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COMMON SOURCE OF ERROR IN
I SEEING AND BELIEVING. .
ytrfutt
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
ON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 27th FEBRUARY, 1881,
By H. MAUDSLEY, M.D.,
IConban:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1881.
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�SYLLABUS.
1. The influence of preconceived idea and of feeling to vitiate observation.
Illustrations:
а. Illusions of Sense.
б. Hallucinations of Sense.
c. Erroneous observation.
d. Miracles.
2. The influence of feeling and belief to vitiate reasoning.
a. Individuals.
b. In communities.
3. The relation of feeling to intellect in the progress of the race.
�I
H
?!
�COMMON SOURCE OF ERROR IN
. SEEING AND BELIEVING.
PROPOSE not in this lecture to enumerate and discuss all the
mistakes which we are liable to make when we see and draw
conclusions from what we see—all the fallacies, that is to say, to
which observation and reasoning are exposed; I purpose only to
note and illustrate now one very common and prolific source of
wrong observation and inference. It is certain we do not see and
judge rightly by instinct; too often, although we have eyes, we
see not truly, and although we have reason, we use it to come to
wrong conclusions. Reason, we know, man claims as his almost
exclusive prerogative, defining himself—for he has that advantage
over other animals—as pre-eminently the reasoning animal; and
one need not cavil at the definition so long as it is not understood
to mean that everybody reasons rightly, or even commonly bases
his beliefs upon reason. To say of the great majority of persons
that they reason at all in the highest sense of the word is to say
what is not true, since their opinions are plainly either got by
inheritance, or engrafted by education, or moulded by particular
life-experiences, or imposed by authority of some kind, and are
then worn by them, as they wear their clothes, after the fashion.
Governed by their habits of opinion as they are by their habits of
life they find it as hard a matter to change the one as to change
the other. If all men reasoned truly and adequately on every
subject, it is evident that all men would be agreed, which is not
quite the case; we should not be meeting here this afternoon to
broach opinions which will not be perhaps in harmony with those
which have been preached from a thousand pulpits this morning;
the heresy of yesterday would not be, as it often is, the common
sense of to-day, and the common sense of to-day the nonsense of
to-morrow ; the majority would not have found it necessary to
stone, burn, poison, cut asunder, crucify, or otherwise silence the
voices of the few who, in the succession of the ages, have not
I
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Common Source of Error in
failed to appear from time to time to inspire and to raise men to
higher planes of thought and duty; the world would have been
without the history of its noble army of martyrs of humanity.
This being so, it is a good thing, I think, from time to time to
make a particular study of the common errors to which we are
liable in observation and thinking, and to take note how far
wrong they may carry us. My attention is drawn often and
forcibly to this matter, because, in the course of my professional
work, I meet with persons who, of sound understanding in respect
of all ordinary matters, entertain some extraordinary delusions in
respect of one or two subjects, and cannot be convinced of their
errors by the plainest evidence and argument. Naturally one asks
oneself how it comes to pass that they form and entertain notions,
which are absurd to the common sense of mankind, holding to
them in the face of conclusive disproof, and notwithstanding that
they cannot find a single person in the world to agree with them.
The vulgar saying is that they have “ lost their senses,” but it is
not so; their senses are in full work, but somehow they fail to
perform their proper offices. In seeking the explanations of these
remarkable distractions of mind one comes to perceive that, after
all, these people have only carried to an extreme pitch, to an
insane height, a kind of faulty observation and reasoning which
is common enough among persons who are not in the least out of
their minds. ’Tis not true perhaps, as is sometimes said, that
everybody is a little mad, but it is true that everybody makes day
by day the same sort of errors in observation and reasoning as
those which lead madmen to their delusions.
I go at once to the heart of what I have to say by laying down
the broad proposition that in looking at things a person sees what
he believes he sees, not necessarily that which really is: his notion
of what he sees may correspond with the reality or not, but in
any case he does not see the reality purely; he sees it through the
idea or notion which he has of it. Had I been born blind, and
were my eyes opened at this moment for the first time to see a
human face before me, I should not know it to be such by my
sense of sight alone: I know a human face, when I see it, only
because of the training in seeing which has been going on ever
since I was born, the unceasing, if unconscious, education which
I have had. The idea has been organised gradually in my mind—
abstract, so to speak, from a multitude of impressions—and when
it is stirred into activity by the proper impression made upon
sight it instantly interprets that impression, so that I recognise
�s
Seeing and Believing.
7
the object. If my idea were very active and at the same time
*
did not fit the reality, it might mislead sight, making me mistake
the identity of a face which I saw—just as Don Quixote, possessed
with his fixed idea of giants and enchanted castles, mistook the
sails of a windmill for the arms of a giant—or even, in a more
extreme case, making me actually see a face where there was no face
at all. You have perhaps seen a person who has been put into
what is called the mesmeric state and noticed the extraordinary
illusions which he can be made to suffer: the operator bids him
take a glass of simple water, assuring him at the same time that it
is exceedingly bitter and nasty, and he forthwith spits it out as if
it were poison, with every expression of disgust; he is told that a
wasp is buzzing about his face and he instantly makes frantic
movements to strike it away; he is introduced to a stranger as his
mother or sister and he immediately embraces her. There is
scarcely a mistake of sense, however extravagant, of which he
may not be made the victim if he is duly susceptible and the
operator skilful and confident. Now what is it which takes place?
This: the idea suggested by the operator becomes so very active
in the subject’s mind, takes such exclusive possession of it, that all
other ideas are inhibited or silenced; they are inactive, in abey
ance, asleep, so to speak, unable therefore to comment upon or
correct it; accordingly the person sees, hears, or otherwise per
ceives all impressions through the active idea, which interprets
them instantly into the language of its own nature; being the
only part of the mind which is then sensible to stimulus and in
function, it cannot of necessity reveal anything which it does notice
but in terms of itself. The person does not see the real thing but
his notion of what the real thing is ; and that does not in this
case accord with what really is. Here then is an experiment
which plainly shows us that an idea in the mind may reach such a
pitch of exclusive activity as to put to silence other ideas and to
completely befool the senses. It is what happens also to the mad
man who, having the delusion that he is the victim of a malignant
persecution, sees or hears his persecutors pursue or threaten him
where no one else can see or hear anything of them.
I now go a step further and note that something of the same
sort takes place in dreams. When we are asleep we see nothing
* The common saying that “seeing is believing” may then be applied
in a double sense—not Sone in the understood sense that we believe by
what we see, but also in the sense that we see by what we believe.
�8
Common Source of Error in
outside us; our eyes being shut it is impossible we should; never
theless we do see very remarkable scenes if we dream, seeing them
too as if they were outside us and more vividly perhaps than we
do see real things when we are awake. What happens is that the
thoughts of the dreamer as they occur to him become instantly
visible as sensory presentations ; the idea of a thing, so soon as it
becomes active, takes form as the sensible object, is translated into
the outward reality; the idea of a person, for example, becomes
the seen person, the idea of a voice the heard voice, bo before the
dreamer’s eyes as a visible pageant, a scenic show, moves the train
of succeeding ideas; it is as if each vague thought which came
into the mind as we walked along the street absorbed in reverie
was visible as an actual scene ; in which case it is plain we
should be surrounded by an ideal world which would be the real
world to us, while the real world would be faint and shadowy or
quite unperceived. Now this happens the more easily in dreams
for two reasons—first, because the active idea has for the time
almost exclusive possession of the mind, the rest of it being asleep,
and, secondly, because the closure of the senses by sleep to all
outward things, preventing that distraction of them by other
objects which is taking place more or less during waking even in
the deepest reverie, leaves them at the mercy of the idea. Here
there is another instance where an idea or notion vividly experi
enced imposes itself upon sense, becomes an actual hallucination.
Take another case: people don’t see ghosts nowadays when they
go through churchyards by night, as they used often to do in olden
times. Why is that ? ‘ It is because, not believing in ghosts, they
do not expect to see them: they have not in their minds the idea
of a ghost which may step solemnly forth from behind a tombstone
or glide away like a guilty thing ashamed. ’Tis an instance of the
excellent philosophy which is never wanting in Shakspeare, that
he makes Hamlet see his father’s ghost at midnight, when the air
is bitterly cold, not a mouse stirring, on the lonely and rocky
platform before the castle of Elsinore, after he had been informed
in solemnly impressive tones of its previous appearances, when he
himself is there in a tremor of expectation to see it, and immedi
ately after Horatio’s exclamation “ Look, my lord, it comes! ”
Again: there is an event which has happened sometimes to
dying persons, well fitted to make a solemn and startling impres
sion on those about them. When at the point of death or nearly
so, the dying person, gazing intently before him, as if he saw some
one there, may pronounce suddenly the name of a long dead
�Seeing and Believing.
9
relative, exclaim perhaps “ Mother,” and soon after expire. Natu
rally people suppose that the spirit of his dead mother has appeared
to him, and are happy to think that he has joined in a better world
those who were taken away from him in this world. So they take
comfort to themselves when they lose by death one who is near
and dear to them in the belief that although he shall not return to
them they shall go to him. That may or may not be, but certainly
the apparition is not proof of it, since it is no more than one of
the hallucinations which a dying person is liable to have; for when
he is near death and the failing functions of his brain portend
their near impending extinction, wandering thoughts of the far
distant past, impressions of childhood perhaps, seemingly long
effaced, but never actually effaced, may flicker in the mind and,
taking visible form as thoughts take form in dreams, be seen as
visions. You will remember that Shakspeare makes Falstaff,
when dying in a London tavern after a life of the most gross
debauchery, a worn out old libertine, go back in this way to the
memories of more innocent days and “babble of green fields.”*
These broken reversions, as I may call them, are the last ebbing
functions of the brain which, as Shakspeare puts it, then
“ Doth by the idle comments that it makes
Foretell the ending of mortality.”
I might go on to multiply instances of this production of hallu
cination by idea, since they are to be met with in all quarters.
You have heard perhaps that there has lately been an apparition
of the Virgin Mary at Father Ignatius’s Monastery of Llanthonev
Abbey, which was seen first in a meadow by four boys of the
Abbey, after that by a brother of the Abbey, and last of all
by Father Ignatius himself. This is his account of what he
saw:—
“ About eight o’clock on Wednesday evening, the 15th inst. (after
the last service of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin) we all.
* It is very doubtful, however, whether Shakspeare ever wrote what is
now the received text. In the first authentic edition (1823) the words
were not “ ’a babbled of green fields,” but “ a table of green, fields,” which
was nonsense. It was changed by an anonymous critic to “ ’a talked of
green fields,” which Theobald altered into" the present reading. Thirty
years ago, however, an annotated copy of the edition of 1632 was found,
which, among a great number of corrections of the text, substituted for
“ ’a table of green fields,” the words “ on a table of green frieze ”—z.e.,
“ His nose was as sharp as a pen on a table of green frieze.” Dr. Newman
makes use of these discrepancies for the purposes of his argument in
Grammar of Assent (p. 265), and it is from him that I quote them.
�10
Common Source of Error in
came to the porch door. I held the processional crucifix. With
me were the brothers, Mr. Bouse, and a gentleman from Oxford
who had visited the Monastery for the purpose of endeavouring
to see the vision. The boys were kneeling in front of us, Sister
Janet was kneeling in the meadow. It was a very wet night. We
were singing the ‘Aves.’ We had sung three ‘Aves’ in honour
of the Holy Trinity, and we had just finished a fourth to the
Blessed Virgin, when, all of a sudden, when I was not expecting
anything of the kind, I saw a tremendous outburst of light from
the dark, heavy clouds over the farm building. It seemed to
burst right upon the buildings. The light was all in bulging circles.
In the very centre of the light there appeared, coming down upon
us, a human form. It was a very commanding, stately figure.
I could only see sideways. The face was turned towards the bush.
I could only see it momentarily, as it were in the ‘ twinkling of an
eye.’ But in that moment it stood out so distinctly and startling
that I am sure that it was darker than the light. Had it been
clothed in cloth of silver, or cloth of gold, it might have produced
the same effect—the darkness against the light. There was an
intense reality about the figure. It was momentary, as I before
said, and yet it seemed that it might have been an hour’s vision,
so intensely real was it. In the majesty of the figure, and in its
being dark against the light, it reminded me of Dore’s picture,
‘ The triumph of Christianity over Paganism.’ There were
flashings of light about the figure. In a moment, as I looked, it
vanished. Before it vanished it had appeared as if it would have
descended upon the church door or the church roof. I feel sure
that it must have been the figure of the Blessed Virgin, because,
although I could not discern the dress it wore, I could see that it
was fully draped; whereas in the visions which others have seen,
when they have seen a male figure, it has always appeared with
simply a cloth round the loins, as our Lord is represented in
baptism, and at other times. I also feel sure that it was the
Virgin, because the figure appeared immediately after we had
sung the ‘ Ave ’ in her honour. The figure also had its face
turned towards the bush, where our Ladye had first been seen. I
have further confirmation in the fact that about two or three,
minutes afterwards the Blessed Virgin’s figure was seen by the
gentleman who was watching with us, and by one of the boys,
nearer to the ground.” *
South Wales Daily News, September 13th and 27th, 1880.
�Seeing and Believing.
11
“ These,” he says, “ are extraordinary and absolute facts. The
sceptic may and will scoff, but his scoffing will not explain or
diminish the truth or supernatural character of these absolute and
incontrovertible facts * * * No amount of contradiction, ridicule,
or unbelief can alter the fact that Monday, August 30th, 1880, be
tween the hours of 9 and 11 a.m., the Blessed Virgin appeared in
dazzling light to four boys and did what no earthly being could do
before their eyes.” With such positive and incontrovertible testi
mony of eye-witnesses, are you of so little faith as to doubt that
the Blessed Virgin appeared ? Probably you have great doubts, as
I have; and perhaps I may venture to think that I shall carry your
sympathetic doubts with me in my sceptical interpretation of
another vivid vision of an apparition in circumstances particularly
favourable to its occurrence.
The vision in this case happened to a woman whom we may
believe to have been predisposed in some measure to hallucination,
since we are told of her that she had once had seven devils cast
out of her.; a story which, in modern scientific interpretation,
means that she had once been insane and had recovered. • In all
likelihood, therefore, she was one of those persons, susceptible or
sensitive, as mesmerists call them, whose unstably balanced nervecentres were easily liable to take on that sort of irregular action
which issues in hallucination and delusion. The woman I refer
to is Mary Magdalene, who visited the sepulchre of Christ on the
third day after His burial, and who, according to the gospel of St.
John, saw two angels in white sitting, the one at the head and the
other at the feet where the body of Jesus had lain. I say accord
ing to John, because the stories of the resurrection told by the
writers of the different gospels differ considerably in details;
amongst other things, not agreeing as to whether there was one
angel or whether there were two angels, or as to the persons who
saw the apparition or apparitions. Discrepancies in the stories of
supernatural phenomena are not of course to be wondered at;
they are the natural results of an inspiration more than natural
pouring itself into natural channels. Those, however, whose
understandings are informed by observation and experience of
nature, not by inspiration from outside nature, may suspect
perhaps that Mary Magdalene, having an excitable brain, was the
victim of a hallucination. She ran to the sepulchre in hot excite
ment, eagerly expectant to see something extraordinary, and she
saw something extraordinary: a flitting impression on sight, pro
bably the “ linen clothes lying there, and the napkin that was
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Common Source of Error in
about the head not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped
together in a place by itself,” suggested two angels, and the ideas
of the angels so suggested took visible form, dominating the sense,
just as the gleaming whiteness of a tombstone suggesting the idea
of a ghost to the walker through a churchyard by night was trans
formed instantly into a ghost.
This dominion of the idea over the senses, which has its con
summate effect in the production of hallucination, is really the most
fruitful source of error and defect in common observation, an ever
active, and never to be neglected, cause of fallacy. Men see not
the reality purely, but see it in the coloured light of the notions
which they have of it. Hence no two persons see an event exactly
alike; two witnesses go into the witness-box and give widely dif
ferent accounts of the same transaction at which they were present
together; two newspaper reporters, of different politics, believing
themselves sincere and truthful, send home to their respective
employers nearly opposite accounts of the same occurrences ; in
each case there is the individual mind behind the eye. Has any
one got a belief, no matter how he got it—whether through his
understanding, as he flatters himself he gets all his beliefs, or
through his feelings, as he actually gets most of them—his mind
yields willing access to all facts which are in keeping with it, and
very unwilling access to any fact which does not consist with it,
insomuch that the belief comes to determine much of what he sees,
to govern his actual observation of things. The stronger, more
over, the feeling associated with a preconceived idea or belief, the
more completely does it rule sense and vitiate observation. What
infatuated lover ever fails to see “ Helen’s beauty in a brow of
Egypt?” What excited onlooker at a spectacle of horror could
ever give an accurate account of it ? At one time it was a firmlyrooted superstition that the wounds on the body of a murdered
person would bleed afresh when the murderer was made to touch
the corpse, and witnesses testified frequently to having seen that
happen. Two respectable clergymen, for example, swore at a trial
in the time of Charles I. (1628-9) that the body having been taken
out of the grave and laid on the grass, thirty days after death, and
one of the parties accused of murder required to touch it, “the
brain of the dead began to have a dew or gentle sweat arise on it,
which increased by degrees till the sweat ran down in drops on
the face; the brow turned to a lively flesh-colour, and the deceased
-opened one of her eyes and shut it again ; and this opening of the
eye was done three several times ; she likewise thrust out the ring,
�Seeing and Believing.
13
Or marriage finger, three times, and pulled it in again; and the
finger dropped blood from it on the grass.” Here was evidence
against the accused which, if true, must have convinced even him
that he ought to be hanged. Of course, it was not true; the
witnesses, however, were not wilfully or wittingly deceiving, they
were themselves deceived; they saw not the real thing, but the
imagination of what the real thing was. One may be permitted
to judge, by this example, of the value of the unsifted testimony
of the believer who has seen a miracle. ’Tis not that he has
really seen a miracle, but that he has made a miracle of what he
has mis-seen.
,lt may be urged perhaps in respect of miracles that it is ex
tremely improbable, if not impossible, that several persons attest
ing them could be deceived in the same way at the same time. On
the contrary, nothing more easy in certain circumstances : a great
wave of emotion passing through a number of people, as emotion
does pass by the quick infection of sympathy, will carry belief with
it and make them see and testify to a quite impossible occurrence.
Hence miracles have always abounded where there was a great
fever of religious enthusiasm. The greater the heat of feeling the
less the coolness of observation and the more plentiful the mira
cles. Hay, it needs not much heat of feeling to see a miracle if a
number of persons be collected together intently expecting to see
something extraordinary happen: the ghost seldom fails to appear
where the spectators are gathered together to see it. Every
religion has had its miracles and its multitudinous witnesses to
them. We do not believe it any the more on that account; we
ought indeed to believe it rather the less, since the miracle is pre
sumption, if not proof, of bad observation by the witnesses. The
lowest religion will have the most miracles, a higher religion will
have few of them, and the highest of all will probably have none
at all. What we may fairly conclude from the testimony of hot
believers is that, by reason of their strong belief, they were not
witnesses to be depended upon, as observers. The interest of
miracles at this day, I take it, is not that which could attach to an
occurrence out of the fixed order of nature, but that which attaches
to the study of the defective, irregular, or actually morbid action
of the human brain, especially under conditions of unusual excite
ment ; it is not whether the body of a dead man which had lain in
the grave until it had begun to putrefy came to life again, but why
people thought and said so. When the belief in miracles has
become extinct they will be received by psychology into its domain
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Common Source of Error in
and they will be of lasting interest there. Indeed, it will be a
most instructive study of the future to elucidate and set forth the
exact relations of beliefs in supernatural phenomena to defective
or morbid functions of the brain. Supernaturalism will take its
proper place as an interesting chapter in psychology.
Thus much then with regard to the action which idea may exert
upon the senses; an action plainly so strong sometimes as to sub
due them into a complete subjection to it. In any case it is almost
impossible for one who has a preconceived notion in his mind to
help seeing in an event that only which is agreeable to the notion,
that which sorts or suits with it. Those who have not thought of
this tendency as an active source of fallacy in observation, and
realised how deeply, widely, constantly and unconsciously it works
are not qualified to weigh the value of testimony; they are like
those who should accept without question an assertion that the
trees and grass were blue from one who was looking at the country
through blue spectacles. To denote, moreover, this action of idea
upon sense vaguely as imagination or even as mental carries us no
further forward; to rest satisfied there is simply to make a word
do duty for a conception; there is neither explanation nor definite
meaning in the statement. Whether we like it or not, we shall
have to acknowledge, first or last, that the process is at bottom
physical, and that we can have no explanation worth thinking
about until we find out what the physical basis is. Unhappily we
are yet a long way from that discovery; we must be satisfied for
the present to figure grossly to ourselves what takes place in the
intimate, most delicate and hidden operations of nerve molecules,
by the help of conceptions derived from the grosser operations in
physics which we can observe and manipulate. When the impres
sion on sense vibrates to the same note as the idea, we may say, it
is perceived and intensifies the idea—that is to say, is assimilated
mentally; when it does not vibrate in unison with it there is no
response, it is not perceived; the active idea responds to the note
that is in harmony with it, just as the string of a harp gives back
in consonant vibrations its proper note when that note is struck
near it.
I proceed now to mark the operation of the same sort of error
in the higher region of thought—in reasoning, that is, about what
we get from the senses when we have got the facts correctly.
Even then we are liable to go all wrong in the opinions or infer
ences which we form. The predominant bias sways the judgment.
Two persons shall have the same facts presented to them, and
�Seeing and Believing.
15
shall not differ as to the facts, yet it is notorious that they will,
according to the bias of their respective opinions, feelings, interests,
differ widely in the conclusions they draw from them, just as two
judges will give very unequal sentences for the same kind of
offence. How is it that the one sees a conclusion plainly and
thinks the other, who does not see it, blinded by prejudice to the
most obvious truth ? The reason of course is that each looks at
the circumstances from his own standpoint, and sees only or
mainly that which is in accord with the bias of his mind, over
looking that which is not; he sees vividly the reasons which
support his opinion, and which the other sees dimly or not at all;
he sees only dimly, or not at all, the reasons which go counter to
it, and which the other sees vividly. Now, how would a third
person,'undertaking to bring these two to the same conclusion, go
about to accomplish it ? Certainly he would not treat them as
purely reasoning beings, and encourage them to go on arguing, by
which they would only heat themselves the more, but he would
handle each as if he was anything but an exact reasoning being;
he would not consider only the truth of what he had to say to
him, but would take account of his feelings, principles, prejudices,
character, and endeavour to bring this truth into the best relations
possible with these predominant lines of disposition, making it
pleasing or agreeable—that is to say, able to agree—and so to get
it accepted; he would in fact persuade by agreeing more than by
convincing, remembering the adage—
•
“ A man convinced against his will
Is of the same opinion still.”
Dealing in this insinuating way with both he brings them gently
and skilfully over their difference to the same conclusion, and that
the right conclusion if the affair be properly managed. One must
have the feelings of a person engaged in favour of reason before he
can see reason, must prejudice him in favour of an argument
before he can feel the force of it. Is not this a proof how very far
man is from being the good reasoning machine which he imagines
himself?
There is not a day, not an hour of the day perhaps, in any
one’s life which does not yield examples of this sort of biassed
or one-sided perception and reasoning. The moods of the moment
notably colour strongly our views of the character or issue of an
event, notwithstanding that the dry light of reason ought to
demonstrate a plain and certain conclusion. Optimism or pessi
mism is a matter of temperament, not of reason; life-despair may
�16
Common Source of Error in
be the intellectual expression, and suicide the outcome in act, of
deranged organic feeling in a sadly tuned temperament. In that
extreme state of morbid depression of mind which we call
melancholia the sufferer cannot perceive a ray of hope, a glimmer
of comfort anywhere; he sees every undertaking, every scheme,
moving towards the same goal of ruin; he can follow the argu
ments which prove that his fears are groundless, but they produce
no effect upon him ; they reach his understanding, but they do
not touch his gloom-enshrouded heart, and accordingly they “ no
more avail than breath against the wind.” Assuredly we credit
ourselves with a great deal larger measure of reason in the forma
tion and change of our beliefs than ever enters into them. On
the one hand, strong and convincing argument will sometimes not
compel belief; on the other hand, a change will sometimes take
place in an individual’s belief, while the reasons in favour of it are
as strong as ever; as Cardinal Newman has remarked, he does
not know how or when the belief has gone, but he finds out some
day that it is gone ; the perception of the old argument remains,
but some change in feeling in himself arising out of condition, age,
interests, occupation, &c., has worked a change of belief.
I shall not go on now to give any more illustrations from
individual experience, because I am anxious, in the time which
remains at my disposal, to point out how this source of error
in reasoning infects the belief of whole peoples, and leads them
to the most illogical conclusions. Do we not oftentimes see
nations swept by epidemics of feeling and belief, good or bad?
Have wars been rational undertakings, or have they not been, in
nine cases out of ten, the results of insane suspicion and insaner
folly ? When one looks quietly back at the history of man’s
thoughts and doings upon earth, considering at the same time
his claim to be pre-eminently a reasoning animal, it is impossible
to help being amazed at the utterly irrational belief which pro
fessedly rational beings have formed and sincerely cherished.
More wonder, perhaps, that as they were so irrational as to form
and hold them they were ever rational enough to get rid of them.
It may be said, no doubt, that as they got better knowledge they
abandoned them, but I doubt whether knowledge has nearly so
much to do directly with human progress as we are in the easy
habit of assuming. It has always been as positive a piece of
knowledge as it is now that every one must die—that to be mortal
is not to be immortal—and that when a person is dead and buried
he does not come to life again ;■ that certainly is as long and sure
�Seeing and Believing.
17
an experience as human beings have had, since it dates from the
beginning of experience ; yet, in spite of that experience, the
greater part of those ranking amongst the most civilized and
enlightened of the earth, and marking therefore the highest water
mark of human progress, solemnly believe at this moment that
there have been men’ who have not died, and others who, after
being dead, have come to life again. And at great expense, and
through many perils, they send missionaries into all parts of the
earth to teach that wisdom to those whose sad ignorance of it
they compassionate. The very creed of the Christian is that the
God whom he worships became a man, was crucified on the cross,
died and was buried, and on the third day rose again and ascended
into heaven. That is a matter of solemn belief, but can we truly
say that it is a matter of rational knowledge ? Looked at in the
dry light of the understanding, we must admit that there could
not well be a doctrine more improbable, more revolting to reason.
How it strikes the unbiassed minds of those who have not been
trained from youth upwards to accept it we know by the experience
of the Jesuit missionaries in China, who found the dogma of a
crucified God so great an obstacle in the way of conversions that
they quietly suppressed it; they preached Jesus Christ triumphant,
not Jesus Christ crucified. It is beyond question then that there
is in man a power deeper and stronger than knowledge which
decides in some cases what he shall believe, and that the most
complete contradiction of observation and reason which it is
possible to conceive can be accepted as a solemn truth, if it be in
harmony with the prevailing tone or feeling of mind. Thereupon
all the powers of the understanding are brought into play, not to
prove it by a searching trial of its worth, but in order to find out
reasons why it should be believed. Meanwhile, all the reasons in
the world against it will not seriously touch it so long as there is
no fundamental change of feeling: when that takes place, how
ever, the whole fabric of belief tumbles easily to pieces without
any serious assault being made upon it. So far from rational im
probability being a difficulty to theological faith, the greater the
mystery the greater the faith of the true believer, until he reaches
the logical climax of sublime credulity in the acceptance of
Tertullian’s maxim—Credo quia impossibile est, I believe it because
it is impossible.
Look back for a moment at the beginnings of Christianity.
How little had knowledge to do with its origin and progress! It
was born of the heart, not of the understanding of mankind, in the
�18
Common Source of Error in
stable not in the Academy or the Lyceum. The great and learned
of that time looked down on it with scorn as a pernicious supersti
tion, and it found acceptance among the poor and ignorant, the
publicans and sinners.
*
Let us note well the meaning of that:
the greatest revolutionary—or rather evolutionary—force which
has moved human society was not the product of the intellect, but
was an outcome of a glowing feeling of the universal brotherhood
of mankind; a feeling so deep and strong and true that it has
inspired and kept alive to this day many beliefs which outrage the
understanding. Can we believe then that the next great revolu
tionary force which shall move society afresh will spring from the
understanding and be governed by its rules? It needs little
reflection, I think, to show that a great social reform will never
come from a Senate or a House of Lords or other sort of upper
chamber, however cultivated and benevolent its members. No;
the impulse will come deep out of the heart of the people,
announcing itself many times beforehand no doubt in blind
yearnings, in wild explosions of social discontent, perhaps in reck
less uprisings of turbulence and violence, a great unreflecting
force, which it should be the function of intelligence to guide in
the right way. You may stop a revolution which has been
hatched in the intellect, by cutting off the heads of the few who
have knowledge; you will never stop a revolution which has been
bred in the heart of the people by cutting off their heads. Instead
of denouncing •wildly the social interest and visionary aspirations
which find outlets in communistic, socialistic, nihilistic, and
similar doctrines and disorders, it would be more wise to try to
understand their meaning; since it may be they are the blind,
* “ It is profitable to remind ourselves,” says Dr. Newman, “ that our Lord
Himself was a sort of smith, and made ploughs and cattle-yokes. Four
Apostles were fishermen, one a petty-tax collector, two husbandmen, one
is said to have been a coachman, and another a market gardener.” Peter
and John are spoken of as “ illiterate men and of the lower sort.” Their
converts were of the same rank. They are, says Celsus, “ weavers, shoe
makers, fullers, illiterate clowns.” “Fools, low-born fellows,” says
Trypho. “ Men collected from the lowest dregs of the people; ignorant,
credulous women; ” “ unpolished, boors, illiterate, ignorant even of the
sordid arts of life; they do not understand civil matters, how can they
understand divine ? ” says Coecilius. “ They deceive women, servants and
slaves,” says Julian. The Fathers themselves give similar testimony as to
their brethren. “ Ignorant men, mechanics, and old women,” says Athenagoras. “They are gathered,” says Jerome, “not from the Academy or
the Lyceum, but from the low populace.” Of meaner sort and more de
spised than the Communisis of Paris; and yet they overturned the world!
�Seeing and Believing.
19
instinctive, dimly prophetic impulses of a truth which, coming
from the suffering and brooding heart of society, lies deeper than
knowledge and which knowledge will one day have to reckon
with. No man’s intellect measures his character; from the un
fathomed depths of his being comes not only that which he shall
feel and do but in great measure also that which he shall think.
So it is with humanity as a whole. It is feeling which inspires
and stirs its great pulses, the intellect fashioning the moulds into
which the feeling shall flow. How momentously important then
that the people should have understanding, should learn know
ledge, so that neither craft of superstition, nor craft of ruler, nor
any other craft may again take possession of its forces and turn
them to its profit!
We are so comfortably confident of the stability of our progress
in these days that we do not give the heed we should to the lessons
of the past and consider seriously, as we might well do from time
to time, to what destructive issues uninstructed popular feeling
may one day carry us. There can be little doubt that each of the
mighty nations of the past believed that its kingdom would endure
and that it was impossible its gains should ever be lost to man
kind. But Home, and Greece, and Egypt are now but the
shadows of great names, and the once powerful Empires of the
East have disappeared so completely that even the places where
their mighty cities stood are hardly known. We may be sure that
there were sagacious men in each of these dead nations who fore
saw the end, perceived the causes that were leading straight to it,
and raised their unregarded voices in warning to the people. But
it is the eternal fate of Cassandra to be unheeded. In vain are the
most obvious truths preached to a people possessed by an impulse
of feeling with which, they are not in harmony; the nation which
is declining to its fall is as deaf to the admonitions of the few
thoughtful men who perceive and try to stay its course of folly
as it is blind to the plainest lessons of its own experience;
elementary principles of morality and the commonest maxims of
prudence go down alike before the current of feeling, and the
audacious charlatan who most cleverly flatters, fans, and directs
its sentiments is acclaimed and obeyed as a hero. This has
always been so, and it would be taking much too hopeful a view
of human nature to believe that it will not be so again. In spite
of all the gains of modern knowledge, which we think so certain,
but which, after all, are the real work and possession of only a
few, it is not at all out of the range of possible occurence that a
�20
Common Source of Error in
great turbid wave of superstition may overflow and overwhelm our
civilization, as other civilizations have been overwhelmed before it.
Do you think perhaps that the foundations of modern knowledge
are laid so deep and sure that it is incredible that they should ever
be swept away? Well, it is a very sanguine belief: one might
have thought it as sure a truth as could well be that a person once
dead will not come to life again, but while multitudes believe the
opposite of that very plain experience, are the foundations of
belief so very sure ? Men are not moved by knowledge, let me
say again, but by feeling, and were a strong wave of superstitious
feeling to pass through them they would see and believe nothing
that was not in harmony with it, would see and believe every
thing that was in harmony with it, would move on, until it was
spent, a huge devastating force, so far as pure reason was
concerned.
There is something too much of complacent self-deception in the
loud praise which we give to pure truth and in the high-flown devo
tion which we loudly profess to it; we make up by our theoretical
enthusiasm for it for much practical dislike and intolerance of it.
Truth is not so acceptable as illusion, since we live in perpetual
illusion, deceived and deceiving. We seem what we are not, and
make others believe that we think them what they are not. No
one speaks the truth sincerely to another, or talks of him in his
presence as he does in his absence. There is no one who would
not think himself grossly insulted if he had truth told of him, nor
would any one who adopted the practice of speaking the truth
always find it easy to keep himself out of an asylum. We hate the
speaker of truth, although the truth which hurts our self-love may
be most useful to us; and love the flatterer, although we know the
flattery to be false and injurious. The ardent profession which
we make of a love of pure truth is itself a comfortable illusion
which we create for ourselves. From cradle to grave we are occu
pied—wisely, I dare say—in nursing our illusions, putting away
one, when we have worn it out, to take up another more fitting
the new desires which experience and years give us. If a person
really believed at the outset of life, as he knows at the end of it,
that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, would he have sufficient
motive to live ? Had there been no illusory prospect of Elysian
fields, or happy hunting grounds, or other sort of paradise beyond
the miseries of this world, where those who had suffered much and
unjustly here might hope to find recompense, one may doubt
almost whether faith in virtue could have been kept alive, whether
�Seeing and Believing.
21
the social organism, would have held together ; at any rate, thou
sands of dreary lives would have been more dreary than they were,
thousands of self-sacrifices of work, of wealth, of duty, would never
have been made, the hopes, aspirations, and' prayers which have
consoled and sustained thousands of heavy-laden hearts would not
have been. What then will be the consequence if science, as it
seems to threaten, shatters these hopes as illusions ? Will the
multitude be able to bear the pain, to face the fearful void, of so
great a loss ? Will man be able to live what the Bishop of Peter
borough has described lately as “ a joyless existence, uncheered by
the hope of a happier hereafter, undignified by the consciousness of
divine descent and the heirship of immortality,” if science makes
him sincerely realise, as it seems to be going to work to do, that
he has no hope whatever of a happier hereafter, that his descent is
not divine but simian, that his last heirship is the corruption of
the grave ? Will not the bereaved people, craving for something
to satisfy the needs of the heart which knowledge cannot give, fly
for refuge in despair to some creed or church in which they may
find again the hopes, and consolation, and support of which they
have been robbed ?
Here lies the strength of the position of the Church of Rome.
Possessing an organization the most complete which the world
has ever known, served by its ministers with a devotion which
counts nothing gain that is not its gain, inspired with the theory
that the meanest human soul is worthy of all its energies, it offers
what seems a safe haven of refuge in the midst of the surging tur
moil of doubts, perplexities, and despair, the perfect rest of absolute
truth delivered into its keeping from the beginning: Come unto
me, might be its cry, all ye that are weary of spirit, with many
doubts and heavyladen of heart with the burden of your fears,
and I will give yon rest.
*
It is admirably adapted by its organi
* “ Thus it is sometimes spoken of as a hardship that a Catholic is not
allowed to inquire into the truth of his Creed; of course he cannot if he
would retain the name of believer. He cannot be both inside and outside
of the Church at once. It is merely common sense to tell him that, if he
is seeking, he has not found. If seeking includes doubting, and doubting
excludes believing, then the Catholic who sets about inquiring thereby
declares that he is not a Catholic. He has already lost faith.”
J. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent, p. 184.
“ For, since we have the truth, and truth cannot change, how can we
possibly change in our belief, except indeed through our own weakness
or fickleness.” p. 186.
�iMMMiMM*
22
Common Source of Error in
zation, its ordinances, and its doctrine to respond to all the appeals
of the weak side of human nature. And I make no doubt many
will flee to it in the coming conflicts. But not of the people, we
may predict; not of the masses which constitute the foundation
and strength of the social organism. Its converts will come from
the tired votaries of fashion, weary of the dreary frivolities of
their lives, and eager to replace their exhausted desires by new
sentiments; from those who are educated enough to perceive
difficulties and perplexities of thought, without being courageous
and capable enough to face them sincerely and to think them out
thoroughly; from those again who, in the mortal struggle of new
thought for existence, have not the strength of understanding and
character to stay through the course, but falling by the wayside,
eagerly in their need lay hold of the helping hand which authority
holds out to them. These and the like are the classes from which
its converts will mainly come. The strong pulsations of popular feel
ing which make themselves felt in different nations, have no affini
ties with the Church of Rome nor has it shown the least sympathy
with them ; on the contrary they are essentially hostile to it, since
it has committed what seems to an outsider the fatal mistake of
allying itself with caste, privilege, power, and of alienating the
great liberal forces with which lies the determination of the
future : Catholic in name it has lost all claim to be Catholic in
fact. It is a rash thing to prophesy, but if I may venture a
prophesy here, it is that it will be by these great popular forces,
not by the knowledge of the learned, that it will be overthrown in
the final struggle. The French Revolution, momentous as an
event, was perhaps more momentous as a prophesy.
If what I have said thus far be true, what is the function of
those who have faith in the future of mankind, who are sanguine
enough to nurse enthusiastic hopes of its glorious destiny ? As
suredly to work well together, while it is time, to enlighten the
giant, so that when he puts forth his strength he may use it wisely,
to give him the understanding to direct his might in the right way.
Although intellect does not move the world it should guide directly
the forces which do move it, and so modify indirectly, as it will by
degrees, the deeper sources in which they take their instinctive
origin. One thing is certain whatever else may be doubtful: that
the true and honest method to pursue is directly the opposite of
that which the Churches have striven to enforce; it is not to incul
cate credulity, to stifle doubt, to foster prejudice, in order that the
beliefs which are may continue to be. That method we know to be
�Seeing and Believing.
23
false. It is to seek truth and pursue it, at whatever cost, whether
it bring us sorrow or joy, peace or tribulation. Doubt, be it never
so disquieting, must go before enquiry, and enquiry before the
discovery of new truth. Scepticism is guilt in the eyes only of those
who fear truth, since it is the essential prerequisite of it. It is
impossible to foresee what fate the future has in store for the race
of man on earth; one may fain hope a more peaceful and happy
career than that which he has had in the past, since to look back
through his history from the beginning unto now is to look back
through succeeding chapters of wars, treachery, tortures, cruelties
and atrocities of all sorts and degrees by which “ man’s inhumanity
to man” has “made countless thousands mourn;” a spectacle of
horrors so appalling that, could we compass it in imagination, it
might well warrant the belief, if matters ended now, of a malevo
lent, not a benevolent, scheme of creation. We shall do well to
cherish the hope, or if not the hope the illusion, that matters will
not end here; that a brighter day will come when knowledge and
peace shall spread through the whole earth, and man’s humanity
to man leave few to mourn; that the past traditions of a golden
age, when all was plenty and peace, and the later aspirations for
a Paradise to come, in which sorrow and sin shall be no more,
may be not entire fable and illusion, but essentially dim fore
feelings, the prophetic instincts, of that which one day shall have
a measure of fulfilment upon earth.
�
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Common source of error in seeing and believing: a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday Afternoon, 27th February 1881
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Maudsley, Henry [1835-1918]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 23 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Contains bibliographical references. Publisher's series list on unnumbered pages at the end.
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Miracles
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Christian church
Fallacies
Miracles
New Testament
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Text
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THE
PHYSICAL BASIS OF W
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DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
ON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, FEBRUARY 15th, 1880,
BY
HENRY MAUDSLEY, M.D.
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PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1880.
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�THE
PHYSICAL BASIS OF WILL.
N a lecture which I gave here last year, and published
afterwards in the Fortnightly Review, I pointed out
*
that moral feeling is just as closely dependent upon
organization as is the meanest function of mind, and
asserted broadly “ that there was not an argument to
prove the so-called materialism of one part of mind which
did not apply with equal force to the whole mind.” For
this statement I was taken to task in an article in the
Spectator, the critic in that journal summoning up to
confront and confound me the alleged self-determining
power of human will—the freedom of the wiH. I pro
pose, then, to make this lecture supplementary to the
former one in some respects, by considering now whether
we are entitled to assume, as I hold, a Physical Basis of
WiH, or whether, as my critic thinks, we have in the Will
a self-sustained spiritual entity, which owns no cause,
obeys not law, and has no sort of affinity with matter.
’Tis not a discussion of much lively or fruitful promise,
but inasmuch as those who engage in the Freewill con
troversy, while repeating the old and trite arguments, for
the most part leave out of sight the physical aspect of the
subject, it may be instructive to bring that more into
notice, and to show that those who uphold a material
basis of will have some plain facts to go upon.
They who maintain that the wiH is not determined
I
* “ Materialism and its Lessons,’
�6
The Physical Basis of Will.
by motives, but is self-determined, free, do not for the
most part go so far as to imply that motives are not at
work in the mind, and that the will takes no account of
them; they affirm that there is not the uniform, in
separable connection between motive and will which
there is between cause and effect in physical nature. The
will is not the unconditionally necessary consequent of
its antecedent motives. It, or some other mysterious
entity in the individual which, having virtually abstracted
from the actual individual, they call his non-bodily self, has,
they allege, an independent, perfectly spontaneous, arbi
trary power to make this or that motive predominate as
it pleases ; to chose this or that one among motives and
make it the motive; in doing which this self-determining
principle is presumed by some, I believe, to act without
motive, of its own pure motion, without cause or reason;
by others to act from motives so high and fine, that they
constrain it instantly, without weighing at all upon its
*
freedom.
Clearly then we have here a very singular
power in nature, which we might call supernatural were
* “The noumenon, ding-an-sich, real self,” “is unknowable,
inscrutable,” “ exists outside Time, Space, and Causality, is ab
solutely free,” “ in itself, per se, is unchangeable; ” “ and, as it is
my only real being, my primitive and inborn self, it must be
present as a factor in every change and every action of which
my phenomenal Self, my empirical character, is capable.” That
is to say, itself outside Time, Space, and Causality, it is the
moving principle of every change in Time, Space, and Causality
which takes place through me. Of a truth a wonderful power
which can thus be actually and not be theoretically at the same
time in and outside Time, Space, and Causality! But more.
Why does a truthful man who has told a falsehood feel a remorse ?
Because “his conscience tells him that he is responsible, not indeed
for this particular act- since this he could not help—but for not
being a better man.” “ Blame not the action, then, but the man
for being capable of such an action. Whip him, not for telling
this particular lie, but for being a liar at heart, in his inmost
nature. For this inmost nature, his real Self, his ding-an-sich,
which, as a noumenon, is in some inscrutable manner emanci
pated from the laws of Time and Causality, from the operation
of motives, is absolutely free.” But surely it will be, on the
one hand, a singularly hard matter to lay hold of and whip the
inmost nature, the real self, the noumenon, when “ it exists out-
�, 'The Physical Basis of Will.
'.7
it not that it is allowed to be a part of nature acting in
and upon it, although coming from a mysterious source
outside it; but being thus an important agent in nature,
without being of the same kind or having anything in
common with anything else there—any sympathy, affinity,
or relationship whatever with the things which it works
in and upon—-we may fairly call it unnatural.
If there be a power of this kind in the Universe, the
reflection which occurs instantly is that causation is not
universal, as people are in the habit of assuming, but that
there is a large region of human events which is exempt
from the otherwise uniform law of cause and effect, the
region, that is to say, of man’s higher mental operations.
A great deal of the force which works in them and by
which they work on the external world obeys not the
law of conservation of energy. Now this is a rather
startling reflection, seeing that the great natural argu
ment for the existence of God is that everything must
have a cause, and that for cause of all things, therefore,
there must be a cause of causes, a great First Cause. At
the outset, then, we come to a perplexing dilemma—to
the obligation of concluding either that the will, like
other things, must have a cause, or that a great- first cause
is not a necessity of human thought.
side of Time, Space, and Causality,” and, on the other hand,
rather unfair to whip vicariously the empirical character which
cannot help itself, when the real culprit escapes. How whip it,
too, in any case, seeing that it is a thing-in-itself, incorporeal,
spiritual, “as the air invulnerable”? The foregoing extracts are
taken from an account of Kant’s Philosophy, by Professor Bowen,
of Harvard College, U.S., in his work on Modern Philosophy.
At the end of his exposition and comments, he says: “And thus
the deep and dark problem of fixed fate and freewill is solved,
the two contradictories being reconciled with each other.” No
doubt they are reconciled in the minds of those who, like Pro
*
fessor Bowen, can believe at the same instant two contradictories.
Sir W. Hamilton laid it down that one of two inconceivable con
tradictories must be true, and it passed for a long time for high
philosophy that a man should be able so to conceive inconceivables as to know them to be contradictory. Here we have
a step farther in philosophy, since we have two conceivable con.tradictories which are both true.
�8
The Physical Basis of Will.
But this is only a first difficulty. We are taught by
those who uphold the freedom of the will that although it
is not governed by motives, but is a self-determining
principle in us, it is wrought upon continually and most
powerfully by supernatural agency. A Divine grace is
ever near to help it in time of need, strengthening it to
do well, weakening it to do ill. It is God’s good purpose
to “ master our will,” and to make us “ surrender and
resign it to his just, wise, and gracious will; ” and to
make good his right, says that eloquent divine, Dr. I.
Barrow, “ God bendeth all his forces and applieth all his
means both of sweetness and severity, persuading us by
arguments, soliciting us by entreaties, alluring us by fair
promises, scaring us by fierce menaces, indulging ample
benefits to us, inflicting sore corrections on us, working
in and upon us by secret influences of grace, by visible
dispensations of providence.” A stupendous array of
motives this, which it is a wonder any one ever withstands,
especially when it is borne in mind that they are worked
by the unlimited power of Omnipotence, which has fore
known and fore-ordained the result from all eternity I
However, we are not to suppose that these mighty agencies
are anywise incompatible with the freedom of will; indeed,
when it has surrendered itself to entire obedience it is
enjoying the most perfect freedom; when it is in the
grasp of Omnipotence it is most free. Hard sayings no
doubt for reason, but not at all hard to faith seemingly,
since many persons persuade themselves that they have
intelligent apprehension of them.
The will is assailed very powerfully in a second super
natural way—namely, by the Devil, if the Devil, that is
to say, be not defunct. For it seems to be an open
question now whether he has not undergone by evolution
such a transformation of kind as to have lost all his per
sonality and much of his power. At the time when he
paid Luther a memorable visit he was a distinct being
enough, with great horns and a tail and cloven hoofs;
later on, when Milton described him, he had lost these
appendages, and become the great Archfiend, above his
fellows “ in shape and gesture proudly eminent,” who
�9
The Physical Basis of Will.
amid the torments of a new-found Hell still flung defiance
at the Omnipotent, with unconquered will declaring it
better to “ reign in Hell than serve in Heaven; ” still
later he underwent philosophic transformation into the
polished, cultivated, intellectually subtile, but mocking,
doubting, cynical, Mephistopheles of Faust. What form
and substance has he now, if form and substance he has
any ? Those whose professional work it is to do battle
with him, and to frustrate his ever active wiles and malice,
and who ought therefore to know him best, do not tell us
clearly what their exact ideas on the subject are, if they
have clear and exact ideas; they apparently like to believe
in him as much in a vague and cloudy way as they dislike
to believe in him in any precise and definite way, or at
any rate dislike to be asked to define precisely their belief;
but although they may not be very sure of his present
form and dwelling-place, they have no doubt in a general
way of the evil desires and passions with which he inspires
poor human hearts, and of his open and insidious assaults
on the higher aspirations of human will, which he, un
tiring enemy, besets, besieges, beleaguers, bombards con
tinually. Again then we have a large region of human
events—a region the limits of which it is impossible to
define or to get defined—which is outside the natural
law of causation, and cannot ever be made matter of
scientific study. For as it is plain that we have no means
by which we can measure and register the quantity and
kind of energy which the Devil thus exerts continually
upon the will—no Satanometer or Diabolometer so to
speak—human events, so far as they are effects of his
counsels and instigations, must lie outside the range of
positive knowledge. But once more we are not to suppose
that these supernatural workings upon the will abridge in
the least degree its perfect freedom.
These are difficulties one might suppose great enough
to make even the theologico-metaphysical theorist pause,
but they have no effect to shake his faith in his dogma,
or to lessen his scorn of the profane persons who
doubt and dispute the freedom of the will. He is bold
enough in the last resort to affirm that man’s thoughts,
B
�10
The Physical Basis of Will.
feelings, and doings on earth are not proper subjects of
enquiry by a scientific method, and to avow that true
knowledge of them must come either by an extraordinary
metaphysical intuition or by revelation and faith. The
last key to the problem for him is indeed not “ Search and
know,” but “God spake these words and said:” not know
ledge by the well-tried paths of observation and reason,
but “ He that believeth not shall be damned.” Of which
text I hope it is not irreverent to say here that whosoever
believeth, whether it be on the authority of Holy Church
or of Holy Scripture, that which contradicts reason abso
lutely needs no further damnation: he has done himself
damage enough already as a rational being.
Meanwhile mankind has lived always and still lives in
conformity with quite an opposite theory of human will—
namely, that it is governed by natural motives. The
problem of freewill is a problem of the study, it never
has been a problem of practical life; a theoretical dogma
of faith, not a working belief, the doctrine has flourished
in an atmosphere of vague and cloudy phrases, and all
discussions about it have been in the air; it has shifted
its ground too and changed its form so often that it is
not possible to know where and how to seize and hold it.
Laws have been systematically made and punishments
inflicted upon those who broke them under a very definite
conviction that the will is not an uncaused power, but
does move in obedience to motive, and may be fashioned
to act in this way or that. The execution of a murderer
does not fail to influence his likeminded fellow, who cer
tainly has not the freedom of will to be unaffected thereby;
the aim and use of the punishment are to determine his
will, and it could not be of the least use if the will were
self-determined. We observe historically the past actions
of men in different situations and circumstances in order
to gain a knowledge of the springs of human action which
shall be of use to us in our present and future dealings.
The person who has had much experience, whether in
politics, business, or any other special department of
human labour, is esteemed a wiser guide than a new
comer, because of the certainty that the thoughts and
�The Physical Basis of Will.
11
acts of men are not in any respect chance-events, but
that what they have done before, that they will do again
when actuated by similar motives.
Prudence and forethought in the conduct of affairs, the
provisions made for education, social institutions and
usages, all the operations of daily life in the intercourse
of sane men are based upon the tacit implication that acts
of will are never motiveless, but conform to law and may
be counted upon. There is not a single department of
practical life which is not an implicit denial of a free self
determining power in each individual, and an implicit
recognition of a common nature in men affected by common
influences, and taking a common development in conse
quence. The only person who answers at all to the
metaphysical definition of a self-determining will is the
madman, since he exults in the most vivid consciousness
of freedom and power, sets reason at naught, and often
does things which no one can predict, because he acts
without motives, or at any rate from motives which no
one can penetrate. Did sane men possess freewill they,
like the madman, would be free from responsibility, since
their wills would act independently of their characters,
just as they listed, not otherwise than as men used to
declare, before they knew better, that “ the wind bloweth
where it listeth,” and no one would have much, if any,
motive left to try to improve his character.
We may take it then to be true that the expEcit setting
forth, in formal knowledge, of what is implicit in the
course of human life would be a system of philosophy in
which a self-determining principle had no part nor place,
in which freewill would be a word void of meaning—
nonsense. But true knowledge has its foundation in
experience, and is really the conscious exposition of what
is implicit in human progress; it is implicit in action
before it is explicit in thought. Men do not divine
truth and then work to it consciously; it is instinct in
them before it is understanding; and when in mature
time the unconscious breaks forth into consciousness, it
is the man of genius who is the organ through which the
expansion takes place; he is the interpreter of its blind
�12
The Physical Basis of Will.
impulses to the age, and gives them thenceforth clear
utterance and definite aim. The truth then, as testified
practically by the experience of the whole world from the
beginning until now, is that will is a power which does
not stand outside the range of natural causation, but one
which is moved habitually by motive in every man from
his cradle to his grave. The freewill problem might be
compared well to that great logical puzzle which so long
and so much perplexed the philosophers: I mean the
race between Achilles and the tortoise, where the tortoise
being allowed a certain start, and Achilles supposed to
run ten times as fast, it was proved that he never could
logically overtake it. For if we suppose the tortoise to
have a thousand yards’ start, it would have run a hundred
yards when Achilles had run the thousand yards; when
Achilles again had run the hundred yards, the tortoise
would be ten yards ahead; when Achilles had run the
ten yards, the tortoise would have gone one yard ; when
Achilles had done the one yard, the tortoise would lead it
by the tenth of a yard; when Achilles had got over the
tenth of a yard, he would still be the hundredth of a yard
behind; and so on by successive subdivisions of the
diminishing space for ever. Clearly then Achilles never
could logically overtake the tortoise, whatever he might
do actually. So it has been with the freewill puzzle: the
philosophers, confusing themselves and others with a
juggling statement of the problem, have applied the word
free to the will instead of to the man, who has always
known himself to be free, not to will, but to do what he
willed when not hindered from doing it by internal or
external causes, just as they proved that Achilles would
not overtake the tortoise, by treating a finite space which
was infinitely divisible as if it were infinite.
*
Put the
race problem in a plain way, without ambiguous use of
words, and the result is plain enough: when Achilles had
run one thousand yards, the tortoise would have run one
* One is required to go on subdividing a unit indefinitely, and
to be surprised that the sum of the diminishing fractions never
can reach 1.
�The Physical Basis of Will.
13
hundred, but when Achilles had run two thousand yards,
where would the tortoise be ? Why, it would have run
two hundred yards altogether, and would of course be
eight hundred yards behind.
So much then for the facts in their relation to freewill.
Now what are the grounds of the metaphysician’s clear
conviction that he has a will and that it is free ? His
consciousness tells him so, he says, and all the arguments
in the world will not invalidate its direct and positive
testimony. But does it really tell him so ? One may
meet that statement truly by affirming that his conscious
ness does not tell him anything like that which he is in
the easy habit of supposing and declaring it to do.
Certainly it is not true that we know immediately by
consciousness that we have such a power as the metarphysician means by will. One-tenth only of that con
fident dogma is the direct deliverance of consciousness,
the other nine-tenths are pure and gratuitous hypothesis.
Consciousness tells us nothing whatever of an abstract
will-entity; it makes known a particular volition when
we have it and no more; the creation of an abstract will
which is supposed to execute the particular volition on
each occasion, and its further fashioning into a spiritual
entity, is an assumption as unwarranted as any that has
ever been made by the crudest materialism. It would be
no whit more absurd to make a spiritual entity of sensa
tion and to maintain that this abstract entity was
necessary to produce each sensation; or to postulate a
special emotional entity which operates in each emotion;
or to create a spirit of greenness and to detect it at work
in each green thing; or to discover the spirit of stoneness
in every stone by the roadside. What the metaphysician
has done has been to convert into an entity the abstract
word which embraces the multitude of particular volitions,
varying infinitely in degree and quality, just as at an
earlier period of thought, when the metaphysical spirit
had more life and sway than it has now, he explained the
sleep-producing properties of opium by a soporific essence
in it, and the difficulty of getting a vacuum by Nature’s
abhorrence of a vacuum; or as at a still earlier period of
�14
The Physical Basis of Will.
thought he put a Naiad in the fountain, a Dryad in the
tree, a Sun-god in the sun.
But, in the second place, while consciousness does not
tell him that he has a will such as he supposes, no more
has it the authority to tell him that his will is free.
Consciousness only illumines directly the mental state of
the moment; it reveals nothing of the long train of
antecedent states of which that state is the outcome—all
is dark beyond where its light directly falls; and it
cannot testify anything as an eyewitness concerning what
is happening there, any more than a person in the light
can testify of what is taking place in the dark. Let
there be a solitary gas-lamp lit in a large square on a
pitchdark night, it enables you to see immediately around
it, but it does not show what is going on in any other
part of the square; and if any one standing near it
chanced to get a severe blow on the head from a stone
coming out of the darkness, he would think it small
satisfaction to be told that the blow was by a selfdetermined stone. So it is with consciousness; it makes
known the present volition, it does not make known its
causes; and that, as Spinoza pointed out long ago, is the
origin of the illusion of Freewill. How, indeed, could a
present state of consciousness reveal immediately another
state of consciousness; in other words, how could it be
itself and a former state of consciousness at the same
time ? But whosoever will be at the pains to carry his
self-inspection patiently back from the present state of
consciousness to that state which went before it, and
from that again to its antecedent state, and so backwards
along the train of activity which has issued in the latest
mental outcome, lighting up in succession as well as he
can each link in an intricate chain of many-junctioned
associations, may easily assure himself that he would never
have present states of feeling were it not for past states of
feeling. Let the will be as free as any one chooses to sup
pose, it is certainly as impotent to will without previous
acts of will, as a child is to walk before it has learned to
step: the present volition contains the abstracts,, so to
speak, of a multitude of former volitions t by them it is in
�The Physical Basis of Will.
15
formed. The most eager metaphysician, when he is not
thinking of his abstract dogma of freewill, or of an equally
abstract reason whose supreme dominion over will is sup
posed to constitute its singular freedom, will not deny
*
that an individual’s thinking, feeling,or acting as he does at
any moment of his life is the outcome of his nature and
training, the expression of his character; that his present
being is the organic development of his past being ; that
he is fast linked in a chain of causation which does not
suffer him ever to get out of himself. It is a chain, too,
which, if he reflects, he must perceive to reach a long
way farther back in an ancestral past than he can
estimate. We see plainly how a person inherits a father’s,
grandfather’s, or more remote ancestor’s tricks of speech,
of walk, of handwriting, and the like, without imitation
on his part, since the father or grandfather may have
died before he was born; and in the same way he inherits
moods of feeling, modes of thought, impulses of will, and
exhibits them in thoughts, feelings and acts which seem
essentially spontaneous, most his own. Has he done
well in some great and urgent emergency of life in which
he knew not what he did at the instant, he may justly
give thanks to the dead father or grandfather who en
dowed him with the actuating impulse or the happy
aptitude which served him so well on the critical occasion.
We little think, for the most part, how much we owe
to those who have gone before us. There is not a word
which I have used, or shall use, in this lecture which does
not attest by its origin and growth countless generations
of human culture extending from our far distant Aryan
forefathers of the Indian plains down to us ; in like
manner there is not a thought or feeling or volition
which any one in this room can have which he could have,
had not countless generations of human beings thought
and felt and willed before him, and had not he himself
been thinking, feeling, and willing ever since he left his
cradle. It is in vain we attempt by self-inspection to
make plain all the links of causation of any feeling or
* See note at the end of the lecture.
�16
The Physical Basis of Will.
volition; the impossibility is to seize and weigh each
minute and remote operative element—to bring all the
contributory factors into the light of consciousness. So
much is unconscious agency—temperament, character,
instinct, habit, potential thought and feeling, what you
will—something which lies deeper than direct self-obser
vation or even the utmost labours of self-analysis can
reach. Hence spring the illusions into which men often
times fall with regard to their motives on particular
occasions, the remarkable self-deceptions of which they
are capable. They think, perhaps, that they have acted
in their freedom from certain high motives of which
they were conscious when these were not the real
motives which actuated them.
*
From the unlit depths
of his being, the deep and silent stream of the indi
vidual’s nature, rise the forces which break on the sur
face in the currents and eddies of consciousness. One
may get a truer explanation sometimes of a person’s
conduct on a particular occasion by a knowledge of the
characters of his near relations than by his own expla
nation of his motives or one’s own speculations about
them ; for in their traits we may see displayed in full
detail what is potential mainly and of occasional out
come in him. When acts appear to be quite incommen
surate with motives, or when the same motive appears to
produce different acts, the just conclusion is not that an
arbitrary freewill has capriciously meddled and upset
calculation, but that the motives which we discover are
only a part of the complex causation, and that the most
important part thereof lies in the dark. Self-conscious
ness is a very incompetent witness in that matter : you
might as well try to illuminate the interior of St. Paul’s
with a rushlight. A motiveless will may be compared,
* A desire or motive does not generally go the direct way to
its issue in action any more than a person necessarily goes the
direct way from London to Edinburgh. He may go two or three
ways, or he might go all round by Exeter, and still get there.
So with desire, which goes a roundabout and very intricate way
sometimes, carrying with it, so to speak, something from each
place at which it has stopped on its journey.
�The Physical Basis of Will.
17
•perhaps, to a foundling baby; respecting which wise men
conclude, not that it had no parents and came by chance,
but that they do not know who its parents are.
The metaphysicians have yet another argument of
which they make much. They lay great stress upon
their assertion that there is nothing in the operations of
the body which is in the least like the energy we are
conscious of as will, and that we cannot put a finger on
anything in all the functions of the nervous system which
can conceivably serve as a physical basis of will. Let us
enquire then if that be so. The simplest nervous opera
tion, that which is the elemental type of which the more
complex functions are built up, as a great house is built
up of simple bricks, is what we call a reflex act: an
impression is made upon some part of the body, the
molecular change produced thereby is conducted along a
sensory nerve to a nerve-centre and arouses the energy
thereof, and that energy is thereupon transmitted or
reflected along a connected motor nerve and accomplishes
a particular movement, which may be purposive or not.
For example, a strong light falls upon the retina and the
pupil instantly contracts in order to exclude the excess of
light; a blow is threatened to the eye and the eyelids
wink involuntary to protect it; a lump of food gets to
the back of the throat and as soon as it is felt there the
muscles contract and push it on. These are operations
of the body in which, although they accomplish a purpose,
the will has no part whatever; they take place in spite of
the will, as everybody knows, and one of them even
when a person is completely unconscious.
A more
striking instance of an instructive reflex act is afforded
by a well-known experiment on the frog: if its right
thigh is irritated by a drop of acid it rubs it off with the
foot of that side, but if it is prevented from using that
foot for the purpose it makes use of the opposite leg.
Intelligent purpose and deliberate will, one would natur
ally say; but when the frog’s head is cut off and the
experiment made then the result is the same; it tries
first to use its right foot, and that being impossible bends
the other leg across and wipes off the acid with it. As
�18
The Physical Basis of Will.
its head has been, cut off it is certain that it has not
conscious intelligence and will in any definite and proper
signification of those terms ; it does not know what it is
doing although it acts with admirable purpose, any more
than the pupil does when it contracts in a strong light or
than the steam engine does when it performs its useful
*
work.
The concluson which we must come to and
emphasize is that the nervous system has the power,
instinct in its constitution or acquired by training, to
execute mechanically acts which have the semblance
of being designed and voluntary, without there being
the least consciousness or will in them. Have we not
here then a pretty fair physical foundation of a rudi
mentary will ?
Let us now go a step further. The will, as we know,
has not the power to execute only, but it has the power
to prevent execution, to hold impulses in check; indeed,
its higher energies are most tasked, and its highest
qualities shown, in the exercise of this controlling function.
Our appetites and passions urge us to immediate gratifica
tions ; it is the noble function of will to curb these lower
* A critic of my book, on the “ Physiology of Mind,” in the
“ Journal of Mental Science,” of January last, defines the theory
of freewill thus: “ that in every determination to act which con
stitutes a volition the determinant is not a mere datum of nerves,
or sense, or passion, but is an idea actively taken up, formulated
as an adequate end, and stamped as an element of happiness by
that nonbodily entity which we call self. . . . This is the
simple key to the whole problem of Responsibility.” The italics
are his. We may take notice here how admirably the acts of
the decapitated frog fit this definiton. It evidently takes up
actively the idea of getting rid of the pain, formulates it as an
adequate end, and stamps it as an element of happiness by that
nonbodily entity (clearly very much, if not entirely, non-bodily
seeing that it is headless) which we call self! Thus it gives
us the key to the whole problem of Responsibility. It were
well, perhaps, if all those who write about mind would follow
Spinoza’s advice—first study sufficiently the functions of the
body, so as to “ learn by experience what the body can do and
what it cannot do by the simple laws of its corporeal nature and
without receiving any determination from the mind.” They
might then, perhaps, as Schopenhauer thought, “ leave many
German scribblers unread.”
�The Physical Basis of Will.
19
impulses of our nature. Is there anything, then, in the
operations of the nervous system which can possibly be
the basis of this exalted governing function? Let us
take preliminary note here that there are reflex actions
going on in the body which are essential to life, but over
which this mighty despot of the mind, the will, has no
authority whatever—the movements of the heart and of
the intestines, for example; they go on regularly night
and day; if they did not we should die; but we cannot
slacken or quicken or stop them by any exertion of will
which we can make. The movements of breathing, which
are also reflex, we can control partially; we can breathe
quickly or slowly as we please, or even stop breathing for
a time, but not for long, since no one can kill himself
by simply holding his breath. The physiologist, however,
can easily quicken or retard the beatings of an animal’s
heart at will, by stimulating directly the proper nerves.
By irritating a nerve which goes to it—the so-called vagus
nerve—he can retard them, and by irritating another
nerve connected with it—the so-called sympathetic—he
can quicken them. He can do with its pulsations as the
coachman can with his horses, pull them in to go slowly
or send them on quickly. But more—and this is the
point I wish to come to—he can affect them not only in
the direct way which I have mentioned, but also indirectly
by a sharp impression on some part of the body. For
example, if he suspends a frog by its legs and then taps
sharply on its belly, he instantly stops its heart for a
time. What happens is that the stimulus of the tap is
carried by a nerve to a nerve-centre in the brain near
that centre from which a controlling nerve of the heart
proceeds, and so acts upon it as in the result to prevent
or inhibit the action of the heart; in other words, what
we have to apprehend and perpend in the experiment is
that the physiological sympathy of nerve-centres in the
organization of the nervous system is such that one
centre, when stimulated to function, has the power to
inhibit physically the function of another centre, just as
the will inhibits the movements of breathing.
This
temporary arrest of the heart’s beats by an intercurrent
�20
The Physical Basis of TFi'ZZ.
stimulus somewhere into its reflex arc is after all not
very unlike to temporary arrest of respiration by an in
tercurrent volition into its reflex arc.
Did time permit, I might bring forward many more,
and more striking, instances of this kind of inhibitory
action, selecting them from the operations of the human
body both in health and in disease; but it must suffice
for the present to set down and emphasize the broad con
clusion which they warrant, namely, that one nervous
centre, when stimulated into activity, may so act upon
another centre as either to help, or to hinder, or to suspend
its function by pure physiological mechanism. Have we
not here, then, a physical basis of the inhibitory power of
will ? Place the fact by the side of the fact on which I
laid emphatic stress just now—namely, that the nervous
system has the power of executing purposive acts without
any intervention of consciousness or will; and it is plain
we have in the two physical functions something which
runs closely parallel with the rudiments of volition and
may well be their material equivalents—that is to say,
power to command execution of a purpose and power to
stop execution.
Metaphysicians * get their theories of will by considering
its highest displays in a much cultivated self-conscious
ness, where the difficulties of satisfactory analysis are
insuperable; but a complete and sincere study of it must
deal with its small beginnings as well as with its finest
displays—ought, in fact, to commence with them; for to
ignore the facts of its genesis and development is to make
an artificial philosophy which may serve well for intel
lectual gymnastics in scholastic exercises, but has no
practical bearing on the concerns of real life. Let us
then examine the simplest instances of primitive volition
in the animal and in the infant. When a dog, in obedi
ence to its natural instinct, seizes a piece of meat which
* They appear to be desirous of abandoning their old name of
metaphysicians in favour of the new name of idealists. But they
have no right to that term, which is properly applicable only to
one who upholds the Berkleian theory.
�The Physical Basis of Will.
21
lies near it and is punished for the theft, the memory of
what it was made to suffer intervenes on another occasion
between the impression on sight and the ensuing impulse,
and checks or inhibits it; in like manner when an infant
grasps something bright which attracts its gaze and is
burnt, its memory of the pain which it suffered checks
or inhibits a similar hasty movement on another occasion.
Here then we have the simplest instance of will; the
animal or infant voluntarily refrains from doing what its
first impulse is to do—of two courses chooses the best.
But what is the probable physical side of the process ?
In the first case, where the dog seized the meat, an im
pression upon the sense of sight, the conduction of the
molecular change to the nerve-centre, and the production
of a special sensation, as the ingoing process; after which,
as the outgoing process, the transmission of the energy
along a motor nerve to muscle and a consequent adaptive
movement—a sensorimotor process; in the second event,
when a punishment was inflicted, the association of this
sensorimotor process with the painful stimulation of
another nerve-centre; and in the third case, when the
dog seeing the meat refrained from touching it, instead
of the instant reflexion of the sensation into movement,
there was the stimulation by it of the associated centre in
which the memory of the pain was registered, the conse
quence of which was the inhibition of the movement.
One of two catenated physiological centres was in fact
excited to inhibit the other. If we multiply in an endless
complexity this simple scheme of nerves and nerve-centres
we get the constitution of the brain, indeed of the whole
nervous system, which contains an innumerable multitude
of interconnected nerve-centres ready to be awakened into
action by suitable stimulation to increase, to combine, to
modify, to restrain one another’s functions. As counter
part on the mental side to this exceeding complexity of
physical structure, we have very complex deliberation
going before the formation of will, which comes out at
last from the intricate interactions of so many hopes,
fears, inclinations, promptings, desires, reflections, and
the like, of so many constituent elements of character,.
�22
The Physical Basis of Will.
that we are unable to analyze them and so to specify the
exact factors in its complex causation: it is the resultant
of a very intricate composition of forces. To me it seems
then a fair conclusion that in the inhibitory action of one
nerve-centre upon another, as disclosed by physiological
observation, and in the simplest instance of volition, as
known by consciousness, we have two processes which go
along together parallel, and not unfair therefore to main
tain that we have as good authority to believe in a physical
basis of will as in a physical basis of any mental state
whatever.
The plain truth is, when we look the facts fairly in the
face, that we never meet with will except in connection
with a certain organization of matter, varying with its
variations, and exhibiting every proof of being dependent
upon it. It is notably infantile in the child, imbecile in
the idiot, grows in power, range, and quality as the
mental powers grow by education, is mature in the adult,
falls sick with the body’s sicknesses, and becomes decrepit
in the decrepitude of age. However free and independent
in theory, it never shows its power in fact except from a
good physical basis. The aim, the use, and the result of
a sound moral training are to fashion a strong will; and
assuredly all training acts through the intimate develop
ment of the nervous system which it produces. Good
moral habits, like other habits, are formed by the structure
growing to the modes of its exercise. When the physical
basis is congenitally defective, as in the idiot, no excellence
of training will succeed in developing a normal will, any
more than much thought will add one cubit to the stature
of a dwarf. And when we make a survey of the various
forms of mental derangement, which we know to be the
deranged functions of disordered brain, we observe that
a first symptom of mischief is always a loss of power of
will over the thoughts and feelings : that is the sad sign
which portends the coming calamity. The person who is
about to fall into acute mania has ideas and feelings surge
up in his mind in the most irregular and tumultuous
fashion, and is impelled by them to strange and disorderly
acts. It is painfully interesting to watch the struggle
�The Physical Basis of Will.
23
which goes on sometimes at the beginning of the attack
before the failing will undergoes complete dissolution:
the patient will succeed by a strong effort in controlling
himself for a few moments when he knows that some one
is looking at him, or when he is spoken to, and in acting
and answering calmly and coherently, but the enfeebled
will cannot hold on to the reins, and he relapses soon into
incoherent thought, speech and conduct, becoming, as the
disease makes progress, incapable of even an instant’s
real self-control. The person who is falling melancholic
is tormented with painful thoughts and feelings, blasphe
mous or otherwise afflicting, which come into his mind
against his most earnest wish, cause him unspeakable
distress, and cannot be repressed or expelled by all the
efforts of his agitated will; so hateful are they to him, so
independent do they seem of his true self, that he ends
perhaps by thinking them the direct inspiration of Satan
and himself given over to eternal damnation. The mono
maniac broods upon some idea of greatness or of suspicion,
rooted in its congenial feeling of exaltation or of distrust,
until the weakened will looses all hold of it and it grows
to the height of an insane delusion; then he imagines
himself to be emperor, prophet, or some other great per
sonage, or believes all the world to be in a conspiracy
against him. The sufferer who is afflicted with a frequently
upstarting impulse to do harm to himself or to others,
conscious all the while of the horrible nature of the im
pulse, which he fights against with frenzied energy, goes
through agonies of distress in the struggles to prevent his
true will being mastered by it. Everywhere we observe
impaired will to go along with the beginnings of physical
derangement. And if we look to the last term of the
mental degeneration, as we have it in the demented
person in whom all traces of mind are well-nigh extin
guished, who must be fed, clothed, cared for in every way,
whose existence is little more than vegetative, we find an
almost complete abolition of rational will accompanying
extreme disorganization of special structure.
The lessons of mental pathology admit of no misread
ing ; they make known everywhere an entire dependence
�24
The Physical Basis of Will.
of will on physical organization. But there is an im
portant aspect of the matter which I ought not to pass
by altogether, although my allusion to it now must
necessarily be the briefest. It is this converse and
weighty truth—that actual derangement of the structure
of an organ can be brought about by the continuance of
excessive or disordered function ; that the habitual indul
gence of evil passions, ill-regulated thoughts, and de
praved will does lead to corresponding physical changes
in the brain; and that every person has thus in the patient
fashioning and timely exercise of will no mean power
over himself to prevent insanity. For the praises of such
a well-fashioned will, I cannot do better than borrow the
lines of Tennyson :—
Oh! well for him whose will is strong!
He suffers, but he will not suffer long;
He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong:
For him nor moves the loud world’s random mock,
Nor all calamities hugest waves confound,
Who seems a promontory of rock
That, compassed round with turbulent sound,
In middle ocean meets the surging shock,
Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crowned.
But assuredly we shall not have a will of that kind
formed by treating it as a free, independent, arbitrary entity
which has no affinities, is not moved by motive, and owns no
law but self-caprice; it can be formed only by painful
degrees, in conformity with stern laws of moral develop
ment, by one who is solicitous uniformly to use motives
and make good use of them, patiently watchful to with
stand and check the earliest invasion of his mind by low
motives, earnest to cultivate good feelings and noble aspi
rations, steadfast always to strengthen the will by habitual
practice in right doing—who aims, indeed, to make it, as
it should be, the highest and fullest expression of a wellformed character.
The acknowledgment that human
will is included within the law of causation—the appre
hension of the universal reign of law in mind and in
matter—so far from tending to dishearten men and to
�The Physical Basis of Will.
25
paralyze their highest efforts by driving them into a dreary
fatalism, seems to me to be essential in order to infix and
develop in their minds a vital sense of responsibility to
search out intelligently and to pursue deliberately the right
path of human progress; a responsibility, be it said, which
the metaphysical dogma of free-will not merely weakens
but logically destroys. Men have not been paralyzed in
intelligence or effort, but have gained in both immeasur
ably, by perceiving and comprehending the law of gravita
tion; and in like manner by apprehending the reign of law
in mind they will lose only the freedom to make ignorant
blunders and to waste their forces unintelligently : they
will obey the law whose service is their best freedom.
Knowing that their efforts rest securely upon eternal law,
they will know that their labours cannot be in vain: that
they have the power of the universe at their backs, “ the
everlasting arms ” beneath them.
It is unfortunate that people, scared by a horror of
materialism, the “uncreating word” before which freedom
of will and responsibility die, as a writer has described
it lately, cannot see that the application of a scientific
method of enquiry to human thoughts, feelings, and
doings in no way touches injuriously the supreme autho
rity of moral law and the power and wish to. obey it.
Neither moral feeling nor responsibility would be taken
out of life were a purely materialistic evolution proved
doctrine ; on the contrary, the course of that evolution in
the past would remain the best guarantee and yield the
strongest assurance of a further moral and intellectual
progress in the future. If it be true that men have risen
by a gradual evolution from a pre-moral state of barbarism
to their present height of intelligence and moral feeling,
and if it be, as it certainly is, the essential principle of
evolution to pass upwards from more simple and general
to more complex and special organisation, it is surely a
rational inference and a sound expectation that intelli
gence and moral feeling will reach a still higher develop
ment in the future. Science is only organised knowledge
and does not pretend to do more than find out and set
forth how things are as they are, and by help of what it
�26
The Physical Basis of Will.
thus learns to forecast what they will be in the future; it
perceives clearly how inexorably its range is limited by
the limitations of our few and feeble senses, and how
impossible it is that it should ever discover anything about
the primal origin of things—about the why and whence of
the mysterious universe of its observations. Evolution,
the modern name of that conception which the old Greek
philosophers, when they first formed it, called nature or
the becoming of things
is only a more exact and
true exposition of how things have become, not in the
least an explanation of the mystery of their why. By
the help of knowledge slowly widening we can look back
in retrospective imagination to the time and manner in
which our planet and the other planets of our solar
system took form by nebular condensation and started
on their several orbits; we can trace with patient
thought the successive changes which have taken place on
the surface of the earth and have culminated in man and
his achievements ; we may foresee, perhaps, a time when
a few miserable human beings, living degraded lives in
snow huts near the equator, shall represent all that is
left of the vanished myriads of the human race, or a still
later period when the earth, fallen to the condition in
which the moon now is, rolls on its solitary way through
space, a frozen and barren globe, the tomb of a Dead
Humanity;—we may, if we look far enough before and
after, do all that, but we can never tell what minute frac
tion our solar system may be—what a vortex-molecule,
so to speak—of countless other systems in the inconceiv
able immensities of space which lie beyond our utmost
ken, and what essential relations it may have to them;
we cannot tell why matter on earth has formed an ascend
ing series of more and more complex compounds, why
having reached a certain complexity of composition it
became living, why organic evolution have gone on to
higher and ever higher achievements until it reached the
complexity of human organization and gave birth to con
sciousness ; and we cannot tell in the least what will
happen in the long long time to come, when all the
operations of our solar system are ended, past as com-
�.The Physical Basis of Will.
27
" pletely as the light of the first human eyes that gazed on
them in wonder. Science is confined to a finite space
• between two infinities—the eternal past and eternity to
come; it measures only a single pulsation, so to speak,
in the working of a power whose source and end are
past finding out, which was and is, and is to come, from
everlasting to everlasting ; beyond that range, narrow it
is true, but more than wide enough to give full scope to
all human affections and to occupy usefully all human
energies, there is absolute nescience—agnosticism if you
will. Organised as we are we can no more know about
it than the oyster in its narrow home and with its very
limited sentiency can know of the events of the human
world—of the noise and turmoil, say, of an English electior,
or of the interesting chronicles of the “ Court Circular.”
-What science repudiates and condemns, I believe, is the
presumptuous pretence on the part of theology to know
and tell all about the inscrutable, to put forward as
truths, not ever to be questioned, childish explanations
which are an insult to the understanding and would be
its suicide if really accepted, to demand reverent assent
to doctrines which sometimes outrage moral feeling, and
to declare solemnly that whosoever believeth not the
fables which it proclaims “ shall without doubt perish
everlastingly.”
What it may furthermore well repudiate and condemn
is the evident want of sincerity of heart and veracity of
thought shown by those who proffer and accept these
explanations, by reason of which they do not honestly
sound their beliefs and pursue them rigidly to their
logical issues, but suffer themselves to use words habitu
ally in a non-natural sense, and to hold side by side
inconsistent and even directly contradictory doctrines,
without being troubled by their manifest inconsistencies.
The scientific spirit claims entire veracity of thought,
whatever the result, knows that truth does not depend
upon our sympathies and antipathies, is resolute to follow
it to the end even at the sacrifice of the most cherished
beliefs. It cannot but think it to be as demoralizing in
tendency as it is insincere in fact, to profess to hold a
�28
The Physical Basis of Will.
faith in entire reverence after having given up most of
what is characteristic of it, and as certain in the end to lead
to grossly inconsistent conduct. Such disingenuous deal
ing with momentous matters marks indeed an unveracity
of thought which would be lamentable hypocrisy were it
not more often intellectual timidity and unconscious
self-deception. But whether the insincerity be conscious
or unconscious, it is incompatible with that rigid, hearty,
and entire devotion to truth in thought, feeling, and ex
pression which is the aim and at the same time the
strength of a good understanding.
Note to Page 15.—Kant’s doctrine is that there is a determi
nation of the will by pure reason, that so reason gets practical
reality, and that in this absolute obedience the will has absolute
assurance of its freedom. The moral law is a law spontaneously
imposed on the will by pure reason: it stands high above all the
motives, sensuous and their like, which determine the empirical
will; it pays no respect to them, but with an inward, irresistible
necessity, orders us, in independence of them, to follow it abso
lutely and unconditionally—'tis a categorical imperative, universal,
and binding on every rational will. A happy thing, certainly, that
a will determined to unconditional obedience by so absolute an
authority retains nevertheless the absolute assurance of its free
dom. But then comes the not unimportant question—What is
it that practical reason categorically commands ? How are we
to know what the moral law dictates and forbids ? The easiest
thing in the world, thinks Kant: let only those maxims of con
duct derived from experience be adopted as motives which are
susceptible of being made of universal validity—which are fit to
be regarded as universal laws of reason to govern the actions of
all mankind. I do right when I do what all persons would
think right in similar circumstances. Very good, without doubt,
although very like the common-place maxim of every ethical
system; but my difficulty has been to know in a particular case
what all intelligent beings would think right. How am I to get
at the universal standard or precept and apply it to my particu
lar occasion, so as to know absolutely what I ought then to do ?
Kant helps me by means of two remarkable illustrations. Suicide
is one. Is suicide, under the strongest temptation conceivable,
ever right ? I must ask myself then, “ Is the principle of the
admission that suicide is ever right fit to become a universal
law ?” No, says Kant, it is not fit, since the universal practice
�The Physical Basis of Will.
29
sary to come down from its supersensuous heights and to be no
better than gross Utilitarianism. All that it can tell me, panting
for its supreme utterance, is that suicide is inexpedient as a
universal principle of conduct—in fact, it makes use of the
common motives of an experience which is nowise supersen
suous, and instead of helping me to an absolute precept or
standard to measure them by, actually comes to them for its
authority. Kant’s philosophy, of which the metaphysical mind
is getting re-enamoured in some quarters at the present day, has
its head high in the clouds and dreams there sublimely; but
it finds it necessary to have its feet on the ground when the time
comes for it to march.
The second instance is no more helpful. May a person in the
greatest need of a loan, which he knows he will not get unless
he makes a solemn promise to repay what he is perfectly certain
he never will be able to repay, make the promise ? No, says
Kant, for if it were a universal law, all faith in promises would
be destroyed, and nobody would lend money. In other words,
in the long run it would be very bad for society that faith in
promises should be destroyed. An excellent truth, which no
body can deny, but it evidently smacks much of the earth
earthy; indeed, it would seem that those who discover the
basis of morality in the social sanction may claim Kant, when
he is not in the clouds, as an out-and-out supporter. It is dif
ferent when he is busy spinning empty supersensuous theories
which have no relation to actual life, and amusing his disciples
with the magnificent dissolving views of his metaphysical magic
lantern. First he presents a splendid view of supreme reason
to the spectator who, as he admires it, sees the picture dissolve
gradually and in its place appear the grand features of Moral
Law, which shared with the Starry Heaven Kant’s ever new
and rising admiration and reverence; as the gaze is fixed in ad
miration upon this view it melts into indistinctness, and, as it
does so, there comes by degrees into clear definition the mighty
figure of freewill. Thereupon, informing his enthusiastic audience
that there are not really three pictures, as they might suppose,
but one picture, the three being one and the one being three,
Reason being Will and Will Reason, and that they cannot fail
to perceive, when they reflect properly upon what they have
seen, that the belief in God and immortality have now been
made safe for ever, he retires amidst unbounded applause.
Meanwhile, the critic who has not been blinded by the magnificent
metaphysical display, and who feels that he does not live, move,
and have his being in an abstract land beyond physics, asks him
self with regard to the philosophy—Will it march ?—and is not
much surprised to find that when it begins to march it can only
do so on well-worn Utilitarian tracks.
All theories of freewill seem to come to this—that the will
which is swayed by low motives is not free, that the will which
�30
The Physical Basis of Will.
of suicide would reduce the world to chaos. Very true, but it is
sadly disappointing to perceive that the sublime and supreme
reason has, in order to become practical reality, found it necesis swayed by the higher motives is more free, and that the will
which is swayed by the highest motives is most free; conse
quently, when a person is blamed for having done ill, he is not
blamed for not having acted without motives, but for not having
been actuated by the highest motives. Create an artificial world
of names apart from the real world of facts—a world which shall
simply be made up of negations of all qualities of which we have
actual experience—and let the highest motives be known in it
as the Will of God or abstract Supreme Reason, you will get
your service which you may please yourself to call perfect
freedom. And there does not appear to be any reason why you
may not create and take refuge in another still more ideal world
beyond that, if persons of a positive spirit should show any dis
position to invade ideal word No. 1 with inconvenient enquiries.
�
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The physical basis of will: a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, on Sunday afternoon, February 15th, 1890
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ß ¿ ¿¿ 9
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THE
SPONTANEOUS DISSOLUTION
ANCIENT CREEDS.
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE
SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
SUNDAY
AFTERNOON, 23rd JANUARY, 1876.
BY
De. G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.R. Hist. S.,
tßne ofthe Lecturers in H,M. Lepajtnient of Science and Art,
LONDON:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
1876.
Price Threepence.
�SYLLABUS.
Definition of terms : ‘'Spontaneous” and “Creed.”-
Constituent elements in Humanity.
Mind and Matter. Imagination and Reason.
Superstition and Knowledge. Ignorance and Faith.
Intellect and Morals. Emotions and Convictions.
Analogy between Chemical and Intellectual Com
binations and Dissolutions.
Religious Reforms. Brahminism and Buddhism.
Magism and Zoroastrianism. Hesiod’s Theogony
and Greek Philosophy. Judaism and Christianity.
Religiousness and Irreligiousness.
St. Paul and St. John.
Christ’s Christianity.
Christian Unchristianity.
The Historical development of Religion based on
Reason and Science.
Polytheism, Anthropomorphism, Anthropopatism,
Acosmism, and Atheism.
Conclusion.
�THE
SPONTANEOUS DISSOLUTION
OF
ANCIENT CREEDS.
LL philosophers of ancient and modern times
agree that words are the principal instru
ments of thoughts. A correct knowledge and use
of these instruments alone can secure for us pro
fitable results of reasoning as the principal aim of
philosophy. I intend to discuss the Spontaneous
Dissolution of Ancient Creeds from an entirely ob
jective point of view. In this sentence there are
two words which I must beg you to accept in the
sense in which I intend to use them. I do not
mean to apply the word “ spontaneous ” colloquially
as something li sudden,” but scientifically as some
thing “ acting, by its own inherent energy, accord
ing to a natural law.” A spontaneous dissolution
will, therefore, be a dissolution to be traced to the
inherent constituent elements of the different creeds,
as the result of a natural law, according to which
antagonistic particles must dissolve in time so soon
as they lose the cause or force of cohesion. By the
word “ creed,” I do not signify “a summary of the
articles of the Christian faith,” but “ any system
of dogmas which is prescribed as necessary to be
believed, or, at least, to be professed.” In a former
Lecture I endeavoured to trace the influence of
natural phenomena on the formation of the different
A
�4
The Spontaneous Dissolution
religious systems or creeds. Nature in its infinity,
and man in his finiteness, are then the two princi
pal elements from which the different creeds of all
times have sprung; that is, from the very begin
ning of man’s consciousness, his notions con corning
the world, its Creator, and himself, spring from
two utterly antagonistic sources.
Man is formed of matter and endowed with mind,
This must be also the case with the whole universe.
Matter is acted upon by an inherent spirit, mani
festing itself as law—the law of causation, which
pervades space, wherever matter is existent, which
.assumes in time different shapes and forms. The
further constituent elements in humanity are man’s
utter helplessness as a single individual, and the
necessity that he should enter into a social bond
with his fellow-creatures, to render his existence as
an individual a possibility.
To make the existence of a collective social state
possible, man must submit to laws equally binding
on all. Exercising his in-born intellectual power,
man will frame such laws to facilitate the existence
both of the detached individual and of a collection of
individuals, brought together by geographical posi
tion, voluntary or forced influences, over which the
individual, as such, has little or no control. The
laws so framed are in all cases revealed; not re
vealed directly by the mouth of the Divinity, or by
some supernatural agent, but by that self-conscious
ness which, in its turn, is the result of man’s material
«organisation.
This brings us once more to the never-ending dis
cussion of mind and matter. History illustrates most
distinctly the fact that in humanity, as in electricity,
there are elements which will be negative, or positive,
or static, and dynamic. Neither the negative nor the
positive electricity, however, predominates by itself,
�of Ancient Creeds.
5
nor does a machine exist exclusively constructed on
the dynamic or static principle. A proper balance
between the two forces alone will produce action
and reaction, motion and resistance. What is static in
electricity or in a machine is moral in humanity—a
stationary element. Absolute morality, if there be
such a thing, can only be one and the same from
eternity to eternity. Relative morality may vary
with the intellectual “ plus ” or “ minus ” in man’s
social development; but “ wrong,” as wrong can only
be one in an absolute sense, and must be “ wrong ”
in all times under all circumstances. So it is with
virtue. To the philosopher “ murder ” is murder,
whether perpetrated by a single individual to satisfy
his passion, or by an army wholesale for the glory
of a nation; though relatively war, or wholesale
murder, pillaging, robbing and ravaging may be
excused under certain circumstances, and even de
serve a bright monument. To draw a sharp distinc
tion between the absolute and the relative in dialec
tics is of the very utmost importance. Absolute
morality can only be one immutable, unchangeable
element, which renders the existence of humanity
as such possible. This existence would be impossible
if theft, murder, and adultery were allowed. We
trace thus in humanity the existence of one con
stituent—a static element—morals.
The next element will be intellect—a pushing,
dynamic force, ever-changing, ever-growing, ever
varying ; to-day different from what it was yester
day, building up slowly the mighty temples of
science and art, to which every one may contribute,
consciously or even unconsciously, a small pebble or a
few grains of sand to form cement; whilst some place
the huge corner-stones, others raise a flag-staff on a
lofty spire from which a bright banner, floating in
the air, shows whence the cosmical wind blows.
�6
The Spontaneous Dissolution
These banner-bearers only become possible when
every-day working men have dug the foundations,
collected materials, mixed the mortar, heaped up
stones, constructed the edifice, and crowned it with
spires. All work according to the plan of the
grand, invisible, and still, through man’s intellectual
power, ever-present architect, who, in endowing
humanity with self-conscious intellect, ordained its
use to be continuous, leading to a correct application,
of morals by an understanding of the aim and pur
pose of humanity in its component individual
particles.
The process of constructing the progressive intel
lectual development of humanity underwent dif
ferent phases according as imagination or reason
predominated. Both are merely faculties of our
intellect; the one engendering superstition and
religious creeds, the other science and art. The
primary constituent elements begin to be subdivided,
and in their subdivision we find the first germs of
confusion, but also of activity, of action and reac
tion. Those who, by their superior intellectual
consciousness, assume the lead of humanity, begin
to be divided into two divergent groups, each
assuming that man has only to cultivate one of its
constituent elements.
The moralists presume that, with their superior
intellectual power, they have found out for eternity
the laws according to which man may be best
induced to be virtuous. They proclaim him to be
conceived in wrath, created full of wickedness and
sin, and propound that ignorance is his birthright
and faith in the system of the creeds, which they
have worked out in the name of the Divinity, his
only salvation. They pronounce the innate spirit of
inquiry to be of evil, wish us blindly to abide by
certain formulae, separate morals from intellect,
�of Ancient Creeds,
7
mind from matter, the static element from the
dynamic, and hinder the progress of our social
development, which they try to limit or altogether
to check by their dictates. . The despotic sway of
these dictates they deny, for they consider that
their wish to promote the welfare of humanity onesidedly palliates everything they say or do. They
create the first terrible rent in humanity by arbitra
rily separating the component parts of our spiritual
and material existence; they devote themselves to
the exclusive culture of morals and foster an inor
dinate contempt for intellect. The division is
brought about by their remaining stationary, and
ignoring the dynamic force as one of the compo
nent and indispensable elements in human nature.
Wherever this happens, superstition is fostered, and
knowledge is only so far promoted as it will serve
the general superstition. Faith will be exalted
as the best tool with which blind ignorance can be
made subservient to the system of an incredible
creed. Intellect will be looked down upon as of evil.
Morals in the garb of set dogmas thus often become
the greatest immorality, for they promote hypocrisy,
cowardice, and voluntary stupidity. Emotions are
excited, but convictions are silenced. Happily this
is a condition of humanity bearing the elements of
spontaneous dissolution in its unnatural and one
sided attempts.
In analysing a drop of water we know it to be
a compound of hydrogen and oxygen. Add to it
any other element, and the water loses its purity.
Take only hydrogen by itself, it may burn, but it is
not water without oxygen. Taking man as a mere
essence of morals, we have as unreal a being as a
mere essence of intellect would be. As purely moral
or intellectual he might be an angel, an imponderable
something, but not man, who is formed of dissoluble
�8
The Spontaneous "Dissolution
matter, endowed with mind. This mind is often
assumed to be an entity in itself, through itself, for
itself. This may, perhaps, be, but we cannot prove
it; we know only that it exists, thinks, reasons,
directs our motions, our will, in a certain limited
sense, but is nowhere to be found as a separate
entity. It has an analogous nature with electricity
in an electric battery. We have the machine before
us; the proper acids, the metallic elements are
there; we hear their working; we take one of the
conductors in our hand—no effect—we take the
other, and we feel the shocks, gradually and with
increasing force, passing through our body. All these
circumstances and combinations were indispensable
for the production of an effect of electricity on our
body. So it is with mind. It is there, under cer
tain circumstances and combinations of the material
elements of which we are formed; disturb these
particles, change their relative proportion or quan
tity and quality, and you have an explanation for
our different moral and intellectual faculties. Mind
is not a cause, but an effect—absolutely, it must
exist in the universe and pervade it as well as elec
tricity—relatively, it requires certain conditions,
under which it will alone come into entity and
activity. If mind be directed one-sidedly, it will
become superstition; if filled with mere emotions,
it will be driven to madness and engender ghost-seers,
spirit-rappers, ritualists, and lunatics; if left unin
structed, it will believe anything, and can be brought,
through a long training, to such a state that it will
look upon those who are anxious to enlighten or to
instruct it as its sworn enemies; hate, persecute,
murder, burn, and crucify them. Still, just as in the
external world, continuous combinations and dissolu
tions take place, forming the different phenomena, as
air, heat, water, minerals, metals, plants, animals,
�of Ancient Creeds,
9.
and human beings, so an intellectual process of the"
mind, forming and undoing religious systems andscientific theories, has been in operation since the ■
first dawn of human consciousness.
That this is the case no honest and unbiassedi
student of history can deny. The most spiritual
elements in humanity are the different religious
systems, by their very nature treating mostly of the
unknown and unknowable; and still, though every
one of them has been proclaimed as the direct or in
direct dictate of the Supreme Being, every one had
in the course of time to undergo changes, modifica
tions, to enter into different combinations, or to dis
solve into its component parts under the action of
the voltaic battery of intellect. All religions are
composed of certain elements, partly acting on our
moral, emotional, and partly on our intellectual
nature. All religions take their origin in the
natural tendency of the human mind to explain the
surrounding phenomena of nature, and to assign to
man his destiny, not only in this but often also in
another world. Religions originate in man’s imagi
nation, more or less enlightened by knowledge?
whether guided, as some teachers assert, by Divine;
inspiration or revelation, or whether as the mere
result of intellectual effort. The position of thosevwho assume a Divine revelation or inspiration is
very difficult one, and requires an immense amount
of credulity; for history furnishes us with unde
niable proofs that the Divine inspiration and re
velation of one period has often been not only
contradicted but altogether abolished by an equally
Divine inspiration and revelation at another periods
Brahma himself is asserted to have dictated the
Vedas, but he has couched his dictates in so unin
telligible a language that man, with his limited!
intellect, had continually to explain, to correct, and
B
�io
The Spontaneous Dissolution
to comment upon the utterances of the infinite
Spirit. Several times the second person of the
Indian Trinity had to assume the human form to
save humanity from utter destruction, and we may
congratulate ourselves that His Royal Highness the
Prince of Wales went to India, because one of the
religious enthusiasts has proclaimed him the last
“ Avatar,” or incarnation of Brahma. We may here
learn, in reading history backwards, how such incar
nations occurred in olden times; how they were
proclaimed by one or several poetical or fanatical
enthusiasts, and how by degrees such proclamations
were believed, and served as the bases of several
Eastern religious creeds.
Manu had in time to step into the world with a
new Code of Laws, which, as well as the Vedas,
were the breath of the Divinity in every chapter,
verse, word, and letter; and Buddha came at a later
period and had to correct again the dictates of
Brahma, and to proclaim, quite in opposition to the
Divinity, that men were not born in different castes,
but that they were all equal. How it could have
happened that the divine Being, in proclaiming His
will through Manu, should have made such a mis
take is perfectly incomprehensible. But the Divi
nity went even further in its incomprehensible
proceedings. For a thousand years the Buddhists
had been worshipping Brahma according to the
dictates of Buddha, who was Brahma himself; they
had constructed temples in honour of that BrahmaBuddha, which, in their splendour and grandeur, are
unsurpassed, and yet in the seventh century after
Christ this very Brahma-Buddha, who taught his
followers a more humane religion, and endowed
them with so much virtue, that they are still,
though the most numerous, the only sect on the
surface of the globe that has not shed one single
�of Ancient Creeds.
11
■ drop of human blood in the propagation of th.eir
faith—this very “ Brahma-Buddha ” allowed these,
his faithful worshippers, to be massacred, and to be
driven from the very birth-place of his divine mis. si on. The same occurred with the Magi and Zoroaster.
The whole religious system of the Magi was pro
claimed by means of the prophet Hom (Homanes),
who was also the great tree of life, the source of all
bliss and prosperity, the first revealer of the word,
the logos; the first teacher of the Magi, of the
learned in the Scriptures and the prophets ; and not
withstanding this another divinely-inspired master
was required to purify and to revise the revelation
of God made through Hom, and to found the
Zoroastrian creed.
In Hesiod we may trace an altogether different
process. The Asiatic gods, who assumed for cer
tain purposes, at certain times, human shape or
form; who, in fact, represented in monstrous con
ceptions the different phenomena of nature, were at
last deprived by Hesiod of their revolting material
and spiritual attributes. They were, for the first
time, represented in human shape by the humane
vand poetical Greek mind. Their beautiful outer
forms led to an elevated conception of their spiritual
. nature, and the Greek gods became mere men and
women endowed with higher bodily and intellectual
. faculties. Through the Greeks, humanity was en
abled to leave the regions of the supernatural and to
embark on the ocean of inquiry, and provided with
the compass of intellect, to make glorious voyages
of discovery in the realms of speculative philosophy,
and to furnish us with the models of rational in
quiry. When the Greeks proclaimed their “ yv^Qe
ffeawo/’—“Know thyself,” man’s spirit became
. conscious of its own self as part of the eternal divine
spirit, but not altogether freed from the fetters of
�12
The Spontaneous Dissolution
outer-fonn. . Intellect with the Greeks was yet
generalised,, and had to take a beautiful form, as
manifested in their immortal works of art; man was
not yet unfettered as pure individual intellect. We
must look for this spiritual development of humanity
elsewhere.
The historical importance of the Jews begins with
their bondage. In misery and wretchedness they
learned their higher aspirations. Their legend about
the creation of man in the image of God and the
forfeiture of his innocence in eating from the tree of
knowledge is a mighty truth, bearing in it all the
elements of future dissolution. For if man was
created in the image of God, why should the gods
have been jealous of Adam becoming as one of them,
“ knowing good and evil ?” With this antithesis the
Jewish misfortune for humanity began. They taught
us to be images of God, to long in boundless eager
ness for that Godhead, and condemned as sinful th iff
very yearning. Mankind had to undergo endless
bodily and intellectual sufferings in consequence of
this decomposing composition of heterogeneous ele
ments, placing reality in eternal opposition to the
ideal. The Jews always hoped to find a Messiah to
reconcile their old oriental antithesis, which they
had in reality borrowed from the Persians and
Egyptians; they always hoped that somebody
would redeem humanity from the fetters of spiritual
darkness or sin. It was clearly felt by the Persians,
as well as by the Jews, that this redemption could
only come through man.
Real religiousness consists in man’s consciousness
of his double attributes and his attempt to bring
harmony into the apparent dissonance of his divine
(intellectual) and human (material or animal)
nature. This pure process must not be disturbed,
interrupted, or checked by any secondary and arbi
�of Ancient Creeds.
13
trary element. Man embodies the eternal divine
spirit only in a transitional phase, that is for a
limited time. During that limited phase he has to
exert all his intellectual and moral powers to pro
mote his own as well as his fellow-creatures’ happi
ness. All those elements that hinder him in this
task through obscure verbiage, revealed and re
revealed incongruities, mystic symbolism, or theolo
gical hair-splitting, are irreligious.
The contradictions in the conception of God, the
transcendent materialism, and the complicated in
comprehensible spiritualism with which Jehovah
was conceived by the Jews; the half-Assyrian and
half-Egyptian mask which he wore—now Osiris, the
redeemer, then again Ahriman, the slayer, the de
stroyer, made him now a mystic tyrant, then again
a partial father. He promised his chosen children
plenty on earth, and many goodly things, and left
them continually in the bondage of the surrounding
Gentiles, who were proclaimed to be his abomina
tion. Now he appears in the Psalms, as in the
strains of the Vedas, to be a God after whom the soul
may thirst to lead us to holiness and righteousness,
then again it is 11 the Lord thy God ” who gives
away the cities of other people, which they built,
the trees which they planted, the wells which they
dug and the vineyards which they cultivated, as an
inheritance to the Jews, and tells them without
cause and reason: “ Thou shalt save alive nothing
that breatheth, but thou shalt utterly destroy them,
namely, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaan
ites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord commanded thee.” And if you
ask for an explanation of the morality of these
enactments, you receive the answer: “the ways of the
Lord are mysterious.” But this is no answer. The
mind of man cannot be satisfied with such replies,
�14
TAe? Spontaneous Dissolution
it finds them in their very mysteriousness irre
ligious.
The marble form of Zeus, in spite of its beauty,
had to give way to a more ideal conception of the
Divinity, and in a similar way the invisible God of
Moses had to assume another shape. Mosaism had
to undergo a reform after having long before divided
the Jews into different sects, who hated one another
with that intense fervour which is the natural out
growth of oppression and long slavery. The records
of the religious system of the Jews were more
favoured than those of the Indians or Egyptians;
for their tenets became sacred not only in the eyes of
the privileged priesthood, that kept all sacred and
profane knowledge to itself, but also in the eyes and
ears of the whole nation. Moses faithfully kept his
promise, and made the Jews “ a nation of priests; ”
in telling them, freed from all symbolism, what
made the Egyptian priesthood so powerful in their
sway over the ignorant masses for thousands of
years, he made every Jew a theologian. Notwith
standing all these advantages, the Hebrew records
had the element of dissolution as a mere formal
creed in them; for the mythic was treated as
historical; phenomenal facts were stated with an
utter ignorance of science, as was only natural in
times in which all sciences were in their infancy, or
as yet unborn. Though the spirit of inquiry was
fettered for centuries, the reform had to come as a
natural sequence of the historical progressive de
velopment of humanity. John the Baptist first
commenced it, Christ followed.
Christ again was followed by the two apostles, St.
Paul and St. John. It is an authenticated fact, that
the canonical writings of the New Testament con
tain different accounts of most important incidents,
and are the outgrowth of mighty minds who could
�of Ancient Creeds.
15
but impress with their powerful individuality what
they wrote. Next followed the Fathers, who did not
content themselves with commenting on Christ’s,
St. Paul’s, or St. John’s teachings, but added dogma
upon dogma, borrowing them from old forgotten
Egyptian mysteries, or from the writings of Greek
philosophers; so that in the course of a few cen
turies, when Christianity became the ruling faith of
the Roman empire, it comprised all the elements of
spontaneous dissolution in its heterogenous bor
rowed forms, symbols, dogmas, and articles of
faith.
Christ’s Christianity, the doctrine of love and for
bearance, of humility and self-sacrifice, of common
brotherhood, and the harrowing tragedy of his life
and death, were all turned into symbolic mysteries.
What was simple and intelligible was surrounded by
incomprehensible contradictions. Christ was to be
the mighty, royal, hoped-for Messiah of the Jews,
though he tried as amere teacher to reform Judaism
and to bring vitality into what had decayed into a
mere dead formalism. Not to abolish the old law
was His mission, but to purify it from its narrow
national particularism, and to restore its mono
theistic and moral universality.
St. Paul saw in Christ a dying God, who had to
atone for the sins of Adam, in order to satisfy the
demand of the Jewish law. Grace was everything
with him. St. John made of Christ the incarnation
of Plato’s Logos, and added that nobody could come
to God except through Christ, which was an un
charitable anathema against all those who were
honest and virtuous, but who either knew nothing
of Christ, or could not understand the mystic dogmas
under which Christ had been buried.
Christ’s
incarnation as the Logos could not have been diffe
rent to that of Brahma, as Krishna or Rama, or
�16
The Spontaneous Dissolution
Buddha, of Amn, as Osiris and Horus. Each - of
these incarnations took place under very analogous
circumstances, and for analogous purposes.
The Divinity to the student of ancient creeds
appears continually to assume new shapes and forms
and to succeed always only in a very partial redemp
tion of humanity. Did Christ, however, ever assume
a Godhead in a Buddhistic or Egyptian sense ? is a
question which will, in time, be differently answered
than at present. Christ the rigorous Jew who con
scientiously kept the spirit of the law, though He
opposed its dead meaningless formality, who ap
peared with scrupulous regularity at the grand
festivals at Jerusalem, could He have ever violated
the sacred monotheistic basis of the Jews so far as
to proclaim Himself as anything else but the “ Son of
Man,” to which title He had every claim, when He
declared the whole of humanity to be the children
of one Father in heaven ? Did Christ ever intend to
make Himself anything but the spiritual redeemer
of mankind, by proclaiming on high-ways and in
market-places what was kept as a secret by the
Esoteric teachers, that there was only one God, and
that man had one real aim, to unite whether poor or
rich, if only “ pure of heart,” into one bond of divine
love, pervading the universe ?
Love was with Christ the connecting element
between the divine and human in man. As attrac
tion is scientifically the vital element of the material
cosmos, so love is the binding element which was,
is, and will be the fundamental basis of any religion ;
and where this element of universal brotherhood is
discarded or stifled, by whatever dogmas, our en
lightened reason will never be persuaded that the
mystery is for our benefit; for the very assumption,
that morals can be fostered and best understood
through unintelligible types and symbols in antagon-
�of Ancient Creeds.
17
ism to intellect, is the very element of a spon
taneous dissolution of any creed, and always only a
question of time.
The sanguinary persecutions that disgraced the
religion of Christ would have horrified no one more
than Him, in whose name they were perpetrated.
And who were those who were most cruelly treated,
robbed, pillaged, insulted, and murdered ? Those
for whom He prayed in dying with his last breath :
<( Father, forgive them, for they know not what they
do.” Christ was said to have established eternal
hell-fire. He who commanded us to forgive our
enemies “ seventy times seven,” could He have con
ceived a Divinity less forbearing in His infinite love,
wisdom and mercy, than a finite human being ? In
this cruel and contradictory assumption we have
another element of spontaneous dissolution, because
it is an unchristian dogma borrowed from the Egyp
tians, with whom Osiris was more an infernal judge,
than a loving, supreme Being. With the Egyptians
gloomy unconscious fear, and not self-conscious love,
Was the beginning of wisdom and the motive element
of their gloomy creed, which element transferred to
Christianity changed its very essence, made Romish
idolatry a possibility, and worked as an antagonistic
dissolving element in Christ’s glorious and simple
code of morals.
Day by day the historical ground was cut from
under the feet of Christ’s Christianity. Dogmas,
ceremonies, rituals, and symbolic performances were
borrowed by the Christian priesthood from Indians
(Brahmans and Buddhists), Egyptians, Greeks, Per
sians, Hebrews, and Romans. The clergy of the
Romish Church strove to become, like the Brahmans
and Hierophants, the augurs, magi and bonzes of
old, masters of the minds of the ignorant masses,
who were kept purposely and systematically in igno-
�18
The Spontaneous Dissolution
rance; for the greater the ignorance of the people
the greater the influence of allegories, symbols, and
mystic incomprehensibilities. So it came to pass
that the clearest laws of humanity and common
sense were trampled under foot with reckless fero
city. From the times of Gregory VII. Christianity
became hourly more unchristian.
Unchristian Christianity persecuted, killed and
burned for nearly a thousand years, from Charle
magne, the Christian Mahomet, down to the year of
grace 1780, when the last witch was publicly burnt
at Glarus, in the Roman Catholic part of Switzer
land. To whatever Christian country we turn we
find the militant Church of Rome desiring pre
rogatives and immunities. The Church claimed the
right to punish those who spoke disrespectfully of
the clergy • the right to the luxury of burning here
tics ; theie were continual disputes as to whether
emperor or pope, cardinal or king, should be first
in authority. Deans and bishops quarrelled in open
courts with one another about images, postures, or
the right to possess a crucifix. The clear enactment
of Christ, “ Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s,”
was distorted and placed under mental reservation.
A dignitary of the already half-reformed English
Church (Archbishop Sandy) dared to proclaim that
we must obey princes “ usque ad aras,” as the
proverb is, “so far as we may without disobeying
God. .And who had to decide what was considered
disobeying God ? The priesthood—which cared
more for prerogatives, the right to fell timber, to seize
lands in mortmain, to receive such estates as were
forfeited for high treason, to have the right of inves
titure., and to possess authority in lay as well as in
ecclesiastical matters, than to educate the masses, to
teach them soberness and cleanliness, forbearance;
■peace, and goodwill.
�of Ancient Creeds.
19
The priests loudly proclaimed Christ s law : “ Do
unto others as you wish that they should do- unto
you; ” hut their deeds were in contradiction to the
ordinance, and they did unto others as they must
have wished that they should never be done unto.
They acted like the great mass of the Chinese, to
whom Confucius, more than four centuries before
Christ, gave the same law : “Do unto others as you
wish that they should do unto you” ; but as we are
cheated, we cheat ; as we are calumniated, we calum
niate ; as we are persecuted, we persecute ; as we are
robbed, we rob ; and as we are served with false
measures or sham goods, we do the same.
This
is certainly not Christianity, and though commen
tators, exegists, apologists, dogmatists, and inqui
sitors tried hard to smooth down and explain the
contradictions, the creed, that had served humanity
for 1,500 years, had to undergo a new reform.
Christian unchristianity was once more to become
pure, primitive Christianity.
In the eyes of the Romish Church Christianity
was no longer the doctrine of Christ, but the enact
ments of the Church. Christ’s personal commands
had for a thousand years to give way to the assumed
higher wisdom of councils or popes. These councils
and popes could, however,not avoid being influenced
by the spirit of their times, and were forced uncon
sciously continually to vary their doctrines, according
to the exigencies of the moment, always with one
clear aim—to keep the power and the means of being
the hieratic masters of the world. So long as the
priest could live with a wife, it was Christ’s com
mand to have one ; so soon as it was found that the
priest became too worldly, too humane with a wife
and family, it was Christ’s command to resign him
self to celibacy. So long as Platonism served them
the priests were Platonists. In the first three cen-
�20
The Spontaneous Dissolution
tunes they had no Trinity, they were (Ze facto
Arians, and then they became Athanasians or Trini
tarians, in imitation of the Indo-Egyptians, and
cursed all who were not of their incomprehensible
opinion. On one day Origen, on another St. Augus
tine, swayed their minds. They had deadly contro
versies on the Lord’s Supper, and about the use of
bread and wine, or the Real Presence, or the Transubstantiation, whilst often thousands were starving
around them for want of food. They forgave sins
but only to those who could pay for such remission"
lh?y 7 J?trodu<;ed self-abnegation, self-flagellation,
and selt-torture'for the masses, and lived in pomp and
vanity. They smiled and cursedin one breath: they
spoke immediately before the Reformation, but their
language was always ambiguous, for they tried to
please all parties; and still they attached more impor
tance to outward ceremonies, vestments, symbols,
types, and mere verbal professions without any
inward spiritual meaning, than tomoral reality and
real religiousness.
. Whilst the Romish Church was thus a house
divided against itself, many honest monks and more
enlightened laymen turned back to the old Greek
and Roman classics, and tried to take up the thread
ot the progressive historical development of
humanity, which appeared to have been rent
asunder and lost for ever. To re-unite it where
it had been broken, they revived sciences and arts ;
and dogmatists, mystics, and dry school-men were
more and more silenced. The Reformation was
nally victorious in the terrible struggle; but it
had to fight its way through torrents of blood.
When the peace of Westphalia left Europe in the
possession of religious freedom, Europe sealed her
right to scientific progress. The Romish Christian
creed was then dissolved, and no Vaticanism will
�of Ancient Creeds.
21
ever revive it. Christianity with the Reformation
ceased to be a special creed based on mere outer
signs ; it was once more made universal. Christ’s
God of Love and Reason who was enthroned
through the Reformation is the God of the Universe,
his existence, in one shape or another, is believed in
by Brahmans, Buddhists, Jews, Mahometans and
Christians.
Christ, if considered as the incarnate divine spirit
of self-sacrifice and love, has freed men of their finite
ness by teaching them to surrender their outerselves
to a pure moral and intellectual consciousness of
their innerselves, and thus only has redeemed
humanity, and dissolved all ancient and modern
creeds by establishing real religion based on reason
aided by science, promoting real morality, freed of
all dogmatic dross and from the unnatural bondage
of prejudices and the mystic fetters of ignorance.
Polytheism of old had to yield to a more refined
creed of one creative power; but Polytheism had
already borne the elements or constituent particles
of spontaneous dissolution in itself. However
poetical the deification of the different phenomena
of Nature may be, it was merely the outgrowth of
an ignorant and over-heated, an unconscious and
unbridled imagination. Bitterly, though poets and
artists bewailed this time, they had to surrender
their fanciful world of self-created gods. Man,
however, wishes at all times to have his emotions
taken into consideration. The culture of the emo
tional element seems to be the last retreat of those
who think that dry morals (as if morals did not
continually exercise our emotional elements), and
mere science (cold, calculating science, as they say
in turning up their eyes) cannot suffice to fill man’s
nature. They then turn to a vague and incompre
hensible anthropomorphism, man-worship, which in
�.2 2-
The Spontaneous Dissolution
■one form or another, has not yet ceased to be the
cherished creed amongst those who crave for the
merely emotional.
The Greeks were the first and most cultivated
anthropomorphists. Their creed has vanished, but
it contained much emotional element that, purified
of idolatry, might serve the masses of our modern
times as an element of unlimited artistic emotion;
for art will and must replace that fervid craving for
„emotion. Art will yet again shape beautiful forms
for their own sake, and ethics and aesthetics will
repair our loss of barren phrases referring to super
natural masters. The anthropomorphism of old will
revive again, though in another spirit; it will not
be sanctified as a creed, but hallowed, because it
will lead man, through love, to understand the ideal
beauty of everything created, from the tiny and
bashful daisy to the lofty-snow covered summits of
the Himalayan Mountains.
Ancient Creeds, after having gone through the
dissolution of Polytheism and Anthropomorphism,
enter upon a species of anthropopatism. The leaders
of this creed try to combine revelation and reason,
faith and science; they use all possible sophistical
contortions to prove that there are no contradictions
in the Sacred books of the Eastern nations ; that all
is clear. You have only to take the different pas
sages in their corresponding allegorical, parabolical,
tropological, anagogical or literal meanings. They
assert, with a mild gentleness, that there are no
difficulties except to the blind, to the heartless, and
to those who live to cold science and have no higher
aim than the “Fata Morgana” of a dreary materi
alism. These anthropopatists work out in their own
imagination a more or less lofty portrait of the
Divinity, and describe, praise, draw, model or paint
it according to their individual idiosyncrasies, their
�of Ancient Creeds.
23
sympathies or antipathies. They persecute, hate,
despise, or, if they are very kind-hearted, pity those
who fail to see a “personal” Father in their dim
half-theological, half-rationalistic colours. These
men are like some Protestants who deny to the
Romish Church the right to have miracles, but keep
certain miracles which must be believed in. They
do not see that in this very contradiction is a
thriving element of spontaneous dissolution. Before
a tribunal of logic these half-theologians and half
Rationalists could not pass a “ spelling-bee.” These
men feel that they have lost their historical basis,
and to find a new one would necessitate too much
study; they could only find it through a correct
appreciation of the gradual development of humanity,
to attain which they would have to make them
selves acquainted with the intellectual pressure of
mind brought to bear upon progress. Fortunately
the discharges from the electric theological clouds
that have gathered, or are gathering, have, since the
invention of the lightning conductor of tolerance,
become extremely harmless, though they may
occasionally be unpleasant. The anthropopatists
should base their ethics and metaphysics, if the
latter exist, on the ruling principles of the Cosmos,
but it is much easier to talk morals than to intro
duce a new creed in our times, after so many
spontaneous dissolutions of ancient creeds.
Who, indeed, wishes for a new creed ? We do
not want the ridiculous Acosmism which denies
the reality of the world, asserting that it had been
created out of nothing, and that matter is a non
entity. These modern apostles in tail-coats talk of
an “ Unseen Universe,” as though it could be.seen ;
if it can, then to call it “ unseen ” is nonsense, and
if it is invisible, to waste time in describing it with
copious verbiage, is still more absurd. Though we
�24
The Spontaneous Dissolution
may never know what the absolute essences of
matter or life are, we may still study matter in its
phenomenal results, and see the aberrations of mind
whenever it treats of the so-called supernatural, and
its glorious conquests in arts and sciences, when
man deals with given forms and quantities, either
transforming them into works of ideal beauty, or
discovering, after centuries of hard labour and keen
observation, more scientific explanations of the secret
workings of the hidden forces of nature, than the
theologians could find on the easy and lazy path of
an assumed revelation. The world belongs in future
to another body of priests, to the priests of science
and art'
The Indian philosophers already attained the con
sciousness of creation, preservation, and transforma
tion as the external actions of one force, in three
equally powerful emanations, and, notwithstanding
this philosophical starting point, free of every taint
of dogmatism and anthropomorphism, a connecting
link of different incarnate gods was worked out by
the priesthood to satisfy the emotional ignorance of
the masses.
The Jews set up a god of their own, a national,
jealous god, who was to be stronger than all the
others, which was a silent indirect admission that
there were other gods. Jewish monotheism reached
merely the notion of a mighty ruler, who was master
even over the false gods j and those gods who gave
comfort and hope for thousands of years to innumer
able generations, saw themselves hurled by Javeh
into the abyss of hell, where they had to rule as
mighty demons. But the i( immanence” or inherence
of a pervading spirit in the universe cannot be a
person in the sense of an anthropopatist or acosmist,
for omniscience and omnipresence is only pos
sible with an impersonal deity. The burning ques-
�of Ancient Creeds.
25
tion of modern thought is not, as Renan has it, a con
test between Polytheists,—namely, Roman Catho
lics, Protestants, Buddhists and Brahmans, and
Monotheists—namely, Jews and Mahometans, but
the struggle is between those who assume an all
pervading infinite spirit, and those who deny the
existence of any Deity, between Panmonotheists
and Atheists.
. ,
But who are those who deny the Divinity ? Such
men as either cannot or will not understand the
cosmos, who can see only matter, but do not grasp
the effects produced by matter in the universe as
well as in humanity, which is but its reflex. Those
who never will draw a line between cause and effect,
and most of all those who drag the Divinity down
to their own low level, transforming it into an idol
of their own, which they wish to force upon
humanity at large ; these proud, conceited theolo
gians promote atheism even more than some pro
fessed atheists. But who are atheists ?
Certainly not the scientific men as physicists,
who bow down their heads, and profess, with child
like lips : “ We are too humble, too finite to grasp
the infinite,; we shall be contented to trace here and
there some minute workings of the innumerable
elements forming phenomena that are, that must
have had an origin and must have an aim.’ Not
the philologists who, in languages freed from all the
trammels of a paradisiacal tongue, in which God
himself spoke, trace and systematize the phases
through which languages had to pass to attain
their different sounds; alphabets, words, _ concrete
and abstract expressions. Not the geologists, who,
unfettered by any Eastern cosmogony, follow
up the growth of our globe according to law and
order, and find in this very inherent law and order
the vestiges of an eternal first cause, which personi-
�26
The Spontaneous Dissolution
Ued becomes utterly unintelligible. Not the his
torian, who, in the complicated phenomena, of which
men are the units with all their passions, yearnings,
hopes, and fears,. traces the eternal laws of action
aaid reaction, which force humanity onward on the
path of continuous progress. To so great an extent
is this the case, that if we carefully consider the sub
ject, we are astonished at the relative progress of
humanity, and this improvement has been attained
since the reformation, since the revival of classic art
.and philosophy ; . since scientific inquiries have
silenced the grand inquisition, and stopped the burn
ing of witches and heretics; since logicians have
disproven the false and pernicious principles of the
reasoning of an infallible priesthood; since tolerance
&nd forboarancG Kavo clad themselves in ermine and
meted out justice with an even hand, regardless of
the creed to which those belonged who sought re
dress for wrongs inflicted upon them ; since even
bishops and deans dare to thunder at the gates of
narrow-mindedness, and to proclaim the right of
free investigation, not only for themselves, but also
for those who are under their sway; since the layauthority took upon itself to spread sciences and
arts amongst the ignorant and neglected masses,
■and to prevent through the strong arm of the law a
reactionary and anachronistic movement inaugu
rated by some of the priesthood, who, craving for
the. emotional, think to find in tapers, fancy em
broideries, monkish dresses, and the most childish
mimicry of a creed that went through the process of
its spontaneous dissolution more than 350 years
ago, a solution of the religious questions of our
days.
Mysticism has been for thousands of years the
bane of humanity. Ignorance is her cherished
foster-sister. Mysticism and ignorance presumed
�of Ancient Creeds.
27
not only to lead humanity on the path of emotion
to virtue, through different creeds, but also to regu
late man’s intellectual powers. Ignorance and
mysticism built up astronomical, zoological, and
geological hypotheses which had to be destroyed;
they prescribed to the Divinity how and when the
world must have been created ; science had to rectify
these errors of a natural ignorance. That such
errors should have been transformed into articles of
«reed, indispensable to the salvation of our better
intellectual nature, and that this deception should
and could have been practised for thousands of years,
is not a mysterious riddle, but the natural effect of
an equally natural cause. Whenever and wherever
ignorance assumes the mask of theological know
ledge, it leads men into error. The error once
having become, through continuous repetition, an
accepted truth (though it may be only negative
truth, viz., falsehood), it takes the positive shape
•of an indispensable entity for the happiness of man
kind, and it requires thousands of years to remove
such falsehoods, and historians testify to the fact
that the whole progressive development of humanity
•consists in the destruction of such falsehoods.
In England and Germany, as the two countries
most advanced in civilisation, the one politically,
the other intellectually, this process of undoing the
past is most apparent. In both countries set dogmas
appear to go down the stream of time with ever
diminishing buoyancy, form and bulk, till they must
sink altogether. Curates and pastors become rarer
and scarcer. In 1831 there were in the eight Prus
sian Universities 2,203 theological students, and in
1875 there were scarcely 560 (about 70 to a Uni
versity). In the Universities of Southern and
Western Germany the decline of theologians was in
the same ratio. In addition to this, one-third of the
�28
The Spontaneous Dissolution
matriculated th eological students abandoned theology
altogether, and entered other professions, tired of
asserting things they could not understand ; for they
had gone through a scientific training in Logie»
Mathematics, and Universal History. The ecclesi
astical authorities in Germany had to acknowledge
that, in one year or so, one-sixth of the vacant bene
fices would have no clergymen to fill them.
Yet, in the face of this growing dissolution, we
have our “ Burials Question,” as the result of Christ’s
command, “ Love thy neighbour as thyself.” After
1875 years of grace and Christian teaching, we find
men trying to. prevent some of their Christian
brothers from lying side by side in the same church
yard, in the same soil from which we have all
sprung, to which we all return, from which all our
pleasures stream, on which all our woes are concen
trated. And why ? Because these Christians
differ, on certain theological questions without real
distinction, from those in power. For this reason
Christians of another shade of thinking should be
carried in silence to their last resting-place. What
tyranny, what cruel tyranny, perpetrated in the
name, of Christianity! And these cruelties are
practised whilst words of piety, fraternal condescen
sion, and humble submission are used on one side,
and on the other the stern, indomitable “no sur
render ” is proclaimed with the blind obstinacy of
an Eastern despot. This intolerance is the more
remarkable, in the third quarter of the nineteenth
century, in our free and enlightened country, whilst
in Germany, Russia, and Austria tolerance is prac
tised, at least amongst the different members of the
Christian faith. In Germany, Roman Catholics and
Protestants often use the same sacred building, the
one for his mass, the other foi' his sermon, and both
for their prayers to their common God. In Russia
�of Ancient Creeds.
29
and Austria the Christian children of one ruling, per
vading spirit, may lie peaceably side by side when
fate has sealed their controversies, when they can no
more pronounce God’s anger and judgment against
one another, when they rest from their labours. But
we persecute one another even beyond the grave,
notwithstanding our great political and social move
ments. We are trying to bring education into the
hovels of our rural population, and to the gutter
children of our over-crowded towns. Our scientific
discoveries are teaching us day by day to distrust
our preconceived prejudices ; our historical inquiries
demonstrate how falsehoods were spread; how truth
was distorted; how dreams, fancies, myths, and
legends were taken for realities; how space and
time were filled with the tears and sufferings ot
men for the sake of false theories; how nations and
individuals lost themselves in dogmatic oyster
shells, and were unable to see beyond their narrow
ossified world—and yet we cannot let our fellow
men sleep their last long sleep in peace.
Philosophers and physicists may smile at this
with tears in their eyes, seeing how the self-contra
dicting elements in creeds not only lead to irreligi
ousness, but contain in themselves—through placing
the form above the spirit, matter above mind, emo
tion above reason—the elements of a spontaneous
dissolution. This inevitable dissolution can only be
directed into the right groove of a higher moral and
intellectual phase by a thorough understanding of
history, which teaches us that only a synthetical
combination of the Indian and Hebrew-Christian
creeds and their sublime ethics, divested of all
extraneous matter, may furnish us with real religion,
as a code of morals binding on the whole of humanity,
without fettering in any way our intellectual
nature.
�30
The Spontaneous Dissolution
, The bigoted and credulous, the fanatics and
ignorant in the Church and in our Universities, in
our colleges and educational establishments, do nottremble in vain at the very name of “ Universal
History” as the grand store-house of man’s immortal
deeds, follies, and crimes, committed for thousands
of years, partly in the name of the Divinity, and
partly to satisfy the religious emotions of a Torquemada, or a Calvin, or some false assumptions
based on some imaginary theory or divine revela
tion. Not in vain have our Universities shut their
doors on an honest, unbiassed study of the develop
ment of humanity on general principles. Were it
not for this,, we might lose our insulated position';
we might discover a continuous gradual growth and
decay of creeds as well as sciences, and see how
one system of ancient fallacies served another as
basis of development.
Not without grave reason does Cardinal Manning
clamour against an appeal to history, and brand it
as “heresy and treachery.” He does not stand
alone, he is supported by our own theologians and
the heads of our own Universities, who consider the
study of “Universal History” superfluous, per
nicious, leading to scepticism; for it might teach us
that man formed his own gods and dogmas, in
fluenced by the aspect of nature and his relative
amount of brain; that man has wasted his time and
energy in trying to answer questions “ d priori” (out
of his imagination) before he could gather informa
tion “ d posteriori” (by experience). We might learn
that every step in the progress of humanity had to
be fought for single-handed by independent men in
whom morals and intellect were well balanced. We
might become conscious that dogmatic superstitions
in India, China, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Egypt,
Judaea, and Borne, during the Middle Ages and in
�of Ancient Creeds.
31
modern times, had caused the dissolution or station
ary state of all these Empires and times. _
For man, composed of the two constituent ele
ments of matter and mind, of morals and intellect,,
must cultivate both ; the one according to immu
table laws, necessitated by his very organisation,,
and the other unfettered by any capricious, emo
tional, and unintelligible self-created and seliimposed creed.
Man’s destiny lies in the perfect balance oi ins
moral and intellectual nature.
t
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and
to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,
—physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature,
and Art; especially in their bearing upon the improvement
and social well-being of mankind.
THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ABE DELIVERED AT
ST GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o'clock precisely.
(Annually—from November to May).
Twenty-Four Lectures (in three series), ending 23rd April,
1876, will be given.
Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket
(transferable and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight
single reserved-seat tickets available for any lecture.
Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,_
To the Shilling Reserved Seats—5s. 6d.
To the Sixpenny Seats—2s.; being at the rate of Threepence
each lecture.
For tickets and the published lectures apply (by letter) to the
Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15 Gloucester
Crescent, Hyde Park, W.
Payment at the door:—One
(Reserved Seats) One Shieling.
Penny ;—Sixpence ;—and
�
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The spontaneous dissolution of ancient creeds: a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 23rd January, 1876
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Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
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Religion
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Text
1Z3S6
MS 4-1
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THE
RELIGION AND MORALITY
OF
SHAKESPEARE’S WORKS;
BEING A LECTURE DELITEBED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
The 16th of November, 1873.
By CHARLES J. PLUMPTRE,
Lecturer at King's College, London.
LONDON:
PUBLISHED
by the
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1873.
Price Threepence.
�ADVERTISEMENT.
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and
to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,
—physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature,
and Art; especially in their bearing upon the improve
ment and social well-being of mankind.
THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ARE DELIVERED AT
ST GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o'clock precisely.
(Annually— from November to May.)
Twenty-four Lectures (in three series), ending 3rd Mav
1874, will be given.
Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket
transferable and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight
single reserved-seat tickets available for any lecture.
Tickets for each series (one for each lecture), or for any
eight consecutive lectures, as below :
To the Shilling Reserved Seats—5s- 6dTo the Sixpenny Seats—2s- being at the rate of Three
pence each lecture.
For tickets apply (by letter) to the Hon. Treasurer, Wm.
Henry Domville, Esq., 15 Gloucester Crescent. Hvde
Park, W.
Payment at the door One Penny ;—Sixpence ;_ and
(Reserved Seats) One Shilling.
�PREFACE.
The Author of this Lecture has to acknowledge
the assistance rendered him in its preparation
from three different sources, viz., the Rev. George
Gilfillan’s Lecture on Shakespeare ; a very inter
esting little work entitled ‘ Bible Truths and
Shakespeare Parallels ’ by James Brown ; and a
most learned critique on ‘Gervinus on Shake
speare’which appeared in the Westminster Review
about ten years ago.
A 2
��THE RELIGION AND MORALITY
OF
SHAKESPEARE’S WORKS.
----- *----F any Englishman were asked who is the
greatest Poet that ever adorned his country’s
Literature, he would answer, without any hesi
tation, I imagine, ‘Milton’ or ‘Shakespeare.’
Two great minds indeed, enriched with the
highest powers of that creative faculty which is
the very essence of the Poet’s nature ; and which
the word in its original signification literally
means:—but how different in their natures and
attributes I Milton, it seems to me, might fitly
be compared to some grand Alpine mountain
range, rising majestically above the sunny smiling
plains by which it is surrounded. As we strive,
with adventurous spirit, to ascend to its loftiest
heights, we soon leave the green pastures and
the golden cornfields, the village spires and the
peasants’ chalets, with all their sweet human
associations, far, far away beneath us. We pass
through the thick, dark forests of fir and pine,
which belt the mountains’ side. We emerge from
their gloomy shades to find (it may be), as I have
known it in my wanderings but a few weeks ago,
I
�6
The Religion and Morality
the sunlight gone, the blue sky vanished—and,
in their place, clouds, almost as black as midnight,
riven only by the incessant flashes of the lurid
lightning; while above, around, the roar of the
thunder is heard, echoing and re-echoing in the
seemingly fathomless ravines and gorges on every
side. We seek what shelter we may for awhile ;
and then, when the violence of the storm is past,
and the lightning flashes remotely in the distance,
and the sound of heaven’s artillery is heard only
far away, we continue our ascent. Through dense
clouds, through huge shadowy masses of vapour
and mist, that rise slowly and solemnly like vast
spectral forms from the depths below, we make
our way, until at length we seem to have left
this lower world altogether, and emerge on a scene
which leaves on the minds of those who for the
first time behold it an impression that can never
be forgotten. We are no longer in the regions of
Life—on every side are wide plateaus of snow
and ice—we stand upon a mountain crag, ‘and
on the torrent’s brink beneath, behold the tall
pines dwindled as to shrubs in dizziness of dis
tance;’ we hear, from time to time, the ava
lanches below ‘ crash with a frequent conflict ’—
while still, far up the heights, shoot forth those
monarch peaks crowned with their diadems of
eternal snow, now blushing like the rose, as they
are kissed by the first beams of Day—then,
standing pure and dazzling in their snowy whiteness against the deep, dark blue of noon—anon
glowing in lurid light of crimson, gold and ame
thyst, as they are lit up by the fiery radiance of
the setting sun—then slowly, in the approaching
�Of Shakespeare's Works.
p
twilight and darkness, fading 1 like the unsub
stantial fabric of a vision,’ silently and solemnly
away; until, a few hours later, they gleam forth
again, robed in fresh garments of unearthly
beauty, and shining pale and spectral-like in all
the mysterious loveliness of moonlight on the Alps.
Now, such a scene as this, on which my eyes
so lately rested, seems to me no inapt type of the
genius of Milton; and of the visions of grandeur,
wonder, sublimity, and awe through which ‘ he
bodies forth the forms of things unknown.’
Regions peopled by beings of supernatural origin
and dark malignity, whose dwellings are like the
halls of Eblis in Eastern mythology; realms of
celestial happiness tenanted by angels, archangels,
and all the company of heaven, over whom reigns
as sovereign the Eternal Father, and only inferior
to him in the poet’s description, the Eternal Son ;
the formation of the universe out of chaos : the
creation of the human race; the entrance of evil
in the world; all these, surely, are the very
elements of sublimity and awe, and well may
Milton be compared in the loftiness of his range
of thought to the sky-aspiring monarchs of the
mountains. But I venture to think the analogy
holds further yet. The mountain has its attendant
shadow, and the loftier the mountain the further
does its shadow extend. Dare I then say, with
all the admiration I feel for Milton’s genius, with
all the veneration with which I regard the
purity of his motives, and the sterling inde
pendent worth of his character, that I yet think
a shadow has been cast by the very altitude of
all these, over much of the theological thought of
�8
The Religion and Morality
England, and which has only comparatively of
late years begun to fade away before the advancing
light of a cultured reason—surely man’s noblest,
greatest prerogative, which I, for one, believe to
have been given him by his Creator, to be rightly
used, to discover all the wise laws by which
He rules; to see His power and goodness in all
nature ; and to worship him as the All-Father:
and which right man ought not to put aside, to
bow down in slavish submission before any
unreasonable dogma, however venerable for its
antiquity, or sanctioned by an authoritative
name.
I do not think I go too far, when I say, such a
shadow has been cast by the very height of
Milton’s genius over much of our popular
theology. To take one instance only, I would
ask, Is not the embodiment of Satan as the Prin
ciple of evil, in the Serpent form that persuaded
Eve in Paradise, rather an idea we owe to Milton,
than to anything that is to be found in the
Hebrew Scriptures ? I remember well the late
Frederic Denison Maurice in a remarkable sermon
of his that is published, commenting on this nar
rative, asks why we should presume to be wiser
than the record, whatever it may mean, and
add statements for which that record affords in
itself no foundation. But I venture not further
in this direction.
• Let me turn then to that poet, who is so essen
tially the poet, not of an age, but of all Time —
Shakespeare.
If I likened Milton in his sublimity, to the
Alpine mountain, soaring upwards to the sky, I
�9
Of Shakespeare s Works.
would compare Shakespeare to a majestic river,
on whose vine-clad steeps I was lately standing,
in a foreign land. Springing forth at first, from
its remote birthplace in the rocks, a few scarcely
noticeable threads of water, it slowly gathers
strength and size; flowing through tranquil val
leys, and gently laving the grass and flowers
that fringe its banks, it receives tributary streams
on every side, and begins now to broaden and
deepen rapidly, as it passes onward in its course,
associated in every age with momentous events
in the history of the neighbouring nations. As
it gradually pursues its appointed course, this
mighty river, to which I refer, calls up before our
minds, the memory of Roman conquests and de
feats ; of the chivalrous exploits of feudal times;
of the coronations of Emperors, whose bones re
pose by its side ; of the wars and negotiations in
more recent days. Its scenery becomes as varied
as its history—now it flows through wild and
picturesque rocks and lofty mountain crags,
crowned with castles, fortresses, and ruins, with
which a thousand wild and romantic legends are
connected; then through thick forests and fertile
plains; then through wild ravines and gorges,
with vineyards sloping from their summits to the
water’s edge ; then through populous cities,
flourishing towns, and quiet villages; bringing
to them all, on its broad bosom, the riches of
Trade and Commerce, and all the varied products
of its shores : until at last its magnificent course
is run ; and nearly a thousand miles away from
its secluded birthplace, it is absorbed in the allembracing ocean.
B
�IO
The Religion and Morality
Now, I think, to such a river the course of
Shakespeare’s genius may be well compared, and
the influence of his works likened. But com
paratively little felt at first were ‘the earnest
thought and profound conviction, the homely yet
subtle wisdom, the deep, historical interest, the
poetic truth, the sweet lyrical effusion, the soar
ing imagination, and grand prophetic insight.’
But, as the noble river broadens and deepens, so
does the intellect, the genius, the influence of
Shakespeare. As the ages roll on, and one gene
ration succeeds another, still more deeply, still
more widely, is that influence felt; enriching
men’s minds, exalting their souls, humanising
their affections with all its precious stores, its
boundless wealth of Religion and morality.
‘ Next to the Bible ’ (we are told by a brilliant
critic), ‘ next to the Bible, I believe in Shake
speare ! ’ once exclaimed to him, an intelligent
woman; who, like most of us, had felt something
of the catholic wisdom enshrined in the writings
of the world’s greatest Poet: and, echoes a learned
Professor, ‘ his works have often been called a
secular Bible.’ Common sense and erudition thus
agree in recognising the same broad simplicity
and universal natures, in the splendid utterances
of Hebrew and English intelligence, preserved in
these perennially popular books. Both alike deal
with the greatest problems of Life; both open
those questions which knock for answer at every
human heart; both reflect the humanity which
is common to us all; both delineate the features
which mark and distinguish individual men. (a)
(a) Westminster Review, No. 48—New Series.
�Of Shakespeare's Works.
i i
A true and just comment indeed, for it is in the
highest sense of the word, this catholic spirit
which vivifies Shakespeare’s works, that forms
one of their chief and special characteristics.
And now I proceed to the task I have more
particularly undertaken, to gather from the
broad river of Shakespeare’s genius, some of the
precious wealth of Religion and morality with
which his priceless argosies are so richly laden.
And first, as regards Religion. Nothing strikes
me as more beautiful than the religious element
which marks Shakespeare’s writings. Here is
nothing gloomy, nothing narrow, nothing ascetic.
It is not thrust obtrusively upon us ; but it breaks
forth as naturally and spontaneously as the sun
light which irradiates and warms, which cheers
and comforts this lower world. It is this spirit
of love, of trust, and confidence in an all-wise
and all-merciful Creator which is the Religion
that Shakespeare preaches and inculcates. Hear
how he tells us all that ‘ we are in God’s hand,’
that ‘though our thoughts are ours, their ends are
none of our own;’ that ‘ heaven has an end in all
that ‘ God is the wisdom’s champion and defence ;’
and in one of his noblest passages he bursts forth
in the sublime exclamation :—
God shall be my hope,
My stay, my guide and lantern to my feet!
The last finishing touch, which he gives to the
portraiture of one of his finest historical charac
ters is, when he tells us, that ‘ to add greater
honours to his age, than man could give him, he
died, fearing God.’
B 2
�12
The Religion and Morality
Again, how beautifully does the religious spirit
in reference to God’s highest attributes, as we
conceive them, continually break forth in his
pages,—like a fountain in the golden sunshine.
Take, for instance, one of these divine attributes
and that the loveliest—Mercy. Does he not tell
■us that
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice bless’d ;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes ;
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown ;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings ;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway ;
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s,
When mercy seasons justice.
In another place too, dwelling on the same
theme, how full of pathos is his eloquent
appeal—
How would you be,
If He who is the top of judgment, should
But judge you, as you are ? Oh, think on that,
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new-made !
Then, too, conspicuous, in innumerable places,
is the sense of Shakespeare’s abiding faith in the
over-ruling Providence of God; as when he says—
Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well,
When our deep plots do fail: and that should teach us,
There’s a Divinity that shapes our ends,
Kough-hew them how we will!
i
�Of Shakespeare s Works.
i 3
What a solemn warning, too, does he give us,
in respect to prayer for mere temporal blessings
and advantages, in the words—
We, ignorant of ourselves,
Beg often our own harm, which the Wise Powers
Deny us for our good ; so we find profit
By losing of our prayers.
But prayer in the highest sense of the com
munion of our souls with God, and trust in his
all-righteous dealings with us, he ever inculcates.
‘ God knows of pure devotion,’ he says, and
counsels us ‘to put our quarrels to the will of
heaven,’ for
God will be avenged for the deed :
Take not the quarrel from his powerful arm ;
He needs no indirect or lawless course,
To cut off those who have offended him.
And in holy exultation raises the cry
Now, God be praised ! that to believing souls
Gives light to darkness—comfort to despair.
Repentance, with mere lip services, repentance,
that would only be manifest in words, but not in
deeds, that would strive to obtain pardon for the
«c£, and yet enjoy all its sensual and worldly ad
vantages, meets ever with the sternest and
severest rebuke. Where was a self-tormented—
a justly tortured soul, in its inmost workings,
ever laid more awfully bare and naked before our
eyes, than in the vainly attempted prayer of the
wicked King in Hamlet ?
Oh, my offence is rank—it smells to heaven,
Itjiath the primal, eldest curse upon’t,
�14
The Religion and Morality
A brother’s murder! Pray, I cannot;
Though inclination be as sharp as will :
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And like a man to double business bound,
1 stand in pause, where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it, white as snow 1 Whereto serves mercy
But to confront the visage of offence ?
And;what’s in prayer, but this twofold force,
To be forestalled, ere we come to fall;
Or pardon’d, being down. Then 1’11 look up,
My fault is past. But, oh ! what form of prayer
Can serve my turn ? ‘ Forgive me, my foul murder,’—
That cannot be, since I am still possest
Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardon’d and retain th’ offence ?
In the corrupted currents of this world,
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law. But ’tis not so above ;
There is no shuffling ; there the action lies
In its true nature ; and we ourselves compell’d,
Even in the teeth and forehead of our faidts,
To give in evidence. What then ? What rests?
Try what repentance can ? W hat can it not ?
Yet what can it, when one can not repent ?
Oh, wretched state 1 oh, bosom, black as death !
Oh, limed soul that struggling to be free,
Art more engaged ! Help, angels ! make assay !
Bow, stubborn knees, and heart with strings of steel,
Ke soft as sinews of the new-born babe I
My words fly up I my thoughts remain below !
Words, without thoughts, never to heaven go !
If there is any preacher who would deter us
from sin and crime, by the se^-punishment which
they bring, and the tortures which, sooner or
later, they inflict upon the human conscience, it
�Of Shakespeare's Works.
15
is Shakespeare. In this he is not surpassed even
by the greatest of the Greek Dramatists. Truly,
in his scenes, does the man of blood and crime
create, out of his thoughts, his- own Eumenides.
What language can depict more vividly the hor
rors of a self-accusing conscience than passages
such as these ?
I am alone, the villain of the earth,
And feel I am so most !
Oh ! when the last account ’twixt heaven and earth
Is to be made, then shall this hand and seal,
Witness against us to damnation.
How oft the sight of meaus to do ill deeds
Makes ill deeds done !
And, again, never surely were so much awe,
dread, and terror at the close of a wicked life,
suggested in three lines, as in those addressed to
the dying Cardinal Beaufort:—
Lord Cardinal, if thou think’st on heaven’s bliss
Hold up thy hand ! make signal of thy hope !
He dies and makes no sign ! Oh, God, forgive him !
Shakespeare, indeed, is ever warning us that
the hour must come to us all, when our vices and
crimes will rise, like spectres before us, in all
their horror, and stand ‘ bare and naked trem
bling at themselves.’ What a sermon is contained
in this brief text!
Death ! thou art he, that will not flatter princes,
That stoops not to authority ; nor gives
A specious name to tyranny ; but shows
Our actions in their own deformed likeness.
I shall offer but one quotation more in regard
�16
The Religion and Morality
to this solemn lesson which Shakespeare is so
continually enforcing in all his greatest dramas
—the sense of our responsibility to God and our
accountability to him, for all the faculties, gifts,
and talents which he has bestowed upon us ; and
that all the riches, honours and dignities of this
world are but the merest vanities—are as nothing
compared to a well-spent life, and a conscience
void of offence to God and man. No solemn
dirge, pealing forth from some great organ and
rolling in waves of harmony down the ‘ dim,
mysterious aisles ’ of some venerable cathedral,
affects me more, whenever I read them, than the
last words which Shakespeare has put into the
lips of Cardinal Wolsey. I know no music
more touching than the flow of their exquisite
and melancholy rhythm:—
Nay, then, farewell !
I have touched the highest point of all my greatness ;
And from that full meridian of my glory,
I haste now to my setting I I shall fall,
Like a bright exhalation in the evening,
And no man see me more.
This the state of man : to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope ; to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him :
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
And when he thinks—good easy man—full surely
His greatness is a ripening, nips his root ;
And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured,
(Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders)
These many summers in a sea of glory ;
But far beyond my depth : my high-blown pride
At length broke under me ; and now has left me,
Weary, and old with service, to the mercy
Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me.
Vain pomp and glory of this world I hate ye !
�Of Shakespeare's Works.
17
I feel my heart new opened. O ! how wretched
Is that poor man that hangs on princes’ favours !
There is betwixt that smile he would aspire to,
That sweet aspect of princes and his ruin,
More pangs and fears, than wars or women have ;
And when he falls, he falls, like Lucifer,
Never to hope again.
Oh, Cromwell 1 Cromwell !
Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, he would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies !
And now Time warns me that I must leave
this first portion of my subject,—the religion con
tained in Shakespeare’s works, and pass on toconsider the morality with which they are im
bued ; although I know well, that I have but
barely opened this part of the mine of religious
wealth with which his writings teem. Well
indeed may Shakespeare be termed a Lay-Bible,
and it is certain that it is to a diligent study of
the English version of the Bible we are indebted
to him for some of his finest thoughts and
language. In his dramas alone I have myself
counted upwards of eighty distinct allusions or
paraphrases of scriptural characters, incidents, or
language. But before I finally quit this division
of my Lecture, I would notice, that what is so
strikingly characteristic of Shakespeare’s religion
is, that it is so pre-eminently coloured with the
Spirit of that religion which was taught by the
Great Master. It has, indeed, been well said that
the peculiarly Christian spirit, in the highest and
most comprehensive sense of the word, leavening
the whole of Shakespeare’s philosophy, is every
where observable in the fondness with which,
�i8
The Religion and Morality
through the medium of his noble characters, he
produces, in endless change of argument and
imagery, illustrations of that wisdom, which is
‘ first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to
be entreated ’ In his allusions to the Deity, he
delights in all those attributes that more par
ticularly represent Him as the God of Love and
Peace ; and as between man and man, would
rather inculcate the humanising doctrine of
forgiveness, and recommend 1 the quality of
mercy ’ than the rugged justice of 'the eye for
eye and tooth for tooth ’ morality of the Hebrew
Code of Ethics. With what tenderness, and yet
with what power, he advocates in innumerable
passages, those virtues which the Christian spirit
more especially enjoins upon us for our guidance.
See how he holds up to our admiration that
gentleness of soul ‘ that seeketh not her own,’
That hath a tear for pity, and a hand,
Open as day, for melting charity.
The true spirit of forgiveness breathes in the
line ‘ I pardon him as God shall pardon me !’
Does he not tell us that
God’s benison goes with us, and with those
That would make good of bad, and friends of foes ;
that ‘ we are born to do benefits,’ that ‘ kindness
is the cool and temperate wind of Grace ’ ‘ nobler
even than revenge,’ and that to help another in
adversity, we should
Strain a little ;
For ’tis a bond in men.
‘ To revenge/ he says, 'is no valour, but to
�Of Shakespeare's Works.
19
bear,’ and that ‘ rarer action is in virtue, than in
vengeance.' With what gems of epithets does he
adorn the idea of Peace—‘ Peace that draws the
sweet infant breath of gentle sleepbut it is
not the inglorious ‘ peace at any price ’ of the
coward or the slave ; not the peace of inaction or
a shameful yielding up of what we hold to be
good and true, at the command of tyrannical
oppression, for he bids us remember also that
Rightly to be great,
Is greatly to find honour in a straw
When honour’s at the stake.
But the Peace that he would commend to us is
that self denying, self restraining, self victorious
Peace which
Is of the nature of a conquest;
For then both parties nobly are subdued,
And neither party, loser.
Again, of Compassion, he does not merely say
that it hates ‘ the cruelty that loads a falling
manbut he bids us remember, too,
That ’tis not enough to hold the feeble up
But to support him after.
Of Contentment, he speaks in passages more
than I can dare quote ; but it is ever an active,
healthy contentment that he praises. He grandly
exclaims:—
My crown is in my heart, not on my head ;
Not deck’d with diamonds and Indian stones ;
Nor to be seen ; my crown is called Content ;
A crown it is, that seldom kings enjov.
�20
The Religion and Morality
And he assures us—
’Tis better to be lowly born
And range with virtuous livers, in content,
Than to be perk’d up in a glistening grief,
And wear a golden sorrow.
And where can there be found a more beauti
ful picture of a contented mind than in these
exquisite lines : —
Now my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp ? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court ?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The season’s difference ; as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind,
Which, when it bites, and blows upon my body
E’en till I shrink with cold, I smile and say
This is no flattery ; these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.
Sweet are the uses of adversity ;
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in its head ;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
But it is not merely as a moralist of the higher
grade that Shakespeare shines so conspicuously
—it is not merely as a Preacher of the loftier
virtues that he is so deserving of our admiration.
View him on a lower level. Regard him as the
exponent of sound practical wisdom in common
life—in every-day experience. Where was ever
more sensible advice given in regard to a young
man’s social intercourse with the world than
in these memorable lines, and what pitfalls
�Of Shakespeare's Works.
21
would be avoided, if they were but borne
in mind 1
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel,
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d unfledg’d comrade.
Beware of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
Bear it that the opposer may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear; but few thy voice :
Take each man’s censure ; but reserve thy judgment.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be ;
°
For loan oft loses both itself and friend ;
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This, above all—to thine own self be true,
And it must follow—as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
I could go on, far beyond the scope to which I
am limited, in my quotations illustrating the
soundness of Shakespeare’s ethical teaching, and
his enforcement of every form of morality. ’ But
let us see how he deals with vice in every form,
no matter under what mask its visage may be
hidden. Injustice, in its broadest sense, ever
meets with his sternest reprobation. He asks,
with all the fire of enthusiasm:
What stronger breast-plate than a heart untainted ?
Thrice is he arm’d, that has his quarrel just ;
And he but naked, though lock’d up in steel,
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.
Hear, too, how he reprobates that assassin of
the soul whose dagger has so often sought to slay
the good and noble character that has at all risen
above, or placed itself in opposition to, the false
�24
The Religion and Morality
grows with such pernicious root‘Deceitfulness,
which to betray doth wear an angel’s face, to
seize with eagle’s talons;’ ‘ Implacability,’ relent
less ; that is, ‘ beastly, savage, devilish ;’ ‘ Dupli
city,’ 1 that can smile and smile and be a villain
and last ‘ Hypocrisy,’ ‘ with devotion’s visage and
pious action,’ can ‘ sugar o’er the Devil himself.’
Surely (as George Gilfillan says) Shakespeare
was the greatest and most humane of all moral
ists. Seeing more clearly than mere man ever
saw into the evils of human nature and the cor
ruptions of society, into the natural weakness
and the acquired vices of man, he can yet love,
pity, forget his anger, and clothe him in the
mellow light of his genius, like the sun, which
in certain days of peculiar balm and beauty,
seems to shed its beams, like an amnesty, on all
created beings.’
I know full well that in the hour’s limit to
which the lectures given before this Society are
properly confined, I have been enabled only to
bring to the surface comparatively a few of the
precious ores of the religious spirit, the wisdom,
and the morality, which lie in such rich profusion
in the golden mine of Shakespeare’s works. But
I think I have said enough, to justify the claim
of Shakespeare to rank foremost amongst the
world’s greatest, wisest, noblest, Preachers of
Religion and Morality; and in conclusion, I know
of no words that could serve me so eloquently
as a peroration, as those of the writer and critic
whom I last named. ‘If force of genius—sympathy
with every form and feeling of humanity—tlie
heart of a man united to the imagination of
�Of Shakespeare's Works.
25
a Poet, and wielding the Briarean hands of
a Demigod — if the writing of thirty-two
Dramas, which are colouring, to this hour, the
literature of the world—if the diffusion of harm
less happiness in immeasurable quantity—if the
stimulation of innumerable minds—if the promo
tion of the spirit of Charity and universal
brotherhood ; if these constitute, for mortal man,
titles to the name of Benefactor, and to that
praise which ceases not with the sun but ex
pands with immortality ; then the name and
the praise must support the throne which
Shakespeare has established over the minds of
the inhabitants of an earth which may be known
in other parts of the Universe as Shakespeare’s
World.’
��WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
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* An Introductory Lecture on Elocution con
sidered in reference to “ Public and Social Life,”
delivered at King’s College, London, at the be
ginning of the Winter Session of the Evening
Classes Department for 1873-4, by Charles
John Plumptre, Lecturer on Public Reading
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London: T. J. Allman, 463 Oxford Street.
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A very interesting discourse.— The Times, October 11.
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“ Clergyman’s Sore Throat” would cease to exist, and laryn
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�11
Advertisements.
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Being the substance of the Introductory Course
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Reading and Speaking, King’s College, Evening
Classes Department.
Dedicated by permission
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*#* This volume will contain special courses of
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London: T. J. Allman, 463, Oxford Street.
�Advertisements.
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Mr. Plumptre has now for several years fulfilled with signal
ability the duties devolving upon him as the Lecturer on Pub
lic Reading and Speaking at King’s College, London, in the
Evening Classes Department. Happily he has afforded us,
one and all, the opportunity for judging of him, not merely by
hearsay—of estimating him not simply by the range or scope
of his reputation. He has now given to the outer public the
means of weighing in the balance his various capabilities as
an instructor in Elocution. He has, in the shape of a goodly
volume of 200 pages octavo, presented to every one who lists
a series of fourteen of these famous King’s College Lectures of
his on Elocution—fourteen sub-divisions of a most instructive
and comprehensive theme—the substance of the introductory
Course of Lectures and Practical Instruction he has now for
some time past been annually delivering. The book is Dedi
cated, by Permission, to H.R.II. the Prince of Wales. It is
followed by two very remarkable appendices—one of them
singularly instructive, the other very curiously interesting. So
far as any merely printed book on Elocution could accomplish
its object, this one by Mr. Plumptre is entitled to our
highest commendation. The eye, the face, the voice, the ges
ture are of course all wanting, but the argument throughout
is so lucid in itself, while the illustrations of that argument are
so animated and so singularly felicitous, that reading the
work attentively page by page and lecture by lecture, is the
next best thing to seeing and hearing the gifted Professor him
self, when he is, in his own person, exemplifying the manifold
and ever-varying charms of the all-conquering art of the
Rhetorician and Elocutionist.—Sun, March 5, 1870.
This, although not a law book, is a book for lawyers. Prac
tical treatises on various branches of the law may be essential
to store the mind of the advocate with ideas, but unless he
has the power of expressing them in such a way as to com
mand the attention of the court, his learning will prove of but
little avail. To a barrister the brains are of but little use
without the tongue, and even the tongue, however fluent, may
fail to give due expression to the ideas, unless the voice is
properly regulated so as to pronounce with both clearness and
force the words that are uttered, and the gestures of the body
�IV
Advertisements.
enforce what the language has attempted to impress. Many
are the failures of those who would otherwise have been suc
cessful advocates from want of attention to the principles of
elocution. Their matter has been excellent, but their manner
has been so bad as entirely to destroy the effect that their ad
dress must otherwise have produced. We would point to
instances of this kind in Parliament, at the Bar, and in the
Pulpit. To all such persons the work before us will be found
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quire them to speak in public, who will fail to derive advan
tage from its perusal. The subject is treated in a thoroughly
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fessor, and he appears to understand his subject entirely, and
in all its different branches. He is quite aware of all the
difficulties to be encountered, and is ready with advice how
to meet them. His work evinces considerable research, ex
tensive classical and general knowledge, and is moreover full
of interesting matter. We commend it heartily alike to
those who aspire to become orators in Parliament, to the
Clergy, and to the Bar.—Quarterly Law Review, May,
1870.
In these days, when Lectures and “ Penny Readings ” are
patronised by the “upper ten thousand,” and Dukes, Mar
quises, Earls, Viscounts, Barons, Baronets, M.P.’s, and
Esquires take part in them, and when at public dinners no
one is supposed to be “ unaccustomed to public speaking,” it
is highly desirable that those who appear on the platform, or
who rise at public banquets, should be able to go through their
parts satisfactorily. To accomplish this there are only two
ways, one, to take lessons in Elocution, the other to read works
published with a view of imparting as much practical instruc
tion as can possibly be imparted by precept, where practice
cannot be attained. Mr C. J. Plumptre, Lecturer at King’s
College, London, has just published a volume upon the Prin
ciples and Practice of Elocution, which will be found to be of
the highest value to every one who is called on, either con
stantly or at intervals, to speak in public. As a teacher, Mr
Plumptre is most skilful: he is a Master of his Art, and those
who cannot avail themselves of his services will do well
to study his treatise, which is lucid, sound, and practical.
The “King’s College Lectures” of Mr Plumptre have been
honoured by the patronage of the Prince of Wales, to whom
the volume is by permission dedicated.—Court Journal,
Dec. 11, 1869.
�Advertisements.
v
Mr Plumptre has, in this volume, reproduced his lectures on
public reading and speaking, which were delivered at King’s
College. We consider that the chief novelty in the hook is
that it contains instruction for public reading as well as
speaking. The science of public reading is very much neglected,
and we are very glad to see that Mr Plumptre favours the
world with a tolerably comprehensive book, which is partly
devoted to this science. We purposely rank Elocution as a
science, as we agree with Mr Plumptre in thinking that it lies
far above a mere art. We believe that if everyone who wishes
to read and speak well were to read and learn by heart
Lecture V., the benefit would be enormous, and the effect
almost immediately appreciable. We find some practical
directions for the management and preservation of the voice,
and although we are not qualified to give an opinion on the
medical part, yet we have the authority of the Lancet for saying
that the suggestions are very practical and the curative mea
sures recommended excellent. We believe that this is by far
the best volume yet published on the subject, and it must
succeed on account of its own worth, as no man who has to
speak or read in public should be without a copy.—Wilts
Advertiser, March 26, 1870.
Mr Plumptre will be known to most of our readers as a very
scientific and successful Teacher of Elocution ; and in this
volume he has put forth the substance of the course of Lectures
that he delivers at King’s College, with such alterations and
additions as may meet the wants of those who are unable to
avail themselves of oral instruction. It is unnecessary to
enlarge upon the advantage of obtaining complete command
of all the powers of the voice, or to point out how very much
a good manner of delivery may promote the success of a
medical practitioner. These considerations are obvious ; and
if they stood alone we should hardly have thought the lectures
within our province as reviewers. We find, however, that Mr
Plumptre enters at length, and with much ability, into the
curative treatment of impediments of speech. We have
perused this portion of the treatise with great care, and have
much pleasure in bearing testimony to its great merit. The
views advanced rest upon sound physiology, and the practice
advocated is in complete accordance with them. Mr Plumptre
states, and our experience enables us to confirm his opinion,
that all cases of stammering and stuttering are curable, if only
the patient will exercise a certain degree of care and perse
verance. It is common for medical practitioners to be consulted
�VI
Advertisements.
about such impediments; and we feel sure that in Mr
Plumptre’s Lectures they will find not only much valuable
practical information, but also a basis of sound principles, upon
which the details of treatment may be founded. We recom
mend thebookverywarmlytoour readers.—Lancet, February
12, 1870.
Professor Plumptre, who is so well known for his elocution
ary powers, has just published a volume of fourteen of his
Lectures on Elocution, delivered some time since at King’s Col
lege, London. The book is a handsome volume of more than
200 pages, and is dedicated to the Prince of Wales. A more
entertaining work it would be difficult to find, and it is one
which we cordially recommend to the student of divinity, the
barrister, the debater ; in a word, to all who desire to cultivate
the faculty of speech, and to be able to express their ideas
with clearness, force, and elegance.—Irish Gazette, March
19, 1870.
This is a book from which we will not quote, but instead
heartily commend, and advise all our readers to purchase and
study it for themselves.—Victoria Magazine, May, 1870.
&c., &c., &c.
C. W. REYNELL, PRINTER, LITTLE PVLTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET, W,
�
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The religion and morality of Shakespeare's works : being a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, the 16th of November, 1873
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Place of publication: London
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B 511
■
THE REVISED VERSION: “THE
ORACLES OF GOD.”
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S IIALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
ON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 13th NOVEMBER, 1881,
By GEORGE J. WILD, Esq., LL.D.
ilonboit:
PUBLISHED . BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1881.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�SYLLABUS
1. —A subject embracing so many points of intricate criticism must
necessarily in a single lecture be treated cursorily and as a whole.
The Nature of the Book revised. Always hitherto regarded as a Sacred
book of infallible authority. Theologians of the minimist school,—various
views of inspiration; neither of these invalidate the authority of scripture
as practically used by recognised bodies of Christians, with whose author
ised statements it is alone possible to deal. Practically the whole
Christian world appeals to us to take scripture as our sure guide.
2. —Sympathy with the alarm of devout persons. Versions;—they
frequently vary. Incongruity of the ideas of an infallible revelation and
varying versions thereof. Opinions, in tlieir own words, of several of the
“Revisers,” and other leading divines, on the effect often produced on
Versions and Manuscripts by bias and dogmatic prejudice—rendering with
a view to edification—chance—attempts at harmonising—intentional falsi
fication and interpolation—dubiousness of meaning.
Reliability of a document must be affected by these incidents.
3.—Attempts to extenuate this difficulty by Christian Apologists. The
attempt invalidated by their own arguments from an opposite point of
view, and by the vital nature of the doctrines affected by the alterations:—
the Trinity—Justification by Faith —Communion in both kinds—The Evil
One;—and by the way in which changed views respecting these doctrines
affect persons and property. Professor Maurice:—Prosecution of “The
Essayists and Reviewers.”
The “trepidation and uncertainty” of the Christian public spoken of by
a clergyman are therefore very natural.
4. —Additional llncertainty warranted by the “ Revisers’ ” own statements
about the text. The Three Great Uncials. Destruction of writings in early
centuries. Rough behaviour of primitive divines. A question for sincere
Christians. The Canon—Four Hundred Years—Eusebius—Dr. Westcott on
“ instinct.”
5. —Sacred volumes among other races deemed also “oracles of God.”
The demons testified of Christ. Reliability of oracles suspected, as sound
knowledge increases.
Conclusion. Apology for disturbing popular sentiment; but to destroy
vulgar conceptions of the infallibility of scripture is as religious and
honest a work in those who think such views detrimental, as is the propa
gation of the Bible by those who think otherwise. The Gospel of the
Future.
�THE REVISED VERSION: “ THE ORACLES
OE GOD.”
ADIES and Gentlemen,—A cursory treatment of such a sub
ject as that proposed to me is all that is possible in a single
lecture, so many are the points of view, and so numerous the
publications to which it bas given rise.
My present purpose is simply to lay before you a few such re
flections as might be supposed to occur to any clear-minded and
fairly-educated person who considered the subject as a whole ; and
I shall only introduce a few of the special points raised by critics
and divines as illustrations by the way.
The first question that naturally occurs is “ What is this booh,”
the revision of which arouses such interest in every direction ?
However vaguely we may recall the lessons of youth, and however
much of late years our attention may have been directed to other
studies, we cannot but remember that it is a book, for which mar
vellous claims are made, which has had a most remarkable history,
and which still exerts a very widespread and powerful influence.
It is a book which claims to be a divine gift from God to man: the
very names that are continually applied to it by divines of all
schools and churches are in fact an assertion of these claims. The
“New Testament,” or, as critics now say it should rather be called,
“ The New Covenant—as setting forth the agreement between
God and man on the terms of salvation. Other titles, familiar to
us, are such as these: “ The Word of God” and “The Oracles of
God,” both adopted from the language of Apostles, “ Holy Scrip
tures,” “ Revelation,” and others, all intended to assert for this
book an authority and a position wholly unique and different from
that of all other books in the world.
Every one,-from his own experience, must be so well aware of
the way in which scripture has been hitherto regarded in the Christ
ian communities, that it would be hardly necessary to insist upon
this point but for the fact that of late years there has grown up
a class of expositors who may be called theologians of the minimist
school. Their notion seems to be that the best method of defend
ing their creed is after the fashion of the animal who escapes from
a trap by leaving his limbs behind him. By a process of gradual
evisceration they seek to free the Christian scheme from whatever
difficulties science or history may discover in it. It may be an
artful plan to confound opponents by providing that all their rude
L
�4
The Revised Version:
blows shall fall upon a vacuum, and if it pleases these gentlemen
to retain the name and style and profess the creed of Christians,
emptied of its contents, it is mainly their own concern. Those,
however, who hold the greater part of the gospel narratives to be
myths, scripture inspired in the same sense as Ovid’s metamor
phoses, and Jesus an amiable social- democrat, burning with the
enthusiasm of humanity, and only divine by a figure of speech, are
not Christians in the usual sense of the word, although it may suit
them to call themselves so. I only allude to them here to say that
it is impossible to take note of the nebulous and ever-shifting
theories by which it is sought to fence or shelter their position. In
discussing the bearing of Christian doctrines it is absolutely neces
sary for clearness sake to have regard only to those presentations
of it put forth by leading Christian bodies and divines of responsible
position. If ever the churches in general come to share the views
of the minimists, there will be not much left then of the old Christ
ianity to discuss, one way or the other, at least nothing probably
that we should care to contend against.
Similar remarks apply in some degree to those defenders of the
faith who insist that there is some refined and esoteric meaning of
scripture language and doctrine imperceptible by ordinary per
sons, and who try to baffle their less learned opponents by telling
them either that they are treating “ Biblical imagery as scientific
*
prose,” or that they “ lade Christians with definitions and conclu
sions which they, are nowhere called on to hold,” or that they are
assuming “ that coarse popular religions of the day represent
Christianity, or attacking “transient phases of opinion long re
linquished.” This all sounds very reasonable, and we acknowledge
that it would be unfair to impute to modern Christians old or igno
rant conceptions which have been abandoned. But then they
must have been really abandoned. It is all very well for one of
our more enlightened bishops, or other speaker at a Church Con
gress, to put a pleasant face on matters, and open both his hands
to science as the true handmaid of religion,—and. my well-read
clerical friend over an evening pipe, may tell me that such or such
a thing only belongs to the “ coarse popular religion of the day,”
that no sensible man thus thinks, and that of course he and his
lettered brethren hold nothing of the kind I—but round the corner
of the street I turn into some Sunday School, and I find the curate
in charge, perhaps my learned friend himself, teaching the actual
titeral beliefs he had been explaining away, or I enter an adjacent
church, and I find much the same thing thought good enough for
* See speeches at Newcastle Church Congress, in Guardian October 5
and October 12.
�a The Oracles of God.”
5
the dear simple-minded mammas and daughters who mostly fill the
pews. It is natural, and not unjustifiable, that such doubletongued Christianity should give rise to the suspicion that certain
of the clergy would gladly re-rivet on us the old superstitions if
only people could be brought to accept them, and that it is only
the persistent voice of the free-thinking objector that forces the
clerical order to concede so much as they do to reason.
On the other hand, I of course allow that there is a considerable
distinction of opinion among genuine Christians. I do not ignore
that there are higher and lower views of inspiration. There are
those who hold that every word and every letter of the sacred
volume were dictated by the Holy Spirit, and those who think
there was only such a general providential superintendence as was
sufficient to guard against substantial error of fact or doctrine.
Liberal theologians, when pressed from the outside.with' the diffi
culties of the inspiration theory, have been ready to concede a
great deal, and have drawn a variety of fine distinctions between
“verbal” and “ plenary,” “ matter and manner,” “ substance and
form,” the “ essence and vehicle” of a revelation—“ the conclusion
and the premises” of a scriptural argument, “the doctrine and
the literary apparatus ” by which it is conveyed. But when they
come to the discussion of points of belief, all schools assume a
practical infallibility for the precise statements, and even, as the
way they use them shows, for short texts and single words of
scripture, and especially are they obliged to do so when dealing
with their hearers in general. For few are so dull as not to
perceive that it must be an extremely risky matter to settle the
criterion of distinction and say how much or how little of a
passage is of divine inspiration: if we admit the fallibility of parts
of scriptural statements, where are we to draw the line ? If none
but expert logicians and skilled linguists are supposed to be
capable of this, scripture for all practical purposes still remains
written “ in a tongue not understanded of the people,” as much as
when written in Hebrew, Greek or Latin. Whatever certain
learned persons may think, therefore, if this theory be plainly put
forward, we others, we of the unlettered multitude, cannot but too
clearly perceive that we are completely at the mercy of a small
priestly or lettered class, or, as Lord Shaftesbury put it, subjected
to the tyranny of professors. The Church of Borne, indeed, faces
this difficulty by claiming for herself the sole and absolute right of
exposition; but she nevertheless, like the Protestant Churches, in
combination with her own tradition, holds the Bible as the rule of
faith.
We may conclude, therefore, this seeming digression by again
�6
The Revised Version:
affirming that amongst all really recognisable Christians the scrip
tures still retain their high prerogative, and that none of those
paramount claims are abated which entitle them to be properly
styled “ the revealed Word of God,” or as St. Stephen called them
“ the living Oracles.” In hundreds of learned and elaborate as
well as popular discourses, in Cathedral and University pulpits,
no less than myriad chapels, we are continually exhorted to
“ search the scriptures,” told that they “ will make us wise unto
Salvation,” to take them “ as a guide to our feet and a lantern to
our paths,” to beware how we “ corrupt the Word of God, either
by adding thereto or taking therefrom;” while some of the more
enthusiastic preachers have not hesitated to apply to the whole
scriptures those words of its last page : “if any man add unto the
words of this book God shall add unto him the plagues that are
written therein, and if any man shall take away from the words of
this book God shall take away his part out of the book of life.”
Of this remarkable and widely reverenced book, then, we are
now presented with a “ Revised Version.”
I can well understand and sympathise with the alarm and
repugnance of simple believers when they first heard that the
venerable volume, whose every verse they had been taught was
sacred, was to be exposed to the tampering and pruning of critics.
Its beautiful language and identical words were stored in their
hearts, linked with the history of their lives, and pregnant with
associations and deep meanings breathed but to God alone, and it
was agony to think that that language of the soul was to be
broken in upon, and those, as they believed, eternal harmonies
dislocated and jarred.
. For does there not in truth seem something incongruous
between the very idea of “ a Word of God ” and “ a revised
version ” thereof? An inspired Oracle, a divine revelation, which
in some way has got so interpolated and wrongly rendered as
to require freshly translating and purging of unwarranted parts.
Some will be disposed to think that a revelation that can be
involved in such risks fails of the very end for which a revelation
might be conceived as possible; at any rate that it must be lacking
in that definiteness and certainty which the very conception of a
divine message seems to imply. For as a renowned divine once
*
said, “ The Holy Ghost sheds pure light, and the truth he teaches
hath a language that is always uniform.”
To reveal means to unveil, to make manifest or clear, and is
opposed to every notion of obscurity, and dark puzzles and con
undrums. If indeed, as at the conclusion of his famous Bampton
* Bossuet, Histoire des Variations des 6glises Protestantes, Preface.
�“ The Oracles of God.”
7
Lectures was once wittily said of Dean Mansel, the chief thing
that we believe in, in regard to revelation, is the veil, it is of course
possible to conceive of a matter being revealed with the object of
making it darker than before. But this process, in the ordinary
use of language, would generally be described as “ obscuring ” not
revealing'a matter. A message is brought to the world, professing
to give information about the nature and being of its God—the
conditions of acceptance with him, the means by which men are
to approach him, and the prospects of future happiness or misery.
I soon find there are divergent copies of the message. Christians
nevertheless aver that it is a revelation which gives precise infor
mation on these and other like matters. But when to my zealous
enquiries I can get no certain and uniform answer, no answer in
which any two agree, in what respect am I better than I was
*
originally ? I am left in a region of conjecture and opinion ; but
I had conjectures and opinions of my own before; and the declared
object of the revelation was to dispel such, and establish certainty.
If it fails of this has it not failed of its end ? The object of a light
is to illumine; of a chart to show the track, of an envoy to carry a
definite message; if the light only shows “ darkness visible,” if in
the map no sure continuous path can be discovered, if the messen
ger is so incoherent that we cannot tell whether he refers to Borne
or Canterbury, Constantinople or Geneva, what in any case can
result but ambiguity and confusion ? Now St. Paul tells us that
God is not the God of confusion, and his master declares we may
know things by their fruits. Judging the churches then by their
own standards, what can we say ?
How very different a complexion and meaning the mere process
of version-making may give to a book is evident from many curious
passages of the Septuagint, as compared with the Hebrew bible.
Some very suggestive remarks on this subject may be found in the
4th and 5th lectures of Professor Bobertson Smith’s recent volume
on “ The Old Testament in the Jewish church.”
To the English reader this divergence of version is made easily
apparent by comparing the prayer-book and the bible versions of
the Psalms. Take for instance two corresponding verses of the
58th Psalm. The prayer-book has it “ Or ever your pots be made
hot with thorns, so let indignation vex him even as a thing that is
raw ”—the bible however says “ Or ever your pots can feel the
thorns, he shall take them away as with a whirlwind, both living,
and in his wrath.” Many similar instances might be given.
It can be shown, then, that considerable differences exist be
tween versions as a matter of fact. Most persons, I think, will
perceive upon reflection that it must have been so from the nature
�8
The Revised Version:
of the case. For consider only the natural bias or prepossession
of each translator derived from his education and mode of thought.
Hear, for instance, what the Bishop of St. Andrews, a “ Reviser,”
says on this point. After alluding to the composition of the
*
Revising Company, with the proportion of Episcopalians and
Dissenters, as necessarily influencing in some degree the results,
he continues thus: “ Bias, of course derived from antecedents,
from education, from position in life, and from ecclesiastical
associations, through the constitution of our common nature there
must needs have been more or less in every case. But I have the
fullest conviction that no conscious partiality . . . was allowed in
any instance to exercise any sway throughout our proceedings.”
So again Mr. Moule,t the well-known Biblical scholar, arguing
against the change from “we have peace with God,” to “let us have
peace with God,” in the revised version of the 5th of Romans,
goes on to say : “ Who can hesitate how to explain the early
growth of the reading ‘ let us have ’ ? It was the result of an age
when the . . . certainties of the Pauline teaching were already
exchanged for the mists of a spirit of unauthorised speculation or
of misguided ecclesiasticism, both alike beclouding the directness
of view and of hold on the part of the Christian towards his
Redeemer.”
As the three earliest MSS. all agree in the reading “ let us have,”
we perceive that Mr. Moule’s estimate of the MSS. even of- that
age is not a high one.
Speaking of another rendering he says, again, “ For this ren
dering, every critical nerve on one side—under dogmatic prejudice
—has been strained.” .... “ But for prepossession against the
idea of the Redeemer’s deity, I am perfectly sure that no rendering
but that now retained would have occurred to a translator in the
first instance.”
Similarly the Rev. W. Ewen, B.D.,1 speaks of “ the unconscious
dogmatic bias” of the “ Revision Committee” itself; even venturing
to state that they have given us, not “ what St. Paul wrote, but
what they think he should have written as an orthodox teacher.”
Then, again, we have an Oxford M.A. complaining that Dr.
Brown',§ one of the Revisers, was led “by dogmatic opinion” . . .
“to insist on the use of the pronoun ‘who’ instead of ‘which’”
when referring to the Spirit; though the Greek word is neuter,
and in English we always say “ it” when speaking of a spirit.*
§
* See his address to his Diocesan Synod, Standard, Sept. 23,1881.
t Moule’s Comment on Epis. to the Romans,-PwiZzcOpm/on,July9th,1881.
J In a letter to Public Opinion, 6th August, 1881.
§ Public Opinion, 6th August, 1881.
�il The Oracles of God.”
9
One gentleman expresses his conviction that a new revision
*
ought to be made chiefly with a view to edification. Since views
of what is edifying differ vastly, this may almost be called erecting
prejudice into a principle.
We have more than one intimation of the opinion that in
introducing “the Evil one” into the Lord’s Prayer, the revisers
were actuated by a laudable desire to restore the doctrine of the
personality of the devil, which has been so depreciated of late
years. One Rev. gentlemant even broaches the comical idea that
the strong dislike expressed by so many persons to this re-intro
duction of “ the Evil one,” arises from the same feeling as Satan’s
own rage when he is found out. I know not to what he alludes,
unless to some of the old stories about the devil appearing in
various disguises, such as lovely women, or beautiful boys, to holy
men and being quickly detected; as when St. Dunstan applied
his hot tongs to the devil’s nose and sent him off swearing.
I need not trouble you with any more statements from orthodox
divines, granting our position as to the large share prejudice must
have in the rendering of any version.
This fact alone must of itself very much affect the trustworthi
ness of any transmitted document.
But our estimate of reliability will have, I think, to be rated
still lower, when we consider the element of chance in the trans
mission of documents—chance including all the risks connected
with the stupidity, the laziness, the superstition and misplaced
reverence of myriads of copyists. Even in the case of the “ Re
vision ” before us, Dr. Sanday, a distinguished critic, allows that
chance must have played its part.J “ In a Committee,” he says,
“ composed of heterogenous elements .... results must needs be
obtained in a great measure by compromise, and even in the
compromises adopted from time to time there will naturally be an
element of accident.”
The Bishop of St. Andrews also emphasises§ the fact that the
voting system of rendering risks the result of a frequent majority
of the least sagacious and able over, as he thinks, a more scholarly
minority.
The Dean of Peterborough and others might be cited as wit
nesses to the same effect.
To the thus allowed effects of prejudice and chance no small
addition must be made from the mistaken views taken of the duties*
§
* J. F. S., in Public Opinion, 17th Sept., 1881.
t Rev. Mr. Tyrwhitt, Public Opinion, 17th Sept., 1881.
t Public Opinion, 6th August, 1881.
§ lb., 24th Sept, and 10th Oct., 1881.
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of a redacteur in those early centuries. If even nowadays we
hear reverend theologians insisting that it is the first duty of a
version-maker to translate with a view to edification, irrespective
of the weight of evidence for or against any particular reading,
what must we suppose to have been the case in those days when
the science and duty of historical precision were altogether un
dreamt of, and a desire “to build up the believers,” as they
phrased it, “in their most holy faith” was considered, not merely
to justify, but to render right and necessary any required amount
of perversion.
To this tendency may be traced some of the blundering attempts
which were evidently made at an early period to harmonize one
gospel with another. The learned Master of University College,
Durham, gives us an instance where even the translators of our
*
Authorised Version were led by this tendency to mistranslate a
passage in John in order to reconcile it with the parallel account
in Matthew and Mark.
But far greater effect, than by attempts at harmonizing, would
be produced by the intentional interpolation and falsification of the
text in those first ages of fierce strife.
On this we have the Bev. Mr. Tyrwhitt’st statement respecting
a text in Matthew, which, he says, “is a plain indication that
deliberate falsification of the evangelist’s phrase must necessarily
here be charged against one or other of the two sets of conflicting
Greek authorities.”
Similarly, Dr. Dwight,t one of the American revisers, speaking
of passages which mention fasting in the Authorised Version, and
which are properly excluded from the “ Bevised,” as no part of the
true text, so that fasting is now nowhere inculcated as a Christian
duty in the New Testament; he observes, “ This manipulating of
the text in the places to which we have made especial reference,
shows the tendency of a later time than the apostolic age.”
So Professor Sanday§ speaks of a certain combination of manu
scripts, namely, the combination “ Aleph D,” that is the Sinaitic
and the Codex Bezae, having “ been found to mark a well-defined
strain of corruption.”
And, here perhaps, it is as well to remark that it makes no differ
ence to our argument whether these gentlemen, in discussing
various passages, are right or wrong in the view they take of the
particular point before them. We need commit ourselves to none*
§
* His Letter in Public Opinion, 1st Oct., 1881.
t Public Opinion, 17th September, 1881.
1 lb. 25th June, 1881.
§ lb., 6th August, 1881.
�il The Oracles of GodT
11
of their opinions. It is enough for us that we have a large
number—for statements like the above might be infinitely multi
plied—a large number of orthodox divines and professed defenders
of the faith, agreeing that a great amount of deliberate and
accidental corruption of New Testament documents prevailed
during the early centuries of our era.
But no small element of uncertainty still remains; it will be
found, even in many cases where all parties are agreed as to the
original reading, but where the meaning of the Greek is doubtful.
Bor an instance, take a verse in the 3rd chapter of John; commenting
on which Professor Plummer says, “In v. 34, the probably correct
*
interpretation of the Authorised Version, ‘ God giveth not the spirit
by measure unto him,’ is reduced to the correct translation ‘ He
giveth not the spirit by measure.’ The possible rendering, ‘ The
spirit giveth not by measure,’ is not thought worthy of notice in the
margin.”
Here, then, we have three possible renderings of the same Greek
the difference of which is not small, at any rate considerable enough
to very much alter the bearing of the text in a conceivable doctrinal
controversy.
Several of our theological leaders have endeavoured to lessen the
sense of uncertainty, perturbing many minds, on account of the
omissions and variations of the I Revised Version,” and confessed
corruptions of the old, by using some such language as this :—
“ After all what is the upshot of the whole work ? No doctrine of
any importance is affected by these corrections; they chiefly refer
to small points. Granting that all the errors, and all the corrup
tions, insisted on by the most trenchant critics are well founded,
yet enough remains to establish all the great articles of faith.”
We must take leave, however, to considerably qualify these
reassuring and comforting statements’
Indeed, this method of representing the alterations, as of little
consequence, is refuted by the language of many of these divines
themselves ; when, regarding the question from the opposite side,
they show the absolute necessity that existed for a revision.
As for instance, Archdeacon Palmer,t one of the revisers, among
others, speaking at the Church Congress, argues that, if the defects
of the Authorised Version had been only in small matters the
public would hardly have endured the experiment of a revision.
“But,”he says, “ when it is seen that the received text is condemned
by a consensus of critics in passages which have been used by authors,
like Bishop Pearson, to establish important doctrines, and which
* Public Opinion, 1st October, 1881.
t lb., Oct. 22nd, 1881.
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must continue to invite like use so long as they stand unaltered in
our English bibles, it is impossible to rest satisfied with a version
which represents that received text.”
He then gives as examples the verse in Tim. (1 Tim., iii. 16),
where the words “ He who was manifest in the flesh,” have been
converted, in the Authorised Version, to “ God manifest in the
flesh,” and the text of the Three Witnesses.
No one can have the face to allege that such texts as these refer
only to small points.
The expulsion of the famous text of the Three Heavenly Wit
nesses must be allowed, on all hands, to withdraw no slight support
from the doctrine of the Trinity. This is made plain, if by nothing
else, at least by the pertinacity and determination with which it
was long fought for in the face of overwhelming evidence, and with
which, in -some orthodox quarters, it is still fought for. Eor their
ecclesiastical experience and acumen make them instinctively feel
that, if it is conceded that the Trinitarian party were so resolute
and unscrupulous as to foist in a whole text to back up their be
loved doctrine, it raises no unreasonable suspicion, that many other
texts, originally of lame inference, have been surreptitiously touched
up to meet their argumentative requirements. Those familiar with
early Greek writing well know that, in many cases, it would require
but the insertion of a mere line an -g-th of an inch long, to convert
a sentence, as an authority, from one side of the question to the
other.
When we consider that this last-mentioned text is the only
one which directly, and in so many words, attested the doctrine of
the Trinity in the whole compass of the New Testament, it must
be fairly allowed that the adversaries of that tenet have scored a
point, when at length it is ignominiously ejected from the sacred
text- without one word of excuse, condolence, or record of its for
mer presence: the Revisers not having condescended to notice it,
even in the margin. Shades of Travis and Porson, behold, how
low this once I glorious pillar of unshaken orthodoxy” has fallen !
Once the rallying point of so many famous champions, and the
*
subject of such hard-fought battles, and now, “ None so poor to do
it reverence,” nay even to bow it out with common civility! If
the poor text had language, we can imagine its addressing these
ruthless Revisers in the words of the old song,—“It may have
been wise to dissemble your love, but why need you kick me down
stairs ?”
Another doctrine, held for many generations to be a vital prin* See Dr. Davidson’s Introduction to New Testament, Vol. II. p. 307, and
Blomfield’s Greek Testament, notes in loco.
�“ The Oracles of God.”
13
ciple of Christianity, almost the note of a standing or falling
church, is that of “ justification by faith.” The rendering of an
important text bearing upon this doctrine, which the “ Revisers ”
have thought themselves obliged to adopt, has been strongly con
demned by no less an authority than the Bishop of Llandaff, whose
*
words are that the view of the “Revisers” “is quite subversive of
this essential doctrine of Christianity,” and “ in direct contradic
tion to the teaching of St. Paul upon the subject.”
I offer no opinion upon the matter beyond stating that it can
hardly be supposed our would-be comforters can, as theologians,
call the doctrine of justification a small point, with, the recollec
tion of all the mighty tomes which have been written on it, and
the endless distinctions hammered out between “ causa efiiciens ”
and “ causa instrumentalis,” “ meritum de condigno,” and “ meritum de congruo,” and all the rest of it.
Then, again, it is well known how long and internecine was the
controversy between the Roman and Protestant Churches on the
question of “ Communion in both kinds,” and the withholding of
the cup from the laity. The present Bishop of Winchester in fact
declares,t “ that it is a very serious question whether the sacra
ment is a valid sacrament when there is only administered one
half of what Christ ordained.”
As all the leading churches agree with that of England that the
sacraments are “generally necessary to salvation,” according to
this showing the great mass of Romanists are reduced to what
Touchstone calls “ a parlous state.” So much the greater conse
quently must be the satisfaction of the Roman authorities when
they find that the “ Revisers ” have thought it right so far to
strengthen their view of the question as to translate in accordance
with the Vulgate version, the text of the 27th v. of 11th ch. of 1
Cor.: “ Whoever shall eat the bread on drink the cup of the Lord,”
instead of as in the Authorised Version: “ and the cup of the Lord.”
In several other instances the Vulgate rendering is approved.
The striking change in the Lord’s prayer of “ evil ” into “ the
evil one,” has caused considerable sensation in most Christian
bodies, and has led to a long and learned controversy between the
Bishop of Durham and Canon Cook.J Time precludes further
allusion to this matter, but when such illustrious authorities differ
so considerably on a point like this, common men may certainly
be excused for thinking that the “oracles” cannot be so plain “that
he may run that readeth.”
* Public Opinion, 17th September, 1881.
+ On the Thirty-Nine Articles, Art. XXX., p. 736.
| See Guardians of September 7 to September 28, inclusive.
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These various changes of the “ Revised Version” can hardly also
be deemed small or immaterial if we consider the probable differ
ence they might have made to persons and parties had they been
foreseen and sanctioned earlier. It is now nearly 30 years ago
since Professor Maurice was the centre of a theological disturb
ance in England, and when, after a somewhat acrimonious dis
cussion, chiefly stirred up by Dr. Jelf, he was ejected from his
professorship. It will be remembered that the main contest ranged
round sundry distinctions of the Professor respecting the word
Aubvios. It can scarcely be doubted that if the standard of infor
mation, and the atmosphere of thought which have led the present
“ Revisers,” in every instance, to translate this word by “eternal,”
and not “ everlasting,” had been as prevalent then as now, that
there would have been nothing heard of the persecution of poor
Maurice—the gentlest and most charitable of men. One, who
was totally opposed to him in most respects, still wrote of him at
the time in these words : “ It is a sorrowful thing to see the fine
subtlety, the large and genial culture, the Christian genius and
virtues of the Chaplain of Lincoln’s-Inn, distorting themselves in
vain struggles of ecclesiastical position, and trying, by all sorts of
loving ingenuities, that would be unveracious in any one else, to
relax the marble brow of a relentless Church.”
A few years later a more terrific storm arose in connection with
the attack upon the authors of “ Essays and Reviews,” which
though finally failing in the attempt to expel the Essayists, subjected
two of them, at least, to a wearisome and costly prosecution, which
if it did not break the heart, at any rate utterly broke the health
and spirits of one of them.
It will be remembered that, the proposed “ handling ” of “ scrip
ture as other books,” was one of the main sources of trouble. It
is probable that a large proportion of those ten or eleven thousand
clergy, who signed the remarkable protest against the “ Essayists,”
have gone to their rest; their survivors must by this time, one
would^think, have got pretty well accustomed to the “ free handling”
of sacred records, and the work of the “ Revisers ” must, at least,
have taught them that if any approximation can be made to the
exact language in which the authors of the New Testament wrote,
it can only be by treating the scriptures very much “ like other
books.” The way in which the “ Revision ” itself has been, for the
most part, accepted is a good index of the great change, in the tone
of thought, on the subject between now and then. But this very
change, this acquiescence in the treatment of “ scripture as other
books,” can hardly be deemed a small or trifling point. It is, in
fact, a point which lies at the very root of the whole matter. It
�“ The Oracles of God.”
15
has already pretty well exploded a whole school of theology, in the
eyes of all rational men, and I am very much deceived if we shall
not, before long, see more remarkable effects. The frantic efforts of
late years among many in Protestant Communities, to bolster up,
like the Homan Controversialists, the scriptures by the Church and
the Church by the scriptures, and the attempt in the Boman Church
to prop what is felt to be itself a crumbling buttress, by elevating
the dogma of infallibility into a “ verite du foi,” are tolerably clear
signs that the feeling of insecurity as to the groundwork of the
faith is spreading in all quarters.
In view, then, of so many varying expedients for underpinning
the faith, and such conflicts of opinion among divines, the letter of
a clergyman, complaining that “ many minds at the present time
*
are agitated by a sense of trepidation and uncertainty,” is not
surprising. When, for instance, we hear so eminent a theologian
as the Bishop of Derryt “ declare his profound conviction that St.
John makes no such statement ” as one which the “ Bevisers ” have
put into his mouth; and that it is to be feared the error of the
revisers will lead to “ serious misapplication ” and “ misapprehen
sion,” and find other ecclesiastics of high position giving utterance
to similar fears, we must grant, I think, that the “ trepidation and
uncertainty ” are not unnatural.
We have hitherto said nothing as to the additional dubiousness
attaching to the subject, in regard to the foundation of the Greek
text of the Bevised Version. The text of the Authorised Version
was confessedly very imperfect. The revisers have, in many re
spects, given us a new one. They tell us, in their preface, that
the materials for improving the text have only come to light within
the last two centuries, some of them only within the last few years.
It follows from this, therefore, that the Christian Church, for the
larger part of its existence, that is from the 5th to the 16 th century,
has had no true text of its divine oracles. The “ Bevisers ” have
chiefly leant upon the great Uncial MSS. Some well known
scholars have complained that they have not consistently done so.
To this the “ Bevisers ” may be said to have replied by anticipa
tion,t when they tdll us “ that it was not within their province to
construct a continuous and complete text; ” and that, in “ many
places,” . . . “it would not be safe for the present to accept one read
ing to the absolute exclusion of others.”
In short, their statements come practically to this : that we are
* Rev. Tilney Bassett, Public Opinion, 16th July, 1881.
t lb., 10th September, 1881.
t Preface to Revised Version.
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still without a true text of the original oracles, and have at present
no means of forming one.
And after all what are these three great Uncials that are placed
up above the other authorities like my Lords in banco, in their fullbottomed wigs. Two of them descend, they say, from the fourth cen
tury, the other from the fifth. It is notorious that by that time
corruptions had sprung up in the church in all directions. It was
a period of the greatest rascality, unscrupulousness, lying, and self
seeking, besides dire confusion among both the lay and clerical
orders, as is admitted even by ecclesiastical historians themselves.
Certainly it is not a creditable era to date from, and a pedigree
commencing in such a period is surely not unquestionable.
It appears to me a very suspicious circumstance too, that we
have no MS., at least of some of the separate books, higher than
the date named. The preceding period was one of violent and
cruel controversy, and we know that religious antagonists did not
stick at trifles in those days, as witness one early council where the
stronger party pummelled their adversaries to that extent that they
were obliged to take refuge under the seats ; and at Ephesus one
leading bishop was so knocked about that he died a few days after
ward. Are these, we cannot help asking, are these the calm sages
and the holy fathers on whose authority we are to accept the mys
teries of religion, and to whose sagacity and fidelity we are to trust
for the preservation of its evidence ? Temperate and precise state
ment might as reasonably be looked for in a meeting of howling
dervishes, or rowdies of the New York slums. At any rate, gentle
men so little ceremonious with the persons of their adversaries,
would not be very particular as to their books, and they had apos
tolic precedent for burning reprobated writings. As they would
not scruple to destroy books, so they would not hesitate either to in
terpolate them, or to ascribe them to others than their real authors.
We have positive evidence that this was the case in some instances,
and we have no doubt in many others also if we could only un
earth the facts. It is not likely that the three great Uncials, de
rived to us from this turbulent and unwholesome era, have escaped
the general contamination. Since these remarks were written, I
have had the pleasure, last week, of reading the terrific onslaught
made upon the Uncials by the current “ Quarterly Review.” The
reviewer gives them the very worst of characters. I am happy to
be so far in accord with him. He should, in consistency however,
have told his readers that the character of the MSS. on which the
Authorised Version is founded is even worse. The joke of the
matter is, that he evidently imagines himself to be lending valuable
support to orthodoxy. The more prudent of the orthodox will, I
�“ The Oracles of God.”
17
think, be ready to cry “heaven save us from our friends.” The re
marks which he ascribes to Tischendorf on Codex D, “ Soepe du- .
bites,” &c., “You may often doubt whether you are reading things
written seriously or in jest,” seem appropriate, I think, to the re
viewer himself. These well-abused Uncials are, however, the best
and earliest MSS. that can be obtained, and we have seen, how
greatly their authority has been allowed to amend the version
hitherto in use in this country.
A question here arises which we shquld think of serious import
ance to such Christians as take their religion in earnest. And that
is, “ What guarantee have you that this revision is final ?” The
“ Revisionists ” themselves tell you that they are not in a position
to certify a perfect text, and that they look for improvement to the
course of time and further research. What guarantee have you
that time has not some great surprise in store ? Suppose, for argu
ments’ sake, a MS. of some New Testament books turned up of the
end of the second century, or suppose that even the identical parch
ments left at Troas were unearthed. And further, suppose that as
of late the comparison of the later with the earlier manuscripts has
led to the suppression or alteration of more than one crucial
text, so the comparison with those still earlier showed that sundry
other passages, upon which theologians have raised their elaborate
edifices, had either been greatly corrupted, or had no existence at
all. It cannot justly be said that by scholars this is held an im
possible supposition, seeing that our most eminent critics, Messrs.
Scrivener and Hort, and others, who agree with them, tell us, in so
many words, “ that the worst corruptions to which the New Tes
*
tament has ever been subjected originated within a hundred years
after it was composed.”
This question of the untrustworthiness of the text brings us
naturally to the subject of the Canon itself.
I conclude that all here understand that by “ the Canon ” is
practically meant the list of books that were eventually received
and held for inspired scripture.
When, then, was this canon finally settled ? All competent
scholars agree that it was not settled until the Council of Carthage,
near the end of the fourth century, and even after that there
were differences of opinion as to certain books.
And here it will be as well for us to try and realise, in some de
gree, the significance of the statement, “ the end of the fourth cen
tury.” Por from the way in which it is often referred to by re
* See Scrivener’s Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament,
chap. vii. p. 453; and see the whole chapter for many facts confirmatory of
the statements of this lecture.
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ligious writers and speakers, it is evident that many Christians
conceive that when they have got up to the fourth century, they
have got to the very primal fount and origin of Christianity, and
taste the pure celestial spring. Let us rectify this conception a
little by applying as a measure the course of our own national his
tory. Now four centuries deducted from the present year of grace
will take us back, barring fractions, to the year 1480, near the be
ginning of the last quarter of the fifteenth century.
How many events have changed the face of the world since
then ? The world was then still “ orbis veteribus notus ”—“ the
world as known to the ancients,” as the schoolbooks say. Neither
America nor the Cape of Good Hope had been discovered; printing
had only just been brought to England; the Roman Church was
still dominant; exactly fifty years will pass before the protest of
Luther and the German princes at Spires; Loyola and his famous
society are not yet in existence; the Wars of the Roses are not
yet over; for several generations yet to come Scotland and England
will be still two countries; the first and the second English
revolutions are distant, and the French yet far away in the future;
the present English language had hardly yet been formed; we
must wait longer than a century for Shakespear’s immortal pen;
and, what perhaps is more to our present purpose, the English
Bible was not yet extant, Tindal’s not appearing for over another
fifty, and the Authorised not before 130 years.
One of the arguments used by some to deprecate the Revised
Version before us was, as you will remember, that the fine idiom
atic English of the older book had so worked itself into English
literature and speech, that to change • it would be almost like
changing our forms of thought. But the great bulk of that
English literature has itself grown up nearly within the last 300
years, during which period also our religion has been changed,
our liberties have been purchased, and we have grown from a
small kingdom occupying part of an island to the widest spread
and most flourishing race the world has yet seen.
Such great changes, such modifications of institutions, arts, and
manners, such powerful revolutions of thought and belief, have
occurred in the last 400 years. And can we conceive that during
the first four centuries it was otherwise ? that the world was then
standing still, and that notions and beliefs of the year 50 were
stereotyped, and had submitted to no corruption and no change
by the year when Theodosius I. published the Edict of Thessa*
lonica, and established the Catholic Faith with the sword ? On
* A.D. 380. Other edicts and violent persecutions followed between
380 and 394 A.D.
�11 The Oracles of GodT
19
the contrary, there was probably never a period of greater change
and greater fermentation of thought. The Hellespont and the
Eastern Mediterranean were crowded with an incessant traffic,
and East and West were being brought together as never before :
races were intermingling, and a persistent fusion of all kinds of
superstitions and fanaticisms, rituals, religions, and philosophies,
was taking place and daily developing. Is it not perfectly certain
that the Christianity which resulted from all this, and such
Christian literature as was allowed to survive, must be strongly
impregnated with the atmosphere from which it drew its breath ?
It may be difficult to track all the stages of the process, since we
have no direct Ecclesiastical history of those times before Euse
bius, writing in the first third of the fourth century; and he dis
tinctly avows that he holds it the duty of a Christian historian
*
to suppress matters unfavourable to his cause, and to write with a
view to edification. Other information is chiefly incidental in
works, mostly of a rhetorical or hortatory nature. Heretical writings,
which might have given us a little more light, were systematically
extirpated. But the conclusion, I think, must be obvious to every
intelligent mind that whatever resulted from those ages must have
been largely affected by their spirit, and that the Canon no more
than other things escaped.
The canon was practically settled, as we have seen, by the end
of the fourth century, and by the party which remained finally
dominant after many struggles.
We of course do not deny that a gradual agreement as to the
chief books had been growing during the two centuries preceding;
but on the question what modification these books received in the
process darkness rests. Those who influenced the selection were
mostly a very ill-informed and superstitious sort of persons, with
minds, as Canon Westcott says,t “ essentially uncritical.” It
would be easy, did time allow, to give many instances of their
puerile and ridiculous style of argument. In the immediate postapostolic age the early writers, when they speak of scripture, mean
the scriptures of the Old Testament. By degrees certain other
writings, supposed to have been the work of their first leaders,
grew into respect from being read in the Christian assemblies;
but distant and different churches had not always the same, each
gloried in its own special books; much in the same way as in later
times this shrine would be famous for one relic, and that for
another. Amidst incessant conflicts and discussions and the
* Eusebius, Hist. Ecc., viii. 2, and see Preeparatio Evangelica, xii. 31.
t Westcott on the Canon, Introduction, p. 10, and see M. Nicolas’ “ De la
formation du Canon,” in his “Etudes Critiques sur le Nouv.Test.,”passim.
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The Revised Version:
assertion of various claims, the dominant party at length came to
a tolerably harmonious settlement; but it is not to be denied that
books long spoken against are now included in the canon, and
books that were once accepted are now cast out. The Muratorian
Canon, for instance, rejects the Catholic Epistles of Peter, John,
and James, and introduces a book called “The Apocalypse of
Peter.” It is a somewhat significant fact that the first known
Canon is that of Marcion, extremely defective according to ortho
dox views. The only accounts we have of Marcion are from his
adversaries, and therefore suspicious. One fact about him, how
ever, is sufficiently certain, and that is that he protested against
the acceptance of many books afterwards received, and that he had
a different gospel. It is probable that the final result somewhat
depended upon the principle of “give and take.” At any rate, as
Dr. Westcott allows the Canon was “ not definitely marked ” out
*
by any special investigation, but “ was fixed practically by the
common use of Christians; it was formed,” says he, “ by an
instinct, not by an argument.” As he and Dr. Hort tell us again,t
in the notes to their recently issued Greek Testament, “instincts”
are extremely various. There were, it cannot be denied, a great
many warring instincts in those early centuries, and it may be
permitted to question how far the one that finally prevailed was
more likely to be trustworthy than the others.
Regarding then the subject from these several points of view—
the unavoidable bias of version-makers, the conflicting views of
meaning, the enigmatical nature of many statements in themselves,
the well-meant attempts at harmonizing, the unavoidable deterior
ation and corruption of the text, added to the wilful interpolation
and falsification of the text, the suspicious destruction of docu
ments by the finally dominant party, and in addition to all this
the extreme haze and precariousness which surround the whole
history of the Canon itself—have we not said enough to justify
the assertion with which we started, that the idea of a revision is
incongruous with that of a divine revelation; that a “revelation”
transmitted by such means and subject to such drawbacks, must
be of necessity involved in such an atmosphere of uncertainty and
doubt as to fail of the purposes for which a conceivable revelation
might be made.
Is it conceivable that the Bright Intelligence that shines through
out the Universe is so wanting in resource, as to make a message
of mercy to a supposed perishing world dependent on “ the ren
dering of a particle,” the blotting of a letter, or the blunder of a scribe?
* Westcott on the Canon, p. 413, and p. 537.
t Westcott and Hort’s Greek Test., p. 542.
�“\The Oracles of God.”
21
As for that poor plea which has been put forward by a northern
Professor, who argues that if Providence has allowed his Word to
be incrusted with errors, Providence has also preserved to our
times the means of correcting them—thus giving us the delightful
opportunity of resorting to “ critical processes,” and exercising our
skill in the solution of difficulties—it seems to me that to impute
such a roundabout and ensnaring plan to Providence is anything
but respectful and complimentary. Moreover, it is not true, as I
have shown the most eminent critics confess, that we have yet the
means of rectifying the mass of corruptions to which the scrip
tures have been subjected. It is a pitiable spectacle to see a man
of intellect driven by the necessities of a baseless theory to adopt
such a miserable evasion.
And let me remind you again, that all the statements and ad
missions I have adduced and pn which my argument is founded,
are not those of opponents and freethinkers, but of stout defenders
of the faith, mostly divines and scholars of eminence. Many
confirmatory facts may be found in Drs. Westcott and Hort’s
recently published introductory volume to their Greek Testament.
St. Luke tells the Excellent Theophilus, that the object of his
writing to him was that he “might know the certainty” of the
things he had been taught. Whatever effect was produced upon
his first reader, assuredly the opposite effect gains ground with the
Theophilusses of later times, who, in every fresh reading and
revision, find some new sources of doubtfulness. Will a hundred
channels of incertitude when combined, bring forth certainty ?
Or not rather, like combinations in general, when taken all
together, produce a total of uncertainty absolutely incalculable.
What wonder then at the histories of thousands of different
opinions, wrangled over by divergent sects and doctors ? If a
system had been specially devised to produce this polychromatous
result, could it have succeeded better ?
Sometimes it is said in mitigation of this statement, that though
certainty is unattainable on many points on which Christians
differ, yet that it is to be found on all essential points. This
fallacy I have already alluded to. I need only further say, how can
those points be declared unessential over which Churches have
lived in eternal conflict, and filled the world with wars, massacres,
and martyrdoms ? If they were, after all, really unessential,
Christianity stands by that very fact, I fear, condemned before
God and man.
In all nations of the world at a certain stage of progress, we
find men weakly anxious to penetrate beyond those things that
can be known, to claim superior Beings for their patrons, and to
�22
The Revised Version:
read the future. This tendency of the human mind has made men
readily credulous of all sort of revelations and scriptures, Zend and
Buddhist, Sibylline books and other oracles, of Jove, Asclepius, or
Apollo, which to their votaries in those days were verily “ Oracles
of God.” In a further stage of progress the more intelligent
classes of a community begin to ask themselves and one another
awkward questions, and find it very difficult to get satisfactory
answers. Then comes the stage of public discussion, and more or
less open literary assault on ancient faiths and observances. As for
*
instance, Oinomaos of Gardara, in disgust, we are told, with the
ambiguous reply of an oracle to himself, put forth a treatise, in
which, among others, he thus ridicules the deity of Delphi,—“ Why
do you make sport of us with your doubtful sayings ; have you not
at least gumption enough to perceive that we are coming to see
that you do not know what to answer (to our questions) and think
by pompous nonsense to cast a mist before our eyes ? What good
are you doing at Delphi, wasting time chanting your trumpery pro
phecies ? What fools we all are to offer you so many sacrifices !”
While the wiser heathen, however, thus 'detected the fraud in
their oracles, some of the early Christians supposed that they were
true, and attributed them to demons, their theory being that the
demons “ stole from the writings of the prophets a knowledge of
things to come.” Some Christians, indeed, seem to have concocted
imaginary oracles in support of their own views. Eusebius pre
tends to an oracle affirming the doctrine of the Trinity; Nicephorust gives an account of one which testified directly of Jesus
Christ. This notion of making the devils testify to Christ, you
will remember has found its way into the New Testament the
writers apparently not perceiving that it somewhat conflicted with
the argument put into Christ’s mouth in another place about
Satan being divided against himself.
However, at last comes the day when oracles are dumb, and one
after another Sibylline books get discredited. A certain amount of
discomfort and social disorganisation is probably unavoidable as
new notions displace old ones. As long as there are influential
classes personally interested in the maintenance of the status quo,
there will never be freedom from the risk of able and ambitious in
dividuals taking advantage of popular ignorance to stir up reaction
*
in favour of the old. And while large masses of a population re
main mentally uncultivated, and in a low condition of material
welfare there is no security that some fresh and worse delusion
may not ground itself upon ancient ones, and spread through a race
* Eusebius Praeparatio Evangelica, v. 21, and seq. and vi. 7.
+ Cited in Vandale’s Treatise on Oracles.
t Mark III. Luke IV.
�4< The Oracles of God.”
23
Eke an epidemic. History shows us more than one instance of this
fact, which philosophers in their studies are sometimes too apt to
forget. It is the part of all wise men, as it seems to me, when old
faiths are crumbling, to hasten on the mental and material improve
ment as rapidly as possible. Nor should it be forgotten that if
they would free mankind from old fond conceptions and prevent
their revival in aggravated forms, they must, as Mr. Frederic
Harrison pointed out in a late able address, find something to fill
the aching void which will give scope for the affections and emo
tions as well as the intellectual part of man.
In conclusion, let me say that it must not be supposed that my
remarks are intended in any spirit of hostility to the bible itself.
As a notable literature, helping largely to the’ study of human
experience and mental progress, and containing much fine poetry
and moral apologue, there are few books more estimable. But when
used, as mainly hitherto, for the manufacture of infallible creeds,
for the armoury of frenzied delusions, and as an excuse for “ dealing
damnation round the land,”—when, in short, it is transformed from
a parable of man, into an “ oracle of God,” instead of a blessing, it
becomes a scourge to the world.
To do what little in one lies to remove this misconception
seems to me a benevolent and religious work. As contributing
thereto I hail the publication of the “ revised version.”
Some people say, “ As the influence of the Scripture is so wide
spread, is it not better to let it remain unchallenged, to take ad
vantage of it as a channel for instruction, and by frequent accom
modation adapt it gradually to the developing knowledge of man
kind ?” Leaving aside for the present the consideration that the
Scripture having been convicted of a mistaken theory of life and
human action cannot be a lasting and safe basis of social welfare
and progress,—it is enough now to answer, that the exorbitant
claims so long asserted for it render it difficult, if not impossible, to
place it in a modified position which shall yet be an authoritative one.
Like Caesar’s wife, a supernatural messenger must be above sus' picion; a supposed infallible guide, once caught tripping, even
when he gives sound information, will hardly gain credit. Sus
picion among the ill-informed quickly becomes exaggerated, and
then arises the danger that those who have based their faith and
duty on a supposed infallible volume, when they “ find out ” their
oracle, will be apt to discard faith and duty altogether.
It may be easier, for the nonce, to rest in some temporary accom
modation of the popular theology, and it may be a long process to
introduce sounder principles, but eventually it will be found the
safer and surer one in a social point of view.
�24
The Revised Version: “ The Oracles of God.”
The Gospel of Science and humanity may not seem at first to
give scope for such fond hopes and afford such marvellous pros
pects as a supernatural revelation, but it has the advantage, that
the lapse of time tends to confirm instead of contradict it, and that
as it never claimed the attributes of an infallible and perfected
scheme, so it'has nothing to dread from any fresh light or manifes
tation. It only opens its record to the patient, slowly and page
by page, as man’s increasing experience enables him to read it, and
if any words are there suggesting error, it not only gives us leave,
but it commands us, by our allegiance to truth, to efface them.
There is no finality about our gospel, and no vain retrospection :
no world and no atom for it is “ lost,” what “ Salvation ” it con
tains embraces the Universe, the immortal mind of man shall never
tire reading its evolving scroll, like the path of the just, ever more
luminous, “ shining more and more unto the perfect day.” Let us
look forward to the time when all men shall learn to read the true
“ living oracles,” the Universe and the mind and heart of man :—
When invitations to sacrifice at inferior shrines shall be met with
the grand words of Cato, advised when in danger, to appeal to the
*
Temple of Ammon:
“ Est ne Dei Sedes, nisi terra, et pontus et aer
Et ccelum, et virtus ? Superos quid qucerimus ultra ?” &c.
Thus versified by Bowe :
“ Is there a place which God would choose to love
Beyond this earth, the seas, yon heaven above,
And virtuous minds,—the noblest throne of Jove ?
Why seek we further, then ?—Behold around
How all thou see’st does with the God abound,
i Jove is alike in all, and always to be foundI”
* Lucan. Pharsal. ix.
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
To provide foi' the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and to en
courage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,—physical, intellec
tual, and moral,—History, Literature, and Art; especially on their bearing t
upon the improvement and social well-being of mankind.
THE “SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ARE DELIVERED AT
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On Sunday Afternoons at FOUR o’clock precisely.
(Annually—from November to May.)
Twenty-four Lectures (in three series) are given in each year.
Members’ annual subscription, .£1, becoming due the 1st of October.
For Tickets and the printed Lectures, and for lists of all the Lectures
published by the Society, apply (by letter) to the Hon. Treasurer, War.
Henry Domville, Esq.; 15, Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & 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>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The Revised Version: "the Oracles of God" : a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 13th November, 1881
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Wild, George J. (George John)
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 24 p. ; 17 cm
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The Sunday Lecture Society
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1881
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G3421
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (The Revised Version: "the Oracles of God" : a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 13th November, 1881), identified by Humanist Library and Archives, is free of known copyright restrictions.
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English
Bible