1 10 2 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/99cdeccf6bde38703b2ce479068910d4.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=O2Dtji7MCi9M31g2UZRSkQGjnYUpz9hRGxleEYirnoujIbis7N3NUedX6O-2LABP7W0Xopxqw%7EgPl%7E%7EG0GOBNyYvR435AzH-WU8WkKrl4WkjxfzHCZIGRcyIzP2qTfNrm7QWKEgBcE81JIzgsbLSfzWHZDQw0tfhgxBeKKbECh0mENkaLR6RXyVZnDgD4Xnb114vytzI3VJCd0yZ%7Eh5OFtA02pqtq4grJMDcOVRzrjyNDRYi9WCZ1EwpqyjyUyCk592vuhjdKU6TY2j43eJYU0lvbbSAe0rCUekcpHA7YiD9AKfioKtRoJfbmeWZL4pi0rGGDKL9hrB2973debnowQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM ebbf892e7c10a1a7d02319c30bd57ef9 PDF Text Text NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY “THE DYER’S HAND:” A DISCOURSE PRECEDED BY THE WAY TO GOD: A MEDITATION, DELIVERED AT SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL, SUNDAY, 5TH MAY, 1872, AND REPEATED BY ESPECIAL DESIRE SUNDAY, 1 8th MAY, 1873. BY ALEXANDER J. ELLIS, B.A.. F.R.S., F.S.A., F.C.P.S., F.C.P., Vice-President formerly President) of the Philological Society, & c *. CHIEFLY AS ARRANGED FOR THE SECOND DELIVERY WITH THE READINGS THEN USED. Price 2d, �ORDER OF THE SERVICE HYMN 12—Words by Dyer.. “ Greatest of beings, source of life !” READINGS— I. “ Love,” from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, in modem language, as follows, p. 3. II. “Design,” from Paley’s Natural Theology, as follows, p. 4. HYMN 5— Words by Wreford. “ God of the Ocean, Earth and Sky !” MEDITATION, “The Way to God,” as follows, p. 9. ANTHEM 74—From the fourth Gospel. “ God is a Spirit.” DISCOURSE, “The Dyer’s Hand,” as follows, p. 13. HYMN 91—Words by Mrs. Barbauld. “ As once upon Athenian ground.” DISMISSAL, as follows, p. 44- �READINGS. I.—LOVE. In listening to an extremely familiar passage rom the first letter of Paul the Apostle to his Corinthian congregation, which I shall purposely put into extremely unfamiliar words, in order to divert your minds from the mere sound to the sense conveyed, it is as well to recall the context Much confusion, as was natural, prevailed in all the early Christian congregations as soon as the founder’s back was turned, and the necessity of correcting it gave rise to those letters which are the earliest and most authentic records of the Christian movement that we possess. Among other troubles in Corinth, every man seems to have thought himself as good a teacher as any other, save of course the founder Paul, who therefore strove in his first letter to convince them of their mistake and induce them to work as parts of a commonwealth of which there was only one real head, Jesus himself, in whose ideal image Paul always sank his own per­ sonality. For this purpose, he first applied the well-known analogy of the body and its members, and then went on to the Allowing purport (i. Cor. xii., 27, to xiii., 13) :— “You form collectively Christ’s body upon earth, and each of you Individually is one of its members. Some of us by God’s disposition are apostles, others preachers, teachers, sign-workers, healers, Birectors, speakers in various tongues. Are all apostles, or all preachers, or all teachers, or all sign-workers, or all healers ? Can all speak in various tongues, or can all interpret what is spoken in unknown tongues ? It is certainly the duty of each individual to do his best to be fitted for the best offices, but I will shew you a far superior method. “If I were to speak all human and divine languages, and had not love, my words would be worthless tinkling. If I had the highest powers of preaching, if I understood all mysteries, had �4 gained all knowledge, or had mountain-moving faith, but had not lave, I should be a mere nothing. I might bestow all my gorJMI feed the hungry, or deliver my body to the torturer, yet withoB love, I should have done nothing. Love is long-suffering and kind. Love knows neither envy nor jealousy, makes no display nor boasting, behaves decently, insists not on rights, checks anger,, suspects not evil, has no sympathy with injustice but much with truth; hides, believes, hopes, endures everything. “ Love is never wanting. Preachings shall fail, languages shall cease, knowledge shall die out; (our knowledge is partial and cur preaching power is partial, and their partial character will not cease till perfection appears. When I was a child, I spake, I thought, I reasoned as a child, but when I became a man I put aside my childish ways. In the same way our vision now is an enigmatical reflection, but hereafter we shall see face to face. That is to say, my knowledge is now partial, but hereafter I shall know as I am known). The power that we now possess, then, will pass away, but whatever else fails, three things abide, belied hope, love. And the greatest of these is love}' IL—DESIGN. Brief extracts from the three first chapters of Dr. William Paley’s “ Natural Theology,” (originally published in 1802) for the purpose of shewing the nature of his argument. fcM large quantity of intermediate matter has been omitted for brevity, but nothing is added. “ In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a sione, and were asked how the stone came to be there : I mighf possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever ; nor would it perhaps be very easy to shew the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a ivatek upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch hap­ �5 pened to be in that place : I should hardly think of the answer I had before given—that, for anything I knew, the watch might have been always there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone ? Why is it not as admis­ sible in the second case as in the first ? For this reason, and for Ho other, namely, that, when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose ; for ex­ ample, that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day ; that if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, of a different size to what they are, or placed in any other order than that in which they are placed, either no Riotion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it. This mechanism being observed, (it requires indeed an ex­ amination of the instrument, and perhaps some previous know­ ledge of the subject to perceive and understand it; but being once, as we have said, observed and understood,) the inference, We think, is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker: Hiat there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose >hich we find it actually to answer ; who comprehended its con­ struction, and designedits use. Nor would it, I apprehend, weaken the conclusion, that we had never seen a watch made ; that we had never known an artist capable of making one ; that we were altogether incapable of executing such a piece of workmanship ourselves, or of under­ standing in what manner it was performed; all this being no Riore than what is true of some exquisite remains of ancient art, of some lost arts, and, to the generality of mankind, of the more £tjrious productions of modern manufacture. Neither, secondly, would it invalidate our conclusion, that the. �6 watch sometimes went wrong, or that it seldom went exactly right. The purpose of the machinery, the design, and the designer, might be evident, and in the case supposed would be evident, in whatever way we accounted for the irregu­ larity of the movement, or whether we could account for it or not. It is not necessary that a machine be perfect, in •order to shew with what design it was made : still less necessary, where the only question is, whether it was made with any design at all. Neither, lastly, would our observer be driven out of his con­ clusion, or from his confidence in its truth, by being told that he knew nothing at all about the matter. He knows enough for his argument: he knows the utility of the end : he knows the subserviency and adaptation of the means to the end. These points being known, his ignorance of other points, his doubts concerning other points, affect not the certainty of his reasoning. The consciousness of knowing little need not beget a distrust of that which he does know. Suppose, in the next place, that the person who found the watch should, after some time, discover that, in addition to all the properties which he had hitherto observed in it, it possessed the unexpected property of producing in the course of its move­ ment, another watch like itself (the thing is conceivable); that it contained within it a mechanism, a system of parts, a mould for instance, or a complex adjustment of lathes, files, and other tools evidently and separately calculated for this purpose. The conclusion which the first examination of the watch, of its works, construction, and movements, suggested was, that it must have had, for the cause and author of that construction an artificer, whojjunderstood its mechanism and designed its use. This conclusion is invincible. A second examination presents us with a new discovery. The watch is found, in the course of its movement, to produce another watch, similar to itself; and riot �7 only so, but we perceive in it a system or organisation, separately calculated for that purpose. What effect would this discovery have, or ought it to have, upon our former inference ? What, but to increase, beyond measure, our admiration of the skill which had been employed in the formation of such a machine! Or shall it, instead of this, all at once turn us round to an oppo­ site conclusion—namely, that no art or skill whatever has been concerned in the business, although all other evidences of art and skill remain as they were, and this last and supreme piece of art be now added to the rest ? Can this be maintained without absurdity ? Yet this is atheism. This is atheism ; for every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design which existed in the watch exists in the works of nature; with the difference on the side of nature of being greater and more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation. I mean that the contrivances of nature surpass the contrivances of art in the complexity, subtlety, and curiosity of the mechanism ; and still more, if possible, do they go beyond them in number and variety; yet, in a multitude of cases, are not less evidently mechanical, not less evidently contrivances, not less evidently accommodated to their end, or suited to their office, than are the most perfect productions of human ingenuity. ��THE WAY TO GOD. A MEDITATION. “ Little children !” said the dying Elder, “ Little children ! Love one another.” “ If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen ? And this com­ mandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.” (i John iv., 20, 21.) The way to God is through the heart of man! Not by metaphysical subtleties, where man turneth his eye inwards to see outwards, can he hope to reach God. Not by theological subtleties, where man vainly strives to fix in words what his mind has failed to grasp, can he hope to reach God. Not by creeds and anathemas, where the empty words of theology are crystallised into a charm or a curse, can man hope to reach God. Not by fasting and penance, where man would fain purchase future bliss by present pain, and mount to heaven by trampling down earth, can he hope to reach God. �IO Not by fervent prayer, where man vainly beseeches God to modify eternal laws for temporary ends, can he hope to reach God. Not by deep and persistent scientific research, where the head is awake but the heart sleeps, can man hope to reach God. The way to God is through the heart of man! By mixing with his fellow-men; by learning the wants of all; by working within his limited circle towards the general well-being; by identifying him­ self with his race ; by feeling that he is above all, and through all, a man, manly, and is only as a man capable of effecting aught; by gathering into a focus those scattered beams of human sympathy which we know as love; by giving practical direction to vague aspira­ tions for improvement; by living for himself but as a part of others, and for others as for himself; by reach­ ing the heart of his fellow-men; thus only can man hope to reach God. If man look beyond the present life and indulge in dreams of a future eternity of well-being, let him not think of saving his own soul without his brother’s, let him not expect to enter heaven by a password, let him not contemplate for a moment the revellers at the lightsome feast within, and the teeth-gnashers in the darksome pit without. The heart of man rejects the contrast, and through the heart of man alone can man reach God. �II Let not man seek to know the counsels of God. Man is of the earth, earthy ; it is at once his badge -and his star. What future may be in reserve for our race none can forecast. If those who have searched most widely are to be followed most readily, we have been evolved from very humble beginnings, and may have a much nobler hereafter. But the future depends on the present as the present on the past. No nobler hereafter is possible, if the present fail in its part. That part is to develop present man ; not to despise him as worthless, and fix all thought on the super­ human. Here is our work, and through it our future. The heart of man, is man’s noblest organ on earth. Through the heart of man alone, can he hope to reach God. “ Little children !” said the dying Elder, “ Love one another!” ��“THE DYER’S HAND.” Walking through a street in Kensington some time ago, I saw a man without his coat, and with his shirt­ sleeves tucked up to the elbows, talking quietly with another man, now putting one hand in his pocket, now stroking his chin with the other, evidently in utter unconsciousness or forgetfulness that his exposed hands and arms were different from other men’s. But to me at a distance there was something frightful in seeing such ordinary living motions performed by hands and arms which had that green tinge we learn to associate with putridity. That shiny green arm, those dead-like fingers that moved with such un­ natural life, were a shock to all my sense of the fitness of things. As I came near, the mystery cleared itself up in the most prosaic fashion—as all mysteries are apt to do. I passed before a dye-house, and had been watching the dyer. Instantly there came full on my mind that (hundred and eleventh) sonnet of Shakspere, of which a few �14 words are so familiar, though the context is little known. Shakspere laments and excuses his “ public manners ” as due to the “ public means ” by which Fortune had provided for his life, and exclaims :— Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, And almost, thence, my nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand. That dyer’s hand, tinged with the most ghastly and inhuman hue, generated by the dye-vat in which it had worked, and yet moving all unconsciously as if nothing ailed it, was by a single stroke of Shakspere’s pen raised into being the most significant symbol of men’s thoughts and feelings, “ subdued to what they work in,” the inherited environment, the geographical environment, the social environment, which colour them so completely that they live in total uncon­ sciousness of their own peculiarity, though they are acutely conscious of the different tinge imparted by a neighbouring dye-vat. Oh, how few are there among us—are there indeed any among us ?—I don’t mean among tne handful of people here assembled, but among the whole circle of humanity,—who can say, as Shakspere said, that their nature is only “ almost ” subdued ! How many of us can from our own hearts, from our own knowledge that we are dyed and must be cleansed, echo the fervent wish of the poet, and exclaim : — �i5 Pity me then and wish I were renewed , Whilst like a willing patient, I will drink Potions of eisel ’gainst my strong infection ; * No bitterness that I will bitter think, Nor double penance, to correct correction ! No! dyed through and through, green-blooded to the heart’s core, and not merely on the surface of our skin; we persist in thinking green-blood to be the only blood, and are shocked at the unnatural redness of another’s. We may laugh at that lady in the story who was struck with the remarkable fact that wherever she went, whatever society she entered, whatever subject she discussed, no one was in the right but herself; yet the only difference between her and most of us is, that she ventured to say so; we are silent, but only think the more steadfastly with the Mahometan carpenter, who replied to Francis New* Also spelled esile and eysell, meaning vinegar, a common dis­ infectant. Old French aisil, aissil, aizil, arzil, esil. The form aisil has even crept into Anglo-Saxon, which, however, has the older form, eced. All are supposed to come from the Latin aceium (vinegar). Shakspere puts “ drinking eisel ” among practical impossibilities. See Hamlet, Act 5, scene 1, speech 106, Shew me what thou’It do ! Woo’t weep? woo’t fight? woo’tfast? woo’t tear thyself ? Woo’t drink up eisel ? eat a crocodile ? I’ll do’t. �i6 man’s attempts at conversion: “ God has given you to know much, but not the true faith.”* The dye which tinges qur every thought and feel­ ing is most general and most “fast,” hardest to be discharged by argument, or to assume a different hue, when it is rooted in the language which we speak, and has thus become ingrained in thought. We learn then inevitably to think under its influence. The whole inheritance of preceding human thought comes to us tinged with the same dye. The very threads by which we would weave the tissue of our own medita­ tions, instead of being susceptible of every hue, so * The story thus reduced to an allusion, is worth giving at length : “ While we were at Aleppo I one day got into religious discourse with a Mohammedan carpenter, which left on me a lasting impression. Among other matters I was peculiarly desirous of disabusing him of the current notion of his people that our Gospels are spurious narratives of late date. I found great difficulty of expression, but the man listened to me with much attention, and I was encouraged to exert myself. He waited patiently till I had done, and then spoke to the following effect :—‘I will tell you, sir, how the case stands. God has given to you English a great many good gifts. You make fine ships and sharp penknives, and good cloth and cottons; and you have rich nobles and brave soldiers ; and you write and print many learned books : (dictionaries and grammars :) all this is of God. But there is one thing which God has withheld from you ■and has revealed to us, and that is the knowledge of the true religion, by which one may be saved.’ When he thus ignored my argument (which was probably quite unintelligible to him), �17 that the pattern may shine bright and pure, beautiful and true, as we conceived it was conceived, are so dulled by their previous dye, that the result, true as it may look to our jaundiced eye, is false to every one whose vision is truer. The few, the very few, who, conscious of the radical unfitness of their material for the effect they would produce, seek to mould it by limiting the signification of current words, or inventing new to embody their new thoughts, preach too often to the winds, or worse,—not understood at all, or misunderstood,—so that the thinker soon finds rea­ son to wonder, not that man knows so little, but that he knows anything, not that a man so often miscon­ ceives another’s thoughts, but that he ever approaches to a conception of what they really are. I am using no hyperbole, I am stating a sober conclusion which and delivered his simple protest, I was silenced, and at the same time amused. But the more I thought it over the more in­ struction I saw in the case. His position towards me was exactly that of a humble Christian towards an unbelieving philosopher; nay, that of the early Apostles or Jewish prophets towards the proud, cultivated, worldly-wise, and powerful heathen. This not only showed the vanity of any argument to him, except one purely addressed to his moral and spiritual faculties; but it also indicated to me that ignorance has its spiritual self-sufficiency as well as erudition ; and that if there is a Pride of Reason, so there is a Pride of Unreason.”—Phases of Faith ; or Passages from the History of My Creed. By Francis William Newman. Sixth edition, i860, /. 32. �i8 years of thought and observation have forced upon me, and which, having often previously stated I find as I live, only more reason to adopt,—when I say that probably no man does understand any other man. The vision of our mind’s eye is too deeply affected, the dye upon our mind’s hand is too ingrained, our language is clothed with too patched a harlequin suit, for us clearly to express or clearly to seize what is expressed. Only those who have aimed at precision, and have hopelessly failed, or have laboured con­ scientiously but vainly to enter into the thoughts of one who himself has aimed at precision, can fully comprehend how utterly our nature is subdued to what it works in, like the dyer’s hand ! Our first observations, as children, are directed to objects of sensation. It is only by storing up our hazy memories of individual impressions that we, in course of time, very clumsily and defectively group together the immediate results of sensation into aggre­ gates, which seem to us the same as those indicated by the words we hear from others. Subsequent know­ ledge, which in its full force is the lot of but a few special observers, teaches us that every one of those individual sensations is altogether vague and wanting in precision; and that we cannot thoroughly depend even upon regaining the same sensations in ourselves, —nay, I may almost say, that we can only thoroughly depend upon never regaining them. All natural �i9 philosophers know,—I am saying nothing new, I am merely repeating the very alphabet of science,—that sensations do not repeat themselves, that when they are registered by the most cunning devices of man, each registration differs from its fellow, and that we can deal only with averages and not with in­ dividuals. There are some of the fixed stars, whose position it is so important for science to de­ termine, that they have been observed by hosts of the most competent men through many years. Yet we know that it would be more surprising for any two determinations to agree than for all to differ, and that what we conventionally assign as their real place is only an average drawn by most refined methods of calculation from an examination of dis­ crepant data, and though assumed to be true for the present, is acknowledged to be liable to subsequent correction. By means of these positions thus assigned, an observer learns to determine his own personal liability to error, and knows that that liability itself * fluctuates with the state of his health; nay, with the length of time since he was roused from sleep, or since his last meal; and he then contrives to allow for such errors in subsequent observations. Yet merely seeing a point of light, like a fixed star, dis­ appear behind an opaque bar, such as a telescopic cobweb, is an observation of extreme simplicity com* Known as his “personal equation. �20 pared with those by- which we obtain the most ordinary notions of external objects in common life. And if each observer is known to differ from others, and even from himself in a matter of such extreme sim-, plicity, what trust can we have that our individual sensations are comparable with our neighbours, and still more that our groupings of those sensations accu­ rately, or even approximately, correspond to those of our neighbours, in the extremely complex determination of the commonest objects which form our environment? But these are only starting points. The greater part of our thoughts and reasonings are occupied with matters which cannot be made the subject of direct observation. It is only in its rudest condition, there­ fore, that our language consists of mere names of groups of sensations, such as man, tree, house, land, water, give, take, black, white, light, heavy, and so forth. To give some sort of vent to our bursting thoughts, to convey them however vaguely and inde­ terminately, we are forced to resort to those half-felt, imperfect, often wholly inadequate, misleading analo­ gies, which we call metaphors. A term used in our own individual sense, according to our own individual experience for some object or act appreciable by direct sensation, is transferred to another merely meditational object or act, some inward feeling, which we know to have no real connection with the first, but which we vaguely connect with it, as we vaguely see human �21 features in a bright coal fire. And then we boldly use that term when speaking to others without any security either that their sensations derived from the external objects were originally the same as ours, or that their inward connection of those sensations with the thought and feeling which we desire to excite in them, may, will, or can have any resemblance to our own. And thus the maze of language goes on to confusion worse confounded, the dye in our vats be­ comes more and more muddy, and the hand that stirs them more and more hopelessly bemessed. When the Elohist or Jehovist spake of God’s eye, God’s hand, God’s outstretched arm, God’s image, he had in his mind, no doubt, a real tangible, living eye, hand, arm, and image. The God of the Jehovist really walked in the garden of Eden in the cool of the day, and Adam and Eve could really hear his voice, and attempt to hide—to hide !—from him among the trees (Gen. iii. 8). When the God of the Elohist created man in his own image (Gen. i. 27), the Elohist himself, as has been truly said, created God in the image of man, and so thoroughly in that image, that the God of his creation was, like a man, weary with his own work of creation, and had to rest on the seventh day from all the work which he had made (Gen. ii. 2). To us, now and here, and to the more intelligent preachers throughout Christendom, such words are mere transparent metaphors, by which we vainly �22 endeavour—how vainly but few consider—to prefigure the unfigurable. But they are all dangerous. They are so thoroughly human that they unconsciously sway the mind to accept God as a mere exaggerated man. The pygmy that can barely descry the giant’s toes seeks to dogmatise on the giant’s whole structure. The dyer’s hand finds its own colour in what the dyer wantonly dares to term a hand. The finite raises its own mental scale to gauge the Infinite ! The Infinite 1 How easy to say ; how hard to conceive ! On this day, in thousands of pulpits throughout our own land, and in other thousands of Christian congregations, men will be standing up and telling of God’s infinitude, arguing from his infinite power, his infinite wrath, his infinite mercy in allow­ ing his infinite wrath to be infinitely appeased by the infinite sacrifice of himself in a finite form at the hands of Roman soldiers instigated by Jewish priests and a Jewish rabble, before his own infinite self, and running over the other changes of infinity which fall so glibly from their tongue, but which have abso­ lutely no root in their intellect. Nay, of that they are proud. They can know all about the powers, the acts, the results of infinity. They can tell you what infinity, so far forth as being infinity, can, will, and must do, without having even the shadow of a con­ ception to put behind the word. The mathematician and the natural philosopher have to deal constantly �23 with the ever-increasing and the ever-diminishing, and many of our preachers (very far from all) have had to bend their minds when- young to such considerations. But with most of them it has been mere cram, stuff to be blurted out in an examination, and then forgotten. Yet here, and here only, have we the least hope of arriving at any practical conceptions of a matter which all religious teachers are apt to treat with easy, selfcomplacent confidence. The course of my own studies during many years, from opening manhood to the present day, has often brought me face to face with this problem of infinity, so well known to all real mathematicians, in the simplest of all relations, number and space. I have been compelled to give it long, continuous, and reiterated consideration; to ponder over it for weeks and months at a time; to read and study what the best heads had written of it; to endeavour by every means in my power to catch some clue to its real nature; to render my thoughts precise by writing and re-writing ; to see how, at least, the effects of infinity might be safely inferred, or its laws partly divined; to comprehend, if it be possible, the infinite in the finite, the description of an endlessly increasing path with an endlessly in­ creasing velocity in a strictly limited time; to see in my mind’s eye the relations of various orders of the infinitely great and the infinitely small; in short, to bridge the great gulf between the discontinuous and �24 the continuous. I need scarcely tell you that I have not done what I have found no other man has done, but I have had a deep conviction of the limits of human power forced upon myself. The matters with which I dealt were not those highly complex, illdefined, worse comprehended conceptions which form the staple of theology. They were the very simplest conceptions which the human mind can form with any approach to precision. And the result ? Did I seem to come nearer to the goal ? Nay, was I not rather like the voyager who day after day sees the same hard circle of horizon limiting his vision, till he misdoubts the very motion of his ship ? Or like the mountaineer who briskly begins his route to top the crest before him, and, that reached, finds only another and steeper there he had not previously divined, and, topping that, another and another, till poor “Excelsior ” falls ex­ hausted by the way? And this, where the road has been marked out with so much skill by minds far above my own, minds which are the very guiding stars of all human thought. * What, then, of matters where all is guess, where no road is known, where the trackless ocean spreads without a compass, where the traveller is involved in the deepest gorges without power to see or to divine how to scale their precipitous cliffs ? When shall we learn the lesson of the Titans, and • Such as Newton and Leibnitz. �25 know the fate of those who would scale heaven by piling the Pelion of presumption on the Ossa of ignorance ? * But while we all, at least I hope all whom I address, acutely feel the purely metaphorical application of terms implying human form, or any part of the human form, to the inapproachable object of all human thought, yet we, are apt, even the wisest and best of all mankind are apt, to be led astray by human lan­ guage,—the inheritance derived from men who held to a literally humanesque personality of the Deity,— when the terms do not imply bodily form, but the best and least corporeal functions of humanity,— thought, will, love. We may be, I believe we are, speaking the highest and noblest thing which man can say of God, when we declare that God is Love; but let us never forget that such language is purely anthropomorphic in its origin, and must be held purely metaphorical in its application. If we seek to drive it home, to make God Love as we alone know love, we do not raise man to God, but degrade God * The Titans are here, as usual, confounded with the Giants who were said to have scaled heaven. “Thrice,” says Virgil, Georgies, book I., vv. 281-3, “thrice they endeavoured to pile Mount Ossa on to Pelion, and roll the woody Olympus on to Ossa ; thrice father Jove with his lightning threw down the mountains they had reared.” See also Ovid’s Metamorphoses, book 1., vv. 152-5. �26 to man. What is the love we know, the love which alone we can have in mind when we apply the term, as the outcome of all the best we can conceive, to the Inconceivable itself? Turn to that glowing descrip­ tion of love by the noble Paul, that passage to which every heart instinctively reverts which has once beaten at its sound, and see how thoroughly human, how utterly un-Godlike, it is in its every part. Reject the negatives, which constitute the main portion of the description, as the painter cannot suggest light but by the accumulation of shade, and see with what reality we can say that God, like love, suffereth long and is kind, rejoiceth in or with the truth, beareth all, believeth all, hopeth all, endureth all (i Cor. xiii. 4, 6, 7.) Aman, dependent man, may do this. But how can we even magnify long-suffering, kindliness, delight at the discovery of truth, endurance, belief, hope, into any conception of God which is not purely human ? Let us know that it is only our own help­ lessness which leads us to say that God is Love ! and that these words are but the faintest possible glimmer of that far-off light which we hope we may forefeel, but certainly can never actually perceive. Let us beware of pushing home an analogy which has already led to the revolting conception of a devil, of a power antagonistic to the Unassailable, to account for what our human conception of love cannot contain. Mark how limited is that conception I Strong between one �27 man and another, love weakens as the circle widens. In the family and clan it often mixes up with feelings of merely personal dignity. Towards the nation, even when strongest and purest, its character is wholly and completely changed. And when extended to the whole of mankind, it dwindles down to a very faint glow indeed. Often mixed with this love is the strongest antipathy, the haughtiest contempt, the most trans­ parent selfishness. Look at the international re­ lations which have convulsed Europe and America, even within the memory of the youngest adult here present! But extend your heart to the lower ani­ mals, to the living but insentient vegetable, to the inorganic kingdom, and, by slow degrees, love dwindles to nonentity. Then think what part the whole of this earth, with all that it contains, plays in that great hniverse of bodies which the telescope reveals, com­ pared to many of which our whole solar system is as nothing, nay, perhaps, our whole stellar system but insignificant. But all these are God’s; all these may, Ike the earth, swarm with a life, an intelligence, a love, unlike the earth’s indeed, but, if any twilight motion we can form of God be even remotely correct, as much bound up with God as our own puny selves. And then, straining our minds to grasp this mighty conception, let us again ask ourselves what resem­ blance can that Love which we call God, have to |hat human conception which alone fills our minds �28 when we utter the word Love on earth ? It is not to disparage, but to appreciate, not to lower, but to elevate, not to put aside God as a loveless, emotion­ less stone of an Epicurean deity, but to widen our minds and hearts to some vague panting hope that the Ineffable may warm us into some power of feeling what we can neither conceive nor utter, that I ven­ ture to call your attention to the utter inadequacy of man’s noblest formula : God is Love ! But the dyer’s hand is still more apparent in the moulding of another conception, which it was my principal object to bring before your notice, and which will occupy the rest of the time for which I can venture to claim your attention. Every lip is ready to speak of God’s “ design; ” of God’s will, purpose, intention, final cause, motive; of the reasons which induce him to make things as they are; of the plan of the universe and the changes or amendments (f£ new dispensations ” is the favourite term) which he has introduced into it; of his scheme of redemption (which, by-the-bye, seems to be con­ ceived as occasionally thwartable); of his contrivances to produce certain effects; of his elaborate system of rewards and punishments to keep the world in order (which, however, altogether fails because he has not succeeded in keeping the Devil in order); of his mechanical knowledge in availing himself of the pro­ perties of bones and tissues in organisation; and so �29 on, and so on, from the philosopher to the clown, from Darwin, whom the necessities of language oblige to speak of the purpose, intention, use of certain organs, to the poet’s “ pampered goose,” who finds man created to feed him. Now, before we proceed to consider this preposterous nonsense, which would not be worth a moment’s thought if it had not such a profoundly distorting effect on our mental vision when directed to the greatest of all subjects, let us inquire what is the human meaning of the principal word throughout this Babel, which I have placed first in order, because it is the key to all the rest. What is the human meaning of “ design ” ? Clearly, it is only by knowing human design that we can infer creative design, and a little consideration will shew that there cannot be even a remote analogy between the two. To design was originally to mark out, to trace out, as the boundary of a city was traced out by a plough, put it very early acquired in Rome, where the word is indigenous, that metaphorical meaning in which it is generally employed. A man designs a machine— Paley’s watch, for example—what has he done ? He has himself, or through his predecessors, discovered “the laws of geometry, the properties of circles, the Power exerted by a metal spring in uncoiling, the difference of that power according to the thickness and length of the spring, and the kind of metal com­ posing it, especially the tempering of the metal, and �3° the isochronous vibrations of thin and highly tempered springs, with various other properties of toothed wheels and levers, which I need not stay to describe. Now observe, he has discovered all this, he has invented nothing as yet. What he wants to do is to make a rod, the hand of his watch, move round in a circle at a rate bearing an exact relation to the rate at which the earth revolves on its axis, which revolution he has also discovered, not invented. Seizing, then, on the fact of the isochronous vibration of a hair-spring when properly weighted and properly jogged, he puts these parts together so that these properties (which he did not make, nor invent, but only discovered), acting according to the laws of geometry and mechanics (which again he did not make, nor invent, but only discovered), may really produce the required result. Observe, too, that his knowledge of the laws of this action is imperfect; there are certain properties of ex­ pansion and contraction with heat, which he has not become sufficiently familiar with, or known how to bring into destructive opposition; there are certain difficulties in cutting geometrical figures truly in metal which he cannot entirely overcome; so that his watch is at best a very imperfect affair requiring daily correction by observations—themselves more or less imperfect—on the presumably invariable motion of the earth. This is human design. All man's part is to find the materials, the laws of their action, and the laws by �3i which they can be connected; nothing else whatever. He puts them together, and we say that that grand abstraction, “nature,” does the rest. Now, if we apply this to God, we see that some other god must have made the materials, and their laws, and the laws of their connection, and that he merely puts them together ! What a degrading conception ! The great God, the expression of utter boundlessness, a mechanical drudge, a piecer of other gods’ goods! Shame on man that he ever inculcated such a doctrine I Shame on those natural theologians who would found our very reason for believing in the existence of God on such transparent fallacies, which can be knocked down like nine-pins by the first bowl of a cunning atheist! But the conception recurs again and again. Even natural philosophers, as distinct from natural theologers, become occasionally involved in its meshes. Professor Tyndall, in the second of his series of lectures on Heat and Light, which he de­ livered at the Royal Institution in 1872, brought forward a notable instance, widely accepted, and hesitatingly admitted by even the founder of that In­ stitution, Count Rumford, for the purpose of shewing pjiow utterly fallacious and presumptuous it is, like Phaethon to guide the horses of the Sun. Water, as every one who has learned anything about its prois aware, is liquid at ordinary temperatures, and �32 as it is cooled down to about 40 deg. Fahrenheit, regularly and gradually contracts like the column of mercury in the thermometer. But then a change ensues. Increase the cold towards freezing and the mercury continues to contract, but the water expands, till at freezing it becomes solid ice, occupying much more space than the water whence it was generated, as most householders have learned from broken water-pipes. Hence, as the water cools to 40 deg., it sinks to the bottom of any pond, lake or river, because it is heavier, but after 40 deg., and up to and after its be­ coming ice, it is lighter and floats on the top, pre­ senting a pad against the cold, and hence keeping the water liquid below, and preventing the whole mass from becoming one solid lump, destroying all possi­ bility of life within it. The importance of this pro­ perty to the inhabitants of temperate and arctic regions is manifest. Without it these climes could not be inhabited by man or any other animal, as now con­ stituted. No other liquid was known to possess the same properties. What so natural, then, as to say that God in his providence designed this solitary exception from the universal law of contractility by cold, for the benefit and preservation of man ? And men have said so one after another. The fact is so striking, the re­ lation to man, in regions where ice can form, so cleail that the boldest denier of God’s providence—gene­ rally somebody extremely ignorant—would be shaken �33 when its bearing was made clear. But in the first place, the fact clearly could not affect those parts of the world where ice never forms, and in the second place, at a time when the present arctic and temperate regions bore tropical vegetation, this law also did not affect them, though as yet man was not to be found on the face of the earth j and, lastly, this is not a solitary exception. When bismuth is sufficiently heated it be­ comes fluid, and as heat is withdrawn that fluid also first contracts and then expands, although no relations between this phenomenon and the life of man can be traced. The whole argument was, therefore, one from ignorance to ignorance, and its present value is to shew how dangerous, nay, how illogical, how thoughtless it is, from an isolated circumstance, which could only have local value, to infer a general propo­ sition of a totally different character about a totally unknown relation. The preacher who is reported to have found a special providence in the fact (which he deemed universal) that great rivers flowed by great cities, did not more burlesque the ways of God to man than he who founded an argument for God’s special care of our race on that other remarkable and more real property of water. The proof of design is now generally sought for in organisation, and not in the inanimate world. Paley “ pitched his foot ” unconcernedly against the ££ stone ” he found on the heath; for anything he knew, as he �34 says, it might have lain there for ever. When he was writing this, at the beginning of the nineteenth cerH tury, geology was practically an unknown science, or he might have found a history in the stone which would have led him to the conception of epochs of creation preparing the way for man, gravel collected here to be subsequently dug up, coal gathered there storing up the sun’s heat for man’s benefit hereafter, perhaps the very mammoths would have been found made to yield ivory or bone manure for future genera­ tions. Again he was no chemist, or he might have dwelled much on the chemical constitution of his stone, and its remarkable adaptation for man’s future habita­ tions. He was no natural philosopher, or he might have dwelled on its specific gravity, and the wonder­ ful contrivance by which, though water is lighter and more mobile than rock, the dry land could appear for man’s existence. In short, he was only a not very learned theologian, who, recommended by his bishop to turn his thoughts to the argument from design, crammed up his subjects, and, more or less correctly-J never with the grasp of real knowledge—wove them into a treatise, with the valuable assistance, as we have lately learned, of a French book on the same * subject. He was a good plain writer, and, his half * This last piece of information has been added since this discourse was delivered. The information was given in the Academy or Athenceum at the end of 1875 or beginning of 1876, butunfor* �35 faawledge enabling him to skim over all difficulties, he has produced a seductive book, which has done an immense amount of harm in deteriorating our concep­ tions of God, and in leading Englishmen to notions thoroughly anthropomorphic in content, though avoid­ ing anthropomorphism in appearance. But the pro­ blem of design in older times, when organisation was less understood, was treated with especial reference to the subordination of the inorganic to the use of man. The Elohist, ignorant that rain was formed in clouds but slightly distant from our earth, placed the “ extension,” (as the Hebrew word means which we translate “firmament”) called “heaven,” to divide the seas from the rain ; and put the sun above us in this same firmament to rule the day, and the moon to rule the night (when it was visible), and that wondrous multitude of other suns, among which our own is only a third or fourth rate body, he brought in paren­ thetically, as “the stars also,” their chief “use ” being, course, “ for signs and for seasons, for days and for years,” that is, for man to reckon seed time and harvest by. The continual addition that God saw that it was “ good,” naturally implies that it was effected for a tunately I neglected to make a note at the time, and have been unable to recover the reference. It was stated, however, that the resemblance between the French work and Paley’s was very close, and that even the incident of the ‘ ‘ watch ” is due to the French original. August, 1876. �3<S certain purpose or design beneficial to man (Gen. chap, i.) All this has gradually gone out. Coperni­ can astronomy dissipated the reference of all celestial bodies to man. Geology and natural philosophy ousted design from inanimate objects. But organisa­ tion remained, and remains a stronghold. Who can regard the human eye, the lens, the retina, the chamber through which the beams pass, the diaphragm of the iris, the varying aperture of the pupil, without, in these photographic days especially, being forcibly reminded of the object glass, the sensitised plate, the camera, the movable diaphragm ? And as all these latter are known to be the works of design, based upon laws of light as regards its refrac­ tion through glass, and its chemical action, what is more natural for the mind just receiving the idea, than to jump to the conclusion, that, as man adapted the camera, so God adapted the eye to the laws of light ? True ; but for the laws of light the eye would not see. We might almost feel inclined to say that light was invented for the eye. But the Elohist having placed light at the earliest epoch (before the sun and the stars, indeed, whence comes all the light, even the so-called artificial light that we know}, no theologer would hit upon this conception, which is not a bit more extravagant than that the sun was made to rule the day, which, therefore, must have existed before the sun. But here, as in the moral government of �37 the world (which religion had to supplement by a devil), we run great danger, if we press the argument home, of imagining the Unerring to be as great a bungler as poor, designing, fractionally informed man. If the eye was “designed” for sight, why should so many exquisite “ contrivances ” exist for defeating that object? Why should this man be born blind, why should an Egyptian sun make that man sightless, why should the focal power of the lens be often—generally, I may say—so ill adapted to the position of the retina, that no distinct image can be formed till man’s knowledge of the laws of optics has taught him the effect of lenses of glass, and how to grind them ? The man is yet alive who first found what form of lens should Ibe given to remedy a not uncommon, but hitherto unsuspected defect existing in his own eye, and now generally known to oculists. If the Jews could ask, in order to explain a certain man’s blind­ ness, “ Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind ? ” are we right in parodying the answer, and replying, “ Neither has the AstronomerRoyal sinned, nor his parents; but he was born with astigmatic vision, that the works of God should be made * * A point of light is seen in correct vision as a single point, but in astigmatic vision not, stigma, a point), it is seen as a line of very perceptible length. If any one looks at himself in the hollow or projection of a bright silver table-spoon he sees the effect of astigmatism, which prolongs or shortens objects, as his �3§ manifest in him?” (John ix., 2, 3.) Do not such phrases grate on every soul attuned to God-like har­ mony ? And what shall we say of the colour-blind for whom no cure has been devised, but who as railway porters on land, or as the look-out at sea, may imperil or destroy hundreds of lives in a moment by confusing green with red? The man most capable * own face, according to the position in which the spoon is held. The Astronomer-Royal, Sir George Biddell Airy, when a pro­ fessor at Cambridge, used to relate to his class (of which I was a member) how he detected the nature of the error in his own eyes, and calculated the proper shape of the lenses (cylindrical and not spherical) for his spectacles to correct the defect, and how he found it impossible for years to get any optician who would undertake to grind them. Now the malformation is well known and studied, and several oculists (as Liebreich, Bowman, &c.) are prepared to measure the error, often very complicated, and order the construction of proper lenses. It is also found that many eyes, with correct vision when young, became astigmatic with age. Dr. Liebreich considers this to have been the cause of the extraordinary vertical lengthening in the drawing of objects introduced into Turner’s latest pictures. * See ‘ ‘ Researches on Colour-blindness, with a supplement on the danger attending the Present System of Railway and Marine Coloured Signals,” by the late Prof. George Wilson, of Edin­ burgh, 1855. “ The great majority of the colour-blind distin­ guish two of the primary colours, yellow and blue, but they err with the third red, which they confound with green, with brown, with grey, with drab, and occasionally with other colours; and not. unfrequently red is invisible to them, or appears black” �39 of passing an opinion on any point of physiological, optics, the great physiologist, physicist, and mathe­ matician, Helmholtz, who had devoted many years of study to this special subject, and written a classical work upon it, says, of the human eye, as Professor Clifford has told us (Macmillan!s Magazine, October, 1872, p. 507, col. 2) : “If an optician sent me that as an instrument, I should send it back to him with grave reproaches for the carelessness of his work, and demand the return of my money.” * Is there, indeed, a single organ in the human body ordinarily so perfect that it needs no help from man ? On what do our physicians and surgeons live ? Was disease part of God’s design for the doctor’s benefit, or was it a punishment for the patient’s sin ? And how can we avoid that last old Judaic notion if we see design in everything ? Aye, but to give up design is to throw p. 129. It is now not usual to consider blue a primary colour a colour-blind friend of my own could not distinguish red from dark blue ; I have known others who could not distinguish red from green. “There is every reason to believe that the number of males in this country who are subject in some degree to thisaffection of vision, is not less than one in twenty, and that the number markedly colour-blind, that is, given to mistake red for green, brown for green, purple for blue, and occasionally red for black, is not less than one in fifty,” p. 130. * This sentence was added for the second delivery, 18th May,. ‘873- �4° everything into the power of chance. Who is this grim goddess Chance that can assume the reins of the world because one man differs from another in opinion ? When the Pope and Cardinals condemned Galileo for affirming the world’s motion, they were, as it has been happily said, at that instant whirling round with it. Our views of the world and its constitution cannot alter the macrocosm without, but may materially affect the microcosm within. Let us face this Chance, and ask again, who art thou ? And in ultimate resort all the best philosophy of the day replies : Chance is the sum of all those laws which we have still to ■learn. To say that the world is what it is, bating the laws we know, through the laws we know not, is surely nothing terrible, is the merest truism of modern science. But by all means avoid a name which conjures up a foul Python that it would need another Phoebus to destroy. What, then, can we mean by God’s design, or rather by that which we humanly call design ? Again, all the best philosophy has its answer ready: we mean solely the conditions of existence, that without which—or that which changed—things would not be what they are. * Stated baldly thus, it seems a most * It will be at once objected that there is nothing even approaching to the conception of human design in such a ■statement. Quite true. If we attempted to introduce anything -approaching to human design, we should have to suppose that �4i barren proposition. Most laws of primary importance have that appearance till their consequences are traced. As long as we conceive that God meant every particular state to be what it is, it remains a sin to touch it. We have even now among us a “ peculiar people,” as they call themselves, who decline to summon a physician in case of illness. I have not heard that they insisted on eating grains of wild wheat instead of bread artfully prepared with unholy leaven from the bruised com. Directly we look upon things as being what they are, owing to certain conditions of existence, we inquire are these modifiable ? and if so, with what result ? We experiment, we modify. As the peculiar people— an “unconditioned” Creator fell into a profound study resulting in his devising not merely materials, but their laws, all fitting into some vast and complicated machine, embracing the whole universe, and having some distinct object which, as w’ell as all the incidents accompanying its action, (the “evil” as well as the “good,”) was conceived and intended beforehand, and which he preferred to effect in this way instead of by a single hat. Not venturing to claim that intimate acquaintance w'ith God’s mind, which most preachers practically assert themselves to possess, I cannot put forward such an hypothesis. It does not appear to be a particularly edifying conception, and on closer inspection I find it totally incomprehensible. But “conditions of existence ” imply no hypothesis. They are a mere statement of what we find, without superadding any imaginary cause, and may be, or rather must be, accepted, whatever cause may be Assigned to them. �42 and others by no means peculiar, I am sorry to say— might declare, we dare to correct God’s handiwork. Think of the sheer blasphemy of such a notion ! Think how deep that dye must be which could thus obliterate -every trace of all that is true and beautiful and good I During an expedition to study the effects of a total •eclipse of the sun a few years ago, as the astronomers were preparing to make those observations which tend •so greatly to establish oneness amidst the diversity of the universe, some ignorant natives lighted a fire to frighten off the dragon that was consuming the sun, and the whole observations would have been nullified by the smoke had not some English officer seen and bravely stamped it out. And we here, here in England, * here in London, here in the largest city of the world, speaking a language more widely spoken than any in the world, need a brave officer like him to stamp out the fumes which would thwart the only means we have of even vaguely forefeeling that Being whom no epithet ■Can describe, but which an ignorant crowd believes to be succumbing to the serpent knowledge. The dye of humanity is on our hand. Wash it as we may, either in the Abana and Pharpar of stately theology that arrogates to itself universal priort * So far as I can recollect, this refers to the total eclipse of the sun on the 12th December, 1871, and the incident mentioned is illustrated by a drawing in the Illustrated London News of the time. August, 1876. �43 knowledge, or in the Jordan of lowly science (2 Kings, v. 10, 12), that lays down as its first principle, ignorance of all not yet discovered—wash it as we may, we cannot wash it clean—but we can know that it A dyed, and we can lift it up with a clear conscience, that while panting after God as the hart for the water brooks (Ps. xlii. 1), we have never knowingly let a single drop of the dye fall on our shapeless conception of the Inconceivable. Let us take a lesson from the Greek myth of Semele. As we can only converse with the Deity through human conceptions, let us be content that they are human, and not entreat a presence which no man can see and live. And, in * order that our nature may not be more than “ almost” subdued to what it works in, let us wear in our “ heart of heart,”f never to be forgotten, cherished as a constant warning, as a safeguard against presumption, as the token of self-knowledge, Shakspeare’s badge of the Dyer’s Hand 1 * Semele “ was beloved by Zeus (Jupiter), and Here (Juno), stimulated by jealousy, appeared to her in the form of her aged nurse Beroe, and induced her to pray Zeus to visit her in the same splendour and majesty with which he appeared to Here. Zeus, who had promised that he would grant her every request, did as she desired. He appeared to her as the god of thunder, and Semele was consumed by the fire of lightning.” (W. Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.) f {Hamlet, act 3, scene 2, speech 14.) �44 DISMISSAL. May we each ponder in private, and shew forth in public, that the way to God is through the heart of man I � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. 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Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "The dyer's hand": a discourse preceded by The way to God: a meditation, delivered at South Place Chapel, Sunday 5th May 1872, and repeated by especial desire Sunday, 19th May 1873 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ellis, Alexander John [1814-1890] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [London] Collation: 44 p. ; 15 cm. Series title: South Place Discourses Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [South Place Chapel] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1873] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context T340 N206 Subject The topic of the resource Sermons Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work ("The dyer's hand": a discourse preceded by The way to God: a meditation, delivered at South Place Chapel, Sunday 5th May 1872, and repeated by especial desire Sunday, 19th May 1873), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English NSS Sermons https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/06d516e6c5600fa0c4b138a1bce8bc9d.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=VVvwQ3Y8FDuwSqFESsWo0M9ML6lIT5Crkef5Mmm1BjjPvhOcZo7mTW9WbTZOLxspnUDbO-JKAn1VRtLXGxlwfS5Zpp2NpNkuQ%7EMJPX-dyfGgXS7d-4%7E3aq2Ci3JS3oo4jtBxuY0N94x7t3rIdYZgQe8yTUvGinDXtz-gUfq5Qhdq8f6Z0ebG5c87R4Z-zNLPzlHiehROQphZIAewtCcN%7EyFgVKbQCd0lrZrisXRfZcMAZrp6dni1-cKty%7ErqIDzQjOhzrKA6pHqFipxGjfpt-g6OEFPy6nVCuUI9MqjiPsa1VGLBHqYOp2Mij4FjVcTjmwAYhY-FQjIYSB12u3zFbA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM dbef45b2d9a240a123eb0fdbface494d PDF Text Text 2.S2..4, f*)o< ON DISCUSSION AS A MEANS OF ELICITING TRUTH. A PAPER READ BEFORE THE LONDON DIALECTICAL SOCIETY, On We d n e s d a y , Oc t o b e r i, 1879. BY ALEX. J. ELLIS, B.A., F.R.S., F.S.A. PUBLISHED BY THE LONDON DIALECTICAL SOCIETY, LANGHAM HALL, 43, GREAT PORTLAND STREET, W. Price Threepence. �VNWIN BROTHERS, PRINTERS. �ON DISCUSSION AS A MEANS OF ELICITING TRUTH. Ra t h e r more than twenty years ago, as I was strolling down the chief street of St. Bees on a sultry Sunday afternoon, a cottage door stood open, and showed a decently-dressed man and his wife taking their Sun day’s meal, and, in their way, discussing some apparently important matter at the same time as their food. Their voices were raised and their tones eager, and as I passed by I heard their argument, and being an out sider literally as well as metaphorically (for I had not the least idea what they were talking about), I had ample opportunity of seeing most of the game. And it was simply this : “ Yes, you did I ” “ No, I didn’t! ” “ Yes, you did ! ” “ No, I didn’t! ” and so on, repeated at least half a dozen times as I passed by, in tones of unmistakeable obstinacy. Here was a case of typical dialectics,—I don’t mean a specimen of argument by philosophical discussion, but a truly typical specimen of the usual argument by reiterated assertion. Assertion without reason assigned, assertion from intuition, from feeling, from the vaguest and most in �complete knowledge of a subject, is so sweet and easy, that we are all only too ready to fall into it ourselves. Positive assertions, indeed, generally relate to matters about which we are very ignorant. A physician told me the other day, that his sister had passed through an ambulance class, and now laid down the law on anatomy and physiology in a way which he, who had studied the subjects for twenty years, instead of six weeks, could not venture to imitate. Some assertors frequently venture on argument which, when analysed, amounts to saying : “ It is so, because it is so, because I know it is so, because I feel it is so, because it can’t be otherwise, because it stands to reason, because every schoolboy knows it, because I’m certain I’ve seen it scores of times, (at least I know I did once,) and besides every fool knows it must be so, and that’s enough.’’ Certainly, quite enough. Every wise man, of course, endorses what every fool knows. But there’s another side to the question, which I will also illustrate by a perfectly authentic anecdote. A carpenter in a village at the North of Yorkshire, when my late brother-in-law proposed that he should under take some job, would say : “You’ll excuse me, sir,” with a deferential touching of his cap, coupled with an unmistakeable emphasis on the personal pronoun, “ You’ll excuse me, sir, but there’s a deal of things as goes to everything. You’ll excuse me, sir.” Now this pithy remark sums up nearly every point which has to be borne in mind in making assertions, and which gives value to discussion. There is indeed “ a deal,” �an inconceivable quantity of circumstances and con siderations, which “ goes to everything ” on which we have to make an assertion, and we cannot by possibility be acquainted with more than a very minute fraction of them, unless we have the brain capacity of the rustic that learned all about the steam-engine in five minutes, and never forgot what he heard, though his instructor would perhaps hardly recognise the lesson in the abridged report. The very fact, however, that most people have not thought of circumstances which may prove of the utmost importance in forming a judgment, but which spontaneously occur to others, shows the great value of discussion, in which these circumstances, or at least many of them, are immediately adduced. We have thus a greater chance of arriving at a correct notion of what is really the case,—the truth as it is commonly called,—supposing that, and not the uphold ing of our own assertions, to be our real purpose. Now, the Dialectical Society aims at arriving at the truth by means of discussion, and as I was asked to open the present session by a paper, it occurred to me that there was no subject more important for the Society to consider than that which they look upon as the very charter of their existence. When a person reads a paper on which a discussion has to be raised, it is to be presumed that he has thought it well over, that the statements he makes are the result of study, examination, or experiment, but that he acknowledges that of “ the deal of things that goes to everything” many may have escaped him,which, �6 when presented, may induce hixn. to modify his state ments partially or wholly. In fact, it is a condition that whoever presents his judgments for criticism, ad mits that they may be criticised. We recollect the barrister turned parson in Theodore Hook’s novel, who found it so comfortable when he got into his pulpit, that there was no one to rise on the other side. But a more sober judgment would be, that that is the most unfortunate position for men to occupy, and the acts of the uncontradictable bear out this view. But as to eliciting truth by discussion—well, I should have to pause a little before I saw my way to giving an opinion on the subject. Let me explain some of my difficulties. We all know Pilate’s petulant remark, “ What is —t r u t h ? ” and really, when we hear so much called “the truth” in one generation which will be looked upon as dreams, or worse, in the next, we begin to appreciate the mind-weariness of a Roman who knew philosophy, and was bothered by a Jew’s telling him that he had come into the world to bear witness unto “ the truth,” and that everyone that was of “ the truth ” heard his voice (John xviii. 37) ; and we can readily understand his finding no fault in the dreamer. At any rate, even if the scene be, as it may be, a mere dramatic invention, it is well conceived and conformable to nature as we know it now. The truth ! what is it ? What can we mean by it? How is it that for thousands of years the business of every philosopher has been to show that his predecessor had not found it out ? Let me take a matter as far removed from the heats of �political and religious discussion as possible, and ask, are mathematics sublimated physics or intuitions ? are they founded upon recollected and combined experi ences, or axiomatic assertions, whose proof is in them selves ? Now here's a subject, the very simplest in existence, appealing, one would think, to no one human passion, on which all the world acknowledges that exact notions are to be found if anywhere, and yet what is the truth already elicited by discussion ? And you will perceive that I do not confine myself to extem pore discussion by word of mouth, such as goes on in this room, which can at the very most be considered as preliminary, as suggestive, as giving ground for re flection. On the point I have raised the profoundest thinkers have laboured for years. They have read and re-read the discussions, they have proved the forensic weapons and armour at every conceivable point, and the result is, there are still two parties, the physicists and the intuitionists, and they are likely to remain, so far as I can see, for the difference is the fundamental one between those who found knowledge on experience, and those who spin it as a cobweb from their own brains. But the world says, what does it matter ? We know what a straight line is, and what an angle is, and whether we know it by experience or by intuition, what does that concern the business of life ? Well, at any rate, the Association for the Improvement of Geo metrical Teaching, in their syllabus, lately published, do not attempt to define a straight line or an angle, �8 and the late Prof. De Morgan said the best definitions were “ a straight line’s a straight line, and an angle’s an angle.” So people would seem to be independent of the controversy. But what becomes of truth ? And may we not apply the same process to other matters, cease to inquire into origins or reasons, and take re sults with nothing to check them, just as a well-known musician said lately that music was better without acoustics ? But in this case, again, what becomes of truth ? and how is it to be elicited by discussion ? Such subjects as I have mentioned are, however, usually left to adepts. Geometrical conceptions and arguments are about the simplest in the world, but just for that reason, may be, the general public takes slight interest in them, and they are so little a matter of common experience that those who know nothing of them, really know that they are ignorant, though a few will persist in squaring the circle. If pressed they may say, “ Oh ! the truth’s long been known about such things” (I’m afraid they would really say, “ those sort of things,”) “and they are of little use in practical life ; we want to find the truth on matters of high import.” And then, leaving the simplest, they jump at the most complicated. They will open up questions of right and wrong, society, government, religion, deity, atheism, eternal life, the soul, spirits, angels, devils, responsibility here and hereafter, inspiration, phenomena and noumena, metaphysics of all kinds, in short the vague, the difficult, the intangible, the inac cessible, the unintelligible, or at least the unknown. �9 These are what charm the general mind. To prove that God exists, to prove that there’s no proof that God exists—some even try to prove that God does not exist, the admitted impossibility of proving a negative adding to the zest of the argument— to alter the whole system of government, to invent governments for people that they know nothing of, to recast legislation, to alter property relations, to reform everything; these are the questions about which discussion waxes interesting and eager, where no one can know much, and most know nothing, and truth remains quiet at the bottom of her well. You will think that I am in the reversed case of Balaam, and being asked to bless have remained to curse. But that would be a mistake. Such subjects as I have named may even be discussed with advantage, if the discussion only succeeds in showing us how much more need we have of further thought, further inquiry, further knowledge, before we can reach a result. But it must not be expected that in the excitement of speaking at the moment, after merely hearing a paper, and with necessarily an imperfect recollection of its contents, any great advance can be made towards the settlement of a difficult question. This fact has been duly recognised in this Society by the rule (xv.) that no vote be taken with reference to the subject of the paper read, or discussion which may have taken place. Yet we can do much which is valuable. We can, by a small sample, gauge current opinion upon the subjects mooted. That will often B �IO give us much to think over, especially in endeavouring to account for this current opinion, and in estimating what amount of knowledge it represents, and hence what amount of permanence it is likely to possess. It is especially valuable to those whose judgments run counter to general opinion, because it may lead them to consider matters and arguments which have entirely slipped their attention, and must be satis factorily disposed of, before they can feel any certainty. But as for truth— ! But if truth cannot be discovered by discussion, how can it be attained ? I do not know that it can ever be attained. I do not know that we have any test by which we could know that it had been attained. The test that we cannot conceive the contrary is individual, varying from man to man, and in the same man from one state of knowledge to another, and has entirely different meanings in different mouths. Yet at present it is held to be the best test by at least one of our best thinkers. Take an example from, the axioms of Euclid, which are generally supposed to satisfy this test com pletely. “ If equals be added to equals the sums are equal.” Does not your assent to that depend upon your conception of the words “ equal, add, and sum ” ? Giving them the only meanings most of you probably know, the only meanings known to Euclid—even to him each word had several meanings—you might accept the dictum, but even then you must qualify it and verify it for each particular case, as straight lines, angles, areas, circles, curved lines. But there are �such things as “directed lines.” Does it apply to them ? How can those who know nothing of the pro perties of directed lines and the nature of their addi tion, deny or accept the axiom ? For directed straight lines on a plane it holds, for directed arcs of great circles on a sphere it does not hold, unless it is quali fied with the words “ in the same order,” and those words need farther explanation. I am not going to demonstrate the fact, which is one of the fundamental propositions of SirW. Rowan Hamilton’s Quaternions. It is quite enough to state it, in order to show how inconceivability is as a test limited by our knowledge of the factors of thought. My own practical test of a theory enunciated as true, that is of a truth in common parlance, rests not on inconceivability but on conceivability, thus : Conceive, or if possible, try experimentally, the effect of the joint action of this theory with others regarded as established, and see whether the result agrees with experience. This is mererly a test, not a proof. For example, the undulatory theory of light bears this test ve y well. Yet, I can by no means regard it as established. Such theories are merely as good as true within certain limits. And none of our theories seem to be established beyond those limits ; scarcely any even can be fully established within those limits It is frequently not even possible to experiment. A medicine cures a patient, we think. But we cannot restore him to his condition before taking the medicine, and see what would have happened had he not taken it, or had he �12 taken some other. We are driven to the very loose analogies of patients in what may appear similar cases, but are different in many secondary peculiarities, and the truth is very doubtfully elicited. Hence the great faith of people in doctors and nostrums,—in barbarous language, medicine-men and fetishes,—of whose real knowledge and action they are most profoundly ignorant. Now in all such matters dicussion is of great impor tance, because it supplies omissions, and causes conse quences and connections to be viewed with different lights. Whenever we make subjective experiments we are apt to be blinded to exceptions, and see only what we wish to see. One who takes iip the subject afresh, and views it from the side of his own environment, and the training of years that this has given him, which will almost invariably have been very different from those of the first propounder of the theory,—will be sure to find out the weak points and make the apparently substantial edifice totter to its base. But will he assist in erecting a firm edifice in its place ? Will he have built a palace of truth ? The most he usually does, at any rate, is to destroy an enchanted castle of error. And this to my mind is the greatest use of discus sion. It is negative not positive, destructive not con structive. It shows points of weakness, it does not build points of strength. It pulls to pieces, it does not re-create. Perhaps after any verbal discussion no one goes home convinced who has previously thought on the subject, least of all the propounder and his chief �opponent The utmost gain of either is generally less security in his own opinion. Those who are con vinced straight off are seldom worth convincing at all. How many votes in Parliament—our great dialectical society—are obtained through the speeches heard ? Many persons may be shaken in their opinions, but there is generally a strong motive in the background, the support of party, which carries the day. In the smaller society here present—the great merit of which is that it is able to discuss subjects of all kinds with calmness and propriety, that it does not find it neces sary to exclude those explosive subjects of religion, politics, and sex, which are generally tabooed—there is fortunately no party to support, there is a unanimous desire to find out what the reader of a paper means, by help of a rattling fire of questions, which are sometimes pretty difficult to answer, and then to state opinions from individual thought andknowledgeforand against, to which the reader briefly replies. Now, there is no doubt in my own mind, that all this is admirable exercise for the discussers, that it greatly opens their eyes, clears their understanding, and makes them more fit to think. But that it after all elicits truth, at least directly, I must beg leave to doubt Indirectly, no doubt, it does much towards helping a thinker forwards; directly, it does very little. There is necessarily no co-operation, no taking of a great subject to pieces, and working at the details separately, so as ultimately to form a perfect whole, like the large woodcuts of our periodicals, engraved by different hands on small �14 blocks of wood ultimately screwed together. Even the papers which are read are not parts of some great whole, but rather unconnected screeds of private thought on the most diverse subjects. Thus in looking over the subjects of papers which have here been read and discussed during the last two years, I find them so unconnected that they can scarcely be classed. Religion occupied six papers, from Mr. Bradlaugh, Dr. Brydges, Mr. Picton, Mr. Foote, Mr. Parris, and myself, very far from beginners on the subject certainly, but as certainly unconnected by any common train of thought. Social arrangements—I can hardly say sociology—occupied as many evenings ; two led by Mr. Coupland, and others by Mr. Rigby Smith, Mr. Fisher, Mr. Parris, and Mr. Montefiore. Mr. Conway gave two papers dealing with the Woman Question in different aspects. Three papers dealt with politics, under the leadership of Mr. Biggar, M.P., Mr. Probyn, and Dr. Drysdale. Four papers were devoted to matters of legal enact ment, introduced by Mr. Tailack, Mrs. Lowe, Rev. Dawson Burns, and Professor Hunter, the last of which gave rise to a special committee. The other papers cannot easily be classed, but Mr. Levy spoke of his “Utopia,” Mrs. Hoggan, M.D., on how to meet chronic illness, Rev. H. N. Oxenham on vivisection, and probably other subjects were also started, but this is enough to show the great variety and complexity of the matters brought before the Society to discuss. It is evident that unprepared discussions upon such �subjects could not lead to any elicitation of truth; they could at most be gymnastics of thought, excellent preparation, but necessarily unfinished work. Might I suggest, by way of an experiment, your taking of a leaf out of the book of the Education Society ? A variety of individual papers on uncon nected branches of education, followed by discussions, used to take place before this Society, which has this year carried out a connected series of discussions upon one book, written by its president, Professor Bain, on ^ Education as a Science.” Might not the Dialectical Society with advantage set apart, say one evening in each month, for connected discussions upon some such work as Spencer’s “ Data of Ethics ”? Each chapter or section might be made the subject of a paper and dis cussion. Such a book is full of matter for discussion, and the discussers would have had the advantage of seeing the whole argument of the original writer col lectively, before beginning to argue, together with the peculiar views of the opener. I throw this out merely as a suggestion for co-operative thinking and directed discussion. But to my mind such discussions would after all be only admirable exercises. They would not produce philosophic results, they would only enable those who take part in them more fully to appreciate the real work of philosophers, and hereafter, may be, really to play their part in advancing the thoughts of mankind. The only discussion which in any way elicits an approximation to truth, that is, which gradually brings �i6 men’s thoughts into a juster conception of the objects of thought and their mutual relations, as evinced by greater security of prediction, is not the verbal discus sion of an hour or the paper discussion of a lifetime. It is the discussion of one life’s thought on another’s, and lasts for ages, leaving its impress on the race, not the individual. It is at first sight surprising how much thought, carefully written out and even printed, never finds an echo in another century, when the individuals are gone, and other knowledge has grown up in the race. Even the raw form of that knowledge has only an antiquarian interest. The knowledge itself has become part of the race, and we forget the discussion which often cannot be unravelled without great difficulty. What man now cares to read of perpetual motion and the philosopher’s stone? Who cares for judicial astrology? Who, beyond priests, care for patristic theology ? The questions which fired thousands as to the books of Moses and Joshua, when the first volume of Colenso appeared, were scarcely heard when the seventh volume came out, though the man is happily still alive to do good. Why this fire and this apathy ? An established Church was concerned in discussing away the first, which appealed to popular knowledge of the English Bible, and threatened to shake the edifice to its base by rending the rock on which it stood. The last volumes were learned discussions, into which no one cared to enter, for everyone was already convinced. No one now considers the books of Moses and Joshua to be verbally inspired—even the Establish �ment has given them up, and although some of the ministers of other sects may yet feel sure that they are, such a fact only shows how little suited the teachers are to teach. This result, of course, has not come from one man, although I have referred to one man alone as a modern typical illustration. It has resulted from a discussion of four centuries, begun by men like Wycliffe and Luther, who thought they were merely dispersing the clouds of papacy, but who were establishing those negative principles, which have done much other work, and have still much work before them. But these men taught us nothing of what they purposed. They merely rubbed out ; they did not draw in. Their work was like those who remove the accumulated whitewash of centuries on the walls of a church to show the old fresco below. But they believed in the old fresco, and were themselves as intolerant as their predecessors of any suggestion that it was out of drawing, out of taste, or false in conception. The history of religion in Europe and on the shores of the Mediterannean has been a succession of nega tives. When and how the positive form of Egyptian worship came in, or the rude worship of the North of Europe, we know not. Even the Greek and Roman gods, although so far from primitive, are but indis tinctly traceable. But Judaism was a negative form of polytheism. It made no new god, but it wiped off many. And round its one God grew a poetic literature due to great men and great thinkers, which was dis tinctly positive in character. But these men, and more �especially their interpreters, were intolerant of criti cism. It came, many times in vain, at last in the form of Jesus, who merely scraped off the whitewash and endeavoured to exhibit the old conception of the one Judaic God (Matthew v. 17-20). Round this work, especially through the action of Paul of Tarsus, grew a new and very remarkable, I might almost say very strange, roll of doctrine, and finally to the old Judaic book was added the new Christian book. But so little did this form of Christianity revolutionise Judaism, that it absolutely incorporated it, and made the Jewish book the corner-stone of the Christian edifice to such an extent, that theoretical Christianity crumbles to dust when the legendary character of the two principal Mosaic histories of creation has been established. Then round this pair of books grew a new literature, offering much that was positive, a priesthood, an inter pretation of tradition, oftentimes irreconcilable with the books, but none the worse for that, and an in tolerance of criticism to the extent of burning the critic. Then came another negative revulsion, another scraping off of the new accumulation of whitewash, and Protestantism bore aloft the old old fresco, much the worse for its continual overplastering, but still un altered. “ The books, the whole books, and nothing but the books !” was its motto. But that meant, the right of everyone to read the books,—granted,—and to criticise them,—oh, dear, no ! It was only the new teachers who could interpret ; what business had Tom, Dick, and Harry, who knew nothing of the matter, to put in a �word ? or what business had a pale scholar, who had thought over the subject, who had investigated every trace and weighed every argument, to controvert the opinions for which the scrapers had given their life’s blood ? If he were a laic, it was impertinence ; if he were an ecclesiastic, it was heresy. And heresy had its limits. Paul might “ confess that after the way which they called heresy so worshipped he the God of his fathers, believing all things which were written in the law and the prophets.” (Acts xxiv. 14), that is, believing in the fresco, but not the whitewash. But when it came to criticising the fresco itself, Paul thought very differently. “ These things teach and exhort,” says he ; “ if any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness, he is proud” (or a fool, says the marginal reading of the authorised version, the original word means ‘ smoked,’ as in ‘ smoking flax shall he not quench’ (Matt. xii. 20), a sufficiently expressive term of abuse ; but it is only the first of a long series, for Paul proceeds), “knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth” (poor truth !) “ supposing that gain is godliness : from such withdraw thyself.” (Tim. vi. 3-5 ) It is clear that Paul would not have tolerated a Dialectical Society, with its “ perverse disputings of men of (as a matter of course) corrupt minds.” �20 \ It is evident, then, that Paul and Luther, the two typical reformers, did not seek to teach anything new, but merely to restore the old, and the work they did was exactly opposite to what they proposed : it was nothing less than to establish the right of discussion, the right of criticism, the right of everyone, learned or unlearned, to say his say. It is of the utmost importance that we should not limit criticism to those who have the re quisite knowledge. (Our reviews, by the by, would be sadly blank if that were the case.) We have quite a right to turn a deaf ear to the words of a man who clearly knows nothing about the matter he is speaking about. But if we once attempt to prejudge his know ledge and keep him silent, we jeopardise the whole right of free discussion, and although free discussion will not elicit truth, there is no other means for elimi nating error. And these words contain the very pith of the observations which I have to make to you this evening. Discussion never has elicited truth, and there does not seem to be the slightest probability of its ever doing so. Approximations to truth arise from painfully evolved hypotheses of thinkers, who endeavour to form the simplest possible representations of all the facts they can manage to collect. But these collections are generally deficient, these representations frequently— but of course in typical cases always involuntarily—■ leave out of consideration important factors, or distri bute the weight of facts injudiciously. Here steps in discussion and criticism, and puts its finger on the �2I blot. Even the veriest ninny who knows nothing about the matter may blurt out some fact which has es caped the philosopher’s notice, although he may not have the least conception of what he is really saying. But everyone must have a right to speak, and we must leave it to their own good sense or modesty, based on consciousness of ignorance, not to speak unless they feel that they have something to say which has a bearing on the question. The function then of dis cussion, that is, of criticism, is the elimination of error, an extremely different thing from the elicitation of truth, but an essential part of the process. Without discussion, error is inevitable ; with discussion, truth is by no means certain, but it is rendered possible. There is, however, another kind of discussion, which is meant to take place, for example, on a great scale in Parliament, and is daily taking place in small committees appointed to deliberate and advise on a course of action. Here each member is selected generally, or theoretically, with a view to his know ledge of the matter in hand, and although such bodies usually appoint one of their number, whom they are supposed to consider best qualified for the purpose, to draw up a scheme, the others in reviewing it are sup posed not merely to criticise, but to amend, to make suggestions, to do positive as well as negative work, and, if they cannot agree, to draw up alternative schemes. A remarkable instance of this kind of dis cussion came under my notice a few years ago. The Association for The Improvement of Geometrical �22 Teaching, to which I have already had occasion to allude, appointed a committee (of which I may as well state I was not a member) to draw up a scheme for teaching Proportion, notoriously the most difficult subject in elementary mathematics. The committee, consisting of five excellent mathematicians, met, talked, and appointed one of their number to draw up a scheme to submit to them at their next meeting. The day came, the scheme was read, talked over, and put to the vote, when four voted against it, and one, the scheme-drawer himself, for it. That would never do. So another reporter was appointed to draw up another scheme, which was submitted to the next meeting, and with the same result, four against and one for, only the distribution of the voters was dif ferent. It was clear that no one scheme could come from these five competent men. So they agreed that each one should present his own report, and the As sociation had absolutely to select from among five different schemes, and they actually did select one and a-half, the meaning of which I could not make clear to you without entering into a mass of details quite unsuitable to a general audience. But the fact, of which I am personally cognisant, serves to exem plify, what will probably be within the experience of all, that even deliberative discussion does not gene rally lead to universally acceptable proposals, but usually ends in compromise, or, to put it in other words, does not really lead to positive truth, but at most to less error. �23 In such a society as the present, no one of course suspects that the discussions raised will have any im mediate or wide influence on public opinion. The very fact that public opinion is very intolerant, and thinks that many subjects should never be discussed, which this society does not shrink from discussing, is enough to discredit its work in the eye of “ the world.” But, nevertheless, the members of this Society are also members of the great body social, and will form efficient units of that body in any deliberative act, while the training which they receive from frequent and animated discussion of topics which have the most important bearing upon acts of the community, cannot fail to enable them to sustain their part in a way which is not only creditable to themselves, but advantageous to the public. Especially would I reckon among the great advantages of such discus sions as here arise, the opportunity which each member has of measuring his own strength. This may be very different on different subjects, and the result may be, I hope is, to lead them to increase their strength upon those matters where they are strongest, and to repair their weakness in others. There are several pitfalls in discussion societies which have to be avoided. There is a great danger in mistaking readiness for depth, fluency for argu ment, and self-sufficiency for power. But the greatest danger of all is arguing for the sake of victory, of taking part for or against any opinion, no matter what, because there is somebody to oppose, not because the |; �speaker’s own deliberations have led him to the ex pression of opinion. Still, with all such drawbacks, a well-conducted discussion society is an excellent school, by which a man may be led to the great work of life, the advancement of the race, physically, intellectually, and socially, not merely eliminating error, but eliciting truth. �NOTES. As the Council of the Dialectical Society have resolved to print the preceding paper, which I felt at the time, and still feel, had not been sufficiently considered to deserve preserva tion. in such a form, I take the opportunity of saying a few words on points which were raised on the discussion that followed. The difficulty of following a written paper when read out, sufficiently well for discussing its principles, was well exempli fied by one speaker, who appeared to suppose that I deprecated discussion, and considered it useless. Those who have read the paper will see how far from correct was any such con ception. Another speaker stated that discussion on paper was much inferior to discussion viva voce. For many purposes oral discussion is most important, especially as a preliminary, and discussion on paper is very tedious. But when we wish to arrive at precise notions, and not to omit arguments of importance, or to overlook what has been advanced through a lapse of memory, oral discussion necessarily fails. Again, oral discussions live in memory alone, unless reported verbatim, and are consequently rapidly forgotten, leaving only an impression, and often an incorrect impression, of what was said, entirely insufficient for anything approaching to the elicitation of truth. Another speaker thought that I was wrong in deprecating speaking for the sake of speaking, or defending an opinion which the speaker did not entertain. He thought that both gave readiness and facility of language, and at the same time �26 an aptitude for considering objections. This may be fully granted, and in mere discussion classes, such speaking has it value. Especially it is useful to be able to call to mind all the objections which may be raised to an argument in which the speaker himself believes. But speaking without know ledge, without examination, without any further desire than to speak, and to raise arguments in which the speaker has himself no faith, is certainly not a way of eliciting truth. The same speaker found that my anecdote respecting the committee on Proportion did not apply, because he supposed that there was a mere disagreement as to method and none in principle on such a subject. There happened to be widely diverse views on principle, and comparatively little difference on method. But the point of my anecdote was that a deliberative discussion of adepts will frequently end in com promise, and not in the ascertainment of “truth.” The same speaker, however, touched upon the question of what is “ true,” and said that a distinction must be drawn between noumenal and phenomenal truth, that we must be satisfied with what is true “for general purposes,” and not strive after the absolute. “Noumenal truth ” did not form part of my argument. It is very difficult to conceive what is meant by it, and I did not intend to express myself in such a way as to lead to any supposition that I referred to noumenal truth at all. The expression “ true for general purposes,” used by the speaker, implied a distinct “com promise.” And in all physical investigations, which are purely phenomenal, we are obliged to take “means” or “averages,” which are all “compromises” in fact. The whole of science is based upon such “ means,” and no one dreams of being able to reach absolute exactness. But there are numerous inquiries—by far the most numerous and the most desired as subjects of discussion—which have not reached a scientific stage proper, so as to be reducible even approximatively, to arithmetic, and in these we must be �satisfied with very rough compromises indeed, although it is just in these that speakers are apt to assume the absolute correctness of their own views. To another speaker it seemed that I had much underrated the power of discussion in eliciting truth, and he considered that there was a distinctly positive side to discussion. My paper certainly did not assert the contrary, for I gave due place to the positive suggestions which might be made, and often are made. But such suggestions are rather points of departure than anything else, and their immediate action is generally to divert the stream of another person’s thoughts, and hence to eliminate error. If they really help to elicit truth, it is possibly always by giving a speaker matter to think over. My suggestion for devoting one evening in a month to a systematic discussion of one book, did not meet with much favour. All that spoke on it, spoke against it. There seem to be practical objections arising from the working of the Society, from a desire for novelty, and from the impossibility of regular attendance. But by saying one evening a month, I intended to leave the other evening disposable for these discursive subjects, and by proposing that each part should be introduced by a paper, I intended to give each evening thus devoted an individual character, and not to partake of the nature of a six nights’ unreported debate, where absence on two or three nights would prevent proper understanding of the arguments advanced when the intending debater was at last present. Also I hoped that each person who came would have had time to look over the whole of the book bearing upon the particular part to be there discussed, which would in some respect stand in place of reports of previous debates. Nor was it my intention that the series of debates should run over half of a whole session. It might be quite enough at first to set apart three or four monthly meetings for such a purpose. But the idea pre-supposed �28 that the Society was really desirous of eliminating as much error and eliciting as much truth as was possible upon certain subjects, or at any rate of discussing fully important theories and arguments which had been raised by profound thinkers. This supposes a very advanced stage for any society, and probably it is only adapted for a smaller body of very earnest thinkers. I think I remember how much good resulted from adopting a similar plan, to the members of a small debating society of which John Stuart Mill, George Grote, and others belonged when young men. There is a good deal about it in Mill’s autobiography. To show how oral discussion is apt to swerve from the point, it may be noted that on one speaker referring to Auguste Comte’s hierarchy of the sciences, another instantly asked what single ‘ ‘ truth ” Comte had ever discovered, and the discussion threatened to become one on Comte’s Philo sophy and Polity, which, even if the speakers had thoroughly studied them, could not have been discussed in one evening, and had no connection however slight with the subject of my paper. But I may mention incidentally that Comte con sidered that the great merit of his religion over that of all others was that it was always discussible, although perhaps no person was ever more impatient of having his opinions called in question by a disciple, or formed an ecclesiastical system which would have more completely excluded discussion. This tendency in a discussion to fly off to some other subject is very strong. In my former paper, the speakers constantly referred to religion as it should be, instead of the connotation of the English word religion, and supposed that I desired to lay down a definition of religion, instead of endeavouring to ascertain the common area of the numerous areas of thought it actually expresses. In a discussion I had lately to conduct concerning the especial use of classical over other languages as an instrument of education, the speakers continually complained that I checked them when speaking �29 of the general use of language as an instrument of education, which being admitted by the opener, had nothing whatever to do with the matter on which a discussion was sought to be raised. This is one of the great difficulties of oral discussion. A speaker is struck by a sudden thought in the course of speaking and follows it out, quite unaware that he is wasting valuable time set apart for one particular object, in dealing with another. One way which this acts is to induce a speaker to introduce his own pet theory on every occasion, as one of the speakers on my paper pointed out,reminding one of the way in which advertisements begin by talking of the Afghan or Zulu Wars in large letters, and glide off ingeniously to a recommendation of Eno’s Fruit Salt or Moses’s Boys’ Suits. If this tendency is not at once checked by the chairman the discussion becomes abortive. My chairman spoke especially upon the value of the negative character of discussion. It was Comte’s opinion that no theory is really snuffed out unless it has been replaced by another, and hence he fulminated against the Reformation, and denied Luther a place in his calendar, although he admitted Paul. Mere negation, nothing but nihilism, is of course self-destructive, ending in a by no means desirable nirvana. But the air is full of theories which cry out for annihilation, and the people who hold them are generally quite unreachable by other theories, at least until the first have been strangled by appeals to the most every-day knowledge. When these unfortunate theories have the further misfortune of subserving the material interests of large bodies of men, as the scribes and pharisees of preChristian Judaism, then they are far more difficult and far more necessary to be exterminated. These are the points of course to which the chairman’s laudations of negation were directed, and some of them were alluded to in the paper. But the principle of discussion is mainly negative. As these Notes will show, the speakers generally take exception to �3° some views enunciated, and seldom if ever advance in dependent theories, unless they dart off to something irrelevant. Hence discussion is mainly critical, not co-operative. It might surely become more co-operative, but perhaps that is not to be expected in a Society so large and so constituted as the Dialectical. These remarks touch upon nearly every point raised, and will I hope tend to render the paper more complete, although it remains in a far more imperfect state that I could have wished. A. J. E. �I 1 �Inntrnn gxalatual Snddg, LANGHAM HALL, 43, GREAT PORTLAND STREET, W. ^regtbent: Professor W. A. Hu n t e r , M.A. An d r e w Cl a r k , Esq.,M.D. Mo n c u r e D. Co n w a y , Esq,. M.A. R. H. Fo x -Bo u r n e , Esq. Professor Hu x l e y , F.R.S. Rev. H. B. Wil s o n , B.D. A. J. El l is , B.A., F.R.S., F.S.A. ©ounct! : H. Ee d e , Esq. Miss H. P. Do w n in g . T. Ho w a r d Dr a y , Esq. C. R. Dr y s d a l e , Esq.,M.D. D. H. DYTE,Esq., L.R.C.P. Lond. R. G. He m b e r , Esq. Mrs. L. Lo w e . A. Ba s s e t t Ho pk in s , Esq., M.A. J. G. Ho c k e n , Esq. Miss A. Vic k e r y . W. C. Co u pl a n d , Esq., M.A., B.Sc. ?i^on. treasurer: C. R. Dr y s d a l e , Esq., M.D. ?^on. ®ecretavg : R. G. He m b e r , Esq. ?^on. ^oltcttor: W. H. Sw e ps t o n e , Esq. &ul)itorg : E. Kn e l l e r Sm a r t , Esq. | J. R. Sh e a r e r , Esq. The Society meets for the discussion of Social, Political, and Philosophical subjects, upon the first and third Wednes days in each month from October to July. Chair taken at Eight o’clock. Subscription, Half-a-Guinea per annum. Prospectus and Rules (price Sixpence) may be obtained of the Hon. Sec., who will also give any further information relating to the Society. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource On discussion as a means of eliciting truth: a paper read before the London Dialectical Society on Wednesday, October 1, 1879. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ellis, Alexander John [1814-1890] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 30, [1] p. : 15 cm. Notes: Author cited as Alex. J. Ellis on title page. Printed by the Gresham Press, Unwin Brothers. Information on the Society's aims and officers on back page. Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts. 2. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available London Dialectical Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1879] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G3360 Subject The topic of the resource Rationalism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (On discussion as a means of eliciting truth: a paper read before the London Dialectical Society on Wednesday, October 1, 1879), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Debates and Debating Discussion Morris Tracts Truth