, tell us also that the feeling of Him is an immediate
consciousness of Him, and that immediate consciousness is its own
self-evidence, is absolute certainty, or, in other words, the highest
and surest knowledge. We do not know God, but we feel Him; however, to
feel Him is to know Him,--such is their answer more or less distinctly
expressed, or, I should rather say, more or less skilfully concealed.
It is at once a Yes and a No, the affirmation of what is denied and
the denial of what is affirmed. And it is this because it cannot be
anything else--because mere feeling is an impossible experience--and
because feeling, so far as it is uncaused and unenlightened by
knowledge, testifies only to the folly or insanity of the being which
feels. If theism have no other basis than feeling, it is a house
which foolish men have built upon the sand. The first storm will cast
it down, and no wise man will regret its fall. Whatever is founded on
mere emotion--on emotion which is not itself explained and justified by
reason--stands but by sufferance; has no right to stand; ought to be
cast down and swept from the earth. But the storms which have already
in the course of the ages spent their force against theism with no
other effect than to make its strength more conspicuous, and to carry
away what would have weakened or deformed it, are sufficient to show
us that it has been built on eternal truth by the finite human reasons
which have been enlightened by Infinite and Divine Reason.
The strangest of all theories as to the foundation of our belief in
God is, that it has no foundation at all--that it is a belief which
rests upon itself, an act of faith which is its own warrant. We are
told that we can neither know that God is nor what God is, but that
we can nevertheless believe in God, and ought to believe in Him, and
can and ought to act as if we knew His existence and character. But
surely belief without a reason must be arbitrary belief, and either to
believe or act as if we knew what we do not know, can never be conduct
to be justified, much less commended. Faith which is not rational is
faith which ought to be rejected. We cannot believe what we do not
know or think that we know. We have no right to believe more than we
know. I know, for example, that the grass grows, and consequently I
believe, and am justified in believing, that it grows. I do not know
how the grass grows, and I do not believe how it grows; I can justify
my believing about its growth nothing beyond what I know to be true.
This law of belief is as binding for the highest as for the lowliest
objects. If I have no reason for believing that there is a God, I have
no right to believe that there is a God. If I do not know that God is
infinite, I am bound not to believe that He is infinite. Belief is
inseparable from knowledge, and ought to be precisely coextensive with
knowledge. Those who deny this fundamental truth will always be found
employing the words knowledge and belief in a capricious and misleading
way.[13]
[13] See Appendix X.
III.
When man apprehends God as powerful, wise, and good--as possessed of
will, reason, and righteousness--obviously he thinks of Him as bearing
some likeness to himself, as having in an infinite or perfect measure
qualities which human creatures have in a finite and imperfect measure.
This can be no stumbling-block to any one who believes that God made
man in His image, after His likeness. If man be in some respects
like God, God must, of course, be in some respects like man. Power
and freedom, knowledge and wisdom, love, goodness, and justice, are,
according to this view, finitely in man, because they are infinitely
in God. But it is a view which excites in certain minds deep aversion.
There are men who protest, in the name of religion, in the name of
God, against this anthropomorphic theism, as they call it. According
to them, to attribute to God any human qualities, even the highest and
best, is to limit and degrade Him--is contrary to reason and contrary
to piety--is idolatrous and profane. The Psalmist represents the Lord
as reproaching the wicked for supposing that He was like them in their
wickedness--"altogether such an one as themselves;" but the modern
philosophers to whom I am referring are horrified at the thought that
the most righteous man, even in his righteousness, has any likeness
to God. According to them, to think of God as wise is to dishonour
Him, and to declare Him holy is to calumniate Him. To think of Him as
foolish, and to pronounce Him wicked, are, in their eyes, only a little
more irreverent and no more irrational.
"We must not fall down and worship," writes one of these philosophers,
"as the source of our life and virtue, the image which our own minds
have set up. Why is such idolatry any better than that of the old wood
and stone? If we worship the creations of our minds, why not also
those of our hands? The one is, indeed, a more refined self-adoration
than the other; but the radical error remains the same in both. The
old idolaters were wrong, not because they worshipped themselves, but
because they worshipped their creation as if it were their creator; and
how can any anthropomorphic theory 'escape the same condemnation'?"[14]
The writer does not see that God can only be thought of as wise and
righteous and free because the mind of man is His creation, so that
His being thus thought of can be no proof that He is _its_ creation.
The fact that we can think of God as wise and righteous and free is
no evidence that He is an image which our own minds have set up.
The man who draws such an inference from such a premiss can be no
dispassionate reasoner. And certainly the fact that we can think of God
as possessed of intellectual and moral perfections is no reason for our
not falling down and worshipping Him, and no evidence that our doing so
is idolatry. To fall down and worship any being whom we do not know to
possess these characteristics is what would clearly be idolatry. And
this idolatry is what the philosophers to whom I refer are manifestly
chargeable with encouraging. When they have rejected the living,
personal, righteous, loving God, in whom humanity has so long trusted,
they can only suggest as a substitute for Him a mysterious Power which
is wholly unknown, and even unknowable. Great is their simplicity if
they fancy that they can persuade men to receive any such god as that,
or if they fancy that men would be any better for a faith so vague
and empty. To believe in we know not what, is directly contrary to
reason; to worship it would be "an idolatry no better than that of
the old wood and stone." What we know is often not the creation of
our minds: the unknowable is in itself nothing at all to us, and, as
a thought, is always the mere creation of our minds; it is different
for each creature, each mind; it is the mere result and reflection of
our finiteness. There can be no unknown or unknowable to an infinite
mind. To worship what is unknowable would be, therefore, simply to
worship our own ignorance--one of the creations of our minds least
worthy, perhaps, of being worshipped. There is, at least, no kind of
worship less entitled "to escape condemnation," even as anthropomorphic
idolatry, than the worship of the Unknowable,--the god proposed to us
by some as the alone true God, belief in whom--perhaps I should rather
say, belief in which--is to be the final and perfect reconciliation of
science and religion.
[14] Barrett's Physical Ethics, p. 225.
All true theism implies a certain likeness between God and man. It
holds that God is not merely an all-pervading and all-sustaining
Power, but an omniscient Mind and perfectly holy Will. It refuses to
think of Him merely according to the analogies of the physical world,
as if human reason and human love were less worthy expressions of
His perfections than mechanical or brute force. It refers to Him not
only "all the majesty of nature, but all the humanity of man." This
truth--that there is a likeness between God and man--must, however, be
combined with two other truths, otherwise it will lead to the gravest
errors.
The first is, that while God and man are both like each other, in that
both possess certain excellences, they are utterly unlike, in that God
possesses these excellences in all their perfection and in an infinite
measure, while man possesses them in a very small degree and violated
with many flaws and faults. The highest glory which a man can hope for
is, that he should be made wholly into the image of God; but never can
God be rightly thought of as mainly, and still less as merely, in the
image of man. It was the great error of classic heathendom that it thus
conceived of the Divine. "Men," says Heraclitus, "are mortal gods, and
the gods immortal men." And the gods of Greece, as represented by her
poets and adored by her people, were simply magnified and immortal
men--a race closely akin to their worshippers in weaknesses and vices
no less than in powers and virtues. They were supposed to be born as
men are, to have voice and figure, parts and passions, and even at
times to cheat and rail and lie. They reflected all the tendencies of
the Greek mind, both good and evil.
Worshippers of the one God can scarcely fall into the same extravagance
of error in this respect as the Greeks and Romans did, as all
polytheists do; but they can, and often do, fall into the error, and
think of God as subject to limits and defects, which are only in
themselves. For instance, what is called deism, as distinguished from
theism, rests wholly on the conception that the presence and power
of God are limited, and that He acts in the manner to which man as a
finite creature is restricted. The deist thinks of God as outside of
and away from the universe; he thinks of the universe as a mechanism
which God has contrived, and which He has endowed with certain powers,
in virtue of which it is able to sustain itself in existence, and to
perform its work so as to save God, as it were, all further trouble
and labour concerning it. It is a great gain for us to have a machine
doing what we desire without our needing to pay any attention to it or
even to be present where it is, because we cannot give our attention
to more than one object at one and the same instant of time, and
cannot be present at the same time in more places than one; but those
who liken God to man in this respect, divest Him of His omnipresence
and omnipotence, and represent Him as characterised in some measure by
their own impotency. There is a truth which Pantheism often claims as
peculiarly and distinctively its own,--the truth that in God we and all
things live, and move, and have our being--that of Him, and through
Him, and to Him, are all things,--but which theism must sincerely and
fully appropriate as one of its simplest and most certain elements,
otherwise the charge against it of being a false and presumptuous
likening of God to man will be warranted. We must not think of Him as
"an absentee God, sitting idle ever since the first Sabbath, at the
outside of His universe, and 'seeing it go'"--as a God at hand but not
afar off, or afar off but not at hand--as here, not there, or there,
not here; but we must think of Him as everywhere present, everywhere
active--as at once the source of all order, the spring of all life, and
the ground of all affection and thought.
We need to be still more on our guard against limiting His wisdom or
righteousness or love, as it is what we are still more prone to do.
These attributes of God are often thought of in the meanest and most
unworthy ways; and doubtless it has to a large extent been horror at
the consequent degradation of the idea of God which has made some men
refuse to assign to Him any of the properties of humanity, saying,
with Xenophanes, that if the animals could think, they would imagine
the Deity to be in their likeness--and with Spinoza, that if a circle
could think, it would suppose His essence to be circularity. But this
is to flee from one extreme to another extreme, from one error to a
still more terrible error, through utterly failing to distinguish
between perfection and imperfection, between what ought and what ought
not to be ascribed to God. Circularity, animal forms and dispositions,
human limitations--these are imperfections, and we must not refer them
to God; but intelligence, righteousness, love--these are so little
in their own nature imperfections that an intelligent being, however
feeble, would be more excellent than an omnipotent and omnipresent
being destitute of intelligence; and righteousness and love are as much
superior to mere intelligence as it is to mere power and magnitude.
To ascribe these to God, if we only ascribe them to Him in infinite
perfection, is no presumption, no error; not to ascribe them to Him is
the greatest presumption, the most lamentable error.
The second truth necessary to be borne in mind, whenever we affirm the
likeness of God to man, is, that in whatever measure and to whatever
extent God may be known, our knowledge of Him is, and always must
be, very inadequate. In these latter days of science we are proud
of our knowledge of the universe; and yet, although we do know a
little of far-away stars and systems, what is this, after all, but,
as Carlyle says, the knowledge which a minnow in its native creek has
of the outlying ocean? And our knowledge of God must fall unspeakably
farther short of being coextensive with its object. To illustrate
the disproportion there, no comparison can be appropriate. "Canst
thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto
perfection? It is high as heaven; what canst thou do? Deeper than hell;
what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth,
and broader than the sea." Our idea of God may contain nothing which
is not true of God, and may omit nothing which it is essential for
our spiritual welfare that we should know regarding Him; but it is
impossible that it should be a complete and exhaustive idea of Him. We
have scarcely a complete and exhaustive idea of anything, and least
of all can we have such an idea of the infinite and inexhaustible
source of all being. God alone can have a complete and exhaustive idea
of Himself. There must be infinitely more in God than we have any
idea of. There must be many qualities, powers, excellences, in Divine
nature, which are wholly unknown to men, or even wholly unknowable
by them, owing to their want of any faculties for their apprehension.
And even as to what we do know of God, our knowledge is but partial
and inadequate. We know that God knows, that He feels, that He acts;
but as to how He knows, feels, and acts, as to what is distinctive and
characteristic of His knowing, feeling, and acting, we have little or
no notion. We can _apprehend_ certain attributes of God, but we can
_comprehend_, or fully grasp, or definitely image, not one of them. If
we could find out God unto perfection in any respect, then, either we
must be infinite or God must be finite in that respect. The finite mind
can never stretch itself out in any direction until it is coextensive
with the Infinite Mind. Man is made in the image of God, but he is not
the measure of God.
LECTURE IV.
NATURE IS BUT THE NAME FOR AN EFFECT WHOSE CAUSE IS GOD.
I.
We have now to consider the principle of causality so far as it is
implied in the theistic inference, and the theistic inference so far as
it is conditioned by the principle of causality. It is not necessary to
discuss the nature of the principle of causality in itself or for its
own sake; it is even expedient, I believe, not to attempt to penetrate
farther into its metaphysics and psychology than the work on hand
imperatively requires. We must of course go as far as those have gone
who have maintained on metaphysical or psychological grounds that the
principle of causality warrants no theistic inference; we must show
that their metaphysics and psychology are irrelevant when true, and
false when relevant; but we may be content to stop when we have reached
this result. The truth of theism has been very generally represented,
both by those who admit and by those who deny the validity of the
theistic inference, as much more dependent than it really is on the
truth or falsity of some one or other of the many views which have been
entertained as to the nature of causation, and the origin of the causal
judgment. We are constantly being warned by theists that unless we
accept this or that particular notion of causation, and account for it
in this or that particular manner, we cannot reasonably believe in the
existence of God; we are constantly being assured by anti-theists that
belief in God is irrational, because it assumes some erroneous view
of causation, or some erroneous explanation of the process by which
causation is apprehended. But it will be found that representations
of this kind seldom prove more than one-sidedness and immaturity of
thought in those who make them. An accurate and comprehensive view
of the nature of causation, and of our apprehension of it, will, it
is true, have here as elsewhere great advantages over an erroneous
and narrow one, but hardly any of the theories which have been held
on these points can be consistently argued by those who hold them to
invalidate theistic belief. Even utterly inadequate statements and
explanations of the principle of causality--as, for example, those
of Hume and J. S. Mill--are not more incompatible with the theistic
inference than they are with any other inference which is a real
extension of knowledge. Unless they are understood and applied more
rigidly than by those who propound them, they allow us to draw the
theistic inference; if understood and applied so as to forbid our
drawing it, they logically disallow all scientific inference except
such as is purely formal and deductive. In a word, if compatible with
science they are compatible with theism, and if incompatible with
theism they are incompatible with science.
When we assume the principle of causality in the argument for the
existence of God, what precisely is it that we assume? Only this: that
whatever has begun to be, must have had an antecedent, or ground, or
cause which accounts for it. We do not assume that every existence
must have had a cause. We have no right, indeed, to assume that any
existence has had a cause until we have found reason to regard it as
not an eternal existence, but one which has had an origin. Whatever
we believe, however, to have had an origin, we at once believe also
to have had a cause. The theistic argument assumes that this belief
is true. It assumes that every existence, once new, every event or
occurrence or change, must have a cause. This is certainly no very
large assumption: on the contrary, if any assumption can claim to be
self-evident, it surely may. Thought implies the truth of it every
moment. Sensation only gives rise to thought in virtue of it. Unless
it were true there could be no such thing as thought. To deny that
the principle of causality, understood as has been indicated, is
true, would be to deny that reason is reason; it would be equivalent
to affirming that to seek for a reason is always and essentially an
unreasonable process. And, in fact, so understood, the principle never
has been denied. Hume even did not venture to deny it, although he
ought in consistency to have denied it, and obviously desired to be
able to deny it. He did not, however, deny that every object which
begins to exist must have a cause,--he did not venture to do more than
deny that this is either intuitively or demonstratively certain, and
that any bond or tie can be perceived between what is called a cause
and what is called an effect. The inquiry which he instituted was not
whether we pronounce it necessary that everything whose existence has
a beginning should also have a cause or not, but for what reason we
pronounce it necessary. He assumed that we pronounce it necessary, and
his elaborate investigation into the nature of causation was undertaken
expressly and entirely to discover why we do so. The conclusion to
which he came--viz., that the causal judgment is an "offspring of
experience engendered upon custom"--was not only a very inadequate and
erroneous one in itself, but inconsistent with the reality of what it
professed to explain: still the admission which has been mentioned was
what was professed to be explained.
Now, if it be true at all that every event, whether it be a
new existence or a change in an old existence, presupposes an
explanatory antecedent or cause, there can of course be no accepting
in all its breadth one of the propositions which Hume urges most
strenuously--viz., that the mere study of an event can tell us nothing
about its cause. We may grant that it can tell us very little,--that
Hume performed an immense service in showing how extremely little we
can know of the particular causes of particular events apart from
the study of both in connection, apart from observation, experiment,
and induction,--but we cannot grant that the event itself teaches us
absolutely nothing. If every event must have a cause, every event must
have a sufficient cause. For these two statements, although verbally
different, are really identical. The second seems to mean, but does not
actually mean, more than the first. The whole cause of the elevation
of a weight of ten pounds a foot high cannot be also the whole cause
of the elevation of twenty pounds to the same height, for the simple
reason that in the latter case the elevation of ten pounds--of half
the weight--would be an event which had no cause at all. And this is
universally true. If every event have not a sufficient cause, some
events have no cause at all. This, then, I say, we necessarily know
that the efficient cause of every event is a sufficient cause, however
vague may be our knowledge of efficiency and sufficiency.
If every event--using this term as convenient to denote either a new
existence or a change in some existence--must have a cause, to prove
that the universe must have had a cause we require to prove it to have
been an event--to have had a commencement. Can this be done? That
is _the_ question in the theistic argument from causality. Compared
therewith, all other questions which have been introduced into or
associated with the argument are of very subordinate importance. Now
there is only one way of reasonably answering the question, and that
is by examining the universe, in order to determine whether or not it
bears the marks of being an event--whether or not it has the character
of an effect. We have no right to _assume_ it to be an event, or to
have had a beginning. The entire argument for the Divine existence,
which is at present under consideration, can be no stronger than the
strength of the proof which we can adduce in favour of its having had
a beginning, and the only valid proof of that which reason can hope to
find must be derived from the examination of the universe itself.
What, then, is the result of such an examination? An absolute
certainty that all the things which are seen are temporal,--that
every object in the universe which presents itself to the senses has
had a beginning,--that the most powerful, penetrating, and delicate
instruments devised to assist our senses reach no cause which is
not obviously also an effect. The progress of science has not more
convincingly and completely disproved the once prevalent notion that
the universe was created about six thousand years ago, than it has
convincingly and completely established that everything of which our
senses inform us has had a commencement in time, and is of a compound,
derivative, and dependent nature. It is not long since men had no means
of proving that the rocks, for example, were not as old as the earth
itself--no direct means of proving even that they were not eternal; but
science is now able to tell us with confidence under what conditions,
in what order, and in what epochs of geological time they were formed.
We have probably a more satisfactory knowledge of the formation of
the coal-measures than of the establishment of the feudal system. We
know that the Alps, although they look as if they might have stood
for ever, are not even old, as geologists count age. The morning and
night, the origin and disappearance of the countless species of living
things which have peopled the earth from the enormously remote times
when the rocks of the Laurentian period were deposited down to the
births and deaths of contemporaneous animals, have been again brought
into the light of day by the power of science. The limits of research
are not even there reached, and with bold flight science passes beyond
the confines of discovered life--beyond the epochs of formation even of
the oldest rocks--to a time when there was no distinction of earth and
sea and atmosphere, as all were mingled together in nebulous matter, in
some sort of fluid or mist or steam; yea, onwards to a time when our
earth had no separate existence, and suns, moons, and stars were not
yet divided and arranged into systems. If we seek, then, after what is
eternal, science tells us that it is not the earth nor anything which
it contains, not the sea nor the living things within it, not the
moving air, not the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars. These things when
interrogated all tell us to look above and beyond them, for although
they may have begun to be in times far remote, yet it was within times
to which the thoughts of finite beings can reach back.
There is no denying, then, that the universe is to a great extent
an effect, an event, something which has begun to be, a process of
becoming. Science is, day by day, year by year, finding out more and
more that it is an effect. The growth of science is in great part
merely the extension of the proof that the universe is an effect. But
the scientific proof of the non-eternity of matter is as yet far
from a complete one. It leaves it possible for the mind to refer the
phases through which the universe has passed, and the forms which it
has assumed, to an underlying eternal source in nature itself, and,
therefore, not to God. And this is by far the most plausible and
forcible way of combating the argument we are employing. It meets it
with a direct counter-argument, which every person must acknowledge
to be relevant, and which, if sufficiently made out, is obviously
decisive. That counter-argument we are bound, therefore, to dispose
of. It has been thus stated by Mr J. S. Mill: "There is in nature a
permanent element, and also a changeable: the changes are always the
effects of previous changes; the permanent existences, so far as we
know, are not effects at all. It is true we are accustomed to say not
only of events, but of objects, that they are produced by causes, as
water by the union of hydrogen and oxygen. But by this we only mean
that when they begin to exist, their beginning is the effect of a
cause. But their beginning to exist is not an object, it is an event.
If it be objected that the cause of a thing's beginning to exist may
be said with propriety to be the cause of the thing itself, I shall
not quarrel with the expression. But that which in an object begins
to exist, is that in it which belongs to the changeable element in
nature; the outward form and the properties depending on mechanical
or chemical combinations of its component parts. There is in every
object another and a permanent element--viz., the specific elementary
substance or substances of which it consists and their inherent
properties. These are not known to us as beginning to exist: within the
range of human knowledge they had no beginning, and consequently no
cause; though they themselves are causes or non-causes of everything
that takes place. Experience, therefore, affords no evidences, not even
analogies, to justify our extending to the apparently immutable, a
generalisation grounded only on our observation of the changeable."[15]
[15] Three Essays on Religion, pp. 142, 143.
On this I would remark, first, that mere experience does not take us
to anything which we are entitled to call even apparently immutable.
It only takes us, even when extended to the utmost by scientific
instruments and processes, to elements which we call simple because
we have hitherto failed to analyse them into simpler elements. It is
a perfectly legitimate scientific hypothesis that all the substances
recognised by chemists as elementary and intransmutable, are in
reality the modifications or syntheses of a single material element,
which have been produced under conditions that render them incapable
of being affected by any tests or agencies which the analyst in his
laboratory can bring to bear upon them. Indeed, unless this hypothesis
be true, the theory of development, so generally accepted at present,
can hardly be supposed to be of any very wide application, seeing that
at its very outset it has to affirm the existence of no fewer than
sixty-four true untransformable species. But suppose the so-called
elementary substances of chemistry to be simple, no one can reasonably
suppose them as known to us to be ultimate. In oxygen there may be no
atoms which are not atoms of oxygen, but we know by experience only
oxygen, not atoms of oxygen. No man has ever been able to put himself
in sensible contact with what alone can be immutable in oxygen, if
there be anything immutable in it, its ultimate atoms. No man has seen,
heard, touched, or tasted an ultimate atom of any kind of matter. We
know nothing of atoms--nothing of what is permanent in nature--from
direct experience. We must pass beyond such experience--beyond all
testimony of the senses--when we believe in anything permanent in
nature, not less than when we believe in something beyond and above
nature. The atomic theory in chemistry demands a faith which transcends
experience, not less than the theistic theory in religion.
Then, secondly, although we grant that there is a permanent element
in the physical universe, something in matter itself which is
self-existent and eternal, we still need, in order to account for the
universe which we know, an Eternal Intelligence. The universe, regarded
even only so far as it is admitted by all materialists no less than
by theists and pantheists to be an effect, cannot be explained, as
materialists think, merely physically. The atoms of matter are, it is
said, eternal and immutable. Grant them to be so. There are, however,
countless millions of them, and manifestly the universe is one, is
a single, magnificent, and complicated system, is characterised by
a marvellous unity in variety. We must be informed how the universe
came to be a universe,--how it came to have the unity which underlies
its diversity,--if it resulted from a countless multitude of ultimate
causes. Did the atoms take counsel together and devise a common plan
and work it out? That hypothesis is unspeakably absurd, yet it is
rational in comparison with the notion that these atoms combined by
mere chance, and by chance produced such a universe as that in which
we live. Grant all the atoms of matter to be eternal, grant all the
properties and forces which with the smallest degree of plausibility
can be claimed for them to be eternal and immutable, and it is still
beyond all expression improbable that these atoms with these forces,
if unarranged, uncombined, ununified, unutilised by a presiding mind,
would give rise to anything entitled to be called a universe. It is
millions to one that they would never produce the simplest of the
regular arrangements which we comprehend under the designation of
course of nature, or the lowest of vegetable or animal organisms;
millions of millions to one that they would never produce a solar
system, the earth, the animal kingdom, or human history. No number of
material atoms, although eternal and endowed with mechanical force,
can explain the unity and order of the universe, and therefore the
supposition of their existence does not free us from the necessity
of believing in a single intelligent cause--a Supreme Mind--to move
and mould, combine and adjust, the ultimate atoms of matter into a
single orderly system. There at once rises the question, Is it really
necessary to believe both matter and mind to be eternal? No, must
be our answer. The law of parsimony of causes directly forbids the
belief, unless we can show that one cause is insufficient to explain
the universe. And that we cannot do. We can show that matter is
insufficient,--that it cannot account of itself even for the physical
universe,--but not that mind is insufficient, not that mind cannot
account for anything that is in matter. On what grounds can it be shown
that a mind possessed of sufficient power to originate the universe,
the ultimate elements of matter being given, could not also have
created these elements? that the Supreme Intelligence, which gave to
each sun, and planet, and satellite its size, and shape, and position,
and motion, could not have summoned into being their constituent
particles? On none whatever. We may not understand how they could be
created, but we have no reason for thinking that they could not be
created; and it is surely far easier and far more reasonable to believe
that they were created, than that a countless number of inconceivably
small indivisible particles of matter, lying far beyond the range of
any of our senses, but extending through immeasurable fields of space,
should all, inconceivably minute although they be, be self-existent
and eternal. The man who asks us to accept the latter supposition,
asks us, it seems to me, to believe what is not only as mysterious as
the self-existence of Deity, but millions of millions of times more
mysterious. I should require strong reasons for assigning infinitely
great attributes to excessively little things, and to an inconceivable
number of them; but I can in this instance find no reasons at all.
Then, in the third place, any plausible conceptions we can form of the
ultimate nature of matter lead to the belief that even that is an event
or effect, a something derivative and caused. It must be admitted that
the most plausible of these conceptions are vague and conjectural.
We have a practical and relative knowledge of matter which is both
exact and trustworthy,--a knowledge of its properties from which we
can mathematically deduce a multitude of remote consequences of an
extremely precise character--but we are hardly entitled to characterise
as knowledge at all any of the views which have been propounded as to
what it is in itself. It is only the unreflecting who fancy that matter
in itself is something very clear and obvious, which they may apprehend
by merely opening their eyes and stretching out their hands. Those
who have never reasoned on the subject are apt to imagine that the
nature of matter is of all things the easiest to understand, and they
unhesitatingly invest it with their own sensations and perceptions.
That is the so-called commonsense view of matter; but the slightest
inquiry proves it to be delusive and nonsensical. Colour, for example,
is just what is seen, and sound just what is heard; they are not
qualities inherent in objects independent of the eye and ear: the
matter which is supposed to cause by its motions on our senses these
and other perceptions of the material world, we cannot see, hear, or
apprehend by any sense. Change our senses and the universe will be
thereby changed, everything in it becoming something other than it was
before, green perhaps red, the bitter sweet, the loudest noise a gentle
whisper, the hardest substance soft. As soon, then, as we thoughtfully
ask ourselves, What is matter? we begin to discover that it is in
itself something utterly mysterious. The collection of phenomena which
we call its properties are quite unlike the phenomena of mind in this
most important respect, that whatever they may be they are not what
they appear to be. A state of mind is what we feel it to be; a state
of matter is certainly not what we seem to ourselves to perceive it
to be. No one, of course, knew all this better than Mr Mill. He, as a
philosopher, had asked himself what matter is; he had formed a theory
in answer to the question. And what is his theory? Just this,--that we
cannot find a permanent element in matter; that we have no right to
suppose that there is a permanent real existence or actual substance
in matter; that all that we are warranted to affirm about the ultimate
nature of matter is that it is a permanent possibility,--the permanent
possibility of sensations. That was the conclusion which he arrived at
when he theorised on matter without any theological aim. But he appears
to have forgotten it when he came to criticise the argument for a first
cause. He could not otherwise have written as if it were quite certain
that there was in matter "a permanent element," not an underlying
possibility but an inherent real substance. Had he remembered what his
own theory as to the nature of matter was, he would have avoided as
utterly untrue and misleading every expression which could suggest the
notion of there being a permanent element in matter, and would have
admitted that very probably the permanent possibilities of sensation,
the causes of all material phenomena, lay in the Divine will, since he
had been unable to find anything else permanent in which they could be
supposed to subsist. That is a view which many profound thinkers have
adopted. They have been led to hold that matter is essentially force,
and nothing but force; that the whole material world is ultimately
resolvable into forces; and that all its forces are but manifestations
or outgoings of will-force. If so, the whole material world is not
only dependent on, but _is_, the will of God, and has no being of any
kind apart from the will of God. If so, God's will is not only the
cause and controlling power of nature, but its substance, its self. And
this view, that what alone substantially underlies all the phenomena
we designate material is an acting mind, an energising will, has not
only been reached by mental philosophers and idealistic speculators,
but by those physicists who, like Boscovitch and Faraday, have found
themselves forced to conclude that what is constitutive of matter is
not indivisible particles, even infinitesimally small, but mere centres
of force, since force necessarily implies some sort of substance, and,
therefore, spirit where not matter.
But suppose the substratum of the universe to consist of a countless
number of inconceivably small indivisible particles of matter, and
do we not even on this hypothesis reach by a single step the truth
on which theism rests, and on which only theism can be based? "None
of the processes of nature," says one of the most eminent of our
physical philosophers, "since the time when nature began, have produced
the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule. We are
therefore unable to ascribe either the existence of the molecules or
the identity of their properties to the operation of any of the causes
which we call natural. On the other hand, the exact quality of each
molecule to all others of the same kind gives it, as Sir John Herschel
has well said, the essential character of a manufactured article, and
precludes the idea of its being eternal and self-existent. Thus we have
been led, along a strictly scientific path, very near to the point at
which science must stop. Not that science is debarred from studying the
external mechanism of a molecule which she cannot take to pieces, any
more than from investigating an organism which she cannot put together.
But, in tracing back the history of matter, science is arrested when
she assures herself, on the one hand, that the molecule has been made,
and on the other that it has not been made by any of the processes we
call natural."[16] I believe that no reply to these words of Professor
Clark Maxwell is possible from any one who holds the ordinary view of
scientific men as to the ultimate constitution of matter. They must
suppose every atom, every molecule, to be of such a nature, to be so
related to others, and to the universe generally, that things may be
such as we see them to be; but this their fitness to be built up into
the structure of the universe is a proof that they have been made fit,
and since natural forces could not have acted on them while not yet
existent, a supernatural power must have created them, and created them
with a view to their manifold uses. Every atom, every molecule, must
even in what is ultimate in it bear the impress of a Supernatural Power
and Wisdom; must, from the very nature of the case, reflect the glory
of God and proclaim its dependence upon Him.
[16] President's Address in Transactions of the British Association for
the Advancement of Science, 1870.
In like manner the latest speculation regarding the nature of
matter--the vortex-atom theory of Sir William Thomson--seems, so far
from having any tendency to exclude creative action, necessarily to
imply it. He supposes that the atoms may be small vortex-rings in the
ether, the rotating portions of a perfect fluid which fills all space.
But a perfect fluid can neither explain its own existence nor the
commencement of rotation in any part of it. Rotation once commenced
in a perfect or frictionless and incompressible fluid would continue
for ever, but it never could naturally commence. There is nothing
in a perfect fluid to account either for the origin or cessation of
rotation, and consequently nothing, on the vortex-atom hypothesis,
to account either for the production or destruction of an atom of
matter. The origin and cessation of rotation in fluids are due to their
imperfection, their internal friction, their viscosity. The origin
or cessation of rotation in a perfect fluid must be the effect of
supernatural action; in other words, every vortex-atom must owe the
rotation which gives it its individuality to a Divine impulse.
A theist has certainly no need, then, to be afraid of researches into
the ultimate nature of matter. Our knowledge thereof is exceedingly
small and imperfect, but all that we do know of it, all that we can
even rationally conceive of it, leads to the inference that it is not
self-existent, but the work of God. The farther research is pushed, the
more clearly, we may be assured, will this become apparent, for the
more wonderfully adapted will the ultimate constituents of matter be
found for assuming countless forms and composing countless objects--the
air, the land, the sea, and starry heavens, with all that in or on
them is. Research has already shown us reason to believe "that even
chemical atoms are very complicated structures; that an atom of pure
iron is probably a vastly more complicated system than that of the
planets and their satellites; that each constituent of a chemical atom
must go through an orbit in the millionth part of the twinkling of an
eye, in which it successively or simultaneously is under the influence
of many other constituents, or possibly comes into collision with them;
that each of these particles is, as Sir John Herschel has beautifully
said, for ever solving differential equations which, if written out
in full, might perhaps belt the earth."[17] Now, what does this mean,
if not that every ultimate atom of matter is full to the very heart
of it with evidences of the power and wisdom of God, and that every
particle of dust or drop of water is crowded with traces of the action
of the Divine Reason, not less marvellous, it may be, than those which
astronomy exhibits in the structure of the heavens and the evolutions
of the heavenly bodies? Those who hoped that molecular science would
help them to get rid of God have obviously made a profound mistake. It
has already shown far more clearly than ever was or could have been
anticipated, that every atom of matter points back beyond itself to the
all-originating will of God, and refuses to receive the idolatrous
homage of those who would put it in the place of God.
[17] See W. S. Jevons, Principles of Science, ii. 452, 453.
To these considerations it has to be added that some of our ablest
physicists believe that in the present age a strictly scientific proof
has been found of the position that the universe had a beginning in
time. "According to Sir W. Thomson's deductions from Fourier's Theory
of Heat, we can trace down the dissipation of heat by conduction
and radiation to an infinitely distant time when all things will
be uniformly cold. But we cannot similarly trace the heat-history
of the universe to an infinite distance in the past. For a certain
negative value of the time the formulæ give impossible values,
indicating that there was some initial distribution of heat which
could not have resulted, according to known laws of nature, from any
previous distribution. There are other cases in which a consideration
of the dissipation of energy leads to the conception of a limit to
the antiquity of the present order of things."[18] If this theory
be true, physical science, instead of giving any countenance to the
notion of matter having existed from eternity, distinctly teaches
that creation took place, that the present system of nature and its
laws originated at an approximately assignable date in the past. The
theory is supported by the most eminent physical philosophers of this
country, and if there be any oversight or error in the principles or
calculations on which it is founded, it would appear not to have been
as yet detected. It is a theory on which, however, only specialists
are entitled to pronounce judgment; and therefore, although those who
assume that matter was not created are bound to refute it, I do not
wish myself to lay any stress upon it--the more especially as I believe
that apart from it there is amply sufficient evidence for holding that
"Nature is but the name for an effect whose cause is God."[19]
[18] Jevons, Principles of Science, ii. 438.
[19] See Appendix XI.
II.
It seems to me, then, that the universe when examined must be concluded
to be throughout--from centre to circumference--alike in what is most
permanent and what is most changeable in it,--an event or effect,
and that its only adequate cause is a Supreme Intelligence. It is
only such a cause which is sufficient to explain the universe as we
know it, and that universe is what has to be explained. The assertion
of Kant that the principle of causality cannot take us beyond the
limits of the sensible world is only true if causality be confined to
strictly material events which display no signs of law and order, and
the progress of science is one long uninterrupted proof that no such
events are to be discovered; that it is hopeless to look for them; that
matter and its changes are ordained, arranged, adjusted phenomena. The
assertion of Kant is clearly false, if we are not to exclude from the
event anything which demands explanation; if we are to reason from the
universe itself and not from its name; if we are to infer a particular
cause from a knowledge of the nature of a given particular event.
This, the so-called concrete use of the principle of causality, is the
only use of it which is legitimate, the only use of it which is not
extremely childish.
The opposite--the absurd--notion that the principle of causality is
abstractly applied, has led some to argue that it leads legitimately
to nothing else than an infinite regress--an eternal succession of
causes and effects. But whatever it may lead to, it certainly does not
lead to that conclusion, and has never led any human being, either
legitimately or illegitimately, to that conclusion. Those even who
have maintained that the principle of causality cannot lead to a first
cause, to an eternal self-existent cause, but only to an eternal
succession of causes and effects, have all, without a single exception,
allowed themselves to be led by it to a first cause and not to an
eternal succession of causes. They have all believed what they say
they ought to have disbelieved; they have all disbelieved what they
say they ought to have believed. They have all accepted as true that
there is a first and self-existent cause, although some have supposed
it to be matter, some mind, some within the world, some without the
world. They have differed as to what it is, but not as to that it is.
None of them have adopted the conclusion to which they have said the
argument founded on causation logically leads. No man has ever adopted
that conclusion. The human mind universally and instantaneously rejects
it as inconceivable, unthinkable, self-contradictory, absurd. We may
believe either in a self-existent God or in a self-existent world, and
must believe in one or the other; we cannot believe in an infinite
regress of causes. The alternatives of a self-existent cause and an
infinite regress of causes are not, as some would represent, equally
credible alternatives. The one is an indubitable truth, the other is a
manifest absurdity. The one all men believe, the other no man believes.
This takes away, it seems to me, all force from the objection that the
argument founded on the principle of causality when it infers God as
the self-existent cause of the universe infers more than is strictly
warranted, a self-existent cause being something which does not in
itself fall under the principle of causality. That every event must
have a cause will be valid, it is said, for an endless series of
causes and effects; but if you stop, if you affirm the existence of
what is uncaused, of what is at once, as it were, cause and effect, you
may affirm what is true, but you affirm also what is independent of the
principle of causation. You claim more than your argument entitles you
to; you are not developing a logical conclusion, but concealing under a
term which seems to express the same idea what is really the vaulting
of the mind to a higher idea which cannot be expressed under the form
efficient cause at all.
Now, of course, a self-existent cause does not in itself come
completely under the law of causality. That law cannot inform us what
self-existence is. A self-existent cause, however, may be known as
well as any other cause by its effects. The mind may rise to it from
its effects. The principle of causality may lead up to it, although it
does not include within itself the proof of the self-existence of the
cause. It may at the last stage be attached to some other principle
which compels the affirmation of the self-existence of the cause
reached; in other words, the affirmation that the first cause is a
self-existent cause, may be a distinct mental act not necessitated by
the principle of causality itself. It may either be held that this
mental necessity is the reason why we cannot entertain the thought
of an infinite regress of causes, or that the incapacity of the mind
to regard the thought of an infinite regress of causes as other than
self-contradictory, is the explanation of its felt necessitation to
affirm a self-existent cause; in which latter case the principle
of causality really necessitates a belief in the ungenerated and
self-existent. Both of these views are plausible, and which of them is
true is an interesting subject of metaphysical investigation, but it is
one of no practical consequence in the inquiry on which we are engaged.
The principle of causality can lead us up from all things which have
on them the marks of having begun to be, and if we at length come to
something which bears no such marks, be it matter or be it mind, no
man can doubt, or does doubt, that something to be self-existent. This
difficulty about a self-existent cause not being able to be arrived
at by the principle of causality, will be worth attending to by the
theist when it is attended to by any one else,--when any atheist or
any anti-theist of any kind is prepared to deny that the last cause
in the order of knowledge, and the first in the order of existence,
must be a self-existent cause--but not until then; and it is mere
sophistry to represent it as of practical importance. Whenever we come
to an existence which we cannot regard as an effect or thing generated
in time, we, either in consequence of the very nature of the causal
judgment, or of some self-evident condition or conditions of knowledge
necessarily attached thereto, attribute to it self-existence and
eternity. We may dispute as to whether this is done in the one or the
other of these two ways, but that is a merely theoretical question;
that every one does, and must, as a reasonable being, do it, is what
no man disputes, or can dispute,--and this alone is of practical
consequence.
Another admission must be made by every man who reflects carefully
on the nature of causation. To say that the idea of cause can never
demand belief in an uncaused cause, sounds as self-evident; to say
that the idea of cause can find no satisfaction save in the belief of
an uncaused cause, sounds as a paradox; but let a man meditate for a
little with real thoughtfulness on the meaning of these two statements,
and he cannot fail to perceive that the former is an undeniable
falsehood, and the latter an undeniable truth. An uncaused cause, a
first cause, alone answers truly to the idea of a cause. A secondary
cause, in so far as secondary, in so far as caused, is not a cause. I
witness some event--some change. I am compelled as a rational being to
seek its cause. I reach it only to find that this cause was due to a
prior cause. What has happened? The cause from which I have had to go
back has ceased to be a cause; the cause to which I have had to go back
has become the cause of two effects, but it will remain so only if I am
not reasonably bound to seek a cause for _it_. If I am, its causality
must pass over to its explanatory antecedent. We may go back a hundred,
a thousand, a million times, but if the last cause reached be not truly
a first cause, an uncaused cause, the idea of cause in our mind will
be as unsatisfied at the end of our search as at the beginning, and
the whole process of investigation will be aimless and meaningless. A
true cause is one to which the reason not only moves but in which it
rests, and except in a first cause the mind cannot rest. A first cause,
however, is certainly not one which has been itself caused.
We are warranted, then, in looking upon the universe as an event or
effect, and we may be certain that it is not the last link of an
infinite chain of causes and effects, or of any series of causes and
effects, long or short, suspended upon nothing. No chain or series can
be, properly speaking, infinite, or without a first link or term. The
universe has a First Cause. And its First Cause, I must proceed to
remark, reason and observation alike lead us to believe must be one--a
single cause. When one First Cause is sufficient to explain all the
facts, it is contrary to reason to suppose another or several. We must
prove that no one First Cause could account for the universe before
we can be entitled to ascribe it to more causes than one. The First
Cause, we shall further see afterwards, must have attributes which no
two or more beings can be supposed to possess, which one being alone
can possess. Then the character of the effect itself refers us back
to a single cause. A belief in more gods than one not only finds no
support in the universe, but, as the very word universe indicates,
is contradicted by it. For, numerous and diverse as are the objects
in nature, they are so constituted and connected--so dependent on
and related to one another--as to compose a whole which exhibits a
marvellous unity in variety. Everything counteracts or balances or
assists something else, and thus all things proclaim their common
dependence on One Original. Co-ordinate things must all be derivative
and secondary, and all things in nature are co-ordinate parts of a
stupendous system. Each one of us knows, for example, that a few years
ago he was not, and that in a few years hence the place which knows him
now will know him no more; and each one of us has been often taught
by the failure of his plans, and the disappointment of his hopes, and
the vanity of his efforts, that there are stronger forces and more
important interests in the world than his own, and that he is in the
grasp of a Power which he cannot resist--which besets him behind and
before, and hems him in on all sides. When we extend our view, we
perceive that this is as true of others as of ourselves, and that it is
true even, in a measure, of all finite things. No man lives or dies to
himself; no object moves and acts absolutely from and for itself alone.
This reveals a single all-originating, all-pervading, all-sustaining
principle. These manifold mutually dependent existences imply one
independent existence. The limitations assigned to all individual
persons and things point to a Being which limits them all. Particular
causes and secondary movements lead back to "a cause of causes," "a
first mover, itself immovable, yet making all things else to move."
The first cause must be far more truly and properly a cause than any
secondary cause. In fact, as we have already seen, a secondary cause
is not strictly a cause; so far as secondary, it merely transmits to
its consequent what it has received from its antecedent. There may be
a succession of a thousand such causes in a process, yet the first
cause is also the last, and there is, in fact, all through, but one
cause; the others merely convey and communicate its force. A machine,
however numerous its parts and movements, does not create the least
amount of force; on the contrary, the most perfect machine wastes and
absorbs some of the force which is imparted to it. The universe, so far
as subject to mechanical laws, is merely a machine which transmits a
given quantity of force, but which no more creates it than it creates
itself. The author of that force is the one true cause of all physical
phenomena. Life is probably, and mind is certainly, not entirely
explicable on mechanical principles; but neither life nor mind can be
maintained to do more than to determine the direction or application of
the power implanted in them, or rendered accessible to them, through
the working of the first cause. All things must, consequently, "live,
move, and have their being" therein. It is at their end as well as
at their origin; it encompasses them, all round; it penetrates them,
all through. The least things are not merely linked on to it through
intermediate agencies which go back an enormous distance, but are
immediately present to it, and filled to the limit of their faculties
with its power. It is in every ray of sunlight, every breath of wind,
and blade of grass; it is the source and life of all human minds and
hearts. The pantheist errs not so much in what he affirms of it, as in
what he denies to it.
This cause--the cause of causes--must, it is further obvious, be in
possession of a power far beyond the comprehension of our reasons or
imaginations. All other power is derived from its power. All the power
which is distributed and distinguished in secondary causes must be
combined and united in the first cause. Now, think what an enormous
power there is displayed even in this world. In every half-ounce of
coal there is stored up power enough, if properly used, to draw two
tons a mile. How vast, then, the power which God has deposited in the
coal-beds of the world alone! The inhabitants of this little island,
by availing themselves of the natural forces which Providence has
placed at their disposal, annually accomplish more work than could by
any possibility be effected by the inhabitants of the whole earth, if
they exerted merely the power which is in their own bodies, the power
of human bones and muscles. And yet there can be little doubt that,
even in this country, we make no use at all of many natural agents,
and only a wasteful use of any of them. "Weigh the earth on which we
dwell," says an astronomer; "count the millions of its inhabitants
that have come and gone for the last six thousand years; unite their
strength into one arm; and test its power in an effort to move the
earth. It could not stir it a single foot in a thousand years; and yet,
under the omnipotent hand of God, not a minute passes that it does
not fly far more than a thousand miles." The earth, however, is but a
mere atom in the universe. Through the vast abysses of space there are
scattered countless systems, at enormous distances, yet all related;
glorious galaxies of suns, planets, satellites, comets, all sweeping
onwards in their appointed courses. How mighty the arm which impels
and guides the whole! God can do all that, for He continually does it.
How much more He could do than He does, we cannot know. The power of
no true cause, of no free cause, is to be measured by what it does.
It must be adequate to produce its actual effects, but it may be able
to produce countless merely possible effects. It has power over its
powers, and is not necessitated to do all that it is capable of doing.
It is difficult, perhaps, to show that the universe is not infinite. It
is obviously unreasonable and presumptuous to deny that the power of
its Author may be infinite. And yet we find men who do so. For example,
the late Mr John Stuart Mill, for no better reasons than that nature
sometimes drowns men, and burns them, and that childbirth is a painful
process, maintained that God could not possibly be infinite. I shall
not say what I think of the shallowness and self-conceit displayed in
such an argument. What it proves is not the finiteness of God, but the
littleness of a human intellect. The mind of man never shows itself
so small as when it tries to measure the attributes and limit the
greatness of its Creator.
A first cause, we have already seen, must be a free cause. It cannot
have been itself caused. It is absurd to look for it among effects.
But we never get out of the sphere of effects until we enter that of
free agency; until we emerge from the natural into the spiritual;
until we leave matter and reach mind. The first cause must, indeed,
be in--all through--the universe; but it must also be out of the
universe, anterior to, and above the universe. The idea of cause is
a delusion--the search for causes an inexplicable folly--if there be
no first cause, and if that first cause be not a free cause, a Will, a
Spirit, a Person. Those who object to the causation argument, that it
does not take us beyond the world--does not lead us up to a personal
cause of the world--have failed to apprehend what causation signifies.
Secondary causes may not be true causes, and yet reason be trustworthy,
for there is that behind them on which it can fall back; but if
there be no first cause, or if the first cause be not free, reason
is throughout a lie. Reason, if honest and consistent, cannot in its
pursuit of causes stop short of a rational will. That alone answers to
and satisfies its idea of a cause.
The most rapid glance at the universe powerfully confirms the
conclusion that its first cause can only be a Mind, a Reason. The
universe is a universe; that is to say, it is a whole, a unity, a
system. The first cause of it, therefore, in creating and sustaining
it, must comprehend, act on, and guide it as a systematic whole;
must have created all things with reference to each other; and must
continually direct them towards a preconceived goal. The complex and
harmonious constitution of the universe is the expression of a Divine
Idea, of a Creative Reason. This thought brings me to my next argument
and next lecture.[20]
[20] See Appendix XII.
LECTURE V.
THE ARGUMENT FROM ORDER.
I.
The prevalence of order in nature has already been referred to as
contributing to prove that the universe is an event, a generated
existence, a something which once began to be. It will now be brought
forward as in itself a manifestation of, and consequently a ground
for believing in, a Supreme Mind. Where order meets us, the natural
and immediate inference is that there is the work of intelligence.
And order meets us everywhere in the universe. It covers and pervades
the universe. It is obvious to the ordinary naked eye, and spreads
far beyond the range of disciplined vision when assisted by all the
instruments and appliances which science and art have been able to
invent. It is conspicuous alike in the architecture of the heavens
and the structure of a feather or a leaf. It goes back through all
the epochs of human history, and all the ages of geological and
astronomical time. It is the common work of all the sciences to
discover and explain the order in the universe. There is no true
science which is not constantly making new and fuller discoveries of
the order in nature,--the order within us and without us; not one
which is not ever increasingly establishing that in order all things
move and have their being. What is maintained by the theist is, that
this order, the proof of which is the grand achievement of science,
universally implies mind; that all relations of order--all laws and
uniformities--are evidences of an intelligent cause.
The order which science finds in nature may be described as either
general or special, although in strictness the difference between them
is only a difference of degree, the former being the more and the
latter the less general, or the former being the less and the latter
the more special. In what may be called general order, that which
strikes us chiefly is regularity; in what may be called special order,
that which chiefly strikes us is adaptation or adjustment. In inorganic
nature general order is the more conspicuous; in organic nature special
order. Astronomy discloses to us relations of number and proportion
so far-reaching that it almost seems as if nature were "a living
arithmetic in its development, a realised geometry in its repose."
Biology, on the other hand, impresses us by showing the delicacy and
subtlety of the adjustment of part to part, of part to whole, and
of whole to surroundings, in the organic world. There is, perhaps,
sufficient difference between these two kinds of order to warrant
their being viewed separately, and as each furnishing the basis of an
argument for the existence of God. The argument from regularity has
sometimes been kept apart from the argument from adjustment. The former
infers the universe to be an effect of mind because it is characterised
by proportion or harmony, which is held to be only explicable by the
operation of mind. The latter draws the same inference because the
universe contains countless complex wholes, of which the parts are
so collocated and combined as to co-operate with one another in the
attainment of certain results; and this, it is contended, implies an
intelligent purpose in the primary cause of these things.
While we may readily admit the distinction to be so far valid, it is
certainly not absolute. Regularity and adjustment are rather different
aspects of order than different kinds of order, and, so far from
excluding each other, they will be found implying each other. It is
obvious that even the most specialised adjustments of organic structure
and activity presuppose the most general and simple uniformities of
purely physical nature. Such cases of adjustment comprehend in fact
many cases of regularity. It is less obvious, but not less true, that
wherever regularity can be traced adjustment will also be found, if the
search be carried far enough. The regularity disclosed by astronomy
depends on adjustment as regards magnitude, weight, distance, &c.,
in the celestial bodies, just as the adjustments brought to light by
biology depend on the general regularity of the course of nature. There
is no law of nature so simple as not to presuppose in every instance
of its action at least two things related to one another in the manner
which is meant when we speak of adjustment. It being thus impossible
to separate regularity from adjustment as regards the phenomena of the
universe, it seems unnecessary to attempt by abstraction to separate
them in the theological argumentation, while giving a rapid general
glance at the phenomena which display them.
The physical universe has, perhaps, no more general characteristic than
this,--its laws are mathematical relations. The law of gravitation,
which rules all masses of matter, great or small, heavy or light,
at all distances, is a definite numerical law. The curves which
the heavenly bodies describe under the influence of that law are
the ellipse, circle, parabola, and hyperbola--or, in other words,
they all belong to the class of curves called conic sections, the
properties of which mathematicians had begun to investigate nearly
twenty centuries before Newton established that whatever was true
of them might be directly transferred to the heavens, since the
planets revolve in ellipses, the satellites of Jupiter in circles,
and the comets in elliptical, parabolic, and hyperbolic orbits. The
law of chemical combination, through which the whole world of matter
has been built up out of a few elements, always admits of precise
numerical expression. So does the law of the correlation of heat and
gravitation. Each colour in the rainbow is due to a certain number of
vibrations in a given time; so is each note in the scale of harmony.
Each crystal is a geometrical construction. The pistils of flowers,
and the feathers in the wings and tails of birds, are all numbered.
If nature had not thus been ruled by numerical laws, the mathematical
sciences might have existed, but they would have had no other use than
to exercise the intellect, whereas they have been the great instruments
of physical investigation. They are the creations of a mental power
which, while occupied in their origination and elaboration, requires
to borrow little, if anything, from matter; and yet, it is only with
their help that the constitution of the material universe has been
displayed, and its laws have been discovered, with that high measure
of success of which physicists are so proud. But they could not have
been applied to the universe at all unless its order had been of the
exact numerical and geometrical kind which has been indicated; unless
masses had attracted each other, and elements combined with each
other, in invariable proportions; unless "the waters had been measured
as if in the hollow of a hand, the heaven meted out as with a span,
the dust of the earth comprehended in a measure, and the mountains
weighed in scales and the hills in a balance." Now it is possible to
deny that things have been thus weighed, measured, and numbered by a
Creative Intelligence, but not that they have been weighed, measured,
and numbered. If we are to give any credit to science, there can be
no doubt about the weights and measures and numbers. This question,
then, is alone left,--Could anything else than intelligence thus weigh,
measure, and number? Could mere matter know the abstrusest properties
of space and time and number, so as to obey them in the wondrous way
it does? Could what has taken so much mathematical knowledge and
research to apprehend, have originated with what was wholly ignorant
of all quantitative relations? Or must not the order of the universe
be due to a mind whose thoughts as to these relations are high above
even those of the profoundest mathematicians, as are the heavens above
the earth? If the universe were created by an intelligence conversant
with quantitative truth, it is easy to understand why it should be
ruled by definitely quantitative laws; but that there should be such
laws in a universe which did not originate in intelligence, is not
only inexplicable but inconceivably improbable. There is not merely in
that case no discoverable reason why there should be any numerically
definite law in nature, but the probability of there being no law
or numerical regularity of any kind is exceedingly great, and of
there being no law-governed universe incalculably great. Apart from
the supposition of a Supreme Intelligence, the chances in favour of
disorder against order, of chaos against cosmos, of the numerically
indefinite and inconstant against the definite and constant, must be
pronounced all but infinite. The belief in a Divine Reason is alone
capable of rendering rational the fact that mathematical truths are
realised in the material world.[21]
[21] See Appendix XIII.
The celestial bodies were among the earliest objects of science, and
before there was any science they stimulated religious thought and
awakened religious feeling. The sun and moon have given rise to so
extraordinary a number of myths that some authors have referred to them
the whole of heathen mythology. There can be little doubt that the
growth of astronomical knowledge contributed greatly to bring about
the transition from polytheism to monotheism, and that so soon as the
heavens were clearly understood to be subject to law, and the countless
bodies which circle in them not to be independent agents but parts or
members of a single mechanical or organic system, the triumph of the
latter was for ever secured. No science, indeed, has hitherto had so
much influence on man's religious beliefs as astronomy, although there
may now appear to be indications that chemistry and biology will rival
it in this respect in the future. And it has been thus influential
chiefly because through its whole history it has been a continuous,
conspicuous, and ever-advancing, ever-expanding demonstration of a
reign of law on the most magnificent scale,--a demonstration begun when
with unassisted vision men first attempted roughly to distribute the
stars into groups or constellations, and far from yet ended when the
same laws of gravitation, light, heat, and chemical combination which
rule on earth have been proved to rule on orbs so distant that their
rays do not reach us in a thousand years. The system of which our earth
is a member is vast, varied, and orderly, the planets and satellites
of which it is composed being so adjusted as regards magnitude and
mass, distance, rate, and plane of direction, &c., that the whole is
stable and secure, while part ministers to part as organ to organ in
an animal body. Our own planet, for example, is so related to the sun
and moon that seed-time and harvest never fail, and the ebb and flow
of the tides never deceive us. And the solar system is but one of
hundreds of millions of systems, some of which are incalculably larger
than it, yet the countless millions of suns and stars thus "profusely
scattered o'er the void immense" are so arranged and distributed in
relation to one another and in accordance with the requirements of the
profoundest mathematics as to secure the safety of one and all, and to
produce everywhere harmony and beauty. Each orb is affecting the orbit
of every other--each is doing what, if unchecked, would destroy itself
and the entire system--but so wondrously is the whole constructed
that these seemingly dangerous disturbances are the very means of
preventing destruction and securing the universal welfare, being due to
reciprocally compensating forces which in given times exactly balance
one another. Is it, I ask, to be held as evidence of the power of
the human mind that it should have been able after many centuries of
combined and continuous exertion to compute with approximate accuracy
the paths and perturbations of the planets which circle round our
sun and the returns of a few comets, but as no evidence even of the
existence of mind in the First Cause of things that the paths and
perturbations of millions on millions of suns and planets and comets
should have been determined with perfect precision for all the ages
past and future of their existence, so that, multitudinous as they
are, each proceeds safely on its destined way, and all united form a
glorious harmony of structure and motion?[22]
[22] See Appendix XIV.
A much more recent science than astronomy, the science of chemistry,
undertakes to instruct us as to the composition of the universe, and it
is marvellous how much it can tell us even of the composition of the
stars. What, then, is its most general and certain result? Just this,
that order of the strictest kind, the most definite proportions, are
wrought into the very structure of every world, and of every compound
object in the world, air and water, earth and mineral, plant and
animal. The vast variety of visible substances are reducible to rather
more than sixty constituent elements, each of which has not only its
own peculiar properties but its own definite and unvarying combining
proportions with other elements, so that amidst the prodigious number
of combinations all is strictly ordered, numerically exact. There is no
chemical union possible except when the elements bear to each other a
numerically constant ratio. Different compounds are always the products
of the combination of the elements in different yet strictly definite
proportions, there being no intermediate combinations, no transitional
compounds. If each element did not admit of union with many others, the
world would be dead and poor, its contents few and unvaried; if their
unions were not always regulated by law, disorder would everywhere
prevail. How comes it that they are so made in relation to one another
that their manifold unions are ever regulated by law, and generate an
endless variety of admirable products? Who made them thus? Did they
make themselves? or, did any blind force make them? Reason answers
that they must have been made by an intelligence which wanted them
for its purposes. When the proportions of the elementary constituents
are altered, the same elements produce the most diverse substances
with the most dissimilar and even opposite properties, charcoal and
diamond, a deadly poison or the breath of life, theine or strychnine.
These powers all work together for good; but if they worked even a
very little differently--if the circumstances in which they work, not
to speak of the laws by which they work, were altered--they would
spread destruction and death through the universe. The atmosphere is
rather a mixture than a combination of chemical elements, but it is a
mixture in which the constituents are proportioned to each other in
the only way which fits it to sustain the lives of plants and animals,
and to accomplish its many other important services; and wonderful in
the extreme is the provision made for the constant restoration of
the due proportions amidst perpetual oscillations. One of the chiefs
of modern chemistry, Baron Liebig, points to what takes place when
rain falls on the soil of a field adapted for vegetable growth as to
something which "effectually strikes all human wisdom dumb." "During
the filtration of rain-water," he says, "through the soil, the earth
does not surrender one particle of all the nutritive matter which it
contains available for vegetable growth (such as potash, silicic acid,
ammonia, &c.); the most unintermittent rain is unable to abstract
from it (except by the mechanical action of floods) any of the chief
requisites for its fertility. The particles of mould not only firmly
retain all matter nutritive to vegetable growth, but also immediately
absorb such as are contained in the rain-water (ammonia, potash, &c.).
But only such substances are _completely_ absorbed from the water as
are indispensable requisites for vegetable growth; others remain either
entirely or for the most part in a state of solution." The laws and
uses of light and heat, electricity and magnetism, and the adjustments
which they presuppose, all point not less clearly to the ordinances
of a supremely profound and accurate mind. In a word, out of a few
elements endowed with definite powers, this world with its air and its
seas, its hills and valleys, its vegetable forms and animal frames,
and other worlds innumerable, have been built up by long-sustained
and endlessly-varied processes of chemical synthesis mostly conducted
under conditions so delicately adjusted to the requirements of each
case, that the ablest chemists, with all their instruments and
artifices, cannot even reproduce them on any scale however small. Can
these elements be reasonably thought of as having been unfashioned
and unprepared, or these processes as having been uninstituted and
unpresided over by intelligence?[23]
[23] See Appendix XV.
The sciences of geology and palæontology disclose to us the history of
our earth and of its vegetable and animal organisms. They prove that
for countless ages, that from the inconceivably remote period of the
deposition of the Laurentian rocks, light and heat, air and moisture,
land and sea, and all general physical forces have been so arranged and
co-ordinated as to produce and maintain a state of things which secured
during all these countless ages life and health and pleasure for the
countless millions of individuals contained in the multitude of species
of creatures which have contemporaneously or successively peopled the
earth. The sea, with its winds and waves, its streams and currents,
its salts, its flora and fauna, teems with adaptations no less than
the land. Probably no one has studied it with more care or to more
purpose than Lieutenant Maury, and his well-known work on its physical
geography proceeds throughout on the principle that "he who would
understand its phenomena must cease to regard it as a waste of waters,
and view it as the expression of One Thought, a unity with harmonies
which One Intelligence, and One Intelligence alone, could utter;" while
many of its pages might appropriately be read as a commentary on these
lines of Wordsworth,--
"Huge ocean shows, within his yellow strand,
A habitation marvellously planned,
For life to occupy in love and rest."
The sciences referred to certify further, that as regards the various
forms of life there has been from the time when it can be first traced
to the present day "advance and progress in the main," and that the
history of the earth corresponds throughout with the history of life
on the earth, while each age prepares for the coming of another better
than itself. But advance and progress presuppose intelligence, because
they cannot be rationally conceived of apart from an ideal goal
foreseen and selected. Volumes might be written to show how subtly and
accurately external nature is adjusted to the requirements of vegetable
and animal life, and how vegetable and animal life are inter-related;
nay, even on how well the earth is fitted for the development and
happiness of man. Think of the innumerable points of contact and
connection, for example, between physical geography and political
economy, which all indicate so many harmonies between the earth and
man's economical condition, capacities, and history.[24]
[24] See Appendix XVI.
The vegetable and animal kingdoms viewed generally, are also striking
instances of unity of plan, of progressive order, of elaborately
adjusted system. There are general principles of structure and general
laws of development common to all organisms, constituting a plan of
organisation capable of almost infinite variation, which underlies
all the genera and orders of living creatures, vegetable and animal.
It comprehends a number of subordinate plans which involve very
abstract conceptions, and which even the ablest naturalists still
very imperfectly comprehend. These higher plans would probably never
have been thought of but for the detection of the numerous phenomena
which seemed on a superficial view irreconcilable with the idea of
purpose in creation. Just as it was those so-called "disturbances"
in the planetary orbits, which appeared at first to point to some
disorder and error in the construction of the sidereal system, that
prompted Lagrange to the investigations which resulted in establishing
that the order of the heavens was of a sublimer and more remarkable
character than had been imagined, essentially including these
apparent disturbances, so it has been the seeming exceptions to plan
which are witnessed in rudimentary and aborted organs (such as the
wing-bones in wingless birds, the finger-bones in horses, the legs
below the skin in serpents, the teeth which never cut the gums in
whales, &c.), that have indicated to modern biologists a unity of
organisation far more comprehensive and wonderful than had previously
been suspected. The larger and more ideal order thus brought to light
as ruling in the organic world is one which could only have originated
in a mind of unspeakable power and perfection. And it not only thus
testifies directly of itself in favour of a Divine Intelligence, but
the recognition of it, while correcting in some respects earlier
conceptions as to the place of utility in nature, far from proving
that utility has been disregarded or sacrificed, shows that each organ
has been formed, not only with reference to its actual use in a given
individual or species, but to the capacity of being applied to use in
countless other individuals and species.[25]
[25] See Appendix XVII.
When we enter into the examination of organisation in itself,
adjustment becomes still more obvious in the processes of growth,
reproduction, fructification, &c., in plants and animals, and in the
provisions for locomotion, for securing food and shelter, for sight,
hearing, &c., in the latter. The great physician, Sir Charles Bell,
devoted a whole treatise to point out those which are to be found
in the hand alone. The arrangement of bones, muscles, joints, and
other parts in the limb of a tiger or the wing of an eagle are not
less admirable. The eye and ear are singularly exquisite structures,
the former being far the most perfect of optical, and the latter far
the most perfect of acoustic instruments. Instances of this sort
are, indeed, so remarkable, and so irresistibly convincing to most
minds, that some theists have consented to rest on them exclusively
the inference of a designing intelligence. They would grant that
the evidences of purpose are only to be traced in organisation. The
limitation is inconsistent and untenable, but not inexplicable. The
adjustment of parts to one another, and their co-ordination as means
to an end, are not more certainly existent in fitting the eye to see
and the ear to hear than in securing the stability of the solar system,
but they are more obviously visible because compressed into a compass
easily grasped and surveyed; because organ and function are the most
specialised kinds of means and ends; because organisms are the most
curiously and conspicuously elaborate examples of order. And as the
telescope can show us no end of the simple and majestic order of the
heavens, so the microscope can show us no end of the exquisite and
impressive order which discloses even--
"In Nature's most minute design,
The signature and stamp of power divine;
Contrivance intricate, expressed with ease,
Where unassisted sight no beauty sees.
The shapely limb and lubricated joint
Within the small dimensions of a point;
Muscle and nerve miraculously spun,
His mighty work, who speaks and it is done.
The Invisible, in things scarce seen revealed,
To whom an atom is an ample field."--(COWPER.)[26]
[26] See Appendix XVIII.
The traces of a Supreme Reason crowd still more upon the vision when we
come to the human mind,--
"The varied scene of quick-compounded thought,
And where the mixing passions endless shift."
--(THOMSON.)
The mere existence of originated minds necessarily implies the
existence of an unoriginated mind. "What can be more absurd," asks
Montesquieu, "than to imagine that a blind fatalistic force has
produced intelligent beings?" The complicated and refined adjustments
of the body to the mind, and of the mind to the body, are so numerous
and interesting that their study has now become the task of a special
class of scientific men. A very little disorder in the organisation
of the brain--such as even microscopic _post-mortem_ examination may
fail to detect--suffices to cause hallucinations of the senses, to
shake intellect from its throne, to paralyse the will, and to corrupt
the sentiments and affections. How precise and skilful must the
adjustment be between the sound brain and sane mind! Who sufficiently
realises the mystery of wisdom which lies in the familiar fact that
the mind, by merely willing to use the members of the body, sets in
motion instantaneously and unconsciously, without effort and without
failure, cords and pulleys and levers, joints and muscles, of which
it only vaguely, if at all, surmises the existence? The laws of our
various appetencies, affections, and emotions, and their relations to
their special ends or objects, the nature of the several intellectual
faculties and their subservience to mental culture, and still more the
general constitution of the mind as a system consisting of a multitude
of powers under the government of reason and conscience, present to us
vast fields filled with the evidences of Divine Wisdom.[27]
[27] See Appendix XIX.
There are others no less extensive and inexhaustible in the principles
which underlie and maintain human society, and those which preside
over the progressive development of humanity. Political economy is
the department of social science which has been cultivated with most
success. What, then, is its most comprehensive and best established
theorem? This--that although the great majority of men are moved
mainly by self-interest, and few seek with much zeal or persistency
the general good, the result of their being left in perfect freedom to
pursue their own advantage, so long as they do not outwardly violate
the rules of justice, is far better for the whole society than if
they conformed their conduct to any plan which human wisdom, aiming
directly at the general good, could devise; nature having provided in
the principles of the human constitution and the circumstances of human
life for the selfish plans and passions of individuals so neutralising
one another, so counteracting and counterpoising one another, as to
secure the social stability and welfare--as to leave general ideas and
interests to rule with comparatively little resistance. It is surely
a natural inference from this that a Supreme Reason grasps all human
reasons, and uses them in order to realise a purpose grander and better
than any which they themselves contemplate. History viewed as a whole
teaches the same truth on a wider scale. An examination of it discloses
a plan pervading human affairs from the origin of man until the present
day--a progress which has proceeded without break or stoppage, in
accordance with laws which are as yet very imperfectly apprehended. Of
the countless generations which have come and gone like the leaves of
the forest, for unknown thousands of years, few have had the slightest
glimpse of the order which connected them with their fellows, and
embraced their every action; fewer still have sought to conform to it;
the immense majority have set before them only mean and narrow schemes
for personal good; all passions have raged and all vices prevailed
in their turn; there have been confusion and tumult and war; and yet
the order, progress, plan I speak of have been slowly and silently
but surely built up. In this evolution of order out of the chaos of
millions on millions of conflicting human wills seeking merely their
own pleasure, there is, perhaps, even a more impressive proof of the
operation of Divine Wisdom than in the origination and preservation
of order among the multitudinous stars of heaven. The philosophical
historian who has most conclusively shown by the scrutiny of the chief
events in the annals of humanity the existence of such a progressive
plan, is amply justified in arguing that it cannot have originated
with man, or matter, or chance, but must be the work of God. "We have
passed in review," he says, "all the theories imagined by philosophers
and historians to explain the mysterious fact that there is in the life
of man unfolded in history a succession, a plan, a development, which
cannot be referred to man himself. Some, despairing from the outset to
find a solution, make of their ignorance a blind power which they call
hazard. Evidently that is no solution. Hazard is a word, and nothing
more. Other writers--the majority of writers--say that this mysterious
power is nature, under the form of climate, or races, or the whole
of the physical influences which act on the moral world. But what is
nature? Whence has it this power, this foresight, this intelligence,
which are so conspicuous in the course of our destinies? If nature
is matter, and nothing but matter, that too is no answer. Who will
believe that matter acts with wisdom--with intelligence? Where there is
intelligent action there must be an intelligent being; therefore nature
leads us to God. Finally, there are those who substitute for nature
general laws. But do not laws suppose a legislator? and who can this
legislator be, if not God?"[28]
[28] See Appendix XX.
There is, then, everywhere, both in the physical and moral worlds,
order and adaptation, proportion and co-ordination, and there is very
widely present progress--order which advances in a certain direction
to a certain end, which is until realised only an ideal. This is the
state of things which science discloses. The question is, Is this
state of things intelligible on any other supposition than that of
a designing mind? The theist holds that it is not; that it directly
and imperatively demands an intelligent cause; that to assign it
either to no cause, or to any other than an intelligent cause, is,
in the strictest and strongest sense of the term, absurd. If we
deny that there is such order as I have indicated, we set aside the
entire teaching of all the sciences--we pronounce science to be from
beginning to end a delusion and a lie. Men in the present day dare not
do this. If we deny that such order implies the agency of a Supreme
Intelligence, we contradict no express declaration of any of the
sciences; we may accept all that they have to tell us about order, and
they can tell us about nothing else. But notwithstanding this, it is
far more reasonable, far less absurd, to deny that there is order in
the universe, than to admit it and deny that its ultimate cause is an
intelligence. Further, although we cannot be more certain of the cause
than of the effect from which it is inferred, and consequently cannot
be more certain that an intelligence has produced the order which is in
the universe than that there is order therein, the theistic inference
from the whole of that order may well be greatly stronger than the
scientific proof of order in any particular instance. Men of science
have probably never as good reasons for believing in the laws of order
brought to light by their own special science, as the theist has for
believing in a Supreme Intelligence because of the order which is the
common and concurrent result of all the sciences, and which is obvious
to every eye.
II.
The argument from order and adaptation is often spoken of as "the
argument from design." The phrase is an unfortunate one. The argument
is not _from_ but _to_ design. To assume design and then to affirm
that "every design must have a designer," is manifestly not serious
reasoning, but a play upon words. To assume design at all is to
assume precisely what one is most bound to prove; and to assume
design in the universe is to assume what cannot be proved, yea, what
the theist requires to show against the pantheist cannot be proved.
In any other than a very loose and metaphorical sense design has no
existence except in mind. There is no design in the sky, or the sea,
or the land; there are only law, order, and arrangement therein, and
these things are not designs although they imply designs. What we can
describe as the designs of the lower animals are given to them with
their constitutions, and are only a part of the instrumentality which
fits them for their place in the world. Men have designs properly so
called; but the argument for the existence of God from the evidences
of a Supreme Wisdom in the progressive evolution of human history,
instead of resting on these designs, is based on the fact that what
has actually been realised has far transcended them. Science as a
mere exposition of the facts of the universe can never show us Divine
design, for the good reason that there is no such design in these
facts, although, had it not existed elsewhere, they could never have
been what they are. While this is true, it must in justice be added
that most if not all of the advocates of theism who have presented
the argument under consideration in the faulty form,--"Design implies
a designer; the universe abounds in design; therefore the universe,
so far as it abounds in design, implies a designer,"--have erred more
in expression than in thought. In reality they have not meant by
design what is properly so called, and consequently have not begun
their argument by assuming what was denied and in need of proof. In
reality they have meant by design those characteristics of things
which they hold to be the indications or evidences or correlatives of
intelligence, and which they might have designated by such terms as
order, adjustment, adaptation, fitness, progress, &c. All attempts
to refute their reasoning, therefore, by a strict and literal
interpretation of the phrase "Design implies a designer," must be
pronounced unfair. Censure of the phrase is warranted. Rejection of the
argument on account of the phrase is superficial and unjust.
It has been held that the argument from order and adaptation is
essentially different from the design argument. The reason given for
this has been that the design argument is based on the analogy or
supposed analogy between the works of nature and the products of human
art. In this argument, we are told, we infer from the likeness which
certain natural objects bear to artificial objects that there must be
a likeness in their causes. We know, it is said, that only intelligent
beings frame such structures as houses, ships, and watches, and seeing
that there is in the mechanism of the heavens, the circulation of the
blood, and the construction of the eye, arrangements and adjustments
of a similar kind, we conclude that they also must have been framed
by an intelligent being, who must be as much greater than man as the
works of nature are greater than the works of art, for causes are
proportional to their effects. Now this may be the design argument
as some have presented it who had no particular wish to criticise it
severely, and it certainly is the way in which Hume and Kant wished
it to be presented; but it has no claim whatever to be considered the
only proper form of the argument, and is, in fact, a very bad form of
it. It is true that there is an analogy between the works of nature
and the works of art, and that on the strength of this analogy the two
classes of works, and also their causes, may be compared, but not true
that the design argument when correctly stated either rests on such
analogy or implies such comparison. The analogy and comparison may be
drawn into, and, as it were, incorporated with the design argument,
but that is rather as a means of illustration than as a condition of
inference. When we infer from an examination of their construction
that the eye and the ear have been designed by an intelligent being,
we are no more dependent on our knowledge that a watch or a telescope
has been designed by an intelligent being than we are dependent on
our knowledge of the eye and ear being the products of intelligence
when we infer that the watch and the telescope are the products of
intelligence. There is an inference in both cases, and an inference
of precisely the same nature in both cases. It is as direct and
independent when the transition is to God from His works as when to
our fellow-men from their works. We are greatly mistaken if we suppose
that we have an immediate knowledge of the intelligence of the beings
who make watches, houses, and ships; we only know that the beings who
make these things are intelligent because such things could not be made
without intelligence: in a word, we only know our fellow-creatures to
be intelligent beings because they utter and arrange sounds so as to
convey a meaning, execute movements which tend to an end, and construct
machines. We have no more a direct perception or a personal experience
of the intelligence of our fellow-men than we have of the intelligence
of God. The mind which has given origin to the order and adjustments
of the universe is not more absolutely inaccessible to sense and
self-consciousness than the mind which gives origin to the order and
adjustments of a watch. It is therefore impossible that our knowledge
of the former should be dependent on our knowledge of the latter. In
both cases the knowledge is inferential,--in both cases it is dependent
on the immediate consciousness of intelligence in ourselves,--but the
inference is in the former case neither longer nor less legitimate than
in the latter. We deny, then, that there is any truth in the statement
that the design argument rests on the analogy between the works of
nature and the products of art It rests directly on the character
of the works of nature as displaying order and adjustment. It is
essentially identical with the argument which we have expounded.
It is not less objectionable to speak of the argument from order and
adaptation as being an argument from final causes than to speak of it
as being an argument from design, unless the different significations
of final cause be distinguished, and those which are irrelevant and
illegitimate be excluded. For the expression "final cause" has various
significations which are indeed intimately related, yet which cannot
be employed indifferently without leading to utter confusion. These
significations may be distributed into two classes. Each class contains
three significations, and every signification of the first class has
a signification of the second class to correspond to it. In fact,
the significations of the first class are simply so many aspects of
order or adaptation, and those of the second class so many aspects of
design or intention; the former are order and adaptation viewed with
reference to the intrinsic, the extrinsic, and the ultimate ends of
things, and the latter are design and intention viewed with reference
to the same three ends. Final cause sometimes means the intrinsic
end of what is orderly and adjusted, the realisation of the nature
of anything which is considered as a whole, a complex of order and
adjustment. The combined stability and movement of the solar system
is in this sense the final cause of the arrangements by which that
result is secured. Sight is in this sense the final cause of the eye,
because in sight the true nature of the eye manifests itself. Then,
final cause sometimes means not the intrinsic but the extrinsic end of
what is orderly and adjusted; not merely the realisation of the nature
of anything, but its relationship to other things, its adaptations to
their requirements, its uses; not merely the end of an arrangement
regarded as a self-contained or completed whole, but the end or
ends which it serves as a system surrounded by, connected with, and
included in other systems. It is impossible to admit final cause in
the sense of intrinsic end and to deny it in that of extrinsic end;
for the universe is not a mere aggregate of systems placed alongside
of one another, but otherwise unconnected--it is itself a system
composed of an infinity of systems within systems. Nothing in nature
stands alone; nothing lives to itself nor dies to itself. What is a
whole with reference to something smaller than itself, is a part with
reference to something larger than itself. The eye is a whole with
reference to its own cords, lenses, fluids, and membranes, but it is a
part with reference to the body; sight is therefore not more certainly
its end than the uses of sight How can a man admit final cause to be
involved in the relationship between his stomach and bodily life, but
deny it to be involved in the relationship between his stomach and the
vegetable and animal substances with which he satisfies its cravings?
Clearly the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic ends is a
narrow one, and exists not so much in the nature of things as in our
way of looking at things. We have but to elevate and extend our own
view, and what was before an extrinsic end is thereby changed into an
intrinsic end. Admit, in fact, final cause anywhere, and you must admit
it everywhere; admit anything to have an end, and you must admit all
things to have an end; for the world is a grand and wondrous unity
in which all objects depend on and serve one another, and all forces
contribute to the attainment of a single comprehensive issue. Once
accept the principle of finality, and there is no consistent stopping
short of the conviction of Aristotle, that on it hang the whole heavens
and earth.
It is only when the word final cause is used in one or other of these
two senses that we can with any propriety speak of reasoning from
final causes to the existence of God. And these are just the senses
in which the expression is now least used. Final cause is generally
employed at present to signify design. It means, not the arrangement
of causes and effects into systematic unities, the parts of which have
definite relations to one another and a common issue, or the adaptation
of these unities to support and serve one another, but purpose or
intention in the Divine Mind with respect to such arrangement or
adaptation. This sense of the word is so obviously general enough to
refer both to intrinsic and extrinsic ends that it would be unnecessary
to direct attention to the fact, were it not that we are much more
apt to fall into error regarding extrinsic than intrinsic ends, and
consequently, regarding the intention or purpose which refers to them.
A thing has just one intrinsic end--namely, the single conspicuous
and all-comprehensive function or issue in virtue of which we can
regard it as being a whole or unity, and as possessed of a certain
relative independence or completeness. There is thus comparatively
little possibility of error in determining what the intrinsic end is
in a given instance, and comparatively little danger of presumption
in affirming it to have been the end contemplated by the Divine
Mind. There is no doubt, for example, that the eye is an instrument
constructed in a way calculated to attain the intrinsic end--sight; and
there can be no presumption in affirming that God must have had that
end in view in the construction of the eye. If there be a God, and if
He have had anything to do with the making of the eye, He must have
designed that His creatures should see with their eyes. It is different
with extrinsic ends. A thing has never merely one extrinsic end; it
has always a multitude of extrinsic ends, for it is always related to
a multitude of other things. If we would speak of the extrinsic end
of a thing we must mean thereby the whole of its adaptations to other
things, the entire circle of its external relationships, the sum of
its uses. But men have always shown themselves prone in judging of the
extrinsic ends of things to single out some particular adaptation or
use, or at least a few adaptations or uses, and to ignore or exclude
all others. And especially have they shown themselves prone to judge
of things merely from their relationship and utility to themselves, as
if their happiness was the chief if not sole end of all things. This
is, of course, an utterly erroneous method of judging, and necessarily
leads to ridiculous thoughts about things, and to irreverent thoughts
about God's designs in the creation of things. "It can," as Hegel tells
us, "truly profit neither religion nor science, if, after considering
the vine with reference to the well-known uses which it confers upon
man, we proceed to consider the cork-tree with reference to the corks
which are cut from its bark to serve as stoppers for wine-bottles."
When we affirm, then, that final causes in the sense of intrinsic ends
are in things, we affirm merely that things are systematic unities, the
parts of which are definitely related to one another and co-ordinated
to a common issue; and when we affirm that final causes in the sense
of extrinsic ends are in things, we affirm merely that things are not
isolated and independent systems, but systems definitely related to
other systems, and so adjusted as to be parts or components of higher
systems, and means to issues more comprehensive than their own. We
cannot affirm that final causes in the sense of designs are in things;
they can only exist in a mind. What do we mean when we hold that final
causes in this sense truly are in the Divine Mind, and with reference
equally to intrinsic and extrinsic ends? Merely that such order and
adjustment as may actually be seen in things and between things--seen
with the naked eye it may be, or only to be seen through the telescope
or microscope--or which, if they cannot be seen, yet can by scientific
induction be proved to be in and between things,--that that order and
adjustment which actually exist, were intended or designed by God to
exist. Of course every theist who sees evidences of God's existence in
the harmonies of nature, must necessarily rise to final causes in this
sense from final causes in the other senses which have been indicated;
he must pass from material arrangements to the Divine Intelligence
which he believes to be manifested by them. And there can be no shadow
of presumption in any theist searching for final causes--Divine
designs--in this sense and to this extent. What Descartes and others
have said against doing so, on the ground that it is arrogant for a man
to suppose he can investigate the ends contemplated by the Deity--can
penetrate into the counsels of Divine Wisdom--has manifestly no force
or relevancy, so long as all that is maintained is that the order
which actually exists was meant to exist. The doubt or denial of that
is irreverent. To admit the existence of God, and yet to refuse to
acknowledge that He purposed and planned the adaptations and harmonies
in nature, is surely as presumptuous as it is inconsistent. To assume
that God is ignorant of the constitution and character of the universe,
and has had no share in the contrivance and management of it, is to
degrade Him to the level of the dream-and-dread-begotten gods of
Democritus and Epicurus. Better not to think of God at all, than to
think of Him in such a way.
The final cause of a thing, however, may mean, and with reference
both to adjustment and design, neither its intrinsic nor extrinsic,
but its ultimate end. It may mean, not merely that a thing is and
was intended to be the mechanism or organism which science analyses
and explains, and to stand in the relationships and fulfil the uses
which science traces, but also that it will have, and was intended to
have, a destination in the far future. We may ask, What is the goal
towards which creation moves? What will be the fate of the earth? In
what directions are vegetable and animal life developing? What is the
chief end of man? Whither is history tending? What is the ideal of
truth which science has before it, and which it hopes to realise? of
beauty, which art has before it? of goodness, which virtue has before
it? And although to most if not all of these questions probably no
very definite and certain answer can be given, to deny that they can
in any measure be answered, to pronounce all speculation regarding
ultimate ends as wholly vain, would justly be deemed the expression of
a rash and thoughtless dogmatism. Science claims not only to explain
the past but to foretell the future. The power of prevision possessed
by a science is the best criterion of its rank among the sciences when
rank is determined by certitude. And most significant is the boldness
with which some of the sciences have of late begun to forecast the
future. Thus, with reference to the end of the world, the spirit of
prophecy, which until very recently was almost confined to the most
noted religious visionaries, is now poured largely out upon our most
distinguished physicists. This we regard as a most significant and
hopeful circumstance, and trust that ere long the prophets of science
will be far less discordant and conflicting in their predictions even
of the remotest issues than they must be admitted to be at present.
While speculation as to final causes in the sense of ultimate ends is,
within certain limits, as legitimate as it is natural, its results are
undoubtedly far too meagre and uncertain to allow of our reasoning from
them to the existence or wisdom of God. We must prove that there is a
Divine Intelligence from what we actually perceive in things, and not
from what we can conjecture as to the final destinies of things. In
fact, until we have ascertained that there is a Divine Intelligence,
and in some measure what are the principles on which that Intelligence
proceeds, our chance of reaching truth through speculation as to the
ultimate ends of things is, in all probability, exceedingly small. It
is on no hazardous speculations of this kind that we would rest an
argument for the Divine existence, although questions have been raised
as to the Divine character and government which will, at a later stage
of the discussion, involve us to some extent in the consideration of
ultimate ends.
When final cause is employed to signify design in any reference,
be it to intrinsic, extrinsic, or ultimate ends, I have nothing to
object to Bacon and Descartes's condemnation of it as illegitimate
and unprofitable in science. I know of no science, physical or moral,
in which, while thus understood, it can be of the slightest use as
a principle of scientific discovery. It is as much out of place in
the world of organic as of inorganic nature. It is quite incorrect
to say that although it does not lead to the discovery of new truths
in strictly physical science, it does so in physiology for example,
or in psychology, or in ethics. It is only when it means merely the
inherent order and adjustment of things--not when it means designs
and purposes regarding them--that the search after it can possibly
lead to scientific truth, and, when so understood, it leads to truth
in all sciences alike. It was the suggestive principle in Adams and
Leverrier's discovery of the planet Neptune from certain unexplained
perturbations of the planet Uranus, quite as much as in Harvey's
discovery of the circulation of the blood from the observation of
certain unexplained valves at the outlet of the veins and the rise
of the arteries. It is involved in the very nature of the inductive
process, and is only confirmed and enlarged by the progress of
inductive research. It stands in no opposition to the principle of
efficient causes, and is in no degree disproved by the discovery of
such causes. Assertions to the effect that it has gradually been driven
by the advance of knowledge from the simpler sciences into those which
are complex and difficult,--that it is being expelled even out of
biology and sociology--and that it always draws its confirmation, not
from phenomena which have been explained, but from phenomena which
await explanation,--are often made, but they rest almost exclusively
on the wishes of those who make them. They have no real historical
basis.[29]
[29] See Appendix XXI.
LECTURE VI.
OBJECTIONS TO THE ARGUMENT FROM ORDER EXAMINED.
I.
The universe is a system which comprehends countless subordinate
systems. It is full of combinations of parts which constitute
wholes, and of means which conspire to ends. The natural and obvious
explanation of the order and adjustments which it thus presents is that
they are due to a mind or intelligence. And this is the only rational
explanation of them. Mind can alone account for order and adjustment,
for the co-ordination of parts into a whole, or the adaptation of
means to an end. If we refer them to anything else, the reference is
essentially contrary to reason, essentially irrational. It may seem at
the first superficial glance as if there were a variety of hypotheses
as to the origin of the order we everywhere see around us, all equally
or nearly equally credible; but adequate reflection cannot fail to
convince us that they must be reduced to a single alternative--to two
antagonistic theories. Our only choice is between reason and unreason,
between a sufficient and an insufficient cause, between, we may even
say, a cause and no cause. This will be brought out by an examination
of the various hypotheses which have been suggested by those who are
unwilling to admit that the order of the world originated in mind. They
try their best to suggest some other alternative than that which I have
said is inevitable; but every suggestion they make only raises the
alternative which they would avoid--mind or chance, reason or unreason,
a sufficient explanation or an absurd one. Before proceeding to
establish this, however, it may be necessary to remark on some direct
objections which have been taken to the design argument,--objections
which might be valid, although no explanation of order could be given
or were even attempted.
The inference which the theist requires to draw from the existence of
order in the universe is merely the existence of an intelligence who
produced that order. It follows that it is an unfair objection to his
argument to urge, as has often been urged, that it does not directly
and of itself prove God to be the creator of the universe, but only the
former of it--not the author of matter, but only of the collocations of
matter. This objection, which men even like Hume and Kant and J. S.
Mill, have thought worth employing, is simply that the argument does
not prove more than it professes to prove. It does not pretend to make
all other reasoning for the Divine existence superfluous. It is no
condition of its validity that it should stand alone; that it should
contribute nothing to other arguments and receive nothing from them.
The objection is thus entirely irrelevant. It may be a wise caution
to those who would trust exclusively to it, and neglect or depreciate
other arguments. It is no objection to its legitimacy.
It is remarkable, too, that those who have urged this objection
have never felt that before employing it they were bound to satisfy
themselves and to prove to others that order is a mere surface or
superficial thing--outside of matter, superimposed on it. If order
be something inherently and intrinsically in matter--be of its very
essence--belong to what is ultimate in it; if matter and its form be
inseparable,--then the author of its order must have been also the
author of itself; and all that this objection shows us is, that those
who have employed it have had mistaken notions about the nature of
matter. Now, as I have already had to indicate, modern science seems
rapidly perfecting the proof of this. The order in the heavens, and in
the most complicated animal organisms, appears to be not more wonderful
than the order in the ultimate atoms of which they are composed. The
balance of evidence is in favour of the view that order extends as far
and penetrates as deep as matter itself does. The human intellect is
daily learning that it is foolish to fancy that there is anywhere in
matter a sphere in which the Divine Wisdom does not manifest itself in
and through order.
There is still another remark to be made on the objection under
consideration. The immediate inference from the order of the universe
is to an intelligent former of the universe, not to a creator. But
this does not preclude the raising of the question, Is it reasonable
to believe the former of the world merely its former? Must not its
former be also its creator? On the contrary, the inference that the
order of the world must be the result of intelligent agency ought
to suggest this question to every serious and reflective mind, and
it should even contribute something to its answer. The order of the
universe must have originated with intelligence. What is implied in
this admission? Clearly that the order of the universe cannot have
originated with matter,--that matter is unintelligent, and cannot
account either for intelligence or the effects of intelligence. But
if so, the intelligence which formed the universe must be an eternal
intelligence. The supposition that matter is eternal must in this case
be supplemented by the admission that mind is eternal. In other words,
the affirmation that the former of the world is merely its former--the
denial that its former is also its creator--means dualism, the belief
in two distinct eternal existences,--an eternal mind and eternal
matter. Whoever is not prepared to accept this hypothesis must abandon
the affirmation and denial from which it necessarily follows. And who
can, after due deliberation, accept it? The law of parsimony of causes
absolutely forbids our assuming, for the explanation of anything, more
causes than are necessary to account for it. It forbids, therefore,
our belief in an eternal matter and an eternal mind, unless we can
show reason for holding that one of them alone is not a sufficient
cause of the universe. Now those who grant the inference from order
to intelligence, themselves admit that matter is not a sufficient
First Cause of the universe as it actually exists. Do they find any
person admitting that mind would be an insufficient First Cause? Do
they themselves see any way of showing its insufficiency? Do they not
even perceive that it would be foolish and hopeless to try to show
that an eternal mind could not create a material universe, and that
all they could show would be, the here quite irrelevant truth, that
the human mind is ignorant of the manner in which this could be done?
If the answers to these questions are what I believe they must be, it
must also be acknowledged that the former of the universe can only be
rationally thought of as also its creator.
I turn to the consideration of another equally futile objection to
the argument from order. That argument, it is said, does not prove
the Divine Intelligence to be infinite. The universe, as a system of
order, is finite, and we have no right to conclude that its cause
is in respect of intelligence, or in any other respect, infinite.
We must attribute to the cause the wisdom necessary to produce the
effect, but no more. The obvious reply is, that this is precisely
what we do. The argument is not employed to prove the infinity of the
Divine Intelligence, but to prove that the order and adaptations which
everywhere abound in the universe must have had an intelligence capable
of conceiving and producing them. It is an obvious and legitimate
argument to that extent, and it is pushed no farther. The inference
that the world had an intelligent author is as simple, direct, and
valid, as that any statue, painting, or book had an intelligent author.
When Mr Spencer, Mr Lewes, and Professor Tyndall argue that the cause
of the universe cannot be known to be intelligent, because the reason
of man, being finite, cannot comprehend the infinite, they overlook
that the reason of man has no need to comprehend the infinite in order
to apprehend such manifestations of the infinite as come before it.
Just as a person reading the works of the able men who urge this weak
objection feels certain that these books must have had their origin in
minds endowed with certain intellectual powers, and cannot have been
produced by chance, or blind forces, or bodies destitute of minds, and
this although much in their minds is and always must be inscrutable
to him; so, when he studies the books of nature and of history, he
feels equally certain, and in the same way certain, that they are the
compositions of a most amazing intellect; and his certainty as to this
need not be lessened, clouded, or in any degree affected, by the great
and indubitable, but here irrelevant, truth--that the mind of God is
in itself, in its essence, inscrutable; and in its greatness, its
infinity, incomprehensible.
The argument from order must further be admitted sufficient to show,
if valid at all, that the wisdom of the First Cause is of the most
wondrous character. The more nature and mind and history are studied by
any one who sees in them evidence of design at all, the more wondrous
must the wisdom displayed in them be felt to be. Whoever realises
that that wisdom is at once guiding the countless hosts of heavenly
bodies in all their evolutions through the boundless realms of space,
and fashioning and providing for the countless hosts of microscopic
creatures dwelling on the leaf of a flower or in a drop of water,
everywhere accomplishing a multitude of ends by few and simple means,
or effecting single and definite purposes by the most elaborate and
complex contrivances, must feel that rash beyond all expression is the
short-sighted mortal who can venture to affirm that it is not infinite.
If "the Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth, and by understanding
hath established the heavens," His wisdom and His understanding are
at least so great that we cannot measure them, and have no right to
pronounce them limited. The adjustments and harmonies of the universe,
as we know it, indicate a depth and richness of wisdom in its Author
which far pass our comprehension; and the universe which we know is
probably less in comparison with the universe which God has made, than
the leaf on which a host of animalcules live and die is in comparison
with the vastest of primeval forests, or an ant-hill with the solar
system. The universe which we see and know is a noble commentary on
such words of Scripture as these: "I wisdom dwell with prudence,
and find out knowledge of witty inventions. The Lord possessed me
in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I was set up
from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When He
prepared the heavens, I was there: when He set a compass on the face of
the depth: when He established the clouds above: when He strengthened
the fountains of the deep: when He gave to the sea his decree, that
the waters should not pass His commandment: when He appointed the
foundations of the earth: then I was by Him, as one brought up with
Him; and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him." But
beyond the universe which we see and know, extend illimitable fields of
space and stretches of time which we do not see and do not know, but
which may be even more crowded with the works of Divine Intelligence
than any which are within our range of bodily or mental vision. The
ingenious authors of the book entitled 'The Unseen Universe' suppose
the entire visible universe to be but a local product and temporary
phase of a far older and greater universe, which itself again may be
only an island in the ocean of a universe still more stupendous and
refined. Whatever error may be mingled with this thought in the work
mentioned, there is, I doubt not, at least this much of truth also,
that the entire course of nature which science reveals is but a ripple,
a current, in the ocean of God's universal action. The man whose mind
is duly open to the possibility of this will not venture to pronounce
the intelligence of God to be finite. The man who fails to recognise
its possibility is very blind, very thoughtless.
It is scarcely credible that the evidences of God's wisdom should
have been argued to be proofs of His weakness. And yet this has
happened. "It is not too much to say," wrote Mr J. S. Mill, "that
every indication of design in the Kosmos is so much evidence against
the omnipotence of the Designer. For what is meant by design?
Contrivance: the adaptation of means to an end. But the necessity for
contrivance--the need of employing means--is a consequence of the
limitation of power. Who would have recourse to means if to attain his
end his mere word was sufficient? The very idea of means implies that
the means have an efficacy which the direct action of the being who
employs them has not. Otherwise they are not means, but an encumbrance.
A man does not use machinery to move his arms. If he did, it could
only be when paralysis had deprived him of the power of moving them
by volition. But if the employment of contrivance is in itself a sign
of limited power, how much more so is the careful and skilful choice
of contrivances? Can any wisdom be shown in the selection of means
when the means have no efficacy but what is given them by the will
of him who employs them, and when his will could have bestowed the
same efficacy on any other means? Wisdom and contrivance are shown
in overcoming difficulties, and there is no room for them in a being
for whom no difficulties exist. The evidences, therefore, of natural
theology distinctly imply that the author of the Kosmos worked under
limitations."[30]
[30] Three Essays on Religion, pp. 176, 177.
This, it seems to me, is very strange and worthless reasoning.
According to it, the ability of God to form and execute a purpose is
evidence not of power but of weakness. I wonder if Mr Mill imagined
that the inability of God to form and carry out a purpose would have
been evidence not of His weakness but of His power. Or did he suppose,
perhaps, that both ability and inability were signs of weakness, and
that, consequently, for once opposites were identical? Or did he not
think on the subject at all, and so reasoned very much at random?
I confess I cannot see how ability to contrive things is weakness,
or inability to contrive them power. I hold to Bacon's maxim that
"knowledge is power," and refuse to admit that wisdom is weakness.
But God, if omnipotent, it is said, did not need to contrive: His
mere word must have been sufficient. Yes, is the obvious answer;
His mere word, His mere will, was sufficient to produce all His
contrivances, and has produced them all. There is no shadow of reason
for suspecting that anything was difficult to Him or for Him. No such
suspicion is entertained by those who employ the design argument;
and those who would rationally object to that argument must find
something else to insist on than the power of God's mere will. The
will of God is everywhere as efficacious as He in His omnipotence and
omniscience chooses that it should be. At the same time, if He desire
certain ends, His will cannot remain mere will and dispense with the
contrivance of appropriate means. If He wish to bestow happiness on
human beings, He must create human beings, and contrive their bodies
and minds. To speak of His will as able to "bestow the same efficacy
on any means" is no less contrary to reason than it would be to speak
of it as able to make the part greater than the whole. It is only
in the world imagined by Mr Mill--one in which two and two might be
five--that a sunbeam could serve the same purpose as a granite pillar
or a steam-engine; and such a world, most people will assuredly hold,
even omnipotence could not create. Infinite power and wisdom must
necessarily work "under limitations" when they originate and control
finite things; but the limitations are not in the infinite power and
wisdom themselves--they are in their operations and effects. According
to Mr Mill's argument, infinite power could not create a finite world
at all: only a finite power could do so. That surely means that a
finite power must be mightier than an infinite power; and that, again,
is surely a plain self-contradiction, a manifest absurdity.
There is another objection which, although in itself unworthy of
answer, has been urged so often and presented in so many forms, some
of which are rhetorically impressive, that it cannot be wholly
passed over. The design argument has been censured as "assuming
that the genesis of the heavens and the earth was effected somewhat
after the manner in which a workman shapes a piece of furniture"--as
"converting the Power whose garment is seen in the visible universe
into an Artificer, fashioned after the human model, and acting as man
is seen to act"--as "transforming the First Cause into a magnified
mechanist who constructs a work of art, and then sits apart from it and
observes how it goes," &c. Now the heavens and the earth are to such a
wonderful extent exemplifications both of mechanical laws and æsthetic
principles, that no man of sense, I think, will deny that they may most
justly be compared to machines or works of art, or even pronounced to
be machines and works of art. They are that, although they are more
than that. An animal is a machine, although an organism too. Every
organism is a machine, although every machine is not an organism. Art
and nature are not antagonistic and exclusive. Man and all man's arts
are included in nature, and nature is the highest art. While, however,
it is legitimate and even necessary to illustrate the design argument
by references to human inventions, the numerous and immense differences
between the works of man's art and the processes of nature must not
be overlooked; and there is no excuse for saying that they have been
overlooked. It is precisely because the universe is so above anything
man has made or can make, and because vegetable and animal organisms
are so different from watches and statues, that the argument in
question leads us to a divine and not to a merely human intelligence.
It implies that both the works of God and the works of man are products
of intelligence; but it does not require that they should have anything
else in common. It recognises that the most elaborate and exquisite
contrivances of man fall immeasurably below "nature's most minute
designs." So far from requiring, it forbids our carrying any of the
limitations or peculiarities of human contrivance over to that which is
divine. Besides, the belief in design is held in conjunction with the
belief in creation out of nothing. The same persons who recognise that
there is a divine wisdom displayed in the constitution and course of
nature believe the universe to have been called into being by the mere
volition of the Almighty. But among all theories of the genesis of the
heavens and the earth, that is the only one which does not represent
the First Cause as working like a man. Man never creates--he cannot
create. To produce anything he must have something to work on--he must
have materials to mould and modify.[31]
[31] See Appendix XXII.
II.
Those who refuse to refer the order and adaptations in the universe to
a designing intelligence are bound to account for them in some other
way. Has this been done? Has any person succeeded in tracing them back
to any other principle which can be reasonably regarded as their cause,
or as adequate to their production? This is the question which we have
now to consider.
Matter, some would have us believe, is the origin of the order of the
universe. Grant it, and there is still the question--What is the origin
of matter?--to be disposed of. We have seen that this is a question
which we are bound to raise; we have seen that there are strong reasons
for holding that matter had an origin, had a beginning in time, and
none whatever for regarding it as self-existent and eternal. The very
existence of order and system, of mechanical adjustments and organic
adaptations in the universe, seems to prove that matter must have had
a beginning. If certain collocations of matter evince design, and
must have had a beginning, the adaptation of the parts to form the
collocation evinces design, and implies a beginning. And if matter
had a beginning, its cause can only have been mind. To say that it
originated with chance or necessity is plainly absurd. Chance and
necessity are meaningless terms unless mind or matter be presupposed.
There can be no accidents where neither mind nor matter exists. There
can be no chance where there is no law. Chance or accident is what
occurs when two or more independent series of phenomena meet, without
their meeting having been premeditated and provided for. When one
series of causes leads a man to pass a house at a given moment of a
given day, and another series of causes, coexistent with but wholly
independent of the former series, determines that a heavy body shall
fall from the roof of that house at that moment of that day and
kill that man, the consequence--his death--is what may be properly
called an accident, or matter of chance. One who believes, indeed,
in the omniscience and universal foreordination and government of
God, will hold that even in such a case the accident or chance is
merely apparent; but he will not deny the right of the atheist to
speak of chance or accident in this way, or to explain as matters of
chance whatever he can. The word chance, or accident, can have no
intelligible sense, however, unless there be such independent series of
phenomena--unless there be mental and material existences, mental and
material laws. Chance cannot be conceived of, even by the atheist, as
the origin of existence. The same may be said of necessity. Matter or
mind may act necessarily, but necessity cannot act without matter or
mind. If it be requisite, therefore, to seek a cause for matter, mind
alone can be assigned as its cause. If we are justified in seeking for
the origin of matter at all, our choice of an answer lies between mind
and absurdity, between a real and sufficient cause and an imaginary and
inconceivable cause. Besides, how could matter of itself produce order,
even if it were self-existent and eternal? It is far more unreasonable
to believe that the atoms or constituents of matter produced of
themselves, without the action of a Supreme Mind, this wonderful
universe, than that the letters of the English alphabet produced the
plays of Shakespeare, without the slightest assistance from the human
mind known by that famous name. These atoms might, perhaps, now and
then, here and there, at great distances and long intervals, produce,
by a chance contact, some curious collocation or compound; but never
could they produce order or organisation, on an extensive scale or of
a durable character, unless ordered, arranged, and adjusted in ways of
which intelligence alone can be the ultimate explanation. To believe
that their fortuitous and undirected movements could originate the
universe, and all the harmonies and utilities and beauties which abound
in it, evinces a credulity far more extravagant than has ever been
displayed by the most superstitious of religionists. Yet no consistent
materialist can refuse to accept this colossal chance-hypothesis.
All the explanations of the order of the universe which materialists,
from Democritus and Epicurus to Diderot and Lange, have devised, rest
on the assumption that the elements of matter, being eternal, must
pass through infinite combinations, and that one of these must be our
present world--a special collocation among the countless millions of
collocations, past and future. Throw the letters of the Greek alphabet,
it has been said, an infinite number of times, and you must produce the
Iliad and all Greek books. The theory of probabilities, I need hardly
say, requires us to believe nothing so absurd. Throw letters together
without thought through all eternity, and you will never make them
express thought. All the letters in the Iliad might have been tossed
and jumbled together from morning to night by the hands of the whole
human race, from the beginning of the world until now, and the first
line of the Iliad would have been still to compose, had not the genius
of Homer been inspired to sing the wrath of Achilles and the war around
Troy. But what is the Iliad to the hymn of creation, and the drama of
providence? Were these glorious works composed by the mere jumbling
together of atoms, which were not even prepared beforehand to form
things, as letters are to form words, and which had to shake themselves
into order without the help of any hand? They may believe that who
can. It seems to me that it ought to be much easier to believe all the
Arabian Nights.
To ascribe the origination of order to _law_ is a manifest evasion of
the real problem. Law is order. Law is the very thing to be explained.
The question is--Has law a reason, or is it without a reason? The
unperverted human mind cannot believe it to be without a reason. "The
existence of a law connecting and governing any class of phenomena
implies a presiding intelligence which has preconceived and established
the law. The regulation of events by precise rules of time and space,
of number and measure, is evidence of thought and mind." So says Dr
Whewell; and the statement is amply justified by the fact, that all
laws and rules in the universe imply that existences are related to one
another in a way of which intelligent adjustment alone is the adequate
and ultimate explanation. The existence of a law uniformly involves
the coexistence of several conditions, and that is a phenomenon
which, whenever the conditions and law are physically ultimate, and
consequently physically inexplicable, clearly presupposes mind. Laws,
in a word, are not the causes but the expressions of order. They are
themselves the results of delicately accurate adjustments, which
indicate the operation of a divine wisdom. There are chemical laws,
for example, simply because there are chemical elements endowed with
affinities, attractions, or forces the most diverse, yet so balanced
and harmonised as to secure the welfare of the world. Besides, laws
do not act of themselves. No law produces of itself any result. It is
the agents which act according to the law that produce results, and
the nature of the result produced depends on the number and character
of the agents, and how each is situated and circumstanced. If the
agents oppose each other, or are inappropriately distributed, they
bring about disorder and disaster in conformity to law. There is no
calamity, no evil, no scene of confusion, in the known world, which
is not the result of the action of agents which operate in strictest
accordance to law. The law of gravitation might rule every particle
of matter, and yet conflict and confusion and death would prevail
throughout the entire solar system were harmony and stability and
life not secured by very special arrangements. Matter might have all
its present inherent and essential laws, and yet remain for ever a
chaos. Apart from a designing and superintending intelligence, the
chances in favour of chaos and against cosmos, even allowing matter
to have uncreated properties and laws, were incalculable. The obvious
inference is that which Professor Jevons expresses in these words--"As
an unlimited number of atoms can be placed in unlimited space in an
unlimited number of modes of distribution, there must, even granting
matter to have had all its laws from eternity, have been at some moment
in time, out of the unlimited choices and distributions possible, that
one choice and distribution which yielded the fair and orderly universe
that now exists." Only out of rational choice can order have come.
The most common mode, perhaps, of evading the problem which order
presents to reason, is the indication of the process by which the
order has been realised. From Democritus to the latest Darwinian there
have been men who supposed that they had completely explained away the
evidences for design in nature when they had described the physical
antecedents of the arrangements appealed to as evidences. Aristotle
showed the absurdity of the supposition more than 2200 years ago. But
those who deny final causes have gone on arguing in the same irrational
manner down to the present time. They cannot, in fact, do otherwise.
They are committed to a false position, and they dare not abandon the
sophism on which it rests. Nothing else can explain how any sane mind
should infer that because a thing is conditioned it cannot have been
designed. The man who argues that the eye was not constructed in order
to see because it has been so constructed as to be capable of seeing,
is clearly either unable to reason correctly, or allows his reasoning
faculty to be terribly perverted by prejudice. That a result is secured
by appropriate conditions can seem to no sound and unprejudiced
intellect a reason for regarding it to have been undesigned. And yet
what other reason is involved in all the attempts to explain away
final causes by means of the nebular, Darwinian, and other development
hypotheses?
M. Comte imagines that he has shown the inference of design, from
the order and stability of the solar system, to be unwarranted, when
he has pointed out the physical conditions through which that order
and stability are secured, and the process by which they have been
obtained. He refers to the comparative smallness of the planetary
masses in relation to the central mass, the feeble eccentricity of
their orbits, the moderate mutual inclination of their planes, and the
superior mean density of their solid over their fluid constituents,
as the circumstances which render it stable and habitable, and these
characteristic circumstances, as he calls them, he tells us flow
naturally and necessarily from the simple mutual gravity of the several
parts of nebulous matter. When he has done this, he supposes himself
to have proved that the heavens declare no other glory than that of
Hipparchus, of Kepler, and of Newton.
Now, the assertion that the peculiarities which make the solar system
stable and the earth habitable have flowed naturally and necessarily
from the simple mutual gravity of the several parts of nebulous matter,
is one which greatly requires proof, but which has never received it.
In saying this, we do not challenge the proof of the nebular theory
itself. That theory may or may not be true. We are quite willing to
suppose it true; to grant that it has been scientifically established.
What we maintain is, that even if we admit unreservedly that the earth,
and the whole system to which it belongs, once existed in a nebulous
state, from which they have been gradually evolved into their present
condition conformably to physical laws, we are in no degree entitled
to infer from the admission the conclusion which Comte and others have
drawn. The man who fancies that the nebular theory implies that the law
of gravitation, or any other physical law, has of itself determined the
course of cosmical evolution, so that there is no need for believing
in the existence and operation of a Divine Mind, proves merely that he
is not exempt from reasoning very illogically. The solar system could
only have been evolved out of its nebulous state into that which it
now presents if the nebula possessed a certain size, mass, form, and
constitution--if it was neither too rare nor too dense, neither too
fluid nor too tenacious; if its atoms were all numbered, its elements
all weighed, its constituents all disposed in due relation to each
other--that is to say, only if the nebula was in reality as much a
system of order, which intelligence alone could account for, as the
worlds which have been developed from it. The origin of the nebula thus
presents itself to the reason as a problem which demands solution no
less than the origin of the planets. All the properties and laws of the
nebula require to be accounted for. What origin are we to give them? It
must be either reason or unreason. We may go back as far as we please,
but at every step and stage of the regress we must find ourselves
confronted with the same question--the same alternative.
The argument of Comte, it is further obvious, proceeds on the arbitrary
and erroneous assumption that a process is proved to have been without
significance or purpose when the manner in which it has been brought
about is exhibited. It is plain that on this assumption even those
works of man which have cost most thought might be shown to have
cost none. A house is not built without considerable reflection and
continuous reference to an end contemplated and desired, but the end
is only gradually realised by a process which can be traced from its
origin onwards, and through the concurrence or sequence of a multitude
of conditions. Would a description of the circumstances on which the
security and other merits of a house depend,--of the peculiarities in
its foundation, walls, and roof, in its configuration and materials,
which render it convenient and comfortable, or of the processes by
which these peculiarities were attained,--prove the house to have
been unbuilt by man, to have been developed without the intervention
of an intelligent architect? It would, if Comte's argument were good;
if it would not, Comte's argument must be bad. But can any one fail
to see that such an argument in such a case would be ridiculous? The
circumstances, peculiarities, and processes referred to are themselves
manifest evidences of design and intelligence. They are a part of what
has to be explained, and a part of it which can only be explained on
the supposition of a contriving and superintending mind. They entitle
us to reject all hypotheses which would explain the construction
of the house without taking into account the intelligence of its
architect. The circumstances, peculiarities, and process described
by Comte, as rendering the earth an orderly system and the abode of
life, are no less among the evidences for the belief that intelligence
has presided over the formation of the earth. They require for their
rational comprehension to be thought of as the means and conditions by
which ends worthy of intelligence have been secured. They require to
be accounted for; and they cannot be reasonably accounted for except
on the supposition of having been designed. If we reject that view
we must accept this, that the present system of things is a special
instance of order which has occurred among innumerable instances of
disorder, produced by the interaction of the elements or atoms of
matter in infinite time. These elements or atoms we must imagine as
affecting all possible combinations, and falling at length, after
countless failures, into a regular and harmonious arrangement of
things. Now, we can in a vague, thoughtless way imagine this, but we
cannot justify our belief of it either by particular facts or general
reasons. It is an act of imagination wholly divorced from intelligence.
Thus to refer the origin and explanation of universal order to chance,
is merely mental caprice.
If the evolution of the earth and the heavenly bodies from a nebula
destroy neither the relevancy nor the force of the design argument,
the development of complex organisms from simple ones, and the descent
of all the plants and animals on earth from a very few living cells
or forms, will not remove or lessen the necessity for supposing an
intelligence to have designed all the organisms, simple and complex
alike, and to have foreordained, arranged, and presided over the course
of their development. Were it even proved that life and organisation
had been evolved out of dead and inorganic matter, the necessity of
believing in such an intelligence would still remain. Nothing of the
kind has yet been proved. On the contrary, scientific experimentation
has all tended to show that life proceeds only from life. But had it
been otherwise--had this break and blank in the development theory been
filled up--matter would only have been proved to be more wonderful
than it had been supposed to be. The scientific confirmation of the
hypothesis of what is called spontaneous generation would not relieve
the mind from the necessity of referring the potency of life and all
else that is wonderful in matter either to design or chance, reason or
unreason--it would not free it from the dilemma which had previously
presented itself.[32]
[32] See Appendix XXIII.
The development of higher from lower organisms, of course, still less
frees us from the obligation to believe that a supreme intelligence
presides over the development. Development is not itself a cause, but
a process,--it is a something which must have a cause; and the only
kinds of development which have yet been shown to be exemplified in
the organic world demand intelligence as their ultimate cause. I do
not know that I can better prove that there is no opposition between
development and design than by referring to an illustration which
Professor Huxley made use of with a directly contrary view. To show
that the argument from final causes, or what is often called the
theological argument, had, as commonly stated, received its death-blow
from Mr Darwin, he wrote as follows: "The theological argument runs
thus--an organ or organism (A) is precisely fitted to perform a
function or purpose (B); therefore it was specially constructed to
perform that purpose. In Paley's famous illustration, the adaptation of
all the parts of the watch to the function or purpose of showing the
time, is held to be evidence that the watch was specially contrived
to that end, on the ground that the only cause we know of competent
to produce such an effect as a watch which shall keep time is a
contriving intelligence, adapting the means directly to that end.
Suppose, however, that any one had been able to show that the watch
had not been made directly by any person, but that it was the result
of the modification of another watch which kept time but poorly, and
that this, again, had proceeded from a structure which could hardly
be called a watch at all, seeing that it had no figures on the dial,
and the hands were rudimentary, and that, going back and back in
time, we come at last to a revolving barrel as the earliest traceable
rudiment of the whole fabric. And imagine that it had been possible
to show that all these changes had resulted first from a tendency in
the structure to vary indefinitely, and secondly from something in the
surrounding world which helped all variations in the direction of an
accurate time-keeper and checked all those in other directions,--then
it is obvious that the force of Paley's argument would be gone. For it
would be demonstrated that an apparatus thoroughly well adapted to a
particular purpose might be the result of a method of trial and error
worked by unintelligent agents, as well as of the direct application of
the means appropriate to that end by an intelligent agent."[33]
[33] Lay Sermons, pp. 330, 331.
Our great comparative physiologist would probably not write so at
present. He may still not accept the design argument; but he is now
well aware that it has not got its death-blow, nor even any serious
wound, from the theory of evolution. He has since, on more than one
occasion, shown the perfect compatibility of development with design.
He might, perhaps, in defence of his earlier and less considerate
utterances, maintain that no organ has been made with the precise
structure which it at present possesses in order to accomplish the
precise function which it at present fulfils; but he admits that the
most thoroughgoing evolutionist must at least assume "a primordial
molecular arrangement, of which all the phenomena of the universe are
the consequences," and "is thereby at the mercy of the theologist,
who can always defy him to disprove that this primordial molecular
arrangement was not intended to evolve the phenomena of the universe."
Granting thus much, he is logically bound to grant more. If the entire
evolution of the universe may have been intended, the several stages of
its evolution may have been intended; and they may have been intended
for their own sakes as well as for the sake of the collective evolution
or its final result. If eyes and ears were contrived for a purpose, the
eyes and ears of each species of animals may have been made with the
precise structure which they exhibit for the precise purposes which
they fulfil, although they may have been developed out of a different
kind of eyes and ears, and will, in the lapse of ages, be developed
into still other kinds. The higher theology, the general designs, which
Professor Huxley admits evolution cannot touch, is in no opposition to
the lower theology, the special designs, which he strangely supposes it
to have definitively discarded.
Nothing can be more certain than that Dr Paley would have held the
design argument to have been in no degree weakened by the theory
of evolution, and that he would have been very much astonished by
Professor Huxley's remarks on that argument. In referring to the
mechanism of a watch as an evidence of intelligence in its maker, Dr
Paley pointed out that our idea of the greatness of that intelligence
would be much increased if watches were so constructed as to give rise
to other watches like themselves. He must necessarily have admitted
that the watch imagined by Professor Huxley was still more remarkable,
and implied a still greater intelligence in its contrivance. The
revolving barrel must have had wonderful capabilities, which only
intelligence could confer. All the circumstances in which it was to
be placed must have been foreseen, and all the influences which were
to act upon it must have been taken into account, which could only
be done by intelligence. All that helped variations in the direction
of an accurate time-keeper must have been brought into requisition,
and all that hindered it, or favoured variations in other directions,
must have been detected and checked; but no unintelligent agents can
be conceived of as accomplishing such work, or as more than the means
of accomplishing it employed by a providential Reason. The greater
the distance between the revolving barrel and the most elaborated
watch--the greater the number of mechanisms between the first and the
last of these two terms, or between the commencing cause and the final
result--the greater the necessity for a mind the most comprehensive and
accurate, to serve as an explanation of the entire series of mechanisms
and the whole process of development.
Mr Darwin, and a large number of those who are called Darwinians,
profess to prove that all the order of organic nature may have been
unintentionally originated by the mechanical operation of natural
forces. They think they can explain how, from a few simple living
forms, or even from a single primordial cell, the entire vegetable and
animal kingdoms, with all their harmonies and beauties, have arisen
wholly independent of any ordaining and presiding mind, by means of
the operation of the law of heredity that like produces like; of
variability from the action of the conditions of life, and from use and
disuse; of over-production, or a ratio of increase so high as to lead
to a struggle for existence; of natural selection, or the survival and
prevalence of the fittest, and the disappearance and extinction of what
is unsuited to its circumstances and inferior to its competitors; and
of sexual selection. But the remarkable originality, ingenuity, and
skill which they display in endeavouring to establish, illustrate, and
apply these laws, make all the more striking the absence of freshness
and independence, of force or relevancy, in the reasonings by which
they would attach to them an irreligious inference. The same men who
have adduced so many new facts, and thrown so much new light on facts
previously known, in support of the real or alleged laws indicated,
have not adduced a single new reason, and scarcely even set in a more
plausible light a single old reason, for the denial of design. They
assure us, copiously and vehemently, that the laws which they claim to
have proved are in themselves a disproof of design; but they somehow
forget that it is incumbent on them to bestow the labour requisite
to make this manifest. They reason as if it were almost or wholly
self-evident, whereas a little more thought would show them that all
their laws imply mind and purpose.
There is a law of heredity: like produces like. But why is there such
a law? Why does like produce like? Why should not all nature have been
sterile? Why should there have been any provision for the propagation
of life in a universe ruled by a mere blind force? And why should
producer and produced be like? Why should offspring not always be as
unlike their parents as tadpoles are unlike frogs? The offspring of
all the higher animals pass through various embryological stages in
which they are extremely unlike their parents. Why should they ever
become like to them? Physical science cannot answer these questions;
but that is no reason why they should not both be asked and answered.
I can conceive of no other intelligent answer being given to them than
that there is a God of wisdom, who designed that the world should be
for ages the abode of life; that the life therein should be rich and
varied, yet that variation should have its limits; that there should
be no disorder or confusion; and who, to secure this result, decreed
that plants should yield seeds, and animals bring forth, after their
kind. He who would disprove design must certainly not start with the
great mystery of generation.
Then, the so-called law of variability is the expression of a purpose
which must have Reason at its beginning, middle, and end. There is in
no organism an absolutely indefinite tendency to vary. Every variation
of every organism is in some measure determined by the constitution
of the organism. "A whale," as Dr Huxley says, "does not tend to vary
in the direction of producing feathers, nor a bird in the direction
of producing whalebone." But a tendency to definite variation is an
indication of purpose. If a man could make a revolving barrel with a
tendency to develop into a watch, he would have to be credited with
having designed both the barrel and watch, not less than if he had
contrived and constructed the two separately. Further, variation has
proceeded in a definite direction. Darwin admits that there is no law
of necessary advancement. There is no more reason in the nature of the
case for improvement than for deterioration. Apart from the internal
constitution of an organism having been so planned, and its external
circumstances so arranged, as to favour the one rather than the other,
its variations could not have been more towards self-perfection than
self-destruction. But variation, according to the Darwinians, has
taken place in one direction and not in another; it has been forward,
not backward; it has been a progression, not a retrogression. Why?
Only because of a continuous adjustment of organisms to circumstances
tending to bring this about. Had there been no such adjustment, there
might have been only unsuitable variations, or the suitable variations
might have been so few and slight that no higher organisms would
have been evolved. Natural selection might have had no materials, or
altogether insufficient materials, to work with. Or the circumstances
might have been such, that the lowest organisms were the best endowed
for the struggle of life. If the earth were covered with water, fish
would survive, and higher creatures would perish. Natural selection
cannot have made the conditions of its own action--the circumstances
in the midst of which it must operate. Therefore, there is more in
progressive variation than it can explain: there is what only an
all-regulative intelligence can explain.
Again, there is a law of over-production, we are told, which gives
rise to a struggle for existence. Well, is this law not a means to an
end worthy of Divine Wisdom? In it we find the reason why the world is
so wonderfully rich in the most varied forms of life. What is called
over-production is a productivity which is in excess of the means of
subsistence provided for the species itself; but no species exists
merely for itself. The ratio of the production of life is probably none
too high for the wants of all the creatures which have to be supplied
with food and enjoyment. And the wants of all creatures are what have
to be taken into account; not the wants of any single species--not the
wants of man alone. If we adequately realised how vast is the number
of guests which have constantly to be fed at the table of nature, we
would, I have no doubt, acknowledge that there is little, if any, real
waste of life in the world. Then, the struggle to which the rate of
production gives rise is, on the showing of the Darwinians themselves,
subservient to the noblest ends. Although involving privation, pain,
and conflict, its final result is order and beauty. All the perfections
of sentient creatures are represented as due to it. Through it the lion
has gained its strength, the deer its speed, the dog its sagacity. The
inference seems natural that these perfections were designed to be
attained by it; that this state of struggle was ordained for the sake
of the advantages which it is actually seen to produce. The suffering
which the conflict involves may indicate that God has made even animals
for some higher end than happiness--that He cares for animal perfection
as well as for animal enjoyment; but it affords no reason for denying
that the ends which the conflict actually serves, it was also intended
to serve. Besides, the conflict is clearly not a struggle for bare
existence; it is, even as regards the animals, a struggle for the
largest amount of enjoyment which they can secure, and for the free
and full exercise of all their faculties. It thus manifests, not only
indirectly but also directly, what its ends are. They are ends which
can only be reasonably conceived of as having been purposed by an
intelligence, and which are eminently worthy of a Divine intelligence.
But what of the law, or so-called law, of natural selection? In itself,
and so far as physical science can either prove or disprove it, it is
simply an expression of the alleged fact, that in the struggle of life,
any variation, however caused, which is profitable to the individuals
of a species, will tend to their preservation, will have a chance
of being transmitted to their offspring, and will be of use to them
likewise, so that they will survive and multiply at the expense of
competitors which are not so well endowed. But natural selection thus
understood is obviously in no opposition to design; on the contrary,
it is a way in which design may be realised. Some might even hold that
design cannot be conceived of as realised in any other natural way;
that if not thus realised, it could only be miraculously realised.
But Mr Darwin, and many of those who call themselves his followers,
tell us not only that there is natural selection, but that blind
forces and mechanical laws alone bring it about; that intention and
intelligence have nothing to do with it. What proof do they give us?
Alas! the painful thing is that they give us none. They point out the
blind forces and the mechanical laws by which the selection is effected
and its results secured; they show how they are adapted to accomplish
their work: and then they assert that these forces and laws explain
the whole matter; that no underlying and all-embracing reason has
prepared, arranged, and used them. They see the physical agencies and
the physical process by which order and beauty have been attained--they
do not see intelligence and design; and because they do not see them,
they conclude that they have no existence. They describe the mechanism
which their senses apprehend, and affirm it to have made itself, or
at least to have been unmade, and to work of itself, because the mind
which contrived it and directs it is inaccessible to sense. All their
reasoning resolves itself into a denial of what is spiritual because it
is unseen.
The only instances of natural selection which have been adduced to show
that blind forces may bring about results as remarkable, and of the
same kind, as those which are accomplished by intelligent agents, are
manifestly irrelevant. They are of such a nature that every teleologist
must hold them to imply what they are intended to disprove. When
Professor Huxley points to the winds and waves of the Bay of Biscay
as carefully selecting the particles of sea-sand on the coast of
Brittany, and heaping them, according to their size and weight, in
different belts along the shore; to a frosty night selecting the hardy
plants in a plantation from among the tender ones; and to a hurricane
transporting a sapling to a new seat in the soil,--he completely
mistakes what the problem before him is. Fire and water can produce
wonderful effects in a steam-engine; but the man who should infer, from
there being no intelligence in the fire and water themselves, that
intelligence must have had nothing to do with their effects when they
were brought into contact in a steam-engine, would deserve no great
credit for his reasoning. It is precisely Professor Huxley's reasoning.
He looks at the fire and water separately, and completely ignores the
engine. Because in a world which is a system of order and law a certain
collocation and combination of physical conditions and forces will
produce an orderly result, he infers that design and intelligence are
not needed to produce such a result. I submit that that is illegitimate
and irrelevant reasoning. It resolves itself into a denial of Divine
and intelligent agency, because the senses apprehend merely physical
elements and a physical process. It assumes a selected adaptation,
which presupposes intelligence in order to get rid of intelligence. It
begs the whole question.
The so-called law of sexual selection, if it be a law at all, is
obviously teleological in its nature. Its end is the production
of beauty in form and colour. Can blind physical forces, if not
subservient to intelligence, be conceived of as working towards so
essentially ideal a goal as beauty?
I think enough has now been said to show that the researches and
speculations of the Darwinians have left unshaken the design argument.
I might have gone farther if time had permitted, and proved that
they had greatly enriched the argument. The works of Mr Darwin are
invaluable to the theologian, owing to the multitude of "beautiful
contrivances" and "marvellous adjustments" admirably described in them.
The treatises on the fertilisation of orchids and on insectivorous
plants require only to have their legitimate conclusions deduced and
applied in order to be transformed into treatises of natural theology.
If Paley's famous work be now somewhat out of date, it is not because
Mr Darwin and his followers have refuted it, but because they have
brought so much to light which confirms its argument.[34]
[34] See Appendix XXIV.
I have challenged the theology of Mr Darwin, and those who follow his
guidance in theology. I have no wish to dispute his science. I pass
no judgment on his theories so far as they are scientific theories. It
may be safely left to the progress of scientific research to determine
how far they are true and how far erroneous. We ought not to assail
them needlessly, or to reject the truth which is in them, under the
influence of a senseless dread that they can hurt religion. In so far
as they are true, they must be merely expressions of the way in which
Divine intelligence has operated in the universe. Instead of excluding,
they must imply belief in an all-originating, all-foreseeing,
all-foreordaining, all-regulative intelligence, to determine the rise
and the course and the goal of life, as of all finite things. That
intelligence far transcends the comprehension of our finite minds,
yet we apprehend it as true intelligence. It is no blind force, but a
Reason which knows itself, and knows us, and knows all things, and in
the wisdom of which we may fully confide, even when clouds and darkness
hide from us the definite reasons of its operations. We can see and
know enough of its wisdom to justify faith where sight and knowledge
are denied to us. Let us trust and follow it, and, without doubt, it
will lead us by a path which we knew not, and make darkness light
before us, and crooked things straight.
LECTURE VII.
MORAL ARGUMENT--TESTIMONY OF CONSCIENCE AND HISTORY.
I.
WE have seen how the power manifest in the universe leads up to God
as the First Cause, the all-originating Will. We have seen also how
the order manifest in the universe leads up to Him as the Supreme
Intelligence. But there is more in the universe than force and order;
there is force which works for good, and a just and benevolent order;
there are moral laws and moral actions, moral perceptions and moral
feelings. Can anything be thence inferred as to whether God is, and
what He is? I think we shall find that they clearly testify both as to
His existence and character.
The moral law which reveals itself to conscience has seemed to certain
authors so decisive a witness for God, that all other witnesses may be
dispensed with. Kant, who exerted his great logical ability to prove
that the speculative reason in searching after God inevitably loses
itself in sophisms and self-contradictions, believed himself to have
found in the practical reason or moral faculty an assurance for the
Divine existence and government capable of defying the utmost efforts
of scepticism. Sir William Hamilton has also affirmed that "the only
valid arguments for the existence of God, and for the immortality
of the human soul, rest on the ground of man's moral nature." Dr
John Newman has insisted that conscience is the creative principle
of religion, and has endeavoured to show how the whole doctrine of
natural religion should be worked out from this central principle. A
well-known living theologian of Germany, Dr Schenkel, has attempted to
build up a complete theology on conscience as a basis, starting from
the position that conscience is "the religious organ of the soul"--the
faculty through which alone we have an immediate knowledge of God.
These thinkers may have erred in relying thus exclusively on the moral
argument--I believe that they have--but the error, if error there be,
shows only the more clearly how convincing that argument has seemed to
certain minds, and these assuredly not feeble minds.
There is, besides, valuable truth underlying any exaggerations into
which they may have fallen on the subject. There is probably no living
practical belief in God which does not begin with the conscience. It
is not reasoning on a first cause, nor even admiration of the wisdom
displayed in the universe, which makes the thought of God habitually
and efficaciously present to the mind. It is not any kind of thinking
nor any kind of feeling excited by the physical universe or by the
contemplation of society, which gives us an abiding and operative sense
of God's presence, and of His relationship to us. It is only in and
through an awakened and active conscience that we realise our nearness
to God--His interest in us, and our interest in Him. Without a moral
nature of our own, we could not recognise the moral character and moral
government manifested by Him. We might tremble before His power, or we
might admire His skill, but His righteousness would be hidden from us,
His moral laws would be meaningless to us, and their sanctions would
be merely a series of physical advantages or physical disasters. But a
God without righteousness is no true God, and the worship which has no
moral element in it is no true worship. As, then, it is only through
the glass of conscience that the righteousness of God can be discerned,
and as that attribute alone can call forth, in addition to the fear,
wonder, and admiration evoked by power and intelligence, the love,
the sense of spiritual weakness and want, and the adoring reverence,
which are indispensable in true worship--such worship as God ought
to receive and man ought to render--the significance of the moral
principle in the theistic argumentation is vast indeed.
It follows, however, from the entire course of the reasoning in which
we have been engaged, that the moral argument is not to be exclusively
relied on. It is but a part of a whole from which it ought not to be
severed. It cannot be stated in any valid form which does not imply
the legitimacy of the arguments from efficiency and order. If other
facts do not refer us back to a primary case, neither will moral
facts lead us to the primary moral agent. If order is no evidence of
intelligent purpose, moral order can be no evidence of moral purpose.
The moral argument proves more, but also less, than the arguments which
have been already expounded. It shows us that God is endowed with
the highest moral excellence, and is the source of moral law and of
moral government, but it does not prove Him to be the Creator of the
universe or the Author of all order in the universe. It contributes to
the idea of God an essential element, without which that idea would be
lamentably defective, but it supposes other elements also essential
to be given by other arguments. The office of bearing witness to
the existence and character of God can be safely devolved on no one
principle alone, even although that principle be conscience. It is
a work in which all the principles of human nature are privileged
to concur. Either all bear true testimony, or all have conspired to
deceive us. The self-manifestation of God is addressed to the entire
man, and can only be rightly apprehended by the concurrent action of
all the energies and capacities of the soul.[35]
[35] See Appendix XXV.
It is, perhaps, especially important in conducting the moral argument
to ask ourselves distinctly, Whence ought we to begin? Is there any
point, any fact or principle, which we are in reason bound to start
from? Inattention to this preliminary inquiry has caused many to try
to look at moral facts _en masse_, as it were, and to endeavour to
draw an inference from them in virtue of something common to them all.
This can only lead to confusion and error. Moral facts are of two
radically distinct classes, and cannot be comprehended under any higher
generalisation, which can be taken as the foundation of a theistic
inference. The facts need to be distributed and interpreted--to have
their characters discriminated; and we must begin with the principle
by which this is done--that is, with conscience itself. We need no
more attempt to judge of moral qualities without reference to our
moral perceptions and feelings--to the information given us through
conscience--than to pass a judgment on colours before seeing them, or
irrespective of how they appeared to us when we saw them. If we look
at the moral facts of the universe from any outside point of view--not
from that of conscience--how can we escape ascribing the evil as well
as the good to God, and trying His character either from both or from
the preponderance of the one over the other? But if we do so,--if we
seek to rise to God through an induction from all moral facts--we
shall form a miserable notion of God, and we shall, besides, ride
rough-shod, as it were, over conscience. For what is it that conscience
declares most clearly about moral good and evil, right and wrong?
Is it not that they are radically antagonistic--irreconcilable and
contradictory,--that they cannot have the same ultimate author--that
if the one be the expression of God's will, the other must be the
expression of His aversion? If conscience have any testimony to give
about God at all, it is that, as the author of good, He must be the
enemy of evil. The contemplation of the moral world may perplex us, but
conscience is an assurance that evil, however perplexing, is not to be
referred to the same source as good.
The testimony of conscience on behalf of God has been presented
in various ways, and it need not surprise us to find some of them
unsatisfactory. I regard as unwarranted the view that conscience is
"the religious organ of the soul," the sole faculty through which the
human mind is in contact and communion with God. There is no one
specific power or organ of the mind in virtue of which exclusively man
is a religious being. It is by the whole make and constitution of his
nature, not by a particular faculty, that he is framed for religion.
I more than question if we have a right even to ascribe to conscience
an immediate intuition of God. It brings us, some have affirmed, in a
strict and positive sense into the real presence of God, with nothing
intervening between us and Him--He as the absolute personality standing
sharply and distinctly over against our personality. This doctrine has,
however, one obvious and serious difficulty before it. Conscience--that
is a word which has got in ordinary use a very clear and definite
meaning. We all know what conscience is as well as we know what the eye
or the ear is, and we all know what an act of conscience is as well as
we know what seeing or hearing is. It is not more certain that by the
eye we see colours, and that by the ear we hear sounds, than that by
conscience we discern good and evil. When, therefore, any man comes and
assures us that through conscience we have an immediate apprehension
of God, it is natural that we should answer at once, You may as well
assure us that through sight we immediately hear sounds or smell
odours. What we immediately apprehend through conscience is the right
or wrong in actions, and therefore not God. Morality is the direct
object of conscience; God can therefore only be the presupposition or
postulate of conscience,--can only be given in conscience as implied in
morality. This, I say, is an obvious objection to the assertion that
God is immediately known in conscience. It is an objection which has
not been got over, and which, I believe, cannot be got over.[36]
[36] See Appendix XXVI.
The argument from conscience, like all the other theistic arguments,
is extremely simple. It is the obvious inference from the most
obvious facts of our moral consciousness. It demands of us no subtle
analysis of conscience. It is not dependent on the truth of some
one particular theory as to the origin of conscience. It is based
directly on what cannot be denied or disputed,--the existence of
conscience, the existence of certain moral judgments and feelings
common to the experience of all men. Conscience exists. It exists as
a consciousness of moral law; as an assertion of a rule of duty; as a
sense of responsibility. When it pronounces an action right, it does
so because it recognises it to be conformed to law; when it pronounces
an action wrong, it does so because it recognises it to fall short of
or to transgress law. It acts as the judge of all that we do, and as
such it accuses or excuses, condemns or approves, punishes or rewards
us, with a voice of authority, which we may so far disregard, but the
legitimacy of which we cannot dispute. It claims to rule over body and
soul, heart and mind, all our appetites, affections, and faculties;
and the claim is implicitly admitted even by those who have most
interest in denying it. But it does not rule, nor pretend to rule,
as an autocratic authority; it does not give us, nor pretend to give
us, a law of its own: on the contrary, it claims to rule in us only
in virtue of recognising a law which is over us; its authority is
derived wholly from a law which it interprets and applies, but does not
create. It thus speaks not of itself but as the deputy of another. It
unequivocally declares itself a delegated authority. Some may say that
the law of conscience is set by man's own will, and that the will is a
law unto itself; but this assertion cannot bear examination. The will
apart from reason and conscience is a mere force, not a true will. It
has a rational law only through its connection with reason, a moral law
only through its connection with conscience. Whoever affirms that the
will is its own law must grossly abuse language, and signify by the
term will what others mean by reason and will, conscience and will. He
must do worse than this, bad as it is. He must contradict the plain
dictates of his own consciousness. The will and its law are distinctly
felt to be not one but two. The will is clearly realised in our moral
experience as not legislative, as not giving itself a law but as
being under a law, the law which conscience apprehends. To identify
the will and its law is to confound entirely distinct things. For the
will to rule the will, it would need at once to command and to obey,
to be bond and free, dependent and independent. To be its own rule
were for it to be without rule. Conscience claims to rule my will in
virtue of a law which cannot be the expression of my will, and which
cannot be anything else than the expression of another will; one often
in antagonism to mine--one always better than mine--one which demands
from me an unvarying and complete obedience. It comes to me and speaks
to me in defiance of my will; when my will is set against hearing it,
and still more against obeying it; when my will is bent on stifling
and drowning its voice. It warns, threatens, condemns, and punishes
me, against my will, and with a voice of authority as the delegate or
deputy of a perfectly good and holy will which has an absolute right
to rule over me, to control and sway all my faculties; which searches
me and knows me; which besets me behind and before. Whose is this
perfect, authoritative, supreme will, to which all consciences, even
the most erring, point back? Whose, if not God's? Those who object that
this argument is a mere verbal inference, or that it rests on a double
meaning of the word law, do not understand it, simple as it is. They
may be honest enough disputants, but their objection is strangely
superficial. In the utterly irrelevant criticism of a word they
lose sight of a great fact, and so necessarily fail to perceive its
momentous significance. From no mere word, whether law or any other,
but from that consciousness of moral dependence which no moral creature
can shake off, which conscience implies in every exercise, which
reveals itself in a thousand ways in the hearts and lives of men, do
we conclude that there is One on whom we morally depend, that we have
a holy Creator and Judge to deal with. Reason takes no mere name, but
it takes the fact that man feels himself under a law of duty, that he
is conscious of obligation and responsibility, that he has a conscience
which does not counsel but which commands him to do what is right and
to resist what is wrong; and it finds this fact inexplicable, this
consciousness a delusion, this conscience a false witness--unless there
be a holy God, a Moral Governor.
Conscience reveals a purpose as well as declares a law. Its very
existence is a proof of purpose. The eye is not more certainly given
us in order that we may see, than conscience is given us in order that
we may use all our powers in a righteous and beneficent manner. Is it
conceivable that any other than a righteous God would have bestowed on
us such a gift, such a faculty? Would an intelligent but unrighteous
God have made us to hate and despise what is characteristic of his own
nature? Would he have made us better than himself? The purpose which
conscience reveals is certainly not our own purpose, just as the law
which it declares is not the law of our own will. The purpose which
finds its expression in conscience, and our own purpose, are often
felt by us to be in direct antagonism. Our souls may be tortured by
the conflict between them. But in all phases of the conflict we are
sensible that it is our purpose which ought to be abandoned; that the
purpose which we dislike is that which we are bound to accept and to
obey. In this way, also, conscience speaks to us of a righteous God
by speaking in His name. If the inference from effect to cause, from
manifestation of purpose to intelligence, is good anywhere, it is good
here; and it warrants us to believe that the First Cause of conscience
is a righteous Being.[37]
[37] See Appendix XXVII.
All the feelings, emotions, and affections which gather around the
apprehension of right and wrong, which accompany the sense of duty
or conviction of obligation, point to the same conclusion. The
consciousness of good or ill desert, remorse and self-approval, moral
hopes and fears, concur in referring to a holy God. They imply that
man is a person related not merely to things and laws, but to another
person who is his rightful and righteous Judge. The atheist himself,
when he grieves even for secret and private sins, or enjoys the inner
peace which only his own heart knoweth, mourns and rejoices as if
in the presence of a higher personal Being--the God whom he denies.
Neither his sorrow nor his satisfaction is fully intelligible if his
soul have before it only an impersonal law or the abstract nature of
things; both presuppose that he has some kind of consciousness of being
under the cognisance of a Person possessed of moral attributes. If
men felt that they were responsible for their evil thoughts and words
and deeds to no one higher than themselves or their fellows, is it
conceivable that the consciousness of guilt and the fear of retribution
would have been what experience and history testify them to have been?
Would prayers and penances and sacrifices have prevailed so widely,
if the law of right and wrong when broken had been merely felt to be
broken--if there were no underlying sense of the existence of One
behind the law whose righteousness must be satisfied, and whose wrath
must be turned away by the breaker of the law? Would there have been in
that case any moral conflicts in the human heart akin to those which
a Sophocles or a Shakespeare has delineated? Were there no God, there
ought to be no fear of God awakened even by crime; but atheism itself
cannot protect a criminal when alive to his guilt from being haunted
and appalled by fears of a judgment and a justice more terrible than
those of man. When we are perfectly willing to bear any pain which the
mere laws of nature attach to our sins, and when our reason assures us
that we have nothing to fear on account of them from the law or even
the opinion of society, why, if our moral natures are not seared and
deadened, do we yet fear, and fear most when most alone? "Inanimate
things," says Dr Newman, "cannot stir our affections; these are
correlative with persons. If, as is the case, we feel responsibility,
are ashamed, are frightened, at transgressing the voice of conscience,
this implies that there is One to whom we are responsible, before whom
we are ashamed, whose claims upon us we fear. If, on doing wrong,
we feel the same tearful, broken-hearted sorrow which overwhelms us
on hurting a mother; if, on doing right, we enjoy the same seeming
serenity of mind, the same soothing, satisfactory delight which follows
on one receiving praise from a father,--we certainly have within us
the image of some person to whom our love and veneration look, in
whose smile we find our happiness, for whom we yearn, towards whom we
direct our pleadings, in whose anger we are troubled and waste away.
These feelings in us are such as require for their exciting cause an
intelligent being; we are not affectionate towards a stone, nor do we
feel shame before a horse or a dog; we have no remorse or compunction
in breaking mere human law: yet, so it is, conscience excites all these
painful emotions, confusion, foreboding, self-condemnation; and, on
the other hand, it sheds upon us a deep peace, a sense of security, a
resignation, and a hope, which there is no sensible, no earthly object
to elicit. 'The wicked flees, when no one pursueth;' then why does
he flee? Whence his terror? Who is it that he sees in solitude, in
darkness, in the hidden chambers of his heart? If the cause of these
emotions does not belong to this visible world, the Object to which his
perception is directed must be Supernatural and Divine; and thus the
phenomena of conscience, as a dictate, avail to impress the imagination
with the picture of a Supreme Governor, a Judge, holy, just, powerful,
all-seeing, retributive."[38]
[38] Grammar of Assent, pp. 106, 107.
It will, I need scarcely say, be objected to the arguments which have
now been presented, that conscience is a product of association or a
consequence of evolution; that it has been developed either in the
experience of individuals or in the course of ages, out of sensations
of pleasure and pain, out of benefits and injuries; and that the
convictions and feelings implicated in it are due to the circumstances
under which it has grown up and the causes which have combined to
generate it. But to this it may be answered either that conscience
has not been shown to have grown up by association and development out
of sensuous experiences, or that even if this were proved the argument
would continue good; in other words, either the truth or the relevancy
of the objection may be denied. All associationist and evolutionist
theories of conscience seem to many of the most competent psychologists
to have failed as regards their main object, although they may admit
them to contain important elements of truth. This view I share. It
does not seem to me that even Mr J. S. Mill, Prof. Bain, Mr Spencer,
and Mr Darwin, have been able to show that conscience contains in it
nothing original. But, of course, I am aware that the vindication of
my dissent would require an adequate examination of associationism
and evolutionism as explanations of the origin of conscience. No such
examination is here possible. Nor is it required; on the contrary, a
discussion of the kind ought, I believe, to be avoided in an inquiry
like the present. No psychological investigation of a difficult and
delicate nature is, so far as I can judge, essentially involved in the
theistic argumentation at any stage. It is certainly unnecessary in
conducting the moral argument to engage in any scientific disquisition
as to the origin of conscience.[39] For our second or alternative
answer will suffice. It does not matter, so far as our present purpose
is concerned, whether conscience be primary or derivative. It exists;
it bears a certain testimony; it gives rise necessarily to the thoughts
and feelings which I have mentioned. Are these thoughts and feelings
true? If not, conscience is a delusion; it utters lies; the completest
moral scepticism is justified. If they are, the argument stands. The
mode in which they have been acquired is in this reference a matter of
indifference.
[39] See Appendix XXVIII.
The argument from conscience, I may add, rests on the general and
distinctive characteristics of our moral nature; not on the truth
of particular moral judgments or the purity of particular moral
affections. It cannot, therefore, be affected by the fact that moral
perceptions and emotions admit of variation and development, and are
sometimes false and depraved. However important in other respects may
be the circumstance that men's thoughts and sentiments as to right
and wrong are not always identical or even accordant, it is plainly
irrelevant as an objection to any of the forms in which the argument
for the Divine existence from the constitution of our moral nature
has just been stated. It cannot be necessary to do more than merely
indicate this, although some who maintain the wholly derivative nature
of conscience appear to believe that the moral differences to be traced
among men disprove all inferences from the moral faculty which they
feel disinclined to accept.
II.
Is the testimony which conscience gives to the existence and character
of God confirmed when we look out into the moral world? No one will say
that all is clear and unambiguous in that world--that it is nowhere
shrouded in unpenetrated, if not impenetrable, darkness--that it
contains no perplexing anomalies. There is an enormous mass of sin on
earth, and the mere existence of sin is a mystery under the government
of an omnipotent God who hates sin. There is a vast amount of
apparently prosperous sin, and a vast amount of temporarily suffering
virtue, and these are often severe trials of faith in the justice
and holiness of God. Pessimism may exaggerate the emptiness and the
sadness of life, but it has done service by exposing and discrediting
the optimism which ignores the dark features and tragic elements of
existence. Can an unprejudiced mind, however, even with all the sins
and sufferings of the world before its view, and although consciously
unable to resolve the difficulties which they suggest, refuse to
acknowledge that the general testimony rendered by the moral world to
the being and righteousness of its Author is ample and unmistakable?
I think not. The conclusion which we have drawn from the character
of the sentiments inevitably excited by the contemplation of virtue
and vice, is also that which follows from the natural tendencies
and issues of good and evil affections and actions. Virtue does not
always meet with its due reward, nor vice with its due punishment,
in any obvious outward shape; if they did, earth would cease to be a
scene of moral discipline; but internal moral laws of an essentially
retributive nature are in incessant operation, and show not obscurely
or doubtfully what is the judgment of God both on character and
conduct. Virtue is self-rewarding and vice is self-punishing. Virtue
tends of its very nature to honour and life, vice to dishonour and
death. There are outward bonds between virtue and happiness, vice and
misery, which may be severed; but there are also inward bonds which
cannot be broken--relations of cause and effect as inflexible as any in
the physical world. Virtue may be followed by no external advantages,
or may even involve the possessor of it in suffering; but infallibly
it ennobles and enriches, elevates and purifies the soul itself, and
thus gradually and increasingly imparts "a peace above all earthly
dignities." Vice may outwardly prosper and meet only with honour from
men, but it cannot be said to be passing wholly unpunished so long
as it weakens, poisons, and corrupts the spiritual constitution. Now
this it always does, and never more actively than when the individual
who is guilty has silenced the voice of his conscience, and when a
depraved society encourages him in his wickedness. The law--"he that
soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption"--is never even
for an instant suspended, although the growth and ripening of the seed
into its fruit may be unobserved. In the very commission of sin the
soul violates the conditions of its own welfare, destroys its own best
feelings, impoverishes and ruins itself.
"He that has light within his own clear breast,
May sit in the centre, and enjoy bright day;
But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts,
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun--
Himself is his own dungeon."[40]
[40] See Appendix XXIX.
When we look from individuals to societies, we perceive the same
truth confirmed on a more comprehensive and conspicuous scale. It
is true that in the social world there are bad triumphs and impious
successes--that the victory of good over evil is often reached
only after a long series of defeats. But it is equally true that
the welfare of society is dependent on a practical recognition of
moral principles--that the laws of morality are conditions of the
progress, and even of the existence, of society. A cynical moralist
of the eighteenth century maintained that private vices were public
benefits; but, of course, his sophisms were easily exposed: he failed
to convince any one of the correctness of his paradox. No inductive
truth can be easier to establish, or better established, than that
righteousness exalteth a nation, while sin lowers and destroys it.
The vicious affections which torment and debase isolated men, equally
disturb and degrade a tribe or nation. The virtuous affections which
diffuse peace and happiness in a single heart, equally spread harmony
and prosperity through the largest community. Thus the general
conditions of social life testify that God loves virtue and hates vice.
Then, if we examine history as a whole, we cannot but recognise that
it has been in the main a process of moral progress, of moral growth.
The children of the present day may be born with no better dispositions
than those of five thousand years ago, and men may be now as guilty, as
wilful sinners against what they know to be right, as ever they were;
in that sense there may be no moral progress; but of this there can
be, I think, no reasonable doubt in the mind of any impartial student
of history, that the thoughts of men have been surely, if slowly,
widened as to liberty, chastity, justice, benevolence, piety--and
that their feelings have been correspondingly modified, their manners
refined, and their laws and institutions improved. There may be no such
thing as the inheritance or transmission of virtue, and every step
of moral advance may have to be gained by the free exertion of each
individual, people, and generation in succession; but, as a matter
of fact, our race does on the whole advance, and not recede, in the
path towards good. Just as reason, although it may be feebler than the
passions in a short struggle, can always conquer them if it get time
to collect its energies--so virtue gains and vice loses advantages
with the lapse of years; for, while the prejudices which opposed the
former subside and its excellences become ever increasingly apparent,
as history flows onward, those who leagued themselves in support of
the latter quarrel among themselves, its fascinations decay, and its
deformities become more manifest and repulsive. Age is linked to age,
and in the struggle of good and evil which pervades all the ages,
victory is seen slowly but steadily declaring itself for the good.
The vices die--the virtues never die. Some great evils which once
afflicted our race have passed away. What great good has ever been
lost? Justice carries it over injustice in the end. Now, whatever be
the means by which moral progress is brought about, the testimony which
it involves as to the moral character of God is none the less certain.
The successful application of Darwinian principles, for example, to
the explanation of human progress, would be no disproof of design in
social evolution. If a natural selection, based on force, were shown
to have prepared the way for a natural selection based on craft, which
in its turn gave place to justice, and that again to love, God must
none the less be credited with having contemplated the final result,
and that result must none the less be held to be an indication of His
character. When what is called the struggle for existence has been
proved to lead, not to the deterioration but to the improvement of
life--to the greatest abundance of the highest kinds of life possible
in the circumstances--it will have been vindicated and shown to have
been a means to secure such ends as a wise and benevolent Being would
entertain. When it has been proved to have constrained men gradually
to recognise that the virtues are the conditions of the most desirable
existence, and that the vices are so many obstacles to the attainment
of such an existence, it will have been still further vindicated
by having been thus shown to be the mode in which righteousness is
realised in the world. It matters little, so far as the religious
inference is concerned, after what natural process and by what natural
laws moral progress has been brought about; for whatever the process
and laws may be discovered to be, they will be those which God has
chosen, and will be fitted to show forth the glory of His wisdom, love,
and justice.[41]
[41] See Appendix XXX.
LECTURE VIII.
CONSIDERATION OF OBJECTIONS TO THE DIVINE WISDOM, BENEVOLENCE, AND
JUSTICE.
I.
Conscience testifies that there is a God who is good and just; and
society and history, on the whole, confirm its testimony. But there are
a multitude of moral evils in the world, and these may seem to warrant
an opposite inference, or at least so to counterbalance what has been
adduced as evidence for the goodness and justice of God as to leave us
logically unable to draw any inference regarding His moral character.
We must consider, therefore, whether these evils really warrant an
anti-theistic conclusion; and as they are analogous to, and closely
connected with, those facts which have been argued to be defects in the
physical constitution of the universe inconsistent with wisdom, or at
least with perfect wisdom, in the Creator, it seems desirable to ask
ourselves distinctly this general question, Are there such defects in
the constitution and course of nature that it is impossible for us to
believe that it is the work of a wise and holy God?
Epicurus and Lucretius imagined that the world was formed by a happy
combination of atoms, acting of themselves blindly, and necessarily
after innumerable futile conjunctions had taken place. Lange, the
most recent historian of materialism, has revived the hypothesis, and
represented the world as an instance of success which had been preceded
by milliards of entire or partial failures. This is the theory of
natural selection applied to account for the origin of worlds; and no
one, I believe, who combines the hypotheses of natural selection and
atheism can consistently entertain any other conception of the origin
of worlds. But where are the milliards of mishaps which are said to
have occurred? Where are the monstrous worlds which preceded those
which constitute the cosmos? We must, of course, have good evidence for
their existence before we can be entitled to hold Nature responsible
for them; we must not charge upon her the mere dreams of her accusers.
Not a trace, however, of such worlds as, according to the hypothesis,
were profusely scattered through space, has been pointed out. It would
be a waste of time for us to argue with men who invent worlds in order
to find fault with them. We turn, therefore, to those who censure not
imaginary worlds but the actual world.
Comte, following Laplace, has argued that there is no evidence of
intelligence or design in the solar system, because its elements and
members are not disposed in the most advantageous manner. The moon, in
particular, we are assured, should have been so placed that it would
revolve round the earth in the same time that the earth revolved round
the sun. In that case she would appear every night, and always at the
full. Storms, volcanoes, earthquakes, and deserts have been often
argued to be defects which mar both the beauty and utility of creation.
Changes in the polar regions, in the physical character of Africa, in
the position of the Asiatic continent, and in the Pacific Ocean, have
been suggested as improvements on the constitution of the world. The
actual climates of various countries have been maintained to be not the
most favourable to life which are possible under the existing laws of
nature.[42]
[42] See Appendix XXXI.
A little reflection will enable us to assign its just value to such
criticism of creation. Remark, then, in the first place, that there may
be abundant evidence of intelligence where there is not evidence of
perfect intelligence. Although very considerable defects were clearly
shown to exist in the constitution and arrangements of the physical
world, there might yet be ample and unmistakable proof of the vast
wisdom of its Author. Were it even true that science could show that
the mechanism of the heavens, and the distribution of land and sea,
heat and cold, on earth, were not in every respect the best, that
would not prove that there was no intelligence, no design whatever,
involved therein. The question, Did the earth and the solar system
originate with intelligence? is distinct from the question, Was the
intelligence in which they originated perfect? It is conceivable that
the one question might have to be answered in the affirmative and the
other in the negative. It is obvious that the former question ought to
be considered apart from and before the latter. The theist proposes,
of course, to prove in the end that there is a perfect intelligence,
but he is content to establish at first that there is an intelligence.
Aware that whoever admits intelligence to be the first cause of the
universe may be forced also to admit that the creative intelligence is
perfect, he is under no temptation himself to confound two entirely
distinct questions, and he is obviously entitled to protest against so
illogical a procedure in others.
Remark, in the second place, that we are plainly very incompetent
critics of a system so vast as the universe. We are only able to
survey a small portion of it, and the little that we perceive we
imperfectly comprehend. We see but an exceedingly short way before
us into the future, and can form only the vaguest and most general
conception of the final goal to which creation, as a whole, is tending.
This need not, and ought not, to prevent us from recognising the
evident indications of intelligence which fall within our range of
apprehension; but it may well cause us to hesitate before pronouncing
that this or that peculiarity, which appears to us a defect, is
an absolute error or evil. There is no one who would not feel it
very unwise to pronounce an apparent defect, even in an elaborate
human mechanism with which he was only imperfectly acquainted, an
unmistakable blunder, and surely far more caution is required in a
critic of the constitution of the universe; for, as Bishop Butler
truly observes, "The most slight and superficial view of any human
contrivance comes abundantly nearer to a thorough knowledge of it than
that part which we know of the government of the world does to the
general scheme and system of it." All Nature is one great whole, and
each thing in it has, as I have previously had to insist, a multitude
of uses and relations, with reference to all of which it must be
viewed, in order that a complete and definitive judgment regarding it
may be formed. Has this fact been adequately realised by those who
have criticised, in the manner which has been indicated, the wisdom
displayed in the system of Nature? I think not. In regard to the moon,
it would seem that, even if that luminary were intended to serve no
other purpose than to give light on earth, it is not the Maker of it
who has blundered, but Comte and Laplace. The real consequences of
their pretended improvement have been shown to be that the moon would
give sixteen times less light than it does, and be in constant danger
of extinction. In other words, what they have demonstrated is, that
their own mathematical and mechanical knowledge was so inferior to that
of the intelligence which placed the moon where it is, that they could
not appreciate the correctness of its procedure in the solution of a
comparatively simple astronomical problem. But even if the change which
they suggested would really have rendered the moon a better lamp to the
inhabitants of the earth, they were not entitled to infer that it was
an error to have placed it elsewhere, unless they were warranted to
assume that the moon was meant merely to be a lamp to the inhabitants
of the earth. But that they were clearly not entitled to assume. To
give light on earth is a use of the moon, but it is foolish to imagine
that this is its sole use. It serves other known ends, such as raising
the tides, and may serve many ends wholly unknown to us. So in regard
to volcanoes, earthquakes, &c. Any single generation of men and beasts
might well dispense, perhaps, with their existence, and yet they may
be most appropriate instrumentalities for securing order and welfare in
the economy of the universe as a whole. It is not by their relations
to the present and local only, but by their relations to all the past
and future of the entire system of things, that they are to be judged
of. If Greenland were submerged, and the Asiatic and North American
continents so altered that no large rivers should flow into the polar
ocean, the climate of Iceland and Canada might be greatly improved.
Would the world thereby, however, be made better as a whole, and
throughout all its future history? He must be either a very wise man or
a very foolish one who answers this question by a decided affirmation;
and yet he who cannot so answer it has obviously no right to hold that
the changes mentioned would really be improvements.
Could we survey the whole universe, and mark how all its several parts
were related to each other and to the whole, we might intelligently
determine whether or not an apparent defect in it was real; but we
cannot do this with our present powers. We can readily imagine that
any one thing in the world, looked at by itself or in relation to
only a few other objects, might be much better than it is, but we
cannot show that the general system of things would not be deranged
and deteriorated thereby. Considered merely in reference to man, the
relative imperfections of the world may be real advantages. A world so
perfect that man could not improve it, would probably be, paradoxical
as the statement may sound, one of the most imperfect worlds men could
be placed in. An imperfect world, or in other words, a world which can
be improved, can alone be a fitting habitation for progressive beings.
Scripture does not represent nature even before the Fall as perfect
and incapable of improvement, but only as "very good;" and still less
does it require us to believe that the actual course of nature is
perfect. The true relation of man to nature can only be realised when
the latter is perceived to be imperfect,--a thing to be ruled, not to
be obeyed--improved, not imitated--and yet a thing which is essentially
good relatively to the wants and powers of its inhabitants. No created
system, it must further be remembered, can be _perfect_ in the sense of
being _the best possible_. None can be so good but that a better may
be imagined. What is created must be finite in its perfections, and
whatever is finite can be imagined to be increased and improved. The
Creator Himself--the absolutely perfect God--the Highest Good--is, as
Plato and Anselm so profoundly taught, the only best possible Being.
In Him alone the actual is coincident and identical with the possible,
the real with the ideal. Whoever receives this truth as it ought to
be received, cannot fail to see that all speculations as to a best
possible world, and all judgments of the actual world based on such
speculations, are vain and idle imaginations.[43]
[43] See Appendix XXXII.
I may add, that when a man argues, as Comte does, that we can know
nothing of final causes, nothing of the purposes which things are
meant to accomplish, and yet that they might have realised their final
causes, fulfilled their purposes, better than they do, he obviously
takes up a very untenable and self-contradictory position. If we can
have no notion of the purpose of a thing, we cannot judge whether it
is fulfilling its purpose or not, whether it is fulfilling it well or
ill. The denial of the possibility of knowing the ends of things is
inconsistent with the assertion that things might have been constituted
and arranged in a happier and more advantageous manner.
Organic nature has been still more severely criticised than the
inorganic world. There have been pointed out a few fully developed
organs, as, for example, the spleen, of which the uses are unknown, and
a multitude of organs so imperfectly developed as to be incapable of
performing any serviceable functions. Even the most elaborate organisms
have been maintained to have essential defects; thus the eye has been
argued by Helmholtz to be not a perfect optical instrument, and on the
strength of the proof one writer at least has declared that if a human
optician were to blunder as badly as the supposed author of eyes must
have done, he would be hissed out of his trade. Stress has been laid
on the fact that abortions and monsters are not rare. Many seemingly
intelligent contrivances, we are reminded, serve mainly to inflict pain
and destruction. And the inference has been drawn that the first cause
of organic existences was not Divine Wisdom but mere matter and blind
force.
The considerations which have already been brought forward should
enable us to answer all reasonings of this kind. An organ is not to be
pronounced useless because its uses have not yet been discovered. To
the extent that evolutionism is true, rudimentary and obsolete organs
are accounted for, and the wisdom displayed in them amply vindicated;
and if evolutionism be not true, they can still be explained on the
theory of types. They are stages in the realisation of the Divine
conception; indications of an order which comprehends and conditions
the law of use and contrivance for use; keys to the understanding
of the Divine plan. Theism cannot have much to fear from the fact
that all human eyes are limited in their range and finite in their
perfections, or even from the fact that a great many persons have very
bad eyesight. Whatever may be its imperfections, the eye, if viewed
with a comprehensive regard to its manifold uses and possibilities,
must be admitted by every unprejudiced judge to be incomparably
superior to every other optical instrument: indeed it is the only
real optical instrument; all so-called optical instruments are merely
aids and supplements to it. If the eye had been absolutely perfect,
its modification or evolution could only have been deterioration,
artificial optical instruments would not have been needed, and all
man's relations to creation must have been essentially different
from what they are. Who can rationally assure us that this was to be
desired? Abortions and monsters are at least exceptions. If mind were
not what is ultimate in the universe--if nature worked blindly--if
there were any truth in what Lange and Huxley have said of her
procedure, that it is "like shooting a million or more loaded guns in a
field to kill one hare,"--this could not be the case; the bullets which
miss would then be incalculably more numerous than those which hit,
and the evidence of her failures ought to be strewn far more thickly
around us than the remains of her successes; there would be, as it
were, no course of nature because of the multitude of deviations, no
rule in nature because of the multitude of exceptions. But what are
the facts? These: the lowest organisms are as perfectly adapted to
their circumstances as the highest, the earliest as the latest; there
is a vast amount of death and a vast amount of life in the world,
but, whatever some men may thoughtlessly assert, no man can show that
there is too much of either, any real waste, if the wants of creation
as a whole are to be provided for; abortions and monsters, which
are the only things in nature which can be plausibly characterised
as "failures," as "bullets which have fallen wide of the mark," are
comparatively few and far between; and the monsters, even, are not
really exceptions to law and order, are not strictly monsters. The
labours of teratologists have scientifically established the grand
general result that there are no monsters in nature in the sense which
Empedocles imagined; none except in the sense in which a man who gets
his leg broken is a monster. A monster is simply a being to whom an
accident not fatal has happened in the womb. Why should an accident not
occur there as well as elsewhere? Why should God not act by general
laws there as well as elsewhere? Who is entitled to say that any result
of His general laws is a failure; that any so-called accident was not
included in His plan; that a world in which a child could not be born
deformed nor a grown man have a leg broken, would be, were all things
taken into account, as good as the world in which we actually live?
Huxley, Lange, and those whom they represent, have failed to show
us any of nature's "bullets which have missed the mark," and have
not sufficiently, I think, realised how imperfect might be their own
perception of nature's target. The contrivances for the infliction
of pain and death displayed in the structure of animals of prey are
none the less evidences of intelligence because they are not also, at
least immediately or directly, evidences of beneficence. Intelligence
is one thing, benevolence is another, and what conclusively disproved
benevolence might conclusively prove intelligence.[44]
[44] See Appendix XXXIII.
II.
Let us pass on to the contemplation of greater difficulties; to
suffering, which seems to conflict with the benevolence of God--and to
sin, which seems irreconcilable with His righteousness.
I cannot agree with those who think that there is no mystery in mere
pain; that it is sufficiently accounted for by moral evil, and involves
no separate problem. The history of suffering began on our planet
long before that of sin; ages prior to the appearance of man, earth
was a scene of war and mutual destruction; hunger and fear, violence
and agony, disease and death, have prevailed throughout the air, the
land, and ocean, ever since they were tenanted. And what connection in
reason can there be between the sin of men or the sin of angels and
the suffering endured or inflicted by primeval saurians? The suffering
of the animals is, in fact, more mysterious than the suffering of
man, just because so little of the former and so much of the latter
can be traced, directly or indirectly, to sin. But every animal is
made subject to suffering; every animal appetite springs out of a
want; every sense and every faculty of every animal are so constituted
as to be in certain circumstances sources of pain; hosts of animals
are so constructed that they can only live by rending and devouring
other animals; no large animal can move without crushing and killing
numbers of minute yet sentient creatures. How can all this be under the
government of Infinite Goodness?
The human mind may very probably be unable fully to answer this
question. It can only hope truthfully to answer it even in a measure by
studying the relevant facts, the actual effects and natural tendencies
of suffering; general speculations are not likely to profit it much.
Now, among the relevant facts, one of the most manifest is that pain
serves to warn animals against what would injure or destroy them. It
has a preservative use. Were animals unsusceptible of pain, they would
be in continual peril. Bayle has ingeniously devised some hypotheses
with a view to show that pain might have safely been dispensed with
in the animal constitution, but they are obviously insufficient. It
would be rash to affirm that pain is indispensable as a warning against
danger, but certainly no one has shown how it could be dispensed with,
or even plausibly imagined how it might be dispensed with. For anything
we can see or even conceive, animal organisms could only be preserved
in a world like ours by being endowed with a susceptibility to pain.
For anything we know or can even imagine, the demand that there should
be no pain is implicitly a demand that there should be no animal life
and no world like the earth;--a most foolish and presumptuous demand.
But however this may be, pain has, as a fact, plain reference to the
prevention of physical injury. "Painful sensations," says Professor Le
Conte, "are only watchful vedettes upon the outposts of our organism
to warn us of approaching danger. Without these, the citadel of our
life would be quickly surprised and taken." Now, to the whole extent
that what has just been said is true, pain is not evil but good, and
justifies both itself and its author. It is not an end in itself, but
a means to an end, and its end is a benevolent one. The character of
pain itself is such as to indicate that its author must be a benevolent
being,--one who does not afflict for his own pleasure, but for his
creatures' profit.
Another fact makes this still more evident. Pain is a stimulus to
exertion, and it is only through exertion that the faculties are
disciplined and developed. Every appetite originates in the experience
of a want, and the experience of a want is a pain; but what would the
animals be without their appetites and the activities to which these
give rise? Would they be the magnificent and beautiful creatures so
many of them are? If the hare had no fear, would it be as swift as
it is? If the lion had no hunger, would it be as strong as it is? If
man had nothing to struggle with, would he be as enterprising, as
ingenious, as variously skilled and educated as he is? Pain tends
to the perfection of the animals. It has, that is to say, a good
end; an end which justifies its use; one which would do so even if
perfection should not be conducive to happiness. Perfection, it seems
to me, is a worthy aim in itself, and the pain which naturally tends
to it is no real evil, and needs no apology. I fail to see that the
nearest approximation to the ideal of animal life is the existence
of a well-fed hog, which does not need to exert itself, and is not
designed for the slaughter. Whatever pain is needed to make the animals
so exercise their faculties as to improve and develop their natures,
has been wisely and rightly allotted to them. We assign a low aim
to Providence when we affirm that it looks merely to the happiness
even of the animals. It would be no disproof of benevolence in the
Creator if pain in the creatures tended simply to perfection and not
to happiness; while it must be regarded as a proof of His benevolence
if the means which lead to perfection lead also to happiness. And this
they do. The pain which gives rise to exertion and the pain which
is involved in exertion are, as a rule, amply rewarded even with
pleasure. Perhaps susceptibility to pain is a necessary condition of
susceptibility to pleasure; perhaps the bodily organism could not
be capable of pleasure and insensible to pain; but whether this be
the case or not, it is a plain and certain matter of fact that the
activities which pain originates are the chief sources of enjoyment
throughout the animal creation. This fact entitles us to hold that
pain itself is an evidence of the benevolence of God. The perfecting
power of suffering is seen in its highest form not in the brute, but
in man; not in its effects on the body, but in its influence on the
mind. It is of incalculable use in correcting and disciplining the
spirit. It serves to soften the hard of heart, to subdue the proud, to
produce fortitude and patience, to expand the sympathies, to exercise
the religious affections, to refine, strengthen, and elevate the entire
disposition. To come out pure gold, the character must pass through the
furnace of affliction. And no one who has borne suffering aright has
ever complained that he had been called on to endure too much of it. On
the contrary, all the noblest of our race have learned from experience
to count suffering not an evil but a privilege, and to rejoice in it
as working out in them, through its purifying and perfecting power, an
eternal weight of glory.
In the measure that the theory of evolution can be established,
the wisdom and benevolence displayed in pain would seem to receive
confirmation. So far as that theory can be proved, want, the struggle
for existence, the sufferings which flow from it, and death itself,
must, it would appear, be regarded as means to the formation,
improvement, and adornment of species and races. The afflictions which
befall individuals will in this case be scientifically demonstrated to
have a reference not merely to their own good, but to the welfare of
their kind in all future time. The truth that nothing lives or dies
to itself would thus receive remarkable verification. But although it
should never receive this verification, although a strictly scientific
proof of it shall never be forthcoming, there is already sufficient
evidence for it of an obvious and unambiguous kind. Every being, and
the animated certainly not less than the inanimate, is adjusted, as
I have previously had occasion to show, to every other. "All are but
parts of one stupendous whole." This is a truth which throws a kindly
and cheering light on many an otherwise dark and depressing fact. Turn
it even towards death. Can death itself, when seen in the light of
it, be denied to be an evidence of benevolence? I think not. The law
of animal generation makes necessary the law of animal death, if the
largest amount of animal happiness is to be secured. If there had been
less death there must have been also less life, and what life there
was must have been poorer and meaner. Death is a condition of the
prolificness of nature, the multiplicity of species, the succession
of generations, the coexistence of the young and the old; and these
things, it cannot reasonably be doubted, add immensely to the sum of
animal happiness.
Such considerations as have now been indicated are sufficient to show
that suffering is a means to ends which only a benevolent Being can
be conceived of as designing. They show that pain and death are not
what they would have been if a malevolent Being had contrived them;
that they are characterised by peculiarities which only love and mercy
can explain. We do not need for any practical spiritual purpose to
know more than this. An objector may still ask, Could not God have
attained all good ends without employing any painful means? He may
still confront us with the Epicurean dilemma: "The Deity is either
willing to take away all evil, but is not able to do so, in which case
He is not omnipotent; or He is able to remove the evil, but is not
willing, in which case He is not benevolent; or He is neither willing
nor able, which is a denial of the Divine perfections; or He is both
able and willing to do away with the evil, and yet it exists." But only
superficial and immature minds will attach much weight to questionings
and reasonings of this kind. A slight tincture of inductive science
will suffice to make any man aware that speculations as to what God
can or can not do, as to what the universe might or might not have
been, belong to a very different region from investigations into the
tendencies of real facts and processes. It would seem as if, with our
present faculties, these speculations could lead us to no reliable
conclusions. We clearly perceive that pain and death serve many good
ends; but we should require a knowledge of God and of the universe
far beyond that which we possess, to be able to state, even as an
intelligent conjecture, that these evils could be wisely dispensed
with, or that there is anything in them in the least inconsistent
either with the power or the benevolence of God.[45]
[45] See Appendix XXXIV.
A large amount of human suffering is accounted for by its connection
with human sin. Whatever so-called physical evil is needed to prevent
moral evil, or to punish it, or to cure it, or to discipline in moral
good, is not really evil. Any earthly suffering which saves us from
sin is to be classed among benefits. There is nothing to perplex
either mind or heart in the circumstance that sin causes a profound
and widespread unhappiness. It is strange that it should sometimes
apparently produce so little misery; only a dull conscience, I think,
will be surprised that it produces so much. It is merely in so far as
physical evil is dissociated from moral evil that its existence is a
problem and a perplexity. But the very existence of moral evil is a
most painful mystery. The absence of physical evil while moral evil was
present would be inconsistent with a moral government of the world;
whereas if moral evil were removed no real difficulty would be left.
Physical evil may be a relative good, which God can easily be conceived
of as causing and approving; moral evil is an unconditional evil, and
cannot be the work of any morally perfect being.
Have we any reason, however, to suppose that sin is willed by God in
the sense either of being caused or approved by Him? All the sin we
know of on earth is willed by man, and all the sin which Scripture
tells us of as existing elsewhere is said to be willed by evil spirits;
neither nature nor Scripture informs us that there is any moral evil
willed by God. In other words, there are no facts which refer us to God
as the author of evil. In the absence of facts, we can, it is true,
form conjectures, and give expression to them in such questions as, How
could God make beings capable of sinning? Why did He not prevent them
sinning? Wherefore has He permitted sin to endure so long and spread
so widely? But thoughtful searchers for truth, at least after a certain
age, cannot feel much interested in, or much perplexed by, questions
like these. They will be quite willing to leave the discussion of them
to debating societies. They will resolutely refuse to assign the same
value to conjectures as to facts.
Sin is not God's work. Moral order may exist without moral disorder,
but moral disorder can only exist as rebellion against moral order. The
very notion of moral evil implies a moral good which it contravenes,
and a moral law by which it is condemned. It can never be thought of as
other than a something grafted on nature, by which nature is perverted
and depraved. It is not natural, but unnatural; not primary and
original, but secondary and derivative; not the law, but the violation
of the law.
"The primal Will, innately good, hath never
Swerved, or from its own perfect self declined."
Between this Will and sin there are ever interposed created wills,
which are conscious of their power to choose good or evil, obedience
or disobedience to God's law. God bestows on His creatures only good
gifts, but one of the best of all these gifts includes in its very
nature ability to abuse and pervert itself and all things else.
Freewill needs no vindication, for it is the primary and indispensable
condition of moral agency. Without it there might be a certain animal
goodness, but there could be no true virtue. A virtuous being is one
which chooses of its own accord to do what is right. The notion of a
moral creature being governed and guided without the concurrence and
approval of its own will is a contradiction. If God desired to have
moral creatures in His universe He could only have them by endowing
them with freewill, which is the power to accept or reject His own
will. The determination to create moral beings was a determination
to create beings who should be the causes of their own actions, and
who might set aside His own law. It was a determination to limit His
own will to that extent and in that manner. Hence, when He created
moral beings, and these beings, in the free exercise of their power,
violated His law, sin entered into the world, but not through His
will. It resulted from the exercise of an original good gift which He
had bestowed on certain of His creatures, who could abuse that gift,
but were not necessitated to abuse it. Their abuse of it was their
own action, and the action consisted not in conforming to, but in
contravening, God's will. Thus, God's character is not stained by the
sins which His creatures have committed.
But, it will be objected, could not God have made moral creatures who
would be certain always to choose what is right, always to acquiesce
in His own holy will? and if He could do this, why did He not? Why did
He create a class of moral creatures whom He could not but foresee
to be certain to abuse their power of choice between obedience and
disobedience to His law? Well, far be it from me to deny that God could
have originated a sinless moral system. If anything I have already said
be understood to imply this, it has been completely misunderstood. I
have no doubt that God has actually made many moral beings who are
certain never to oppose their own wills to His; or that He might, if
it had so pleased Him, have created only such angels as were sure to
keep their first estate. But if questioned as to why He has not done
the latter, I feel no shame in confessing my ignorance. It seems to me
that when you have resolved the problem of the origin of moral evil
into the question, Why has God not originated a moral universe in which
the lowest moral being would be as excellent as the archangels are?
you have at once shown it to be speculatively incapable of solution
and practically without importance. The question is one which would
obviously give rise to another, Why has God not created only moral
beings as much superior to the archangels as they are superior to
the lowest Australian aborigines? and that to still another of the
same kind, and so on _ad infinitum_? But no complete answer can be
given to a question which may be followed by a series of similar
questions to which there is no end. We have, besides, neither the
facts nor the faculties requisite to answer such questions. A merely
imaginary universe is one on which we have no data to reason. We who
are so incompetent judges of the actual universe, notwithstanding the
various opportunities which we possess of studying it, and the special
adaptation of our organs and powers to the objects which it presents,
can have no right to affirm its inferiority to any universe which we
can imagine as possible. The best world, we may be assured, that our
fancies can feign, would in reality be far inferior to the world God
has made, whatever imperfections we may think we see in it. We ought to
be content if we can show that what God has done is wise and right, and
not perplex ourselves as to why He has not done an infinity of other
things, the propriety of which we cannot possibly estimate aright or as
parts of any scheme unlimited in extent and eternal in duration.
Sin, then, is not God's work, and we are unable to prove that He
ought to have prevented it. Can we go any farther than this? Yes; we
can show that the permission of it has been made subservient to the
attainment of certain great ends. Man has the power to choose evil, but
God has also the power to overrule it--to cause it, as it were, to
contradict itself, to work out its own defeat and disgrace, to promote
what it threatens to hinder; and the facts of experience and history
show us that this is what He does. There is thus developed in His
human creatures a higher kind of virtue than that of mere innocence;
a virtue which can only be reached through suffering, and conflict,
and conquest. The struggle with moral evil, still more than that
with physical disadvantages and intellectual difficulties, tests and
exercises the soul, teaches it its weakness and dependence on Divine
strength, and elicits and trains its spiritual faculties. Successive
battles with vice raise honest combatants to successive stages of
virtue. The type of character presented to us in the second Adam is
no bare restoration of that which was lost in the first Adam, but one
immeasurably superior. The humblest of true Christians now aspires
after a far grander moral ideal than that of an untested innocence. Is
there not in this fact a vindication of God's wisdom and holiness worth
more than volumes of abstract speculation?
Due weight ought also to be given to the circumstance that the system
of God's moral government of our race is only in course of development.
We can see but a small part of it, for the rest is as yet unevolved.
History is not a whole, but the initial or preliminary portion of a
process which may be of vast duration, and the sequel of which may
be far grander than the past has been. That portion of the process
which has been already accomplished, small though it be, indicates the
direction which is being taken; it is, on the whole, a progressive
movement; a movement bearing humanity towards truth, freedom, and
justice. Is it scientific, or in any wise reasonable, to believe that
the process will not advance to its legitimate goal? Surely not.
The physical history of the earth affords abundant evidence of the
realisation of the most comprehensive plans, and no indication of
failure. We can have no right to imagine that it will be otherwise in
the moral sphere; that the ideals towards which history shows humanity
to have been approaching in the past will not be reached even in the
most distant future. But if moral progress will, no less than physical
progress, be carried on unto completion, the future cannot fail to
throw light on the past--cannot fail to some extent to justify the
past. The slowness of the progress may perplex us, and yet, perhaps,
it is just what we ought to expect, both from God's greatness and our
own littleness. He is patient because eternal. His plans stretch from
everlasting to everlasting, and a thousand years are in His sight but
as yesterday when it is past. We have not the faculties which fit us
for rapid movements and vast achievements. We need to be conducted by
easy and circuitous courses. "Lofty heights must be ascended by winding
paths."
"We have not wings, we cannot soar,
But we have feet to scale and climb
By slow degrees, by more and more,
The cloudy summits of our time."
It must be added that whoever acknowledges Christianity to be a
revelation from God, must see in it reasons which go far to explain
the permission of sin. There is, it is true, in the authoritative
records of the Christian religion, the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, no
explanation of the origin of moral evil as a speculative problem. The
account of the first parents of the human race introducing sin into the
world by yielding to the seduction of a being who had himself sinned,
is wholly of a historical character, and can neither be compared
nor contrasted with the theories of philosophers as to the nature,
possibility, and cause of sin. To measure the one by the others, or
to set the one over against the others, is to do injustice both to
Scripture and philosophy. But the whole scheme of Christianity must
seem to those who accept it the strongest possible of practical grounds
for the Divine permission of man's abuse of freewill. The existence
of sin has, according to the Christian view, been the occasion and
condition of a manifestation of the Divine character far more glorious
than that which had been given by the creation of the heavens and the
earth. It called forth a display of justice, love, and mercy before
which all moral beings in the universe may well bow down in wonder
and adoration, and man especially with unspeakable gratitude. If God
has really manifested Himself in Christ for the reconciliation of the
world to Himself, His permission of sin has certainly to all practical
intents been amply justified.
But I must conclude. Let it be in leaving with you the lesson that
belief in conscience and belief in God--belief in the moral order
of the universe and belief in a moral Governor and Judge--are most
intimately connected and mutually support each other. Many of you
will remember how Robertson of Brighton,--when describing the crisis
of the conflict between doubt and faith in the awful hour in which,
as he says, life has lost its meaning, and the grave appears to be
the end of all, and the sky above the universe is a dead expanse,
black with the void from which God has disappeared,--tells us that he
knows but of one way in which a man may come forth from this agony
scatheless--namely, by holding fast to those things which are certain
still, the grand, simple landmarks of morality. "In the darkest hour,"
are his words, "through which a human soul can pass, whatever else
is doubtful, this at least is certain,--If there be no God, and no
future state, even then, it is better to be generous than selfish,
better to be chaste than licentious, better to be brave than to be
a coward. Blessed, beyond all earthly blessedness, is the man who in
the tempestuous darkness of the soul has dared to hold fast to these
venerable landmarks. Thrice blessed is he who, when all is drear and
cheerless within and without, when his teachers terrify him and his
friends shrink from him, has obstinately clung to moral good. Thrice
blessed, because his night shall pass into clear bright day." Now there
is a great truth, a most sacred and solemn truth, in these words. But
it is only a half truth, and it should not be mistaken for the whole
truth. It is not less true, and it is true, perhaps, of a far greater
number of human souls, that there are dark and dreadful hours when
they are tempted to believe that virtue is but a name, that generosity
is not better than selfishness, truth not better than falsehood, and
the courage which defends a post of dangerous duty not better than the
cowardice which abandons it; and in these hours I know not how the soul
is to regain its trust in human goodness, except by holding fast its
faith in Divine goodness; or how it can be strengthened to cling to
what is right, except by cleaving to God. It is as possible to doubt of
the authority of conscience as to doubt of the existence of God. There
are few souls which have not their Philippi, when they are tempted
to cry like Brutus, "O virtue, thou art but an empty name!" Blessed
in such an hour is he who, feeling himself to be sinking in gloomy
waters, cries to that God who is able to rescue him from the abyss,
and clings to that justice in heaven which is the pledge that justice
will be done on earth below. Thrice blessed, because he will be guided
through the darkness of a sea of doubts even thus terrible to a haven
of light and safety. Faith in duty helps us to faith in God: faith in
God helps us to faith in duty. Duty and God, God and duty, that is the
full truth.[46]
[46] See Appendix XXXV.
LECTURE IX.
_A PRIORI_ THEISTIC PROOF.
I.
The arguments which we have been considering are not merely proofs
that God is, but indications of what He is. They testify to the Divine
existence by exhibiting the Divine character. They are expressions
of how He manifests Himself, and expositions of how we apprehend His
self-manifestations. We have seen that against each of them various
objections have been urged, but that these objections when examined
do not approve themselves to reason; they leave the arguments against
which they have been thrown quite unshaken. These arguments, however,
although perfectly conclusive so far as they go, do not, even in
combination, yield us the full idea of God which is entertained
wherever theism prevails. They show Him to be the First Cause of the
world--the Source of all the power, wisdom, and goodness displayed
therein. They do not prove Him to be infinite, eternal, absolute in
being and perfection. Yet it cannot be questioned that the cultivated
human mind thinks of God as the absolute, infinite, eternal, perfect
First Cause, and that no lower idea of God can satisfy it. The
intellect cannot accept, and the heart also revolts against, the
thought that God is dependent on any antecedent or higher Being; that
He is limited to a portion either of time or space; or that He is
devoid of any excellence, deficient in any perfection. Such a thought
is rejected as at once utterly unworthy of its object, and inherently
inconsistent.
Are we, then, rationally warranted to assign to God those attributes
which are called absolute or incommunicable? This is the question we
have now to answer. What has been proved makes it comparatively easy
to establish what is still unproved. We have ascertained that there
is a God, the First Cause of the universe, the powerful, wise, good,
and righteous Author of all things. We are conscious, also, that we
have ideas of infinity, eternity, necessary existence, perfection, &c.
We may be doubtful as to whence we got these ideas--we may feel that
there is very much which is vague and perplexing in them; but we cannot
question or deny that we have them. Having them, no matter how or
whence we have got them, and knowing that God is, as also in a measure
what He is, the remaining question for us is, Must these ideas apply to
God or not? Must the First Cause be thought of as eternal or not--as
infinite or finite, as perfect or imperfect? Reason, after it has
reached a certain stage of culture, has never found this a difficult
question. Indeed, often even before freeing itself from polytheism, it
has been internally constrained to ascribe to some of the objects of
adoration those very attributes of eternity, infinity, and perfection
which polytheism implicitly denies. Once it has come to believe that
the universe has its origin in a rational and righteous creative Will,
it can hardly refuse to admit that that Will must be infinite and
eternal. Where it has rejected polytheism without accepting theism,
it has been forced to acknowledge the world itself to be infinite and
eternal. When it has risen beyond the world, when it has reached an
intelligent cause of the world, it cannot, of course, refuse to that
cause the perfections which it would have granted to the effect--to the
Creator what it would have attributed to the creation. The first and
ultimate Being, and not any derived and dependent Being, must obviously
be the infinite, eternal, and perfect Being.
The proof that God is absolute in being and perfection should, it
seems to me, not precede but follow the proofs that there is a cause
sufficiently powerful, wise, and good to account for physical
nature, the mind of man, and the course of history. The usual mode
of conducting the theistic argumentation has been the reverse; it
has been to begin by endeavouring to prove, from principles held to
be intuitive and ideas held to be innate, the necessary existence,
absolute perfection, infinity, and eternity of God; or, in other words,
with what is called the _a priori_ or ontological arguments. This mode
of procedure seems to me neither judicious nor effective. If we have
not established that there is a God by reasoning from facts, we must
demonstrate His existence from ideas: but to get from the ideal to the
actual may be impossible, and is certain to be difficult; whereas, if
we have allowed facts to teach us all that they legitimately can about
the existence, power, wisdom, and righteousness of God, it may be easy
to show that our ideas of absolute being and perfection must apply to
Him, and can only apply to Him.
Theism, according to the view now expressed, is not vitally interested
in the fate of the so-called _a priori_ or ontological arguments.
There may be serious defects in all these arguments, considered as
formal demonstrations, and yet the conclusion which it is their aim to
establish may be in no way compromised. It may be that the principles
on which they rest do not directly involve the existence of God, and
yet that they certainly, although indirectly, imply it, so that
whoever denies it is rationally bound to set aside the fundamental
conditions of thought, and to deem consciousness essentially delusive.
It may be that the _a priori_ arguments are faulty as logical
evolutions of the truth of the Divine existence from ultimate and
necessary conceptions, and yet that they concur in manifesting that if
God be not, the human mind is of its very nature self-contradictory;
that God can only be disbelieved in at the cost of reducing the whole
world of thought to a chaos. Whether this be the case or not, some of
the _a priori_ proofs are so celebrated that I cannot pass them over in
entire silence.[47]
[47] See Appendix XXXVI.
There is a charge which has been very often brought against the _a
priori_ proofs, but which may be at once set aside as incorrect. It has
been alleged that they proceed on forgetfulness of the truth that the
Divine existence is the first and highest reality, and therefore cannot
be demonstrated from anything prior to or higher than itself. But in
no case that I know of have those who adopted what they supposed to be
the _a priori_ line of argument been under the delusion that the ground
of the existence of God was not in Himself, but in something outside
of or above Himself, from which His existence could be deduced. Such
a notion is, in fact, so self-contradictory, that no sane mind could
deliberately entertain it. It would imply that theism could be founded
on atheism. Whatever _a priori_ proof of the Divine existence may be,
it has certainly never been imagined by those who employed it to be
demonstration from an antecedent necessary cause.[48]
[48] See Appendix XXXVII.
_A priori_ proof is proof which proceeds from primary and necessary
principles of thought. From its very nature it could only appear at
a comparatively late period in the history of intelligence. It is
only a profound study of the constitution of thought, only a refined
reflective analysis of consciousness into its elements, which can
bring to light the principles which necessarily underlie and govern
all intellectual activity; and it is only on these principles that
_a priori_ proof is based. As these principles never exist in an
absolutely pure form, as what is universal and necessary in thought
is never found wholly apart from what is particular and contingent,
no absolutely pure _a priori_ argumentation need be looked for,
and certainly none such can be discovered in the whole history of
speculation.
Plato was, perhaps, the first to attempt to prove the existence of God
from the essential principles of knowledge. He could not consistently
reason from the impressions of sense or the phenomena of the visible
world. He denied that sense is knowledge, and that visible things
can be more than images and indications of truth. He maintained,
however, that besides the visible world there is an intelligible
world, with objects which reason sees and not sense. These objects
are either conceptions or ideas, either hypothetical principles or
absolute principles, either scientific assumptions and definitions or
necessary and eternal truths which have their reality and evidence in
themselves. The mathematical sciences deal with conceptions; but their
chief value, according to Plato, is that they help the mind to rise
to that absolute science--dialectics--which is conversant with ideas.
The apprehension of ideas is the apprehension of the common element in
the manifold, the universal in the individual, the permanent in the
mutable. Reason contemplates ideas, and participates in ideas, and
ideas are at once the essences of things and the regulative principles
of cognition. By communion with them the reason reaches objective
reality and possesses subjective certainty. They are not isolated and
unconnected, but so related that each higher idea comprehends within
it several lower ones, and that all combined constitute a graduated
series or articulated organism, unified and completed by an idea which
has none higher than itself, which is ultimate, which conditions all
the others while it is conditioned by none. The supreme idea, which
contains in itself all other ideas, is absolute truth, absolute beauty,
absolute good, absolute intelligence, and absolute being. It is the
source of all true existence, knowledge, and excellence. It is God. In
this part of its course the dialectic of Plato is simply a search for
God. It is _a priori_ inasmuch as it rests on necessary ideas, but _a
posteriori_ inasmuch as it proceeds from these ideas upwards to God
in a manner which is essentially analytic and inductive. Only when
God--the principle of principles--is reached, can it become synthetic
and deductive.
The question, Is the Platonic proof of the Divine existence
substantially true? is precisely equivalent to the question, Is the
Platonic philosophy substantially true? Of course, I cannot here
attempt to argue a theme so vast as Spiritualism _versus_ Empiricism,
Platonism _versus_ Positivism. My belief, however, is, that Platonism
is substantially true; that the objections which the empiricism and
positivism at present prevalent urge against its fundamental positions
are superficial and insufficient; that what is essential in its
theory of ideas, and in the theism inseparable from that theory, must
abide with our race for ever as a priceless possession. The Platonic
argument--by which is meant not a particular argument incidentally
employed by Plato, but the reasoning which underlies and pervades his
entire philosophy as a speculative search for certainty--has been
transmitted from age to age down to the present day by a long series
of eminent thinkers. Augustine, for example, argues for the existence
of God from the very nature of truth. It is impossible to think that
there is no truth. If there were none, to affirm that there was none
would be itself true; or, in other words, the denial of the existence
of truth is a self-contradiction. But what is truth? It is not mere
sensuous perception, not a something which belongs to the individual
mind and varies with its moods and peculiarities, but a something
which is unsensuous, unchangeable, and universal. The human reason
changes and errs in its judgments; but ideas, necessary truths, are not
the products, but the laws and conditions, of the human reason--they
are over it, and it is only through apprehending, realising, and
obeying them, that it enlightens and regulates our nature. These
ideas--the laws of our intellectual and moral constitution--cannot
have their source in us, but must be eternally inherent in an eternal,
unchangeable, and perfect Being. This Being--the absolute truth and
ultimate ground of all goodness--is God. Anselm reasoned in altogether
the same spirit and in nearly the same manner. In one of his works he
institutes an inquiry as to whether the goodness in good actions is
or is not the same thing present in all; and when he has convinced
himself that it is the same thing, he asks, What is it? and where has
it a real existence? Ascending upwards by these stages, Good _is_; Good
is _perfect_; Good is _one_; the one perfect Good is God,--he comes
to the conclusion that the goodness constitutive of good actions has
necessarily its source in God, and that the absolutely and essentially
good is identical with God. In another of his works he similarly
inquires whether there is any truth except mere actual existence. He
holds that there is, and argues, as he had done before in regard to the
good, that the absolute and ultimate truth must be God. Thomas Aquinas
was at one with Anselm thus far. The very nature of knowledge seemed to
him to show that it was in man only through the dependence of the human
intelligence on an underived and perfect intelligence.
Among the many modern philosophers who have adopted and enforced the
same doctrine I shall refer only to a few. Lord Herbert of Cherbury,
the founder of English deism, is very explicit on the subject.
He thought of the human mind as united in the closest and most
comprehensive way to the Divine mind through the universal notions of
what he called the rational instinct. These notions are the laws which
every faculty is meant to conform to and obey--the laws of all thought,
affection, and action. As to nature and origin, they are, in Herbert's
view, Divine; thoughts of God present in the mind of man; true
revelations of the Father of spirits to His children. In apprehending
one of them we have truly an intuition of a Divine attribute, of
some feature of the Divine character. It is through contact, through
communion with the Divine Intelligence, Love, and Will, that we know
and feel and act. The Divine is the root and the law of human thought,
emotion, and conduct. Not afar off, not to be realised by great stretch
of intellect, not separated by innumerable existences which intervene
between Him and us, but close around us, yea, with nothing between Him
and our inmost souls, is the Being with whom we have to do. "In Him,"
really and without any figure of speech, "we live, and move, and have
our being."
Among the various metaphysical proofs of Divine existence employed
by Cudworth, one is in like manner founded on the very nature of
knowledge. Knowledge, it is argued, is possible only through ideas
which have their source in an eternal reason. Sense is not only not
the whole of knowledge, but is in itself not at all knowledge; it
is wholly relative and individual, and not knowledge until the mind
adds to it what is absolute and universal. Knowledge does not begin
with what is individual, but with what is universal. The individual
is known by being brought under a universal, instead of the universal
being gathered from a multitude of individuals. And these universals
or ideas which underlie all the knowledge of all men, which originate
it and do not originate in it, have existed eternally in the only mode
in which truths can be said to be eternal, in an eternal mind. They
come to us from an eternal mind, which is their proper home, and of
which human reason is an emanation. "From whence it cometh to pass,
that all minds, in the several places and ages of the world, have ideas
or notions of things exactly alike, and truths indivisibly the same.
Truths are not multiplied by the diversity of minds that apprehend
them; because they are all but ectypal participations of one and the
same original or archetypal mind and truth. As the same face may be
reflected in several glasses; and the image of the same sun may be in a
thousand eyes at once beholding it; and one and the same voice may be
in a thousand ears listening to it: so when innumerable created minds
have the same ideas of things, and understand the same truths, it is
but one and the same eternal light that is reflected in them all ('that
light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world,') or the
same voice of that one everlasting Word that is never silent, re-echoed
by them."
Malebranche's celebrated theory of "seeing all things in God" is but an
exaggeration of the doctrine that "God is the light of all our seeing."
It found a zealous English defender in John Norris of Bemerton.
According to Malebranche and Norris, all objects are seen or understood
through ideas, which derive their existence neither from the senses nor
from the operations of the mind itself but are created in us by the
Deity; and which are not drawn from contemplation of the perfections
of the soul, but are inherent in the Divine nature. Better guarded
statements of the Platonic argument from necessary ideas will be found
in Leibnitz, and Bossuet, and Fenelon.
In the hands of Cousin more was again attempted to be deduced from it
than it could legitimately yield. We may reject, however, his opinion
that reason is not individual or personal, without rejecting with it
the substance at least of what he has so eloquently said regarding the
necessary ideas which govern the reason, or the reasoning by which he
seeks to show that truth is incomprehensible without God, and that all
thought implies a spontaneous faith in God. The most recent defenders
of theism employ in one form or another the same argument. In the works
of Ulrici, Hettinger, and Luthardt, of Saisset and Simon, of Thompson
and Tulloch, it still holds a prominent place.
I pass from it to indicate the character of some other arguments, which
are of a much more formal nature, but which have by no means commanded
so wide an assent. In fact, the arguments to which I now refer have
never laid hold of the common reason of men. They are the ingenious
constructions of highly-gifted metaphysicians, and have awakened much
interest in a certain number of speculative minds, but they have not
contributed in any considerable degree either to the maintenance or the
diffusion of theistic belief, and have had no lengthened continuous
history. They obviously stand, therefore, on a very different footing
from the proofs which have already been adduced--proofs which are
as catholic as the conclusions which they support, or as any of the
doctrines of the Christian system.
The Stoic philosopher Cleanthes, author of the famous Hymn to Zeus,
argued that every comparison, in affirming or denying one thing to
be better than another, implied and presupposed the existence of
a superlative or an absolutely good and perfect Being. Centuries
later, Boethius had recourse to nearly identical reasoning. It is
only, he maintained, through the idea of perfection that we can
judge anything to be imperfect; and the consciousness or perception
of imperfection leads reason necessarily to believe that there is a
perfect existence--one than whom a better cannot be conceived--God.
Cleanthes and Boethius were thus the precursors of Anselm, who was,
however, the first to endeavour to show that from the very idea of God
as the highest Being His necessary reality may be strictly deduced.
In consequence, Anselm was the founder of that kind of argumentation
which, in the opinion of many, is alone entitled to be described as
_a priori_ or ontological. He reasoned thus: "The fool may say in his
heart, There is no God; but he only proves thereby that he is a fool,
for what he says is self-contradictory. Since he denies that there is
a God, he has in his mind the idea of God, and that idea implies the
existence of God, for it is the idea of a Being than which a higher
cannot be conceived. That than which a higher cannot be conceived
cannot exist merely as an idea, because what exists merely as an idea
is inferior to what exists in reality as well as in idea. The idea
of a highest Being which exists merely in thought, is the idea of a
highest Being which is not the highest even in thought, but inferior
to a highest Being which exists in fact as well as in thought." This
reasoning found unfavourable critics even among the contemporaries of
Anselm, and has commended itself completely to few. Yet it may fairly
be doubted whether it has been conclusively refuted, and some of the
objections most frequently urged against it are certainly inadmissible.
It is no answer to it, for example, to deny that the idea of God is
innate or universal. The argument merely assumes that he who denies
that there is a God must have an idea of God. There is also no force,
as Anselm showed, in the objection of Gaunilo, that the existence of
God can no more be inferred from the idea of a perfect being, than the
existence of a perfect island is to be inferred from the idea of such
an island. There neither is nor can be an idea of an island which is
greater and better than any other that can ever be conceived. Anselm
could safely promise that he would make Gaunilo a present of such an
island when he had really imagined it. Only one being--an infinite,
independent, necessary being--can be perfect in the sense of being
greater and better than every other conceivable being. The objection
that the ideal can never logically yield the real--that the transition
from thought to fact must be in every instance illegitimate--is merely
an assertion that the argument is fallacious. It is an assertion which
cannot fairly be made until the argument has been exposed and refuted.
The argument is that a certain thought of God is found necessarily to
imply His existence. The objection that existence is not a predicate,
and that the idea of a God who exists is not more complete and perfect
than the idea of a God who does not exist, is, perhaps, not incapable
of being satisfactorily repelled. Mere existence is not a predicate,
but specifications or determinations of existence are predicable.
Now the argument nowhere implies that existence is a predicate; it
implies only that reality, necessity, and independence of existence
are predicates of existence; and it implies this on the ground that
existence _in re_ can be distinguished from existence _in conceptu_,
necessary from contingent existence, self-existence from derived
existence. Specific distinctions must surely admit of being predicated.
That the exclusion of existence--which here means real and necessary
existence--from the idea of God does not leave us with an incomplete
idea of God, is not a position, I think, which can be maintained. Take
away existence from among the elements in the idea of a perfect being,
and the idea becomes either the idea of a nonentity or the idea of an
idea, and not the idea of a perfect being at all. Thus, the argument
of Anselm is unwarrantably represented as an argument of four terms
instead of three. Those who urge the objection seem to me to prove only
that if our thought of God be imperfect, a being who merely realised
that thought would be an imperfect being; but there is a vast distance
between this truism and the paradox that an unreal being may be an
ideally perfect being.
The Cartesian proofs have been much and keenly discussed. The one
which founds on the fact of our existence and its limitations is
manifestly _a posteriori_. The other two both proceed from the idea
of a perfect being. The first is, that the idea of an all-perfect and
unlimited being is involved in the very consciousness of imperfection
and limitation. The imperfect can only be seen in the light of the
perfect; the finite cannot be conceived of except in relation to the
infinite. But can a finite and imperfect cause--like the human mind
or the outward world--be reasonably supposed to originate the idea of
an infinite and perfect being? Descartes holds that it cannot; that
the idea of an infinite and perfect being can only be explained by
the existence and operation of such a being. Was he correct in this
judgment? Perhaps not; but what has been urged in refutation of it
is probably by no means conclusive. It has been said that the ideas
of infinity and perfection are mere generalisations from experience.
But this is a statement which can only be proved on the principles
of sensationalism, and never has been proved. It has been likewise
said that these ideas are purely subjective, or, in other words,
that there may be nothing whatever to correspond to them. But this
is a meaningless collocation of words. No finite mind can conceive
the infinite, for example, as within itself at all. The human mind
can only think of the infinite as without itself. If the infinite
be not objective, the idea of the infinite is false and delusive.
The infinite, it has been further objected, means merely what is not
finite; and the perfect what is not imperfect. So be it; the argument
is as valid if the words be taken in that sense as in any other. Only
do not add, as some do, that the perfect and the imperfect, the finite
and the infinite, are mere verbal correlatives. Such a proposition can
be spoken, but it cannot be thought; and it is most undesirable to
divorce thought from speech. It has also been urged that all men have
not the idea of perfection; that different men have different ideas
thereof; and that in each man who possesses it the idea is constantly
changing. This must be granted; but it does not affect the argument,
which is founded on the existence of the idea of a perfect being, and
not on the perfection of the idea itself.
The second form of the Cartesian argument is, that God cannot be
thought of as a perfect Being unless He be also thought of as a
necessarily existent Being; and that, therefore, the thought of God
implies the existence of God. "Just as because," for example, "the
equality of its three angles to two right angles is necessarily
comprised in the idea of a triangle, the mind is firmly persuaded that
the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles; so, from
its perceiving necessary and eternal existence to be comprised in the
idea which it has of an all-perfect Being, it ought manifestly to
conclude that this all-perfect Being exists." Kant met this argument
thus: "It is a contradiction that there should be a triangle the three
angles of which are not equal to two right angles, or that there
should be a God who is not necessarily existent. I cannot in either
case retain the subject and do away with the predicate. If I assume
a triangle, I must take it with its three angles. If I assume a God,
I must grant Him to be necessarily existent. But why should I assume
either that there is a triangle or that there is a God? I may annul
the subject in both cases, and then there will be no contradiction in
annulling the predicate in both cases. There may be no such thing as a
triangle, why should there be such a Being as God?"
This reasoning of Kant has generally been accepted as conclusive. It
does not appear to me to be so. He ought not merely to have asserted
but to have shown that we can annul the subject in either of the cases
mentioned. We obviously cannot. I can say "there is no triangle," but
instead of annulling that implies the idea of a triangle, and from
the idea of a triangle it follows that its three angles are equal to
two right angles. In like manner I can say "there is no God," but
that is not to annul but to imply the idea of God, and it is from
the idea of God that, according to Descartes, the existence of God
necessarily follows. Kant should have seen that the proposition "there
is no God" could be no impediment to an argument the very purpose
of which is to prove that that proposition is a self-contradiction.
It is futile to meet this by saying that existence ought not to be
included in any mere conception, for it is not existence but necessary
existence which is included in the conception reasoned from, and that
God can be thought of otherwise than as necessarily existent requires
to be proved, not assumed. To affirm that existence cannot be given
or reached through thought, but only through sense and sensuous
experience, can prove nothing except the narrowness of the philosophy
on which such a thesis is based.
Cudworth, Leibnitz, and Mendelssohn modified the Cartesian argument
last specified in ways which do not greatly differ from one another. It
may be doubted whether their modifications were improvements.
In the eighteenth century there were elaborated a great many proofs
which claimed to be _a priori_ theistic demonstrations based on the
notions of existence and causality. Assuming that something is,
and that nothing cannot be the cause of something, these arguments
attempted to establish that there must be an unoriginated Being of
infinite perfection, and possessed of the attributes which we ascribe
to God. The most famous of them was, perhaps, that of Dr Samuel Clarke,
contained in the Boyle Lecture of 1704. But Dr Richard Fiddes, the
Rev. Colin Campbell, Mr Wollaston, Moses Lowman, the Chevalier Ramsay,
Dean Hamilton, and many others, devised ingenious demonstrations
of a similar nature. It is impossible for me to discuss here their
merits and demerits. Probably not one of them has completely satisfied
more than a few speculative minds. They are certainly not fitted to
carry conviction to the ordinary practical understanding. Yet it is
not easy to detect flaws in some of them; and the more carefully they
are studied, the more, I am inclined to think, will it be recognised
that they are pervaded by a substantial vein of truth. They attempted
logically to evolve what was implied in certain primary intuitions or
fundamental conditions of the mind, and although they may not have
accomplished all that they aimed at, they have at least succeeded
in showing that unless there exists an eternal, infinite, and
unconditioned Being, the human mind is, in its ultimate principles,
self-contradictory and delusive.[49]
[49] See Appendix XXXVIII.
There must, for example, unless consciousness and reason are utterly
untrustworthy, be an eternal Being. Present existence necessarily
implies to the human intellect eternal existence. The man who says
that a finite mind cannot rise to the idea of an eternal Being talks
foolishly, for all the thinking of a finite mind implies belief in
what he says is inaccessible to human thought. No man can thoughtfully
affirm his own existence, or the existence even of a passing fancy of
his mind, or of a grain of sand, without feeling that that affirmation
as certainly implies that something existed from all eternity as any
mathematical demonstration whatever implies its conclusion. And this
truth, that the most transient thing cannot be conceived of as existing
unless an eternal Being exist, may be syllogistically expressed and
exhibited in a variety of ways, because the contradictions involved
in denying it are numerous. This is what has been done by the authors
above mentioned with much ingenuity, and by some of them in a manner
which never has been and never can be refuted. It may be doubted
whether they did wisely in throwing their arguments into syllogistic
form; but as nobody ventures to undertake the refutation of them, they
must be admitted to be substantially valid. The reasonings of men like
Clarke and Fiddes, Lowman and Ramsay, have sufficiently proved that
whoever denies such propositions as these,--Something has existed from
eternity; The eternal Being must be necessarily existent, immutable,
and independent; There is but one unoriginated Being in the universe;
The unoriginated Being must be unlimited or perfect in all its
attributes, &c.,--inevitably falls into manifest absurdities.
This, it may be objected, is not equivalent to a proof of the existence
of an infinite and eternal Being. It leads merely to the alternative,
either an infinite and eternal Being exists, or the consciousness and
reason of man cannot be trusted. The absolute sceptic will rejoice to
have the alternative offered to him; that the human mind is essentially
untrustworthy is precisely what he maintains. I answer that I admit
that the arguments in question do not amount to a direct positive
proof, but that they constitute a _reductio ad absurdum_, which is just
as good, and that if they do not exclude absolute scepticism, it is
merely because absolute scepticism is willing to accept what is absurd.
I am not going to examine absolute scepticism at present. I shall have
something to say regarding it when I treat of antitheistic theories.
Just now it is sufficient simply to point out that if disbelief in an
infinite, self-existent, eternal Being necessarily implies belief in
the untrustworthiness of all our mental processes, the absolute sceptic
is the only man who can consistently disbelieve in God. Unless we are
prepared to believe that no distinction can be established between
truth and error--that there is no certainty that our senses and our
understandings are not at every moment deceiving us--no real difference
between our perceptions when we are awake and our visions when we
are asleep--no ground of assurance that we are not as much deluded
when following a demonstration of Euclid as any have been who busied
themselves in attempting to square the circle,--we must accept all
arguments which show that disbelief of the existence of an infinite and
eternal Being logically involves a self-contradiction or an absurdity,
as not less valid than a direct positive demonstration of the existence
of such a Being. If, although I am constrained to conclude that there
is an infinite and eternal Being, I may reject the conclusion on the
supposition that reason is untrustworthy, I am clearly bound, in
self-consistency, to set aside the testimony of my senses also by the
assumption that they are habitually delusive. When any view or theory
is shown to involve absolute scepticism it is sufficiently refuted,
for absolute scepticism effaces the distinction between reason and
unreason, and practically prefers unreason to reason.
II.
The _a priori_ arguments have a value independent of their truth and
of their power to produce conviction. True or false, persuasive or
merely perplexing, they are admirable means of disciplining the mind
distinctly to apprehend certain ideas which experience cannot yield,
yet which must be comprehended in any worthy view taken of God. They
help us steadily to contemplate and patiently to consider such abstract
and difficult thoughts as those of being, absolute being, necessary
being, cause, substance, perfection, infinity, eternity, &c.; and this
is a service so great, that it may safely be said--as some writer whose
name I cannot recall has said--that they will never be despised so long
as speculative thinking is held in repute.
While believing that several of these arguments on the whole accomplish
what they undertake, I am not prepared to maintain that any of them
are faultless or even conclusive throughout. They are all, probably,
much too formal and elaborate, so far as any directly practical
purpose is concerned. It ought to be constantly kept in view that
they presuppose an immediate apprehension of the infinite, and that
their value consists entirely in establishing that that apprehension
implies the reality and presence of God. The simplest mode of doing
this must be the best. It may be thought that no reasoning at all is
needed; that the intuition does not require to be supplemented by any
inference; that if the infinite be apprehended, the living God must be
self-evidently present to the human mind. But this is plainly a hasty
view. Few atheists will deny that something is infinite, or that they
immediately apprehend various aspects of infinity. What they refuse
to acknowledge is, that the apprehension of the infinite implies
more than the boundlessness of space, the eternity of time, and the
self-existence of matter. There is certainly some reasoning needed in
order to show that this interpretation of the intuition is inadequate.
But such reasoning cannot be too direct, for otherwise the function of
the intuition is almost certain to be obscured, and argument is almost
certain to be credited with accomplishing far more than it really
effects.
According to the view of the theistic argumentation which has been
given in the present course of lectures, all that is now necessary to
complete the theistic proof is very simple indeed. The universe has
been shown to have an inconceivably powerful and intelligent cause,
a Supreme Creator, who has dealt bountifully with all His creatures,
who has given to men a moral law, and who has abundantly manifested
in history that He loveth righteousness and hateth iniquity. We are
further conscious of having ideas or intuitions of infinity, eternity,
necessary existence, and perfection. We may dispute as to whence and
how we have got them, but we cannot deny that we possess them. Were
any person, for example, to affirm that he did not believe that there
is a self-existent or necessary being--a being which derived its
existence from no other and depends upon no other but is what it is in
and of itself alone--we should be entitled to tell him either that he
did not know the meaning of what he said, or that he did not himself
believe what he said. But if we undoubtedly possess these ideas, they
must, unless they are wholly delusive--which is what we are unable to
conceive--be predicable of some being. The sole question for us is,
Of what being? And the whole of our previous argumentation has shut
us up to one answer. It must be, Of Him who has been proved to be the
First Cause of all things--the Source of all the power, wisdom, and
goodness displayed in the universe. It cannot be the universe itself,
for that has been shown to be but an effect--to have before and behind
it a Mind, a Person. It cannot be ourselves or anything to which our
senses can reach, seeing that we and they are finite, contingent, and
imperfect. The author of the universe alone--the Father of our spirits,
and the Giver of every good and perfect gift--can be uncreated and
unconditioned, infinite and perfect.
This completes the idea of God so far as it can be reached or
formed by natural reason. And it gives consistency to the idea. The
conclusions of the _a posteriori_ arguments fail to satisfy either
mind or heart until they are connected with, and supplemented by,
this intuition of the reason--infinity. The conception of any other
than an infinite God--a God unlimited in all perfections--is a
self-contradictory conception which the intellect refuses to entertain.
The self-contradictions inherent in such a conception have been
exposed times without number, and in ways which cannot possibly be
refuted. The chief value of most of the _a priori_ arguments lies in
such demonstration; and no theologian who has thoughtfully discussed
either the immanent or the transitive attributes of God has been
able to dispense with as much of _a priori_ reasoning as necessary
to establish that a denial of the eternity, or immutability, or
omnipotence, or ubiquity, or omniscience, or any other attribute
implied in the infinity of the Divine Being, logically leads to
absurdity. If the infinity or independence, for example, of the First
Cause be questioned, whoever would maintain it must return some
such answer as that which Mr Spencer, although not assenting to it,
puts in these words: "If we go a step further, and ask what is the
nature of this First Cause, we are driven by an inexorable logic to
certain further conclusions. Is the First Cause finite or infinite?
If we say finite, we involve ourselves in a dilemma. To think of the
First Cause as finite is to think of it as limited. To think of it
as limited necessarily implies a conception of something beyond its
limits: it is absolutely impossible to conceive a thing as bounded
without conceiving a region surrounding its boundaries. What now
must we say of this region? If the First Cause is limited, and there
consequently lies something outside of it, this something must have
no First Cause--must be uncaused. But if we admit that there can be
something uncaused, there is no reason to assume a cause for anything.
If beyond that finite region over which the First Cause extends there
lies a region which we are compelled to regard as infinite, over which
it does not extend--if we admit that there is an infinite uncaused
surrounding the finite caused--we tacitly abandon the hypothesis of
causation altogether. Thus it is impossible to consider the First Cause
as finite. And if it cannot be finite it must be infinite. Another
inference concerning the First Cause is equally unavoidable. It must
be independent. If it is dependent, it cannot be the First Cause; for
that must be the First Cause on which it depends. It is not enough to
say that it is partially independent; since this implies some necessity
which determines its partial dependence, and this necessity, be it what
it may, must be a higher cause, or the true First Cause, which is a
contradiction. But to think of the First Cause as totally independent,
is to think of it as that which exists in the absence of all other
existence; seeing that if the presence of any other existence is
necessary, it must be partially dependent on that other existence, and
so cannot be the First Cause."
It is impossible, I think, to show that we are justified in ascribing
to God the attributes most essential to His nature without having
recourse to a very considerable extent to reasoning of an _a priori_
kind similar to that of which we have a specimen in the passage just
quoted. Such reasoning may be perfectly legitimate and conclusive. Mr
Spencer, I have said, does not accept as valid the arguments cited. But
he admits that from their inferences "there appears to be no escape,"
characterises their logic as "inexorable," and makes not the slightest
attempt directly to refute them. On what grounds, then, does he
withhold his assent from them?
One reason is, that the very conclusions which such arguments yield,
lead, he thinks, by a logic as inexorable, to self-contradictions as
great as those found to be involved in the denial of the infinity,
independence, &c., of God. Reasoning from which there appears to be no
escape, and in which no logical fallacy can be detected, yields the
conclusion that there is an infinite and absolute First Cause; but
reasoning as faultless yields also the conclusion that an infinite and
absolute First Cause is a self-contradiction--that there is no infinite
and absolute First Cause. In other words, an inexorable logic proves
both that there is an infinite and absolute First Cause, and that there
is none. Therefore it proves nothing at all except the worthlessness of
logic when applied to such an idea as that of a First Cause.
Most persons will probably be of opinion that a view like this is its
own sufficient refutation; that the reasoning which tries to prove
that reasoning may be necessarily and essentially self-contradictory
is self-condemned. And they will be quite right in their opinion. If
for any proposition the proof and counter-proof be equally cogent--if
for contradictories there may be perfect demonstrations--it is not God
only, but everything, that we shall have to cease to believe in. Such
a _reductio ad absurdum_ of a proposition would be also a _reductio ad
absurdum_ of the reason itself, leaving no inference, no intuition, no
perception, to be rationally trusted. A scepticism more absolute and
comprehensive than any human being has dared to advocate, would be the
only legitimate result. Our whole nature would have to be regarded as a
lie. But we need have no fear of reason thus terminating its existence
by committing suicide. If we are disposed to be afraid that the human
mind is in danger of so terrible a calamity, an examination of the
reasoning by which it has been attempted to show that the idea of an
infinite and absolute First Cause involves a variety of contradictions
ought speedily to reassure us. Few persons of ordinary reasoning
powers, if not committed to a foregone conclusion, will regard as
"inexorable logic" the argumentation by which Mr Mansel and Mr Spencer
fancy that they show that one and the same Being cannot be a cause,
infinite and absolute, or its inferences as those "from which there
appears to be no escape." On the contrary, ninety-nine men in a hundred
will deem them extremely weak, and possessed of no other plausibility
than that which they derive from an inaccurate and ambiguous use of
language. There are arguments proving that there is a First Cause, and
that the First Cause must be infinite and absolute, in which no fallacy
can be detected. But the only arguments which have yet been invented
to show that the First Cause cannot without contradiction be thought
of as infinite and absolute, are good for little else than to exercise
students of logic in the examination of fallacies. The two sets of
arguments are by no means of equal worth and weight.
They are also notably different in nature. Those which attempt to
prove the First Cause to be infinite and absolute imply no more than
that the mind may conclude that such a cause is not finite, dependent,
and imperfect. In this there is nothing arrogant. Those which attempt
to prove that the First Cause cannot be infinite and absolute are of
a much less humble character. They imply that we have a positive and
comprehensive knowledge of the First Cause; the infinite, and the
absolute; that we can define, compare, and contrast them, and thus find
out that they are incompatible and contradictory. But we may be quite
unable to do anything of the kind, and yet be fully entitled to hold
that the First Cause is not finite, dependent, or imperfect. We may
reason _to_ the infinite, if we only know what the finite is and is
not, without being justified in reasoning _from_ the infinite, as if we
knew definitely, not to say exhaustively, its nature.
The idea of an infinite First Cause--the idea of the infinite
God--contains no self-contradiction; on the contrary, it solves certain
otherwise inevitable self-contradictions of thought. It is only by
the apprehension of a Being who passeth knowledge that knowledge
can be rendered self-consistent; only by the admission that all
existence is not included within the conditions of the finite that
thought can escape self-destruction. But, of course, we may easily
put contradictions into our idea of an infinite Being, by assuming
that we know more about unoriginated existence, primary causation,
infinity, independence, &c., than we really do, and by defining or
describing them in ways for which we have no warrant. The idea of an
infinite First Cause is, it must not be forgotten, the idea of an
incomprehensible Being. No sane mind can refuse to acknowledge that
something is eternal and immense; but we cannot comprehend eternity and
immensity, and when we reason as if we comprehended them, we speedily
find ourselves involved in absurdities. We may know and believe that
God is eternal and immense, but if He be so, we undoubtedly cannot
comprehend Him. We cannot think of God otherwise than as self-existent,
yet we certainly cannot comprehend the nature of self-existence. We
can think of it negatively as unoriginated and independent existence,
and consequently as a positive, most perfect, and peculiar manner of
existence, unlike that which is characteristic of ourselves and other
finite beings; but we are ignorant wherein its peculiarities and
perfections positively consist.
The incomprehensibleness of the Divine perfections is no reasonable
objection against their reality. We do not comprehend the manner
even of our own existence, although we are quite certain that we do
exist. Assent, however, has often been refused to _a priori_ theistic
argumentation, not on the ground that it is illogical, but on the
ground that the conclusions inferred are incomprehensible. Thus the
author of whom I have just been speaking urges in favour of the
procedure which he adopts the following argument, in addition to the
one already specified: "Self-existence necessarily means existence
without a beginning; and to form a conception of self-existence is
to form a conception of existence without a beginning. Now by no
mental effort can we do this. To conceive existence through infinite
past-time, implies the conception of infinite past-time, which is an
impossibility." "Those who cannot conceive a self-existent universe,
and who therefore assume a creator as the source of the universe, take
for granted that they can conceive a self-existent creator. The mystery
which they recognise in this great fact surrounding them on every
side, they transfer to an alleged source of this great fact, and then
suppose that they have solved the mystery. But they delude themselves.
Self-existence is rigorously inconceivable; and this holds true
whatever be the nature of the object of which it is predicated. Whoever
agrees that the atheistic hypothesis is untenable because it involves
the impossible idea of self-existence, must perforce admit that the
theistic hypothesis is untenable if it contains the same impossible
idea."
Now, that we can by no mental effort conceive existence without a
beginning is certain, if by conceive be meant to comprehend, or
definitely imagine, or sensibly represent; but that we not only
conceive but cannot avoid conceiving such existence is equally
certain, if by conceive be simply meant to be conscious of, to know
to be true, to be rationally convinced. It is impossible seriously
to doubt that existence was without beginning. Something is, and
something never sprang from nothing. From nothing nothing ever came
or can come. Something always was. Being was without beginning.
Mr Spencer can no more deliver himself from the sublime and awful
necessity of acknowledging an eternal something--a self-existent
reality--underlying the whole universe, than any one else. His own
Absolute is such a something, such a reality; and although, in
accordance with his peculiar use of the words "know" and "conceive,"
he denies that that Absolute can be known or conceived, he admits
that its positive existence is a "necessary datum of consciousness."
Further, no intelligent theist argues "that the atheistic hypothesis is
untenable because it involves the impossible idea of self-existence."
On the contrary, the theist, far from objecting to the idea of
self-existence as impossible, admits it to be a necessary idea. He
recognises that the universe must be allowed to be self-existent until
it is shown to be a creation or event. It is only after an examination
of its character--only after having convinced himself that it is an
effect--that he transfers the attribute of self-existence to its
cause or creator. To say that in doing so he flees from one mystery
to another as great, is a statement which admits of no possible
justification. In a word, Mr Spencer's account of the reasoning of the
theist is an inexplicable caricature.
The _a priori_ reasoning employed in the establishment of theism is
independent of any particular theory as to the origin of our ideas of
infinity. It presupposes merely that these ideas are valid--are not
delusive. It is only as predisposing to, or implying, scepticism, as
to their truth or objective worth, that a theory as to their origin has
a bearing on their application. Such scepticism cannot be logically
limited to the ideas in question. If we do not accept these ideas as
true and trustworthy, absolute scepticism is rationally inevitable. An
examination of the nature and principles of scepticism will make this
manifest, but I cannot enter on that examination at present.
In conclusion, I remark that the conception of any other than an
infinite God--a God unlimited in all perfections--is not only a
self-contradictory but an unworthy conception; it not only perplexes
the intellect but revolts the spiritual affections. The heart can find
no secure rest except on an infinite God. If less than omnipotent,
He may be unable to help us in the hour of sorest need. If less than
omniscient, He may overlook us. If less than perfectly just, we cannot
unreservedly trust Him. If less than perfectly benevolent, we cannot
fully love Him. The whole soul can only be devoted to One who is
believed to be absolutely good.
LECTURE X.
MERE THEISM INSUFFICIENT.
I.
I have endeavoured to show, in the course of lectures which I am now
bringing to a close, that the light of nature and the works of creation
and providence prove the existence, and so far manifest the goodness,
wisdom, and power of God. This truth ought always to be combined with
another--namely, that the light of nature and the works of creation
and providence "are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God,
and of His will, which is necessary unto salvation." Reason sends
forth a true light which is to be trusted and followed so far as it
extends, but which is much more limited than the wants of human nature.
The deepest discoveries and the highest achievements of the unaided
intellect need to be supplemented by truths which can only come to us
through special revelation. The natural knowledge of God which man can
attain by the exercise of his own faculties is not sufficient to make
him feel that the Eternal bears to him fatherly love, or to break the
power of sin within him and over him, or to sustain and develop his
moral and spiritual life. It falls far short of what is required to
enable a human soul, a religious and immortal being, to accomplish its
true destination. It falls far short, in other words, of being what is
"necessary unto salvation," in the broad and comprehensive sense which
the term salvation bears throughout Scripture.
There are those who, instead of regarding theism as simply so much
fundamental truth which Christianity presupposes and applies, would
oppose theism to Christianity, and substitute theism for Christianity.
They would rest in mere theism and would reject Christianity. They
represent theism, dissociated from Christianity, as all-sufficient, and
as the religion to which alone the future belongs. In doing so, these
men--many of them most earnest and excellent men--seem to me to show
great want of reflection, great ignorance of the teachings of history,
and a very superficial acquaintance with human nature.
Atheism, polytheism, and pantheism have always proved stronger than
mere theism--more popular, more influential on ordinary minds. It
is only in alliance with revelation that theism has been able to
cope successfully with these foes. In no land, and in no age, has
a theism resting exclusively on the authority of reason gained and
retained the assent of more than a small minority of the community. Its
adherents may have been men who did credit to their creed--honourable,
high-minded, cultivated men--but they have always been few. In India,
in Persia, in Greece, in Rome, some specially gifted and religious
minds reached, or at least approached, theism; but, on the whole,
the development of belief in all these countries was not towards but
away from theism. The Israelites, although authoritatively taught
monotheism, fell back again and again into polytheism. Mythology is not
merely "a disease of language," but also a testimony to the fact that
the minds and hearts of the mass of mankind cannot be satisfied with
a Deity who is only to be apprehended by abstract thought,--a proof
that while a few speculative philosophers may rest content with the God
discovered by pure reason, the countless millions of their fellow-men
are so influenced by sense, imagination, and feeling, that they have
ever been found to substitute for such a God deities whom they could
represent under visible forms, as subject to the limitations of space
and time, and as actuated by the passions of humanity. Pantheism has
a powerful advantage over theism, inasmuch as it can give a colouring
of religion to what is virtually atheism, and a semblance of reason
even to the most wildly extravagant polytheism. There is no logical
necessity why a mere theist should become an atheist, but the causes
which tend to produce atheism are too strong to be counteracted by any
force inherent in mere theism; and hence, as a matter of historical
fact, mere theism has always, even in modern Christendom, largely given
place to atheism. All the powers of the world above, and of the world
to come, are needed to oppose the powers of the world below, and of
the world which now is. Only a much fuller exhibition of the Divine
character than is presented to us by mere theism can make faith in God
the ruling principle of human life. Mere theism might have sufficed us
had we remained perfectly rational and perfectly sinless; but those who
fancy that it is sufficient for men as they are, only make evident that
they know not what men are. In the state into which we have fallen, we
need a higher light to guide us than any which shines on sea or land;
we need the light which only shines from the gracious countenance of
Christ.
"The world by wisdom knew not God." The whole history of the heathen
world testifies to the truth of this affirmation of St Paul. It
is an indubitable historical fact that, outside of the sphere of
special revelation, man has never obtained such a knowledge of God
as a responsible and religious being plainly requires. The wisdom of
the heathen world, at its very best, was utterly inadequate to the
accomplishment of such a task as creating a due abhorrence of sin,
controlling the passions, purifying the heart, and ennobling the
conduct. Not one religion devised by man rested on a worthy view of the
character of God; not one did not substitute for the living and true
God false and dead idols, or represent Him in a mean and dishonouring
light. We are apt to associate with the religion of Greece and Rome
the religious philosophy of a few eminent Greek and Roman thinkers
who rose above the religion of their age and country. The religion
itself was mainly the creation of imagination, and in various respects
was extremely demoralising in its tendencies. The worshippers of
Jupiter and Juno, of Mars and Venus, and the gods and goddesses who
were supposed to be their companions, must have been very often not
the better but the worse for worshipping such beings. Certainly, they
could find no elevating ideal or correct and consistent rule of moral
life among the capricious and unrighteous and impure objects of their
adoration. It was less from the religion, the idolatrous polytheism,
of Greece and Rome that the human soul in these lands drew spiritual
inspiration, than from philosophy, from reason apprehending those
truths of natural religion which the positive religion concealed and
disfigured and contradicted. If salvation be deliverance from darkness
to light, from sin to holiness, from love of the world to love of God,
no sane man will say that the Greek or Roman religion was the way to
it, or an indication of the way to it.
Did, then, the philosophers discover the way? There is no need that
we should depreciate what they did. Men like Socrates, Plato, and
Aristotle, among the Greeks--like Cicero, Epictetus, and Antoninus,
among the Romans--obtained wonderful glimpses of Divine truth, and gave
to the world noble moral instructions, which are of inestimable value
even to this day. But they all failed to effect any deep and extensive
reform. They did not turn men from the worship of idols to the service
of the true God. They were unable to raise any effective barrier either
to superstition or to vice. They were insufficiently assured in their
own minds, and spoke as without authority to others. They saw too
clearly to be able to believe that the popular religion was true, but
not clearly enough to know what to put in its place. In the systems
and lives of the very greatest of them there were terrible defects,
and neither the doctrine nor the conduct of the majority of those
who pretended to follow them, the common specimens of philosophers,
was fitted to improve society. Philosophy found out _many truths_,
but not _the truth_. It did not disclose the holiness and love of
God--discovered no antidote for the poison of sin--showed the soul no
fountain of cleansing, healing, and life.
The true character of the philosophical theism of antiquity has been
admirably described by one of the ablest theologians of the present
day. "Theism was discussed as a philosophical, not as a religious
question, as one rationale among others of the origin of the material
universe, but as no more affecting practice than any great scientific
hypothesis does now. Theism was not a test which separated the orthodox
philosopher from the heterodox, which distinguished belief from
disbelief; it established no breach between the two opposing theorists;
it was discussed amicably as an open question: and well it might be,
for of all questions there was not one which could make less practical
difference to the philosopher, or, upon his view, to anybody, than
whether there was or was not a God. Nothing would have astonished him
more than, when he had proved in the lecture-hall the existence of a
God, to have been told to worship Him. 'Worship whom?' he would have
exclaimed; 'worship what? worship how?' Would you picture him indignant
at the polytheistic superstition of the crowd, and manifesting some
spark of the fire of St Paul 'when he saw the city wholly given to
idolatry,' you could not be more mistaken. He would have said that
you did not see a plain distinction; that the crowd was right on the
religious question, and the philosopher right on the philosophical;
that however men might uphold in argument an infinite abstraction,
they could not worship it; and that the hero was much better fitted
for worship than the Universal Cause--fitted for it not in spite of,
but in consequence of, his want of true divinity. The same question
was decided in the same way in the speculations of the Brahmans. There
the Supreme Being figures as a characterless, impersonal essence, the
mere residuum of intellectual analysis, pure unity, pure simplicity.
No temple is raised to him, no knee is bended to him. Without action,
without will, without affection, without thought, he is the substratum
of everything, himself a nothing. The Universal Soul is the Unconscious
Omnipresent _Looker-on_; the complement, as coextensive spectator, of
the universal drama of nature; the motionless mirror upon which her
boundless play and sport, her versatile postures, her multitudinous
evolutions are reflected, as the image of the rich and changing sky is
received into the passive bosom of the lake. Thus the idea of God, so
far from calling forth in the ancient world the idea of worship, ever
stood in antagonism with it: the idol was worshipped because he was not
God, God was not worshipped because He was. One small nation alone out
of all antiquity worshipped God, believed the universal Being to be a
personal Being. That nation was looked upon as a most eccentric and
unintelligible specimen of humanity for doing so; but this whimsical
fancy, as it appeared in the eyes of the rest, was cherished by it as
the most sacred deposit; it was the foundation of its laws and polity;
and from this narrow stock this conception was engrafted upon the human
race."[50]
[50] Canon Mosley, On Miracles, Lect. IV.
It is historically certain, then, that the world by its unaided wisdom
failed to know God. Of course, it may be said that the experiment was
incomplete; that even if Christianity had not appeared, the human
mind would have found out in process of time all the religious truth
needed to satisfy the human heart, guide human life, and sustain human
society. But such an assertion is quite arbitrary. History gives it
no confirmation. It was only after human wisdom had a lengthened and
unembarrassed opportunity of showing what it could accomplish in the
most favourable circumstances, and after it had clearly displayed its
insufficiency, that Christianity appeared. Christ did not come till it
was manifest that reason was wandering farther and farther away from
God--that religion had no inherent principle of self-improvement--that
man had done his utmost with the unaided resources of his nature to
devise a salvation, and had failed. There was no probability whatever
that a new and higher civilisation would rise on the ruins of that
which fell when the hordes of Northern barbarians subdued and overran
the Roman empire, had not Christianity been present to direct the work
of construction.
We need not, however, discuss what might or might not have happened,
supposing the sun of Christianity had not appeared on the horizon when
that of classical civilisation was hastening to its setting, since
it is obvious that the science and philosophy even of the present
day, dissevered from revelation, can produce no religion capable of
satisfying, purifying, and elevating man's spiritual nature. They are
far advanced beyond the stage which they had reached in the time of St
Paul. Knowledge has since received large accessions from all sides,
and reflection has been taught by a lengthened and varied process
of correction and discipline valuable lessons. In mathematical and
physical science especially there has been enormous progress. The human
mind is now enriched not only with the intellectual wealth which it
has inherited from Greece and Rome, but with that of many ages not
less fruitful than those in which they flourished. Can we accomplish,
then, what the Greeks and Romans so signally failed to achieve? Can
we, with all our knowledge of nature and man, devise a religion which
shall be at once merely rational and thoroughly effective? Can we,
when we set aside Christianity, construct a creed capable of not only
commanding the assent of the intellect, but of attracting and changing
the heart, quickening and guiding the conscience, and purifying and
ennobling the conduct? Can we build a system worthy to be called a
religion on any other foundation than that which has been laid in the
Gospel? If science and philosophy cannot do anything of this kind even
at the present day, we are surely at length entitled to say that the
world needs to know more about God than it can find out for itself. In
proof that they cannot, we would appeal both to facts and reason--both
to the character of what science and philosophy have actually done in
this connection, and to the nature of the task which their injudicious
friends would impose on them.
What, then, even at the present day, do the ablest of those who
reject Christianity propose to offer us instead? Comte would have us
to worship humanity. Can we? Comte himself did not believe that we
can in any but a very partial and insincere way. If we could, would
our worship do either our minds or hearts more good than the worship
of Jupiter and Juno did the Greeks of old? Strauss would have us to
revere the universe. Is that not to go back to fetichism? Might we
not just as wisely and profitably adore a stock or stone? Herbert
Spencer would present to us for God the Unknowable. But what thoughts,
what feelings, can we have about the Unknowable? Might we not as
well worship empty space, the eternal no, or the absolute nothing?
Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Mainlander, and others, would have us to go
back to Buddhism and welcome annihilation. But it is clear as the light
that if the advice were acted on, the springs of intellectual life and
social progress would soon be dried up. The philosophy and science on
which they exclusively rely have enabled none of these men to find out
God; nay, they have left them under the delusion that there is no God
to find out, except those strange gods to which I have referred. And
being without God in the world, these philosophers, with all their
knowledge and accomplishments, are also without any hope of a life
beyond the grave. No man need go to them with the question, "What
shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Among all their differences--and
they are many and radical--on one point they are agreed, and it is
that eternal life is but a dream; that the highest hope even of the
best of mankind is to survive for a time as a memory and an influence
in the minds and conduct of others, after having ceased to be real
and personal beings; that the only form in which the aspiration after
immortality can be rationally cherished is that which the greatest of
contemporary novelists and among the greatest of contemporary poets has
expressed in the words:--
"O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence: live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man's search
To vaster issues....
This is life to come,
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow."
It is as true, then, as ever it was, that the world by wisdom knows not
God. The advantages which the eighteen Christian centuries have brought
us only make more manifest the world's inability by its own wisdom
to know God. The longer the trial has lasted, the more manifest has
it become that God's revelation of Himself is indispensable--is what
man can provide no substitute for. The philosophy which sets itself
in opposition to revelation--which professes to supply in another and
better way the spiritual wants to which revelation responds--which
aims at constructing a religion out of the conclusions of science--is
a mournful failure. The only religious constructions which it has been
able to raise, even with all the scientific resources of the nineteenth
century at its command, are simply monuments of human folly.
This is just what was to be expected; for apart from special Divine
teaching, apart from special Divine revelation, man cannot truly know
God, as a sinful being needs to know Him. Apart, for example, from
the revelation which God has made of Himself in Christ, the mind
cannot possibly attain to a sincere and well-grounded conviction even
of that primary truth on which all the perfection of religion and
all the happiness and hopes of mankind depend--the truth that God is
really a Father, with all a Father's love, to the children of men.
There are manifold signs or evidences of God's goodness and bounty in
creation and providence, but, unless seen in the light reflected on
them from redemption, they fall far short of a complete proof of God's
cherishing fatherly love to sinful men. In the light of the Cross
it is otherwise; the man who looks at the works of creation in that
light will unhesitatingly and with full reason say, "My Father made
them all," and will easily and clearly trace in all the dealings of
providence a Father's hand guiding His children. Suppose, however, that
blessed light not shining or shut out, and that creation and providence
are before us in no other light than their own,--what then? What can
creation and providence teach us about God?
Substantially this only: that He has vast power, since He has created
and sustains and controls the whole of this mighty universe; wondrous
wisdom, since He has arranged everything so well and directs everything
so well; and a goodness corresponding to His power and wisdom, since
a beneficent purpose may be detected underlying all His works of
creation and pervading the course of providence. I cannot suppose that
any one will seriously maintain that creation and providence teach
us more than that God is thus powerful and wise and good; and fully
granting that they teach us all this, if any one mean by God being the
Father of men no more than that He is as good as He is powerful and
wise, and that His power and wisdom have been so employed on behalf of
men that good gifts meet them at every step, I readily agree with him
that creation and providence are sufficient to show God to be a Father
in that sense and to that extent.
But is there nothing more, nothing higher than this, implied in
fatherhood among men? Unquestionably there is. Love in the form of
mere goodness is far from the noblest and most distinctive quality in
a human father's heart; nay, there is no true fatherliness of heart
at all in a man in whom there is nothing better than that. One can,
by an effort of imagination, indeed, conceive a man to have children
so absolutely innocent and happy, and so perfectly guarded from all
possibility of evil and suffering, that love in the form of goodness
or kindness would be the only kind of love he could show them; but
would his fatherly love be ever really tested in that case? Could he
ever show the deeper, the truly distinctive feelings of a father's
heart--those we so often see manifested in the toils, the hardships,
the dangers, the sacrifices of wealth, comfort, and even life, which
parents undertake and endure for their children? Certainly not. Apply
this to God. In what sense is He a Father? In what sense has He
fatherly love? Among the angels this question could have no place, for
they were such perfectly innocent and happy children that love in the
form of goodness was all they required--all that could be shown to
them. And it would have been the same with men also, if they had not
fallen. But as soon as sin, suffering, and death invaded earth, and
seized on man's body and soul, and help or healing there was none for
him in any creature, the most awful of questions for the human race
came to be, whether or not God was a Father in the full meaning of that
term, or, in other words, whether or not He had a love which, in order
to save men, would submit to humiliation, suffering, sacrifice?
Now that is what I say creation and providence cannot prove. Point to
anything in creation or to anything in ordinary providence which you
can show to have _cost_ God anything. You can easily point to thousands
and thousands of things and events which you may justly conclude to be
signs or gifts of God's goodness; but can you point to one thing in
creation, one event in ordinary providence, which you can seriously
maintain to come from a self-sacrificing love such as a father
displays when he rushes into a house in flames, or throws himself
into a raging flood, to save the life of his child at the risk of his
own? If you cannot, you fail to prove God a Father in the sense I
mean. And in that sense, which is the true sense, there seems to me no
possibility of proving God a Father from creation and providence, apart
from redemption.
Wherein is it that both fail? Obviously in this, that they can show
no traces of sacrifice on God's part. But it is just here that the
revelation of redemption comes in. God, in the unspeakable gift of His
Son, shows us a power of sacrifice infinitely above anything known
among men--an intensity of tenderest fatherly affection of which
the strongest fatherly affection on earth is but a pale and feeble
reflection; and Christ in His incarnation, life, sufferings, and death,
reveals to us not merely the power, and wisdom, and goodness of God,
but the very depths, if we may so speak, of His heart as a Father,
enabling us to feel without a doubt that now indeed are we the sons
of God. Nothing but a special revelation, however, could thus unveil
and disclose God. The natural reason could not thus discern Him by its
unaided power. And yet it is only in the knowledge of God as a Father
that the soul can either discern or realise its true destiny.
There are many other precious truths set before us in the Gospel which
we might in like manner show to be at once most necessary for human
guidance, and inaccessible to unaided human research. We shall not,
however, dwell on them or even enumerate them. The entire problem of
our present and future salvation is beyond our powers of solution.
The light of nature and the works of creation and providence cannot
show man a way of reconciliation to God. No man by mere human wisdom,
by any searching into the secrets of nature or providence, can find
that out. Mere human wisdom is utter folly here; and if man may be
wise at all in this connection, he must confess his natural folly, the
powerlessness of his own reason, and must consent to be guided by the
wisdom of God--or, in other words, to accept Christ, who is the wisdom
of God to us for salvation, who is God's solution of the problem of our
salvation. The only real wisdom possible to man must, from the very
nature and necessity of the case, be the wisdom of renouncing his own
wisdom. If he say, I shall solve this awful problem for myself, without
help from any one, then he in his wisdom is a most manifest fool, whose
folly will ruin him; but if he have the candour to confess his own
folly, to admit his own intellect powerless here, and to acknowledge
the wisdom of God and acquiesce in His plan of salvation, then, in the
very act of confessing himself foolish he is made wise, for Christ is
made wisdom unto him.
The oracle at Delphi pronounced Socrates the wisest of men. Socrates
could not understand it, and yet he was unwilling to disbelieve the
oracle, so he went about from one person reputed wise to another, in
order to be able to say, "here is a wiser man than I am," or at least
to find out what the oracle meant. He went to many, but he found that,
while they in reality knew almost nothing that was worth knowing, they
thought they knew a great deal, and were angry with one who tried to
convince them of their ignorance. So that at last Socrates came to
recognise that there was a truth in what had been said about him; to
use nearly his own words,--"He left them, saying to himself, I am wiser
than these men; for neither they nor I, it would seem, know anything
valuable: but they, not knowing, fancy that they do know; I, as I
really do not know, so I do not think that I know. I seem, therefore,
to be in one small matter wiser than they." Now it is only the kind
of spirit which in its degree and about less important matters was in
Socrates--it is precisely that kind of spirit about the things which
concern eternal life and peace, that can alone make a man wise unto
salvation. The most ignorant person, provided he only know that he must
renounce his own wisdom as foolishness--which on subjects pertaining
to salvation it really is--and accept what is disclosed in Christ as
to salvation, is infinitely wiser than the most able or learned man who
trusts solely to his own wisdom apart from Christ's revealed work and
will. Both of them are foolish and ignorant; but the one knows it, and,
in consequence of knowing it, accepts Christ's plan of salvation, and
is made a partaker of infinite wisdom--the other does not know it, and,
thinking that he is wise while he is a fool, remains in his folly, and
must bear its punishment.
And now I bring this course of lectures to a close. I trust that they
may not have been found wholly without profit, through the blessing of
Him who despises not even the smallest and most imperfect service, if
humbly rendered to Him. I should rejoice to think that I had helped
any one to hold, in such a time as the present, with a firmer and more
intelligent grasp, the fundamental truth on which all religious faith
must rest. Amen.
APPENDIX.
NOTE I., page 6.
NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION.
The Hindus regard the Vedas, the Parsees the Zend-Avesta, and the
Mohammedans the Koran, as having been immediately and specially
inspired. This means that they believe the spiritual truth contained
in these books to belong to revealed religion, although it in reality
is merely a portion of natural religion. The Greeks and Romans could
not distinguish between nature and revelation, reason and faith,
because ignorant of what we call revelation and faith. Without special
revelation or inspiration the oriental and classical mind attained,
however, to the possession of a very considerable amount of most
precious religious truth. In all ages of the Christian Church there
have been theologians who have traced at least the germinal principles
of such truth to written or unwritten revelation; and probably few
patristic or scholastic divines would have admitted that there was a
knowledge of God and of His attributes and of His relations to the
world which might be the object of a science distinct from, and
independent of, revelation. This is quite consistent with what is also
a fact--namely, that the vast majority of Christian writers have always
acknowledged that "the light of nature and the works of creation and
providence manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God," and that
this general revelation is implied in the special revelation made at
sundry times and divers manners and recorded in the Scriptures. The
'Theologia naturalis sive liber creaturum' of the Spanish physician,
Raymond de Sebonde, who taught theology in the University of Toulouse
during the earlier part of the fifteenth century, was, so far as I
know, the first work which, proceeding on the principle that God has
given us two books, the book of nature and the book of Scripture,
confined itself to the interpretation of the former, merely indicating
the mutual relations of natural and revealed religion. Faustus Socinus
was one of the first distinctly to maintain that there was no such
thing as natural religion--no knowledge of God attainable except from
Scripture: see his 'De Auctoritate Scripturæ Sacræ.' A conviction
of the importance of natural theology spread very rapidly in the
seventeenth century. This contributed to awaken an interest in the
various religions of the world, and thus led to the rise of what may
be called Comparative Theology, although more generally designated the
Philosophy of Religion. Its origin is to be sought in the attempts made
to prove that the principles of natural theology were to be found in
all religions. Lord Herbert of Cherbury's 'De Religione Gentilium,'
published in 1663, was one of the earliest and most characteristic
attempts of the kind. From that time to the present the study of
religions has proceeded at varying rates of progress, but without
interruption, and has at length begun to be prosecuted according to the
rules of that comparative method which has, in the words of Mr Freeman,
"carried light and order into whole branches of human knowledge which
before were shrouded in darkness and confusion."
The eighteenth century was the golden age of natural theology. The
deists both of England and France endeavoured to exalt natural theology
at the expense of positive theology by representing the former as
the truth of which the latter was the perversion. "All religions in
the world," said Diderot, "are merely sects of natural religion."
The prevalent opinion of the freethinkers of his time could not have
been more accurately expressed. It was just what his predecessors in
England meant by describing Christianity as "a republication of natural
religion," and by maintaining that it was "as old as the creation."
The wisest opponents of the deists, and thoughtful Christian writers
in general--the adherents of the moderate and rational theology
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--strove, on the other
hand, to show that natural theology was in reality presupposed by
revelation, and that it should carry the mind onwards to the acceptance
of revelation. But there were some who undertook to maintain that
there was no such thing as natural theology; that reason of itself
can teach us absolutely nothing about God or our duties towards Him.
The Hutchinsonians, for example, whose best representatives, besides
the founder, were Bishop Horne of Norwich, and William Jones, curate
of Nayland, believed that all knowledge of religion and morals, and
even the chief truths of physical science, ought to be drawn from the
Bible. Dr Ellis, in his treatise entitled 'The Knowledge of Divine
Things from Revelation, not from Reason or Nature' (1743), laboured
to prove that neither the being of a God nor any other principle of
religion could be legitimately deduced from the study of the phenomena
of the universe. He argued on the assumption that the senses are the
only natural inlets to knowledge. The late Archbishop Magee adopted
his views on this subject. One of the most widely known expositions
and defences of the theory is that contained in the 'Theological
Institutes' (1823) of the eminent Wesleyan divine, Richard Watson. In
order to establish that all our religious knowledge is derived from
special revelation, he employs all the usual arguments of scepticism
against the proofs of theism and the principles of reason on which
they rest. In the Roman Catholic Church, scepticism as to reason and
the light of nature has often been combined with dogmatism as to the
authority of revelation and the Church. In the system of what is called
the theocratic school may be seen the result to which attempts to
establish the certitude of authority by destroying the credit of human
reason naturally lead. It is a system of which I have endeavoured to
give some account in my 'Philosophy of History in France and Germany,'
pp. 139-154.
The fact on which I have insisted in the latter part of the
lecture--the fact that theism has come to mankind in and through
revelation--has caused some altogether to discard the division
of religion into natural and revealed. They pronounce it to be a
distinction without a difference, and attribute to it sundry evil
consequences. It has led, they think, on the one hand, to depreciation
of revelation--and, on the other, to jealousy of reason: some minds
looking upon Christianity as at best a republication of the religion
of nature, in which all that is most essential and valuable is "as
old as the creation;" while others see in natural religion a rival of
revealed religion, and would exclude reason from the religious sphere
as much as possible. The distinction is, however, real, and the errors
indicated are not its legitimate consequences. If there be a certain
amount of knowledge about God and spiritual things to be derived from
nature--from data furnished by perception and consciousness, and
accessible to the whole human race,--while there is also a certain
knowledge about Him which can only have been communicated through a
special illumination or manifestation--through prophecy, or miracle, or
incarnation,--the distinction must be retained. It is no real objection
to it to urge that in a sense even natural religion may be regarded as
revealed religion, since in a sense the whole universe is a revelation
of God, a manifestation of His name, a declaration of His glory. That
is a truth, and, in its proper place, a very important truth, but it
is not relevant here: it is perfectly consistent with the belief that
God has not manifested Himself merely in nature, but also in ways which
require to be carefully distinguished from the manifestation in nature.
In like manner, the distinction is not really touched by showing that
revealed religion has embodied and endorsed the truths of natural
religion, or by proving that even what is most special in revelation
is in a sense natural. These are both impregnable positions. The Bible
is to a large extent an inspired republication of the spiritual truths
which are contained in the physical creation, and in the reason,
conscience, and history of man. But this does not disprove that it is
something more. The highest and most special revelation of God--His
revelation in Jesus Christ--was also the fullest realisation of the
true nature of man. But this is no reason why we should not distinguish
between the general and the special in that revelation. We can only
efface the distinction by reducing Christ to a mere man, or confounding
God with man in a pantheistic manner.
It has been further objected to the division of religion into natural
and revealed that it is unhistorical, that natural religion is only
revealed religion disguised and diluted--Christianity without Christ.
It never existed, we are told, apart from revelation, and never would
have existed but for revelation. But this very objection, it will
be observed, implies that natural religion is not identical with
revealed religion--is not revealed religion pure and simple--is not
Christianity with Christ. Why is this? Is it not because revealed
religion contains more than natural religion--what reason cannot read
in the physical universe or human soul? Besides, while the principles
of natural religion were presented in revelation in a much clearer form
than in any merely human systems, and while there can be no reasonable
doubt that but for revelation our knowledge of them would be greatly
more defective than it is, to maintain that they had no existence or
were unknown apart from revelation, is manifestly to set history at
defiance. Were there no truths of natural religion in the works of
Plato, Cicero, and Seneca? Is there any heathen religion or heathen
philosophy in which there are not truths of natural religion?
The belief in a natural religion which is independent alike of special
revelation and of positive or historical religions has been argued
to have originated in the same condition of mind as the belief in
a "state of nature" entertained by a few political theorists in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This can only be done by
confounding natural religion with an imaginary patriarchal religion,
which is, of course, inexcusable. Natural religion is analogous, not to
the state of nature, but to the law of nature of the jurists. Natural
religion is the foundation of all theology, as the law of nature is the
foundation of all ethical and political science; and just as belief in
the law of nature is perfectly independent of the theory of a state of
nature, so the belief in natural religion has no connection whatever
with any theory of patriarchal or primitive religion.
There is a well-known essay by Professor Jowett on the subject of this
note in the second volume of his 'St Paul's Epistles,' &c.
NOTE II., page 9.
INFLUENCE OF RELIGION ON MORALITY.
The assertion of Mr Bentham and of Mr J. S. Mill that much has been
written on the truth but little on the usefulness of religion, is quite
inaccurate. Most of the apologists of religion have set forth the proof
that it serves to sustain and develop personal and social morality;
and, from the time of Bayle downwards, not a few of its assailants have
undertaken to show that it is practically useless or even hurtful. But
Bentham may have been the first who proposed to estimate the utility
of religion apart from the consideration of its truth. The notion was
characteristically Benthamite. It was likewise far too irrational to be
capable of being consistently carried out or applied. The work compiled
by Mr Grote from the papers of Mr Bentham, and published under the name
of Philip Beauchamp--'Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on
the Temporal Happiness of Mankind'--and Mr Mill's 'Essay on the Utility
of Religion,' are, in almost every second page, as well as in their
general tenor, attacks not merely on the utility but on the truth of
religion.
The former of these works is an attempt to show that natural religion
has done scarcely any good, and produced no end of evils--inflicting,
so runs the indictment, unprofitable suffering, imposing useless
privations, impressing undefined terrors, taxing pleasure by the
infusion of preliminary scruples and subsequent remorse, creating
factitious antipathies, perverting the popular opinion, corrupting
moral sentiment, producing aversion to improvement, disqualifying the
intellectual faculties for purposes useful in this life, suborning
unwarranted belief, depraving the temper, and, finally, creating a
particular class of persons incurably opposed to the interests of
humanity. The author makes out that religion is responsible for this
catalogue of mischiefs, by two simple devices. First, he defines
religion as "the belief in the existence of an almighty Being, by whom
pains and pleasures will be dispensed to mankind during an infinite and
future state of existence," or, in other words, he so defines religion
as to exclude from the idea of God the thought of moral goodness,
righteousness, and holiness. He even insists that the God of natural
religion can only be conceived of as "a capricious and insane despot,"
and bases his argumentation on this assumption. Dr Caselles, who has
translated the treatise into French, and prefaced it by an interesting
introduction, informs us that the argumentation is not applicable
to the new, but only to the old theism. It is historically certain,
however, that the "old" theism of Jeremy Bentham and his friends never
existed outside of their own imaginations. It is likewise certain that
a lamb would acquire a very bad character if it were by definition
identified with a wolf, and credited with all that creature's doings.
The second device is "a declaration of open war against the principle
of separating the abuses of a thing from its uses." The only excuse
which can be given for this declaration of a most unjust war is, that
Mr Bentham was able completely to misunderstand the obvious meaning of
the principle which he assailed. That a book so unfair and worthless
should have produced on the mind of Mr J. S. Mill, even when a boy of
sixteen, the impression which he describes in his Autobiography would
have been inexplicable, had we not known the character of his education.
Mr Mill's own essay is rather strange. It begins with six pages of
general observations, which are meant to show that it is a necessary
and very laudable undertaking to attempt to prove that the belief in
religion, considered as a mere persuasion apart from the question
of its truth, may be advantageously dispensed with, any benefits
which flow from the belief being local, temporary, and such as may
be otherwise obtained, without the very large amount of alloy always
contained in religion. Yet we are told that "an argument for the
utility of religion is an appeal to unbelievers to induce them to
practise a well-meant hypocrisy; or to semi-believers to make them
avert their eyes from what might possibly shake their unstable belief;
or, finally, to persons in general to abstain from expressing any
doubts they may feel, since a fabric of immense importance to mankind
is so insecure at its foundations, that men must hold their breath in
its neighbourhood for fear of blowing it down." An argument for the
utility of religion is "moral bribery." An argument for its uselessness
is highly to be commended. Mr Mill further tells us that "little
has been written, at least in the way of discussion or controversy,
concerning the usefulness of religion;" and likewise, that "religious
writers have not neglected to celebrate to the utmost the advantage
both of religion in general and of their own religious faith in
particular." The inference must be, that what religious writers urge
for the utility of religion is not to be reckoned as reasoning; that
only what writers like Mr Bentham and Mr Mill urge against its utility
is to be thus regarded. The charity of this view is capped by the
assertion that "the whole of the prevalent metaphysics of the present
century is one tissue of suborned evidence in favour of religion;"
an assertion which is made amusing by following a sentence in which
Mr Mill speaks of "the intolerant zeal" of intuitionists. After his
general considerations, he professes to inquire what religion does for
society, but in reality never enters on the investigation. He devotes
two pages to insisting on "the enormous influence of authority on the
human mind;" three to emphasising "the tremendous power of education;"
and ten to enlarging on "the power of public opinion." He might as
relevantly have dwelt on the influence of reason, speech, the press,
machinery, clothes, marriage, and thousands of other things which
undoubtedly affect the intellectual and moral condition of society.
It is as unreasonable to infer that religion is useless because
authority, education, and public opinion are powerful, as it would
be to infer that the fire in a steam-engine might be dispensed with
because water is necessary. Any person who assumes, as Mr Mill assumed,
that authority, education, or public opinion may be contrasted with
religion--who does not see, as Mr Mill did not see, that all these
powers are correlatives, which necessarily intermingle with, imply,
and supplement one another--is, _ipso facto_, unable intelligently to
discuss the question, What does religion do for society? In the second
part of his essay, Mr Mill ought, in order to have kept his promise,
to have considered what influence religion in the sense of belief in
and love of God is naturally calculated to exert on the character and
conduct of the individual; but instead of this he applies himself to
the very different task of attempting to prove that "the idealisation
of our earthly life, the cultivation of a high conception of what it
may be made, is capable of supplying a poetry, and, in the best sense
of the word, a religion, equally fitted to exalt the feelings, and
(with the same aid from education) still better calculated to ennoble
the conduct, than any belief respecting the unseen powers." He forgets
to inquire whether there is any opposition between "the idealisation
of our earthly life" and "belief respecting the unseen powers," or
whether, on the contrary, religious belief is not the chief source of
the idealisation of our earthly life. That this logical error is as
serious as it is obvious, appears from the fact that ten years later
Mr Mill himself confessed that "it cannot be questioned that the
undoubting belief of the real existence of a Being who realises our
own best ideas of perfection, and of our being in the hands of that
Being as the ruler of the universe, gives an increase of force to our
aspirations after goodness beyond what they can receive from reference
to a merely ideal conception" (Theism, p. 252). His proof that the
worship of God is inferior to the religion of humanity rests mainly on
these three assertions: (1) That the former, "what now goes by the name
of religion," "operates merely through the feeling of self-interest;"
(2) That "it is impossible that any one who habitually thinks, and who
is unable to blunt his inquiring intellect by sophistry, should be able
without misgiving to go on ascribing absolute perfection to the author
and ruler of so clumsily made and capriciously governed a creation as
this planet and the life of its inhabitants;" and (3), That "mankind
can perfectly well do without the belief in a heaven." "It seems to me
not only possible, but probable, that in a higher, and, above all, a
happier condition of human life, not annihilation but immortality may
be the burdensome idea; and that human nature, though pleased with the
present, and by no means impatient to quit it, would find comfort and
not sadness in the thought that it is not chained through eternity to a
conscious existence which it cannot be assured that it will always wish
to preserve." On this last point more mature reflection brought him to
a different and wiser conclusion (see Theism, pp. 249, 250).
Those who wish to study the important subject of the relations of
religion and morality will find the following references useful: the
last chapter of M. Janet's 'La Morale;' the _étude_ on "La Morale
indépendante" in M. Caro's 'Problèmes de Morale Sociale;' many articles
and reviews in M. Renouvier's 'Critique Philosophique;' Martensen's
'Christian Ethics,' §§ 5-14; O. Pfleiderer's 'Moral und Religion;'
Luthardt's 'Apologetic Lectures on the Moral Truths of Christianity;'
and Bradley's 'Ethical Studies,' pp. 279-305.
NOTE III., page 18.
ETHICS OF RELIGIOUS INQUIRY.
Much has been written regarding the spirit and temper in which
religious truth should be pursued and defended. In a large number of
the general treatises both of apologetic and systematic theology,
the subject is considered, and not a few essays, lectures, &c., have
been specially devoted to it. The greater portion of this literature
may, I believe, be forgotten without loss, but there is a part of it
which will well repay perusal. The "Oratio de recto Theologi zelo" in
the first volume of the 'Opuscula' of Werenfels, is worthy of that
tolerant and philosophical divine. Archbishop Leighton's 'Exhortations
to Students' exhale from every line a heavenly ether and fragrance. It
will be long before Herder's 'Letters on the Study of Theology' are out
of date.
Dr Chalmers attached high value to the distinction between the ethics
of theology and the objects of theology, and expatiated with great
eloquence on the duty which is laid upon men by the probability or
even the imagination of a God (Nat. Theol., B. i. ch. i. ii.) "Man is
not to blame, if an atheist, because of the want of proof. But he is
to blame, if an atheist, because he has shut his eyes. He is not to
blame that the evidence for a God has not been seen by him, if no such
evidence there were within the field of his observation. But he is to
blame if the evidence have not been seen, because he turned away his
attention from it. That the question of a God may be unresolved in his
mind, all he has to do is to refuse a hearing to the question. He may
abide without the conviction of a God, if he so choose. But this his
choice is matter of condemnation. To resist God after that He is known,
is criminality towards Him; but to be satisfied that He should remain
unknown, is like criminality towards Him. There is a moral perversity
of spirit with him who is willing, in the midst of many objects of
gratification, that there should not be one object of gratitude. It is
thus that, even in the ignorance of God, there may be a responsibility
towards God. The Discerner of the heart sees whether, for the blessings
innumerable wherewith he has strewed the path of every man, He be
treated like the unknown benefactor who was diligently sought, or like
the unknown benefactor who was never cared for. In respect at least of
desire after God, the same distinction of character may be observed
between one man and another--whether God be wrapt in mystery, or stand
forth in full development to our world. Even though a mantle of deepest
obscurity lay over the question of His existence, this would not efface
the distinction between the piety on the one hand which laboured and
aspired after Him, and the impiety upon the other which never missed
the evidence that it did not care for, and so grovelled in the midst of
its own sensuality and selfishness. The eye of a heavenly witness is
upon all these varieties; and thus, whether it be darkness or whether
it be dislike which hath caused a people to be ignorant of God, there
is with Him a clear principle of judgment that He can extend even to
the outfields of atheism."--(Pp. 72, 73.)
The Rev. Alexander Leitch, in the First Part of his 'Ethics of Theism'
(1868), discusses in a thoughtful and suggestive manner the following
subjects: the reality and universality of the antithesis between
truth and error, the legitimate dependence in all cases of belief on
knowledge, the responsibility of man for his whole system of belief,
the distinction between mystery and contradiction, the distinction
between speculative and practical knowledge, the distinction between
certainty and probability, the standard of morality, and the claims of
reason and faith.
Mr Venn's 'Hulsean Lectures' for 1869 "are intended to illustrate,
explain, and work out into some of their consequences, certain
characteristics by which the attainment of religious belief is
prominently distinguished from the attainment of belief upon most other
subjects. These characteristics consist in the multiplicity of the
sources from which the evidence for religious belief is derived, and
the fact that our emotions contribute their share towards producing
conviction."
What I have said in the text ought not to be understood as implying any
doubt that men are largely responsible for their beliefs. This I accept
as an indubitable truth, although there is great room for difference of
opinion as to the limits of the responsibility; but it is a truth which
no one party in a discussion has a right to urge as against another
party. It is a law over all disputants, and is abused when severed from
tolerance and charity. Perhaps it has never been better expounded and
enforced than in Dr Pusey's 'Responsibility of the Intellect in Matters
of Faith' (1873).
That religious belief is in a great measure conditioned and determined
by character is implied in the whole argument of my third lecture.
In this fact lies the main reason why the highest evidence may not
produce belief even where there is no conscious dishonesty in those
who reject it. A person desirous of working himself fully into the
truth in this matter, will find excellent thoughts and suggestions in
Dr Newman's 'Fifteen Sermons preached before the University of Oxford,
between A.D. 1826 and 1843,' and in Principal Shairp's 'Culture and
Religion.'
NOTE IV., page 23.
TRADITIVE THEORY OF RELIGION.
Mr Fairbairn makes the following remarks on the theory which traces
religion to a primitive revelation: "Although often advanced in the
supposed interests of religion, the principle it assumes is most
irreligious. If man is dependent on an outer revelation for his idea
of God, then he must have what Schelling happily termed 'an original
atheism of consciousness.' Religion cannot, in that case, be rooted
in the nature of man--must be implanted from without. The theory that
would derive man's religion from a revelation is as bad as the theory
that would derive it from distempered dreams. Revelation may satisfy or
rectify, but cannot create, a religious capacity or instinct; and we
have the highest authority for thinking that man was created 'to seek
the Lord, if haply he might feel after and find Him'--the finding being
by no means dependent on a written or traditional word. If there was
a primitive revelation, it must have been--unless the word is used in
an unusual and misleading sense--either written or oral. If written,
it could hardly be primitive, for writing is an art, a not very early
acquired art, and one which does not allow documents of exceptional
value to be easily lost. If it was oral, then either the language for
it was created or it was no more primitive than the written. Then an
oral revelation becomes a tradition, and a tradition requires either
a special caste for its transmission, becomes therefore its property,
or must be subjected to multitudinous changes and additions from the
popular imagination--becomes, therefore, a wild commingling of broken
and bewildering lights. But neither as documentary nor traditional can
any traces of a primitive revelation be discovered, and to assume it is
only to burden the question with a thesis which renders a critical and
philosophic discussion alike impossible."--Studies in the Philosophy of
Religion and History, pp. 14, 15.
There is an examination of the same theory in the learned and able work
of Professor Cocker of Michigan on 'Christianity and Greek Philosophy'
(1875). He argues: 1. "That it is highly improbable that truths so
important and vital to man, so essential to the wellbeing of the human
race, so necessary to the perfect development of humanity as are the
ideas of God, duty, and immortality, should rest on so precarious and
uncertain a basis as tradition." 2. "That the theory is altogether
incompetent to explain the _universality_ of religious rites, and
especially of religious ideas." 3. "That a verbal revelation would be
inadequate to convey the knowledge of God to an intelligence purely
passive and utterly unfurnished with any _a priori_ ideas or necessary
laws of thought."--Pp. 86-96.
A good history of the traditive theory of the diffusion of religion is
a desideratum in theological literature.
NOTE V., page 29.
NORMAL DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY.
The truth that social development ought to combine and harmonise
permanence and progress, liberty and authority, the rights of
the individual and of the community, has been often enforced and
illustrated. The earnestness with which Comte did so in both of his
chief works is well known. A philosopher of a very different stamp, F.
v. Baader, has in various of his writings given expression to profound
thoughts on the subject. His essay entitled 'Evolutionismus und
Revolutionismus des gesellschaftlichen Lebens' merits to be specially
mentioned. Alexander Vinet has often been charged with a one-sided
individualism, and perhaps not altogether without justice; but he
always maintained that he was merely the advocate of individuality.
"Individualism and individuality are two sworn enemies; the first
being the obstacle and negation of all society--the second, that to
which society owes all it possesses of savour, life, and reality.
Nowhere does individualism prosper more easily than where there is an
absence of individuality; and there is no more atomistic policy than
that of despotism." Vinet has probably not held the balance exactly
poised between the individual and society; but his dissertations, 'Sur
l'individualité et l'individualisme' and 'Du rôle de l'individualité
dans une réforme sociale,' would have been far less valuable than they
are if he had forgotten that, although it is the individual who thinks,
the thought of the individual cannot form itself outside of society
nor without its aid. But he did not, as words like the following
sufficiently prove:--"It is better to connect ourselves with society
than to learn to dispense with it, or rather to persuade ourselves
that we are able to dispense with it. It is only given to the brute to
suffice to itself. Man has been chained to man. We hardly give more
credit to spontaneous generation in the intellectual sphere than in the
physical world; the most individual work is to a certain point the work
of all the world; everywhere _solidarity_ reappears, without, however,
any prejudice to liberty: God has willed it so." "It is with the soul
engaged in the life of religion, or that of thought, as with the vessel
launched upon the waters, and seeking beyond the ocean for the shores
of a new world. This ocean is society, religious or civil. It bears
us just as the ocean does--fluid mass, on which the vessel can indeed
trace furrows, but may nowhere halt. The ocean bears the ship, but the
ocean may swallow it up, and sometimes does so; society swallows us
up still more often, but yet it is what upbears us; nor can we arrive
without being upborne by it, for it is like the sea, which, less fluid
than the air, and less dense than the earth, just yields to and resists
us enough to sustain without impeding our progress towards the desired
goal." There are no finer pages in Martensen's 'Christian Ethics' than
those in which he treats of "individualism and socialism," "liberty
and authority in the development of society," and "conservatism and
progress." The most adequate historical proof and illustration of the
truth in question as to the nature of social evolution will be found in
the Earl of Crawford's 'Progression by Antagonism' and 'Scepticism and
the Church of England.'
NOTE VI., page 32.
DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION BY THE HIGHEST TYPE.
Dr Whewell maintained that in natural history groups are fixed not by
definition, but by type. "The class," he wrote, "is steadily fixed,
though not precisely limited; it is given, though not circumscribed; it
is determined not by a boundary-line without, but by a central point
within; not by what it strictly excludes, but by what it eminently
includes; by an example, not by a precept; in short, instead of
Definition we have a Type for our director. A type is an example of
any class--for instance, a species of a genus--which is considered
as eminently possessing the characters of the class. All the species
which have a greater affinity with this type-species than with any
others form the genus, and are ranged about it, deviating from it
in various directions and different degrees."--Philosophy of the
Inductive Sciences, vol. i. pp. 476, 477. Dr Whewell, it will be
observed, was more cautious in his language than the theologians to
whom I have referred. He did not speak of defining by type, but only
of classifying, not by definition, but by type. His motive, however,
for entertaining the view he laid down, was obviously the same which
has led so many theologians to give definitions of religion which are
only applicable to its highest forms. Probably it was insufficient.
Prof. Huxley (Lay Sermons, pp. 90-92) very justly, it seems to me,
argues that classification by type is caused by ignorance, and that as
soon as the mind gets a scientific knowledge of a class it defines.
Nothing which is not precisely limited is steadily fixed; nothing
which is not circumscribed is exactly given: if the boundary-line is
not determined, the central point cannot be accurately ascertained;
what is eminently included cannot be known so long as what is strictly
excluded is unknown. While assenting to the view of Prof. Huxley in
the passage indicated, I may remark that he falls into one error which
rather forcibly illustrates what is said in the page to which this
note refers regarding the necessary poverty of the significance of a
strictly scientific definition of an extensive class. He instances as
a definition which is of a truly scientific kind and "rigorous enough
for a geometrician," the following: "Mammalia are all animals which
have a vertebrated skeleton and suckle their young." But clearly this
definition says too much if we are to criticise it rigorously. Were
it true, there would be no males among mammalia. The definition is in
strictness applicable to females only.
NOTE VII., page 38.
PSYCHOLOGICAL NATURE OF RELIGION.
In this note I shall briefly summarise three class lectures on the
psychological nature of religion.
1. Investigations into the psychological nature of religion date only
from about the end of last century.
For ages previously men sought to know what religion was; but they
attempted to find an answer merely by reflection on positive or
objective religion. Kant opened up to them a new path--that of
investigation into the nature of religion as an internal or mental
fact. O. Pfleiderer's account (Die Religion, pp. 5-124) of the
researches thus started characterised, and criticised.
2. The testimony of consciousness is sufficient to establish the
existence of religion as a subjective or mental state, but cannot
certify whether, as such, it be simple or complex, primary or
derivative, coextensive with human consciousness, or wider or narrower,
or whether there be anything objectively corresponding to it.
3. In order to analyse religion, the ultimate genera of consciousness
must be ascertained, which has only been slowly done. History of
the process: Plato, Aristotle, their followers, Descartes, Spinoza,
the English philosophers from Bacon to Dugald Stewart, Kant and the
German psychologists, Brown, Hamilton, and Bain. Establishment of the
threefold division of mental phenomena into cognitions, emotions, and
volitions. Difficulties of the division shown by the author in 'Mind,'
No. V.
Religion must be a state of intellect, sensibility, or will, or some
combination of two or all of these factors.
4. Religion may be held to consist essentially and exclusively of
knowledge; but this mistake is too gross to have been frequently
committed.
The Gnostics, the earlier and scholastic theologians, the rationalists,
Schelling and Cousin, have been charged with this error. The grounds of
the charge indicated. Shown to be in all these cases exaggerated.
5. Schleiermacher refutes the theory by the consideration that the
measure of our knowledge is not the measure of our religion.
Vindication and illustration of his argument. Service rendered by
Schleiermacher to religion and theology in this connection.
6. Hegel came nearest to the identification of religion and thought,
maintaining that sentiment was the lowest manifestation of religion,
while the comprehension of the absolute, the highest knowledge,
was its complete realisation, as also that religion was the
self-consciousness of God through the mediation of the finite spirit.
Exposition and criticism of this theory. Examination of Vera's defence
of it. Worship supposes two persons morally and spiritually as well as
intellectually related.
7. While no mere intellectual act constitutes religion, the exercise of
reason is an essential part of religion.
The denial of this an error prevalent among the modern theologians of
Germany, owing to their accepting Kant's argumentation against the
possibility of apprehending God by the speculative or pure reason as
conclusive. If religion have no rational foundation, it has no real
foundation. Reason does not apprehend merely what is finite. True place
of reason in religion.
8. Religion has often been resolved into feeling or sentiment,
but erroneously, since whatever feeling is fixed on requires some
explanation of its existence, and this can only be found in some act or
exercise of intellect.
9. Epicurus, Lucretius, and Hume have traced religion to fear.
10. Fear explains atheism better than it explains religion, and in
order even to be feared God must be believed in.
Men fear a great many things. Mere fear founds nothing, but only causes
efforts to avoid the presence or thought of its object. Fear enters
into religion, and is filial in the higher, and servile in the lower,
forms of religion.
11. Feuerbach resolves religion into desire--into an ignorant and
illusive personification of man's own nature as he would wish it to be.
12. This view presupposes the truth of atheism, does not explain why
man should refer to supramundane ends or objects, and is contradicted
by the historical facts, which show that reason and conscience have at
least co-operated with desire in the origination and development of
religion.
13. Schleiermacher resolves religion into a feeling of absolute
dependence--of pure and complete passiveness.
Statement of his theory. Shown to rest on a pantheistic conception of
the Divine Being. His reduction of the Divine attributes into _power_.
14. No such feeling can exist, the mind being incapable of experiencing
a feeling of nothingness--a consciousness of unconsciousness.
15. Could it be supposed to exist, it would have no religious
character, because wholly blind and irrational.
16. The theory of Schleiermacher makes the moral and religious
consciousness subversive of each other, the former affirming and the
latter denying our freedom and responsibility.
17. Mansel supposes the religious consciousness to be traceable to
the feeling of dependence and the conviction of moral obligation; but
the latter feeling implies the perception of moral law, and is not
religious unless there be also belief in a moral lawgiver.
18. Schenkel represents conscience as 'the religious organ of the
soul,' but this is not consistent with the fact that conscience is the
faculty which distinguishes right from wrong.
Schenkel's view of conscience shown to make its religious testimony
contradict its ethical testimony.
19. Strauss combines the views of Epicurus, Feuerbach, and
Schleiermacher; but three errors do not make a truth.
Account of the criticism to which the Straussian theory of religion has
been subjected by Vera, Ulrici, and Professor H. B. Smith.
20. Although there can be no true religion without love, and although
to love the true God with the whole heart is the ideal of religion,
religion cannot be resolved exclusively into love; since love
presupposes knowledge, and is not the predominant feeling, if present
at all, in the lower forms of religion.
21. Religion includes will, implying the free and deliberate surrender
of the soul to God,--the making self an instrument where it might,
although wrongfully, have been made an end,--but it is not merely will,
since all volition, properly so called, presupposes reason and feeling.
22. Kant made religion merely a sanction for duty, and duty the
expression of a will which is its own law, and which is unaffected by
feeling; but this view rested on erroneous conceptions as to (1) the
relation of religion and morality, (2) the nature of the will, and (3)
the place of feeling in the mental economy.
Religion and morality inseparable in their normal conditions; but not
to be identified, religion being communion with God, while morality
is conformity to a law which is God's will but which may not be
acknowledged to be His will, so that they may and do exist in abnormal
forms apart from each other.
The will has not its law in itself. Kant's errors on this subject.
Feeling is the natural and universal antecedent of action. Kant's
errors on this subject.
23. Dr Brinton (Religious Sentiment, &c., 1876) analyses religion into
emotion and idea--an effective and intellectual element--the latter of
which arises necessarily from the law of contradiction and excluded
middle.
Merits and defects of his theory.
24. The religious process is at once rational, emotional, and
volitional.
Its unity, and the co-operation of knowing, feeling, and willing.
25. Description of (1) its essential contents, (2) its chief forms,
(3) its principal moments or stages, and (4) its manifestations in
spiritual worship and work.
NOTE VIII., page 58.
ARGUMENT E CONSENSU GENTIUM.
Pessimism will be treated of along with other anti-theistic theories.
The fact that religion is a natural and universal phenomenon, as
widespread as humanity and as old as its history, and the fact insisted
on in the lecture, that religion can only realise its proper nature
in a theistic form, give us, when adequately established, the modern
and scientific statement of the old argument--_e consensu gentium_.
This argument, which we already meet with in Cicero (De Nat. Deor.,
i. 17; Tusc. Ques., i. 13; De Leg., i. 8) and Seneca (Epist. 117), in
Clement of Alexandria (Strom., v. 14) and Lactantius (Div. Inst., i.
2), has gradually grown into the science of comparative theology. An
instructive essay might be written on its development.
Mr J. S. Mill, who had obviously no suspicion that there had been
any development of the kind, criticised the argument in his essay
on Theism, pp. 154-160. He was entirely mistaken in representing it
as an appeal to authority--"to the opinions of mankind generally,
and especially of some of its wisest men." It has certainly very
rarely--probably never--been advanced in a form which could justify
such an account of it. He was also mistaken in supposing that it had
any necessary connection with the view which ascribes to men "an
intuitive perception, or an instinctive sense, of Deity." I agree with
his objections to that view; but the argument does not imply it. If it
prove that man's mental constitution is such that, in the presence of
the facts of nature and life, religion necessarily arises, and that
the demands of reason, heart, and conscience, in which it originates,
can only be satisfied by the worship and service of one God, with the
attributes which theism assigns to Him, it has accomplished all that
can reasonably be expected from it.
Mr Mill was, however, it seems to me, perfectly correct in holding
that the mere prevalence of the belief in Deity afforded no ground
for inferring that the belief was native to the mind in the sense of
independent of evidence. In no form ought the argument from general
consent to be regarded as a primary argument. It is an evidence that
there are direct evidences--and when kept in this its proper place it
has no inconsiderable value--but it cannot be urged as a direct and
independent argument. This is a most important consideration, which is
in danger of being overlooked in the present day. Some authors would
actually contrast the argument for theism or Christianity derivable
from the comparative study of religion with the ordinary or formal
proofs, and would substitute it for them, not seeing that, although
powerful in connection with, and dependence on, these proofs, it has
little relevancy or weight when dissociated from them.
The two recent writers who have made most use of the argument are,
perhaps, Ebrard, who has devoted to it the whole of the second volume
of his Apologetics, and Baumstark, whose 'Christian Apologetics on an
Anthropological Basis' has for its exclusive aim to prove that man has
been made for religion, and that the non-Christian religions do not,
while Christianity does, satisfy his religious cravings and needs.
In this country we ought not to forget the service which Mr Maurice
rendered by his 'Religions of the World,' and Mr Hardwicke by his
'Christ and other Masters.'
The position maintained by Sir John Lubbock, that religion is not
a universal phenomenon, and that advocated by Comte, that it is a
temporary and transitional phenomenon, will be examined in the volume
on Anti-theism.
NOTE IX., page 75.
THE THEISTIC EVIDENCE COMPLEX AND COMPREHENSIVE.
Cousin has said, "There are different proofs of the existence of God.
The consoling result of my studies is, that these different proofs are
more or less strict in form, but they have all a depth of truth which
needs only to be disengaged and put in a clear light, in order to give
incontestable authority. Everything leads to God. There is no bad way
of arriving at Him, but we go to Him by different paths."
The truth, that all the faculties of man's being must co-operate in
the formation of the idea of God, is well enforced and illustrated
in an article on "The Origin of the Concept of God," by the Rev.
George T. Ladd, in the 'Bibliotheca Sacra,' vol. xxxiv.; also in
Principal M'Cosh's 'Method of the Divine Government,' B. i., c. i.,
sec. 1, and 'Intuitions of the Mind,' Pt. iii., B. ii., c. v., sec.
2. The following quotation from Mr Ladd's article is a statement of
its central idea: "Nothing is more necessary, in the endeavour to
understand how the concept under consideration originates, than to hold
correct views of the entire relation of man to truth. The view which,
if not held as a theory, is quite too frequently carried out in the
practical search after knowledge, seems to be this one--that truth is
a product of mind wrought out by the skilful use of the ratiocinative
faculties. It follows, then, that the correct working of these
faculties is almost the only important or necessary guarantee of truth.
But it is not any lone faculty or set of faculties which is concerned
in man's reception of truth. The truth becomes ours only as a gift
from without. All truth is of the nature of a revelation, and demands
that the organ through which the revelation is made should be properly
adjusted. The organ for the reception of truth is symmetrically
cultured manhood, rightly correlated action, and balanced capabilities
of man's different powers. The attitude of him who would attain to
truth is one of docility, of receptiveness, of control exercised
upon all the powers of the soul,--so that none of them, by abnormal
development or activity, interfere with the action of all the rest....
If the statements just made are true with regard to human knowledge in
general, they are pre-eminently true with regard to such knowledge as
is presented to the soul in the form of the concept of God. The pure
in heart shall see God; they that obey shall know of the doctrine;
the things of the spirit are spiritually judged of. These statements
are as profound in their philosophic import as they are quickening in
their practical tendencies. This concept comes as God's revelation of
Himself within all the complex activities of the human soul. It is
adapted to man as man in the totality of his being and energies. And
the whole being of man must be co-operative in the reception of this
self-revelation of God, as well as met and filled by the form which the
revelation takes, in order that the highest truth concerning God may
become known.... In his work on Mental Physiology, Dr Carpenter speaks
of certain departments of science 'in which our conclusions rest, not
on any one set of experiences, but upon our _unconscious co-ordination
of the whole aggregate of our experience_; not on the conclusions of
any one train of reasoning, but on _the convergence of all our lines
of thought toward one centre_.' These words, italicised by that author
himself, well represent the form in which the knowledge of God is given
to the human soul. It is the convergence of these lines of thought that
run together from so many quarters which makes a web of argument far
stronger to bind men than any single thread could be. This is a form
of proof which, while it is, when understood aright, overwhelmingly
convincing, gives also to all the elements of our complex manhood
their proper work to do in its reception. In its reception it makes
far greater difference, whether the moral and religious sections of
the whole channel through which the truth flows are open or not, than
whether the faculty of the syllogism is comparatively large or not. Nor
is there any effort to disparage any intellectual processes involved,
in thus insisting upon the complete and co-ordinated activity of the
soul, as furnishing the organon for the knowledge of God. All the
strings of the harp must be in tune, or there will be discord, not
harmony, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it."
That the power of apprehending God is conditioned by the character of
man's nature as a whole, was clearly seen and beautifully expressed
by the ancient Christian apologist, Theophilus. "If thou sayest, show
me thy God, I answer, show me first thy man, and I will show thee my
God. Show me first, whether the eyes of thy soul see, and the ears of
thy heart hear. For as the eyes of the body perceive earthly things,
light and darkness, white and black, beauty and deformity, &c., so the
ears of the heart and the eyes of the soul can perceive divine things.
God is seen by those who can see Him, when they open the eyes of their
soul. All men have eyes, but the eyes of some are blinded that they
cannot see the light of the sun. But the sun does not cease to shine
because they are blind; they must ascribe it to their blindness that
they cannot see. This is thy case, O man! The eyes of thy soul are
darkened by sin, even by thy sinful actions. Like a bright mirror, man
must have a pure soul. If there be any rust on the mirror, man cannot
see the reflection of his countenance in it; likewise if there be any
sin in man, he cannot see God."--Ad Autolycum, i. c. 2.
There is an improper use of the fact that the emotional capacities as
well as the intellectual faculties are concerned in the apprehension of
God. Some persons express themselves as if there was an evidence for
God in the feelings not only as well as in the intellect, but distinct
from, and independent of, the evidence on which the intellect has to
decide. They reason as if although the latter were necessarily and in
its own nature inconclusive, the former might still warrant belief, or
as if at least feelings might so supplement weak arguments as to allow
of their conclusions being firmly held. They virtually acknowledge
that, although it were incontestably proved that the theistic inference
was such as could not reasonably be deemed trustworthy or sufficient
by the intellect, they would believe in the existence of God all the
same in reliance on their feelings, because the heart is as trustworthy
as the head and as well entitled to be heard. This is a very different
doctrine from what I regard to be the true one--namely, that neither
the head nor the heart is a competent witness in the case under
consideration when the one is dissociated from the other. Purity of
heart and obedience to the will of God enable us to see God and to know
His character and doctrine, but they do not dispense with vision and
knowledge, nor do they create a vision and knowledge which are distinct
from, and independent of, reason. The heart must be appealed to and
satisfied as well as the head, but not apart from or otherwise than
through the head, or the appeal is sophistical and the satisfaction
illegitimate. Our feelings largely determine whether we recognise and
assent to reasons or not, but they ought not to be substituted for
reasons, or even used to supplement reasons. The sentimentalism which
pleads feelings in deprecation of the rigid criticism of reasons, or
in order to retain a conviction which it cannot logically justify,
necessarily tends to scepticism, and, indeed, is a kind of scepticism.
NOTE X., page 86.
INTUITION, FEELING, BELIEF, AND KNOWLEDGE IN RELIGION.
There are few who hold in a consistent manner that God is known by
immediate intuition. The great majority of those who profess to
believe this, so explain it as to show that they believe nothing of
the kind. Dr Charles Hodge (Systematic Theology, pt. i. ch. i.) may
be indicated as an example. Professing to hold that the knowledge of
God is innate and intuitive, he so explains and restricts these terms
as would make our knowledge of our fellow-men as much innate and
intuitive as our knowledge of God, or even more so; and even after
all these qualifications finds that nothing more can be maintained
than "that a sense of dependence and accountability to a being
higher than themselves exists in all minds"--which is far from being
equivalent to the conclusion that God is intuitively known. Cousin
is sometimes represented as an advocate of the view in question,
but erroneously. Discounting a few inaccurate phrases, his theory
as to the nature of the theistic process is substantially identical
with that expounded in the lecture. Its purport is not that reason
directly and immediately contemplates the Absolute Being, but that it
is enabled and necessitated by the essential conditions of cognition,
the _a priori_ ideas of causality, infinity, &c., to apprehend Him
in His manifestations. To find intuitionists who in this connection
really mean what they say, we must go to Hindu Yogi, Plotinus and the
Alexandrian Mystics, Schelling, and a few of his followers--or, in
other words, to those who have thought of God as a pantheistic unity
or a Being without attributes.
Many German theologians, unduly influenced by the authority of
Schleiermacher, and destitute of a sound knowledge of psychology, have
rested religion on feeling--mere or pure feeling. Hegel opposed the
attempt to do this, with considerable effect, although on erroneous
principles. Krause exposed it, however, with far more thoroughness
in his 'Absolute Religionsphilosophie.' It is on feeling that belief
is rested by most of the advocates of what is called "the faith
philosophy." With thinkers of this class a man like Cousin must not
be confounded, although he maintained that religion begins with faith
and not with reflection; or like Hamilton, although he denied that the
infinite can be _known_ while affirming that it "is, must, and ought to
be, _believed_." Cousin meant by faith "nothing else than the consent
of reason," and Hamilton meant by belief "assent to the original data
of reason."
The words faith and belief are used in a bewildering variety of senses.
A few remarks will make this apparent.
(_a_) By belief or faith is sometimes meant _reason_ as distinguished
from _understanding_, and sometimes _reason_ as distinguished from
_reasoning_. These two senses are so very closely allied that we may
allow them to count as but a single signification. It is extraordinary
that in either sense belief should be contrasted with reason, as it
is by those who tell us that the infinite is an object only of faith,
and that reason has to do exclusively with the finite, or that first
principles are inaccessible to reason but revealed to faith. To create
an appearance of conflict between reason and faith by identifying
faith with reason in a special sense, and reason with understanding
or reasoning, is unwarranted, if not puerile. What use can there be
in telling us that God cannot be known--cannot be apprehended by
reason--but is only an object of faith, a Being merely to be believed
in, when what is meant is that we have the same immediate certainty of
His existence as of the truth of an axiom of geometry?
(_b_) Belief may be limited to apprehension, and knowledge to
comprehension. It may be said that "we have but faith, we cannot know"
the unseen and infinite, just as it is said that we believe that the
grass grows but do not know how it grows. It is obvious, however, that
if apprehension be knowledge, as it surely is, we believe only what we
know. We know--_i.e._, apprehend--the existence of God and the growth
of the grass, and we believe what we thus know. We do not know--_i.e._,
comprehend--the nature of God or the nature of growth, and what we do
not thus know neither do we believe.
(_c_) At other times faith or belief relates to probable, as opposed
to certain, knowledge. "We do not know this, but we believe it," often
means, "We are not sure of this, but we think it likely." It is not in
this sense, of course, that any one except a religious sceptic will
allow that the existence of God is a matter of faith. A man may admit
that religion and science differ as faith and knowledge, but if he is
willing to understand this as signifying that while science is certain,
religion is at the most merely probable, he must necessarily be a
doubter or an unbeliever.
(_d_) Faith or belief sometimes refers to the knowledge which rests on
personal testimony, Divine or human. Such faith may be more certain
than assent given to the evidence furnished by science. It ought to be
precisely proportioned to the evidence that there is such and such
testimony, and that the testimony is trustworthy.
(_e_) By faith or belief is sometimes meant trust in a person or
fidelity to a truth; the yielding up of the heart and life to the
object of faith. Faith or belief of this kind always involves
"preparedness to act upon what we affirm." It does not appear to me
that such preparedness is, as Professor Bain maintains, "the genuine,
unmistakable criterion of belief" in general. This kind of faith,
like all other faith, ought to rest on the assent of the intellect to
evidence, although what is characteristic of it is to be found not in
the intellect but in the emotions and will. Since it constitutes and
produces, however, spiritual experience, it is a condition and source
as well as a consequence of knowledge. There can be, in fact, no
profound religious knowledge, because there can be no vital religion,
without it.
In religion, as in every other department of thought and life, man is
bound to regulate his belief by the simple but comprehensive principle
that evidence is the measure of assent. Disbelief ought to be regulated
by the same principle, for disbelief is belief; not the opposite of
belief, but belief of the opposite. Unbelief is the opposite both of
belief and disbelief. Ignorance is to unbelief what knowledge is to
belief or disbelief. The whole duty of man as to belief is to believe
and disbelieve according to evidence, and neither to believe nor
disbelieve when evidence fails him.
NOTE XI., page 118.
THE THEOLOGICAL INFERENCE FROM THE THEORY OF ENERGY.
A remarkably clear account of the chief theories as to the nature of
matter will be found in Professor Tait's 'Lectures on some Recent
Advances in Physical Science,' Lect. XII. In Thomson and Tait's
'Natural Philosophy,' Thomson's article on "The Age of the Sun's
Heat" ('Macmillan's Magazine,' March 1862), Tait's 'Thermodynamics,'
Helmholtz's 'Correlation and Conservation of Forces,' Balfour Stewart's
'Treatise on Heat,' &c., the facts and theorems which seem to establish
that the material universe is a temporary system will be found fully
expounded.
I am not acquainted with any more effective criticism of the
argumentation by which the eminent physicists mentioned support their
conclusion than that of the Rev. Stanley Gibson; and, although it
seems to me not to come to very much, I feel bound in fairness to give
it entire. After an exposition of the theory of energy, and of the
reasoning founded on it by which we seem necessitated to infer that
the universe tends at last to be a scene of rest, coldness, darkness,
and death, he thus writes: "Is this reasoning, I ask, open to any
objection? and if not, does it bear out the theological conclusion
here sought to be rested upon it? In attempting to pass a verdict upon
the question here raised, we cannot but feel, not only the grandeur
of the subject before us, but also the imminent risk of its being
affected by considerations unknown to us. We certainly need to judge
with diffidence. Perhaps the first question which arises is, Are we to
take the material universe to be infinite? If it be, and if its stores
of energy, potential and kinetic, have no limit, then it is no longer
clear that the final stage of accumulation need have been reached,
however long its past history may have been; nor yet, I may add, that
it would ever be reached in the future. I may be reminded that at
present, at all events, only finite accumulations have arisen, and that
this is not consistent with an accumulation through a past eternity.
But this objection assumes that there never could have been more than
some assignable degree of diffusion of matter. Why should this be? If
at any past period there was a certain degree of diffusion, why may
there not have been a greater degree at an earlier period? And if so,
why may not this integrating, as I should propose to call it, have been
going on for ever?
"If, on the other hand, the universe be finite, then, according to the
principle of the conservation of energy, reflection of heat must take
place from its boundaries, and there may be reconcentration of energy
on certain points, according to the form of the bounding surface.
"A second inquiry arises thus. If it be impossible to imagine the
present history of the universe continued backward indefinitely under
its present code of laws, are we therefore obliged to assume some
anomalous interference? We speak, of course, of these laws as they are
known to us. Might there not be others, yet unknown, that would solve
the difficulty?
"The history of the universe, as immediately known to us, offers as
its leading feature the falling together of small discrete bodies in
enormous numbers and with great velocities, or the condensation of
very rare and diffused gases. Hence the formation of bodies, some
of vast size, others smaller, but all originally greatly heated.
This process seems to point to an earlier state of things, in which
such accumulations of matter, though sparse even now, were far less
common--a state in which, to use the expression which I have proposed,
matter was far less integrated. It is quite true that the great change
of which we thus obtain a glimpse is not a recurring process. It is
not therefore fitted for eternal repetition and continuance. But it
is a bold thing to say that this earlier state of things may not have
followed from one still older by a natural process, and this again
from one before, and so on through an indefinite regression. We have
seen what an important part the ether plays in the present process of
the dissipation of energy. The existence of that ether, the separation
of matter into two main forms, may have sprung out of some previous
condition of things wholly unknown to us. And so also there may be
forms and stores of energy as yet unknown.
"Mr Proctor, in his work on the sun, has cautioned us how we speculate
on the physical constitution of that body, whilst we must feel
uncertain how far the physical laws, which we observe here, will hold
under the vastly different conditions obtaining there. He supports
his caution by referring to cases in which what had been confidently
thought by many to be safe generalisations have been shown to fail in
novel circumstances. Thus it was thought that the passage of a gas
from the gaseous into the liquid form was always an abrupt change.
But it has been found that carbonic acid gas can be made to pass into
the liquid state by insensible gradations. Again, it had been thought
that gas, when incandescent, always gave light whose spectrum was
broken into thin lines; but it has been shown that hydrogen, under
high pressure, may be made to give forth light with a continuous
spectrum. Now surely this caution, which Mr Proctor enters in the case
of which he speaks, might still more wisely be entered when we come to
consider a state of things so novel, so remote from our experience,
as that which attended the origin of the universe, or rather of that
state of the universe with which we are acquainted. We certainly must
not be in haste to conclude that because the laws of nature, as they
are known to us, will not explain what must have taken place at some
very remote period, therefore those events must have been altogether
anomalous."--Religion and Science, pp. 71-74.
It is here virtually--perhaps I may say expressly--conceded that if the
matter and energy of the universe be finite and located in infinite
space, the reasoning by which the theorists of thermodynamics maintain
that perpetual motion is incompatible with the transformation and
dissipation of energy, cannot be resisted. Unless matter and energy
be infinite or space finite, the known laws of nature must eventually
abolish all differences of temperature and destroy all life--this
is what is admitted. To me it seems to amount to yielding all that
is demanded; because whoever seriously considers the difficulties
involved in believing either matter infinite or space finite must, I am
persuaded, come to regard it as equivalent to an acknowledgment that
the world will have an end and must have had a beginning.
Zoellner, in his ingenious work on the nature of comets, endeavours
to avoid this inference by recourse to the hypotheses of Riemann and
others as to a space of _n_ dimensions. In such a space the shortest
line would be a circle, and a body might move for ever, yet describe a
limited course. Matter, space, and inferentially time, would, in fact,
according to this hypothesis, be both finite and infinite. It is to be
hoped that few persons in the full possession of their intellects will
ever accept a view like this. The imaginary geometry may be thoroughly
sound reasoning, but it is reasoning from erroneous premises, and it
can only be useful so long as it is remembered that its premises are
erroneous. They have only to be assumed to be true to experience and
reality, and all science must be set aside in favour of nonsense. Logic
ought not, however, to be confounded with truth.
Caspari fancies that by representing the universe as not a mechanism
but an organism, he preserves the right to believe it eternal. But
surely the laws of heat apply to organisms no less than to mechanisms.
In an article concerning the cosmological problem, published in
the first number of the 'Vierteljahrsschrift f. Wissenschaftliche
Philosophie,' Professor Wundt rejects the theory in question on
extremely weak grounds. "It is easy to see," he says, "that, in the
case of the English physicists at least, the desire of harmonising the
data of the exact sciences with theological conceptions has not been
without influence on this limitation of the universe." The rashness
displayed by such a statement, and the utter want of evidence or
probability for it, as regards men like Thomson or Tait, need not
be pointed out. Besides, Clausius and Helmholtz are neither English
physicists nor likely to be influenced by theological conceptions.
Will it be believed that, notwithstanding this charge against others,
Professor Wundt's own reasoning is not scientific, but merely
anti-theological? Such is the case. If the Thomsonian theory be
admitted, a place is left for creative action, for miracle; and this,
he argues, is a contradiction of the principle of causality. Therefore
the theory must be rejected. It is to be regretted that so eminent a
man of science should employ so unscientific an argument.
There is obviously a very widespread unwillingness to accept the
Thomsonian theory; but, so far as I am aware, good reasons have not
yet been given for its rejection. The contrast between the reception
which it has received and that which has been accorded to the Darwinian
theory is certainly curious, and probably instructive.
NOTE XII., page 130.
THE HISTORY OF THE ÆTIOLOGICAL ARGUMENT.
The argument for the Divine existence which proceeds on the principle
of causality is generally called the cosmological argument, but
sometimes, and perhaps more accurately, the ætiological argument.
The proof from order is not unfrequently termed cosmological. It is
impossible to keep the ætiological argument entirely separate either
from the ontological or cosmological argument. Ætiological reasoning
may be detected as a creative factor in the rudest religious creeds.
The search for causes began not with the origin of philosophy but with
the origin of religion. Passages like Ps. xc. 1, 2, cii. 26-28; Rom. i.
19, 20; Heb. i. 10-12--have been referred to as anticipations of the
argument. Wherever nature is spoken of in Scripture, it is as the work
of an uncreated being, of a free and sovereign mind. Aristotle gave a
formal expression to the ætiological argument by inferring from the
motion of the universe the existence of a first unmoved mover--Phys.,
vii. 1, 2, viii. 7, 9, 15. Cicero repeated his reasoning, and tells us
it had been also employed by Carneades, De Nat. Deor., ii. 9, iii. 12,
13. Well known is St Augustine's "Interrogavi terram, et dixit: non
sum. Interrogavi mare et abyssos--et responderunt: non sumus deus tuus,
quære super nos. Interrogavi coelum, solem, lunam, stellas: neque nos
sumus deus, quem quæris, inquiunt. Et dixi omnibus iis--dicite mihi de
illo aliquid. Et exclamaverunt voce magna: ipse fecit nos. Interrogavi
mundi molem de Deo meo et respondit mihi: non ego sum, sed ipse me
fecit."--Conf., x. 6. Diodorus of Tarsus (Phot. Bib. Cod., 223, p.
209 Bekk.), and John of Damascus (De Fid. Orth., i. 3), inferred the
necessity of a creative unity from the mutability and corruptibility
of worldly things. Thomas Aquinas argued on the principle of causality
in three ways--viz.: 1. From motion to a first moving principle,
which is not moved by any other principle; 2. From effects to a first
efficient cause; and 3. From the possible and contingent to what is in
itself necessary.--Summa. P. i., Qu. 2, 3. Most of the theologians of
the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries who treat of the
proofs of the Divine existence, employ in some form the argument from
causation. Thus, in Pearson 'On the Creed' and Charnock's 'Discourses
on the Existence and Attributes of God' will be found good examples of
how it was presented in this country in the seventeenth century. Hume's
speculations on causation attracted attention to it. The philosophers
of the Scottish school and their adherents among the theologians
laboured to present it in a favourable light. In Germany, Leibnitz
(Théodicée, I. c. 7) and Wolff (Rational Thoughts of God, § 928)
laid stress on the accidental contingent character of the world and
its contents, and, relying on the principle of the sufficient reason,
concluded that there must be a universal and permanent cause of all
that is changing and transitory, an absolute ground of all that is
relative and derivative. Further, Wolff and his followers raised on
this reasoning a large amount of metaphysical speculation as to the
nature of a necessary cause, the properties of an absolute Being, which
was of a very questionable sort in itself, and had no proper connection
with the so-called cosmological argument. To this argument, as stated
by Wolff, Kant applied his transcendental criticism, and proved, as
he thought, that it was "a perfect nest of dialectical assumptions."
His argumentation may be allowed to have had force against Wolff, but
it is weak wherever it is relevant to the ætiological proof rightly
understood. In fact, his objections openly proceed on the assumption
that the principle of causality is only applicable within the sphere
of sense experience. If this be true, no objections, of course, are
necessary. As a rule, the ætiological argument is not skilfully or even
carefully treated in the works of recent German theologians. It has
been expounded, however, with great philosophical ability and with a
rare wealth of scientific knowledge, by Professor Ulrici of Halle, in
the work entitled 'Gott und die Natur.' A translation of this treatise
would confer a real service both on the theology and philosophy of this
country.
NOTE XIII., page 137.
MATHEMATICS AND THE DESIGN ARGUMENT.
"Another science regarded as barren of religious applications, and
even as sometimes positively injurious, is mathematics. Its principles
are, indeed, of so abstruse a nature, that it is not easy to frame out
of them a religious argument that is capable of popular illustration.
But, in fact, mathematical laws form the basis of nearly all the
operations of nature. They constitute, as it were, the very framework
of the material world.... It seems, then, that this science forms the
very foundation of all arguments for theism, from the arrangements
and operations of the material universe. We do, indeed, neglect the
foundation, and point only to the superstructure, when we state
these arguments. But suppose mathematical laws to be at once struck
from existence, and what a hideous case would the universe present!
What then would become of the marks of design and unity in nature,
and of the theist's argument for the being of a God?... It is said,
however, that mathematicians have been unusually prone to scepticism
concerning religious truth. If it be so, it probably originates from
the absurd attempt to apply mathematical reasoning to moral subjects;
or rather, the devotees of this science often become so attached to
its demonstrations, that they will not admit any evidence of a less
certain character. They do not realise the total difference between
moral and mathematical reasonings, and absurdly endeavour to stretch
religion on the Procrustean bed of mathematics. No wonder they become
sceptics. But the fault is in themselves, not in this science, whose
natural tendencies, upon a pure and exalted mind, are favourable to
religion."--Hitchcock's Religion of Geology, pp. 387-389.
"Nor can we fail to notice how frequently the law which men have
invented proves to have been already known and used in nature. The
mathematician devises a geometric locus or an algebraic formula from
_a priori_ considerations, and afterward discovers that he has been
unwittingly solving a mechanical problem, or explaining the form of a
real phenomenon. Thus, for example, in Peirce's 'Integral Calculus,'
published in 1843, is a problem invented and solved purely in the
enthusiasm of following the analytic symbols; but in 1863 it proved
to be a complete prophetic discussion and solution of the problem of
two pendulums suspended from one horizontal cord. Thus also Galileo's
discussion of the cycloid proved, long afterward, to be a key to
problems concerning the pendulum, falling bodies, and resistance
to transverse pressure. Four centuries before Christ, Plato and
his scholars were occupied upon the eclipse as a purely geometric
speculation, and Socrates seemed inclined to reprove them for their
waste of time. But in the seventeenth century after Christ, Kepler
discovers that the Architect of the heavens had given us magnificent
diagrams of the eclipse in the starry heavens; and, since that time,
all the navigation and architecture and engineering of the nineteenth
century have been built on these speculations of Plato. Equally
remarkable is the history of the idea of extreme and mean ratio. Before
the Christian era geometers had invented a process for dividing a
line in this ratio, that they might use it in an equally abstract and
useless problem--the inscribing a regular pentagon in a circle. But it
was not until the middle of the present century that it was discovered
that this idea is embodied in nature. It is hinted at in some animal
forms, it is very thoroughly and accurately expressed in the angles
at which the leaves of plants diverge as they grow from the stem, and
it is embodied approximately in the revolutions of the planets about
the sun.... Now, in all these cases of the embodiment in nature of an
idea which men have developed, not by a study of the embodiment, but
by an _a priori_ speculation, there seems to us demonstrative evidence
that man is made in the image of his Creator; that the thoughts
and knowledge of God contain and embrace all possible _a priori_
speculations of men. It is true that God's knowledge is infinite, and
beyond our utmost power of conception. But how can we compare the
reasonings of Euclid upon extreme and mean ratio with the arrangement
of leaves about the stem, and the revolutions of planets around the
sun, and not feel that these phenomena of creation express Euclid's
idea as exactly as diagrams or Arabic digits could do; and that
this idea was, in some form, present in the creation?"--The Natural
Foundations of Theology. By T. Hill, D.D., LL.D.
There is an ingenious and judicious little work by Charles Girdlestone,
M.A., published in 1875, and entitled 'Number: a Link between Divine
Intelligence and Human. An Argument.'
NOTE XIV., page 140.
ASTRONOMY AND THE DESIGN ARGUMENT.
The design argument has always drawn some of its data from astronomy.
The order and beauty of the heavenly bodies, the alternation of
day and night, the succession of the seasons, and the dependence of
living creatures on these changes, are referred to as indications of
God's character and agency in many passages of Scripture. Thus, to
select only from the Psalms: "When I consider Thy heavens, the work
of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained;
what is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that
Thou visitest him?"--viii. 3, 4. "The heavens declare the glory of
God; and the firmament showeth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth
speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge."--xix. 1, 2. "He
appointed the moon for seasons; the sun knoweth his going down. Thou
makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the forest
do creep forth.... The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together,
and lay them down in their dens. Man goeth forth unto his work and
to his labour until the evening. O Lord, how manifold are Thy works!
in wisdom hast Thou made them all."--civ. 19-24. Among classical
writers, Cicero has presented the design argument as founded on the
arrangements and movements of the heavenly bodies in a very striking
manner, when, referring to the instrument by which Posidonius had
ingeniously represented them, he asks whether, if that instrument were
carried into Scythia or Britain, any even of the barbarians of these
lands would doubt that it was the product of reason, and rebukes those
who would regard the wondrous system of which it was a feeble copy as
the effect of chance. "Quod si in Scythiam aut in Britanniam, sphæram
aliquis tulerit hanc, quam nuper familiaris noster effecit Posidonius,
cujus singulæ conversiones idem efficiunt in sole, et in lunâ, et in
quinque stellis errantibus, quod efficitur in coelo singulis diebus
et noctibus: quis in illâ barbarie dubitet, quin ea sphæra sit perfecta
ratione? Hi autem dubitant de mundo, ex quo et oriuntur et fiunt omnia,
casune ipse sit effectus, aut necessitate aliquâ, an ratione ac mente
divinâ: et Archimedem arbitrantur plus valuisse in imitandis sphæræ
conversionibus, quam naturam in efficiendis, præsertim cum multis
partibus sint illa perfecta, quam hæc simulata, sollertius."--De Nat.
Deorum, ii. 34, 35. The 'Astro-Theology' of Wm. Derham, published in
1714, was perhaps the first work entirely devoted to the illustration
of the design argument from astronomical facts and theories. Among
comparatively recent works of a similar kind I may mention Vince's
'Confutation of Atheism from the Laws and Constitution of the Heavenly
Bodies,' Whewell's 'Bridgewater Treatise,' Dick's 'Celestial Scenery,'
Mitchell's 'Planetary and Stellar Worlds,' and Leitch's 'God's Glory
in the Heavens.' They afford ample evidence of the erroneousness of
Comte's assertion that "the opposition of science to theology is more
obvious in astronomy than anywhere else, and that no other science has
given more terrible shocks to the doctrine of final causes." Kepler did
not think so, for he concludes his work on the 'Harmony of Worlds' with
these devout words: "I thank Thee, my Creator and Lord, that Thou hast
given me this joy in Thy creation, this delight in the works of Thy
hands. I have shown the excellency of Thy work unto men, so far as my
finite mind was able to comprehend Thine infinity. If I have said aught
unworthy of Thee, or aught in which I may have sought my own glory,
graciously forgive it." Nor did Newton, for he wrote: "Elegantissima
hæcce compages solis, planetarum, et cometarum (et stellarum), non
nisi consilio et dominio Entis cujusdam potentis et intelligentis oriri
potuit." And in our own times such men as Herschel, Brewster, Mädler,
&c., have protested against the notion that astronomy tends to atheism.
The late Professor De Morgan demonstrated in his 'Essay on
Probability,' when only eleven planets were known, that the odds
against chance, to which in such a case intelligence is the only
alternative, being the cause of all these bodies moving in one
direction round the sun, with an inconsiderable inclination of the
planes of their orbits, were twenty thousand millions to one. "What
prospect," are his own words, "would there have been of such a
concurrence of circumstances, if a state of chance had been the only
antecedent? With regard to the sameness of the directions, either of
which might have been from west to east, or from east to west, the case
is precisely similar to the following: There is a lottery containing
black and white balls, from each drawing of which it is as likely a
black ball shall arise as a white one: what is the chance of drawing
eleven balls all white?--answer 2047 to one against it. With regard to
the other question, our position is this: There is a lottery containing
an infinite number of counters, marked with all possible different
angles less than a right angle, in such a manner that any angle is
as likely to be drawn as another, so that in ten drawings the sum of
the angles drawn may be anything under ten right angles: now, what is
the chance of ten drawings giving collectively less than one right
angle?--answer 10,000,000 to one against it. Now, what is the chance of
both these events coming together?--answer, more than 20,000,000,000 to
one against it. It is consequently of the same degree of probability
that there has been something at work which is not chance in the
formation of the solar system."
There are several departments of science as much, or even more, adapted
than astronomy, to furnish proofs of the wisdom of God; but there is
none which affords us such evidence of His power, or so helps us to
realise His omnipresence, our own nothingness before Him, and the
littleness of our earth in the system of His creation. Those who wish
to have impressions of this kind deepened may be recommended to read
the works of Proctor and Flammarion.
What is said in the paragraph to which this note refers must not be so
understood as to be in consistent with the possibility or probability,
if not demonstrated certainty, that the universe is not a perfectly
conservative system, but one which is tending surely although slowly to
the destruction of the present condition of things. This fact, if it
be a fact, can no more affect the design argument in its relation to
astronomy, than the decay of plants and the death of animals can affect
it in relation to vegetable and animal physiology.
NOTE XV., page 143.
CHEMISTRY AND THE DESIGN ARGUMENT.
The history of chemistry is of itself sufficient to disprove the view
of Comte that the initial and conjectural stages of a science are those
in which it affords most support to theology. It was only after the
definitive constitution of chemistry as a science, only after the
discovery of positive and precise chemical laws, that the teleological
argument for the Divine existence began to be rested to a certain
extent upon it.
The Honourable Robert Boyle, the founder of the Boyle Lectureship, was
one of the most distinguished chemists of his age, a zealous defender
of final causes, and the author of several treatises intended to
diffuse worthy views and sentiments as to the character and operations
of the Creator.
Probably the two best English treatises on the relationship of
chemistry to theism are the Bridgewater Treatise of Dr Prout,
'Chemistry, Meteorology, and the Function of Digestion, considered
with reference to Natural Theology' (3d ed., 1845), and the Actonian
Prize Essay of Professor Fownes, 'Chemistry as exemplifying the
Wisdom and Beneficence of God' (1844). Both writers were chemists of
high reputation, but they were not very conversant with theology or
philosophy, and have, in consequence, by no means fully utilised the
excellent scientific materials which they collected.
This makes it all the more to be regretted that the late Professor
George Wilson was not permitted to accomplish his design of writing "a
book corresponding to the 'Religio Medici' of Sir Thomas Browne, with
the title 'Religio Chemici.'" Among the fragments comprised in the work
published under that title after his death, three essays--"Chemistry
and Natural Theology," "The Chemistry of the Stars," and "Chemical
Final Causes"--are most interesting and suggestive.
The attempts of writers like Moleschott and Büchner to draw atheistic
inferences from the theories or hypotheses of modern chemistry
have given rise to a multitude of answers, but it may be sufficient
to refer to the 'Antimaterialismus' of Dr L. Weiss. Liebig in his
'Chemical Letters' manifests profound contempt for the materialistic
and anti-theistic speculations attempted to be based on the science of
which he was so illustrious a master.
NOTE XVI., page 145.
GEOLOGY, GEOGRAPHY, ETC., AND THE DESIGN ARGUMENT.
The single fact that geology proves that every genus and species of
organic forms which exist or have existed on the earth had a definite
beginning in time, gives to this science great importance in reference
to theism. It decides at once and conclusively what metaphysics might
have discussed without result for ages. Its religious bearings are
exhibited in Buckland's 'Geology and Mineralogy considered in reference
to Natural Theology,' Hugh Miller's 'Footprints of the Creator,'
Hitchcock's 'Religion of Geology,' and many other works. Lyell
concludes both his 'Elements of Geology' and 'Principles of Geology'
by affirming that geological research finds in all directions the
clearest indications of creative intelligence; that "as we increase
our knowledge of the inexhaustible variety displayed in nature, and
admire the infinite wisdom and power which it manifests, our admiration
is multiplied by the reflection, that it is only the last of a great
series of pre-existing creations, of which we cannot estimate the
number or limit in times past."
The numerous adaptations which exist between the terrestrial and
celestial economies are dwelt on in detail by M'Culloch in the second
volume of his 'Proofs and Illustrations of the Attributes of God
from the Facts and Laws of the Physical Universe,' and by Buchanan
in 'Faith in God and Modern Atheism,' vol. i. pp. 132-156. These two
authors have also treated of the adaptations subsisting between the
organic and inorganic worlds. The Bridgewater Treatise of Chalmers was
on 'The Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual
Constitution of Man;' and that of Kidd, on 'The Adaptation of External
Nature to the Physical Constitution of Man.'
In Ritter's 'Geographical Studies,' Guyot's 'Earth and Man,' Kapp's
'Allgemeine Erdkunde,' Lotze's 'Mikrokosmus,' B. vi. c. 1, Duval's
'Des Rapports entre la Géographie et l'Economie Politique,' Cocker's
'Theistic Conception of the World,' ch. vii., &c., will be found a
rich store of teleological data as to the fitness of the earth to be
the dwelling-place and the schoolhouse of human beings. Of course,
those who attempt to prove this thesis require carefully to resist the
temptation to conceive of the relation of nature to man as not one of
cause and effect, of action and reaction, of mutual influence, but as
an immediate and inexplicable pre-established harmony like that which
Leibnitz supposed to exist between the body and the soul. This was
the theory which Cousin set forth in a celebrated lecture on the part
of geography in history. Regarding it I may quote the words which I
have used elsewhere: "This notion is not only purely conjectural, but
inconsistent with the innumerable facts which manifest that nature
does influence man, and that man does modify nature. It is impossible
to hold, either in regard to the body and soul, or in regard to nature
and man, _both_ the theory of mutual influence and of pre-established
harmony. All that, in either case, proves the former, disproves the
latter. The belief in a pre-established harmony between man and nature
is, indeed, considerably more absurd than in a pre-established harmony
between the body and soul; for when a body is born, a soul is in it,
which remains in it till death, and is never known to leave it in
order to take possession of some other body: but every country is not
created with a people in it, nor is every people permanently fixed
to a particular country. Imagination may be deceived for a moment
by an obvious process of association into this belief of certain
peoples being suited for certain lands, independently of the action
of natural causes--the Greeks, let us say, for Greece, the Indian for
the prairies and forests of America, the Malayan for the islands of
the Indian Archipelago; but a moment's thought on the fact that the
Turk has settled down where the Greeks used to be--that mighty nations
of English-speaking men are rising up where the Indian roamed, and
that Dutchmen are thriving in the lands of the Malayan, should suffice
to disabuse us. Besides, just as the dictum, 'Marriages are made in
heaven,' is seriously discredited by the great number that are badly
made, so the kindred opinion that every country gets the people which
suits it, and every people the country, as a direct and immediate
consequence of their pre-established harmony, is equally discredited by
the prevalence of ill-assorted unions, a great many worthless peoples
living in magnificent lands, while far better peoples have much worse
ones."--Philosophy of History in France and Germany, pp. 191, 192.
NOTE XVII., page 146.
THE ORGANIC KINGDOM AND DESIGN.
The order and system in the vegetable and animal kingdoms are
undeniable general facts, whatever may have been the secondary
agencies by which they have been produced; and the inference of
design from these facts is valid, whatever may have been the mode of
their production. The characters and relationships of organic forms
constitute a proof of intelligence, whether their genera and species
be the immediate and immutable expressions of the ideas of the Divine
Mind, or the slowly-reached results of evolution. Of course, if
there has been a process of evolution, it must have been one exactly
fitted to attain the result. But the discovery or exhibition of such
a process will be sufficient to cause a certain class of minds to
believe that there has been no cause but the process--that the process
completely explains both itself and the result, and leaves no room for
intelligence.
The character of the order and system in the organic world is so
extremely abstruse, subtle, and comprehensive, that all the attempts
at classification in botany prior to De Candolle, and in zoology prior
to Cuvier, were failures. The labours of the great naturalists and
biologists of the present century have, doubtless, accomplished much;
but the light reached is still but the feeble light of an early dawn.
Yet that light is most pleasant and satisfying to the eye of the mind.
The reason sees in it a profound significance and a wonderful beauty.
How, it may well be asked, can a scheme of order which tasks to such
an extent the powers of comprehension possessed by the human mind, and
yet which is perceived, when discovered, to be admirably rational, be
supposed to have originated elsewhere than in a Mind?
I can only mention a few out of the multitude of books which treat of
design in the organic world. Among general works on natural theology it
may be sufficient to refer to those of Paley, Buchanan, and Tulloch;
and among special works to Professor Balfour's 'Phyto-Theology; or,
Botanical Sketches, intended to illustrate the Works of God in the
Structure, Functions, and General Distribution of Plants;' M'Cosh's
'Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation;' Agassiz's 'Structure of
Animal Life; being Six Lectures on the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of
God, as manifested in His Works;' Kirby's 'Power, Wisdom, and Goodness
of God, as manifested in the Creation of Animals;' Roget's 'Animal and
Vegetable Physiology, considered in reference to Natural Theology;'
and Sir Charles Bell's 'The Hand, its Mechanism and Vital Endowments,
as evincing Design.' The three last-mentioned works are Bridgewater
Treatises.
It is a duty to call particular attention to the recent work of M.
Janet, 'Les Causes Finales.' Although M. Janet concedes, perhaps, too
much to the opponents of finality, his treatise contains the ablest
and most adequate discussion of the various problems suggested by the
indications which organic nature gives of design that has yet appeared.
It is eminently worthy of a careful study. I am glad to know that a
translation of this valuable work is in progress.
Among the masters of biological science, Cuvier, V. Baer, Agassiz, and
R. Owen may be named, as among those who have set the highest value on
the principle of finality. The essay on Classification of Agassiz, and
the various essays which Von Baer has published at different times, on
what he calls "Zielstrebigkeit," are specially important.
NOTE XVIII., page 148.
EVIDENCES OF DESIGN IN ORGANISMS.
"The _savants_ are generally too much disposed to confound the doctrine
of final cause with the hypothesis of an invisible force acting
without physical means, as a _deus ex machinâ_. These two hypotheses,
far from reducing themselves the one to the other, are in explicit
contradiction; for he who says _design_ says at the same time _means_,
and, consequently, causes adapted to produce a certain effect. To
discover this cause is by no means to destroy the idea of design; it
is, on the contrary, to bring to light the condition, _sine quâ non_,
of the production of the end. To make clear this distinction we cite a
beautiful example, borrowed from M. Claude Bernard. How does it happen,
says this eminent physiologist, that the gastric juice, which dissolves
all aliments, does not dissolve the stomach itself, which is of
precisely the same nature as the aliments with which it is nourished?
For a long time the vital force was supposed to intervene--that is to
say, an invisible cause which, in some way, suspended the properties
of the natural agents, to prevent their producing their necessary
effects. The vital force would, by a sort of moral _veto_, forbid the
gastric juice to touch the stomach. We see that this would be a real
miracle. Everything is explained when we know that the stomach is lined
with a coating or varnish which is not attacked by the gastric juice,
and which protects the walls which it covers. Who does not see that
in refuting the omnipotence of the vital force, very far from having
weakened the principle of finality, we have given to it a wonderful
support? What could the most perfect art have done to protect the
walls of the stomach, but invent a precaution similar to that which
exists in reality? And how surprising it is that an organ destined to
secrete and use an agent most destructive to itself, is found armed
with a protective tunic, which must have always coexisted with it,
since otherwise it would have been destroyed before having had time
to procure for itself this defence--which excludes the hypothesis
of long gropings and happy occurrences."--Janet, 'Final Causes and
Contemporaneous Physiology,' Presb. Quart. Rev., April 1876.
Professor Tyndall gives a very graphic description of the combination
of remarkable arrangements by which the human ear is fitted to be an
organ of hearing. I quote from it the following words, and connect
with them some striking observations of Max Müller. "Finally, there is
in the labyrinth a wonderful organ, discovered by the Marchese Corti,
which is to all appearance a musical instrument, with its chords so
stretched as to accept vibrations of different periods, and transmit
them to the nerve-filaments which traverse the organ. Within the
ears of men, and without their knowledge or contrivance, this lute of
3000 strings has existed for ages, accepting the music of the outer
world, and rendering it fit for reception by the brain. Each musical
tremor which falls upon this organ selects from its tensioned fibres
the one appropriate to its own pitch, and throws that fibre into
unisonant vibration. And thus, no matter how complicated the motion of
the external air may be, those microscopic strings can analyse it and
reveal the constituents of which it is composed."--On Sound, p. 325.
"What we hear when listening to a chorus or a symphony is a commotion
of elastic air, of which the wildest sea would give a very inadequate
image. The lowest tone which the ear perceives is due to about 30
vibrations in one second, the highest to about 4000. Consider, then,
what happens in a _presto_, when thousands of voices and instruments
are simultaneously producing waves of air, each wave crossing the
other, not only like the surface waves of the water, but like spherical
bodies, and, as it would seem, without any perceptible disturbance;
consider that each tone is accompanied by secondary notes, that each
instrument has its peculiar _timbre_, due to secondary vibrations;
and, lastly, let us remember that all this cross-fire of waves, all
this whirlpool of sound, is moderated by laws which determine what
we call harmony, and by certain traditions or habits which determine
what we call melody--both these elements being absent in the songs of
birds--that all this must be reflected like a microscopic photograph on
the two small organs of hearing, and there excite not only perception,
but perception followed by a new feeling even more mysterious, which
we call either pleasure or pain;--and it will be clear that we are
surrounded on all sides by miracles transcending all we are accustomed
to call miraculous."--Science of Language, second series, p. 115.
The structure of the eye has often been described as an evidence of
design. There is an extremely interesting comparison of it with the
photographic camera in Le Conte's 'Religion and Science,' pp. 20-33.
The whole reading public knows the masterly chapter on "The Machinery
of Flight" in the Duke of Argyll's 'Reign of Law.'
NOTE XIX., page 149.
PSYCHOLOGY AND DESIGN.
The following writers treat at considerable length of the evidences of
design to be traced in the constitution of the mind: Sir Matthew Hale
in his 'Primitive Origination of Mankind;' Barrow in the seventh of
his 'Sermons on the Creed;' Bentley in the second sermon of his 'Boyle
Lecture;' Crombie in the second volume of his 'Natural Theology;' Lord
Brougham in his 'Discourse on Natural Theology,' sect. iii., pp. 52-80;
Turton's 'Natural Theology Considered,' pp. 65-160; Chalmers's 'Natural
Theology,' Book III.; Buchanan's 'Faith in God,' pp. 213-231; Tulloch's
'Theism,' pp. 182-247; and Ulrici's 'Gott und Mensch.'
The phenomena of animal instinct are of themselves an inexhaustible
source of instruction as to the Divine wisdom and goodness. "The
spinning machinery which is provided in the body of a spider is not
more accurately adjusted to the viscid secretion which is provided
for it, than the instinct of the spider is adjusted both to the
construction of its web and also to the selection of likely places
for the capture of its prey. Those birds and insects whose young
are hatched by the heat of fermentation, have an intuitive impulse
to select the proper materials, and to gather them for the purpose.
All creatures, guided sometimes apparently by senses of which we
know nothing, are under like impulses to provide effectually for the
nourishing of their young; and it is most curious and instructive
to observe that the extent of provision which is involved in the
process, and in the securing of the result, seems very often to be
greater as we descend in the scale of nature, and in proportion as the
parents are dissociated from the actual feeding or personal care of
their offspring. The mammalia have nothing to provide except food for
themselves, and have at first, and for a long time, no duty to perform
beyond the discharge of a purely physical function. Birds have more to
do--in the building of nests, in the choice of sites for these, and
after incubation in the choice of food adapted to the period of growth.
Insects, much lower in the scale of organisation, and subject to the
wonderful processes of metamorphosis, have to provide very often for a
distant future, and for successive stages of development not only in
the young but in the _nidus_ which surrounds them. Bees, if we are to
believe the evidence of observers, have an intuitive guidance in the
selection of food which has the power of producing organic changes in
the bodies of the young, even to the determination and development of
sex, so that, by the administration of it, under what may be called
artificial conditions, certain selected individuals can be made the
mothers and queens of future hives. These are but a few examples of
facts of which the whole animal world is full, presenting, as it does,
one vast series of adjustments between bodily organs and corresponding
instincts. But this adjustment would be useless unless it were part of
another adjustment--between the instincts and perceptions of animals
and those facts and forces of surrounding nature which are related
to them, and to the whole cycle of things of which they form a part.
In those instinctive actions of the lower animals which involve the
most distant and the most complicated anticipations, it is certain
that the prevision involved is a prevision which is not in the animals
themselves. They appear to be, and beyond all doubt really are,
guided by some simple appetite, by an odour or a taste, and, in all
probability, they have generally as little consciousness of the ends
to be subserved as the suckling has of the processes of nutrition. The
path along which they walk is a path which they did not engineer. It is
a path made for them, and they simply follow it. But the propensities
and tastes and feelings which make them follow it, and the rightness
of its direction towards the ends to be attained, do constitute an
adjustment which may correctly be called mechanical, and is part of
a unity which binds together the whole world of life, and the whole
inorganic world on which living things depend."--Duke of Argyll on
Animal Instinct (Cont. Rev., July 1875).
Instinctive actions will not be shown to be less evidences of Divine
purpose by its being proved that intelligence, at least in the higher
animals, probably always co-operates in some degree with instinct, or
that much which is referred to instinct may be traced either directly
to experience or to the hereditary transmission of qualities originally
generated by experience.
NOTE XX., page 152.
HISTORY AND DESIGN.
The quotation is from the eighteenth--the concluding--volume of the
'Etudes sur l'Histoire de l'Humanité,' by Professor Laurent of Ghent.
I have given some account of his historical doctrine, and endeavoured
to defend the theistic inference which he has drawn from his laborious
survey of historical facts against the objections of Professor J.
B. Meyer, in my 'Philosophy of History in France and Germany,' pp.
321-330. Bunsen, in the work entitled 'God in History,' seeks to
establish the same great thesis.
"History," says Niebuhr, "shows, on a hundred occasions, an
intelligence distinct from nature, which conducts and determines
those things which may seem to us accidental; and it is not true
that history weakens our belief in Divine Providence. History is, of
all kinds of knowledge, the one which tends most decidedly to that
belief."--Lectures on the History of Rome, vol. ii. p. 59.
Süssmilch's celebrated treatise, 'Göttliche Ordnung in der Veränderung
des menschlichen Geschlechtes, &c.;' M'Cosh's 'Method of the Divine
Government;' and Gillett's 'God in Human Thought,' vol. ii. pp.
724-792, may be consulted as regards the evidences of Divine purpose to
be found in the constitution of society.
NOTE XXI., page 168.
HISTORY OF THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT.
The proof of the Divine existence from the order and adaptations of the
universe is known as the physico-theological or teleological argument.
It has also been sometimes called the cosmological argument; the very
word cosmos, like the Latin _mundus_ and our own universe, implying
order. It is so obvious and direct that it has presented itself to
the mind from very ancient times. It is implied in such passages of
Scripture as Job, xxxvii.-xli.; Ps. viii., xix., civ.; Isa. xl. 21-26;
Matt. vi. 25-32; Acts, xiv. 15-17, xvii. 24-28. Pythagoras laid great
stress on the order of the world; and it was mainly on that order
that Anaxagoras rested his belief in a Supreme Intelligence. Socrates
developed the argument from the adaptation of the parts of the body to
one another, and to the external world, with a skill which has never
been surpassed. His conversation with Aristodemus, as recorded in the
'Memorabilia' of Xenophon, is of wonderful interest and beauty. Few
will follow it even now without feeling constrained to join Aristodemus
in acknowledging that "man must be the masterpiece of some great
Artificer, carrying along with it infinite marks of the love and favour
of Him who thus formed it." Plato presents the argument specially in
the 'Timæus,' and his whole philosophy is pervaded by the thought that
God is the primary source and perfect ideal of all order and harmony.
Aristotle expressly maintains that "the appearance of ends and means
is a proof of design," and conceives of God as the ultimate Final
Cause. Cicero (De Nat. Deor., ii. c. 37) puts into the mouth of Balbus
an elaborate exposition of the design argument. The 'De Usu Partium'
of Galen is a treatise on natural theology, teaching design in the
structure of the body.
This proof is found more frequently than any other in the writings of
the fathers and scholastics. "When we see a vessel," says Theophilus,
"spreading her canvas, and majestically riding on the billows of the
stormy sea, we conclude that she has a pilot on board; thus, from the
regular course of the planets, the rich variety of creatures, we infer
the existence of the Creator."--Ad Autol., 5. Minucius Felix (c. 18)
compares the universe to a house, and Gregory of Nazianzum (Orat.,
xxviii. 6) compares it to a lyre, in illustrating the same argument.
Ambrose, Athanasius, Augustine, Basil the Greek, Chrysostom, &c.,
employ it. So do Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, &c.
The opposition of Bacon and Descartes to final causes had no influence
in preventing theologians from insisting on their existence. From
Boyle and Derham to Paley and the Bridgewater Treatises, an enormous
literature appeared in England devoted to this end. Germany, also,
in the second half of the eighteenth century, was almost as much
overflooded with Lithotheologies, Hydrotheologies, Phytotheologies,
Insectotheologies, &c., as it at present is with works on Darwinism.
In France, Fenelon in his 'Démonstration de l'Existence de Dieu,' and
Bernardin de Saint Pierre in his 'Etudes' and 'Harmonies de la Nature,'
eloquently, although not perhaps very solidly or cautiously, reasoned
from the wonders of nature to the wisdom of God.
Hume and Kant, by their criticisms of the design argument, rendered to
it the great service of directing attention to the principles on which
it proceeds. Theologians had previously gone on merely accumulating
illustrative instances and instituting minute investigations into the
constitutions of the complex objects which they selected with this
view. Attention was thus distracted from what really needed argument.
Hume and Kant showed men the real point at issue.
Although Kant rejected the argument, he speaks of it in these terms:
"This proof deserves to be mentioned at all times with respect. It
is the oldest, the clearest, and the most suited to the ordinary
understanding. It animates the study of nature, because it owes its
existence to thought, and ever receives from it fresh force. It brings
out reality and purpose where our observation would not of itself have
discovered them, and extends our knowledge of nature by exhibiting
indications of a special unity whose principle is beyond nature. This
knowledge, moreover, directs us to its cause--namely, the inducing
idea, and increases our faith in a supreme originator to an almost
irresistible conviction."
I must refer to the Notes from XIII. to XX. inclusive, for the titles
of recent works on the design argument.
"The assertion appears to be quite unfounded that, as science advances
from point to point, final causes recede before it, and disappear
one after the other. The principle of design changes its mode of
application, indeed, but it loses none of its force. We no longer
consider particular facts as produced by special interpositions; but
we consider design as exhibited in the establishment and adjustment of
the laws by which particular facts are produced. We do not look upon
each particular cloud as brought near to us that it may drop fatness
on our fields; but the general adaptation of the laws of heat and air
and moisture to the promotion of vegetation does not become doubtful.
We do not consider the sun as less intended to warm and vivify the
tribes of plants and animals because we find that, instead of revolving
round the earth as an attendant, the earth, along with other planets,
revolves round him. We are rather, by the discovery of the general laws
of nature, led into a scene of wider design, of deeper contrivance, of
more comprehensive adjustments. Final causes, if they appear driven
farther from us by such extension of our views, embrace us only with a
vaster and more majestic circuit. Instead of a few threads connecting
some detached objects, they become a stupendous network, which is wound
round and round the universal frame of things."--Whewell, 'History of
Scientific Ideas,' vol. ii. pp. 253, 254.
NOTE XXII., page 182.
CREATION AND EVOLUTION.
Creation is the _only_ theory of the _origin_ of the universe.
Evolution assumes either the creation or the self-existence of
the universe. The evolutionist must choose between creation and
non-creation. They are opposites. There is no intermediate term. The
attempt to introduce one--the Unknowable--can lead to no result; for
unless the Unknowable is capable of creating, it can account for the
origin of nothing. All attempts to explain even the formation of the
universe, either by the evolution of the Unknowable or by evolution
out of the Unknowable, must be of a thoroughly delusive character. The
evolution of what is known can alone have significance either to the
ordinary or scientific mind. Nothing can be conceived of as subject
to evolution which is not of a finite and composite nature. Nothing
can be evolved out of a finite and composite existence which was not
previously involved in it. And what gives to anything its limits and
constitution must be more perfect than itself. [Greek: To prôton ou
sperma estin, alla to teleion.]
"As many philosophers as adopt the supposition--such as the
Pythagoreans and Spensippus--that what is best and most fair is not
to be found in the principle of things, from the fact that though
the first principles both of plants and animals are causes, yet
what is fair and perfect resides in created things as results from
these,--persons, I say, who entertain these sentiments, do not form
their opinions correctly. For seed arises from other natures that are
antecedent and perfect, and seed is not the first thing, whereas that
which is perfect is."--Aristotle, 'Metaphysics,' xi. 7.
"It is manifest by the light of nature that there must at least be as
much reality in the efficient and entire cause as in its effect; for
whence can the effect draw its reality if not from its cause? And how
could the cause communicate to it this reality unless it possessed
it in itself? And hence it follows, not only that what is cannot be
produced by what is not, but likewise that the more perfect--in other
words, that which contains in itself more reality--cannot be the effect
of the less perfect."--Descartes, 'Meditations,' iii.
"In not a few of the progressionists the weak illusion is unmistakable,
that, with time enough, you may get everything out of next-to-nothing.
Grant us, they seem to say, any tiniest granule of power, so close upon
zero that it is not worth begrudging--allow it some trifling tendency
to infinitesimal increment--and we will show you how this little stock
became the kosmos, without ever taking a step worth thinking of, much
less constituting a case for design. The argument is a mere appeal
to an incompetency in the human imagination, in virtue of which,
magnitudes evading conception are treated as out of existence; and an
aggregate of inappreciable increments is simultaneously equated,--in
its cause to _nothing_, in its effect to _the whole of things_. You
manifestly want the same causality, whether concentrated on a moment
or distributed through incalculable ages; only, in drawing upon it,
a logical theft is more easily committed piecemeal than wholesale.
Surely it is a mean device for a philosopher thus to crib causation
by hair's-breadths, to put it out at compound interest through all
time, and then disown the debt."--Martineau, 'Essays Philosophical and
Theological,' pp. 141, 142.
"Think of it! An endless evolution, an eternal working, an infinite
causation, and yet an effect so finite. Nature has been working upward
from eternity, and has just passed the long-armed ape who begat
prognathus, as prognathus begat the troglodyte homo. What becomes of
our doctrine of progress? As sure as mathematics, it should have been
all evolved, all that we now have, over and over again--all _out_, or
far more _out_ than has come out, incalculable ages ago. An eternal
ante-past of progressive working. To what a height should it have
arisen! It should have transcended all our ideals. The most exalted
finite being should have been reached, the most exalted that our minds
can conceive, instead of this creature man, so poor, so low; for you
will bear in mind that I am speaking of him as measured by no higher
scale of value than that afforded by this physical hypothesis--man
evolved from nebular gas--man just coming out of darkness, and so soon
to return to darkness again--_e tenebris in tenebras_. This all comes
from that hideous [Greek: hysteron proteron], that inversion of all
necessary thinking. Nature first, it says--matter first, an impalpable
nebulous nihilism first, the lowest and most imperfect first; life,
thought, reason, idea, their junior products, and God, therefore, the
last product, if there be a God at all, or anything to which such a
name can possibly be given. And we are asked to adopt this, and call it
grand, whilst rejecting as narrow and soul-contracting the revelation
which makes God first, reason first, idea first, the perfect first,--as
has been said before--the imperfect and the finite ever a departure
from it, whether in the scale of order or of time, whether as exhibited
in processes of lapse and deterioration or the contrary seeming of
recovery and restoration in cyclical rounds. The two schemes have two
entirely different modes of speech. Says the mere physical hypothesis:
In the beginning was the nebula, and all things were in the nebula,
and all things were self-evolved from the nebula--even life, thought,
consciousness, idea, reason itself, having no other source. The other
speaks to us in language like this: [Greek: En archê ên ho Logos], "In
the beginning was the Word," the [Greek: Logos], the Reason, "and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being
by Him. In Him was life," [Greek: Zôê], and "from this life"--not
from motions, or molecules, or correlated forces, or the vibration of
fibres, or the arrangements of nebular atoms, but from this life of
the Logos, the eternal Reason--"came the light of men"--the mind,
reason, conscience of humanity--even "the light that lighteth" every
rational being "coming into the cosmos."--Prof. Lewis, 'The Kingdom of
God' (Dickinson's Theological Quarterly, No. 6).
NOTE XXIII., page 195.
THEOLOGICAL INFERENCES FROM THE DOCTRINE OF SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.
An eloquent preacher exclaims, "Great ought to be our compassion
for the weak brother whose faith in God would be shaken because
a chemist should succeed next year in producing vital cells out
of a hermetically-sealed vessel containing only the elements of
protoplasm."--Rev. E. A. Abbott, D.D., 'Cambridge Sermons,' p. 33. It
must be admitted, however, that many who certainly cannot be fairly
described as "weak brethren," entertain very strongly that fear of
the doctrine of spontaneous generation which Dr Abbott deprecates. I
quote, from the 'Presbyterian Quarterly' of January 1874, the words of
President Barnard of Columbia College, New York, expressing an entirely
opposite sentiment. I do so without criticism or comment, as I shall
have to consider the relation of materialistic theories of the origin
of life to theism in next volume.
"To the philosopher, the demonstration of the theory of spontaneous
generation, should it ever be demonstrated beyond all possibility of
doubt or cavil, cannot but be a matter of the deepest interest. But to
the man who finds himself compelled to receive it, this interest, it
seems to me, must be no less painful than it is deep. Nor is this the
only theory which the investigators of our time are urging upon our
attention, of which I feel compelled to make the same remark. There
are, at least, two besides which impress me with a similar feeling;
and the three together constitute a group which, though to a certain
extent independent of each other, are likely in the end to stand or
fall together. These are, the doctrine of spontaneous generation, the
doctrine of organic evolution, and the doctrine of the correlation of
mental and physical forces. If these doctrines are true, the existence
of an intelligence separate from organised matter is impossible, and
the death of the human body is the death of the human soul. If these
doctrines are true, the world becomes an enigma, no less to the theist
than it has always been to the atheist. We are told, indeed, that the
acceptance of these views need not shake our faith in the existence of
an almighty Creator. It is beautifully explained to us how they ought
to give us more elevated and more worthy conceptions of the modes by
which He works His will in the visible creation. We learn that our
complex organisms are none the less the work of His hands because they
have been evolved by an infinite series of changes from microscopic
gemmules, and that these gemmules themselves have taken on their forms
under the influence of the physical forces of light and heat and
attraction acting on brute mineral matter. Rather, it should seem, we
are a good deal more so. This kind of teaching is heard in our day even
from the theologians. Those sentinels on the watch-towers of the faith,
whose wont it has been for so many centuries to stand sturdily up in
opposition to the science which was not, in any proper sense, at war
with them, now, by a sudden and almost miraculous conversion, accept
with cheerful countenances, and become in their turn the expounders
and champions of the science which is. But while they find the mystery
of the original creation thus satisfactorily cleared up in their minds,
they seem to have taken very little thought as to what is going to
come of the rest of their theology. It is, indeed, a grand conception
which regards the Deity as conducting the work of His creation by
means of those all-pervading influences which we call the forces of
nature; but it leaves us profoundly at a loss to explain the wisdom
or the benevolence which brings every day into life such myriads of
sentient and intelligent beings only that they may perish on the morrow
of their birth. But this is not all. If these doctrines are true, all
talk of creation or methods of creation becomes absurdity; for just as
certainly as they are true, God Himself is impossible. If intelligence
presupposes a material organism, of which it is a mode of action, then
God must be a material organism or there is no God. But it is the law
of all living organisms that they grow, mature, and perish; and since
God cannot perish, He cannot be an organism."
NOTE XXIV., page 208.
DARWIN AND PALEY.
To the two treatises of Mr Darwin mentioned in the lecture, there
must now be added another equally rich in fact suggesting theological
inferences--'The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the same
Species.'
A multitude of books have been written on Darwinism and Teleology.
Most of those published between 1859 and 1875 will be found named in
the list of works on Darwinism appended to Seidlitz's 'Darwin'sche
Theorie.' There are two good popular accounts of the controversy: 'What
is Darwinism?' by Dr Charles Hodge of Princetown, and 'Die Darwin'schen
Theorien' of Rudolf Schmid.
As to Paley, it gives one pleasure to quote the following passage
from Sir William Thomson's address to the British Association in
1871; because the foolish writing which is so frequently met with in
books and journals about "the mechanical God of Paley," about Paley
representing Deity as "outside of the universe," or as "a God who makes
the world after the manner that a watchman manufactures a watch," &c.,
can only be explained by utter ignorance of Paley's views: "I feel
profoundly convinced that the argument of design has been greatly too
much lost sight of in recent zoological speculations. Reaction against
the frivolities of teleology, such as are to be found, not rarely, in
the notes of the learned commentators on Paley's 'Natural Theology,'
has, I believe, had a temporary effect of turning attention from the
solid irrefragable argument so well put forward in that excellent old
book. But overpowering proof of intelligence and benevolent design
lies all around us; and if ever perplexities, whether metaphysical or
scientific, turn us away from them for a time, they come back upon us
with irresistible force, showing to us through nature the influence of
a free will, and teaching us that all living beings depend upon one
ever-acting Creator and Ruler."
NOTE XXV., page 214.
KANT'S MORAL ARGUMENT.
The unsatisfactoriness of the position that conscience can supply the
place of reason, and can do without its help, in the search after God,
is clearly seen in the case of the thinker who undertook with most
deliberation to maintain that position. When Kant said,--Although all
other arguments for the existence of God are delusive, still conscience
gives us a feeling of responsibility and a sense of freedom which
compel us to believe in One through whom virtue and fortune, duty and
inclination, will be reconciled, and in whom the will will be free to
do all that it ought,--he saw that he would be met with the retort and
reproach that the same process by which he pretended to have demolished
the other arguments was just as applicable to this new one; that the
ideas of freedom and responsibility might be as delusive when supposed
to assure us of reality, as those of causation and design; that if the
latter were mere forms of human thought, the former might be held to be
so likewise with equal reason, and to be equally incapable of affording
a warrant to belief in God Himself; and consequently, that the final
religious result of his philosophy was, not that there is a God, but
that there is an idea of God, which, although we cannot get rid of it,
is full of contradictions, and wholly incapable of justification or
verification. He saw all this as clearly as man could do, and it is
marvellous that so many authors should have written as if he had not
seen it; but certainly he might as well not have seen it, for all that
he was able to do in the way of repelling the objection. His reply
amounted merely to reaffirming that we are under the necessity of
associating the idea of a Supreme Being with the moral law, and then
qualifying the statement by the admission that we can know, however,
nothing about that Being; that as soon as we try to know anything about
Him we make a speculative, not a practical, use of reason, and fall
back into the realm of sophistry and illusion from which the Critical
Philosophy was designed to deliver us. In other words, what he tells
us is, that the argument is good, but only on the conditions that
it is not to be subjected to rational scrutiny, and that no attempt
is to be made to determine what its conclusion signifies. It seems
to me that, on these conditions, he might have found any argument
good. Such conditions are inconsistent with the whole spirit and very
existence of a critical philosophy. And it is not really God that Kant
reaches by his argument: it is a mere moral ideal--a dead, empty,
abstract assumption, which is regarded as practically useful, although
rationally baseless--a necessary presupposition of moral action, but
one which tells us nothing about the nature of its object. Fichte was
only consistent when he refused to speak of that object as a Will or
Person, and affirmed that God exists only as the Moral Order of the
universe, and that we can neither know nor conceive of any other God.
He was also, only following out the principles of his master when he
represented that order as the creation of the individual mind, the form
of the individual conscience, a mode of mental action.
Kant has expounded his argument, and discussed its bearings fully and
minutely, in his 'Kritik der Urtheilskraft,' sec. 86-90, and 'Kritik
der Praktischen Vernunft, Zweites Buch, Zweites Hauptstück,' v.-viii.
M. Renouvier, in an article entitled "De la Contradiction reprochée à
la doctrine de Kant" (La Critique Philosophique, 3^{ieme.} Année, No.
29), has exposed some errors on the subject which are common in France,
and equally common in England.
NOTE XXVI., page 217.
DR SCHENKEL'S VIEW OF CONSCIENCE AS THE ORGAN OF RELIGION.
Dr Schenkel has fully set forth his reasons for holding that
conscience is the religious organ of the soul, in the ninth chapter
of the first volume of his 'Christliche Dogmatik.' He endeavours to
meet the objection urged in the text by representing what is truly
the primary and distinctive function of conscience as a secondary
and derivative function. Its primary activity is, according to him,
religious; it unites with God--it is conscious communion with Him. Its
ethical activity is only elicited when this communion is disturbed and
broken; its source is the religious want occasioned by the rupture of
communion. That is felt to be a something abnormal and unsatisfactory,
and awakens a desire after the restoration of the lost communion
with God. The conscience is cognisant of a moral law only when, its
communion with God being disturbed, it seeks its re-establishment Dr
Schenkel thus, as he thinks, accounts for conscience having an ethical
function as well as a religious function. But clearly the result at
which he arrives is in direct contradiction to the position from which
he starts. The affirmation of conscience as religious is represented
as being that man is in direct communion with God; and the affirmation
of conscience as ethical is represented as being that man is not in
direct communion with God, but desires to be so. These are, however,
contrary declarations; and to describe conscience in the way Schenkel
does, as "a synthesis of the ethical and religious factor," is to
represent it as a synthesis of self-contradictory elements--a compound
of yes and no. We cannot be conscious both of communion with God and of
non-communion with Him. And, on Dr Schenkel's own showing, the evidence
for immediate communion with Him is but small. The consciousness
of moral law he affirms to be consciousness of the want or need of
communion with God, not the consciousness of enjoying it. But is
conscience ever independent of the consciousness of moral law? If not,
it can never, according to the hypothesis, be a consciousness of God.
If it be independent thereof, the fact would require to be better
proved than by the misinterpretation of a few texts of Scripture.
Solidly proved it never, I believe, can be. A conscience not conscious
of a moral law is simply no conscience at all.
NOTE XXVII., page 221.
CHALMERS AND ERSKINE ON THE ARGUMENT FROM CONSCIENCE.
The moral argument was, as was to be expected, a very favourite one
with Dr Chalmers, and his way of stating it was as remarkable for
its simplicity and directness as for its eloquence. "Had God," he
asks, "been an unrighteous Being Himself, would He have given to
the obviously superior faculty in man so distinct and authoritative
a voice on the side of righteousness? Would He have so constructed
the creatures of our species as to have planted in every breast a
reclaiming witness against Himself? Would He have thus inscribed on
the tablet of every heart the sentence of His own condemnation; and
is this not just as likely, as that He should have inscribed it in
written characters on the forehead of each individual? Would He so have
fashioned the workmanship of His own hands; or, if a God of cruelty,
injustice, and falsehood, would He have placed in the station of master
and judge that faculty which, felt to be the highest in our nature,
would prompt a generous and high-minded revolt of all our sentiments
against the Being who formed us? From a God possessed of such
characteristics, we should surely have expected a differently-moulded
humanity; or, in other words, from the actual constitution of man,
from the testimonies on the side of all righteousness, given by the
vicegerent within the heart, do we infer the righteousness of the
Sovereign who placed it there."--Natural Theology, vol. i. pp. 323,
324. This argument of Dr Chalmers, like all other arguments from
conscience, implies the soundness of the reasoning by which God has
been attempted to be shown to be the intelligent cause or author of the
universe; and, on that perfectly legitimate presupposition, it seems
to me as irresistible as it is simple. An intelligent but unrighteous
God would never have made a creature better than himself and endowed
with admiration of what is most opposite to himself, the reverse and
counterpart of his own character.
The argument as stated by the late Mr Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, is
no less simple and direct: "When I attentively consider what is going
on in my conscience, the chief thing forced on my notice is, that I
find myself face to face with a purpose--not my own, for I am often
conscious of resisting it--but which dominates me and makes itself
felt as ever present, as the very root and reason of my being....
This consciousness of a purpose concerning me that I should be a good
man--right, true, and unselfish--is the first firm footing I have in
the region of religious thought: for I cannot dissociate the idea of
a purpose from that of a Purposer, and I cannot but identify this
Purposer with the Author of my being and the Being of all beings; and
further, I cannot but regard His purpose towards me as the unmistakable
indication of His own character."--'The Spiritual Order, and other
Papers,' pp. 47, 48.
NOTE XXVIII., page 225.
ASSOCIATIONIST THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIENCE.
I have indicated to some extent my reasons for regarding this theory as
unsatisfactory in an article entitled "Associationism and the Origin
of Moral Ideas," in 'Mind,' No. III. (July 1876). In the treatise of
M. Carrau, 'La Morale Utilitaire,' the various forms of the theory are
examined with fairness and penetration.
NOTE XXIX., page 229.
CHALMERS AND BAIN ON THE PLEASURE OF MALEVOLENCE.
Dr Chalmers devotes a chapter of his 'Natural Theology' to the
illustration of "the inherent pleasure of the virtuous, and misery of
the vicious affections." I do not think the psychological doctrine
of that chapter unexceptionable; but, at the same time, I cannot
understand on what ground Prof. Bain imagines that it "implies
doubts as to the genuineness of the pleasures of malevolence," and
virtually denies that "the feeling of gratified vengeance is a real
and indisputable pleasure."--See Emotions and the Will, pp. 187-189.
The very passage which Prof. Bain quotes is quite inconsistent with
this view. It is as follows: "The most ordinary observer of his own
feelings, however incapable of analysis, must be sensible, even at the
moment of wreaking the full indulgence of his resentment on the man who
has provoked or injured him, that all is not perfect within; but that
in this, and indeed in every other malignant feeling, there is a sore
burden of disquietude, an unhappiness tumultuating in the heart, and
visibly pictured in the countenance. The ferocious tyrant who has only
to issue forth his mandate, and strike dead at pleasure the victim of
his wrath, with any circumstance too of barbaric caprice and cruelty
which his fancy, in the very waywardness of passion unrestrained and
power unbounded, might suggest to him--he may be said through life
to have experienced a thousand gratifications, in the solaced rage
and revenge which, though ever breaking forth on some new subject, he
can appease again every day of his life by some new execution. But we
mistake it if we think otherwise than that, in spite of these distinct
and very numerous, nay, daily gratifications, if he so choose, it is
not a life of fierce internal agony notwithstanding."
The sentence which precedes these words leaves no doubt that Prof.
Bain's interpretation of them is incorrect. "True, it is inseparable
from the very nature of a desire, that there must be some enjoyment or
other at the time of its gratification; but, in the case of these evil
affections, it is not unmixed enjoyment." The following passage is,
however, still more explicit: "There is a certain species of enjoyment
common to all our affections. It were a contradiction in terms to
affirm otherwise; for it were tantamount to saying, that an affection
may be gratified without the actual experience of a gratification.
There must be some sensation or other of happiness at the time when a
man attains that which he is seeking for; and if it be not a positive
sensation of pleasure, it will at least be the sensation of a relief
from pain, as when one meets with the opportunity of wreaking upon its
object that indignation which had long kept his heart in a tumult of
disquietude. We therefore would mistake the matter if we thought that a
state even of thorough and unqualified wickedness was exclusive of all
enjoyment, for even the vicious affections must share in that enjoyment
which inseparably attaches to every affection at the moment of its
indulgence. And thus it is that even in the veriest Pandemonium might
there be lurid gleams of ecstasy and shouts of fiendish exultation--the
merriment of desperadoes in crime, who send forth the outcries of their
spiteful and savage delight when some deep-laid villany has triumphed,
or when, in some dire perpetration of revenge, they have given full
satisfaction and discharge to the malignity of their accursed nature.
The assertion, therefore, may be taken too generally, when it is stated
that there is no enjoyment whatever in the veriest hell of assembled
outcasts; for even there, might there be many separate and specific
gratifications. And we must abstract the pleasure essentially involved
in every affection at the instant of its indulgence, and which cannot
possibly be disjoined from it, ere we see clearly and distinctively
wherein it is that, in respect of enjoyment, the virtuous and vicious
affections differ from each other. For it is true that there is a
common resemblance between them; and that, by the universal law and
nature of affection, there must be some sort of agreeable sensation
in the act of their obtaining that which they are seeking after. Yet
it is no less true that, did the former affections bear supreme rule
in the heart, they would brighten and tranquillise the whole of human
existence; whereas, had the latter the entire and practical ascendancy,
they would distemper the whole man, and make him as completely wretched
as he was completely worthless." Dr Chalmers, then, did not call in
question the pleasures of malevolence.
NOTE XXX., page 232.
HISTORY OF THE MORAL PROOF.
Conscience has from the earliest times and among the rudest peoples
exercised great influence in the formation of religious belief. Moral
reasons weighed with men in their origination and elaboration of
religion long before they expressed them in abstract propositions and
logical forms. The historical proof of this truth is so ample that it
would require a volume to do it justice: all literatures might be made
to yield contributions to it.
The simplest form of the moral argument, and the one which has been
most generally employed, is that of an inference from the moral law to
a moral lawgiver. Closely associated with it are those forms which rest
on the emotions involved in or accompanying virtue and guilt. These
are the directest modes of exhibiting what Chalmers calls "the theology
of conscience, which is not only of wider diffusion but of far more
practical influence than the theology of academic demonstration."
Raymond of Sebonde, in a work which I have previously had occasion to
mention, was perhaps the first to present it in a more artificial form.
He argues thus: Man is a responsible being who can neither reward nor
punish himself, and who must consequently be under a superior being
who will reward and punish him, unless his life is to be regarded as
vain and purposeless--unless even the whole of external nature, which
is subject to man and exists for his sake, is to be pronounced aimless
and useless. External nature, however, is seen to be throughout orderly
and harmonious; how can we suppose the moral world to be disorderly
and chaotic? As the eye corresponds to things visible, the ear to
things audible, the reason to things intelligible, so conscience must
correspond to a judgment which implies some one to pronounce it, and to
a retribution which implies some one to inflict it. But this some one
must be absolutely just; he must be omniscient, as possessing a perfect
knowledge of all human actions, and a thorough insight into their moral
character; omnipotent, to execute his judgments; and, in a word, must
be the most perfect of all beings--_i.e._, God.
Kant's argument is thus summarised by the Archbishop of York: "The
highest good of man consists of two parts, the greatest possible
morality and happiness. The former is the demand of his spiritual, the
latter of his animal nature. The former only, his morality, is within
his own power; and while, by persevering virtue, he makes this his
personal character, he is often compelled to sacrifice his happiness.
But since the desire of happiness is neither irrational nor unnatural,
he justly concludes either that there is a Supreme Being who will so
guide the course of things (the natural world, not of itself subject to
moral laws) as to render his holiness and happiness equal, or that the
dictates of his conscience are unjust and irrational. But the latter
supposition is morally impossible; and he is compelled, therefore, to
receive the former as true."
Akin to this argument are those which are based on man's desire of
good. Proclus, in his 'Theology of Plato,' argues to the following
effect: All beings desire the good; but this good cannot be identical
with the beings which desire it, for then these beings would be
themselves the good, and would not desire what they already possessed.
The good is antecedent, therefore, to all the beings who desire it.
Since the time of Proclus to the present many have argued that there
must be a God because the heart demands one to satisfy its desire
of love, or holiness, or happiness; few, perhaps, have done so with
more ingenuity of logic or fervour of belief than John Norris in
"Contemplation and Love, or the Methodical Ascent of the Soul to God
by steps of Meditation," and in "An Idea of Happiness" ('Collection of
Miscellanies').
A contemporary theologian, Principal Pirie of Aberdeen, has laid great
stress on an argument which we may assign to this class. "No argument,"
he says, "can be valid which founds on innate ideas, or which embraces
considerations so entirely beyond the range of human apprehension that
we cannot positively be assured whether they be true or false. Yet
we have no hesitation in saying that there is an argument _a priori_
for the existence and attributes of a God, which is involved in
the very nature of our feelings, and which therefore tells upon the
faith of the whole human race, even when they are altogether ignorant
of it logically, as existing in the form of a proposition. It makes
no appeal, however, to profound metaphysical speculations, and is
consequently plain and intelligible to any one capable of exercising
reason at all. It rests on the principle which both our feelings
and our experience demonstrate to be true, that every primary and
essential desire of the human mind has a co-relative--or, in other
words, a something to gratify it--existing in the nature of things.
The mode in which the development of this principle constitutes an
argument _a priori_ for the existence and attributes of a God we now
proceed to explain. Every human being feels from the moment in which
he comes into existence, and through his whole subsequent history,
that he is in himself a weak, helpless creature. As we have said, this
feeling begins from the very beginning of our conscious existence.
The appeals of the infant for aid are made continually.... As we
advance to childhood, youth, and manhood, our sense of power gradually
increases. We are conscious that under certain circumstances we can do
something for ourselves. Yet this capability, we are also conscious
in its very exercise, does not depend on us for its continuance. We
cannot preserve to ourselves fortune, health, or even life, for _a
single moment_. Yet all these things we desire, and desire with the
utmost earnestness, and desire as a primary tendency of our minds. We
may not indeed always clothe such desire in words--we may not put it
into the form of a proposition; but that it exists in every mind as a
feeling, and practically operates upon every individual, is as certain
as our existence itself, and is indeed manifest every moment in the
efforts which we make to preserve these and all other forms of what we
believe to involve happiness. In this desire, consequently, we have the
voice of nature speaking, and commanding us to use such efforts. Of
ourselves we know that they would be insufficient. The results depend
upon causes over which we have no control. Our own efforts, we are
conscious, are only means which nature has appointed us to employ, but
their success depends on circumstances altogether beyond our power. It
is, as has been said, the voice of nature telling us that each of our
desires has a co-relative, through which it may be fully gratified by
the use of the proper means. This co-relative, in the case of intense
and permanent happiness, can only be found in the existence of a God,
omnipotent, omniscient, true, just, benevolent, and eternal, _in whom
we repose entire confidence_. No other assumption could by possibility
satisfy our desire for the highest and permanent happiness now and for
ever. For to realise thoroughly the argument, it is to be observed
that our desire is for the highest and permanent happiness. It is not
imperfect or temporary happiness merely which we desire, though we may
be compelled to be content with this, if we cannot procure more. It
is the highest happiness possible for our natures, and that without
end. Now, if such happiness is to be attained at all, it can only
be obtained through a God possessed of the attributes which we have
enumerated."--Natural Theology, pp. 71-74.
Prof. Wace, in the second course of his Boyle Lectures--Christianity
and Morality (1876)--has exhibited, with considerable detail, and in
an ingenious and eloquent manner, the testimony which conscience bears
to a personal God, a moral Creator, and a moral Governor. A glimpse
of his general idea may be obtained from the following words: "In our
endeavour to trace in the conscience, and in the personal experience
of individuals, the roots of our faith in a God of infinite power,
wisdom, and goodness, we have now advanced two considerable steps
beyond our first and simplest sense of right and wrong. We have seen
that this sense, when allowed to speak with its full imperative and
personal force, arouses in us, as it aroused in the Psalmist, a sense
of our being in contact with a personal and righteous Will. This
conviction necessarily involves, as it involved in the writer of the
139th Psalm, the further belief that an authority which has this claim
upon our obedience in every particular of our conduct, in all our
thoughts and acts, must at the same time be the author and source of
our whole constitution; that the righteous eyes which now penetrate,
whether through darkness or through light, to the very depths of our
souls, must also have seen our 'substance, yet being imperfect,' and
that in their book must all our members have been written. If it be
the imperative and paramount law of our nature to obey our conscience,
and to make moral perfection, or spiritual excellence, our ultimate
aim, we cannot but conclude that our whole nature, and the whole order
of things in which we are placed, is in the hands of a moral power;
and that, as we are fearfully and wonderfully made for righteous and
reasonable ends, it must be by a righteous and reasonable Will that we
are made. The conscience of man must never be omitted from our view of
the design of man; and it is only when we contemplate the adjustment of
his whole nature to the purposes of the loftiest moral development,
that the argument from design acquires its full strength.... The
apprehension of a Power which establishes righteousness as the law of
life, involves also the conviction that it is able to enforce that
law, and to render it finally and everywhere supreme. The conviction,
indeed, is one of faith and not of demonstration; and the Scriptures,
no less than life, are full of instances in which this faith is
tried by the bitterest experience. Even prophets, as I have before
observed, are at times driven to the cry that 'the law is slacked,
and that judgment doth never go forth.' But the deepest instincts and
necessities of conscience forbid the toleration of any such instinct of
despair. If right were not essentially and ultimately might, I do not
say--God forbid--that it would not still claim the supreme allegiance
of the soul; but life would be a bitter mockery and an inexplicable
cruelty. Not merely to be under an imperative law to pursue that
which cannot be realised, but to be bound to such a fruitless pursuit
by every noble and lovely influence--to be condemned in moral and
spiritual realities to the torments of a Tantalus--this is a conception
of human life against which the whole soul rebels. Accordingly, a God
of all righteousness must of necessity be regarded as a God of all
power.... That 'categorical imperative' of the conscience, on which the
German philosopher insisted, is imperative in demanding not only a God,
but an Almighty God."
NOTE XXXI., page 235.
DEFECTS IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD.
Lucretius (ii. 177-v. 196) has dwelt on the arrangements which render
one zone of the earth torrid and others frigid--on the extent of barren
heaths and rocks, of sands and seas--on the prevalence of unseasonable
weather, storms, and tempests--and on the abundance of noxious herbs
and destructive animals, &c.--as evidences that the earth was faulty
and ill made, and could not be the work of a Divine Intelligence.
Whether it was well or ill made appears to have been a favourite
subject of dispute between the Epicureans and Stoics. Lactantius (De
Ira Dei, c. xiii.) reports, and attempts to answer, the objections
which the Epicureans and Academics were accustomed to urge against
the constitution of the physical world. In Cudworth's 'Intellectual
System,' vol. iii., pp. 464-8, Bentley's 'Folly of Atheism,' pt.
i., Serm. 8; Derham's 'Astro-Theology,' book vii., c. 2, &c., such
objections are discussed. In the remarks which I made on the subject in
the lecture, I have had chiefly in view the opinions of Comte, J. S.
Mill, and J. J. Murphy (Scientific Bases of Faith, c. xvi.)
Mr Mill's charges against nature are very vigorously and graphically
expressed. "Next to the greatness of these cosmic forces, the quality
which most forcibly strikes every one who does not avert his eyes
from it, is their perfect and absolute recklessness. They go straight
to their end, without regarding what or whom they crush on the road.
Optimists, in their attempts to prove that 'whatever is, is right,'
are obliged to maintain, not that Nature ever turns one step from
her path to avoid trampling us into destruction, but that it would
be very unreasonable in us to expect that she should. Pope's 'Shall
gravitation cease when you go by?' may be a just rebuke to any one who
should be so silly as to expect common human morality from Nature. But
if the question were between two men, instead of between a man and
a natural phenomenon, that triumphant apostrophe would be thought a
rare piece of impudence. A man who should persist in hurling stones
or firing cannon when another man 'goes by,' and, having killed him,
should urge a similar plea in exculpation, would very deservedly be
found guilty of murder. In sober truth, nearly all the things which
men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another, are Nature's
everyday performances. Killing, the most criminal act recognised by
human laws, Nature does once to every being that lives, and in a
large proportion of cases after protracted tortures, such as only
the greatest monsters whom we read of ever purposely inflicted on
their living fellow-creatures. If, by an arbitrary reservation, we
refuse to account anything murder but what abridges to a certain term
supposed to be allotted to human life, Nature also does this to all
but a small percentage of lives, and does it in all the modes, violent
or insidious, in which the worst human beings take the lives of one
another. Nature impales men, breaks them as if on the wheel, casts
them to be devoured by wild beasts, burns them to death, crushes them
with stones like the first Christian martyr, starves them with hunger,
freezes them with cold, poisons them by the quick or slow venom of her
exhalations, and has hundreds of other hideous deaths in reserve, such
as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed.
All this Nature does with the most supercilious disregard both of
mercy and of justice, emptying her shafts upon the best and noblest
indifferently with the meanest and worst--upon those who are engaged
in the highest and worthiest enterprises, and often as the direct
consequence of the noblest acts,--and it might almost be imagined as
a punishment for them. She mows down those on whose existence hangs
the wellbeing of a whole people, perhaps the prospects of the human
race for generations to come, with as little compunction as those
whose death is a relief to themselves, or a blessing to those under
their noxious influence. Such are Nature's dealings with life. Even
when she does not intend to kill, she inflicts the same tortures in
apparent wantonness. In the clumsy provision which she has made for
that perpetual renewal of animal life, rendered necessary by the
prompt termination she puts to it in every individual case, no human
being ever comes into the world but another human being is literally
stretched on the rack for hours or days, not unfrequently issuing in
death. Next to taking life (equal to it, according to a high authority)
is taking the means by which we live; and Nature does this, too, on
the largest scale and with the most callous indifference. A single
hurricane destroys the hopes of a season; a flight of locusts, or an
inundation, desolates a district; a trifling chemical change in an
edible root starves a million of people. The waves of the sea, like
banditti, seize and appropriate the wealth of the rich and the little
all of the poor with the same accompaniments of stripping, wounding,
and killing, as their human antitypes. Everything, in short, which the
worst men commit either against life or property, is perpetrated on a
larger scale by natural agents. Nature has _noyades_ more fatal than
those of Carrier; her explosions of fire-damp are as destructive as
human artillery; her plague and cholera far surpass the poison-cups
of the Borgias. Even the love of 'order,' which is thought to be a
following of the ways of Nature, is, in fact, a contradiction of them.
All which people are accustomed to deprecate as 'disorder' and its
consequences, is precisely a counterpart of Nature's ways. Anarchy and
the Reign of Terror are overmatched in injustice, ruin, and death, by a
hurricane and a pestilence."--Three Essays, pp. 28-31.
The opinion that the world would be either physically or morally
improved were gravitation to cease when men went by, were fire not
always to burn and were water occasionally to refuse to drown, were
laws few and miracles numerous, may safely be left to refute itself.
Therefore, let me simply set over against Mr Mill's censure of Nature
Wordsworth's praise:--
"Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy; for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore, let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure, when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me
And these my exhortations!"
NOTE XXXII., page 241.
NO BEST POSSIBLE CREATED SYSTEM.
Dante has given magnificent expression to the truth that no created
system can be absolutely perfect:--
"Colui che volse il sesto
Allo stremo del mondo, e dentro ad esso
Distinse tanto occulto e manifesto,
Non poteo suo valor si fare impresso
In tutto l'universo, che il suo verbo
Non rimanesse in infinito eccesso.
E ciò fa certo, che il primo Superbo,
Che fu la somma d'ogni creatura,
Per non aspettar lume, cadde acerbo:
E quinci appar ch' ogni minor natura
È corto recettacolo a quel bene
Che non ha fine, e se in se misura.
Dunque nostra veduta, che conviene
Essere alcun de' raggi della mente
Di che tutte le cose son ripiene,
Non può di sua natura esser possente
Tanto, che suo principio non discerna
Molto di là, da quel ch' egli è, parvente.
Però nella giustizia sempiterna
La vista che riceve il vostro mondo,
Com' occhio per lo mare, entro s' interna;
Che, benchè dalla proda veggia il fondo,
In pelago nol vede; e nondimeno
Egli è; ma cela lui l'esser profondo."
--_Del Paradiso_, cant. xix. 40-63.
"He his compasses who placed
At the world's limit, and within the line
Drew beauties, dimly or distinctly traced--
Could not upon the universe so write
The impress of his power, but that His Word
Must still be left in distance infinite:
And hence 'tis evident that he in heaven
Created loftiest his fate incurred
Because he would not wait till light was given.
And hence are all inferior creatures shown
Scant vessels of that Goodness unconfined
Which nought can measure save Itself alone.
Therefore our intellect--a feeble beam,
Struck from the light of the Eternal Mind,
With which all things throughout creation teem,--
Must by its nature be incapable,
Save in a low and most remote degree,
Of viewing its exalted principle.
Wherefore the heavenly Justice can no more
By mortal ken be fathomed than the sea:
For though the eye of one upon the shore
May pierce its shallows, waves unfathomed bound
His further sight, yet under them is laid
A bottom, viewless through the deep profound."
--WRIGHT.
NOTE XXXIII., page 245.
DEFECTS IN THE ORGANIC WORLD.
The objections to final causes from alleged defects in the organic
world have been answered with wisdom and success by M. Janet, in his
'Causes Finales,' pp. 313-348.
The views of Professor Helmholtz as to the defects of the eye will be
found stated at length in his popular lectures on scientific subjects.
The chief defects enumerated are: 1. Chromatic aberration, connected
with 2. Spherical aberration and defective centring of the cornea
and lens, together producing the imperfection known as astigmatism;
3. Irregular radiation round the images of illuminated points; 4.
Defective transparency; 5. Floating corpuscles, and 6. The "blind spot"
with other gaps in the field of vision. "The eye has every possible
defect that can be found in an optical instrument, and even some
which are peculiar to itself." "It is not too much to say that if an
optician wanted to sell me an instrument which had all these defects, I
should think myself quite justified in blaming his carelessness in the
strongest terms, and giving him back his instrument. Of course I shall
not do this with my eyes, and shall be only too glad to keep them as
long as I can--defects and all. Still, the fact that, however bad they
may be, I can get no others, does not at all diminish their defects, so
long as I maintain the narrow but indisputable position of a critic on
purely optical grounds."
Helmholtz himself, however, points out that the defects of the eye are
"all so counteracted, that the inexactness of the image which results
from their presence very little exceeds, under ordinary conditions of
illumination, the limits which are set to the delicacy of sensation
by the dimensions of the retinal cones;" that "the adaptation of the
eye to its function is most complete, and is seen in the very limits
which are set to its defects." In fact, were the eye more perfect
as an instrument of optical precision, it would be less perfect as
an eye. Its absolute defects are practical merits. To be a useful
eye it must be neither a perfect telescope nor a perfect microscope,
but a something which can readily serve many purposes, and which can
be supplemented by many instruments. The delicate finish of a razor
renders it unfit for cutting wood. All man's senses and organs are
inferior to those possessed by some of the lower animals, but the
inferiority is of a kind which is a real and vast advantage. It is of
a kind which allows them to be put to a greater variety of uses than
could more perfect senses and organs. It is the very condition of
their capacity to be utilised in manifold directions by an inventive
and progressive reason. Further, no man can see at all merely with a
so-called perfect optical instrument. He must have in addition the
imperfect instrument, composed of a soft, watery, animal substance,
and designated the eye. There is that in the eye which immeasurably
transcends all mere physics and chemistry, all human mechanism and
contrivance; there is life; there is vision.
NOTE XXXIV., page 252.
EPICUREAN DILEMMA.
The Epicurean dilemma has been often dealt with. I shall content
myself with quoting Mr Bowen's remarks on the subject: "_Omnipotence
and benevolence_ are apparently very simple and very comprehensive
terms, though few are more vaguely used. The former means a power
to do everything; but this does not include the ability to do two
contradictory things at the same moment, or to accomplish any
metaphysical impossibility. Thus, the Deity cannot cause two and two to
make five, nor place two hills near each other without leaving a valley
between them. The impossibility in such cases does not argue a defect
of power, but an absurdity in the statement of the case to which the
power is to be applied. A statement which involves a contradiction
in terms does not express a limitation of ability, because in truth
it expresses nothing at all; the affirmation and the denial, uttered
in the same breath, cancel each other, and no meaning remains. All
metaphysical impossibilities can be reduced to the formula, that it is
impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same moment,
as this would be an absurdity--that is, an absurd or meaningless
statement. Thus, virtue cannot exist without free agency, because a
free choice between good and evil is involved in the idea of _virtue_,
so that the proposition means no more than this--that what contains
freedom cannot be without freedom. We cannot choose between good and
evil, unless good and evil are both placed before us--that is, unless
we know what these words mean; and we cannot express our choice in
action, unless we are able to act--that is, unless we have the power
of doing either good or evil. In the dilemma quoted from Epicurus,
a contradiction in terms is held to prove a defect of power, or to
disprove omnipotence; the dilemma, therefore, is a mere logical puzzle,
like the celebrated one of Achilles and the tortoise.
"The meaning of _benevolence_ appears simple enough; but it is often
difficult to tell whether a certain act was or was not prompted by kind
intentions. Strictly speaking, of course, benevolence is a quality
of mind--that is, of will (bene _volo_) or intention, not of outward
conduct. An _action_ is said to be benevolent only by metaphor; it is
so called, because we infer from it, with great positiveness, that the
agent must have had benevolent intentions. We think that the motives
are indicated by the act; but we may be mistaken. He who gives food
to the hungry poor would be esteemed benevolent; but he may do it with
a view to poison them. To strike for the avowed purpose of causing
pain usually argues ill-will or a malignant design; but the blow may
come from the kindest heart in the world, for the express purpose of
benefiting him who receives it. In the present argument, Epicurus
assumes that the presence of evil--that is, the outward fact--is enough
to prove a want of benevolence, or even a malignant design, on the part
of him who might have prevented it. But if by evil is here meant mere
pain or suffering, whether proceeding from bodily or mental causes, we
may boldly deny the inference. If pleasure or mere enjoyment is not the
greatest good, if sometimes it is even inconsistent with the possession
of a higher blessing, then a denial of it may be a proof of goodness
instead of malice."--Metaphysical and Ethical Science, pp. 362, 363.
NOTE XXXV., page 263.
GOD AND DUTY.
"To such readers as have reflected on man's life; who understand that
for man's wellbeing Faith is properly the one thing needful; how with
it martyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame and the
cross--and without, worldlings puke up their sick existence by suicide
in the midst of luxury: to such it will be clear that for a pure moral
nature the loss of religious belief is the loss of everything.
"All wounds, the crush of long-continued destitution, the stab of false
friendship and of false love, all wounds in thy so genial heart, would
have healed again had not its life-warmth been withdrawn.
"Well mayest thou exclaim, 'Is there no God, then; but at best an
absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, at the
outside of His universe and _seeing_ it go?' 'Has the word Duty no
meaning? is what we call Duty no Divine messenger and guide, but a
false earthly phantasm made up of desire and fear?' 'Is the heroic
inspiration we name Virtue but some passion; some bubble of the blood,
bubbling in the direction others profit by?' I know not; only this I
know, if what thou namest Happiness be our true aim, then are we all
astray. 'Behold, thou art fatherless, outcast, and the universe is--the
Devil's.'"--Carlyle.
NOTE XXXVI., page 268.
HISTORIES OF THE THEISTIC PROOFS.
There are several histories of the proofs for the Divine existence.
One of the earliest is Ziegler's 'Beiträge zur Geschichte des Glaubens
an das Dasein Gottes' (1792). The best known, and perhaps the most
interesting, is Bouchitté's 'Histoire des Preuves de l'Existence de
Dieu' (Mémoires de l'Académie, Savants Étrangers, i.), written from
the Krausean point of view. The 'Geschichte der Beweise für das Dasein
Gottes bis zum 14 Jahrhundert' (1875), by Alfred Tyszka, and the
'Geschichte der Beweise für das Dasein Gottes von Cartesius bis Kant'
(1876), by Albert Krebs, supplement each other. There are two very able
articles--partly historical, but chiefly critical--on these proofs by
Professor Köstlin in the 'Theol. Studien und Kritiken,' H. 4, 1875,
and H. 1, 1876. The most conscientious, useful, and learned history
of speculation regarding Deity is, so far as is known to me, the
four-volumed work of Signor Bobba, 'Storia della Filosofia intorno all'
Idea di Dio.'
On the history of the _a priori_ proofs there may be consulted the
treatise of Fischer, 'Der ontologische Beweis f. d. Dasein Gottes u.
s. Geschichte,' 1852, and an article of Seydel, "Der gesch. Eintritt
ontologischer Beweisführing," &c. (Tr. f. Ph. H. i. 1858). In Hase's
'Life of Anselm' (of which there is an English translation) there is
a good account of Anselm's argument. There is also a translation of
the 'Proslogion,' with Gaunilo's objections and Anselm's reply, in the
'Bibliotheca Sacra,' 1851. On the Cartesian proofs there is a special
work by Huber, 'Die cartes. Beweise v. Dasein Gottes' (1854).
Hegel's 'Vorlesungen über d. Beweise f. d. Dasein Gottes' are of great
interest and value in various respects; but his view of the historical
succession of the proofs does not appear to me to be tenable.
NOTE XXXVII., page 269.
_A PRIORI_ PROOF NOT PROOF FROM A CAUSE.
The philosophers and theologians who have supposed A PRIORI proof
to be proof from a cause or antecedent existence, have, of course,
denied that there can be any _a priori_ proof of the Divine existence.
Aristotle laid down as a rule that demonstration must proceed from
things prior to and the causes of the things to be demonstrated, and
those who assented to this rule necessarily denied the possibility
of demonstrating the existence of God. The assertion of Clemens of
Alexandria that "God cannot be apprehended by any demonstrative
science" is indubitable, if the view of demonstration on which he
rests it be correct; "for such science is from things prior and more
knowable, whereas nothing can precede that which is uncreated." It is a
manifest contradiction to imagine that an eternal being is subsequent
to any other being, or a perfect being dependent on any other being.
Even mathematical demonstration, however, is not from causes; nor
is there any reason for supposing that the order of knowledge is
necessarily and universally the same as the order of existence.
It is by confounding demonstration erroneously understood in the manner
indicated with proof in general that not a few persons have arrived at
the conclusion that the existence of God cannot be proved at all, and
have deemed preposterous assertions like that of Jacobi, "A God who can
be proved is no God, for the ground of proof is necessarily above the
thing proved by it," both profound and pious.
NOTE XXXVIII., page 285.
SOME _A PRIORI_ ARGUMENTS.
I have treated of Clarke's argument in the 'Encyc. Brit.' art. "Samuel
Clarke."
The demonstration of Dr Fiddes is contained in his 'Theologia
Speculativa, or a Body of Divinity,' 2 vols., 1718-20. It consists
of six propositions: 1. Something does now exist; 2. Something has
existed eternally; 3. Something has been eternally self-existent;
4. What is self-existent must have all the perfections that exist
anywhere or in any subject; 5. What is self-existent must have all
possible perfections, and every perfection, in an infinite measure;
6. What has all possible perfections in an infinite measure is God.
He proves his fourth proposition thus: "Since nothing can arise out
of nothing, and since there can be no perfection but what has some
subject of inherence, every perfection must have been eternally
somewhere or other, or in one subject or other, into which it must be
ultimately resolved, or else it could never have been at all; without
admitting, what of all things we are the best able to conceive, an
infinite progression of efficient causes--that is, an infinite series
of beings derived one from another, without a beginning or any original
cause at the head of the series. So that whatever perfections we
observe in any being must have been originally and eternally in the
self-existent being." On behalf of his fifth proposition he advances
two arguments: 1. "All properties essentially follow the nature and
condition of the subject, and must be commensurate to it. For this
reason we say that wisdom, power, and goodness being attributes of an
infinite subject, or one which is the substratum of one _infinite_
attribute, these and all the other perfections belonging to it must be
infinite also. Otherwise the same subject, considered as a subject,
would be infinite in one respect, and yet finite in another; which, if
it be not a contradiction, seems to border so near upon one that we
cannot comprehend the possibility of it." 2. "A self-existent being
as the subject of any perfection cannot limit itself; because it must
necessarily have existed from all eternity what it is, and have been
the same in all properties essentially inherent in it, antecedently
to any act or volition of its own. Nor can such a being be limited by
anything external to it; for, besides that self-existence necessarily
implies independence, properties which are essential to any subject
can admit of no increase or diminution or the least imaginable change,
without destroying the essence itself of the subject. Nor yet can it
be said that there is any impossibility in the nature of the thing
that the perfections inhering in an _infinite_ subject should be
in the highest or even in an infinite degree. Indeed it is scarce
possible for us (for the reasons already assigned) to conceive how they
should be otherwise. Neither can any such impossibility arise from
the nature of the perfections themselves. If, then, the perfections
of a self-existent being cannot be limited by itself, nor by anything
external to it, nor from any invincible repugnancy in the nature of
the perfections themselves, I conclude that the self-existent being
must not only have all possible perfections, but every perfection in an
_infinite_ degree."
The 'Demonstration of the Existence of God against Atheists,' by the
Rev. Colin Campbell, Minister of the Parish of Ardchattan, 1667-1726,
has been recently printed for private circulation from a MS. now
deposited in the library of Edinburgh University. The editor has
added to it a learned and admirable appendix. Mr Campbell's manner of
proving that there is one, and but one, infinite Being, is as follows:
"As everything which hath a beginning forces confession of one who
hath none--because to produce is an action, and must presuppose an
actor,--by the same force of reason, we must confess that whatever is
limited, or made of such and such a limited nature, is limited by
something which did limit it to be such a thing, and no other. For
limit is an action, and confesseth an actor. So that there must be a
being anterior to all limited beings, and, consequently, some being
that is not at all limited, to evite the absurd progress of running
infinitely upwards unlimited beings, without a single limiter. Now, an
unlimited being is the same as to say an infinite being. And so, by the
force of reason, we have a being which is eternal, which is infinite.
There can be but one infinite, because, were there two or more, the
one would limit the other; and so the infinite would be finite, the
unlimited would be limited. Therefore, the unlimited, or infinite, must
be one only; and that one purely single and uncompounded, else every
part of the compound would limit the other parts, so that all the parts
would be limited. And a whole whose parts are limited must be limited
in the whole, it being impossible that a compound or conjunction of
finites can, by addition, produce an infinite, unless you imagine this
complex whole to consist partly of finites, and also of some infinite.
But the one infinite part, if infinite, cannot leave place for any
other finite to make it up, it being itself unlimited and infinite; and
such an addition would speak it limited by the part which was added.
And a thousand like absurdities would follow."
Wollaston's attempted demonstration is contained in the fifth section
of his 'Religion of Nature Delineated' (1725). This is a common book,
and the mere reference to it must suffice.
Moses Lowman's 'Argument to prove the Unity and Perfection of God
_a priori_' was published in 1735, and reprinted, with a preface by
Dr Pye Smith, containing an account of the author and his works,
in the Cabinet Library of Scarce and Celebrated Tracts (1836). I
reproduce the abstract which Dr Smith gave of this ingenious argument
in his 'First Lines of Christian Theology:' "1. Positive existence is
possible, for it involves no contradiction. 2. All possible existence
is either _necessary_, which must be, and in its own nature cannot
but be; or _contingent_, which may be or not be, for in neither case
is a contradiction involved. 3. _Some_ existence is _necessary_: for,
if all existence were contingent, all existence might not be as well
as might be; and that thing which might not be never could be without
some other thing as the prior cause of its existence, since every
effect must have a cause. If, therefore, all possible existence were
contingent, all existence would be impossible; because the idea or
conception of it would be that of an effect without a cause, which
involves a contradiction. 4. Necessary existence must be _actual_
existence: for necessary existence is that which must be and cannot
but be--that is, it is such existence as arises from the nature of
the thing in itself; and it is an evident contradiction to affirm
that necessary existence might not be. 5. Necessary existence being
such as must be and cannot but be, it must be _always_ and cannot
but be always; for to suppose that necessary existence could begin
to be, or could cease to be--that is, that a time might be in which
necessary existence would not be--involves a contradiction. Therefore,
necessary existence is without beginning and without end--that is, it
is eternal. 6. Necessary existence must be _wherever_ any existence
is possible: for all existence is either contingent or necessary; all
contingent existence is impossible without necessary existence being
previously as its cause, and wherever existence is possible it must
be either of a necessary or a contingent being. Therefore, necessary
existence must be wherever existence is possible--that is, it must be
_infinite_. 7. There can be but _one_ necessarily existent being; for
two necessarily existent beings could in no respect whatever differ
from each other--that is, they would be one and the same being. 8. The
one necessarily existent being must have _all possible perfections_:
for all possible perfections must be the perfections of some existence;
all existence is either necessary or contingent; all contingent
existence is dependent upon necessary existence; consequently, all
possible perfections must belong either to necessary existence or to
contingent existence--that is, to contingent beings, which are caused
by and are dependent upon necessary being. Therefore, since there
can be but one necessarily existent being, that being must have all
possible perfections. 9. The one necessarily existent being must be a
_free agent_; for contingent existence is possible, as the conception
of it involves no contradiction; but necessary existence must be the
cause or producing agent of contingent existence, otherwise contingent
existence would be impossible, as an effect without a cause; and
necessary existence as the cause of contingent existence does not act
necessarily, for then contingent existence would itself be necessary,
which is absurd as involving a contradiction. Therefore necessary
existence, as the cause of contingent existence, acts _not necessarily_
but _freely_--that is, is a free agent, which is the same thing as
being an _intelligent agent_. 10. Therefore, there is one necessarily
existent being, the cause of all contingent existence--that is, of all
other existences besides himself; and this being is eternal, infinite,
possessed of all possible perfections, and is an intelligent free
agent--that is, _this Being is God_."
The demonstration of the Divine existence given by the Chevalier
Ramsay is contained in the First Book of his 'Philosophical Principles
of Natural and Revealed Religion' (1748). It is as elaborately
mathematical in form as the reasoning in Spinoza's 'Ethics,' and has
continuous reference to that reasoning. It is impossible to give any
distinct conception of its nature by a brief description.
The argument of Dr Hamilton, Dean of Armagh, is fully set forth in his
'Attempt to prove the Existence and Absolute Perfection of the Supreme
Unoriginated Being, in a Demonstrative Manner' (1785). It assumes the
"axiom" that "whatever is contingent, or might possibly have been
otherwise than it is, had some cause which determined it to be what it
is. Or in other words: if two different or contrary things were each of
them possible, whichever of them took place, or came to pass, it must
have done so in consequence of some cause which determined that _it_,
and not _the other_, should take the place." The propositions which he
endeavours to demonstrate are these: I. There must be in the universe
some one being, at least, whose non-existence is impossible--whose
existence had no cause, no beginning, and can have no end. II. The
whole nature of the unoriginated being, or the aggregate of his
attribute, is uncaused, and must be necessarily and immutably what
it is; so that he cannot have any attribute or modification of his
attributes but such as were the eternal and necessary concomitants of
his existence. III. Whatever are the attributes of the unoriginated
being, he must possess each of them unlimitedly, or in its whole
extent, such as it is when considered in the abstract. IV. In whatever
_manner_ the unoriginated being exists or is present anywhere, he
must in the _like manner_ exist or be present everywhere. V. The
unoriginated being is one individual uncompounded substance identically
the same everywhere, and to which our ideas of _whole_ and _parts_,
_magnitude_ or _quantity_, are not applicable. VI. The unoriginated
being must necessarily possess intelligence and power unlimited,
and all other natural attributes that are in themselves absolute
perfections. VII. There is in the universe but one unoriginated being,
who must therefore be the original fountain of all existence, and
the first cause of all things. VIII. All things owe their existence
ultimately to the power of the first cause operating according to his
free will. IX. Almighty God, the first cause and author of all things,
must be a Being of infinite goodness, wisdom, mercy, justice, and
truth, and all other moral perfections, such as become the supreme
author and governor of the universe.
THE END.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes
Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained
except in obvious cases of typographical errors.
Italics are shown thus _italic_.
3^{ieme.} indicates that the letters enclosed in curly brackets
are superscripted.
The repetition of the title on the first two pages has been removed.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Theism, by Robert Flint
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEISM ***
***** This file should be named 45850-8.txt or 45850-8.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/4/5/8/5/45850/
Produced by David Garcia, Les Galloway, Marilynda
Fraser-Cunliffe and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from
scanned images of public domain material from the Google
Print project.)
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.
*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
http://gutenberg.org/license).
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that
- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
of receipt of the work.
- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
[email protected]. Email contact links and up to date contact
information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
page at http://pglaf.org
For additional contact information:
Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
[email protected]
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit http://pglaf.org
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.
Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
http://www.gutenberg.org
This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
