1
10
9
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/61bd9db1c0684ecafb96efe430eb41b4.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=KICwaGmJ-MJe9DODINQIMOq2wNHZHbndBtNoQ5esppvoQgcLqYSFtlSZrmdV0ipFOed6gACLX8Bw7DmSIyhm2C-lP4P%7EV01nt7yHl1LoRwDnB0ukMxu4gdLfZelWPkXmjkqWYKUZ22TpV1PXwleoyFX2qn9zW6rryTrBXLDqf7%7E9qH-RY1EYDMo5omsakLMXsIKU0kXbwo-IYFFZAG7VG0g4IiYOko2hf4XkOtauqGAjBi6L0419a4JTTXl7Zgr4dzEEns5z4ZpA9fCFcDQLAU1yTg9C7FiQq0otzKB3zs1CUHr8UVVrFzYiyENAYEWgRgJ824nwApustuVHoYiDag__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
1ff77dfe4169d8d2879335e5e7079e2c
PDF Text
Text
POSITIVE RELIGION:
ITS BASIS AND CHABACTEBIST1CS.
LECTURE IV.
BY THE LATE
REV. JAMES ORANBROOK,
EDINBURGH.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Threepence.
��POSITIVE RELIGION—ITS BASIS AND
CHARACTERISTICS.
E are to travel together to-night over a region where
VY you will require patient thought; not so much
because the subject is especially difficult or recondite,
as because it is one not very generally familiar. The
result, however, will repay, I think, any amount of
attention you may expend, as it will show us the possi
bility of worship even under the stringent conditions
imposed by the phenomenal philosophy.
We must begin by recognising a curious faculty or
tendency common to our human nature, but much
more active amongst some individuals and some races
than others. I mean the faculty or tendency which
leads us to objectively represent, and indeed to vitalise
and give a personal existence, or, at all events, personal
relations, to our general and abstract ideas. Under
its impulse the mind becomes impatient of base and
pure thought, simple ideas collected in classes and
bound together by a common or general name, and by
the instrumentality of fancy hastens to represent them
in concrete forms, and to give them some personal
relation to itself. Indeed, the tendency is not confined
to the sphere of ideas alone, in the strict sense of the
term; it leads us also, in some states of culture, to
ascribe vitality to the inanimate objects of nature,
and to place them in personal relations to ourselves.
And thus, where it predominates, the whole universe
�4
Positive Religion:
becomes living, and man’s affections or personal feel
ings are elicited by every object around him.
But the activity of the tendency greatly varies in
different races, at different periods, under different
temperaments, and with different degrees of culture.
It is predominantly active in childhood. The feelings
the child experiences within itself are promptly trans
ferred to whatever it comes into contact with, and
hence its passions reciprocate the supposed intentions
of all the objects around it according as these objects
become to it the source of pleasure or pain. The
tendency is also generally very active amongst people
in a low and barbarous state. They infuse their own
personality into all the great objects and all the
powerful forces of nature, and seem, therefore, to
themselves, constantly living in the presence of wills
as active as their own. More extended observation
sets limits upon, and in a measure corrects, its action.
The distinction between things animate and inanimate
are more accurately discerned, and the predication of
will is withdrawn from the inanimate objects and
forces themselves and is transferred to some being or
beings standing outside and directing them.
This limitation of the tendency necessitates an im
portant change in the religious conceptions. So long
as it is unrestrained, and every object is vitalised,
fetishism is possible and natural. Immediately a
distinction is drawn between things animate and
inanimate, the fetishism passes into polytheism or
monotheism. A god or gods directing the forces of
nature, and not the forces themselves, become the
objects of worship.
The limitation, however, is not the destruction of
the tendency. It often continues as active as ever,
but in new conditions. There is the same impatience
with abstract ideas; the same effort to embody them
in a concrete form; the same yearning after personal
relations to the objects. Hence, in religion, the god
�Its Basis and Characteristics.
5
or gods are realised as vividly as ever, and are recog
nised and addressed as intimately and personally
present. More than this, the mere mental conception
of them is a cross the soul becomes impatient to bear,
and therefore the fancy strives to embody the concep
tion in some outward form.
It is at this point (I wish you especially to observe,
because of its subsequent application) that this ten
dency gives rise to art. The inward impulses urge to
an outward objective representation of the ideas and
feelings. Efforts are made to realise them by means
of sculpture, music, and poetry, architecture, and
painting. None of the arts were introduced to accom
plish a purpose. They were, and are still, when
genuine, the single, pure, and spontaneous products
of this impulse or tendency towards objective repre
sentation. Whoever had attempted to accomplish
some secondary end by them has always failed in the
art. He who has painted a picture or wrought a
piece of sculpture to gain a pound has never done
anything worth the pound he has gained. Those who
compose a song, or a piece to be played on an instru
ment, in order to make music, will be sure to com
pose what will deserve to be hissed out of creation.
That does not of course refer to singing or playing
what others have composed, much less to learn the
manual art, but to the origination of the work itself.
All art work must be from irresistible impulsion of
the spirit—sculpture, because the spirit is burdened
until it can embody its idea in substantial form;
music, because the spirit cannot restrain the har
monious emotions from uttering themselves ; painting,
because the spirit must proclaim what nature and life
are to it; poetry, because the frenzied love of the
beautiful would cause one to die if it could not find a
rhythmical expression. Accordingly, that which has
ever called forth the most urgent ideas and emotions
has from the beginning constituted the primary
�6
Positive Religion:
materials of art. And so tlie history of genuine art
has been scarcely anything but the history of religious
ideas and emotions striving to embody themselves in
an objective form. This has led some critics to call
religion the parent of art. What I have said will
show you the appellation is incorrect, and that it was
merely the strength and urgency of the religious ideas
and emotions above others which compelled the ten
dency to objective representation to make them the
first objects of its representing efforts; for the ten
dency must needs manifest itself according to the
character of the ideas or emotions most occupying and
burdening the soul, and in all the great eras of art
these ideas and emotions were religious. Hence art
has become the clearest and most distinct record of a
nation’s religious life—the conceptions and sentiments
upon which it was founded. It is not in Thucydides
and Heroditus—not in Plato and Aristotle even, but
in Homer, JEschylus, and Sophocles, in the Apollo
Belvedere, the Venus de Medici and de Milo, the
Laocoon and the Niobe—that the real inner life of the
ancient Greeks is revealed to us and to their profound
religious ideas. In strict keeping with this too is the
fact that the most artistic nations have ever been
the most given to what is called idolatry, and to
elaborateness of religious forms and ceremonies. The
Hebrews and Persians, the most strict of monotheists,
and to whom abstract ideas were least oppressive, had
no idols in their advanced period, and were nearly
destitute of the artistic faculty. The Egyptians, Hin
doos, and Greeks multiplied their idols and brought
art to perfection. The same contrasts exist between
the northern and southern races of Europe, of which
you may take Scotland and Italy as the extreme types.
In Scotland the religion is embodied in the abstract
notions of the Confession of Faith and the Longer and
Shorter Catechisms; in Italy it is embodied in the mass
and Mariolatry; Scotland lias erected Free kirks at so
�Its Basis and Characteristics.
7
many pence per foot; has given birth to Burns and
killed him ; has of late years produced some men who
could paint a little, and sent them to get their living
in London. Italy has erected St. Mark’s and St.
Peter’s (amongst others), has given birth to Dante,
Tasso, and Petrarch: has nurtured Titian, Pra An
gelico, Raphael, and I know not how many others of
the same sort, and claims as her own Palestrina and
Mozart. If religion were the parent of art this con
trast would prove the religion of the Italians to be
stronger, more fervent, more productive than that of
the Scotch. But religion is not the parent. As we
have seen, art is the consequence of an impatience with
abstract ideas and feelings, giving rise to a tendency
to seek for them any kind of outward impression and
embodiment; and in the case of the Italians it assumed
the particular forms we have alluded to in virtue of the
special culture of the times.
But now, it is important to observe, the force of this
tendency to objective expression seems directly con
nected with the depth and intensity of our sense
emotions, i.e., of those emotions or feelings which are
directly excited through our various senses ; and also,
the perfection of the expression depends primarily
upon their purity, adequateness, and full culture.
The ancient Hindoos and Egyptians would both fur
nish us with convincing illustrations of this truth.
But I refer now to the Greeks alone because they are
better known. In them the culture of the senses was
carried to its utmost perfection—-their whole nature
was in complete harmony. They were the most ra
tional and the most sensuous race that ever lived. No
people have surpassed them—I would scarcely say any
have equalled them—in intellect; and no people have
had such eyes to see, such deep emotions to feel, the
beauty and sensuous glory of all nature. In gigantic
stature of intellect no human being that ever lived
came up to Aristotle by the whole head and shoulders ;
�8
Positive Religion:
and yet no other people ever seem to have dreamed of
such exquisite forms as those of the Apollo and the
Venus. In everything they did and said you see the
depth and intensity, the purity and culture of their
sensuous emotions. Accordingly, in keeping with the
principle I have asserted, no people were ever more
impatient of unembodied, unrepresented, abstract ideas
and feelings. They were always striving after objec
tivity; their philosophy no less than all their other
works proves this—Plato, the idealist, no less than
Aristotle, the realistic. Their method of philosophical
inquiry was purely subjective; but the subjective crea
tions to which it led were instantaneously projected
upon the outward world of sense, and existed for them
not as abstractions of the fancy, but as realities of
nature. In religion this comes out still more pal
pably. In their inmost thought and feeling the Greeks
were always pantheistic. The gods of their polytheism
were the mere offspring of their impatience to embody
the pantheistic conception in form. Over them all,
over all the universe, was that awful, terrible, incom
prehensible power they called Fate or Destiny. This
was their real, their universal god. It gave birth to
all things, gods and men not less than the physical
forces of nature, and yet against it both gods and men
had to maintain a perpetual struggle, and to them the
struggle seemed most awful. With the thought of
Zeus they could toy; but the thought of this mys
terious, all-creating, all-determining Fate caused thenwhole being to melt with the most intense and
profound emotion. Impatient of the mere thought,
however, they embodied it in everything. It is the
sublime idea which inspires the tragedies, and moves us
so deeply in the representations of Hecuba, Medea,
Electra, and the rest. And it is this which most of
all we feel in the statues of the gods, in whose coun
tenance and form the individualities of the character
are subdued by that sublime calmness and indifference
�Its Basis and Characteristics.
9
which can only come from a nature at one and in haimony with destiny. Why has the world never since
seen such perfection in Art 1 Because never since
has it possessed a race with ideals of humanity so lofty,
and at the same time with the senses and the sense
emotions so refined, so developed, and so richly cul
tured. The only approach ever made to the perfection
of Grecian religious art was by the Italianised-Gothic
people of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth cen
turies. But their intense sensuousness was tainted
by the Christian notions of asceticism, and therefore
never attained to that full culture which alone could
have brought their art to a level with the Grecian..
But, enticing as the theme is, these observations
must suffice us now in illustration of the principle I
have been endeavouring to establish. I trust enough
has been said, however, to show you that there is in
men a tendency to embody their abstract ideas and
feelings in outward forms and expression, through this
embodiment, and to bring all things into personal lelations to themselves; that this tendency gives rise to
art in its various departments, and some religious ideas
and feelings have hitherto been the most predominant
and so the most urgent for outward embodiment. Art
has hitherto in all its great eras been mainly con
cerned with the expression of religious ideas and feel
ings; and finally, that the urgency and strength of
this tendency to objective expression, and the per
fection of the art, by means of which the expression
is made, seem mainly to depend upon the intensity,
fulness, development, and perfect culture of the senses
and the sense emotions.
Now, these principles being, in my judgment, clearly
and irrefutably established by an analysis of our human
nature, and by the history of all people in the past, I
think they furnish us with data from which we may
derive some tolerably accurate conclusions with regard
to the possibilities and conditions of worship under
�IO
Positive Religion:
that form of religion determined by the phenomenal
philosophy. At present, no doubt, the tendency
amongst those who have embraced the philosophy is
to abandon all kinds of worship. The old forms are
felt to be perfectly incompatible with the new con
ditions of thought. And in itself, at first sight, it may
well appear that the worship of what is unknown and
unknowable is an absurdity and a superstition. Hence
the majority either give up all idea of worship whatso
ever, or attempt to substitute for the old something
which possesses none of the characteristics of worship
excepting the name. At this, however, those will not
be surprised who remember that, until the system of
philosophy has been generally diffused, and it has
become a form of national life, its full, permanent
tendencies cannot be known (excepting by inference),
and a great deal will seem to result from it which are
only peculiarities of the individuals adopting it under
their isolated circumstances. I cannot stay to illus
trate this remark now; but it will be found applicable
to all systems of religion and philosophy in the early
and struggling periods of their history, and fully
explains why phenomenalists so generally abjure all
worship, and yet without making it necessary to
suppose they must continue to do so.
On the other hand, the principles I have expounded
to-night justify the assertion that worship will be
found as inevitable under the influences of pheno
menalism as under every other form of thought. For
worship is nothing but an attempt to objectively
embody or express the religious ideas and feelings.
Unless, therefore, it could be shown that the pheno
menal philosophy destroys all such ideas and feelings,
or else destroys the tendency to objective expression,
worship must be as inevitable under its forms of
thought as under every other. Now, that it does not
destroy the religious ideas and feelings, I think I
clearly showed in the last lecture. It rather deepens
�Its Basis and Characteristics.
11
them, and gives them a sublimer reality. When it
proves to us that we have no faculties to penetrate
the great mystery of existence and to know God, it
deepens and intensifies our sense of that mystery ; and
in the awe, reverence, and conscious littleness which
spring up within us, we have the essence of all religion.
We cannot but believe in a something which is the
determined condition of the universe j that we cannot
know it only makes us realise the thought more
vividly, and feel its mystery and awfulness more
deeply. And this is religion, in its truest, inmost
sense. The phenomenal philosophy, therefore, does not
destroy, but fosters, religion.
But now, seeing it does not destroy religion, the
primary element in worship, the ideas and feelings
working in the mind, let us ask if it destroy the
second element, that tendency to embody or express
our ideas and feelings in all objective form, the nature
of which I have endeavoured to explain. Clearly it
cannot, if that tendency arise out of a primary law of
our nature, as I think every one must own that it
does, seeing it is common to all people, although in
different degrees, and manifesting itself under different
conditions. Nay, if it be conceded that I am correct
in those assertions I have made respecting the connec
tion between the culture of our senses and sense
emotions and the strength and intensity of the tendency,
then most assuredly the phenomenal philosophy must
have the direct effect of greatly intensifying the ten
dency. And the reason of this appears in the fact
that the philosophy must necessarily lead to a culture
of our whole physical nature, and so of our senses and
sense emotions to a degree. and in a rational manner
which has not been known since the times of the
ancient Greeks. Indeed, you already see this conse
quence of it in active operation. Biological studies,
which have done so much to foster the phenomenal
philosophy, and which, on the other hand, are almost
�12
Positive Religion:
entirely due to the influence of its spirit, have already
revealed facts connected with sense and sense emotions
which not only show their importance in our system,
but the absolute necessity to our full development of
their culture upon rational principles. Accordingly,
attention on every hand is awakening up to this
subject, and even those still bound to the old orthodox
and metaphysical doctrines cannot escape the influence,
And hence, in keeping with the principles I have
expounded, there is also a great awakening in the
taste or love for art, and especially in those nations
most coming under the phenomenal spirit. Every
where music, painting, sculpture, architecture, are
more sought after; everywhere true poetry is better
appreciated. If Art be yet wavering, uncertain, and
unsatisfactory, and we have still to go back to the
older springs to slake our thirst for poetry, the fact
arises out of circumstances I may at some future
time explain. But the revival of the taste, the
longing after such things, comes to us as proof of the
intensifying of the tendency to objectivity, and to that
the extending influence of the phenomenal philosophy
is operating in favour of that tendency.
I think, then, that these considerations, amongst
others, serve to prove that worship will still be neces
sary to us in the new era of thought upon which we
are entering, and that the phenomenal philosophy
strengthens and intensifies both the elements of which
it is constituted, £.e., the deep, religious emotion, and
the tendency to give that emotion an outward, objec
tive expression.
But you will recollect that I have already pointed
out that the precise form the outward expression
assumes must depend upon the general culture. Or
perhaps I should say rather, that the general culture
or method of thought will necessarily influence the
ideas and conceptions; these ideas and conceptions
will modify the character of the emotions; and thus
�Its Basis and Characteristics.
13
the objective expression of them will, in proportion to
its truthfulness, vary with the ideas and conceptions.
Accordingly, when the state of culture allowed men to
think every object around them possessed a will like
their own, the emotions each object called forth weie
expressed in the form of fetish worship. Wlien theii
culture allowed them to suppose the conceptions of
their fancies possessed a substantive existence, and
their religion in consequence became polytheistic, then,
as amongst the Greeks, it became possible to worship
these fanciful conceptions by prayer and songs, to
represent them in statues, and consecrate to them the
services of Art. When men came under the Christian
culture, the ideas of God in a bodily form were pro
scribed, and consequently all material representations
were excluded from the worship j but the ideas of God
as possessing mental and moral qualities were allowed ;
the corresponding emotions reciprocating the divine
affections were cherished, and the worship became an
expression of this mental conception accordingly. It
would considerably help my exposition, and be exceed
ingly interesting, if I had time for it, to point out how
the introduction of the metaphysical and yet material
ising doctrine of transubstantiation necessitated a
gorgeous ceremonial, and how the Protestant-attempted
recurrence to the purely mental idea of God necessi
tated the bald forms of Presbyterian and Congrega
tional worship. But I trust you will follow out the
clue I have given you to the explanation for your
selves.
Upon the principles thus far explained, it will at
once be seen how the phenomenal philosophy must
still more than Christian monotheism limit these
objective expressions of worship. For, limiting the
ideas to the phenomenal, and declaring that God is in
Himself unknown and unknowable, merely the con
ceived something to which the phenomena of the uni
verse is referred as its unascertainable antecedent, the
�r4
Positive Religion:
emotions excited by them can have in their character
nothing of the affections called forth by human beings
and therefore all the direct expressions of them objec
tively can be nothing else than the pure outpouring of
the feelings of wonder, awe, and reverence, which the
sense of the great mystery calls forth. Now, even if
there were nothing else possible, since in these feelings
the essence and primary elements of all religions are
contained, the outward worship would be as real as in
any other religions. Nor would the objective expres
sion be confined to one form. Not only poetry and
song, but sculpture, painting, and, above all, architectuie, might be used as freely as under the Grecian
conceptions, and much more freely than is consistent
with Christian monotheism. But of this I shall speak
again.
But observe this is not all. I have shown that this
great mystery is not only spread over the universe as
a whole, but encompasses every particular particle and
every particular force. Each aspect of nature thus
becomes identified with it, and moves our emotions
according to the relations which under its deter
mination thus become evolved. The emotions thus
awakened also seek their objective expression and
mingle in the worship of the one great mystery. The
expression thus becomes a glorification and adoration
of the mystical in the powers of universal nature and
may even assume the forms of trust, longing, and
desire, according to the relations those powers sustain.
And I take it, it was the perception of this truth
which led a certain metaphysical school in Germany,
approaching the subject under pantheistic forms, to
propose, a few years since, the restoration of the
Grecian Cultus as the only possible religion for the
cultivated. The phenomenal philosophy could not do
so. Its method excludes the conception of all fancied
beings whose existence cannot be proved; but it takes
up into its knowledge those forces of nature, the
�Its Basis and Characteristics.
15
Greeks personified and deified ; it views them in their
relations to man and in their relation to the great
mysteryit could not and would not check those
natural emotions they inspire, and thus the worship of
all that is great, beautiful, and good becomes in
evitable. And when Nature, the Universe, God, is
viewed under these aspects, another source of emotion
is speedily opened. The mystery which enshrouds all
things we still 1 ong to penetrate. The longing quickens
our thirst for the knowledge of the laws and succes
sions within our horizon. Especially we long to be
come so conformed with these laws that we may move
in harmony with that destiny which determines all
things, and so have the blessedness of a free and indif
ferent life. Now, in worship, these longings take the
form of aspiration—aspiration after the fuller and a
perfect knowledge ; aspiration after complete conform
ity with the highest laws of our being ; aspiration
after the free, indifferent, blissful life of humanity in
repose with destiny. The aspiration creates for itself
a lyrical expression. The deepest, purest, noblest
worship is in the lyrics it creates.
Nor is it necessary to worship of this kind that an
auditor should be assumed. The true lyric is often
inspired in absolute solitude. It pours itself forth in
overwhelming feeling like the mountain spring, freely
and without reflection. Its essence is not in address,
but in utterance. Like the Hebrew lyrist, who ex
claimed, “ Whilst I was musing the fire burned, then
spake I with my tongue,” so all such utterances, when
real, well up irresistibly and impulsively from the
depths of feeling within, and flow forth independently
of all outward circumstances.
In these later sentences I have spoken I may have
seemed to be thinking only of the worship which
makes use of words for its utterance. But I have
already expounded to you principles which will warn
you that such could not be the case. Still more than
�i6
Positive Religion.
other religions the religion founded on phenomenalism
will be sure to appropriate to its use everything true
in thought, lofty in aspiration, noble and glorious in
life, beautiful and lovely in form ; for to it every such
thing in nature becomes an inspiration, and every such
thing becomes to it a symbol of its deepest emotions.
It must needs therefore lay an embargo upon all nature
and all art and make them subservient to its purposes.
It is therefore that I anticipate an era which, because
of its truer knowledge and method, shall surpass the
most golden period of Grecian culture—when religion
freed from superstition shall once more, not in phrase
merely but in very deed, consecrate all nature as a
sacred temple, and everything noble and beautiful and
good, whether in humanity or the physical world, as
an object before which one may bow down to invoke
his adoration and love; and when Art, no longer
raising a feeble hand in wearying mutation, inspired
with a new life, shall consecrate her genius to the
glorification of the great All-in-all, that Power we
cannot comprehend, but which not the less we wor
ship from the inmost depths of our being.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Positive religion : its basis and characteristics. Lecture IV
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Cranbrook, James
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Thomas Scott
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1874?]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5512
Subject
The topic of the resource
Positivism
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Positive religion : its basis and characteristics. Lecture IV), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Positivism
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/013df9b90309957a1160a9edeeddf80c.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=M5I%7Eii9157GljpvUi74EVwNPvS6fjiqxGVmoVb-wS8sqp8P7dM9x3hHpx7PxAcVv7AqxjrDodpc18hpsDh%7ExNyFuPozD0H1J4-ro8pg3aNO9hlV3DRv2A0YOy44zvCB03Tu96uDNc%7Exp0YXhfryMq8EQsv8pWC7vk8zV%7EjqEMq%7E6rssSEx7O2prDVnqEVKjQhfRU88QP2dT5ZlehodttCi9%7EI4KBv10Hh1e4MQuKoNXy6myQEuBzUeiSN7fzBdlnCJaOC54C1GQ%7Elaof%7EJlVnCiHuCHr9khHG2rJYLJid0p-%7EOJUxjI2FbCP-sfSzITpaz2xQ3fEgZN9BHlc2O40OQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
806d784e4d19c2db56207f09150f53b1
PDF Text
Text
WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS.
Positivism, or the Religion, of Humanity, is the name
given by the French philosopher, Auguste Comte, to the
system of thought and conduct founded by him, and
signifies that it rests on a basis of demonstrable, or “posi
tive”, science. The name has been objected to in some
quarters as being ungainly, and in others as suggesting
the idea of dogmatism. To the first of these objections,
although, perhaps, superficially true, it may be replied
that every system has a fair claim to be recognized by the
appellation bestowed on it by its founder; and this ia
especially the case where a man like Comte is concerned.
The other objection, expressing the idea that Positivism
leans towards intellectual autocracy, can be maintained
only so long as ignorance of its real nature prevails. In
addition to the qualities of reality, utility, certainty, and
precision, which are connected in ordinary language with
the term positive, Comte points out that, when science was
applied to the study of social phenomena, it at once as
sumed an organic character, and that, being organic, it
necessarily became relative. It could not, however, become
relative without becoming also sympathetic, and it is this
last quality which, although usually regarded as having
no connection with science, Comte declares to be specially
typical of Positivism.
In his famous Law of Intellectual Progress, without a
reference to which even the briefest account of Positivism
would be imperfect, Comte asserts that every theoretical
conception framed by the human mind passes through
three stages ; the first being the Theological, or fictitious;
�4
WHAT POSITIVISM MEAN’S.
the second, the Metaphysical, or abstract; the third, the
Positive, or scientific. The first of these stages is always
provisional, the second simply transitional, the third alone
definitive. It is not intended to discuss here at any length
the truth of this law, which can be adequately appreciated
only after a study of Comte’s Philosophy of History ; but
it may be mentioned that it has been accepted by various
thinkers of eminence, and notably by John Stuart Mill.
Considering, however, its importance, as furnishing the
foundation from which the whole Positivist system springs,
it will, perhaps, be well to give a very brief explanation
of its meaning, which is this:—Prom the earliest epoch
at which we can conceive man to have become possessed
of even the smallest amount of speculative power, he must
spontaneously have been led to theorize, although in a
very crude way, on the origin and meaning of the multi
tudinous facts of the world around him, and must, for his
own satisfaction, have endeavoured to frame some explana
tion which might account for their existence. Of real
knowledge he could have but little, and his means of
acquiring it were very slender. He was, therefore, neces
sarily thrown back upon imagination and hypothesis; and
the simplest and readiest hypothesis which could, under
the circumstances, present itself to him was, that the endless
motion and variety he found pervading the world were the
products of intelligence of some kind, resembling that
which he himself was conscious of possessing, although,
of course, infinitely more powerful. This assumption lies
at the root of all theological philosophy, whatever the
precise shape of the doctrines which, from age to age,
have been built upon it. It is, however, a mental process
which, according to Comte, is itself also susceptible of
.analysis into three stages. In the first of these, primitive
man, knowing nothing of the distinction which, with the
progress of science, has been drawn between organic and
inorganic nature, incapable of realizing the ultimate dif
ference between life and death, supposes all matter to be
animated, and assumes that the intelligences, to which he
ascribes the changes he sees, dwell in and form part of
the objects with whose existence his senses make hirn,
acquainted. The lion roars, the fish swims, the eagle
soars, because it is alive and possessed of an intelligence
similar to his own. And so the river flows, the cloud
�WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS.
5
moves, th© lightning flashes, because, so far as he knows,
it, too, is alive, and endowed with intelligence.
This mode of explanation, which Comte denominated
Fetichism, was regarded by him as the inevitable startingpoint of man’s intellectual activity. With the increase of
. knowledge, however, and the advance of reasoning-power,
it was eventually found to be insufficient. The hypothesis
■ < of universal, all-permeating life and will was discovered
t 1 to be irreconcilable with the facts furnished by ever
widening experience, and it had accordingly to be modified.
The world was still assumed to be governed by intelli
gence, but that quality was no longer attributed to
inanimate bodies, upon which man had, by degrees, learned
to exercise, within certain limits, an unquestioned power.
It was now supposed to reside in certain supernatural
beings, having no corporeal existence, and dwelling apart
from matter, although continuing to preside over different
groups of phenomena manifested by matter—beings which
were accessible to the prayers of man, and susceptible of
being propitiated by his sacrifices. With this form of
philosophy, known as Polytheism, the reign of theology,
properly speaking, began.
But this enormous effort of abstraction once accom
plished, by which the attributes of Life and Will were
detached from the countless objects of inanimate nature,
and bestowed on a comparatively restricted number of
purely mythical gods and goddesses, it was inevitable that
this theory should have a much less stable existence than
that which preceded it. A gradual process of concentrartion in the number of deities, to which, from the outset,
the system was necessarily exposed, could eventually
have but one logical termination. This was the establish
ment of Monotheism, and the recognition of a single god
as the legitimate heir to the government of the universe.
Every Polytheistic system must, in the nature of things,
come to this in the end.
So long, however, as theological methods were pursued,
SO long, that is to say, as men persisted in inquiring into
the causes of phenomena, the answers obtained were more
and more doomed to be regarded as unsatisfactory and
delusive. Men vt*fere, however—as they still are—reluctant
to frankly abandon the search for causes; but, growing
mistrustful of purely theological solutions, the habit was/
�6
WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS.
by degrees, formed of silently ignoring them, and seeking
the desired explanation in various abstract principles, quite
as much the creation of their own minds as theology, and
quite as unreal: of which tendency a familiar illustration
is afforded in the case of Moliere’s aspirant to medical
honours, who, amidst the applause of the Court of Ex
aminers, explains the narcotic properties of opium, not by
the soothing intervention of the god of sleep, but by the
assumption that it is possessed of a certain “ dormitive
virtue ”. This method marks what Comte calls the Meta
physical stage, and is regarded by him as a mere transition
from the Theological search into causes to the final, scien
tific, Positive stage, in which all hope of ever learning the
real nature of causes is definitively abandoned, and men
are contented to voluntarily restrict themselves to the study
of the laws of phenomena—a study which has, in fact, been
going on all the time concurrently with the other inquiry ;
has been the basis on which the whole of man’s practical
activity has rested; and the chief agent in discrediting
supernaturalism, and gradually narrowing its domain.
Supposing the Law of the Three Stages to be true, it
involves, ultimately, the universal abandonment of every
form of theological belief—that is to say, the disappear
ance of every religion resting on a supernatural foundation.
Religion, however, as suggested by its etymological deriva
tion, is the binding force of all human society, and by no
writer has this been more clearly recognized than by Comte.
It is religion which, under one form or another, holds
society together. In order, therefore, that the social fabric
may not, as a result of intellectual progress, be dissolved,
and anarchy supervene, it is necessary to discover some
substitute for theological religion. Science must become
religious. Positivism, then, professes to be such a religion.
It is ostensibly based on science, and, in Comte’s view, is—
in its general principles at least, if not in all its details—
destined ultimately to become universal.
The fundamental problem of human life, as stated by
Comte, is how to subordinate Egoism to Altruism—or, to
put it in a perhaps simpler, though certainly less compact
form, how to give continually-increasing predominance to
the higher over the lower side of man’s nature, so that his
activity, which originally was inspired by necessarily in
dividualist motives, may become ever more and more social
�WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS.
7
in its character. This is a problem which, it is almost
needless to say, has been empirically dealt with, although
not explicitly recognized, by every religion in its turn, and,
in some cases, with remarkable success; but, owing to
what Positivism regards as the fatal want of reality in the
doctrines of all previously-existing religions, it was impos
sible that the success could be other than temporary. Those
creeds, whatever their differences in dogmatic details, all
inculcated in man’s mind a spirit of reverence and sub
mission to some supernatural power or powers, which he
supposed to exercise absolute dominion over his destiny,
and from which he derived all that he possessed. As a
collateral and subordinate result they also, through the
wisdom of their teachers, the spiritual leaders of the race,
fostered the sense of duty and desire for union among
those whose lives were subject to the same conditions, and
who acknowledged allegiance to the same Divine Power.
At first, no doubt, this was done in a very rudimentary
and imperfect way; but every fresh religious develop
ment, while becoming simpler in its supernatural aspect,
strengthened the social ties, until Christianity, by its
doctrine that all men were children of one Father, and
consequently brethren, carried the conviction of the unity
of the race to a point which had never before been reached,
thereby approximating more closely than any previous
creed to a solution of the problem.
Assuming, however, the truth of the Positivist hypothesis
as to the disappearance of theological belief, a substitute
will eventually be required for the supernatural Power
which has so long served, not merely as the rallying-point
of man’s intellectual conceptions, but as the source of
inspiration of his social sympathies. This substitute
Positivism finds in Humanity, which, following out a
suggestion of Pascal, it personifies as an immense and
eternal Being, to whose immeasurable services we are
indebted for all the blessings we enjoy, and whose
existence, apart altogether from disputed theological
legends of origin, is, at all events, an indisputable fact.
It is not unusual to speak of Positivism as if it were a mere
a priori emanation from Comte’s brain; as if he had under
taken the task of reconstructing society in such a fashion
as merely to give it a shape which should correspond with
his own prejudices and conceptions; and he has accord
�8
WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS.
ingly been, taxed with arrogance and presumption. But
to regard Positivism in this fight is to mistake its character
and its aims. It is, in theory, a scientific construction,
framed in accordance with what Comte regarded as per
manent and incontrovertible laws governing the world and
man, and cannot, therefore, justly be condemned as a mere
arbitrary scheme for which Comte alone is responsible.
How far its claim in this respect is well-founded is, of
course, open to question, and no one was more sensible
than Comte of the difficulties which lay in the way of its
general acceptance. He was fully aware of the tentative
nature of his task, but, while acknowledging the possi
bility that shortcomings might ultimately be detected in
his doctrines, he insisted strenuously on the virtue of his
method. “ In all inquiries,” he said, “but especially in
the study of social questions, the method is more important
than the doctrine ” ; and in more than one passage of his
fundamental work, the Philosophic Positive, he admitted, in
a spirit of modesty widely separated from the arrogance
laid to his charge, that different conclusions from his own
might be arrived at by “more fortunate successors”,
employing his method, but possessed of later, and there
fore more accurate, information. The tendency to agree
with him that social, like all other, phenomena, are subject
to the action of natural law, is certainly increasing.
Whether the system he built up on this assumption will
ultimately secure the adhesion of mankind, is a question
which only the future can decide.
Although, however, Positivism puts forward these scien
tific pretensions, it has by no means the dry, cold character
with which it is sometimes reproached, and which is popu
larly attributed to all science. Its cardinal principle is
the supremacy of feeling over intellect, and this principle
is fostered in every way by the conception of Humanity, by
the cultivation of a sense of gratitude to the past, by a
touching attitude of reverence towards the dead, by insist
ing on the sacredness of family ties, by exalting the func
tions of woman as a wife and a mother, and by the most
elaborate provisions for what Comte called Cuite — a
French word which has, perhaps, no adequate equivalent
in English, but is more or less imperfectly rendered by the
word “worship ”, and which, as employed by Comte, has
for its object to enforce the idea, not merely of the solidarity,
�WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS.
>
9
but—what is far more important—the conimu/ty of the
human race: an idea which lay at the root of Carlyle’s
Hero Worship. “The History of the World”, said Car
lyle, “is the Biography of Great Men”, and he declared
that he knew of “no nobler feeling ” than “the transcen
dent admiration of a Great Man”, to which he gave the
name of worship. Comte—with whom, not merely on this
but on some other points, Carlyle had much in common—
gave a more universal and systematic form to this con
ception by his remarkable compilation of the “Positivist
Calendar ”, which, with the double view of cultivating
a knowledge of the history of the past, and stimulating
our gratitude for the legacy it has bequeathed to us,
devotes each day in the year to the memory of some bene
factor of the race: some great man who, whether as priest
or warrior, poet or statesman, thinker or worker, aided, by
his efforts, the great cause of human progress. Carlyle
justifies hero-worship by asking whether every “true
man” does not feel “that he is, himself made higher by
doing reverence to what is really above him ” ; and this
question is some index to the spirit which animates Posi
tivism. It urges its adherents to endeavour to understand
the past, as a means of raising their own characters. It
seeks to repress the tendency, so widely manifest in the
present generation, to glorify itself at the expense of its
ancestors, and to substitute for it a spirit of humility,
springing from a more thorough knowledge of the extent
of our obligations; in reference to which, indeed, it affirms,
in one of its most characteristic axioms, that, with the
lapse of time, the living become ever more and more subject to
the dominion of the dead, and that, therefore, in adopting
an attitude of irreverence towards the past, we are vainly
striving to escape from an inevitable destiny.
As a further means of subordinating the individual to
the community, and therefore to Humanity, Positivism
seeks to break down the barrier which now exists between
private and public life, by means of a series of social cere
monies, to which Comte gave the name of Sacraments,
and which are intended to remind each member of a community that, in all the important epochs of his career—
e.g., birth, marriage, death—his interests are not exclusive,
but that he forms part of a greater whole which is also
concerned. This view of life, although expressed under
�10
WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS.
theological forms, has been, sanctioned by all previous
creeds, and Positivism merely continues the tradition.
By these and similar means it endeavours to assert the
supremacy of feeling over intellect, and to stimulate the
sentiment of social duty—duty to Humanity. But according
to the wise phrase of Tacitus, which has been so often
repeated, the difficulty is not merely to do our duty, but
to know what is our duty ; and here the assistance of the
intellect is necessary. Such knowledge is to be obtained
only by education directed to social ends ; and perhaps the
most important part of Comte’s work is his comprehensive
scheme for the reform of education, which, if carried out,
would mean a veritable revolution, not merely in the
methods of teaching, but in social habits and modes of
life. It would be superfluous at the present moment to
enter into the details of this scheme, but the magnitude of
the changes it contemplates is faintly indicated by the pro
vision that schools, as now understood, would be abolished,
all children being left in their mother’s care till the age of
fourteen, and receiving from her the rudiments of educa
tion which they are now taught at school. This, however,
is merely a preliminary process, it being proposed that, at
the age of fourteen, the children of all classes, and both
sexes, shall commence an encyclopaedic training (occupying
seven years, and founded on Comte’s Classification of the
Sciences), which is intended to give them a general
acquaintance with the whole field of human knowledge,
beginning with mathematics, passing afterwards in suc
cession through astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and
sociology, and terminating with morals. This education is to
be imparted by an organized body of teachers, whom Comte
designates by the name of a priesthood—a term which,
especially in Protestant countries, is invested with certain
sinister associations, and the employment of which accounts,
no doubt, for the suspicion with which many people view
Positivism, under the impression that, if once established,
it would be dangerous to liberty. Of the existence of this
feeling Comte was quite aware, but his survey of history
led him to the conclusion, which, ignoring current preju
dices, he formulates as a definite sociological theory—that
no society can exist, and be developed, without a priesthood in
some form or other. “All men”, he said, “stand in need
of education and counsel ”, and wherever any institution
�WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS.
11
is found to exercise these functions, there, under whatever
name it is known, exists what is in essence a priesthood. In
this sense the germ of a Positivist priesthood has already
made its appearance, although in a very imperfect form.
The science teacher, the physician, the journalist, each in
his own way, performs these functions, and may conse
quently, within his own limits, be regarded as a priest.
Comte, however, desired that what is now done in a
spontaneous, informal way, with too often no guarantee of
either capacity or integrity, should be done by a carefully
selected body of men, trained for the purpose, devoting
their whole lives to the work, and voluntarily abandoning
all competition for wealth or exalted position.
But education, in the Positivist sense, must not be re
garded as limited to mere book-learning. Its object, as
already stated, is to inculcate principles of civic duty—to
make men not merely scholars, but citizens; the education
which allows any member of the community to stand aloof
from the political and social movements of his time, how
ever elaborate it may be from the intellectual stand-point,
being, in Comte’s view, utterly unworthy of the name.
Obviously, however, the character of civic duty is governed
by the conception which exists as to the nature and func
tions of the State; and here, again, Positivism sets forth an
ideal which, if established, would effect a revolution. With
the decay of theology, it regards as inevitable the decline
of the hereditary principle in government, the institution
of birth being directly dependent on theology. On this
hypothesis, the ultimate form of government will be
republican. War also, being regarded as another ally of
theology, it is assumed will disappear. If, in fact, the
Positivist estimate be correct, there are spontaneous ten
dencies now at work, by which society will ultimately be
transformed—which will, by degrees, abolish the theolo
gical, monarchical, and military character it still possesses,
and render it instead scientific, republican, and pacific
industrial. Abandoning, as Positivism does, all idea of a
future life, and of consolation in another world for the
misfortunes of this, it considers the highest duty of the
human race to be that of developing, by collective efforts,
the resources of the earth, its only dwelling-place, so that,
by the labours of each succeeding generation, the happiness
of its inhabitants may be increased. With the acceptance
�12
WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS.
of this view, many of the special classes identified with, and
supported by, existing institutions will gradually become
extinct, and society, in the main, will assume a purely
industrial aspect, the bulk of it consisting of workmen,
labouring as now, only under vastly improved conditions,
and with more avowedly social aims, in association with,
a comparatively small body of capitalists, regarded as
trustees of the wealth of the community, under the intel
lectual and moral' guidance of the priesthood, and in
spired and consoled by the companionship and sympathy
of women.
Industry, however, being the basis of the society to
which Positivism looks forward, and peace being ever
more and more firmly established, Comte predicts that the. communities into which mankind is now distributed will,
by degrees, undergo a process of re-arrangement. Thereare, in his view, three normal forms of human association
—three social aggregates which call out man’s affection,
and inspire him with a sense of duty—the Family, the
State, and Humanity. Of these, the spirit of union is most
intense in the case of the first, and most general in thecase of the last; the State serving as a connecting link
between the two—appealing to man’s sympathy and ener
gies on behalf of something nobler than the interests of
. the narrow family group, and so helping to raise him to
a consciousnesss of his duty to Humanity. In order, how
ever, that this process should be effective, the idea of
Country should be real and tangible. Patriotism, in the
proper sense of the term, Comte holds to be impossible in
the case of such enormous societies as those now con
stituting the principal states of the world. They are toolarge to inspire a genuine sentiment of affection and de
votion, and he regards it, therefore, as certain, that, sooneror later, a movement of decomposition will set in, which
will reduce them within narrower limits. The ideal Posi
tivist State, the State destined to become universal, is
represented by a city with its surrounding territory; and
Comte anticipates that, under the influence of this view,.
Europe will in time break up into a number of small
republics of the size of Belgium or Tuscany, in which,
as a result of the restraining discipline of the new universal
spiritual power which Positivism will establish, civic
duty, now too often a synonym for mere vulgar Chauvin
�WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS.
13
ism, will become a reality, modified, restricted, and en
nobled by subordination to the still loftier sentiment of
■duty to Humanity.
It will be seen that the aims of Positivism are large,
and it is consequently regarded with hostility by many
who are ignorant of its teaching, or who shrink from its
conclusions. It is sometimes classed indiscriminately with
Atheism, Communism, and other theories of a purely
revolutionary character ; and if attention be directed only
to the results which it proclaims as inevitable, and for
which it seeks to prepare the way, this comparison is,
perhaps, not unnatural. Between Positivism, however,
and other so-called “progressive” schools, there is a pro
found difference in method, which is too often overlooked.
While they mostly look to political changes, either peace
ful. or violent, as a means of achieving their ends, Positivism
relies solely on moral means. It insists that a reformation
in ideas must precede any alteration in institutions. One
of the most pregnant and luminous political maxims with
which Comte has enriched the world consists in this—that
progress is but the development of order ; from which maxim
the conclusion is inevitable that, unless based upon order,
progress of any permanent character is impossible. Al
though, therefore, the intellectual, moral, and political
aspects of society will, in the course of time, if the Posi
tivist ideal be reached, undergo modifications of which
the most advanced reformers now scarcely dream, yet it
is assumed that they will be effected gradually and spon
taneously, as the result of previous convictions arrived at
by means of Positivist education. Briefly, the method of
Positivism may be described as that of evolution as opposed
to revolution.
. Whether the Eeligion of Humanity be destined to justify
its title, time alone can show. Its success, or its failure
can matter nothing to its founder. The philosopher to
whose genius it is due, who passed his life in poverty and
obscurity, , gaining a precarious subsistence as a teacher of '
mathematics, now sleeps peacefully, indifferent alike to
praise or blame, in a quiet hollow of Père-Lachaise. It is
however, a significant testimony to the force of his doc
trines, that, in various parts of the world, they have
succeeded in. attracting groups of devoted adherents, of
different nationalities, who carry on a systematic propa
�14
WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS.
ganda. The influence of his teaching, moreover, cannot
De measured by the number of those who call themselves
Positivists. In Comte’s phrase, Positivism is “systema
tized common sense”, and, as such, it acts, naturally
enough, in different ways on different minds, influencing
them to an extent which it is quite impossible to gauge.
Persons of the most widely varying pursuits, although
unable to accept it as a whole, and even rejecting its
leading principles, have acknowledged their obligations
to it on points connected with their own special ex
perience.
The centre of the Positivist movement is at No. 10, Rue
Monsieur-le-Prince, Paris, where M. Pierre Laffitte, the
friend and disciple of Auguste Comte, assisted by a body
of younger co-religionists, carries on the work of scientific
and historical teaching essential to the progress of the
cause, and where also a Positivist magazine, La Revue
Occidentale, is published every two months. There are also
groups in Havre, Rouen, and other French cities. Positi
vism was introduced into England by Dr. Richard Con
greve, another disciple of Comte, and there are now three
organized bodies in London, the best known, perhaps, of
which has its head-quarters at Newton Hall, Fleur-de-lis
Court, Fetter Lane. The movement has of late years
spread to Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and other
British cities. It has branches also in Sweden, the United
States, Chili, Brazil, India, etc. The organization is not
very strict, and there are differences of opinion as to the
opportuneness of giving prominence to certain aspects of
the system; but, by common consent, an agreement exists
on fundamental points of doctrine. All the groups cherish
the same ideal, although some of them differ as to the
means of arriving at it.
Comte’s principal work, La Politique Positive, instituting
the Religion of Humanity, has been translated into
English, and published in four volumes by Longmans,
but is now out of print. Comparatively few people, how
ever, have sufficient time, and perhaps still fewer the
inchnation, to study, as it requires and deserves, so large
and important a philosophical work. Those who wish to
make acquaintance with the system, without so serious an
expenditure of energy, will do well to read Comte’s smaller
works, two of which, the General View of Positivism, and
�WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS.
15
the Catechism of Positive Religion, are published in English
in a convenient form, price half-a-crown each. The former,
translated by Dr. Bridges, and published by Messrs.
Beeves and Turner, 196, Strand, is an admirable exposition
of general principles, and, as such, is perhaps the more
suitable for a person approaching the subject for the first
time. It begins with a most remarkable chapter on the
intellectual character of Positivism, the first reading of
which, to any one not previously familiar with philosophical
problems, is in itself a veritable education. In the suc
ceeding chapters, it deals with such subjects as the nature
and uses of wealth (in connexion with which it includes a
profound criticism of the ordinary Economic and Socialist
theories), the position and duties of the workman in a
properly-organized society, the social functions of woman,
the human theory of marriage, the relation of Positivism
to Art, the meaning of the conception of “ Humanity ” as
a central object of religion, etc., etc. But, for the purpose
of learning the nature of the institutions by which it is
proposed to give effect to these principles, and to form
an idea of what society, organized in accordance with
them, would belike, the reading of the General View should
be supplemented by that of the Catechism, a translation of
which, by Dr. Congreve, is published by Messrs. Triibner
and Co., Ludgate Hill. The original appeared in 1852,
four years later than the General View, and as a conse
quence, Comte’s views having become more matured, the
religious conception of Positivism is brought forward more
distinctly. In it are found the list of books, known as the
Positivist Library, which Comte recommended for habitual
reading by those whose leisure is limited, and who are,
therefore, under the necessity of making a selection from
the enormous mass of literature by which they are sur
rounded ; a copy of the Positivist Calendar; and sundry
other tables, the knowledge of which is essential in order
to thoroughly realize the nature of Positivism, not merely
as a philosophical creed conducing to sound and tranquil
lizing convictions, but as a large-hearted effort to reor
ganize society, to stimulate material and moral progress,
and to increase the sum of human happiness. An English
abridgment, by Miss Martineau, of the Philosophic Positive
is published by Triibner in two volumes. An appreciative
memoir of Comte, with some account of the system, will
�16
WIIAT POSITIVISM MEANS.
be found ill the second volume of Lewes’s History of Philo
sophy. * A fuller and more synthetic view, however, is
given in the Notice sur V Œuvre et sur la Vie P Auguste Comte,
by Dr. Bobinet, his friend and physician.
Any one wishing for further information as to the organiza
tion in England, or the methods of propaganda, is requested
to apply to the Secretary of the English Positivist Com
mittee, Newton Hall, Fleur-de-lis Court, Fetter Lane,
London, E.C.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
What positivism means
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ellis, Henry
English Positivist Committee
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 16 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Publication details from KVK.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[18--]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G2815
Subject
The topic of the resource
Positivism
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (What positivism means), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Positivism
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/d868816dc7f799dda9cfc03f3beb7528.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=i-HTwURkdxSuusxvxk2wArmAaOw9mUv1JZwhM5KF0FKhh6VNuouiK1VfsV1T9BroFpJqxIz2j3X8tBWR2JEMyU7uHNqRQmhwi73JQVkWMugloBZpxdkdx9J9tirVuO9iEvZM7pot7Ss9vVABZ2QtjGrjAhFfGJ7%7EgB2GuvJJ6yoDdECIr2RLjQiFyP%7EQhyCu-SuiYx8kfCWxdbwnDrYX2rVV2zOVMQgR-5WLr5PTszP4rnREPezbxjIw2JcMvUqgXqnqFaT66nxyhf6BwiCwecml9ef1xD7yVRe%7EADT2r2%7Ejq-VlEn0piiIhVLtN9ojfCNJz9AjKVR32ui1wA8w0sw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
2247ded444d94f042bbaa41f1ea3c602
PDF Text
Text
WHAT WE BELIEVE.
A DIALOGUE BETWEEN AN INQUIRER AND AN “INCOMPLETE”
POSITIVIST.
I
NQUIRER. I understand you do not believe in a Personal God 01
great First Cause.
Positivist. We neither deny nor affirm respecting either.
There may be a God such as Christians and Mohammedans gen
erally accept as existing, but they no more than we can demonstrate
the fact, if it be a fact.
Inquirer. Then your religion does not recognize any God at all.
Positivist. Oh yes, it does. John Stuart Mill has done us grievous
injury in saying that August Comte propounded a religion without a
God or a future state; whereas we, with Comte, believe in both, if
allowed to define what we mean. Our Supreme Being is Humanity,
whom we love and serve. We say the only God man can know, or
whose existence can be- demonstrated, is the collective Man—the sum
of all human personalities, past, present, and future.
Inquirer. This strikes me as vague. How can you make a Thing
or a Person out of what is clearly an abstract conception ?
Positivist. But the human mind does very readily personify abstract
conceptions. The Town, the State, the Nation, the Church are no
more actual things or entities than is Humanity; yet they are—they
convey a definite impression to the rudest intelligence. Now Human
ity clearly exists as a subjective conception no less than an objective
phenomenon.
Inquirer. But how about the Creator? How do you account for
the origin of the universe ?
Positivist. We know nothing of the beginning of things. It is be
yond our ken. So far as we know, matter and force are eternal.
Science proves this in that no atom of matter can be destroyed or any
force wasted. Each can take a different form, but the precise quantity
or energy of the one or the other always exists in the same definite pro
portions. Hence to the human scientific mind there never was a be
ginning—there never can be an end. Eternity with us is a circle; in
other words, the old Hindoo symbol —the serpent with his tail in his
mouth. The ordinary conception is that of a straight line with a be
ginning and end.
�/
WHAT
WE BELIEVE.
149
Inquirer. When you discriminate between matter and force, do you
mean that there is any real difference between them ?
Positivist. Oh, I speak in a popular way of course. We want what
Mr. Lincoln called the “plain people” to understand us. We know of
matter only through force; that is, through its changes—by the im
pression it makes upon us; but this conception, which is simple enough
to you or me, is too subtile for common comprehension, and hence we
speak of matter and force as two distinct entities.
Inquirer. But the ordinary conception of God must have some valid
basis.
Positivist. So it has. All gods are idealizations of man himself.
They are man-made. Every attribute, with two important exceptions,
which the human race in its past history have ascribed to its gods, is
purely human. Thus love, justice, wisdom, mercy, as well as revenge
fulness, vanity, and lust—in short, all the emotions and passions which
have been attributed to Deity, are purely human. To these have been
added conceptions of the Infinite and Absolute, which are extra-human.
The elements which compose the popular notion of God vary with
every age. The Jewish Jehovah was stern, revengeful, jealous, vain;
the Christian God is a tender, loving Father; the more human or man
like the God, the better he is—hence the noblest Deity of all is the
man Christ-Jesus. In short, this brief and imperfect analysis shows us
that Humanity is, after all, the only pure metal in this alloy of gods.
Let us consecrate all our energies to the service of the only Supreme
Being we can ever know—Humanity. There may be in addition an
Infinite and Absolute Deity; we do not say there is not; but we hold
with Sir William Hamilton, Prof. Mansell, and Herbert Spencer, that
from the laws of our being we can never know or understand Him;
He is out of all relation with us. Unlike Herbert Spencer, we regard
the worship of an unknowable God as a rank absurdity. His ways
cannot be as our ways, nor his thoughts as our thoughts. He is for
us as if he were not. Such is the verdict of modern Philosophy and
Science.
* Inquirer. How about Immortality? If a man die, shall he live
again ?
Positivist. We know we live upon this earth. We do not know
that we shall continue our personal consciousness after death. It may
be so, but we cannot demonstrate .it by any scientific proof. If the
phenomenon of Spiritualism so-called could be proven, all would be
plain sailing; but it resists scientific tests. There is, however, a real
immortality which we are scientifically sure of. We know that the
materials of which we are composed are indestructible. Every atom
which has formed a part of this body of mine from birth to death will
exist forever. And so too of the forces I generate; they cannot be lost
or wasted. “ The good I do lives after me.” I live in my children—in
the work I do—in what I hand down from those who came before to
�150
WETA T
WE BELIEVE.
those who will follow me. The machine becomes unusable and decays,
but the forces to which it gave birth live forever.
Inquirer. But does not life lose much of its interest and glory by
being confined to this earth, and the few, the very few years we spend
upon it ?
Positivist. We must take things as they are, and not as we would
like them to be. No doubt the hope of a personal, conscious immor
tality has done much in times past to soften and brighten the harsh
lot of myriads of human beings who else would have been given over
to despair from the wretchedness of their material surroundings; but
notwithstanding the comfort men have got from this and other pleasant
illusions, we Positivists decline countenancing the dogma of conscious
immortality until it is proven. So far it has no basis of fact to rest
upon. If it ever should be demonstrated, we should believe in it; but
we do not think this possible.
Inquirer. Do I understand you to wish to unsettle the faith of the
mass of mankind in a Personal Creator of the universe and a Personal
Immortality ?
Positivist. By no means. The prevalent disbelief and scepticism is
to us a worse symptom of the times than the current theological illu
sions. Any religion, even the most baseless, is better than the bald
atheism and materialism which is gaining such hold upon the age.
We want to build up a religion to supply the -spiritual needs of man
kind, and one which is based upon the facts of nature. The old faiths
rest upon supernatural authority and revelation; the new, upon dem
onstrated facts — in other words, upon science. The priest of the
Past appealed to the Unknown; the priest of the Future will be the
expounder, or rather the declarer, of the Known.
Inquirer. Does the belief in a future state do any harm ?
Positivist. Yes; it attracts the best and purest minds of the race
away from the solution of practical problems involving human well
being, to the consideration of insoluble questions. Now what is needed
is that all the energies of the race shall hereafter be devoted to making
this earth the fabled heaven. Human effort should be confined to
human improvement, and to making the earth more habitable.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
What we believe: a dialogue between an inquirer and an "incomplete" positivist
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [New York]
Collation: [148]-150 p. ; 26 cm.
Notes: From Modern Thinker, no. 1, 1870. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[American News Company]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1870]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5419
Subject
The topic of the resource
Positivism
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<p class="western"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (What we believe: a dialogue between an inquirer and an "incomplete" positivist), identified by <span style="color:#0000ff;"><span lang="zxx"><u>Humanist Library and Archives</u></span></span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</p>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
[Unknown]
Conway Tracts
Positivism
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/74bbd6ad552f27359ec6671f83c4287b.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=TmI9mc4KaQPotE0j8hw6PVRU5VrvIiB5Vj1Pxcql0KTUAEeA13UPJVgBKoY3bEjRGH1IO4bEQFWUW8gJ%7E8zJniNynA70a3F7KRqR7memaII4Xh1AAZA88nOxHM3%7EnWMCraA72O0nI%7ELnDvTtuNPgaATDR0D-y%7EGS5P9%7EFImLZMYiuiiD%7EK5bPN7F-jdHOpgQOJ5RjF4b2OudeGZIDj-172lKDC4-CXBPuU-8exNwI7jMaIvIjGkfZFnYz%7Ez58SBEj-IcMTEWQ%7EX-EhWxAIiJGAVS2yAwldOr7LMHJBByyQhhS2cq5dTiD35hFhbC1gT1fzt1G4kvQs3BqS00RhHMqA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
acbce89ed869dbf74c892c2ee27ba5c4
PDF Text
Text
POSITIVE RELIGION:
ITS BASIS AND CHARACTERISTICS.
LECTURE II.
BY THE LATE
REV. JAMES CRANBROOK,
EDINBURGH.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, EARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Threepence.
��LECTURE II.
HE term “force” enters very largely into modern
science, and in philosophy seems very much to
occupy the position which “ secondary cause ” once
did. Thus, we are constantly hearing of the mechani
cal forces, chemical forces, electrical forces, vital forces,
the force of gravity, and so on. The word is a very
convenient one, and it would be hard if physicists had
to give it up; yet I sometimes fear that through the
misuse that is already being made of it, they will have
to do so. As the word is used by natural philosophers,
it simply denotes those conditions upon which certain
changes are effected in a substance. But, as the word
is taken up by a certain class of writers and as it is
used by the public it means very much more than
this, viz., a power, energy, or cause, which, by the
possession of certain inherent properties, is able to
compel the substance it acts upon, independently of all
circumstances, to undergo a certain indefinite change.
This metaphysical use of the word arises out of the
same experiences as those which led to the misuse of
the word “ cause.” Men transfer the sensations or
feelings arising within themselves when they perform
an action to external nature, and hence suppose there
are the same effort to produce and the same resistance
to undergo change that they find in relation to them
selves. Hence these forces seem to them energies,
powers, a something constraining the substances they
act upon to undergo change in spite of themselves.
The phenomena of human will gets transferred to the
T
�4
Positive Religion.
physical circumstances which condition every change ;
and hence the notion arises that there is something
corresponding to the human will amongst those con
ditioning physical circumstances.
Formerly men
would have looked for that something in the force
itself, or, as it would then have been called, the cause.
Now, such metaphysical entities are given up, hut it is
supposed to reside in one absolute, efficient cause,
pervading all nature. And out of the supposition an
argument is constructed, intended to prove the divine,
personal existence.
The argument may be stated thus: Everything,
every moment of time, is passing out of one state of
being into another, and all the phenomena by which
we are surrounded, are subject to constant changes.
These changes do not take place at hap-hazard and by
irregular order: constancy and law regulate them all.
The same antecedent is always followed by the same
consequent; the same conditions, without the shadow
of variableness, issue in the same results. Now, in
contemplating these facts, the question arises—Why
does the same consequent always follow the same
antecedent, or the same results the same conditions ?
It would be no answer to refer to some still higher or
more general physical process which explains the
lower, for what is asked for is the reason, cause, or
efficient condition of each step in the process. A stone
falls, e.g., to the earth. Why ? Because of the force
of gravity. What is the force of gravity ? That
which causes all bodies to tend to the centre of the
earth, according to a given law. What is that? We
know not. But although we know not, it is said that
we have a feeling, a conviction that there is a force, a
power, a something which causes or determines that
tendency. And so of every connection between all
phenomena, we ask after something more than physical
antecedents, we have a feeling that there is a some
thing more • we have the feeling or conviction that
�Lecture 11.
5
there is an efficient force, a power, a something which
determines absolutely each special antecedent to be
followed by its special consequent. Now this efficient
force, in virtue of which every event takes place and
every antecedent is followed by its own proper con
sequent, is God. God, the efficient force, the deter
mining power of the universe, are synonymous terms.
And out of the phenomenal, one’s belief in the Divine
existence emerges. I will not detain you by describing
the process through which from these elements his
personality and conscious intelligence are eliminated,
because my objection goes to the base of the argument,
and therefore criticism upon the superstructure would
he superfluous.
My objection, then, is this : it is constructed by a
transference, as I have already intimated, of the sensa
tions we experience in action to the phenomena of
outward nature, and that we are entirely unwarranted
in doing. As I showed you in the course of lectures
I recently delivered,* the idea of efficient force is purely
and simply derived from the sensation of muscular
resistance we experience whenever we act. Hence the
notion of striving, using energy or force, comes to be
associated with all the changes produced by such acts,
and we are apt to suppose the striving or energizing
an essential condition of the change. But we have no
ground whatsoever to transfer our experiences to out
ward nature, and infer there must be an equivalent to
the same striving or energizing in the changes we
witness going on around us. We know nothing but
the phenomena, i.e., the succession of events, the order
and constancy in antecedents and consequents, and all
supposed to exist besides, is due to a pure and gratui
tous assumption, and is the simple creation of our own
fancy.
Nor can I allow the plea which is sometimes put in,
* See “The Founders of Christianity,’’ p. 77- Triibner & Co.,
London.
�6
Positive Religion.
viz., that although the existence of an efficient force
cannot he logically proved yet that the feeling or con
viction of its existence almost universally springs up
when we look upon the processes of nature. For, in
the first place, the explanation I have given accounts
for the feeling and shews it arises out of a illicit pro
cess ; and secondly the feeling disappears as soon as
you begin to analyse what are the actual phenomena
presented by nature, for then you can discover nothing
but base facts, and their relations of co-existence and
succession.
I do not think therefore this argument from an
efficient force any more valuable than those from
design and intuition; not one of the three is logically
tenable. Belief in the divine existence cannot ration
ally come through them, and unless we can find some
other basis for it religion becomes impossible. Having
cleared the ground for our inquiries let us now proceed
to ascertain what of real, rational basis there is.
And I must begin by drawing your attention to
some facts of experience, which although they are
probably familiar to you I must, because of their
importance to the subject, dwell upon with some
detail.
Amongst the first of these I wish you to
notice, because they will enable you to understand
some of the rest better, are the feelings which arise
when one is in the midst of grand and sublime scenery.
I presume you and I are alike in that respect; besides
the sense of grandeur and sublimity a feeling of wonder
springs up, a wonder at the grandeur and sublimity, a
wonder at its power of affecting us as it does, a wonder
at its origin and what we do not understand about it.
And this wonder is not the less although we may have
a theory about the sublime which seems to explain
the other feelings excited; but the more full the
explanation the deeper the wonder grows. There is
so much the theory does not explain, so much which
lies beyond all explanation, nature as thus presenting
�Lecture II.
7
herself to us stands out so far beyond and above us
that we cannot but wonder and feel awed.
The same feeling arises when we gaze upon very
beautiful scenery. Beyond that sense of the beautiful
and the unspeakable happiness and joy it creates there
is also this feeling of wonder and mystery about it.
I have a theory of my own about the physical con
ditions (causes) of the sense of the beautiful which
would be regarded as of a very materialistic character
if I were now to explain it to you, but this theory
does not in the least degree prevent that feeling of
wonder at the surpassing beauty nature sometimes
reveals to me—nay it deepens it when I think of it
at the same time, for then I wonder at the existence of
those conditions there and at the peculiar effect they
are able to produce.
The same effect takes place when I look up at the
stars or upon the ocean in a contemplative mood, and
allow them to make what impression they can upon
my feelings. And the teachings of astronomy and of
physical geography when they expound to me the
order and constancy, the motions, and the causes of
the motions, the immense spaces and times and such
like things, make them seem more wonderful still and
have sometimes made me thrill with awe, at the
sense of the mystery lying all round about them.
But the object need not be upon a grand scale to
excite this feeling, or these feelings rather; what is
little and minute has the same effect. The other day
I was looking at the tiny flower of a small sprig of
heath. The exquisite beauty of its petals filled me
with an inexpressible sense of enjoyment. I began to
think of the process of its formation and the laws
which had determined its existence there in such
loveliness. But over all these thoughts and all those
feelings spread my sense of wonder—a wonder
intensified greatly by the recollection of the physio
logical laws and processes, and as I gazed upon the
�8
Positive Religion.
flower it became to me full of the deepest mystery.
And I suppose every one of you would have felt the
same.
Nor, as I have intimated, is it the pure objects of
nature alone which excite these feelings, but more
deeply still the expositions and revelations of science.
Science seems to me to extend and deepen the mystery
and the feeling of wonder, nature calls forth, instead
of diminishing it. The simplicity of the processes,
the unity of the methods, the constancy and order are
more mysterious, more wonderful to me than the bare
phenomena, however grand and imposing these latter
may be ; and that very phenomenal philosophy which
forbids an attempt to penetrate to the noumenon and
the infinite conducts me to the confines which separate
them where I find myself overwhelmed with awe as I
gaze into the darkness. Thus, e.g., science tells me
that the revolution of the planets around the sun is
produced by the two forces termed the centripetal and
the centrifugal. I ask an explanation and am informed
that it is found that when a body upon earth revolves
around another it has two tendencies, one to rush in a
straight line towards the centre of that around which
it revolves, and the other to go off each moment of
time in a straight line from the point of the circle it
occupies into a direction which would be away from
that centre. Now by the supposition of these same
tendencies or directions of motion acting in the planets
the form of their orbit is explained. Well, although
this supposition is established by most unquestionable
facts, and we all believe it to be true, the explanation
it gives is more wonderful than the motion of the
planets themselves. How wonderful, how mysterious
it is that a planet as well as a stone set in motion
should tend towards the centre of some other body
with a definite momentum. How strange, how won
derful that it should tend to move on in the same
straight line for ever ! How unspeakably strange and
�Lecture II.
9
wonderful that the course of the planets in their orbits
should be determined by the combination of two such
simple laws. Surely you cannot but feel as I do that
science makes this wondrous, mysterious universe more
wondrous and mysterious still!
Here, too, come in the various fitnesses, harmonies
and organizations, upon which has been built the
argument from design. Science points out to us how
all the great results in nature are obtained by the
combination of a few simple principles or processes.
The eye by means of a lens, a few muscles, and a nerve
or two, becomes capable of vision. The ear by con
struction upon the same principle as a musical
instrument for the reception and propagation of sound
becomes capable of hearing. Each organ of the body
is exactly fitted to perform its special function.
Wherever we turn, indeed, we find these fitnesses,
congruities, what some call adaptations and marks of
design. Now, we have seen that they afford no
argument by which we can prove the existence of an
intelligent, designing creator; but on that very account
they become the more wonderful and mysterious.
There they are, patent to every observer but unac
counted for, unexplained: suggesting ten thousand
speculations about their origin and determining
causes, but for ever by their silence mocking our
curiosity. How little, ignorant, and blind, they make
us feel ourselves to be ! How mysterious, great, and
supreme, they make us feel nature is ! With all our
advancing knowledge we can do nothing before such
final facts, but wonder and bow down in reverence.
Hitherto, I have principally referred to external
nature as the source of these feelings; but man himself
under some conditions, excites them equally within us.
Great and heroic actions, extraordinary virtue and
excellency, or indeed, the manifestation of great
individual power, and especially of great individual
mental power, will frequently call them forth. Extra
�io
Positive Religion.
ordinary beauty in a woman, which of course, as
opposed to mere prettiness depends upon intellectual,
aesthetical and moral qualities, and extraordinary
nobleness in a man will do it. Such persons excite
great wonder, reverence and a sense of mysteriousness
in us.
I must confess, however, that I do not
attribute so much influence to objects of this kind as
some writers are disposed to do. The habit of analys
ing every thing which one acquires in the present day
leads to the perception of too many imperfections even
in the highest and best, to allow of the possibility of
unrestrained hero worship.
On the other hand,
however, the more rigidly the formation of character is
brought under the operation of law, the more deeply
wonder at the powers of nature is excited, and the
more marvellous one feels her to be.
But it is when human beings are contemplated in
their history that these feelings of mystery, wonder,
and awe, are the most powerfully called into activity.
For it is then that we see that human life is not merely
an aggregation of individual existences thrown together
at haphazard upon this earth, but that it is a con
nected, organized whole, each part of which affects the
destiny of the rest Take any of the great epochs in
history and you will find illustrations of this fact.
Thus, e.g. in modern times, movements in Central Asia
led to the ascendency of the Saracens in the Moslem
empire, and the oppression of Christian pilgrims to the
Holy Land. The oppression aroused the romantic,
superstitious spirit of Europe, and organised the
crusades. The crusades brought the ignorant barbar
ous people of the west into contact with Arabian, and
other oriental scholars, and reintroduced the study of
Aristotle into the west.
The study of Aristotle
reawakened the scientific spirit, and gave rise to the
controversies between the realists and the nomenalists.
The spirit of free inquiry thus revived, became
greatly intensified by the taking of Constantinople by
�Lecture II.
11
the Turks in the 15th century, and the dispersion of
its classical scholars over Europe.* This spirit of free
inquiry of nomalism and of science influenced the
theological thinking, especially of the Teutonic nations,
and gave origin to the Reformation in the beginning
of the 16th century. Now, here is a strange combina
tion of independent events, determined by most remote
causes and yet leading to definite results affecting the
condition of the whole civilized world. No explanation
seems to offer itself but that of an overruling intelligent
power; and yet when you come to examine such an
explanation, you are not only encountered by the
logical difficulties, but the real mystery remains un
touched and the feelings of wonder and awe keep
possession of the mind.
Here then is the basis upon which I rest my religion.
I have enumerated a number of cases in which the
feelings of wonder, awe, and mystery are originated by
the objects presented in nature.
The enumerated
cases are not exhaustive of the whole, but only
specimens of the rest. Whenever or under whatever
aspects nature is gazed upon in a contemplative mood,
these feelings are awakened. Pick up a common stone
off the road, look at it, examine it, ask about its con
struction, the conditions or laws under which it came
to exist as you have found it, and the same feelings of
marvellousness, mystery, and awe, will be forced upon
you. If all nature do not encompass us with a sense
of its mystery and bow us down with feelings of
profoundest wonder, it is because we have not thought
sufficiently upon the facts it presents.
I have said, it is upon these feelings I base my
religion; I may add, it is upon the feelings thus
* The same original movements in Asia too, had led to the
establishment of the Moors in Spain, and through them to an
introduction of the study of Aristotle and of various sciences
from a different quarter, but all tending to augment the
same influences which came directly from the East.
�12
Positive Religion.
excited, all the theologies of the world have been con
structed. When men have been moved by nature in this
way, they have been aroused to ask for the explanation
of the mystery. Not content with knowing that
phenomena are as they are, they want to know the
cause of their being so, and to convert the feeling of
wonder they excite into the complacency which arises
from competent knowledge. Never doubting of their
power to transcend the phenomenal and ascertain the
noumenal cause, they have boldly speculated upon the
questions the feelings have aroused and arrived at
answers determined in all cases by the character of
their culture.
Accordingly we find them passing
through all the grades of fetishism, polytheism,
monotheism, pantheism, and atheism—projecting the
shadow of their own thoughts and feelings upon the
object they superinduced to explain the mysteries of
nature.
Amongst these various methods of explanation, the
monotheistic seems the only one which in any measure
meets the demands of the case. Pantheism only puts
the mystery and the questions one step further back;
or rather, I should say, Pantheism, in its usually
accepted sense, does so, for a force which only becomes
conscious and intelligent in such manifestations and
embodiments as man, seems itself to require to be
accounted for, and leaves the mystery of existence as
dark as ever. On the other hand, the Monotheistic
theory will account for the facts, if one be capable of
forming the conceptions the theory requires. But
there is the difficulty—a difficulty, if I mistake not,
becoming greater every day. And the principal,
although not the only cause of this increasing difficulty,
must be attributed to the progress of biological science.
That science daily more and more conclusively proves
that the phenomena of thought and feeling, as known
to us, arise entirely out of the processes of our nervous
organization ■ so that those who, are thoroughly
�Lecture II.
l3
abreast of the science find it no more possible to con
ceive of thought and feeling apart from such organiza
tion than an electrician could conceive of electricity in
a homogeneous substance of equal structure and tem
perature, or than a natural philosopher could conceive
of the existence of the prismatic colours apart from
rays of light. There is therefore no fact out of
which one can construct the Monotheistic theory, no
basis of any kind upon which one could form the con
ception of a Being possessing thought, feeling, and will
independent of organization; the conception is the
product of a fancy as wild and as worthless as ever
was created in our dreams.
But some will say, The formation of a hypothesis to
account for facts is perfectly legitimate; and if it
account for all the facts, it may be held as presumably
true until it is disproved. Thus, e.g., the hypothesis
that Nature abhors a vacuum to account for the rising
of water in a well, and the compression of the sides of
a cavern, &c., was as legitimate, until it was disproved,
as Newton’s theory of gravitation—the only difference
being, that in the latter case increased knowledge con
firmed it, and in the former case increased knowledge
proved it to be untrue. So in like manner we may
form and hold the hypothesis upon which Monotheism
is built until it is disproved. The illustration, how
ever, is founded upon a mistake. That Nature abhors
a vacuum was never a legitimate hypothesis, for there
never was any evidence that Nature possesses that
class of feelings of which abhorrence is one. To
assume it as a method of accounting for certain facts,
was therefore a wanton act of fancy, altogether un
known to the scientific method. When Newton
applied his theory of gravitation to account for the
movements of the heavenly bodies, he was merely
using known facts as the probable explanation of
other facts. He had found bodies upon earth moving
according to certain laws. He said, “Suppose the
�14.
Positive Religion.
same laws to regulate the heavenly bodies, it will
account for their movements.” “ Ah, but then,” said
some objectors, “such and such things would also
happen, and that is absurd.” “ Would they ? ” said
Newton’s disciples; “let us see then if they do.”
They examined, and found that they did. And every
discovery since has proved the truth of Newton’s
supposition.
Now, that is the only way of forming hypothesis
science can allow. It does not suffer you to weave
fancies at will, and then suppose their actual existence.
Your hypothesis must consist of some acknowledged
fact or law, which, when applied to the subject, accounts
also for its facts. But the theologians have no such
known and accepted facts to form the Monotheistic
hypothesis upon. They have nothing but a fancy as
wild as that of Nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum.
Whether it account for all the facts or not, therefore,
it can never be allowed to do more than amuse the
idle hours of the intellect.
It seems to me, then, that none of the theological
methods of accounting for the facts I have referred to,
and answering the questions they suggest, are tenable;
they are all founded on erroneous conceptions and
mere fancies. We cannot accept of what does not rest
upon certain knowledge.
And equally, I think, you will see that the religious
system of A. Comte fails to meet the wants of the
case. It ignores the greater part of the facts alto
gether, and only offers to satisfy the feelings which
arise from the contemplation of man under a few
special aspects. It has nothing to say to that wonder
and deep sense of mystery all nature calls forth ;
nothing to say even to those feelings as called forth by
the contemplation of the history of man; it merely
encourages reverence and worship for humanity, as
ennobled in some few of the elect of its children ; for
although it is professedly humanity as a whole, the
�Lecture II.
15
great, the sublime Existence which it worships, it is
to special forms of it, men and women who have
done great and loving deeds to whom the homage is
paid. But religion must be wider, truer, more com
plete than that. It must take up into itself all the
mystery around us, all the wonder and awe in our
selves from whatever source they spring. It must
allow our feelings free play, whilst it satisfies every
demand of the intellect.
What form it must take to do this I next proceed
to show ; but I will not do tlie injustice to myself or
system of giving you a part of my doctrine to-night
and the rest next Sunday. You must have the whole
before you before you can judge of the parts. I there
fore shall delay until next Sunday the exposition of
the form I consider religion must adopt in the present
day.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
��
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Positive religion : its basis and characteristics. Lecture II
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Cranbrook, James
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 15 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Thomas Scott
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[n.d.]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RA1600
G5747
Subject
The topic of the resource
Positivism
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Positive religion : its basis and characteristics. Lecture II), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Positivism
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/b261ab9da4ed3b99771ed93605df0bb5.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=l1H9wMr6t-9Ad28ZYYkK3YTAcKKGu%7EQPq3PmqoQuRTx2sDDr-%7EvRLEq6t9EO4ZZ4hwC61yl8pUfgmnJl3r7T-dAE6xYtjFae9cYFDiyTRaM2TwgcEWjJY-PSy6RcVV0okglRH06jgB%7ErqdJRAmG977lIDRH46P-28x00OZKq30OGpavjsUmTZntne93EpXpw-Ds8NCn4v9yxMT66MWdTCjiSTinlgWsHNt7M%7E62BqAUv4lucpOzC6FuWnPUyON%7EAF31QbrFSbEioTdTcqMrsu6%7EXvKb2FWxIiOQ7CI1zTdjQ4QB0ciwUOJ6awZGOrigMavgLX-rxf6W0p6v8htmYuw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
7c8344386fa4cbb9db07ca29248fa06a
PDF Text
Text
POSITIVE RELIGION:
ITS BASIS AND CHARACTERISTICS.
LECTURE I.
BY THE LATE
REV. JAMES CRANBBOOK,
EDINBURGH.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Threepence.
��LECTURE I.
N entering upon a course of lectures upon the basis
and characteristics of the only religion I conceive
to be possible for those partaking of the spirit of the
present day, I must bespeak your patient and very
candid attention. For I shall have many things to
say which I fear it will be very difficult for those who
do not approach the subject from my own point of
view, not to misunderstand and misrepresent. I will.
endeavour, however, to be as explicit and as clear as I
can, and I have no doubt, you in return, recognising
the importance of the subject, will endeavour to exclude
from my words all ideas they do not in themselves ex
press. For this, I apprehend, will constitute your prin
cipal difficulty in comprehending what I have to say—
the intrusion of other ideas into the words than those
which I mean to convey. Whenever an old subject
has to be re-discussed this difficulty is sure to arise.
People import into it the loose popular ideas that have
become associated with it j the mind listlessly allows
these ideas to interweave themselves with the new
forms of thought: and thus, an interpretation is
often given to these new forms of thought which is
quite foreign to them. I must ask you, therefore, not
to suppose that. I mean anything more than I say;
and I, upon my part, will promise to do my best to say
all I mean.
In attempting to lay a basis for a religion compatible
with the culture of the present day, I think it is
necessary to begin with a distinct recognition of what
I
�4
Positive Religion.
is somewhat unfortunately called the positive philo
sophy. I think it is unfortunately so called, because
there is an ambiguity about the word positive which
affords weak witlings an opportunity to make them
selves facetious in their small way over the negations
of the philosophy; and also because the term has
become so closely connected in the vulgar-literary mind
with the name of M. Comte that it is very hard for
one, avowing that he adopts the method of the
philosophy, to make people believe he does not also
adopt that great man’s entire system. Now, of course,
if the term were a necessary or even a particularly
descriptive one in itself, these would not be sufficient
reasons for giving it up. But the word positive itself
suggests a better. As it is used by the scientific school
it simply means that which can be affirmed ; the
positive philosophy concerns itself only with objects
concerning which one can make affirmations. Now,
all such objects are phenomenal. What is noumenal
lies beyond us, we can only make guesses, from fancies,
or constant hypothetical inferences, about it; and
consequently all affirmations concerning it are out of
the question. The positive philosophy is therefore the
phenomenal philosophy, and to call it so would be at
once to describe the limits of its enquiries and its
aims.
Whenever therefore I have to refer to the
philosophy distinctively in the course of these lectures
I shall call it, not the positive, but the phenomenal
philosophy. And I especially hope that by so doing
I shall at once guard you against supposing that the
system of religion I advocate has any direct relation or
resemblance to that of M. Comte. I say this, not
because I at all shrink from sharing in the stupid
odium attached to his name, but because I think his
religious system is so fanciful in its substance, and so
entirely French in its form, that it can never obtain
but the smallest acceptance with the Anglo-Saxon
race.
�Lecture I.
:>
Well, then, all attempts at ascertaining a basis for
the only religion possible in the present day must, as
I said, begin by recognising the phenomenal philosophy.
And I say so because I everywhere find this philosophy
becoming predominant over men’s thoughts. Even
those who eschew it in words, come unconsciously
more or less under its influence, and the most thorough
going metaphysician is seen wriggling and turning in
every direction to meet its demands. I believe the
time is coming when it will have become universal;
therefore no religion can become permanent which
does not recognise its claims.
Now this philosophy is distinguished from others by
two essential characteristics.
The first is the one
already referred to and which I have embodied in its
name, i.e. it limits the objects of its enquiries to the
phenomenal. It distinctly avows itself incapable of
searching out and knowing anything but phenomena,
in their relations of coexistence and succession. It
declares that Being, substance, noumenon in itself, lies
utterly beyond the reach of the human faculties, and
therefore, must ever be utterly unknown.
The second characteristic is its method. Confining
itself to ascertaining the coexistences and successions
of phenomena it rigidly insists that every fact asserted,
every inference deduced, every hypothesis formed in
explanation, shall be tested, analysed, brought under
the laws of experience, and so, thoroughly verified,
before it shall be accepted as true. No assumed facts,
however plausible ; no process of reasoning however
logical; no theory, however fully accounting for all the
known phenomena of a particular subject of enquiry
are allowed for one moment to become the substitute
for verification; knowledge consists of what has been
verified ; all else lies beyond in the regions of plausi
bility, conjecture, hypothesis, fancy and faith.
Now, in recognising this phenomenal philosophy
thus characterized as true, I think I am doing what both
�6
Positive Religion.
my knowledge of the character and strength of my
own faculties and the history of all attempts to obtain
knowledge through all the past ages compel me to do ;
for, in the first place, when I examine myself, I find
that I have no means of knowing anything but what
comes within the range of my outward senses, such as
seeing, hearing, &c., and what affects my inner sense,
such as objects remembered, pain, pleasure, and so on.
And all these objects so known are phenomenal merely.
They are the appearances of things, of substances, not
the substances themselves. At least I only know them
as- appearances,—I only know them as of a certain
colour, a certain form, a certain hardness and resist
ance, as producing a certain sensation of heat, &c.—all
else is hidden from me. And so, in like manner, I
only know the inner objects as appearances to my inner
sense; I only know objects in my memory as of the
same though fainter colour, form, &c., as they had in
my outer senses, or I know them as combined in new
arrangements, and shewing new relations. But the
body, the substance, the noumenon in which these appear
ances, both inner and outer, are supposed to inhere, I
know not, and have no faculty for knowing.
Nor do I suppose myself poorer than the rest of my
fellowmen in this respect, for when I look back upon
the whole history of the race, I find all attempts to
discover and know anything more than phenomena
ending in contradiction, confusion, fanciful absurdities,
and an empty jingle of words. Nothing is presented
but a constant succession of philosophers one after the
other, the latter only arising to declare the former in
error, himself to be denounced in turn by the next
coming after him. And the authentic history of these
futile attempts, leaving out of consideration those of the
Orientals, extends from the 636th year before our era
downwards over a space of more than 2500 years. Surely,
after such an unquestionable failure as this, one is
justified in pronouncing that their attempts were mis
�Lecture I.
7
directed, and the objects they sought beyond their
reach. Their failure warns us off the ground they
occupied. It teaches us that the knowledge of which
we are capable is limited to the coexistence and suc
cession of phenomena alone.
But now, the acceptance of the phenomenal philo
sophy as the only possible and true one, at once causes
a convulsion in our religious beliefs; for all these
beliefs are founded upon the supposed knowledge of
substance, being in itself God, the being of all beings,
the substance of all substances, the one and the all.
If we cannot know anything but phenomena, then we
cannot know God who transcends all phenomena; and
thus religion seems to become impossible. Nor is
there any possible escape from this conclusion. Ac
cordingly, it is admitted by all who adopt the philo
sophy, and is even tacitly admitted by those who come
only indirectly under its influence. Thus, e.g., many
who are quite orthodox in their religious opinions,
acknowledge that they cannot know God in himself,
but only through his works, and that revelation they
suppose he has given of himself in Jesus Christ. This,
however, you will observe, is not, strictly speaking,
a knowledge of God at all; it is only a knowledge of
certain phenomena which are supposed to represent
God. All which, in virtue of such representations, is
affirmed about God, is derived by a process of infer
ential reasoning, and expresses merely a conviction or
belief.
There are, however, many convictions or beliefs
which are just as powerful, and have just as much
practical hold of us as our knowledge has ; we must
not, therefore, disparage these convictions or beliefs
men have about God merely because they are such,
but must enquire into their validity by examining the
processes of reasoning through which they have been
obtained. To this examination I now therefore invite
your attention.
�8
Positive Religion.
And first of all, let us notice that which is so
popular in the present day—I mean the argument
based upon our asserted intuitions or religious instincts.
It is said that as soon as certain phenomena, or any pheno
mena, are presented to the mind, the idea of God, the
Infinite and Absolute, instantaneously springs up in or
flashes upon it also, and that the universality and invari
ableness of the idea prove its truthfulness and validity.
Now, there would be some force in this, if it could be
shown that this idea did thus invariably, universally,
and purely spontaneously, arise upon such occasions.
Indeed, all further discussion of the subject would be
at an end, because, upon the conditions supposed, those
who argued against would be as necessarily the subjects
of the idea as those who argued for it.
But, unfortunately, when we come to examine the
facts, every one of these supposed conditions is want
ing. First, it cannot be shown that the idea is
ever purely spontaneous. Those in whom it arises
have always been instructed in it. We have no case
of a human being, who had never been told of God, for
the first time gazing on phenomena and the idea
instantaneously springing up in his mind. That in
any case it would do so is therefore a gratuitous
assumption. For all we can tell, in every case the
idea may be the simple result of education, and its
apparent spontaneity the consequence of the strong
association of ideas.
Then, secondly, this so-called intuition, instinct or
law of the mind, is wanting in the essential character
of all instincts, invariableness. Its utterances differ
in different ages, and amongst different races. The
idea of God it presents is always changing. This is
not the case with real instincts. A bee always in all
countries and ages forms the honey-comb in the same
way. Young mammals always obtain their food by
the same movements. And the same may be said of
every other instinct. How then can we call that an
�Lecture I.
9
instinct, and class it with the rest, which differs in
such an essential ? Nor do I see that this difficulty is
in the least degree obviated by calling it a necessary
law of the mind instead of an instinct; for a necessary
—i.e., an inevitable—law must be as invariable as an
instinct. If it be subject to modifications and con
ditions, it is not inevitable or necessary, and its products
therefore become subject to the laws of evidence, to
which the products of all other laws are subject. We
can never, simply from its deliverances, establish the
truth of any conviction.
I do not, however, dwell upon this, for there is the
want to this so-called necessary law or instinct of a
yet more necessary characteristic still,—universality. It
is quite untrue that phenomena spontaneously call
forth the idea of God in all minds; for, on the one end
of the scale of civilization, there are whole tribes
without any notion of God; and on the other, there
are numbers of cultivated people who reject the idea
and declare that it is never suggested to them by
nature. I know that this has been disputed so far as
the non-belief of savage tribes is concerned ; but there
is no justifiable pretence whatsoever for doing so. I
have heard, both publicly and privately, Mr Moffat,
a Missionary who had resided for upwards of twenty
years amongst some of the tribes of South Africa,
declare that they had no idea whatsoever of God, and
no word in their language by which it could be
expressed. And this is the testimony not of a traveller
merely passing through the country in a few months,
but of one who had become so naturalised amongst
them that he had learned to think entirely in their
language, and when he made a speech in English had
to translate it to himself as he proceeded out of the
Bechuana tongue. Here then is a clearly proved case
of a people without the idea of God; and upon this
case, I deny the universality of the idea, and so show
the invalidity of the argument based upon it. The
�io
Positive Religion.
idea is not spontaneous, for here it has never sprung
up at all; neither is it invariable and universal. It
is therefore the result of conditions and not of an
original, necessary law. But if so, the conviction or
belief which rests upon it must seek some other basis
before it can be received as a ruling principle of our
life.
Turning then from this argument we meet with
another which, although not so fashionable as once it
was, is still considered of great force by some, and has
received recently the apparent sanction of one of the
greatest thinkers of the age. Mr John Stuart Mill
has written thus :—“ It has been remarked, with truth,
that there is not one of the received arguments in
support of either natural religion or revelation a formal
condemnation of which might not be extracted from the
writings of sincerely religious thinkers................ But
looking at the question as one of prudence, it would be
wise in them, whatever else they give up, not to part
company with the design argument.
For, in the
first place, it is the best; and besides, it is by far the
most persuasive. It would be difficult to find a
stronger argument in favour of Theism than that the
eye must be made by one that sees, and the ear by
one who hears.” Now, it has been alleged to me that
this does not necessarily commit Mr Mill to the
validity of the argument from Design ; for, it is said,
it may be the best of arguments none of which are
good, and the most persuasive where none can persuade.
But if Mr Mill merely meant that, he is very censur
able for a loose use of words. An argument is not
good, and not rationally persuasive at all, unless it be
logically correct.* To say therefore that it is the best
* “ One circumstance which has misled some persons into
the notion that there may be reasoning that is not
substantially syllogistic, is this ; that in a syllogism we see
the conclusion following certainly (or necessarily') from the
premises ; and again, in any apparent syllogism which on
�Lecture J.
11
and the most persuasive is to admit its logical correct
ness, unless it were meant it is the best to persuade
illogical, unwary, unreasoning minds. But Mr Mill’s
argument throughout the paragraph would not allow
one to suppose he meant that, and therefore we must
conclude, he gives his sanction to the argument of one
design.
It becomes us therefore to consider the
subject very thoroughly before we venture to question
its validity.
Notwithstanding this great authority, however, I
must confess that the more I think of it, the more
clearly I see the fallacy the argument involves. It
seems to me a pure petitio principii-—an assumption in
the premises of that which has to be proved. A very
few words will make this plain. Reducing it to the
syllogistical form the argument is stated thus : What
ever has marks of design must have had an intelligent
designer ; but the world has marks of design ; there
fore the world must have had an intelligent designer.
Now, what is meant by the word design ? Is it not
planning something by the mind to be wrought out
in deed 1 Is not mind an essential ingredient of it 1
In the new edition of Johnson’s Dictionary by Dr
Latham, the following are the only definitions given
of it :—“ 1st. Intention ; purpose ; scheme ; plan of
action. 2nd. Scheme formed to the detriment of
another. 3rd. Idea which an artist endeavours to
execute or express.” Each of these, you will see,
examination is found to be not a real one, the conclusion
does not follow at all. And yet we often hear of arguments
which have some weight, and yet are not quite decisive ; of
conclusions which are rendered probable, but not absolutely
certain, &c. And hence some are apt to imagine that the
conclusiveness of an argument admits of degrees ; and that
sometimes a conclusion may probably and partially, though
not certainly and completely, follow from its premises. [This
mistake arises from men’s forgetting that the premises them
selves will very often be doubtful; and then the conclusions
also will be doubtful.”—Whatley's Logic, Book II., Ch.
IH., §i.J
�12
Positive Religion.
directly involves the idea of mind. When therefore
the argument in its major premise says, whatever has
marks of design must have had an intelligent designer,
it merely affirms a truism ; and when it affirms in the
minor premise that the world has marks of design;
it quietly assumes all that has to be proved. For the
question is whether the world had a creator possessing
mind in our sense of the term mind, and to say that it
has marks of design is to affirm that it has marks of
such a mind’s operations since the term design
necessarily involves it. This therefore is to assume the
whole question in dispute and not to prove it.
Nor would anything be gained by changing the
term marks of design for “ indications of adaptation ”
or anything of that kind. They would all fall into
the same paralogism of assuming the conclusion in the
premises, and could not advance the cause one step.
But if in order to avoid this you simply assert the facts,
you form no basis whatsoever from which you can rise
to the truth one wishes to reach. You say, e.g., the
form and conditions of the eye enable it to see, the
form and conditions of the ear enable it to hear.
Well, and what then? What does that prove?
Absolutely nothing. It leaves perfectly untouched the
question, How came the eye into this state in which
it can see, and the ear into this state in which it can
hear ?
If any one reply by saying that it is impossible to
suppose, imagine, or conceive of such a thing as the
eye being able to see unless it had been made by a
wise, intelligent mind for the purpose of seeing, that
would be only affirming under another form the
question at issue. Why is it impossible to conceive
otherwise ? What is required of one making an asser
tion of that kind is to prove the impossibility. But
that no one could do, for there are many who conceive
otherwise. They think of the universe under different
modes from those of a creation. So that it is not true,
�Lecture 1.
L3
and can be no argument, to say that it is impossible to
suppose, imagine, or conceive of the universe except as
created by an intelligent mind. Besides, I should like
to know how any one can realize to himself a self
existing first cause, existing in the solitudes of his
being through all the past eternity, any more distinctly
than he can realize an eternally existing universe 1 The
one conception is quite as impossible as the other.
Mr Mill seems indeed to countenance this argument
when in the passage I have quoted from him he says :
“ It would be difficult to find a stronger argument in
favour of theism, than that the eye must have been
made by one that sees, and the ear by one who hears.”
But why mustl He does not tell us; and I can
imagine no other necessity than that which is supposed
to arise from this assumed powerlessness in thinking
or conceiving otherwise. Yet I feel sure Mr Mill
does not mean this, for there is no one who has so
thoroughly exposed the worthlessness of such an
argument. To me it seems most egregious presumption
to argue upon either side from the possibilities of our
knowledge, conceptions or imagination, there must be
an infinitely deal more in the universe than we can
form the remotest notion or fancy of. To say, there
fore, that such a thing must be so and not otherwise,
because we cannot conceive of it but as so is to be
guilty of the egregious folly and presumption of
making our ignorance the measure of all possible fact.
Men ought long before this to have learned the
worthlessness of such arguments ; for, the possibilities
of our thoughts are continually being modified. Things
once possible, in thought, have become impossible;
and things once impossible have become necessary
conceptions. If you had told an ancient philosopher
that bodies put into motion will move on for ever
in the same straight line, if there be nothing to
interrupt their course he would have laughed at you as a
fool. The thing not only would have contradicted his
�14
Positive Religion.
senses, but would have been absurd in its conception.
Now it has become a fundamental law in mechanics. And
many other things of the same kind might be named.
What, then, I say, is the power we have of conceiving
of this thing or that, of imagining this or the other to
be an explanation necessary and absolutely imposed by
the laws of thought, depends very much upon our
culture and can never be brought forward as a proof
that the thing is as we conceive it to be. So that when
theologians argue that because the world exists in such
and such a manner, and we cannot conceive of its so
existing unless by the creative act of an intelligent,
conscious mind, they are assuming what it is great pre
sumption to assume, i.e. that the conceptions of their
minds are to be taken as the standard of truth.
And I feel this argument from design all the more
fallacious as it is based entirely upon the analogies of
human experience. Paley opens his treatise with such
an analogy : “ If we find a watch we know there must
have been a watchmaker, if we find a world with
admirable fitnesses and appliances, we, in like manner,
infer an intelligent world-maker.” But why, in the
first case, do we infer a watchmaker ? Simply because
the watch is an instrument whose whole construction
has come under our observation. Paley says, if we
had never seen a watch made we should still infer a
watchmaker. But upon what ground should we infer
it ? Simply because we have a large experience of
what the undirected forces of nature alone produce, and
of what it requires the additional aid and direction of
man to produce, and the watch belongs to the latter
class of productions. But we have no such experience
with regard to the making of worlds. We are there
fore extending our experiences beyond the rational
limits, when we apply the analogies of watchmaking
to the explanation of worldmaking. Por all we know,
the application of such analogies may be a direct
reversal of the truth. Nay, that expression concedes
�Lecture I.
J5
too much. The application of such analogies must be
a falsifying of the facts, for, granting the act of creation
by an intelligent mind, the act must be altogether
unlike the mechanical working of man. The difference
in the nature and modes of the existence of the divine
and human creators, and the difference of their
relations to the materials would determine that. So
that the analogies are essentially false at least in one
direction, and all arguments based upon them necessarily
fall to the ground.
I repeat, therefore, the statement with which I set
out respecting this argument from design. As a proof,
it utterly fails to establish the doctrine of the Divine
existence. It begs the whole question at issue in its
very terms. It is founded upon presumptuous assump
tions concernings the powers of our knowledge. It is
constructed by the unwarranted application of analogies
derived from limited human experiences, and some
of which we know must, upon the principles of
those who contend for the argument, be false. If,
indeed, you can arrive at the belief in the Divine
existence by other means, then all the wonderful
apparent fitnesses and harmonious combinations we find
in the world may give strength by the appearance they
have of purposed adaptation and design to our convic
tions of God’s creative wisdom and power. For it is
one thing to say, these things prove that there is a
Creator, and quite another to say, they are all best
accounted for by the belief I have already received
that there is an infinitely wise and powerful intelligent
Creator, and therefore they confirm me in that belief.
I must, however, once more remind you that even
if these two arguments which I have criticised were
valid, they could not do more than establish grounds
of belief, of presumption, of hypothesis with those who
hold the phenomenal philosophy; they would not help
us to real knowledge. The method of that philosophy
would insist that the conclusions should be verified :
�16
Positive Religion.
and that, from the nature of the case, they could never
be. They would be regarded, therefore, merely as
establishing a hypothesis more or less probable. The
argument might seem so strong that the hypothesis
would possess the highest degree of probability, and
require us to act upon the assumption of its truth.
But still it would not be knowledge, and the feeling
would remain that any day it might possibly be proved
to be false.
There is one other fallacious argument I shall have
to call your attention to before I endeavour to lay the
basis of the religion I think to be possible ; but I must
reserve that for the commencement of the next lecture.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Positive religion : its basis and characteristics. Lecture I
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Cranbrook, James
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Date of publication from KVK. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Thomas Scott
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1874
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RA1599
G5746
Subject
The topic of the resource
Positivism
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Positive religion : its basis and characteristics. Lecture I), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Positivism
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/7b95d3d0e333951a347317403976b045.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=n4Aa4TnjuHv86XWXgI5eIPLgvlgGXCw5uf1gjXkp--Arr90oe2IM5tR55m3FXCYRSucZWZ23C%7E8245FN6KAI8r1Bu4-0ojN9VHOWDmeorUWZyAjEhkFoQQlVkh2jfXgF-Otc5AKn0aq7oIGCrPpFTUETkAH2v-AKKTod93bw6780%7EW1lKyPRLtVEPAVumT0UBZw-38r2L0xHFE971Zn0PntDwb5f7zZ4XxE%7EKowgd0XmQ1ZfTgTalgnWsEn7RBkhV87%7EzP-K7SYWgKefpHojpHQSuzTYRLkOiGEpiXDIshcvQvYQhFhwRn33GV6H5xvij-6%7ECj0GTKJ52YilbL4RSg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
92010ab9453a4dadd81d97c8a2e0c0b8
PDF Text
Text
POSITIVE RELIGION:
ITS BASIS AND CHARACTERISTICS.
LECTURE III.
BY THE LATE
REV. JAMES CRANBROOK,
EDINBURGH.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Threepence.
�■
�LECTURE III.
N the last Lecture, I directed your attention to
certain feelings which arise within us whenever we
come face to face with nature. They are common to
the cultivated and the uncultivated alike, hut, I think,
are greatly intensified by the larger knowledge of the
cultivated obtained through the revelations of science.
The feelings are those of wonder, awe, and the sense of
the mysterious arising out of the perception of the order
and constancy, the adaptation and fitnesses, the beauty
and beneficence of the whole universe. The smallest
object as well as the most sublime tends to excite them,
and the more fully we comprehend the processes by
which all the changes in nature are effected the more
deeply they excite our wonder and awe, and the more
intensely they make us feel how mysterious every thing
around is.
Now, as we have also seen, it is not natural for man
to stand before this mystery with these feelings of
wonder and awe without his curiosity being excited, and
his being led to investigate the origin and causes of the
objects which so move him. He must ask himself,
How came this universe into existence ? What is it
that determines the order and constancy with which
each antecedent is followed only by its own consequent ?
Who or what arranges those organizations by means of
which such admirable results are obtained? What
controls the course of human actions so that they
become not merely an accumulation of events but a
I
�4
Positive Religion.
history ? And the answer in almost every case which
has hitherto been given has laid the basis of man’s
doctrine of God. For, failing to find any response from
without to his questioning, each man has been content
to project upon the phenomena his own image, and in
it to find the cause. As he has gazed upon his own
thought reflected upon the universe, in delight at his
discovery he has exclaimed, Behold the solution of the
mystery! See the Creator of the universe revealed in
the midst of his works !
But now, what are we to do who have been con
vinced of the truth of the phenomenal philosophy ?
who deny that it is in the power of man by any means
to transcend the phenomenal? Such explanations as
others resort to are proscribed to us. We may neither
affirm nor deny anything which rests on conjecture
merely, however seemingly plausible an explanation of
the facts it may be. We are bound down to that
which can be verified, and can only admit -of
hypotheses as the temporary guides of our tentative
inquiries. To us therefore the theories of Polytheism,
Monotheism, Pantheism, and Atheism are alike idle
fancies making affirmations about that of which we can
know nothing. And yet in us nature moves these
feelings of wonder, awe, and mystery as deeply as in
others, and we not less than they intensely long to
penetrate the great secret of the universe. Yes, in
some of us I believe these feelings swell with a power,
an intensity, a consuming fervour others never experi
ence ; and that because we know the questions they
originate can never be answered. What then must we
do ? Are we alone of all mankind doomed to live
without a religion ? Has our culture come to this, that
nothing is left for us to worship ?
Now let us be calm and look at the facts. And,
first, this is clear, the mystery is insoluble; God is
unknowable; we can affirm nothing whatsoever of his
existence. The orthodox no less than we constantly
�Lecture 111.
5
say this. Mr Mansel says it; Sir William Hamilton
said it; the whole School of Locke has always said it;
and indeed all modern philosophers bnt the Cartesians.
Only most of them endeavour by means of a special
revelation or of some specious argument to take back
what they thus have clearly admitted. We however
abide firmly by that admission. We cannot transcend,
we cannot know anything but phenomena and the
relations in which they exist, and therefore we can
neither know God in himself nor explain the mysteries
of the universe. However intense therefore the feelings
which nature inspires within us, however deep and
ardent the longing to explain these mysteries we have
in common with others, we own our inability and never
attempt to satisfy the longing.
But are we therefore worse off than those around us?
We are better off. They in explanation of the
mysteries of the universe create by their fancies an
object they call God, and then fall down and worship
it. We knowing the worthlessness of fancy abstain
from such creations and content ourselves without the
explanation. They in their ignorance glory in their
knowledge.
We in our knowledge confess our
ignorance. At least we have learned this, not to walk
where there is no light to lead. But I meant more
than this when I said that we are better off than they
who delude themselves with the creations of their own
fancy. I meant that the unknowable, the mystery of
the universe, is truer, more real to us, than it is to them,
is more present and has greater and a grander, purer
influence over our feelings. The very fact that we do
not play with it and transmute it into fanciful forms,
but accept it as it is, determines this. I must
however explain what I mean more fully from another
point of view.
We meet, then, with mystery on every side. Directly
we begin to enquire we come upon ultimate facts we
cannot explain. If by means of science we can trace any
�6
Positive Religion.
particular process to the operation of some general law,
not only the general law hut the reason why that general
law gives rise to that process is unknown. The interpreta
tions and revelations of science only multiply the inexplic
able facts. Now, the law of our mind compels us to look
in every case for an explanation, an antecedent to what
we observe. The law has arisen out of our experience,
probably, and depends upon the association of ideas;
but it is not the less imperative and insisting than an
original law of the mind. We cannot escape from it,
and therefore are always asking, how or why these
primary facts exist, and what that is which determines
them to be. We cannot but look for that something ;
we cannot think of them coming to be without it; and
yet we cannot find it; we learn from experience, it lies
and must ever lie beyond our knowledge. But then
this discovery only makes the law more urgent and the
mystery more insistent. At all events, here we are
with the mystery ever before us, ever pressing upon us,
meeting us at every step, in every movement, the most
real, most unquestionable, the truest thing in life.
Speculative philosophers may raise doubts about our
own substantive existence, they may raise doubts about
the correspondence between the outer world and our
own sense presentations of it, every thing in the
universe may be made a subject of doubt, but this one,
the mystery of existence, the unknowableness of the
antecedent of all things, our ignorance of the determin
ing condition or cause of all conditions and causes.
The very doubts which men raise concerning other
things, bring this fact more urgently before us and
leave it an unquestionable reality. And observe, it is
not a mere negative fact, that is thus urged upon us.
It is not merely that we do not know; but that there
is a something we do not know, viz., the antecedent,
determining condition, cause, or source of these facts,
of this universe so mysterious to us. In assuming its
existence we are not transcending our experience j we
�Lecture 111.
7
are merely doing what every natural philosopher, and
indeed what every man or woman does when asking
after the antecedent conditions of any ordinary
phenomenon. We never suppose any phenomenon
comes into existence under any given form without
some pre-existing, determining conditions or cause. In
proportion to the activity of our intellect in every case
we enquire what were these pre-existing, determining
conditions or cause, and in asking of course assuming
the fact of their existence. We are only doing the'
same thing when we assume that there is a something
which determines the existence of the whole universe,
and each of its primary facts and consequents,
although we confess that something can never be
known to us.
Now, this mysterious, unknown, unknowable some
thing, the antecedent of all consequents, the primary
condition of the existence of all objects and their
relations, not only thus seems to us the truest and
most real of all things which occupy our thoughts, but
it fills us with that awe which has ever been considered
the very first element in religion, as nothing else in
the universe can do. All other things, however great
and sublime, however recondite and complicated, we
can hope by patient thought eventually to comprehend
and master. There is not a phenomenal power in the
universe but which we may ultimately comprehend, and
through the comprehension make subservient to our
purpose. But here, before the great mystery, we are
helpless : here is what we can never know, and before
which we must ever subserviently bow down; here is
the limit of both our understanding and our activity,
our knowledge and our action. We are surrounded
with its wonders, and can only exist as we can conform
ourselves to the conditions it has imposed. How
little, how insignificant, we feel before it 1 We are
filled with awe, with reverence, with wonder. Spon
taneously we humble ourselves and worship. What
�8
Positive Religion.
then, shall we call this unknown and unknowable,
determining condition of all existence? this hidden,
mysterious source of the universe ? this all-pervading,
all-comprehending, all-determining something, which,
we know must be, and yet ever eludes our grasp? Call
it! What signifies the name ? No term can name it.
God ! — Fate! —Causa-causarum ! — the All-in-All! —
every word has been abused; and every word therefore
fails to describe the awfulness, the reality of this ever
present mystery. But then, name it we must, and
since all names are insufficient, but some have been
rendered sacred by the use of ages, we will keep to the
sacred names, and call this unknown and unknowable
condition of the universe God and Lord.
But more important than to inquire after names, is
it for us to note that in those deep feelings already so
often enumerated, we have the exercise of the religion
appropriate to such an object of worship. That which
is unknown can in itself possibly call forth no other
feelings than those of wonder, awe, and the sense of
mystery; whatever else in any case is mingled with
these, must come from other and adventitious sources.
Accordingly, as I have before intimated, these feelings
are at the base of all the religions which have ever
existed in the world. Whatever has been superadded
to them, the great mystery of the universe, which has
originated all religions, has inspired only these.
This is very distinctly taught in F. W. Newman’s
book called “ The Soul,” where principles very different
from mine are inculcated. Mr Newman thinks we
have a distinct faculty which he calls the soul, whereby
we immediately apprehend God. In its rudest and
most uncultivated state it simply apprehends him as a
mysterious power which calls forth its wonder and awe.
As it learns more of nature, it rises gradually to the
perception of his wisdom, goodness, love, and holiness,
calling forth the feelings also of admiration, gratitude,
trust, the sense of sin and adoration. And those who
�Lecture 111.
9
are more orthodox than Mr Newman follow very nearly
the same order in their supposed development of the
religions of Jews and Christians through the special
revelations of God. By the side of these matured sys
tems, the simple feelings which constitute the whole
basis of the religion of the Unknowable must appear
very meagre and deficient. But a closer examination
will show us that those other feelings of admiration,
gratitude, trust, the sense of sin and adoration, arise
only by attributing to the object of worship qualities,
the knowledge of which is derived from his works.
Contemplating these works, they discern the order,
beauty, adaptation, and the beneficent results which
arise from them; and by the study of the nature and
history of man discern the moral character of the
system by which he is governed. All that is thus dis
cerned is then transferred to the object of worship, as
expressive of his nature and character, and the feelings
which are excited by it are directed towards him as the
embodiment and source of all which calls them forth.
Now, I do not deny that upon their principles this
process is allowable ; and I freely own that when you
have by such a process constructed a God, it must have
an immense influence over your life. The conception of
such a Being, when realized to the feelings, must wholly
control them and overwhelm the influence of every
other object. But, as we have seen, the principles or
method by which this process is conducted is altogether
false. It is purely subjective. It has no basis of fact
to rest upon. The object of worship is the pure creation
of the fancy. It is an idol in all the bad senses of the
word “idol.”
Nor, when we come to examine into the matter
closely, can we allow that the influence which such an
object has over the feelings and life is wholly good.
This we might, a prion, have expected, from the fact
that the object of worship is an idol. All error contains
within itself the germs of evil in some form. And there
�io
Positive Religion.
are several evils to which this error gives rise—1st,
There is the false trust a sense of personal relationship
to one so infinitely wise and good calls forth, leading to
a childish dependence upon his care, and diverting the
attention from, the study of the laws of Nature, and
from the self-government which is the duty and highest
prerogative of man; 2dly, There are the spurious affec
tions excited by the contemplation of such an object,
giving a transcendental tone to the whole character, and
making one’s nature, so far as they are operative, false
to itself and to all the real objects around it; and 3dly,
There are the efforts aroused to render oneself pleasing
and acceptable to so great a Being, which, being regu
lated by no rational principle, tend to become of a
frenzied and fanatical character, leading to an indiffer
ence towards the ordinary and proper duties and enjoy
ments of everyday life. I might mention other evils ;
but probably they all could be summed up in these,
which so obviously arise out of the belief in question,
that I need not stay to prove the fact.
But now, when we restrain our fancy and refuse to
follow those around us into these creations of an object
for worship, we not only avoid these evils but we do
not lose any of the real good, any of the solid comfort,
of the healthful stimulus to feeling which they suppose
themselves to find. For, as we have seen, they derive
their knowledge of the supposed qualities which call
forth the trust, love, and adoration, &c., from the
study of the works of nature. So that it is, in fact,
not the qualities considered abstractedly, but the works
of nature which elicit the feelings. Accordingly we
find that the pure and simple study of nature produces
the same feelings in us. But then there is this;
difference. They transferring the facts to their idol,
and investing him with them as attributes, they dare
not afterwards question their infinite perfection. We
regarding them simply as facts of nature, are at liberty
to note all the modifications and counteractions, and
�Lecture III.
11
regulate our feelings accordingly. Thus e.g., a study
of nature as a whole leads us to the perception of her
beneficent tendencies. Happiness and good are the
predominating results of her operations, and this
perception calls forth our trust and confidence in the
general issues of life and enables us to repose without
agitating care upon the general course of events. So
far then we are upon the same ground as those who amuse
themselves with the conception of an idol who brings
about these results in consequence of his personal
relationship to themselves. But from this point we
diverge. They are bound by the nature of their
conception of this idol to implicit and universal trust.
We, on the other hand, recognising merely the order of
phenomena, soon discern that there are many contra
dictions to this seeming beneficence. We observe in
the midst of the general good and happiness not a little
evil and suffering. We learn that the good and
happiness depend upon conditions which often are not
realized. We do not place, therefore, implicit trust in
the course of events, nor expect with absolute
certainty the issue of good. We anticipate the possi
bility of evil; our trust is associated with watchfulness;
we calculate on contingencies that will require resistance
and efforts of a painful character to surmount; we
prepare ourselves to meet possible sorrows, that when
they come they may not overwhelm us. Now, surely
everybody must own that it is better thus to moderate
our trust and confidence, since the real facts of life
require it, than to blindly confide in a power and find
in the issue our confidence misplaced.
But again, the contemplation of nature leads us to
the perception of its beauty, loveliness, and fitnesses;
and the contemplation of human nature especially
presents to us its moral and spiritual excellences and
beauty. This perception calls forth towards the whole,
feelings of complacency, delight, and admiring, adoring
affection; whilst towards human nature the more
�12
Positive Religion.
tender affections of appreciation, approbation, and
sympathising love flow forth. And in the exercise of
these feelings there are both joy and stimulus to our
higher sensibilities and powers. Now, I own these
feelings differ much in their character from those of
persons who embody the excellences and beauty of
nature in a personal being. But the difference is
wholly in favour of those who abj ure all but the actual
facts. For in their case the feelings are entirely real,
whilst in the other they are given to a fancied object
which, by the confused and conflicting elements that
are made to enter into its composition, and the mingling
of the infinite and finite, entirely falsifies them, and
gives them a fanatical bias. The love, the adoration,
and the joy in nature of a pure phenomenalist, ennoble
no less than they gladden his whole being; the love,
the adoration, and joy felt by the supernaturalist for
his idol are not indeed without spiritualizing excellences,
but in their highest condition are always based upon a
falsehood, and therefore must necessarily tend to a
degradation of the worshipper.
I think, then, it will appear from these considerations
that nothing is gained when theists proceed to add on
to the pure and ever-present mystery of the universe
which calls forth our wonder and awe, other qualities
of a personal character which call forth the more
personal feelings of trust, confidence, love, adoration,
and such like. On the contrary, by keeping ourselves
to the pure and rigid facts we are saved from an other
wise inevitable fanaticism, and the influence of our
religion in every respect becomes more ennobling and
purifying.
But this does not mean that we must not associate
all the processes of nature, all the facts, issues, and
tendencies we observe in her with that mysterious
unknown before which we adore. On the contrary,
they are necessarily associated with it. For, as I have
explained, and I presume, as we all feel, it is not alone
�Lecture III.
J3
the most generalized facts which suggest this sense of
mystery, but also each individual succession of phe
nomena. We not only feel unable to account for the
universe as a whole, but for each particular connection
between two events. The fire, e. g., burns my flesh and
causes pain. Upon enquiry, I find the following
phenomena explanatory of the fact:—The heat consists
of the motion of the infinitely small particles of the
atmosphere. These striking my flesh with an amazing
although calculable rapidity, like cannon balls striking
a wall, destroy the fine tissues of the skin, and by
exciting the nerves spread over them cause the pain.
Very well; this is the physical explanation so far as we
can carry it. But now, why do those infinitely small
particles cannonading the skin destroy its tissue 1
Why does the destruction so move the nerves as to
cause pain ?
We are absolutely ignorant.
You
observe, then, it is not merely that we cannot compre
hend these facts under more general ones, but each
particular fact, each succession of phenomena in itself
is incomprehensible and full of mystery, and so brings
us into the presence of that unknown something we
call God. In this way all the facts of existence, and
of co-relation, all the processes and laws of the
universe, so far as known to us, are associated with that
unknown condition or cause, and are derivable from it
as consequents. Whatever of order and organization,
whatever of beauty, and beneficence nature discovers
must ultimately be referred and ascribed to it. Nor is
there a single object that comes under our contempla
tion which does not immediately suggest it. And thus
we own, even with a fuller and more consistent mean
ing than the orthodox, that all things are related to,
and dependent upon God ; but we dare not follow
them in their rash inferences of what God must there
fore be. When, e.g., they and we contemplate the
complicated and yet beautiful conditions upon which
the eye is capable of seeing, we both refer them to God,
�14
Positive Religion.
the unknown antecedent of these existent conditions.
But then, they, taking as their guide the analogies of
human nature, proceed to attribute to their God the
human faculty of wisdom and will, in bringing these
conditions about; we, on the other hand, adhering to
our principle that we only can know phenomena, dare
not follow them in such inferences. We own that if
God be like men the organization of the eye would
prove his wisdom or skill in contrivance ; but then we
do not know that he is like men; we do not know
that any of his qualities are like human qualities at all.
We, therefore, would not be so presumptuous as to infer
he possesses anything like human wisdom. We merely
content ourselves with bowing down in wonder, awe,
and reverence, before the unknowable cause of that
wonderful work, the eye and its power of vision. For
all we know that cause may possess personality and all
the mental qualities possessed by man. But also, for
all we know, its qualities or modes, of existence may be
absolutely unlike ours. To attribute human qualities
to it may be as absurd as to attribute them to the
planets or the trees. Surely, therefore, it becomes us
to abstain from such attribution and simply to bow
down and adore.
But now, I know that to uncultivated persons this
abstinence from fancying qualities and modes of
existence to fill up the gaps in our ignorance will be
next to impossible. The undisciplined mind is the
most impatient of uncertainty and doubt. Where it
has not facts to constitute knowledge or to form a
judgment upon, it always precipitately creates them in
its fancy. It is only the cultured, the disciplined, the
matured mind that is capable of suspending its judg
ments, refraining from the formation of opinions, and
confessing its ignorance until it has before it sufficient
facts to justify its proceeding to a conclusion. And
then, in this special case respecting the mode of
the divine existence, the sentiments associated
�Lecture III.
*5
with it are apt to make men more impatient still.
They have so long been accustomed to indulge their
fancies without restraint, and have associated with
them so many of their dearest affections and the whole
system of their morality, that to renounce these fancies
and to own their ignorance, seems like rooting up all
that they esteem precious and good. And then, too,
certain supposed consequences frighten them into pre
cipitancy. “ If,” say they, “ God should after all possess
the same mental characteristics as man, only in infinite
perfection, what a fearful condition they will be in, who
have not recognised and owned them.’’ As if a being
even with human qualities in infinite perfection could
ever be displeased with his creatures for not recognising
what he has given them no faculty to discern ; or as if
he could be pleased by our stumbling upon truth even,
by the exaltation of our fancy over our reason, when
the constitution he has given us expressly requires that
reason should be supreme and that we should only
accept as true, what it can justify.
But however difficult the acquisition of the habit of
restraining our fancy and suspending our judgments may
be, every cultivated and disciplined mind will neces
sarily make the strongest efforts to acquire it. It is
essential to a rational life. By it alone can we escape
those superstitions which, based upon ignorance, are
constantly springing up into existence and carrying
away multitudes of deluded victims. And surely, of
all subjects that can solicit our judgment, none can
require such deliberation, such caution, such restraint
of fancy, such sober and solemn adherence to fact, as
that which concerns the existence of God. I call upon
you, therefore, as rational beings to ponder upon and
accurately examine the real facts of this great question.
Let neither intellectual impatience nor a maudlin
superstitious fear precipitate your conclusions or
prevent you from that calm and logical investigation
which it requires. Follow the truth and nothing but
�16
Positive Religion.
the truth; whithersoever it leads follow it, and that, in
the firm persuasion it can lead to nothing but good.
The positive principles I have set before you, have
been necessarily so mingled with references to other
doctrines that I will conclude by re-stating them in a
brief summary.
We are limited by our faculties to the knowledge of
phenomena in their relations of co-existence and succes
sion. In the study of these phenomena, however, we
instantly come to ultimate facts for which we cannot
account. This incapability fills us with wonder, awe,
and a sense of mystery. But although we cannot
account for them, we are persuaded there is a something
which accounts for them. We could no more suppose
them without an antecedent, a cause which accounts for
them, than any other fact. This unknown and un
knowable antecedent or cause is what we call God. It
pervades the whole universe, and is related to every
individual object inasmuch as the same mystery, the
same impotency, is developed in the whole and in every
object. But although this cause, condition, or ante
cedent is connected with every object, we can infer
nothing respecting its nature or attributes, excepting the
one attribute of anteceding or conditioning. In itself
it is unknown and unknowable excepting as the
unknown. The only devout feelings therefore appro
priate to it are those already named, wonder, awe, and
the sense of mystery. How worship, and especially
public worship, emerges out of this I shall show in the
next lecture.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Positive religion : its basis and characteristics. Lecture III
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Cranbrook, James
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Thomas Scott
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[n.d.]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RA1601
G5748
Subject
The topic of the resource
Positivism
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Positive religion : its basis and characteristics. Lecture III), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Positivism
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/32ec916ad42036f04a9aa7ab0399f8d4.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=pXztEzZowBbPvpcmKbdsI%7EbShNs1El-GSYJQVVRtHcmrn4dTeJOzDGuehsAWaotUw%7ENLbukpBS5-oermvmt2XUFl1X2JiOAnhmsFj0ILGqLu075Cvp1%7EbKJpG8MB-qVqckgR9%7E0nbceTBRU3mxFxnXDfVclbbKrqcaADcDOxvPEX4auVYmVDQzWxlhDhCoNuR-mZSeVVIVNJUYrxIH-6Y4el8daHxr03CIvUG9-GhONXjhOXpqDjNBL0aSLD3GzgE0rO6WC5pLcK0BAcYhOcSJx2F3v8zbuwEu%7EL66lV-cWbsw1v5Mvs60I6uuEQx3b-5QcfAweCkL6zZRDPLZSNiA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
e1ab9c718c291a63ada2f728be1ec21f
PDF Text
Text
��������
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Egotisms
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Goodman, D.
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: [1]-8 p. ; 25 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Modern Thinker, July 1870.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1870
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5728
Subject
The topic of the resource
Positivism
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Egotisms), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Positivism
Reason
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/5016ad7a0fdc744766b573701db430d5.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=GXwEzi5xEVeO8Sp92x4uongUGzUy65nUhf5qrwa3G5MCZQly1%7EVVbCnYG6yJhVHCi7GEegqPlowe-DUmyf1tC74jUHxDJ7v3%7EovVY5j%7EP8fXEcHqbGPTZwYSu3MKwwkk84TthmUjioqDnbFGjc2TxCpggMq9exg9cYrTJeqVGMpzl4pjTY5REaL1kdsE3SdCtaSqtxaECBvQjs4-KN8wyhYj59cNRjO5KtejMs2%7E1I-lJr4zBE3fmjvA5-3lk3OgU51jKskJ-u7PqbMkuJkcFW8KCM17z-PSKUaftSjhUv1DB7vfln2dz6OQnvT8Suk6%7EGD9ffl3oreaWfnPoBAd%7Eg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
5d615b8add7e4334443f79c054e75cae
PDF Text
Text
THE
CAUSE OF HUMANITY,
O R
THE WANING AND THE RISING FAITH.
An Essay
from the
Standpoint of the
POSITIVE
PHY,
By COURTLANDT PALMER.
Read
before the
Society
of
Humanity, Sunday, March 3d, 1878,
With subsequent Revisions and Additions.
PUBLISHED FOR THE
SOCIETY OF HUMANITY,
141 Eighth Street,
NEW YORK.
Copyright 1879, by Cortlandt Palmer.
��PREFATORY
LETTER.
T. B. Wakeman, Esq.,
JZy Dear Friend:
Many indulgent hearers who have kindly listened to
the reading of this Essay have requested me to publish
it. In doing so allow me to dedicate it to you ; for I
feel that to you, more than to any one individual, I owe
not only deliverance from the superstitions of the old
theology, but a firm and abiding sense of salvation in
the new faith of Science.
I make, for this paper, little or no claim to original
ity. My object has been to present a summarized state
ment of my faith as it is held and expounded by the
Society of Humanity. I have tried to tell “ a plain, un
varnished tale,” “ to naught extenuate, nor set down
aught in malice,” and to do this in a way so simple
“ that he who runs may read.”
As is the inevitable fate of anyone who departs from
the commonly received religious belief, my opinions
have been subjected to all sorts of misrepresentations.
The appelatious Spiritualist, Communist, and other
epithets still more objectionable, have been unhesita
tingly applied to me, none of which, it should be need
less for me to say, serve at all to explain my position.
We positivists must expect to be misunderstood in re
gard not only to our doctrines but also in respect to our
conduct and our aim. I believe that I personally, sup
ported as I feel myself by the nobleness of our philoso
phy and the rectitude of my own endeavor, am quite in
�8
different to these uncharitable misconstructions, nor
would any motives of mere egotistical explanation ever
induce me to appear in print. I mean that were it a
question of myself alone, I should prefer to remain
silent, to quietly live my life and be judged by the fruits
thereof; but for the sake of my family and of many
friends who are interested in knowing what I really
think, I have been moved to write out this compendium
of my views. In this attempt, wherever I have found
the language of another which I thought would serve
to express my meaning better than my own pool* words
could do, I have not hesitated to quote it. I may per
haps rather say that it has delighted me to call in the
aid of such powerful auxilaries, prominent among whom
are Comte and Spencer, to say nothing of yourself.
In two instances I have been unable to put these ex
tracts in quotation marks for the reason that they have
been so adapted, altered and inwrought into my text that
even their own authors would hardly recognize their off
spring. One case of this kind is the description of doc
trinal Christianity which I found in reading “ the Pil
grim and the Shrine;” the other is my statement of
Morality in which Mr. F. E. Abbott’s “ Fifty Affirma
tions ” partially assisted me. I here render to these
writers my acknowledgment.
That the few readers I may chance to have may not
labor under any misunderstanding as to my meaning of
the terms “ Positivism ” and “ The Religion of Human
ity,” I wish here to state distinctly that I agree with you
in the propriety of dissociating them in due measure
from the system of Comte. I gladly accord to that most
noble and most able man the first place in this connec
tion, but, as you so well said in your last address before
the Free Religious Association: “ we agree with the
“ rest of the world in thinking that the true philosophy
4‘ and religion of our race is not, and cannot be, the pen-
�9
“ dant of any personality, however great; but that the
“ personality must be regarded as a pendant or incident
“ of the religion.” Thus not only Comte but Spencer,
not only Decartes but Plato, not only Jesus, but Con
fucius, Buddha and Mahomet; in truth all great think
ers, scientists and prophets, ancient and modern, are
gladly adopted as our guides. Paul may plant and Appolos water ; it is Humanity alone that giveth the in
crease.
Although my Essay has extended itself far beyond
the limits of an evening lecture, 1 have still thought it
best to have it in its original form of an address before
an audience.
Trusting that my feeble effort may be instrumental in
helping some few strugglers who are toiling to work
their way towards the light of truth, and that thus they
may be saved some of the mental agony I underwent in
my transition from the Religion of Christ to the Religion of Humanity, I remain,
Sincerely Your Friend,
CoURTLANDT PALMER.
�10
“ Where thou findest a lie that is oppressing thee, ex
tinguish it. Lies exist there only to be extinguished;
they wait and cry earnestly for extinction. Think well,
meanwhile, in what spirit thou wilt do it: not with ha
tred, with headlong selfish violence ; but in clearness of
heart, with holy zeal, gently, almost with pity.”
— Thomas Carlyle.
“ To destroy, you must replace,”
“ Ou ne detruit que ce qu'on remplace ”—Comte.
“ Unceasingly strive
From the half life to wean ourselves;
And in the whole, the good, the beautiful,
Resolutely to live.”—Goethe.
Faire le bien, Connaitre le vrai.
To do the good, know the true.—Motto of Diderst.
“ The world is my country; to do good is my relig
ion.”—Thomas Paine.
Those who can read the signs of the times, read in
them that the kingdom of man is at hand.—Professor
Clifford.
�THE
CAUSE OF HUMANITY.
Ladies and Gentlemen :
Did I need any apology for presenting this essay to
the attention of my audience, I should find it in the fol
lowing words which I adapt from Herbert Spencer,
where he says : ££ whoever hesitates to utter that which
“ he thinks to be the highest truth, lest it should be too
*£ much in advance of the time, may reassure himself by
“ looking at his acts from an impersonal point of view.
“ Let him duly realize the fact that opinion constitutes
“ the general power which works our social changes, and
4£ he will perceive that he may properly give full utter•“ ance to his innermost conviction, leaving it to produce
“ what effect it may. It is not for nothing that he has
££ in him these sympathies with some principles and re££ pugnance to others. He with all his capacities and
££ aspirations and beliefs, is not an accident but a prot£ duct of the time. He must remember that while he is
££ a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future;
££ and that his thoughts are as children born to him,
££ ■which he may not carelessly let die. Not as adven<c titious therefore will the wise man regard the faith
,££ which is in him. The highest truth he sees he will
fearlessly utter ; knowing that, let what may come of
�12
“ it, he is thus playing his right part in the world—
“ knowing that if he can effect the change he aims at,
“ well: if not—well also ; though not so well.”
This eloquent language is a sufficient justification for
anyone to speak his thought when he feels that his
thought is worth the speaking. Christ of old was cal
led the Way, the Truth and the Life. I feel that to us
of the modern era a new way, a truer truth, and a larger
life is opened. Old things are passing away and all
things are becoming new. Our times are pealing forth
the trumpet tones of mighty change. Vast questions
are pending in politics, art, and industry. The new
wine can no longer be kept in the old bottles. Every
breeze that sweeps the ocean sings a new deliverance for
man, or wafts as from an Aeolian harp the pleasing
notes of advancing science.
The press is filled with the unrest of disturbed con
victions. Every week and month journal and magazine
deal trenchant blows against the strongholds of theology,
oi’ build up brick by brick the beauteous temple of Hu
manity. Phoenix-like from the ashes of the old faith
we behold arising the world-wide pinions of the new.
The pulpit itself is wavering. With each passing
fortnight comes the report that this clergyman is leading
a reformed movement in his church, or that that one
withdraws entirely from his flock. Of the broad church
of England, under the leadership of Dean Stanley, it
may not, perhaps, be speaking too strongly to say that
they are casting out devils in the name of the Religion
of Humanity. Repeating the words of the great Nazarene we can say that he that is not against us is for us,
and he that gathereth not with us scattereth abroad. A
general view of the situation cannot fail to impress us
with the conviction that the creeds of Christendom are
becoming hard of assimulaticn even for those trained to
their digestion. Church is contending against church
�13
sect against sect is waging deadly warfare: and although
the cathedral of theology still points its spire to the sky,
although the dim religious light of ages steals through
Gothic windows painted with the rarest art, bathing in
its softened rays pillar, aisle and dome; although priests
kneel in spotless surplice, and worshippers bow with
adoring knee, there still is wanting one great presence,
The once true God is no longer there ! The edifice so
fair in form is weak at the foundation. Its worn-out
beams are sinking under the dry-rot of doubts, which the
church can no longer meet nor overcome.
Most of us have heard that noted lecturer, Col. Robert
G-. Ingersoll, who is carrying throughout this land his
onslaught against superstition. He is not a professed
believer in the Religion of Humanity, but still, as a
grand pioneer, he is one of the van-guard of the army
of progress whose office it is to destroy and clear away
in order that riper constructives may come in and pos
sess the land that he has conquered. From the lips of
this valiant champion I heard on one occasion the fol
lowing remark ; he said: “I occupy this platform by
reason of the infidelity of the churches. And so it
was, for no further back than ten years ago he would
have been persecuted, or perhaps, even stoned for the
expression of such radical utterances.
All these and many other signs show beyond perad
venture that our age is the age of a great transition, the
greatest as yet witnessed in the history of our race. The
handwriting is plainly seen upon the wall.
The fiat
has gone forth. With trembling knees the Belshazzar
of superstition beholds the “Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin,” which forewarns him that the power of ignorance
is doomed, and that emancipation is dawning for man
kind ; while, on the other hand, the pilgrim, toiling up
the steep and narrow way of progress, beholds’the salva
tion of the race in the universal reign of law.
�14
For evolution rules the world of man as surely as
gravitation dominates the world of matter. Under the
resistless sway of law the stars revolve in their deter
mined course, and man is hurried on to progress. The
mighty car of change sweeps on, an engine of destruc
tion to those who would resist it, but to those who ac
cept its protection, it becomes at once a palladium of
safety, and a vehicle that bears them to a higher life.
Still, advance comes only at the price of effort and
conflict. It will not do to rest supinely on our backs
and lay the pleasing unction to our souls that the spon
taneous movement of the race will attain the end desired.
As Comte says: “ In order to complete the laws, there
“ is need of our wills.” Evolution therefore is not to
be taken as a moral sedative, or excuse for idleness, but
rather as an incitement to action and enthusiasm. It is
we who are the factors of the problem. On us depends
the coming era. It is for us, therefore, not only to re
ceive the rich legacies of the past, but to transmit them
improved and brightened to the future. To effect this,
the soldiers of Humanity must not fear to buckle on
their armor and defend their convictions to the utter
most. The smallness of their numbers is no real cause
of fear: one man in the right is a majority against a
million, and, as conservative liberals, they can cherish
the assured hope that in the end their opinions must sur
vive, not only because they are the fittest, but because
they are the best.
The parties to this conflict are and can be only two.
On the one side, the myriad hosts of supernaturalism
launch their thunders from behind “ the baseless fabrics
of their visions,” while, on the other side, the little army
of science stand entrenched within the impenetrable
breastworks of our solid earth. Against this inexpug
nable rampart fall alike harmless the anathema of pope,
and the frenzied rage of ignorance ; while every shot
�15
sent forth from the camp of true knowledge, pierces the
frail defences of theology, scattering terror through its
midst.
And so of necessity must it be ; for it is the war of
new weapons against old weapons, of the Sharpe rille
against the bow of the savage, of new intellectual re
sources against old intellectual resources.
I earnestly hope in criticising Christianity that I may
not seem to do so in the spirit of blind hatred. I well
remember it as the earnest faith of my own childhood
taught me at my mother’s knee, a mother to whom it
was the comfort and stay of life, as it still is to millions
like her. And even now I recognize and freely allow
that the Religion of Jesus, on its heart or human side,
has taught mankind the noblest lessons of love and duty.
On these grounds, I shake hands with the theologians,
and am glad to call them brethren, but when they turn
to the head or doctrinal side of their creed and attempt
to teach us the misleading and immoral tenets of the
Fall of Man, Vicarious Atonement, Election and Hell,
against these pious lies (to be more fully considered here
after^ I maintain that any honest thinking man should
enter his earnest protest; and I feel that such an one
might well be pardoned if in his wrath against these
dwarfing dogmas we found him uttering as his own that
famous malediction of Voltaire when, a century ago he
flung in the teeth of the priesthood and of all Europe
those memorable -words “ Ecrasez 1’ infame,” (crush the
infamous thing), for that great hero felt, as all should
feel, that on the denial of these dismal falsehoods hangs
the welfare of mankind.
The difference at bottom between the two parties is a
difference of method. Both the Religion of Christ
and the Religion of Humanity uphold beneficence
virtue, love, self-sacrifice, sympathy, and every other
noble attainment. But one employs theological or
�16
supernatural means and methods, while the other
resorts only to scientific and human means or methods,
the deep signification of which is that Christianity de
pends on imaginative and fictitious expedients which
can only serve to defeat its own most cherished pur
poses, while Positivism takes no steps except those
which in the light of science facilitate its high endeav
ors, and establish truth and virtue.
I have said that the parties to this conflict are and can
be only two ; viz., the theologians and the philosophers
of science. Many clergymen, to be sure, as previously
remarked, show progressive tendencies, and some even
desire to be ranked among the liberals. It may be that
such men, placed as they are midway in this great tran
sition, are performing a most effective service. They
administer milk to their religious babes, and help to
guide their feeble steps by the leading strings of modern
thought; but theologians they are and theologians they
remain. Like men riding backward in a railroad car,
either their gaze is turned towards heaven, or, if they
cast their eyes to earth, ’tis but to see the landscape they
have passed. The great onward destiny of man they
dimly see and only half appreciate. These are the men
who preach the reconciliation of science and religion,
unknowing that science and religion need no reconcilia
tion, that they are in their essential nature one . Not
therefore till in place of the words “ Religion and
science, they can speak the words, “ The Religion of
Science,” can such men be entitled to a place in the lib
eral ranks. We welcome all signs of advance, and
therefore we bless the priest who extols Science to his
congregation, not, however, because he really adheres
to the new ideal, but because his teachings, like the
boomerang, return to destroy the false parts of his
creed.
Such preachers having committed themselves to ra
�17
tional Science are obliged to maintain for the sake of
consistency that their religion also is rational. Unfor
tunate dilemma !! Much to be pitied men, while with
doubting hands they offer their Evidences of Christian
ity and claim that there can be such a thing as a Natu
ral Theology, or a Science of Theology—Natural Supernaturalism ; a science or knowing of the Z7h-knowable!
Why, for the sake of their own side and their own con
sistency, can they not drop at once and forever all ap
peal to reason and support themselves on what ordinary
mortals, from their standpoint, would deem all sufficient,
viz., an infallible God, who in an infallible bible, tells
the infallible truth. To the weakness of the Positivistic
mind it does really seem as if the Christian’s appeal
to reason means the surrender of his doughtiest strong
hold. Where the need thereof ? Is not the word of
God sufficient of itself ? — No! No! No! Let me con
jure both Christian and Liberal thinkers that they de
ceive not themselves. Between science and doctrinal
theology there can be no truce. As men of large char
ity and students of the philosophy of history, we may
recognize whatever services the various creeds have in
past times rendered to humanity; still, we cannot fail to
perceive that, as the case stands to-day, they are both
striving for the same places, and are contrary the one to
the other; and those, therefore, who endeavor to float
the banner of evolution in the name of God are only
acting at once in opposition to their own belief and ours.
Infallible revelations can never for long adapt themselves
to changing environments, and therefore it seems to
me that for such Christians there is only one of two con
sistent courses, viz., either to content themselves with
their own iron-bound revelation, and to bow before their
chosen God, with whom is neither variableness nor
shadow of turning; or else, to renounce their idolatrous
�18
adherence to a bible, which, by its assumption of com
pleteness leaves no place for the idea of progress.
I have alluded to the unrestful religious feeling
that broods over our century. I have also described the
contending parties of advance and retrogression. I
now approach my main topic.
THE CAUSE CF HUMANITY.
What is it ?
Before describing what it is, it will not, perhaps, be
amiss to describe what it is not; since a negative defi
nition will render the affirmative one clearer.
Our cause, then, is not the cause of doctrinal theloogy, which represents a tyrant God, who created his
children, placed them in an Eden of forbidden delights,
and then required of them an obedience which by the
deification of Christ (who alone was able to fulfil the
law) could not be rendered by any earthly man however
perfect, and when they yielded a little to the first temp
tation in the garden, this heavenly ruler condemned
them and their unborn offspring to unspeakable tor
tures forevermore; all of which is simply saying that
the cause of Humanity is not the cause of a God who
made men finite and imperfect, and then condemned
them for not being infinite and perfect, and who would
only be propitiated towards them by the blood and
agony of the only innocent one who had never offended
Him, and that one his only-begotten son. No human
father requires a compensation or sacrifice before he
can pardon a repentant child, so I ask the Christians,
Is man more tender than their God, and is the thing
made an unfaithful index to the character of its maker ?
If their God be so infinitely pure as to detest sin, how
came he to admit its defilement into his work ? If so
infinitely just how came he to make men (the work of
his own hands) responsible for the flaws in their con
�19
struction ? If so infinitely merciful and lo/ing, why so
averse to pardon his erring children ? If so infinitely
powerful why allow an evil demon to devastate the fair
domain of his creation ? Why ! such doctrine deposes
their God from his high place, and makes. their Devil
triumphant to all eternity! Evangelical Christianity
simply means Devil worship !!
“ You preach Him to me to be just,
And this is His realm you say,
While the good are dying of hunger,
And the bad gorge every day.
You say that He loveth mercy,
And the famine is not yet gone,
That He hateth the shedder of blood,
And He slayeth us every one.”
To sum up in a word, the theologic conception of
God is to the human mind and heart an inexplicable
bundle of riddles and immoralities. Such, it is needless to
say is not the cause of Humanity. What, then, is it ?
In the place of these stultifying contradictions I af
firm that
THE CAUSE OF HUMANITY IS THE CAUSE
OF TRUTH.
Arid Pilate said, What is Truth ? and his question has
been echoed and re-echoed by the ages. How simple at
last is the answer! Truth is human knowledge, that
which man does or can know. But, here comes in the real
enquiry, What can man know ? 'What are the limits of
human knowledge f Can we, as the theologians claim,
grasp such a conception as that of the infinite? Can
the mind, in other words, force itself outside of its con
ditions, and soar in the thin ether of the unconditioned?
“ Can the finite the infinite search ?”
“ Did the blind discover the stars ?”
�20
No ! no! let us away with such vain imaginings,
which modern philosophy declares to be utterly un
thinkable ; for its teaching tells us that to think at all,
we must have a thing to think of, and that that thing
can only be known by its likeness or unlikeness to ano
ther thing. In other words, a thing to be known must
be defined, and to be defined it must be compared.
By this test, the infinite becomes simply the unknow
able. No one can even attempt to realize the infinite
(the illimitable) except by defining it, and the moment
he does that he immediately imposes limits upon it, and
makes it the finite and no longer the infinite. He
limits or attempts to limit the illimitable.
In like manner, all enquiries into first and final causes
are foreign to science, and perfectly fruitless. How,
for instance, can the mind rest in the conception of an
uncaused first cause ? Why not just as well an un
caused world as an uncaused God ?
The human soul, likewise, as an immaterial entity,
separate from and independent of the body, is, in the
same manner, swept away by the besom of this law of
thought. I say nothing of the probable denial which
anatomy and physiology present to this conception,
but I ask as before, What is the soul or what is it not,
what like or what unlike ? And echo answers, what ?
Thus we find that the theological definitions of God,
and also of the human soul, are utterly misleading. All
these conceptions are undefinable, and unverifiable.
For the real purposes of life, such words must either
have attached to them some true and scientific meaning,
or else we must affirm, that what they attempt to repre
sent are mere non-existences.
The principle thA has thus been stated in these con
densed terms is the famous doctrine of the Relativity
of Human Knowledge, which simply means, as before
shown, that our minds, by their very constitution, are
�'
21
forced to consider things in their likeness or unlikeness
to each other, ?. e., in their relations. This law is the
basis of all human truth. It is as much a condition of
thought, as breathing is a condition of life; and it
forms the great wall of partition between the true and
the imagined, between the knowable and the unknowa
ble, between theology and science. It says to the mind
that thus far it may go but no further, and that here must
its proud waves be stayed. It tells us that while we may
cling to the relative (that is, to the known and the
knowable) beyond as ever stretches the irrelative (the
infinite, the illimitable) there to remain forever a terra
incognita, a No-mans land.
We show by this law that the Cause of Humanity
is that of Truth. “But,” I hear the theologian cry,
“you take away my God, you take away my soul !!
What, what do you leave me ?” “ Take away your
God” I answer, “ take away your soul! No ! no !
What we banish are but the specters of the mind ! We
only take away your GHOSTS ! We lift from the
ages the incubus of a mighty night-mare.”
And what do we leave you ?
Here comes in the important question the Christians
have a perfect right to ask. What are we positivists
to provide as a substitute for the “ Waning Faith ?” To
this I reply as follows:
Firstly: We give you if nothing else
EMANCIPATION.
We award you deliverance from the debasing supersti
tions of a vain imagination, we free you from the worst
of all hells, the hell of doubt. We liberate you from
that worst of all responsibilities, the responsibility of a
soul to save or lose. We bid you stand forth, like the
slave freed from his fetters, in all the conscious dignity
of manhood.
�22
But more, much more than this we give you, for
Secondly: The cause of Humanity is the cause not
only of Emancipation, but also of
FRUITFUL
TRUTH, AS EXPRESSED
SCIENCE.
IX
I have spoken a few pages back of the doctrine of
the relativity of human knowledge as the cause of
truth : so indeed it is, for it is the invaluable doctrine
which points out clearly to us the inevitable boundaries
between the knowable and the unknowable, but by itself
alone it is totally insufficient, and science, fruitful science
becomes the real creed of the new faith. Demonstration
not Revelation is our watchword. As some one has
beautifully said, “ Our belief is one with the falling
rain and the growing corn.”
I do not propose, Ingersoll-like, to merely preach in
place of the dying faith the gospel of the railroad,
telegraph and postoffice. We positivists are no worship
pers of a bald materialism, though we are free to say
that even this view is not undeserving of attention, for
science since the sixteenth century has transformed the
features of the globe, and re-created the substantial
well-being of the race. Comparing our new era with
the middle age we find, for example, that a real medical
art has supplanted shrine cure, that comparative health
and comfort bloom where pestilence then trampled
millions into noisome graves ; we find good roads and
lands redeemed, where formerly the wayfarer struggled
through pitfalls or fell a victim to miasmatic poison.
And thus we might go on reciting by the hour these ma
terial benefactions of science, for their name is Legion;
but it is aside from our object. We wish here only to
recall those larger generalizations which form the great
intellectual treasures of the race,—the philosophy of
science, from which fall the 'material discoveries and
�•
uz
23
arts, as do ripening fruits from the tree that bears
them.
I would first allude to the great law of The Correla
tion of Force and Matter. This is an affirmative truth
astonishing in its reach and results. It proves to us that
matter is indestructible, and that force is ever persistent, that all change expresses itself in these two terms,
and that all phenomena are but re-distributions of these
factors. In the light of this law life itself is seen as
“bottled sunshine,” and the very words I am now using
had their source in the charges of light and heat of our
great luminary.
We discover in this law of correlation the final unity
of objective science; for by it the organic and inor
ganic world, mind and matter, are brought into a know
able relation as parts of this wondrous cosmical order.
This fundamental truth can only be consistently held
by the new faith, for by it all duality of conception,
such as God as opposed to Man, Heaven as contrasted
with Earth, a spiritual life in contradistinction to a
worldly life, must be forever discarded, and, in their
place, we obtain the grand monistic conception of the
unity of force and matter ; wherein all things, organic
and inorganic, appear but asparts of one stupendous
whole.”
This new conception as opposed to the old is well pre
sented to the mind in the symbol of a circle as contrast
ed with a straight line. The old idea was the straight
line with God at one end, man and the world at the
other; but the circle, without beginning or end, can
alone picture the grandeur of the everlasting flow of
phenomena as now we know them.
Turn we now for another illustration of the same gene
ral topic to the teachings of Astronomy and Geology.
The old faith presents such astonishing cosmical revela-
�24
tions as the following : “ Again the devil taketh Jesus
“ up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him
“ all the kingdoms of the 'world, and the glory of them.”
Matt, iv—8.
“ And it came to pass while he blessed them he was
« parted from them and carried up into heaven.” Luke
xxiv—51.
These two texts,'though doubtless possessing allegori
cal value, display complete unaccjuaintance with the
facts of the rotundity of the earth and its revolution
on its axis. No miracle could make us believe that
Jesus saw the antipodes, and in the continual motion of
the earth there can be no such conception as up to
heaven since what is up one hour is down another.
Thus these two texts form excellent illustrations of
the old geological and astronomical notions. The
earth, under this, (at the time, natural) illusion, was be
lieved to be a flat, extended, stationary plane, all the
kingdoms of which could be seen from a high eleva
tion. Heaven was just a little way above it, at most
not more than a mile or so, and its floor was the crys
talline dome of the sky. Here was distinctly located
the realm of the blessed. Here the eternal harpers dis
coursed their ecstatic strains. Here the angels, for oc
cupation, bore onwards during the night not only the
moon whereby to illumine the earth, but also other
“ lesser lights,” like Jupiter, Neptune and Sirius.
A
somewhat larger lamp they kindly held aloft pioducing
daylight.
The celestial architect, inhabiting this supernal re
gion, conceived the idea some six thousand years ago of
making an earth. He completed the task in six days,
and then feeling tired rested on the seventh.
Silly as this primitive cosmogeny now appears, the
old faith, in reality, is nothing without it, for on it de
pended the localization of heaven and hell, the one
�25
placed above, the other below the earth; but how piti
ful, how sadly childish it appears in view of the real re
velations of science, which prove that this earth is not
the recent creation of a divine mechanic, but a planet
which for inconceivable time has revolved around its
central sun. Vast transformations have occurred upon
its surface. Continents have risen and fallen. Great
systems of life have followed one upon another, mark
ing their birthdays not by years but by centuries.
And this little earth, so hoary with age, so venerable
with change, is itself but a tiny speck amid the starpeopled fields of space. From the great nebula of
Orion it would be indiscernible even with the aid of the
most powerful telescope. Could we in imagination
take the wings of the morning and fly to the outermost
parts of our astronomical system, still beyond us would
stretch space and stars, space and stars, till the sense is
dazed and the mind benumbed in the contemplation.—
The telescope has pierced the infinite depths, revealing
orbs whose lightning-speeding rays consume millenia in
reaching us, but the telescope reveals—no heaven—
There is a curious little book called Erehwon, the letters
of which being re-transposed, read “ Nowhere.” Sci
ence has transformed Heaven into Erehwon. God,
if he exists, is a homeless wanderer in the Infinite.
But I fancy I hear the old question of Napoleon,
“ Whence came all these stars ?” I could reply by
giving you the nebular-hypothesis or the aggregation
theory, and so present a proximate explanation, but I
am content to answer in all humility “ I know not.”
Nor do we need to know. Any fact of science traced
to its ultimatum, brings us face to face with facts which
are impenetrable to any human capacity. We have, how
ever, no warrant to invoke the pseudo mystery theolo
gians call God to solve the real mystery that surround
us. We, as positivists, are content to take our mysteries
�26
at first hand, and do not presume to measure the infi
nite by the little foot-rule of human experience.
But if Astronomy has deprived the theologian of
his heaven, it has certainly shown him what the posi
tion of his earth is in the universe. If rightly inter
preted it tells him that on this contracted isle in the
ocean of the infinite is to be wrought out his destiny
and that of the race of which he is a member. It tells
him that the celestial spheres have departed, that the
old false world is gone, but that his true home is here
on earth, and that he must now turn, not to the angelic
hosts, but to his fellow-man for aid and comfort.
Since this is so ; since, in other words, we must now
look to Humanity instead of God, it becomes of para
mount importance to know the laws not only of the
inorganic, but also of the organic world. We there
fore shut the leaves of the old fable, and open the new
book of Genesis, which reveals the law of evolution, as
exemplified in the studies of Biology and Sociology;
the former being the science of plant and animal life 5
the latter, the science of society.
Geologists are well agreed that there was a time when
no life existed on this planet. We also know that all
living substances are composed, of protoplasmic cells.
Life must, therefore, have first appeared in the form of
this colloid substance, which lias been analyzed and
found to consist of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen,
a little sulphur and pliosporus. Such is the physical
basis of life, and, under the law of correlation, the
alternative seems to be inevitably thrust upon us that
from the combination of these elements resulted that con
dition of matter, whose organic action we call life, the
definition of life being the interplay between an or
ganism and its environment, and thought the miiror
that reflects them.
�Protoplasm is therefore the bridge between the or
ganic and the inorganic worlds. The peculiarity of
this substance is its wonderful quality of increment
and growth. By means of this peculiarity, and by
adaptation and re-adaptation to its environment, by the
survival of the the fittest in the struggle for existence,
by the transmission through inheritance of acquired
superiorities, came that vast development of animal life,
recorded in the unalterable history of the rocks, and
kept concealed in those rough pages till the wand of
science, with its “ open sesame,” revealed these miracles
of nature.
Well, this process of advancing life went on till the
higher animals were developed, and with them man. If
anyone still entertains a doubt of the descent of man
from some form of the anthopoid ape, let him visit some
museum of natural history and study the appearance,
manners and formation of the Gibbon and Chimpanzee.
One look will be worth a hundred arguments, and the
distant relationship will appear two plain to be honestly
disowned. To-day even there are savages existing far
nearer the condition of the highest ape than they are to
civilized man.
“ Shocking” cries our objector, and we also seem to
hear him say, “ I do not wish to believe it even if it is
true;” to which we rejoin that we rejoice in it, because
it makes our life at one with the great life of this globe.
It protects our being by placing it in the lap of law. It
shows to us our destiny. It tells us whence we came
and whither we are going. Better the developing ape
than the degraded angel. The ape progressive opens
boundless vistas for the Future of the Race ; the angel
fallen tolls the knell of human hope,
These ^primeval ancestors of anthropoid origin were
the completest possible contradiction to those Paradi
saical creatures into whom the Almighty is fabled to
�28
have breathed the breath of life, creating them, so says
the legend, in his own image. They were, as a matter
of fact and science, but a grade above the beasts, and
it was only when they first began to associate, for of
fence, defence, or other purpose, that they laid thefoundation of Society and Manhood, for, “ man is not
man, but in Society Man means Society.”
Co-evally with that association doubtless came the
first dull glimmerings of language, the sine qua non to
social advancement. The savage learned also to make
a fire ; another great step in human progress. TribaL
union came. The untutored intellect began to ask
itself the great questions of the whence, the where, and
the whither. It looked around on nature. It saw the
grasses grow, the leaves waving in the breeze, the brook
lets dancing in the sunshine, and the stars pursuing
their silent courses. All nature seemed in motion.”
“ Whence these motions ? asked the savage. Must not
“ these objects move just as I move ? My will directs
“ my motion. Wills, therefore, must also direct theirs.”
Thus came the first great stage of religion—Fetichism,
in which all nature seemed alive, in which all things
that moved, whether animate or inanimate, were inter
preted as being actuated by wills.
By this incipient philosophy, rude and primitive as it
now appears, the human mind was saved-from chaos. In
the absence of science no other theory was possible.
All nature was alive, actually alive. To the fetichist
there were literally books in the running brooks, sermons
in stones, and God in everything. He was the most
complete of theologians the world has ever, or ever will
behold, for he always lived in the midst of a constant
communion with his surrounding deities.
But the savage had other experiences. , He saw
visions and dreamt dreams. In the watches of the
night appeared to him his friend or enemy, nay even.
�29
his own self. These apparitions to him were realities.
To each man, therefore, the savage reasoned, belonged a
second self, a veritable alter ego, which was a spirit or
ghost, the belief in which was confirmed by such
strange phenomena as the breath appearing and fading
away, or the shadow following in snch silent mystery.
Herein we discover the historical origin of the
human soul, considered as an entity. As an illusion it
arose and as such is fast fading away.
Nor is this all. If these strange appearances could
live separate from the body during life, why not after
death ? So a place had to be prepared for departed
spirits, located sometimes on a mountain, sometimes in
a cave; sometimes above, sometimes below the earth.
Thus, also, do we find the historical foundations of
heaven and hell, a doctrine natural to and consistent
with that old savage theory of things, but an utter ano
maly in the state of our present knowledge.
Still, social advance went on. The original nomadic
life became changed to that of agriculture and the care
of flocks. Men found a settled abode in the great river
valleys, like the Tigris and Euphrates. It was the be
ginning of home life.
There was now more time for contemplation. The
care of harvests and cattle led the people to watch the
skies. The lesser fetiches began to fade in interest be
fore the sun and stars, and astrolatry set in. The great
Gods were thus seen as further off, and the mind be
came prepared to separate the wills, deities and spirits
from the objects they inhabited. Then came the next
great religious stage Polytheism. For men had begun
to notice uniformities in nature. The gods of each
tree, for example, were condensed into the God of the
Forest. The great divisions of the universe, Earth,.
Hades (or Hell) and Heaven were assigned to their re
spective rulers.
�30
But still along the ages the process continued of the
weeding out of the deities, for completer observations
of nature and larger scientific conceptions were forcing
the minds of men towards a larger unity, (especially
under the influence of the great amalgamation of the
Roman Empire,) and Monotheism was the result.
Idol worship was the first stage, Fetichism. Idol
worship was the second stage, Polytheism. And idol
worship is the third stage (their direct successor) Mono
theism. What matters it whether the idol be one carved
by the hand or created by the mind ? Has not Comte
well described the God of Christianity by applying to it
the term “La Grand Fetiche?”
But observe the process. With the advance of real
knowledge, the Gods of false knowledge have been ex
terminated one by one, or relegated to a greater dis
tance ; and thus through the ages has the great war gone
on between science and theology. Every advance meant
fewer gods, or the same god attenuated or driven fur
ther off; and the course of human history show’s that
this earth can never stand redeemed till God and Satan,
angels and demons, ghosts and spirits, are forever driven
and consigned to their appropriate limbo of fiction and
mythology.
'But pari passu with this destructive theological disso
lution was ever occurring a constructive scientific evolu
tion. We have said that men became men by virtue of
their primal association. These associations at first were
small, consisting, probably, of the family. The family
grew to the tribe, the tribe increased to the city, or
combined with other tribes to form the nation; until
now in these latter days, as Tennyson says, “ The Indi
vidual withers, but the Race is more and more,” and we
have dawming upon us, at last, the grandest of all the
revelations of science the great conception of tlie Im
mortal Individual, Humanity as an Organism. This
�31
Humanity, as defined by my friend, Mr. T. B. Wakeman,
tlie author of that admirable little work called “ An
Epitome of the Positive Religion and Philosophy,” is
to be regarded as the “ whole of human beings past, pre
sent and future,” or again, as “ the voluntary conver
gence of all the sentient beings on our planet, the
Parliament of Man, the Federation of the world.”
“ This,” he says, “ has been especially manifest since the
“ French Revolution in the inciease of diplomatic,
“ scientific, commercial and social intercourse, all of
“ which has strengthened the conviction that all are but
“ parts of one great earthly family, whose interests are
“ in a thousand ways indissolubly interwoven. Both the
“ French and American revolutions, in the appreciation
“ they displayed of the brotherhood aud the rights of
“ man, were a grand admonition that the word Humanity
“ had come to stand for the deepest sentiment and the
“ highest interest of Mankind, whereby each finds that
“ he has a place, a right and a duty as part of the grand
“ Organic Social Being of our planet.”
Under my fifth head, wherein I shall endeavor to
show that our cause is the Cause of Religion, I shall
adduce further evidence to prove that Humanity is a
Being or Organism; but fearing that the impression
which my scientific outline has thus far left upon the
minds of my hearers, in spite of my previous protest,
is that of the identity of Positivism with Materialism,
I wish at once to correct any such misunderstanding in
case it exists. Beginning with Chaos I have described
the occurrence of Phenomena under the laws of corre
lation and evolution, and have stated that those pheno
mena culminated in man himself. We have been consi
dering these things objectively, just as if we were
disinterested observers poised somewhere in space and
watching how matters took place on earth. In this ob
�32
jective view Positivism is, we are ready to confess, mate
rialistic. But the great point to notice is that we are
not such disinterested observers in space. We are our
selves part and parcel of the Cosmos. Its laws are only
laws as they appear so to our minds. “ The everlast
ing laws are parts of ourselves.” In this therefore
which is the subjective view, the idea or idealism is the
uppermost consideration. The two conceptions, put
together, form the counterpart one of the other. If on
the objective side we seem purely materialistic, on the
subjective side we seem purely idealistic, and the one
view is as scientific as the other. If the out-and-out ma
terialist states that we cannot know mind except in terms
of matter we shall not contradict him, but we shall put in
our rejoinder to the effect, neither can matter be known
except in terms of mind, that, in fact, the final synthesis
of science must be a subjective one or one based on the
consciousness of impressions made on the mind by its
environment. The environment may be called material,
the effect of it is ideal. The mind (subjective) is
the reflector of the world (objective). They are but
two aspects of the same shield. In their ensemble
they constitute, in truth, the grand reconcilation of
materialism with spiritualism, using the latter term not
in the sense of Ghostism, but in its proper human
meaning.
But the individual, in this subjective or human view,
is totally inexplicable except when considered in his re
lation to the race. The theologian right here with jus
tice urges his intuitional philosophy against the ma
terialist, asking him whence come all these aspirations
and longings, these fine imaginations, this soaring of the
soul for something higher and better, unless from the
divine intentions implanted from the source of all per
fections, God. Before this question pure materialism
has to stand abashed. Holiness of life and striv-
�33
fngs after righteousness could not be entirely inter
preted by the attempt of physiology to resolve
them into so much expenditure of nervous and
vital force. To account for these phenomena scien
tifically a missing link had to be found, which is the
the link that Positivism presents to view, viz., the race
idea, or Humanity. Says Comte “ Entre nous et le
monde il faut V Ilumanite.” ' (Between us and the
world there is, and there is need of Humanity). Only
in the continuity and solidarity,(that is, by investigation
ot the past and present,) of this greater organ
ism can we know ourselves as individuals at all, but now
we are sure that law, science, intellect, morality, all we
have and are, are the accomplishments of the generations
dead and gone transmitted to us through heredity.
Thus everything is accounted for, even the tenderest
pleadings of the heart, the lover’s sigh, or the child’s
sweet glance of confidence.
Distasteful as I know these discriminations between
the objective and the subjective to be, I yet linger for a
few moments upon them to consider the much vexed
question of the freedom of the will, for I feel that in
the distinction between the objective and subjective lies
the only approach to a solution of this puzzle. As has
before been intimated, the subjective synthesis is nothing
more nor less than the classified impressions of the
world around tis. Having received and thus arranged
these impressions, the mind naturally asks itself, “ What
are you going to do about it ? Are you going to rest
quiet and take no action in the premises, or will you at
tempt to modify these phenomena and turn them to the
well being of man ?” To put the question differently,
Have we freedom of the will ? Are we the creatures
of a blind fatality or can we regulate circumstance,
and become to ourselves a practical providence ? To the
question then, Have we freedom of the will, I an
�34
swer no and yes. In the objective sense, no; in the sub
jective sense, yes. Objectively we see that all things
. are under the sway of immutable law from the move
ment of the planets to the finest action of the brain
and the strongest decisions of our nature. This is the
position of the materialistic fatalist, and as far as he
goes he is right and consistent. Kismet is its watch
word. It is the philosophy of laisser abler and of
consequent indifferentism. It bids its disciples to quietly
sail along with the sluggish stream of time, picking
up on their way whatever driftwood they can find of
pleasure or of gain. In its morality it is profoundly
selfish. It seeks only for number one. But, turning
to the subjective aspect of this hard problem, a new
light bursts upon it. While we must acknowledge that
under the sway of objective law our wills simply follow
the lines of least resistance, and are consequently noth
ing but a force the resultant of other forces ; still it is
at once apparent that this line of least resistance is re
sultant from influences far beyond the mental powTer of
man to calculate, and hence the will of man is, for all
practical purposes, left perfectly free. I mean that the
resolutions a man is each moment taking are undoubt
edly because of a countless number of influences,
astronomical, metereological, biological, socialogical
and moral, which in their ensemble no earthly power
can either control or stop to calculate. But his will, the
resultant of all these influences, any man is most dis
tinctly conscious of, and can with reason proceed to act
upon it as an original and basic force, and as if it were
not the consequent of other forces at all. This position
may be, perhaps, dimly illustrated by the attitude of
children in a household. In many respects such chil
dren feel themselves perfectly free in their wills. They
laugh and play, rise and sleep, pretty much to please
themselves, totally thoughtless that their parents have
�35
woven around them a net-work of physical and moral
bands that bind them with most powerful hold. The
children feel that they are free, and act so. The
parents know that they are not. Just so it is, only in a
much greater degree, that the minds and wills of adults
are free. The inextricable combinations of the external
and internal worlds are incalculable, and thus leave man
an independent agent. This is shown by our everyday
attitude towards our environment. The astronomical
world around us is unmodifiable. No effort of the will
can change the course of the stars, but as we approach
the regions of physics and chemistry we find that we
can effect vast transformations in nature to the use
of man, and coming to the social and moral life
of man himself, here, of all regions, are the places
where he can change and alter the most, and in these
fields it is that the hope of human redemption lies as
they are most of all under intelligent direction and con
trol. If this explanation is not entirely satisfactory to
all, I can maintain at any rate that it is a vastly better
one than theology could ever offer in consideration of
the okl difficulty that always existed under the attempt
to reconcile man’s free agency with the predestinations
of an all-wise and overruling God. There was here, in
fact, no reconciliation possible. But it certainly strikes
me that in the objective and subjective aspects of the
antagonism between fate and free-will we have a rela
tive, if not an absolute explanation, which is sufficient
for all the real purposes of life.
As long as science, thus transmitted through race in
heritance, was confined to the inorganic world, a cold
and selfish, one-sided and exclusive materialism was the
result, but now that she has extended her sway over the
organic departments, we find ourselves so linked by law
to our fellows, that only by unselfishness can we fulfil
the laws.
�36
I wish, at this point, to offer a suggestion concerning
the question of theology and science, which, at the first
blush, may seem to contradict my previous statements.
I have maintained that between these two ideas or
methods there is an irrepressible conflict. And this is
strictly true. Yet it is not only fair, but it will throw
much light on the topic to remember that until real de
monstrated science came in, the theological interpreta
tion of the Universe was regarded as the Scientific one.
It was the ignorant man’s science. Science (from scioire) is what we know. The savage 'knew that a nightly
vision was a reality, for he saw it with his very eyes.
He knew that the earth was flat and stationery. He
knew that the sun moved around it, and not it around
the sun. The astrologer believed religiously in his
horoscope ; the alchemist in his alembic. The search of
Ponce de Leon for the fountain of youth was just as
much a scientific expedition to him as a few years ago
was that of her Majesty’s ship “ Challenger ” in its deep
sea soundings. Only little by little has real science dis
placed false science. The process has involved, through
many centuries, the conflict between these two interpre
tations of the universe, the one pseudo-scientific, the
other really scientific. Any one who has read Dr.
John W. Draper’s History of the Conflict between Sci
ence and Religion has seen, as in a grand epic, the por
trayal of what I allude to. The God idea and the man
idea have ever been contending because they are both
endeavors to construe the universe and the destiny of
Humanity with reference thereto.* The one has had its
basis on the conception of the will of a God or Gods,
the other on the conception of Law. Both methods
have been upheld as scientific, but in every case demon
stration has held its own against revelation. In Astron* They both attempt to tell man what he is, where he is, whence
he is, and whither he is tending.
�37
-omy, Physics and Chemistry no appeal to deity is now
even thought of to explain their phenomena. In these
departments the would-be science of divine interpreta
tion has completely yielded to the proven science of
rational interpretation. In individual and social life
recourse is still had to the old methods to explain man
in his relations to the world and to his fellows, but the
application of the laws of Biology and Sociology must as
inevitably remove the resort to a celestial governance,
as has been the case in the other regions of demonstrated
fact. “ When I was a child, I thought as a child, I
felt as a child, I spoke as a child, but when I became a
man, I put away childish things.” This text clearly
illustrates the manner in which we emerge from our
worn out opinions. We lay them aside as we do a shabby
garment, or as a Crustacean does the shell he has out
grown.
The same text also shows how in most cases those in
a lower stage of civilization should be treated, as against
the educated classes; but one ground is tenable, and
that is the utter unfitness of Christian doctrine to guide
the thought of the future, but concerning those in lower
stages of culture, we should, in the light of evolution,
apply to such only a relative remedy. In the case of the
African tribes, for instance, their adoption of Moham
medanism would be a long step in advance, and prob
ably the best one, as well as the only one practicable.
And with regard to our own ignorant masses under the
rule of the Romish Church, any sudden extrication from
their priestly censorship would undoubtedly prove an
evil. Religiously speaking, they are children, and as
such they must be treated. It is to be hoped that the
Catholic priesthood may become sufficiently enlarged to
apply to their charges a Kindergarten method in religion
which will, without violence, acquaint the masses piece
meal with the new truth. Unless some such plan of
�38
gradual amelioration can be effected, another (and hap
pily the last) great conflict between theology and science
is inevitable. The thinking, reading world will range
itself on one side, ignorance and Pharisaism on the
other, and sad will be the clash.
In this connection the following words of John Mor
ley, taken from the Contemporary Review, may not
seem out of place: addressing the clergy, he says:
“ The growth of bright ideals and a nobler purpose will
go on, leaving ever and ever further behind them your
dwarfed finality and leaden, moveless stereotype. We
shall pass you on your flank ; your fiercest darts will
only spend themselves upon air. We will not attack you
as Voltaire did ; we will not exterminate you ; we shall
explain you. History will place each dogma in its
class, above or below a hundred competing dogmas, ex
actly as the naturalist classifies his species. From being
a conviction, it will sink to a curiosity ; from being the
guide to millions of human lives it will dwindle down to
a chapter in a book. As history explains your dogma,
so science will dry it up ; the conception of law will
silently make the conception of the daily miracle of
your altars seem impossible ’ the mental climate will
,
gradually deprive your symbols of their nourishment,
and men will leave your system, not because they have
confuted it, but because, like witchcraft or astrology, it
has ceased to interest them.”
I conclude the present head of my discourse by saying
that the above, in brief, are the lessons of science which
show to man his place in nature. As the result and out
come of all these forces (organic and inorganic) stands
the civilization of to-day. That civilization can only be
expressed in the term Humanity, and in that Humanity
we all live and move and have our being. Just as the
individual organism is made up of living cells, which
�39
only exist as they are related to and connected with the
body, so is each one of us in our dependence on Human
ity. Outside of man has neither meaning nor exist
ence. Humanity is our Providence. Its toils and
agonies have been the stepping stones to bear us to a
higher life; its benificent protection holds us in the
hollow of its hand.
Having thus far endeavored to show that science an* swers (as far as they are answerable) the great questions
of the whence, the where and the whither, our subject
leads us to another grand point, in which the new re
ligion of Truth brings to us the idea of the Beautiful.
So I affirm,
THIRDLY—THAT THE CAUSE OF HUMAN
ITY IS THE CAUSE OF ART.
Much as I have dwelt on science, art is as truly and
fundamentally an inspiration of the new faith : art, not
in its narrow meaning, but art in its larger sense, in the
sense implied in Goethe’s splendid aphorism, wffiere he
says, “We know no world except in relation to man ;
we wish no art except as an expression of that relation.”
Rising at once above the domain of the mechanical arts,
art, in its highest sense, becomes the idealization, the
apotheosis of the real. Its aim is to ennoble and beau
tify humanity. Art is Beauty. Its masterpieces in
poetry, sculpture, painting, music and architecture, have
always been the accompaniments of great concrete civ
ilizations. This explains why art has been called the
handmaid of religion, since no civilization of any mo
ment has existed in the world unless based upon and
accompanied by a controlling faith. Art accomplished
marvels under Polytheistic and Christian theology, not
�40
because of the divinity of those religions, but because
they both possessed a strong human side, and this side it
is that art has given us in its delineations. If chained
completely to the trammels of superstition, she would
starve for want of sustenance, for she must find her
nourishment in the actual.
It is science that lays the deeply dug foundations, and
there she is content to leave them buried ; but on these
solid blocks of truth art will rear her dwellings and her
temples for the future of men. All the skill of archi
tecture, all the resources of sculpture, all the devices of ’
painting, she will apply to their adornment. Fairer
women and braver men will dwell and worship therein,
and will echo their sense of the sublime and beautiful
through the harmony of music and the synthetic
inarch of poetry.
Art is the child of nature; yes,
Her darling child, in whom we trace
The features of the mother’s face,
Her aspect and her attitude,
All her majestic loveliness
Chastened and softened and subdued
Into a more attractive grace,
And with a human sense imbued,—He is the greatest artist then,
Whether of pencil or of pen,
Who follows nature,—Never man,
As artist or as artizan,
Pursuing his own fantasies,
Can touch the human heart, or please,
Or satisfy our noble needs,
As he who sets his willing feet
In nature’s footprints, light and fleet,
And follows fearless where she leads.
�41
Art’s greatest effort under the old faith has been to
idealize this world in order to enable us to realize an
other. The new faith cherishes the ideal at least in
equal degree; all that is lovely and of good report, all
that is beautiful, all that is grand, all that is true and
estimable in the world of nature or the world of man,
will be the office of art to symbolize ; and then the
heaven which men have so vainly sought in another
sphere will be realized on earth. Quoting Goethe’s
words, in their largest sense, may we not almost say
with him ?
“ Who science has and art
Has also religion.
Who neither of them has
Let him have religion.”
I would gladly dwell longei’ on this most attractive
phase of positivism, but the limitations of space, already.
too much transgressed, compel me to desist.
Having shown thus far that our synthesis embraces
the regions of science and art, I am next led to de
monstrate that the cause of Humanity is now prepared
to cope with Christianity in its last stronghold, and that
hence
FOURTHLY.—OUR CAUSE IS THE CAUSE
OF MORALITY.
We claim that Humanity is the sole basis of morals.
Therefore, in discussing this portion of our subject we
must, at the outset, distinguish between the human and
divine morality ; or the morality of Naturalism and the
morality of Supernaturalism. The former may be called
the ethics of one world at a time, the latter the ethics of
two worlds at a tune.
�42
Some skilled equestrians in the hippodrome are able
to ride two steeds simultaneously. Even they, however,
find it a tiresome and risky operation. But for the mul
titude sueli a feat is an impossibility; yet this is the
attempt which for ages civilization has been trying to
accomplish, and many have been the falls and greatthe
disaster which has resulted.
When I speak of Supernaturalism in this essay, I
limit myself to Christian Supernaturalism, and here, as
before, I draw the line between the head side and the
heart side of the religion of Jesus. On the heart side
(within the brotherhood of the Christian confession)
noble traditions of sympathy, charity and self-sacrifice
have become the inheritance of the race. Contracted
within the limits of the Boman Catholic civilization this
heait side has given us much that is human and humane.
But when we turn to the head side (the doctrinal side)
of Christianity, how sadly the picture changes ! We
there have the vengeful God, who created man in his
own image by making him totally depraved, and who
still further showed the cruelty and despotic favoritism
of his nature by slaying his own son to the end that cer
tain sti ay sinners might inherit life eternal. Heaven
and hell were presented to lure the selfish and intimi
date the weak, and a priesthood was established as the
ministers plenipotentiary of their Celestial Tyrant.
These same points have been before dwelt upon, but we
now restate them to show their bearing upon morality.
Would you know the meaning of these Christian dog
mas ? I will tell you. They mean the organized despair
of man. They mean the slave cringing before a power
he cannot control. They mean the perpetuation of
ignorance and fear. They mean the denial of our own
manhood, the shirking of our own responsibility through
the wretched doctrine of the atonement, the cowardly
and degrading assumption of another’s merits to stand in
1
�(
43
place of our own. They mean a personal salvation gained
at the price of almost universal damnation. . They mean
a human fellowship confined to the narrow range of the
Christian confession, excluding all others. And, worst
of all, they mean the denial of human freedom, the sub
jection of the race to an absolute foreign despot, who
has vested his unalterable authority in Priest, King or
Bible.
Such is the picture of Christian morality, a picture of
stagnation and misery set against the dark background,
and within the sombre frame-work of the middle ages.
But in the sixteenth century two twin giants leapt
forth, full-armed, like Minerva from the head of Jove,
whose double office it was to reverse this dreary pic
ture. Their names were Protestantism and Science.
Protestantism, with its dogma of the right of private
judgment, shouted revolt against authority, the destruc
tion of idol-worship, the overthrow of all false Gods;
while Science prophesied the establishment of a higher
truth, the construction of a new ideal, the conformity of
the soul of man, not to the laws of God, but to the laws
of nature.
Both of these twin Saviours appealed to humanity in the
name of liberty. The former demanded, and is still de
manding, liberty from the trammels of the old; the lat
ter, liberty to lay down the strong foundation of the
new. They both tell us that the law of freedom means
freedom to obey law.
For three centuries have these great forces been work
ing in society, and under their holy influence what a
vast change do we see in the civilization of the nine
teenth century, so falsely called a Christian civiliza
tion ! How differently we can now describe the
morality of the representative man of the modern
epoch ! No longer bowed with face in the dust, pros
trate at the feet of Jesus, we see him standing erect in
�44
the nobility of his own manhood. Instead of Faith in
Christ, we see him living by his Faith in Human Na
ture. The brotherhood of the Christian Confession has
given way to the Republic of the World, the Common
wealth of Man. In place of self-suppression we have
self-development. Doubt is no longer sin, nor disbelief
damnation. Organized Faith in man has become the
substitute for the organized Despair of man.
All this has been accomplished for human morality in
the sacred names of Science and of Liberty. Reverence
for freedom has increased as reverence for authority has
decreased, and even Christianity (which I have thus
strongly assailed) has so expanded under the freedom
wrested from itself, that it has proved fruitful of
many blessings. I wish to give it all the credit possible,
but after every allowance it is evident that much, very
much, remains to be done. Under the doctrine of elec
tion, for example, theology created an elect in heaven,
which has been aptly imitated by an overbearing aristo
cracy on earth. In directing contrite submission to the
will of God, by saying that the powers that be are or
dained of God, that the poor you have always with you,
&c. it basin past times justified masters in grinding down
their slaves, feudal lords in trampling on their vassals,
and to-day sanctions capital in its oppression of labor.
If Christianity does go down into the pit to help the
poor, it first is determined to keep them there ; witness
how it advocates the present false competitive method
of trade, that Darwinism in business, wherein every
man’s hand is against every other man’s, and must of
necessity be while the system lasts. The priest is the
natural ally of the capitalist. They both represent one
sided, selfish power.
I here wish to answer an anticipated objection,
which is that I am fighting against the windmills,
that I have been setting up straw figures merely
�45
to knock them down, or, in other words, that
these dogmas which I have been reprobating have be
come, in the light of the nineteenth century, practically
obsolete. To which I would reply, that this is not true.
There is not a single orthodox sect in Christendom in
whose printed articles of faith these incubi will not be
found, and I venture the assertion that week by week
thousands of ingenuous children in our Sunday-schools
are having their consciences warped, and their little
minds polluted with the debasing teaching that they are
(in the words of Brown’s old Catechism) “ Enemies of
God, children of Satan and heirs of hell.”
They are taught on Sunday, under the holy sanction
of the church, that the world was created in six days;
on Monday they learn in their day-school that its con
struction consumed millenia of time. The childish mind
sees there is a lie somewhere, and most unhappily, as
my witty friend James Parton once said, the young
hopeful’s natural inference is, . “ Go it while you’re
young.” The conflict of secular and religious teaching
deprives him of his standard of morality.
And even in the more liberal churches, those which
have reached out beyond the pale of orthodoxy, I main
tain that the same flavor pervades their tenets. Re
moulding an old rhyme, I would say :
“ You may break, you may shiver the jar, if you will,
“ The stench of the garbage will cling round it still.”
For, as long as these doctrines exist (even in their most
attenuated form), they tend on the side of that spirit
which makes for ignorance, hatred and slavery, and
which sets itself at variance with freedom, science and
humanity. These liberal churches are a strange anom
aly. Christianity, to be Christianity at all, it seems to
me, must, by the force of its own logic, hold to the doc
�46
trines we have been considering, or else become no
longer Christianity. For the dogmas of the Fall,
Atonement and Salvation, form one consistent whole ;
the abstraction of any one of them being the removal of
a link that breaks the whole chain. Unless men were
fallen, what the need of a Saviour, unless doomed to hell,
what the use of atonement; if possessed of merits of
their own, what the need of another’s merits ? Consid
eration will thus show that all these conceptions must be
construed together. Still, only in direct proportion as
Christians cut loose from such belief do they work out
from the genius of the twelfth into the genius of the
nineteenth century, and from the narrow morality of
superstition into the large morality of science and free
dom. The retention even of an iota of Christian doc
trine is so much premium on selfishness and wrong. Yet
it may be there is one class of Christians (if Christians
they can be called) whom hitherto I have not described
in this essay, and to whom I have not done justice.
They are a set of men who are symbolizing away their
old faith. To them no longer is God a person, but the
name signifies the great unknowable, unnameable power
underlying the cosmos. Christ is to such the type of
self-sacrifice, the highest embodiment of manhood, the
symbol of reconciliation ; and the chief idea they attach
to immortality is the glory of the conscious performance
of well-doing throughout eternity. Canon Farrar is
perhaps an example of such believers. He denies en
tirely the orthodox interpretation of the atonement.
With regard to such Christians, it might not be im
proper to again quote their own Scripture by saying,
“ He that is not against us is for us.”
The truth, however, about such seems to be that they
are simply stopping in a half-way house. Their First
of May, their moving day, must soon come. Between
Roman Catholicism and the Religion of Humanity there
�47
is no fixed resting place. The men I am now describ
ing necessarily cling to their old notion of Duality. This
must unfix their foundation.. It bases their hopes
wrongly, and to that extent debases them. I know a
gentleman who once bought a beautiful place on the
sea-shore. He found it so thickly surrounded with ever
greens—the type of immortality—that the beautiful
view of the ocean was quite excluded. "With his ax he
struck them down right and left. The evergreens were
gone, but the loveliest panorama was opened, having the
grand old ocean for its background, with men and wo
men rambling by the roadside, and children playing in
the fields. And thus will it ever prove. This life will
become more and more just as the other life becomes
less and less, and not till our hopes are no longer fixed
on an objective personal immortality ; not till this and
other false aspirations are removed, can Humanity reach
to the full attainment of its high capability. The heaven
men would gain must be sought for here.
Did this last most advanced type of Christians but
know it, there is only one step trom their belief to Posi
tivism. Perhaps no better definition of the latter on its
religious side could be found than to call it thus, viz,
developed Christianity, minus its theology. In this
view all superstition would be discarded. The term
Force would take the place of God, and the noble ideal
of Humanity would supplant, without displacing, that of
the Christ.
And we who embrace these modern views know
whereof we speak. Having tasted of this new tree of
life, we have found the fruition of our religious hopes.
To use an expression of Frederic Harrison’s, “we find
ourselves again in the old lines of religious rest.” Each
one, be he high or low, rich or poor, again finds himself
of use in the world. He sees again the purpose and the
joy of life.
�48
“ Poor indeed thou must be, if around thee
“ Thou no ray of light and joy canst throw;
“ If no silken cord o.f love hath bound thee
“ To some little world through weal or woe.
“ If no dear eyes thy fond love can brighten,
“No fond voices answer to thine own ;
“ If no brother’s sorrow thou cans’t lighten
“ By tender sympathy and gentle tone.
“ Not by deeds that win the crowd’s applause;
“ Not by works that give the world renown ;
“ Not by martyrdom or vaunted crosses
“ Canst thou win and wear the immortal crown.
“ Daily struggling, though unloved and lonely,
“ Every day a rich reward will give ;
“ Thou wilt find by hearty striving only
“ And truly loving thou canst truly live.”
Returning from this side path into -which I have been
led for the purpose of describing the Christians of the
most liberal type, I return to the high-road of my sub
ject, and proceed to say that in spite of every allowance
to be made for the generally received opinions, too much
of the middle-age spirit still remains.
Protestanism was an advance upon Romanism in the
line of freedom, as Unitarianism is upon Protestantism,
but, after all, it is undeniable that the Christian Church,
as such, both in its constitution and history, has been
the sworn foe of science and of liberty. I say both in
her constitution and history. In her constitution, be
cause a perfect revelation from a perfect God admits of
no improvement, needs no science; obedience to the
divine will allows of no liberty. In her history, as wit
ness Copernicus, Galileo, Giordan Bruno, the Inquisi
tion, St. Bartholomew, to say nothing of the Puritan’s
persecution of witchcraft, and numberless other instances
of religious cruelty.
�49
*
To state the matter in one single phrase, doctrinal
Christianity means absolute despotism. It represents
the rule of an overbearing God, and is the very anti
type of Republicanism. Heaven has certainly never
been represented as a democracy. In that summer-land
nothing prevails but meekness and obedience in the
presence of a potentate. A government of the angels,
for the angels, by the angels, with a new president re
elected every four years, would certainly be an anomaly.
This unavoidable antagonism between the ideal heavenly
life and the ideal earthly life leads us to say further that
the fundamental difficulty with Christians, in these tran
sition times, is that, consciously or unconsciously, they
are sailing under two flags. Each individual believer
represents in his own nature a conflict of authority, the
conflict between despotism and republicanism. In his
spiritual and religious nature his life is passed in a dream
of Oriental Tyranny ; in his earthly life, he is a member
of our glorious commonwealth.
History helps us to an explanation of this, since it
shows to us that of old the idea of government, both
human and divine, was based on theology. Christians
have outgrown the one conception and not the other.
Theological government remains in the church, but has
passed away in the state. Government to our fore
fathers was deemed a royal appanage, founded on the
divine right of kings ; while government now is regarded
as the prerogative of the people only, growing out of
their natural right of self-rule.
The American Declaration of Independence human
ized or socialized politics. What we now want is a Declaration of Independence which will humanize religion.
The one equally with the other must be secular and re
publican. Real religion can no more exist under the
rule of God than popular government can under the
sway of a Caesar. Political liberty we have already ob
�50
tained. The next great issue, underlying and including
all others, is the attainment of religious liberty, which,
in the high sense that I refer to, means, and can only
mean, that this toiling, groaning, suffering race of men
and women must summon God before the bar of human
justice, there to have him tried for the deeds done in the
spirit during the long six thousand years of his misrule,
and when found guilty to depose him from his high
estate and in his stead enthrone Humanity, whose scep
tre he has so long usurped.
The abolition of the divine right of kings is the pro
phecy of the abolition of the divine right of God. De
livered from the false authority of both king and God,
of earthly and heavenly tyrant, society will then be
free to submit itself to the only true authority, the
authority of Law.
When freed from the mirage of supernaturalism true
morality is seen to be purely a social growth. From
the attrition through the ages of human experiences, the
sense of right has been evolved, and has become in
grained into the human system as the sum and substance
of social utilities. The old morality is founded on the
God idea, and places its reliance on a divine providence;
the new morality is based entirely on the man idea,
and trusts implicitly in a human providence. The one
is theological, the other sociological. Beginning with
low conditions, the conscience has been augmented, and
ever transmitted and re-transmitted, till it has come to
be regarded as an instinct, an intuition, or a separate
entity. That the moral sense, however, is really the
result of an evolution is shown by comparing present
customs with those of the savage, who, in perfect accord
ance with his barbarous code, kills off the aged, murders
or enslaves his prisoners of war, tortures his enemy, and
�51
feasts on human flesh. Ethically defective, as is our
present age, it certainly represents a vast improvement
on such practices, and we cannot fail to see on a com
parison of savage with civilized times, that conscience,
like the intellect, grows through the ages, and is a purely
relative and human acquisition.
A not unfamiliar example might be found in the Ser
mon on the Mount (Matt, v., 38-41), wherein Christ
himself becomes the unconscious witness of the evolu
tion of morality by his contrast of the old with the new.
“Ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an
“ eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
“ But I say unto you, that you resist not evil; but
“ whosoever small smite thee on the right cheek, turn to
“ him the other also.
“ And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take
“ away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
“ And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go
“ with him twain.
“ Give to him that asketh of thee, and from him that
“ would borrow of thee, turn not thou away.
“ Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt
“ love thy neighbor and hate thy enemy.
“ But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them
“ that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and
“pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute
“ you.”
But, in spite of the advance effected by Christianity,
and notwithstanding its many excellent precepts, the
insuperable trouble with theology still remains, viz.:
that it has always placed morality upon a selfish and
individual basis; we may, perhaps, say selfish, because
individual basis. Before each believer was placed Par
adise and the Judgment for him or her alone to gain or
lose. The earth was a vale of tears, the heavenly Jeru
salem the all in all. As the Christian song recites it,
�52
“ I’m but a pilgrim here,
Heaven is my home;
Earth’s but a desert drear,
Heaven is my home.”
This world and all that pertains thereto were reckoned
but as dross, and the one thing needful was for each to
save his own immortal soul; (“ for what profiteth it a
man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul ?”)
the whole scheme differing in this respect most un
favorably from he Chinese Fo worship, in the liturgy
of which occurs the following remarkable expression :
“ Never will I seek to receive private individual salva
tion, never enter final peace alone, but forever and
everywhere will I live and strive for the universal re^
demption of every creature throughout all worlds. Un
til all are delivered, never will I leave the world of sin,
sorrow and struggle, but will remain where I am.”
Thus, this Heaven-and-Hell, or look-out-for-numberone doctrine, inevitably resulted “ in weakening the
affections by unlimited desires, or in degrading the
character by servile terror.” It is a selfish, unsocial „
individual, and hence immoral religion, a transfer of'
this world’s egoism into another, though imaginary
sphere. Just as in the fierce competition of modern
life in the terrific race for wealth we see the rule exem
plified of “ each for himself,” so is it in this Christian
theory, the one, in fact, being the counterpart of the
other. What is sought on earth is the selfish attainment
of ease and power. What is sought in the after-life is
practically the continued enjoyment of the same thing.
While the heavenly ideal is the representative of the
earthly selfishness, the earthly selfishness, in turn, is
sanctioned by the heavenly ideal. To save our own
souls we are obliged, on the Christian theory, to do our
duty towards God, and subordinate ourselves to His
�53
almighty will, the performance of duty and self-salva
tion thus becoming interchangeable terms; and morality,
which can only be truly defined as unselfishness, and
which should be entirely dissociated from the idea of
rewards and punishments, becomes divorced from social
surroundings and indissolubly connected with a sel
fish hope of heaven and a debasing fear of hell. Under
the old dispensation the one unpardonable sin was blas
phemy against the Holy Ghost. Under the new regime
that one sin is egoism. No matter how reputable a man’s
life may seem; no matter how brilliant a women’s
career may be; nay, let the highest attainment of
science and culture be their object, still them life is
wrongly directed unless its motives and its aims are
sanctified by the heart. The intellect, at best, is fitted
only for a guide. Beason must never master the affec
tion. If it does, the life so governed must be largely a
life of selfishness, and to that extent a life of wasted
power ; as Longfellow puts it:
“ A millstone and the human heart
Are driven ever round ;
If they have nothing else to grind,
They must themselves be ground.”
Tho subordination of egoism to altruism is thus not
only the path of duty but the path of the highest happi
ness also. St. Paul has expressed it inimitably in that
greatest chapter in the whole of religious literature, his
chapter on charity in the first epistle to the Corinthians.
The standard thus held up, though the happiest, is
■undoubtedly the hardest to follow. To oppose the gen
eral opinions of one’s age, to swim eternally against the
•current, is no holiday sport. It only brings its compen
sation in the sense of duty done and convictions adhered
to. It leaves the feeling that our children will have one
�54
stone or two less to turn in the path of their progress,,
and that mankind generally are at least one little whit
the better for our having been here and breasted out
our little struggles. For it is inevitable that those who
succeed these times must face a new environment, and
they are the blessed ones who thus prepare the way of
Man and make his path straight. Such will be the real
second coming of the Christ.
I have criticised unsparingly the creeds of Christen
dom, but, happily, Christians for the most part are bet
ter than their creeds; and why they are so we positivists
well know, for right living and right thinking do not
have their foundations in the sky, but in the here and
now. It is the social influences that form the basis
of all the faiths, and morality is stronger than any
creed, and has outlived all religions. Theology is to
Morality what the old man of the sea was to Sinbad
the Sailor, merely a weight to drag him down; but,
under the new conception, where society is regarded
as an organism, man discovers that only in the good
of all can he find his own good ; he sees, under the
influence of the new faith, that it is only by others that
he can exist, and that thus the noble motto of Positiv
ism, “ Live for others,” comes to supplant the golden
rule of Confucius and the Gospels. “ Dans le bonh&ur
d'autruije cherche monbonli&urf says Corneille. “In
the happiness of others my happiness I seek.”
It is not meant that each one’s personal identity is to
be lost in this sense of universal love. On the contrary,
the individual becomes more and more important and
exalted. We find, for example, in regard to a complete
human body that perfect organs are needful to make it
so. Foi’ the wholeness and harmony of its structure,
arms and legs moved by powerful muscles are required;
also a heart to propel the blood, and a brain to preside
over and crown the whole, to say nothing of the thous
�55
*
and and one functions by which each and all of the
many organs perform their lesser parts.
And thus it is in that larger and more wonderful or
ganism, Humanity. For the perfection of the whole,
the individual organs of which it is composed must be
perfect; and cleanliness, observances of hygiene, and
physical and intellectual improvement become bounden
duties. A quotation from Comte applies aptly here
where he says:
“ All human societies and individuals are regarded as
the organs of this Great Being, Humanity, having their
work and duties determined by their relation to it, and
finding their welfare, happiness and life motive in their
cheerful and faithful service.”
Positivism has been criticised as insisting so strongly
on the conception of duty, as practically to deny the
conception of rights. But this is not just. Bights are
but the obverse estimate of duties, the opposite view of
the same shield. What is A’s duty to B, B has the
right to demand of A. Did A and B both do their
duty, no insistance on the rights of either would ever
be required. Thus the doctrine of human duty will, in
the end, swallow up the doctrine of human rights and
man will learn that the highest, nay, the only right he
needs, is the right to do his duty. In one word, to live
for parents, live for children, live for country, live for
mankind, or, to express it in the noble phrase before
used, to “ Live for others,” becomes the whole duty of
man.
Space forbids mention of much of Positivistic Ethics
that should not be omitted. I merely allude, for example, to its glorious motto, “ vivre au grand jour”
“live in the light of day,” or, “live without conceal
ment.” What a world of value it contains, admonishing
us ever to act as if the eye of all mankind were upon
us!
�56
Again, in passing, it would be an absolute remissness
not to recall the image under which this philosophy sym
bolizes tlie application of all our powers and the per
formance of all our duty to the generations past and
gone, the image, namely, of a trust, by which it
insists that we come into this world largely in debt, that
all our capacities are the gift of Humanity, and to
Humanity must be devoted; that wealth, for instance,
being social in its origin, should be socialized in its use,
and that its claim as a purely individual acquisition, is a
crime against our fellows. This same notion of respon
sibility clings to any human endowment we possess, be
it a genius for the highest art cr but the humblest apti
tude for manual service.
Under such and analagous conceptions and motives,
there must arise, in time, a new order of chivalry in the
world, wherein the strong on earth, as Knights of Hu
manity, under the impulse and inspiration of an emanci
pated womanhood, will go forth conquering and to con
quer, devoting their powers to the rescue of the weak,
the deliverance of the enthralled, and the common wel
fare of the whole.
Fascinating as such points are, they must be hur
ried by to enable us to reach and treat the last
head of our discourse, and therefore Ibeg permission
of my theological friends to leave this topic with one
* concluding thought.
I ask them to imagine that
Death, the Christian King of Terrors, has subjected
Heaven to his sway, and has sent forth his devouring
Plague, under whose deadly arrows have fallen prostrate
not only all the Angelic hosts, but God Himself. Jehovah
is dead! Heaven is no more I Our old earth, however,
with all the inhabitants thereof, still moves on in its accus
tomed way, protected in the lap of everlasting law. God
has gone, but Fatlier and Mother still remain. Heaven is
a barren waste, but our country still is left us. Must
�57
♦
family love die out ? Must patriotism perish ? Must
virtue exist no longer ? Shall we not rather say that
since Jerusalem the Golden is abolished we will cling
with increased tenderness to this our native sphere ?
Shall we not rather affirm that since the Almighty is no
more, we will hold parents in kindlier reverence, and
that since the angels above have disappeared, we will
cherish with deeper affection those earthly angels who,
as friends and relatives, afford the solace of our lives ?
No, my Christian brothers and sisters, our higher natures
need not die with the decay of Supernaturalism. In
stead thereof it will be found that under a system of
purely secular morals, humanity, rid of its old clogs,
will attain Jits! heights and develop capabilities which
heretofore have been but dreams.
We have thus far shown the Cause of Humanity to
be the Cause of Science, Art and Morality; the good,
the true, the beautiful. We are now naturally led to
our last point, wherein we maintain,
FIFTHLY—THAT THE CAUSE OF HUMANITY
IS THE CAUSE OF .RELIGION.
>
We find an easy transition from the subject of Moral
ity to the subject of Religion in Matthew Arnold’s de
finition of the latter wherein he says: u Religion is
Morality touched with Emotion.” The writer of “ Ecce
Homo” has also beautifully called Religion the “ En
thusiasm of Humanity,” but the meaning of the word
may, perhaps, best be seen in its derivation from the
Latin words re and ligo, “ to bind back” or “ tie back.”
To quote again the words of the Epitome before refer
red to: “ Religion is the tie by which man’s feelings
“ and thoughts within and his actions without are co•“ ordinated into health and harmony with each other,
�58
“ with society and the world, with the past and the fu“ ture.
What is holy. That it is that
Many souls together hinds,
Binds them ever so lightly,
As a rush thread the wreath.”
What is the holiest ? That which
To-day and ever on
Deeper and deeper felt, souls
More and more together binds.”—Goethe.
All theological definitions made earth “ the battlefield
of religions.” Each one “ true” God had to be up
held and defended : as Christ said : “ I come not to bring
peace but a sword.”
“ But (still quoting from the Epitome) in the newer,
“ that is the human or scientific sense, the word religion
“ has come to mean ‘ the convergence’ or unity of peo“ pie or of peoples, that has resulted or may result from
“ any common belief or sentiment, whether springing
“ from a belief in a God or otherwise. In this sense,
“ the unity, integration, or binding together, under the
“ influence of a common conviction, is the substance of
“ the meaning of which the gods are but the variable
“ incidents. Thus, in the march of history, each god, in
“ his turn, falls into insignificance, but the social unity
“ the collective man, is more and more., In this view
“ the lesson of history is clear, ^%iman progress
“ must be arrested, or man must, in this newer sense,
“ become more and more religious, and yet, at the same
“ time, less and less theological.”
Man has always created his gods or god in his own
image. The have been and are mere anthropomorphic
(man-imitated) embodiments. The great spirit of the
�59
Indians, for example, is a majestic brave, and the gods of
Greek mythology were the perfect men and beauteous
women of the Greek ideal. The whole history of
theology has exemplified this, and nowhere has it been
better expressed than in the following humorous lines
from the old Greek poet Xenophanes:
If sheep and swine and lions strong,
And all the bovine crew,
Could paint with cunning hands and do
What clever mortals do.
Depend upon it every pig,
With snout so broad and blunt,
Would make a Jove that like himself
Would thunder with a grunt.
And every lion’s God would roar
And every bull’s would bellow,
And every sheep’s would give a “ baa”
And each his worshipped fellow^
Would find in the immortal form,
And naught exist divine,
But had the gait of lion, sheep,
Oi’ ox or grunting swine.
In other and more serious words, underneath all the
superstitions of the creeds, men have ever been striving
to attain to a more and more ennobled human ideal, and
before that ideal they have fallen down and worshipped.
Guided by this perception, as Richard Congreve says:
“ the Positivist reviews the different religion of man.
“ He accepts them all as in their time, useful. But he
“ finds in their decay a proof that they are none of them
“ final, and that some definitive and comprehensive solution is yet required. To his view the religions disap-
�60
“ pear; religion remains. That which is human in
“ them alone is imperishable. They have in their variety
“ had one common aim. They have each in its measure
“ given an account to man of his existence, his existence
“ in relation to other men and to himself. They have
“ aimed at the harmony of all his faculties; they have
“ sought to unite him with a smaller or larger portion of
“ his fellow men.
“ Positivism accepts the same problem, offers to man
“ an account of his existence, gives him an object of
“ faith, explains the conditions under which he lives,
“ and makes him lovingly accept them, unites him in
“ himself by love, and binds him to his fellow men in
“ the three-fold communion of faith, of worship, and of
“ action.” In one word, the God whom thus far men
have so ignorantly worshipped, have so longingly yearned
for, and have represented to themselves under so many
symbols, is the God whom we announce, Humanity, the
Supreme Being on this planet, the one science-revealed
God.
Here at once I perceive that 1 shall be asked the ques
tion, How do you know that Humanity is a being of any
kind, much less a Supreme Being, and I may be reminded
of the witty reply of the Oxford student who on being
sent to investigate and report on the Positivist meetings
in London, brought back word that he found “ three
persons, but no God I”
In the theological sense we certainly have no God.
But have we no Supreme Being ?
For my 'answer to this most proper enquiry, I turn to
Herbert Spencer’s Sociology where he gives his reasons
for believing Society to be an organism. I present a
partial summary of his statement.
What is a Society ? It is a mere aggregate of separ
ate individuals, which, like an audience in a theatre, dis
�61
4
perses when, the play is over, and exists no longer, or is
it not rather like the bricks, beams and mortar of a house
which combine together to make a result quite distinct
from the parts which compose it ?
The latter is the conception of Sociology; though the
material simile of the building presents but a very im
perfect analogy, since we cannot reason from the inor
ganic to the organic, from dead to living matter. A
better illustration will be found in the science of Biology.
How do we know for example that man himself is a
being or organism ? We know it, among many other
reasons: 1st. because he grows ; 2d. because he increases
both in structure and function; 3d, because the different
parts of his body are dependent upon the whole body,
and the whole body upon the different parts.
In much the same way we know a society to be an
organism. 1st, because it grows: our own U. S. with
its century of increase in population is sufficient evidence
of this. One hundred years ago we numbered three
millions, now we count our forty five millions.
2d. Because while increasing in size society increases
in structure and function. We find in animal evolution
that at first an organism all stomach develops into a
creature with lungs, heart, &c., &c., further and further
differentiations causing greater and greater unlikenesses
among the organs, all of which perform their multiform
functions. So in the development of a society. Divis
ions and subdivisions occur and recur. Another glance,
for example, at our own country will show us how much
greater diversity of structure there is to-day in com
merce, the arts, manufactures, religions, education and
all the departments of life, than existed a hundred years
ago ; also how, the unlike portions having thus become
marked off, vast divisions of labor ensue, producing un
like duties through all the mass of the community, and
�62
making up in their entirety that complex thing we call
modern civilization.
3d. Because as in the human, so in the social organ
ism nothing is more strongly marked thant he mutuality
of dependence between the parts. The necessity of all
the organs in the animal frame to form the complete
being is paralleled in society by the dependence of the
parts upon each other and the whole, and the whole
upon the parts. For instance when society is rudiment
ary, every man is his own warrior, merchant and farmer,
but when It becomes highly developed, the warrior class,
the merchant class, the farmer class, and, in fact, all the
thousands of classes become unified and interdependent
till, as Carlyle says, an Indian can’t quarrel with his
squaw on Lake Winnepeg without causing a rise in
the price of furs in London. Co-ordinately with this
differentiation of the parts of society and their mutual
dependence on each other we find an integration (or the
action of the whole upon the parts) formulating itself in
the shape of religion and government.
But enough of this dry reasoning to prove that society
is an organism or heing. Popular acceptance alone is
sufficient to prove it so, as is shown by the conceptions
attached to such words as home and country. The home,
for example, is never thought of as a place enclosed in
bare walls where parents and children meet merely to
eat, and separate simply to sleep.
Around the sacred
name cling a thousand associations recalling tender ideas
of father and mother, brother and sister. We regard it
as the seat of our affections, the abode of our rest. We
love to think of its honorable ancestry. We hope to
establish a still nobler posterity. In this sense, is not a
family, with its kindred idea of home, a being or or
ganism ?
�63
So with our commonly received notion of “ country,”
which is to us a distinct conception, though by no possi
bility can we represent to ourselves even in imagination
the vast numbers which compose it. We speak of the
life of a nation as we do of the life of a person. The
blood-disks in a man’s arteries die, but the life of the
man goes on. So, the individuals of a country disappear
but the life of the nation continues. In the one case as
the other we formulate to our minds the idea both of
the man and the nation as an existence, entity, organism
or 3ezmg.
Speaking thus instinctively of the life and growth of
a nation, in a larger, fuller sense, Humanity also may be
said to have its life, not only in the present, but extend
ing through the past and future, a life in which even the
eras of national existence are but as wavelets on a shore
less sea. Pascal’s seer-like instinct dimly grasped this
great conception long ago when he said : “ the entire
succession of men through the whole course of the ages
must be regarded as one man, always living and inces
santly learning.” “ In this light,” says Comte, “ the
human race, past, present and future, constitutes a vast
and eternal social unit, whose different organs, individual
and national, concur in their various modes and degrees
in the evolution of Humanity.”
Again says Comte, “ this Humanity, this object of
Positivist worship, is not like that of theological be
lievers, an absolute, isolated, incomprehensible being,
whose existence admits of no demonstration or compari
son with anything real. The evidence of this Being is
shrouded in no mysticism, since by means of history we
know her laws. Though not claiming perfection for
Humanity, she is ever growing towards it, and we know
that of all organisms she is the supreme one on this
planet.”
�64
But again we hear our objector entering his caveat:
“ A very pretty God,” he exclaims, “ is this Humanity
“ of yours, a most adorable God ! Hero fiddling over
“ burning Rome and making torch-lights out of
“ Christians, is a sweetly attractive saint; Torquemada
“ amusing himself with the application of the thumb“ screw and the rack, is a most worshipful man;
“ Jeffreys persecuting and condemning his luckless vic“ tims, is a deeply religious spectacle, and Wm. M.
“ Tweed will answer, I presume, as well for a deity as he
“ will for a “ boss !” Or, taking Humanity outside of its
“ individual aspect, what a lofty contemplation do we
“ not discover for example, in the eternal reign of desola“ ing carnage ! The path of history is red with the
“ blood of battle-fields! And if we turn from the
achievements of glorious war to the pursuits of
“ ‘ piping peace,’ what then do we find ? The great
“ struggle of men for the ‘ almighty dollar,’ wherein to
“ gain the paltry prize, human rights are trampled down,
“ human duties disregarded, and the higher life is
“ crushed beneath the iron heel of selfishness! Whether
“ in war or peace, therefore, man’s record is that of
“ Cain, his hand against every man, and every man’s
“ hand against him, or, to quote the oft-repeated phrase,
“ i Man’s inhumanity to man, makes countless thousands
“ mourn.’ Such is your God, Humanity; and if Posit“ ivism cannot present us with some better Supreme
“ Being, my advice to it would be to go into liquidation
“ on the God-making business, and adopt some other
“ trade ! ”
The answer to our theological sceptic is two-fold.
1st. The perhaps non-logical, but always effective,
“ you’re another” argument. For the criticism he makes
�65
against Humanity holds with ten-fold power against his
biblical deity. Unlike theology, Positivism makes no
claim of omnipotence for its Supreme Being.
It only
says that Humanity is the highest organism known to
man. But the Christian’s claim for their God endows
him with omniscience. CVwC.
Omniscience, omnipotence ! Posessed of these great
attributes it needed but a single stroke of such Almighty
Power to make of Earth an Eden, and of Life a Joy ;
but instead thereof we find in their God the primal source
of all life’s evils, be they devils or mosquitoes, wars or
warts, the black vomit, the itch, or any other ill that
flesh is heir to. Consistent reasoning regarding this allpowerful deity leaves no alternative except the conclu
sion that his infliction of misery upon his children,
through time and eternity, was from deep design and de
liberate choice. Unattractive as is the picture our or
thodox unbeliever has drawn of Humanity, it is beatific
compared to that of his fiendish God. The evil in the
one is relative, and the result of environment and cir
cumstance; it is evil that can be understood and recon
ciled, because it can be taken as the simple fact. It is
evil that can be patiently borne because hope is left to
soften it. But the evil in the other is sin self-chosen as
it is self-damning, and totally at variance with a benefi
cent omnipotence an&4^By^cjgee.
But 2d: The real reply to our atheistic retrograde
(for he is the truest atheist who denies the highest good)
is to be found in a sufficiently comprehensive definition
of Humanity as the Supreme Being, and this can only
be obtained by a proper discrimination between the ob
jective and subjective view of man’s Life on Earth. We
have previously dwelt (page 31) on these two phases
�66
of thought. In the light of that explanation let us now
considei’ Humanity ul dor this double aspect.
First, in the objective view: In this view it is un
deniable that the history of mankind is a recital of a
vast intermixture of the evil with the good; or, more
correctly speaking, of the endeavor of Humanity to
adapt herself to her environment.
We see her ever
baffled and thwarted, yet ever striving, and on the whole
gaining ground. She might be likened to a child born
amid low surroundings, subject to physical pollution
from the slums wherein it dwells, and liable to moral
degradation from debauched companionship,
“ An infant crying in the night,
“ An infant crying for the light,”
with all life’s odds apparently against it. We see it,
however advancing from childhood to youth, from youth
to age, ever struggling on, sinking into pitfalls only to
rise the stronger, yielding to one temptation only to
present more fierce resistance to the next.
Little by
little it progresses from a low culture to a high one,
from beasthood to manhood. Such a sight is a sublimity
and such, in miniature, is the story of Humanity. De
graded in her early stages, the slave of fear, and the
victim of imagination, we see her emergent in the grand
march of time, ever redeeming herself and her children,
ever conquering and to conquer.
And it is a matter of congratulation, in this new age,
that many causes are working under the conscious use
of the law of evolution towards a favorable end, causes
that are grounds of improvement and of hope. As an
example, nothing promises more fairly for the supremacy
of the humane over the inhumane than the application
�67
of the doctrine of heredity: and when this doctrine is
scientifically availed of, it is believed that the good will
more and more overcome the evil by arresting the
trouble at its source, viz., by the checking of a badlyborn population; by preventing from being born those
who, when born, must inherit physical, mental or moral
stain. This remedy working in connection with a higher
religious sentiment and a better morality (especially in
reference to the distribution of wealth) must have an
immense effect in circumscribing pauperism and crime.
The pressure of population on food will be diminished
and less temptation to crime engendered. Equally also
with the influence of this law of heredity on the non
creation of evilly disposed beings will it show its benefi
cent results in the wider production of more highly born
characters. Just as by care and by the study of points
and pedigrees, high breeds of animals are produced on
our best stock farms, so, under a comprehension of this
law in relation to man, a nobler race of beings will be
“ selected,” to whom can rightfully be entrusted the
management of this planet.
Many other combined causes are tending towards the
disenthralment of the race, but without stopping to ' ex
amine these further, I may say that the picture I have
been thus seeking to paint is a general objective pre
sentation of our earthly career in history which, while
it concedes the evil in Humanity, shows at the same
time her constant conquest and reduction of it, a view
which explains our retardations through the past and
our encouragement for the future. Better, a thousand
times better even such a Supreme Being than the dread
unapproachable God of Christianity, who exerts his om
nipotence to curse men here and doom them to hell
hereafter. If no choice remains but between this hu
man conception and the theological one let us by all
means adopt the human.
�68
Second : In the subjective view ; turning to the sub
jective side, we here meet one of the foundational doc
trines of Positivism, to wit, that no subjective concep
tion can be true unless based on an objective fact. There
fore in strict science, the subjective cognition of Hu
manity must correspond to the objective actual Human
ity. As is the real Humanity so is our conception of it.
In fact, one of the strongest charges Positivism brings
against theology is that it is purely subjective, having
nothing outside of the human imagination to confirm it
in its assumed data. We have just recognized in the
objective Humanity a mingling of the good and bad,
and it must here also at once be conceded that in the
sternly scientific subjective view,, we are obliged to re
cognize this great organism just as it is, full of strength
yet full of weakness, replete with energy yet often tot
tering, losing one day yet more than gaining the next.
I trust that I have shown that even this apprehension of
Humanity, ever triumphing over herself, is no real bar
to the inspiration of a religious enthusiasm, but this does
nut by any means include the whole picture; it merely
gives the view, as it were, from the base of the moun
tain, wherein the vision, in a small horizon, is confined to
the stern outlines of subjective science in its severest
aspects, wherein it merely endeavors to represent the
cold and naked truth ; but as we ascend the heights, we
find from our new standpoint that the landscape of ex
istence stretches vastly wider, softly mellowed and sub
dued through depth of atmosphere. Thus there is a
subjective view that includes something more than mere
science. In fact, there may be said to be two subjective
views, one the strictly scientific subjective, which we
have just given ; the other, the ideal or reZz’yw-subjective, which now remains to be described.
This ideal conception, while ever reposing on facts for
�G9
its base, points way beyond these towards the airy realm
of Fancy, wherein dwell Art and Love. The old scrip
tures enjoins: “ be ye therefore perfect even as your
Father which is in Heaven is perfect;” it tells us to
“ approve those things which are excellent, to seek those
things which are above where Christ dwelleth at the
right hand of God.” Now this sublime perfection can
only be thought of whether in a theological or strictly
human faith by means of the ideal faculty in man, for
man to be truly great must have a high purpose inspired
by a lofty spiritual aim. He must have that which is
outside of, better than and beyond himself. He must
have some Arcadia towards which in hope at least he can
steer his bark. The ideal alone is the source of this;
the ideal alone is the constructor of Utopias. The ideal
alone it is which kindles anew on the altar the fires of
enthusiasm, and becomes, when personified, the true highpriestess of Religion, in whom we find the transmuta
tion of the evil, the divination of the highest good. Anyone who has been among the mining districts has seen
the long narrow troughs divided up into sections formed
by small cross pieces fastened to the wooden sluice to
catch the ore as it sinks in the flowing water. The
pounded and broken mineral all mixed with dirt and
rubbish is thrown in at the upper end of the receptacle;
the heavier pieces fall in the first section clear and clean;
the lighter particles in the next compartment, and so on
till in the last one the finest ore dust is deposited bright
and shining, while the water flows away carrying off
every vestige of impurity.
In this mamer it is, through the blessed aid of the
imagination, that we are enabled to appreciate the ideal
and to escape from even the appearance of evil in our
Supreme Being, for this idealized Humanity represents
only tlie beings in the past, present and future who con
�.70
verge. None but the good can converge. Inhumanity
has no convergence. The good only exercise upon each
other and posterity the power of a moral cohesion. From
such a conception all the Neros, Torquemadas, Jeffreys
and Tweeds must be excluded, and in place of these non
human men can be counted those noble animals (more
truly good than many self-styledly more exalted beings)
such as the horse, without whose aid civilization could
not have been, and the dog, the synonym of fidelity,
who has been to man such a devoted friend and servant.
Beckoned forward by this uplifting inspiration can we
not be justified in dreaming that this world will become
a paradise, an earthly heaven, where there will be no
more war nor any distraction of contentious trade, an
Eden of Peace, where the lion and the lamb shall lie
down together, and a little child shall lead them; where
the rough shall be made smooth and the crooked straight ?
We must think thus or hope must bid farewell to life.
Humanity nnder this idealization may perhaps best
be symbolized, as Comte pictured Her to himself, under
the figure, namely, of the Virgin Mother and Child,
adopted from the Roman Catholic Church. In the
mother we have the Past; in the child and mother to
gether, the Present; in the child alone, the Future.
This group expressed Comte’s highest soaring toward
perfection as best embodying beauty, both in form, fea
ture and character, and was his idealized representation
of Humanity. In like manner all of us, to aid ourselves
may, if we choose, adopt this or some similar dream
wherewith to fill our longings.
In the light of this Examination of Humanity as the
Supreme Being, we may claim, not without reason, to
have found the Holy Spirit of the New Religion, and a
real Trinity in Unity. The Father may be called the
GreatUnknowable Power or Force, underlying all things;
�71
the Son, the Redeemer, may be thought of as this
Grand Objective Human Organism,ever striving to reconcile itself unto the world, and the world unto itself;
while the Holy Spirit may be pictured in the ideally
subjective view we have attempted to portray, which
quickens the conscience of man and says to his soul:
“ Peace, be still, for all things are for the best, and are
working together for good 1 Better times are coming,
hope cheers us on, and Paradise lies not in the past, but
in the future!”
The voices of spirits
Are calling from yonder,
The voices of masters :
Neglect not to ponder
The Powers of the Good.
In silence eternal
Here are a-weaving,
Crowns that with fulness
The strong are achieving!
We bid thee to hope !
Goethe.
In further development of this same strain of thought
are added the following eloquent words of Frederic Har
rison, in eulogy of Humanity as embodied in civilization:
“ Does not our imagination stir when 'we think of its
<£ immensity ? Does not our intelligence ‘triumph in its
“achievements? Do not our souls melt to remember
“ its heroisms and its sufferings ? Are we not dust in
“ comparison with that myriad-legioned world of human
“ lives, which made us what we are ? Every thinker
<£ who ever wore out his life, like Simon, on his lonely
££ column of thought, was dreaming for us. Every
££ prophet and king who raised up a new step in the
££ stage of human advance raised the pyramid on which
�72
“ we stand. Every artist who ever lifted himself into
“ the beautiful lifted us also. Nor was ever mother who
“ loved her child in toil, tears and pain, but was wrung
“ for us. Each drop of sweat that ever fell from the
il brow of a worker has fattened the earth which we en“ joy. Martyrs, heroes, poets, teachers, toilers—all con“ tribute their share. The priests in the churches would
“ rest our whole religion upon the legend of pity on
“ Calvary. They dwarf and narrow the range of our
“ compassion. There were Nazarenes in many ages and
“ in many climes, and Calvaries have been the land“ marks of each succeeding phase of human story.
“ Moses, Bouddha, Confucius, St. Paul, Mahomet, the
“ ideals and authors of every creed, have been but some
“ of the Messiahs of the human race. The history of
“ every religion is but an episode in the history of hu“ manity. Nor has any creed its noblp army of martyrs
“ which can compare with that of man.”
Think of the vast dependence each of us has upon this
organism. Whether we eat or drink, or whatever we
do, we rely on this Humanity. The fields and gardens
of the world minister to every repast of which we par
take.
Longfellow touches this note of human unity in his
beautiful poem of “ The Building of the Ship :”
“ Ah ! what a wondrous thing it is,
“ To note how many wheels of toil,
“ One thought, one word can set in motion I
There’s not a ship that sails the ocean,
“ But every climate, every soil
“ Must bring its tribute great or small,
“ And help to build the wooden wall.”
And so the work goes on. For each of us the labor
of the world is toiling. Trace out this idea in all its
�73
details, and it becomes at once apparent that but for this
human providence we could not live a day.
Thus, as with the Fetichist, every act of life was a re
ligious one in the theological sense, so, with the Posit
ivist, every act becomes a religious one in the scientific
sense, and living becomes one great hymn of human
worship. “From Humanity we have received all; to
“ Her we owe all; we are Her servants and Her organs;
“ we live by Her and so should live for Her.”
Humanity has created all the Gods, so is greater than
any God. She has written all the bibles, so is greater
than any bible. She has founded all religions, so is
greater than any religion. She has discovered all sci
ence, so is greater than any science. She is the Supreme
Being on this planet.
In this new faith, head and heart are finally united,
for Humanity, like all phenomena, is under the govern
ance of law, and yet by our relation to her we are com
pelled towards love and duty. Thus, with us most liter
ally, love becomes the fulfilling of the law ; and thus our
atonement (at-one-ment) is at least completed—for we
are at one with the great external order of inorganic na
ture, by obedience to its laws, and we become at one
with our fellow men in love, in service, and in duty. In
the oneness of the cosmos we find no place for the dis
tractions of another world. Earth and Humanity be
come our all in all, and “ human life at last attains that
“ state of perfect harmony, which has been so long
“ sought for in vain, and which consists in the direction
“ of all our faculties to one common purpose, under the
“ supremacy of affection” (Comte). Liberty is our con
dition, Love is our principle, Order is our basis, Progress
is our end.
Incorporated with Humanity we Positivists do not
await salvation ; we are saved. We do not sigh for im
�74
mortality; we are immortal.
True it is
u That low in the dust our mouldering frames may lie,
But that which warmed them once can never die.”
A. modern poet, still unknown to fame, strikes the
same conception when he says,
Man—
Who, being dead, is buried and consumed,
By the unseemly fingers of decay,
His sad remainder setting forth a feast
For the same guests as an interred dog;
Yet, being thus, the unrecorded brute,
Sans life his equal and, when dead, both dumb,
His voice is heard through all the rear of time,
In mighty diapason loud and long,
And magic chords of sweet entuned rnyme,
That echo and will echo to the doom.
And Victor Hugo emphasises the same sentiment
most nobly in his funeral eulogy of George Sand :
“ I weep for the dead and I salute the immortal.
“ I have loved her; I have admired her; I have
“ venerated her; to-day in the presence of the august
“ serenity of death, I contemplate her.
“ I felicitate her, because what she has done is great,
“ and I thank her because what she has done is good. I
“ remember that one day I wrote to her : ‘ I thank you
“ c for being so great a soul.’
“ Have we lost her ? No. These lofty figures dis“ appear, but they do not vanish. Far from it, one can
“ almost say that they are realized. By becoming in“ visible under one form, they become visible under an“ other. A sublime transfiguration.
“ The human form is an occultation.. It masks the
“ real and divine usage, which is the idea. George
*
�“ Sand was an idea: she escaped from the flesh, and be“ hold she is free: she is dead, and behold she is liv“ ing.”
It may be said that this sort of Immortality may prove
an inspiration for those raised by genius above their fel
lows, “ but how about the many common toilers who
constitute the rank and file of life ?” For these also the
same sentiment amply suffices. I cannot express this
better than does the following anonymous bit of poetry
I have chanced upon.
WORDS AND ACTS.
Not a mind but has its mission—
Power of working woe or weal;
So degraded none’s condition,
But the world his weight may feel,
Words of kindness we have spoken,
May, when we have passed away,
Heal, perhaps, some spirit broken,
Guide a brother led astray.
Thus our very thoughts are living,
Even when we are not here ;
Joy and consolation given
To the friends we hold so dear.
Not an act but is recorded,
Not a word but has its weight;
Every virtue is rewarded,
Outrage punished, soon or late.
Let no being, then, be rated
As a thing of little worth
Every soul that is created
Has its part to play on earth.
Tn this sense it is, the sense of the Immortality of In
�76
fluence that we abide, the sense of the immortality of
that which is best and noblest in us, quite content to
leave to the Christians the selfish materialism of an after
life, which, contrary to all reason and all morality, they
seek to transfer to another and impossible sphere.
Are not the Christians aware that there is absolutely
no demonstration of a personal existence beyond the
grave ; that at the best it is but a hope which no more
proves their case than the desire for earthly wealth
proves its possession ? Do they not also know that the
widest spread religion on the earth finds the acme of its
longing in the very opposite of this Christian doctrine,
in the Buddhist dream, viz. of Nirvana, wherein the
sense of eternal rest is sighed for through the total and
eternal absorption of the individual into the universal
all?
Why, also, do not the theologians dwell on the pre
natal as well as the post-mortuary immortality ? Cer
tainly an undying soul lives as much before birth as after
death. Yet this point is never even alluded to.
“ You say that the soul is immortal,
“ That the spirit can never die ;
“ If God was content when I was not,
“ Why not when I have passed by ?”
Still, with all said, if people insist on clinging to this
last remnant of superstition, the position taken by
Positivism is, that it denies nothing. It simply affirms
that to the human ken all knowledge of the hereafter is
impossible, and that ample inspiration, ample solace and
ample hope can be found in the substitute, the wholly
unselfish substitute, which it proposes. •
;
And mark how beneficent in practical action our re
ligion becomes. Capital and labor under this enthusi
asm will each appear servitors under the impulse of a
�common love, and their united action will constitute the
material providence of the race. The philosopher,
scientist and artist will become the priests of the new re
ligion. Woman, the mother and queen, will be wor
shipped as the moral ideal. But these are all subjects
for separate essays, involving as they do the organiza
tion of society under the new regime.
So I can only ask in conclusion, who is the true in
fidel, the Christian or the Positivist; he who believes in
legend, or he who believes in law, he who enlarges art,
or he who dwarfs it, he who foundmmorality in the here*
or he who basis it on heaven and hell, he whose aim is a
scramble for his individual salvation, or he who religi
ously “ lives for othersin a word, he who adores God
or he who clings to Humanity ? I leave to yon the
answer.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The cause of humanity, or the waning and the rising faith: an essay from the standpoint of the positive philosophy ... read before the Society of Humanity, Sunday, March 3d,1878, with subsequent revisions and additions
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Palmer, Courtlandt
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: New York
Collation: 77 p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Society of Humanity
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1879
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5215
Subject
The topic of the resource
Positivism
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The cause of humanity, or the waning and the rising faith: an essay from the standpoint of the positive philosophy ... read before the Society of Humanity, Sunday, March 3d,1878, with subsequent revisions and additions), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Humanity
Positivism
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/c5a15f6b17b809785930417df25ff2e8.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=NUI2Lshce8rHcyymEnKwmiQCSMpSxXXS2vLx-7l7DLSR9g0%7EQU9ku34C6qZmUZWD%7E5diZ7eSyoW00A9fz7wCq2sn5SL%7Eqno2DsblX5igwVor6Sbk3XldI9EC3nYTt4qnqSvJyNox6P9Ljc75p%7EZo8oYEVT-l3lUb0NedRsRM3wqG3Xu67kxnMe8OvA0LoA6ZGgCp4A-SNnQvzcl5%7EfxIWl1pyBGInrPpBTn5r5-uJHOQbgwTFn6QiHFk4GXg85%7EMbWQd24Gth5V%7ECGrrc0evNhxcrGb-AXw8-3hNGdwFSfXzhm8Ey9jueid7xw53rh8vJI4ekFKJ6-DkWQNm-cM7fw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
214192575c2bc526dc32f11eaf85a580
PDF Text
Text
THE POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
BY FREDERIC HARRISON.
HE interest which the system known as Positivism awakens
in public attention is so vastly in excess of any knowledge
of the writings of Comte, and of any attempts at propagandism made by his followers, that it may afford matter
for some curious reflection. On the one hand, we have one of the most
voluminous if not the most elaborate of all modern philosophies, com
posed in a foreign language and a highly technical style. Those who
have honestly studied, or even actually read, these difficult works may
be numbered on the hand; and no methodical exposition of them exists
in this country. The full adherents of this system in England are
known to be few; and they but very rarely address the public. Among
the regular students of Comte two or three alone find means occasion
ally to express their views, and that for the most part on special sub
jects. Such is the only medium through which the ideas of Comte are
promulgated—a mass of writings practically unread; a handful of
disciples for the most part silent.
On the other hand, the press and society, platform and pulpit, are
continually resounding with criticism, invective, and moral reflection
arrayed against this system. Reviews devote article after article to
demonstrate anew the absurdity or the enormity of these views. The
critics cut and thrust at will, well knowing that there is no one to re
taliate ; secure of the field to themselves, they fight the battle o’er again;
thrice have they routed all their foes, and thrice they slay the slain.
Religious journalism, too, delights to use the name of Comte as a sort
of dark relief to the glowing colors of the Scarlet Woman. Semi-re
ligious journals detect his subtle influence in everything, from the last
poem to the coming revolution. Drowsy congregations are warned
against doctrines from which they run as little risk as they do from
that of Parthenogenesis, and which they are yet less likely to under
stand. Society even knows all about it, and chirrups the last gossip or
jest at afternoon tea-tables. Yet even under this the philosophy of
Comte survives; for criticism of this kind, it need hardly be said, is
not for the most part according to knowledge.
Some such impression is left by the glaring inconsistencies which
appear among the critics themselves. They have so easy a time of it in
T
�50
THE
POSITIVIST PBOBLEM.
piling up charges against Positivism, that they, in a great degree, dis
pose of each other. According to some, for instance, it would promote
a perfect pandemonium of anarchy. With others it means only the
“paralyzing and iron rule of law.” With some it is the concentration
of all human energy on self; with others, an Utopia which is to elimi
nate self from human nature. Now it is to crush out of man every
instinct of veneration for a superior being; now it is to enthrall him in
a superstitious devotion. The followers of Comte are at once the vota
ries of disorder and of arbitrary power; of the coldest materialism and
the most ideal sentimentalism; they are blind to everything but the
facts of sensation, yet they foster the most visionary of hopes; they
execrate all that is noble in man, and yet dream of human perfectibility.
In a word, they are anarchists or absolutists; pitiless or maudlin; ma
terialists or transcendentalists, as it may suit the palette of the artist to
depict them.
Now all of these things cannot be true together. If it is proved to
the satisfaction of a thousand critics that Positivism is a mass of absur
dity, why need we hear so much about it ? How can that still be
dangerous which is hardly ever heard of but in professed refutations,
and known only through adverse critics ? It is strange that a writer,
as they tell us, of obscure French, such as no one can make sense of,
who finds in this country but an occasional student, should need such
an army to annihilate him. If he were responsible for one-tenth of the
contradictory views which are put into his mouth, he is self-condemned
already. No house so divided against itself could stand, to say nothing
of the critical batteries which thunder on it night and day—religious,
scientific, literary champions without stint, warning an intelligent
public against a new mystery of abominations. “ Dearly beloved,” cries
the priest, “beware of this soul-destroying doctrine of Humanity!”
“ Science has not a good word for it,” cries the man of physics, “ to say
nothing of its irreligion! ” and so makes a truce with the man of God.
“ And literature has a thousand ill names for it,” cry out the brazen
tongues of the press through all its hundred throats of brass. Yet,
withal, the thoughts of Comte seem still to live and grow, to flourish
without adherents, and to increase without apostles. They must be in
some way in the air; for all that men see is the refutation of that
which none study, the smiting of those who do not contend. Epur si
muove !
Those to whom the system of Comte is of serious moment would be
but of a poor spirit if they lost heart under such a combination of
assaults, or took pleasure in the signs of so wide-spread an interest. A
perpetual buzzing about a new system of thought can as little do it
good as it can do it harm. The students of Comte would be foolishly
sanguine if they set this down to real study or serious interest in his
system. They would be culpably weak if they supposed it was due to
any efforts of their own to extend it.
�THE
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
51
However much Positivism may desire the fullest discussion, little can
come of criticism which does not pretend to start with effective study.
As a system it demands far too much both in the way of sustained
thought and of practical action, to gain by becoming merely a subject
of social or literary causerie. The platoon firing of the professional
critics, and the buzz of the world, may become fatiguing; but both in
the main are harmless, and in any case appear to be inevitable.
But when we look below the surface a different view will appear.
However few are they who avow Positivism completely, its spirit per
meates all modem thought. Those who teach the world have all learnt
something from it. The awe-struck interest it arouses in truly relig
ious minds shows how it can touch the springs of human feeling. Men
of the world are conscious that it is a power clearly organic, and that it
is bent on results. And even the curiosity of society bears witness that
its ideas can probe our social instincts to the root.
It cannot, indeed, be denied that so general an interest in this subject
is itself a significant fact; and though it be not due to anything like a
study of Comte, and most certainly to nothing that is done by his
adherents, it has beyond question a cause. This cause is that the age
is one of Construction—and Positivism is essentially constructive.
Men in these times crave something organic and systematic. Ideas are
gaining a slow but certain ascendency. There is abroad a strange consciousne*ss of doubt, instability, and incoherence; and, withal, a secret
yearning after certainty and reorganization in thought and in life.
Even the special merits of this time, its candor, tolerance, and spirit of
inquiry, exaggerate our consciousness of mental anarchy, and give a
strange fascination to anything that promises to end it.
We have passed that stage of thought in which men hate or despise
the religious and social beliefs they have outgrown—their articles of
religion, constitutions of State, and orders of society. We feel the need
of something to replace them more and more sadly, and day by day we
grow more honestly and yet tenderly ashamed of the old faiths we once
had. At bottom mankind really longs for something like a rule of
life, something that shall embody all the phases of our multiform
knowledge, and yet slake our thirst for organic order. Now there is, it
may be said without fear, absolutely nothing which pretends to meet
all these conditions—but one thing, and that is Positivism. There are,
no doubt, religions in plenty, systems of science, theories of politics,
and the like; but there is only one system which takes as its subject
all sides of human thought, feeling, and action, and then builds these
up into a practical system of life. Hence it is that, however imperfectly
known, Positivism is continually presenting itself; and though but
little studied, and even less preached, it ceases not to work. It proposes
some solution to the problem which is silently calling for an answer in
the depths of every vigorous mind that has ceased to be satisfied with
the past. It states the problem at least, and nothing else does even
�52
THE
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
this. Thus, in spite of every distortion from ignorance or design, the
scheme of Positivism has such affinity for the situation that it is ever
returning to men’s view. For whilst mankind, in the building of the
mighty tower of Civilization, seem for the time struck as if with a con
fusion of purpose, and the plan of the majestic edifice for the time
seems lost or forgotten, ever and anon there grows visible to the eye of
imagination the outline of an edifice in the future, of harmonious de
sign and just proportion, filling the mind with a sense of completeness
and symmetry.
An interest thus wide and increasing in a system so very imperfectly
known, proves that it strikes a chord in modern thought. And as
among those who sit in judgment on it there must be some who hon
estly desire to give it a fair hearing, a few words may not be out of
place to point out some of the postulates, as it were, of the subject, and
some of the causes which may account for criticisms so incessant and
so contradictory. It need hardly be said that these words are offered
not as by authority, or ex cathedrd, from one who pretends to speak in
the name of any body or any person whatever. They are some of the
questions which have beset the path of one who is himself a disciple
and not an apostle, and the answers which he offers are simple sugges
tions proposed only to such as may care to be fellow-hearers with him.
It is of the first importance for any serious consideration of Posi
tivism to know what is the task it proposes to itself. For the grounds
on which it is attacked are so strangely remote, and appear to be so
little connected, that perhaps no very definite conception exists of what
its true scope is. There is much discussion now as to its scientific
dogmas, now as to its forms of worship, now as to its political prin
ciples. But Positivism is not simply a new system of thought. It is
not simply a religion—much less is it a political system. It is at once
a philosophy and a polity; a system of thought and a system of life;
the aim of which is to bring all our intellectual powers and our social
sympathies into close correlation. The problem which it proposes is
twofold: to harmonize our conceptions and to systematize human life;
and furthermore, to do the first only for the sake of the second.
Now this primary notion stands at the very root of the matter, and
if well kept in view it may spare much useless discussion and many
hard words. Thus viewed, Positivism is really not in competition with
any other existing system. It is hardly in contrast with any, because
none is in pari materid—none claims the same sphere. No extant re
ligion professes to cover the same ground, and therefore with none can
Positivism be placed in contrast. Christianity, whatever it may have
claimed in the age of Aquinas and Dante, certainly in our day does not
profess to harmonize the results of science and methodize thought. On
the contrary, it is one of the boasts of Christianity that its work is ac
complished in the human heart, whatever be the forms of thought and
even of society. It cannot therefore be properly contrasted with Posi
�THE POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
53
tivism, for they are essentially disparate, and the function claimed by
the one is not that claimed by the other.
So, too, Positivism is hardly capable of comparison with any existing
philosophy. There are many systems of science and methods of thought
before the world, but they insist on being heard simply as such, and
not as being also religions, or schemes of life. They stand before the
judgment-seat of the intellect, and they call for sentence from it accord
ing to its law. Such social or moral motive as they rest on is ade
quately supplied in the love of truth and the general bearing of knowl
edge on human happiness. Their doctrines ask to stand or fall on
their own absolute strength, and are not put forward as a mere intro
duction to a form of life. Not but what, of course, philosophers,
ancient and modern, have elaborated practical applications of their
teaching to life. But no modern philosophy, as such, puts itself forth
as a part of a larger system, as a mere foundation on which to build the
society, as a major premise only in a strict syllogism of which the con
clusion is action. Now this the Positive philosophy does. Positivism
therefore is not a religion, for its first task was to found a complete
system of philosophy: nor is it á philosophy, for its doctrines are but
the intellectual basis of a definite scheme of life: nor a polity, for it
makes political progress but the corollary of moral and intellectual
movements. But, though being itself none of these three, it professes
to comprehend them all, and that in their fullest sense. Thus it
stands essentially alone, a system in antagonism strictly with none, the
function and sphere of which is claimed by no other as its own.
Criticism which ignores this primary point, which deals with a sys
tem as if its end were something other than it is, can hardly be worth
much. And thus viewed, a mass of popular objections fall to the
ground. For instance, a continual stumbling-block is found in politi
cal institutions and reforms which Positivism proposes—institutions
which are wholly alien, it is true, to our existing political atmosphere,
and which could hardly exist in it, or would be actively noxious. But
these are proposed by Positivism only on the assumption that they fol
low on and complete an intellectual, social, and moral reorganization
by which society would be previously transformed, and for which an
adequate machinery is provided. No value can attach therefore to any
judgment on the political institutions per se, tom from the soil in
which they are to be planted, crudely judged by the political tone of
the hour. No serious judgment is possible until the social and intel
lectual basis on which they are to be built has been comprehended and
weighed, and found to be inadequate or impossible. But this is what
he who criticises the system from a special point of view is unwilling
or unable to do.
So with the philosophy—we often hear indignant protests against
the attempt made by Comte to organize the investigation of nature.
Nothing is easier than to show that the organization proposed might
�54
THE
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
check the discovery of some curious facts, or the pursuits of certain
seekers after truth. But the same would be true of any organization
whatever. The problem of human life is not to secure the greatest ac
cumulation of knowledge, or the vastest body of truth, but that which
is most valuable to man; not to stimulate to the utmost the exercise
of the intelligence, but to make it practically subservient to the happi
ness of the race. The charge therefore that the Positive philosophy
would set boundaries to the intellect by setting it a task, is not to the
purpose, even if it were true. This might be said of almost every re
ligion and any system of morality. The very point in issue is whether
the true welfare of mankind is best secured by the absolute independ
ence of the mind, going to and fro like the wind which bloweth
whither it listeth.
Thus, too, in criticising the religious side of Positivism, it is argued
that it fails to provide for this or that emotion or yearning of the re
ligious spirit; that it leaves many a solemn question unanswered, and
many a hope unsatisfied, and has no place for the mystical and the In
finite, for absolute goodness, or power, or eternity. Be it so. The
objection might have weight if Positivism were offering a new form of
theology, or came forward simply as a new sort of religion. But the
problem before us is this—whether these ideas can find a place in any
religion which is to be in living harmony with a scientific philosophy.
We are called on to decide whether, since these notions are repugnant
to rational philosophy, religion and thought must forever be divorced,
and whether we must choose thought without religion, or religion
without thought. Positivism, if it has no place for the mystical or su
pernatural, has the Widest field for the Ideal and the Abstract. It
holds out the utmost reach for any intensity of sentiment. Nor could
its believers fail in a boundless vista of hope; of hope which, while it
is substantial and real, is not less ardent, and far more unselfish, than
the ideals of' older faiths. Positivism maintains that supposing estab
lished such a scientific and moral philosophy as it conceives, inspiring
a community so full of practical energies and social sympathies as that
which it creates, a rational religion is possible, but such hopes and
yearnings would be practically obsolete, supplanted by deeper and yet
purer aspirations. They would perish of inanition in a mind or a so
ciety really imbued with the relative and social spirit. They had -no
place under the practical morality and social life of past ages. They
would have none, it argues, under the scientific philosophy and the
public activity of the future. The truth of this expectation cannot
possibly be estimated without a thorough weighing both of the philos
ophy and of the polity which it is proposed to found, and a very sys
tematic comparison of their combined effects.
To treat philosophy, religion, or polity without regard to the place
each holds in the general synthesis, is simply to beg the question. It is
much more to the purpose to argue that the general synthesis which
�THE
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
55
Positivism proposes to create is not needed at all, or even if needed, is
perfectly chimerical. Certainly it is a question which cannot be dis
cussed here; and perhaps it is one which cannot be settled by any dis
cussion at all. It seems one of those ultimate questions which can only
be determined by the practical issue, and which no a, priori argument
can touch. Solvetur ambulando. It has been most vigorously treated
by Mr. Mill in his estimate of Positivism, and, like all that he has said
on this subject, deserves the most diligent thought. After all, it may
be the truth that this question of questions—if human life be or be not
reducible to one harmony—is one of those highest generalizations
which the future alone can decide, and which no man can decide to be
impossible until it has been proved so.
In any case, those who have no mind to busy themselves with any
system of life or synthesis of social existence whatever—and they are
the great bulk of rqankind—may well be asked to spare themselves
many needless protestations. Positivism most certainly will not
trouble them; and the world is wide enough for them all. Still less
need of passionate disclaimers and attacks have all they who are hon
estly satisfied with their religious and social faith as it is. Positivism
looks on their convictions with the most sincere respect, and shrinks from
wounding or disturbing the very least of them. How much waste of
energy and serenity might be spared to many conscientious persons if
these simple conditions were observed! Positivism is in its very essence
unaggressive and non-destructive; for it seeks only to build up, and to
build up step by step. It must appeal to very few at present, for the first of
its conditions—the need of a new System of Life—is as yet admitted only
by a few. It must progress but slowly as yet, for its scheme is too wide
to be compatible with haste. If all of those who are alien to anything
like a new order of human life, and all those who are satisfied with the
* order they have lived under would go their own way and leave Posi
tivism to those who seek it, a great deal of needless irritation and agi
tation would be happily averted. The idea that thought and life may
some day on this earth be reduced to organic order and harmony may
be Utopian, but is it one so grotesque that it need arouse the tiresome
horseplay of every literary trifler? And though there be men so un
wise as to search after this Sangreal in a moral and intellectual re
form, is their dream so anti-social as to justify an organized hostility
which amounts to oppression? Incessant attempts to crush by the
weight of invective, fair or unfair, a new system of philosophy, which
appeals solely to opinion, and which numbers but a handful of adher
ents for the most part engaged in study, are not the highest forms of
intelligent criticism. Positivism as a system has nothing to say to any
but the very few who are at once disbelievers in the actual systems of
faith and life, and are believers in the possibility of such a system in
the future. To the few who seek it, it presents a task, as it fairly warns
them, requiring prolonged patience and labor. The rest it will scarcely
�56
THE
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
trouble unless they seek it; and perhaps it will be better that they
should leave it alone. Little can come of eternally discussing the solu
tion of a problem which men have no wish to see solved, or of multi
plying objections to what they have no mind to investigate.
Positivism, then, consists of a philosophy, a religion, and a polity;
and to regard it as being any one of these three singly, or to criticise
any one of them separately, is simple waste of time. Its first axiom is,
that all of these spheres of life suffer from their present disorder, because
hitherto no true synthesis has been found to harmonize them. This
axiom is obviously one which must meet with opposition, and in any
case be very slowly accepted. The very notion of system and organiza
tion implies subordination in the parts, submission to control, and
mutual concession. The unbounded activity, independence, and free
dom of the present age, not to say its anarchy and incoherence, quiver,
it seems, in every nerve at the least show of discipline. Yet any species
of organization involve discipline, and any discipline involves some re
straint. Of course, therefore, any scheme to organize thought and life
presented in an age of boundless liberty and individualism meets oppo
sition at every point. To show that Positivism involves a systematic
control over thought and life is not an adequate answer to it. To prove
of a new system that it is a system is not a final settling the question
until you have first proved that no system can be good. All civilizartion and every religion, all morality and every kind of society, imply
some restraint and subordination. The question—and it is a question
which cannot be decided off-hand—is whether more is implied in the
system of Positivism than is involved in the very notion of a synthesis,
or a harmony co-extensive with human life.
It is worthy of notice how entirely new to modern thought is this
cardinal idea of Positivism—that of religion, science, and industry
working in one common life—how little such an idea can be grasped *
in the light of the spirit of the day! Yet so far is it from being an
extravagant vision, that it sleeps silently in the depths of every brain
which ever looks into the future of the race. None but they who dwell
with regret on the past, or are engrossed in the cares of the present,
doubt but what the time will come when the riddle of social life will be
read, and the powers of man work in unison together; when thought
shall be the prelude only to action or to art, and action and art be but
the realization of affection and emotion; when brain, heart, and will
have but one end, and that end be the happiness of man on earth.
And thus while priest, professor, and politician forswear the scheme
which Positivism offers, and society resounds with criticism and refu
tation, none believe it overcome or doubt its vitality; for it remains
the only conception which pretends to satisfy an undying aspiration
of the soul.
Whether the pursuit of system or harmony be carried out by Comte
extravagantly or not is, no doubt, a question of the first importance.
�t
THE
ii a
pa
R
p
r
B
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
57
It is certainly one which there is no intention of discussing here. But
in any case it is not to be decided lightly. Mr. Mill, as has been said,
has argued this question-with all that power which in him is exceeded
only by his candor. But which of the other critics have done the
like ? A criticism like that of Mr. Mill is a totally different thing,
and worthy of all attention. Nor must it be forgotten how largely, in
criticising Positivism, he accepts its substantial bases. Nothing can
be more disingenuous than to appeal to the authority of Mr. Mill as
finally disposing of the social philosophy of Comte, when Mr. Mill has
adhered to so much of the chief bases of that philosophy in general,
and has warmly justified some of the most vital features of the social
system. A system may be false, but it is not false solely because it is a
system. It might very possibly be that harmony had only been
attained by Positivism at the expense of truth or life, by doing violence
to the facts of Nature, or by destroying liberty of action. But this is
a matter depending so much on a multitude of combined arguments
and on such general considerations, that it can be decided only after
long and patient study. It clearly cannot be done piecemeal or at first
sight. And of all questions is the one in which haste and exaggeration
are most certain to mislead.
Let us follow a little further each of the three sides of Positivism—
the Philosophy, the Religion, the Polity—in order, but not independ
ently, so as to put before us the goal they propose to win and the main
obstacles in their path. The grand end which it proposes to philosophy
is to give organic unity to the whole field of our conceptions, whether
in the material or in the moral world, to order all branches of knowl
edge into their due relations, and hence to classify the sciences. Even
if the unthinking were to regard this project as idle or extravagant,
every instructed mind well knows that it is involved in the very nature
of philosophy, and has been its dream from the first. Can it be neces
sary to argue that the very meaning of philosophy is to give system to
our thoughts ? What are laws of nature but generalizations ? what
are generalizations but a multitude of facts referred to a common
idea ? what is science but the bringing the manifold under the one ?
Knowledge itself is but the study of relations; and the highest knowl
edge, the study of the ultimate relations.
And as science has no meaning but the systematizing of separate
ideas, so the grand systematizing of all ideas has been the ceaseless aim
of philosophy. What else were the strange but luminous hypotheses
of the early Greeks? what else was the colossal task of Aristotle?
what else that of the elder Bacon and his coevals, of the other Bacon,
of Descartes, of Leibnitz, of the Encyclopaedists, of Hegel ?
That order is the ultimate destiny of all our knowledge is so ob
vious that the effort to found it at once can be met only by one objec
tion worthy of an answer, and that is that the aim is premature. It is
very easy to see that the earlier attempts, when even astronomy was in
�58
THE POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
complete and the moral sciences outside the pale of law, were utterly
premature. But whether the task is premature now is entirely dif
ferent. After all, it is one of those questions which no a priori argu
ment can affect. It is not premature if it can be even approximately
done. Yet the mere suggestion of it arouses a myriad-headed oppo
sition. In every science and every sub-section of a science a specialist
starts forth to tell us that generations of observers are needed to ex
haust even his own particular corner in the field of knowledge. And
if one science is to become but the instrument of another, if one kind
of inquiry is to be subordinated to another, we should fetter, they tell
us, the freedom which has led to so many brilliant discoveries, and
leave unsolved many a curious problem.
The answer of Positivism is simply this: If the systematizing of
knowledge will be premature before all this is accomplished, it will
always be premature. The end for which we are to wait is one utterly
chimerical. No doubt there are no bounds to knowledge, any more
than there are bounds to the universe. As Aristotle says, thus one
would go on for ever without result; so that the search will be fruitless
and vain. Nay, if we go by quantity, estimate our knowledge now as
compared with the facts of the universe, we are but children still play
ing on the shore of an infinite sea. If, before philosophy can be
formed into a systematic whole, every phenomenon which the mind
can grasp in the inorganic or in the organic world has to be first ex
amined—every atom which microscope can detect, every nebula which
telescope can reach—if every living thing has to be analyzed down to
the minutest variation of its tissues, from infinitesimal protozoa to
palaeontologic monsters—if every recorded act, word, or thought of
men has to be first exhausted before the science of sciences can begin
—the task is hopeless, for the subject is infinite. A life of toil may
be baffled by the problems to be found in one drop of turbid water.
Ten generations of thinkers might perish before they had succeeded in
explaining all that it is conceivable science might detect on a withered
leaf. And whole academies of historians would not suffice fully to
raise the veil that shrouds a single human life.
Were science pursued indefinitely on this scale, not only would the
earth not contain all the books that should be written, but no conceivable
brain could grasp, much less organize, the infinite maze. The task of
organization would thus be made more hopeless each day, and philos
ophy would be as helpless as Xerxes in the midst of his countless
hosts. The radical difference between the point of view of the positive
and the current philosophy, that which feeds the internecine conflict
between them, is that between the relative and the absolute. Looked
at from the absolute point of view—that is, as the phenomena of mat
ter and life present themselves from without—the task of exhausting
I he knowledge of them is truly infinite, and that of systematizing them
is truly hopeless. From the relative point of view philosophy is called
�THE P OSITIVIST PROBLEM.
59
on to exist, not for its own sake, but as the immediate minister of life.
To utilize it, and to organize in order to utilize it, is of far higher im
portance than to extend it. It judges the value of truths, not by the
degree of intellectual brilliancy they exhibit, or the delight they afford
to the imagination, but by their relation, in a broad sense, to the prob
lem of human happiness. Till this great problem is nearer its solution,
Positivism is content to leave many a problem yet unsolved and many
a discovery unrevealed. It sees life to be surrounded by such problems
as by an atmosphere “ measureless to man; ” for life rests ever like an
island girt by an ocean of the Insoluble, and hangs like our own planet,
a firm and solid spot suspended in impenetrable space.
What is the test of true knowledge, when phenomena, facts, and
therefore truths, are actually infinite? The fact that this or that gas
has been detected in a fixed star is, no doubt, a brilliant discovery in
the absolute point of view; but, in the relative, it might possibly turn
out to be a mere feat of scientific gymnastic—the answer to a scientific
puzzle. The discoverer of many a subtle problem may be, absolutely
speaking, entitled to the honor of mankind; but relatively, if his
problem is valueless, he may have been wasting his time and his
powers. Hence the special professors of every science are the first to
resent the principles and the judgments of the relative mode of
thought. They cannot endure that their intellectual achievements
should be judged by any but scientific standards, or their inquiries
directed by any but scientific motives. The whole conception of the
relative method differs from theirs. It calls for the solution first of
those problems in each science which a systematic philosophy of them
all indicates as the most fruitful sources of inquiry: it enjoins the fol
lowing of one study and science for the sake of and as minister to
another, and of all for the sake of establishing a rational basis for human
life and activity. And this not in the vague general spirit that all
knowledge is good, and all discoveries useful to man, and no one can
tell which or how. The same objection was brought against Aristotle
and Bacon when they proposed their Organa, or clues to inquiry. All
truths may have some value, but they are not equally valuable. The
claim of the relative is to test their value by a system of referring them
to human necessities. It sees the life of man stumbling and wander
ing for the want of a foundation and guide of certain and organized
knowledge. Each hour the want of a rational philosophy to direct and
control our social activity is more pressing, yet the absolute spirit in
science, vain-glorious and unmindful of its function, shakes off the idea
of a yoke-fellow, and widens the gulf between thought and life by soli
tary flights amidst worlds of infinite phenomena.
It is sometimes pretended—it must be said rather perversely—that
this relative conception of science is akin to the stifling of thought by
the Catholic Church. It is of course true that the Holy Inquisition,
like most dominant religions, did claim the right, in virtue of its
�60
THE POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
divine mission, of dictating to the intellect certain subjects as forbid
den ground, and warning it off from these limits; it dictated to the
intellect the conclusions which it was required to establish, and the
methods it was permitted to use—and this not on intellectual, but on
religious and supernatural grounds. Positivism neither dictates to the
intellect nor hampers its activity. It calls on it on grounds of philos
ophy, and on demonstrable principles, to work in its own free light;
but by that light, and at its own discretion, to choose those spheres and
to follow those methods that shall combine harmoniously with a scheme
of active life as systematic as itself. This is utterly distinct from the
slavery of the mind, according to the Catholic or any other religious
notion. The comparison is as simple a sophistry as to argue that it is
slavery in the will deliberately to follow the dictates of conscience.
No one who has given the subject a second thought can suppose
that Positivism, in bringing the intellect into intimate union with the
other sides of human nature for the direct object of human happiness,
intends thereby to confine it to the material uses of life, or to refer
every thought to some immediate practical end. The former is mere
materialism ; the second simple empiricism; and both utterly unphilosophical. On the contrary, by far the noblest part of the task of the
mind is to minister to moral and spiritual needs. And by far the most
of its efforts are employed in strengthening its own powers, and amass
ing the materials for long series of deductions. Philosophy, as Positiv
ism conceives it, would annihilate itself by becoming either material
or empirical. Its business is to systematize the highest results of
thought; but those results are the highest which are most essential
to, and can be assimilated best by, human life as a whole.
And
no system can be the true one but as it orders all thoughts in rela
tion, first to each other, and, secondly, in relation to every power of
man.
Can it be needful again to say that the attempt of Positivism to
systematize the sciences is very far from implying that there is but one
science and one method, or that it would reduce all knowledge to one
set of laws. Its chief task has been to show the boundaries of the
sciences, to classify the different methods appropriate to each, and to
point out how visionary are all attempts at ultimate generalizations.
When men of science tell us that processes of reasoning are used indis
criminately in all sciences, and that all scientific questions are ulti
mately referable to one set of laws, they are going back to the infancy
of philosophy, effacing all that has been done to analyze reasoning, and
attempting, as of old, to reach some chimerical, because universal,
principle. It is but the materialist phase of the metaphysical problem.
Supposing all questions of science, including all social questions, as has
been proposed, not apparently in jest, could be reduced to questions of
molecular physics, how would this serve human life more than if they
were reduced to air, water, or fire ? The end of specialism is at hand
�THE
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
61
if science is looking for some ultimate principle of the universe. The
search is equally unpractical, whether it be pursued by crude guessing
or by microscopes and retorts. It would not help us if we knew it;
and as Aristotle says of Plato’s idea, the highest principle would
contain none under it. It would be so general as to support no prac
tical derivatives. Like all extreme abstractions, it would bear no fruit.
Turn on whichever side we will, we meet this conflict between the
relative and the absolute point of view. The absolute burns for new
worlds to conquer; the relative insists that the empire already won,
before all things, be reduced to order, and knowledge systematized in
order to be applied. The absolute calls us to admire its brilliant dis
coveries ; the relative regrets that such efforts were not spent in dis
covering the needful thing. The absolute claims entire freedom for
itself; the relative asks that its labors be directed to a systematic end.
It is the old question between individual and associated effort—the
spontaneous and the disciplined—the special and the general point of
view'. We might imagine the case of a general with a genius for war,
such as Hannibal or Napoleon, carrying on a campaign with a hetero
geneous host and a staff of specialist subordinates. He desires to learn
the shape of a country, the powers of his artillery, the fortification of
his camp, or the engineering of his works. He seeks to master each
of these arts himself, so far as he has means, and for his ultimate end.
But with his specialists he wages a constant struggle. His geographer
has a thousand points still to observe to complete his survey. His en
gineers start curious problems in physics, and each science has its own
work, as each captain of irregulars may have his pet plan. It may be
true that much may be needed before any of the branches can be
thoroughly done ; and the scheme of some subordinate officer might
possibly destroy a certain number of the enemy. But the true general
knows that all these things are good only in a relative manner. His
end is victory, or rather conquest.
Thus it is not only intelligible, but quite inevitable, that Positivism
should meet the stoutest opposition from the science of the day, not
only in details and in estimates, but even in general conceptions, and
yet not be unscientific. The strictures of men even really eminent in
special departments are precisely what every system must encounter
which undertakes the same task. That all such should make them,
more especially if they be inclined to theology, or devotees of individ
ualism, is so entirely natural that any answer in detail must be an end
less task. By their fruits you shall know them. Let us see them pro
duce a system of thought more harmonious in itself and more applica
ble to the whole of human life. Every new philosophy which proposes to
change the very point of view of thought has always incurred fierce oppo
sition. Every new religion and social system has seemed to its predeces
sors an evil and cruel dream. How much more a system which involves
at once a new philosophy, a new religion, and a new society; which brings
�62
THE POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
to thought a change greater than that wrought by Bacon or Descartes;
which draws a spiritual bond vaster and deeper than that which was
conceived by Paul, and founds a social system that differs from our own
more than the modern differs from the ancient world.
Whether the actual solution of the problem of systematizing thought
as worked out by Comte in all its sides, his statement of natural laws,
and his classification of the sciences, be adequate or true, is a matter
which it is far from our present purpose to discuss. It would be for
eign to our immediate aim, and impossible within our present limits.
But there is a stronger reason. It would be simple charlatanry in one
without due scientific education to undertake such a task as that of
examining and reviewing a complete encyclopaedia of science. The
natural philosophy of Comte is a matter which no one could undertake
to justify in all its bearings without a systematic study of each science
in turn. Looking at it from the point of view of philosophy, and with
that relative spirit which the sense of social necessities involves, a dili
gent student of the system, who seeks to satisfy his mind on it as a
whole, can form a sufficient opinion, at least so far as to compare its
results with any other before us. After very carefully considering the
strictures passed on Comte’s classification of the sciences and his state
ment of the principal laws, it does not appear to the writer that one of
them will hold. If we are to shelter ourselves under authority, we may
be content with that of M. Littré, Mr. Mill, and Mr. Lewes. We are
too apt to forget the great distinction between philosophy and science,
and the paramount title of the former. Men of science are far too
ready to decide matters of philosophy by their own lights, matters
which depend far less on knowledge of special facts than on the gen
eral laws and history of thought, and even of society. Nor does there
appear to be any weight in some strictures which have recently been
published in this Review on the positive law of the three stages and the
classification of the sciences, the greater part of which objections have
been already anticipated and refuted by Mr. Mill—part of which are
obvious misconceptions of Comte, and part are transparent sophisms.
On the whole, it may be fairly left to any one who seriously seeks for a
philosophy of science, and is prepared to seek it with that patience
and breadth of view which such a purpose requires, to decide for him
self if he can discover any other solution of the problem, the general
co-ordination of knowledge as a basis of action.
Let us now for a moment turn to the system viewed as a religion,
not with the slightest intention of reviewing it, much less of advocating
it, but simply to see what it is, and what it proposes to do. Its funda
mental notion is that no body of truth, however complete, can effect
ually enlighten human life; no system of society can be stable or
sound without a regular power of acting on the higher emotions.
There are in human nature capacities which will not be second, and
cannot be dispensed with. There are instincts of self-devotion and of
�THE POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
63
sympathy, love, veneration, and beneficence, which ultimately control
human life, and alone can give it harmony. Though not the most
active either in the individual character, or even in the social, these
powers are in the long run supreme, because they are those only to
which the rest can permanently and harmoniously submit. Each sepa
rate soul requires, to give unity to the exercise of its powers, a motive
force outside of itself: for the highest of its powers are instinctively
turned to objects without. The joint action of every society is in the
long run due to sympathy, and to common devotion to some power on
which the whole depends. There thus arises a threefold work to be
accomplished—to give unity to the individual powers; to bind up the
individuals into harmonious action ; to keep that action true and per
manent—unity, association, discipline. Without this the most elabo
rate philosophy might become purely unpractical or essentially im
moral, the most active of societies thoroughly corrupt or oppressive,
and the result throughout the whole sphere of life—discord. Nothing
but the emotions remain as the original motive force of life in all its
sides; and none of the emotions but one can bring all the rest and all
other powers into harmony, and that is the devotion of all to a power
recognized as supreme. To moralize both Thought and Action, by
inspiring Thought with an ever-present social motive, by making
Action the embodiment only of benevolence—such is the aim of reli
gion as Positivism conceives it.
Now, without debating whether the mode in which Positivism
would affect this be true or not, adequate or not, it is plainly what
every system of religion in its higher forms has aimed at. And accord
ingly we see the singular attraction which this side of Positivism pos
sesses for many orthodox Christians. It is entirely their own claim;
and, indeed, there nowhere exists in the whole range of theological phil
osophy an argument on the necessity for and nature of religion in the
abstract at all to be compared with that in the second volume of the
“ Politique Positive.” Passing over the question whether Positivism
has carried out this aim by methods either arbitrary or excessive, it is
plain that every system which can claim to be an organized religion at
all, has had a body of doctrine, a living object of devotion, observances
of some kind, and an associated band of teachers. It is not easy to see
how there could be anything to be rightly called a religion without them,
or something with equivalent effect. A mere idea is not a religion,
such as that of the various neo-Christian and Deist schools.
The hostility, therefore, which the religious scheme of Positivism
awakens is one involved of necessity in the undertaking, and should
count for very little until it is seen that its critics are prepared fairly
to consider any such scheme at all. Those who are most disposed to
feel any interest in the scientific or political doctrines of Positivism
are just those who almost to a man reject worship, Church, and religion
altogether. This, for the most part, they have done, not on any gen
�64
THE
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
eral philosophical reasons, but simply from antipathy to those forms of
devotion they find extant. Whether, in rejecting the actual forms of
them now or hitherto presented, the very spirit of these institutions
can be eliminated from human nature and from society, is a question
which they care neither to ask nor to answer. But in treating of the
Positive, or any scheme of religion, this is the question at issue. Nor
must it be forgotten that so much is the vital spirit of all religious
institutions extinct in modern thought, that even if the doctrines and
ceremonies of existing churches escape ridicule by virtue of habit and
association, forms less familiar, however rational in themselves, would
be certain to appear ridiculous, as doctrines far more intelligible and
capable of proof would appear chimerical to men accustomed to listen
calmly even to the Athanasian Creed.
Fully to conceive the task which Positivism as a religion has set
itself to accomplish, much more fairly to judge how its task has been
done, requires the mind to be placed in a point of view very different
from that of the actual moment. How little could the most cultivated
men of antiquity, who never looked into the inner life of their time,
estimate the force of early Christianity, or the most religious minds of
the middle ages accept the results of modern enlightenment! What
an effort of candor and patience would it have proved to any of these
men to do justice to the system which was to supersede theirs, even if
presented to their minds in its entirety and its highest form 1 It is
inherent in the nature of every scheme which involves a great social
change that it should bring into play or into new life powers of man
kind hitherto dormant or otherwise directed. Whether it be right in
so doing, or whether it do so to any purpose, is the question to decide;
but it is a question the most arduous which can be put to the intelligence,
and involves protracted labor and inexhaustible candor. Random criti
cism of any new scheme of religious union is of all things the most
easy and the most worthless. It can only amuse the leisure of a trifler,
but it deserves neither thought nor answer. Positivism in the plainest
way announces what is its religious aim and basis. The partisans of
the actual creeds may of course resist it by any means they think best.
But as it certainly does not seek them, nor address any who are at rest
within their folds, they cannot fairly complain of being scandalized by
what they may find in it for themselves. Those who attack it from
independent grounds show but small self-respect if they do so without
accepting the first condition of their own good faith, which is patiently
to weigh it as a whole. And those who fairly intend to consider it to
any purpose may be assured that they are undertaking a very long and
perplexing task; that much of it must necessarily seem repugnant to
our intellectual tone. A system which professes to be co-extensive
with life and based upon proof would be mere imposture if it could be
accepted off-hand as true or false, if it did more than assert and illus
trate general principles, or if it ended in closing the mind and leaving
�THE
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
65
man but a machine. The real point in issue is whether it be possible
to direct mankind by a religion of social duty, if humanity as a whole—
past, present, and to come—can inspire a living devotion, capable of
permanently concentrating the highest forces of the soul; whether it
be possible to maintain such a religion by appropriate observances and
an organized education. This is the true problem for any serious
inquirer, and not whether a number of provisions admittedly sub
ordinate approve themselves to the first glance. To travestie a new
system by exaggerating or isolating its details is a task as easy as it
is shallow.
In its third aspect—that is, as a polity—what is it that Positivism
proposes ? It is a political system in harmony with a corresponding
social and industrial system, tempered by a practical religion, and based
upon a popular education. The leading conception is to subordinate
politics to morals by bringing the practical life into accord with the
intellectual and the emotional. The first axiom, therefore, is this—
that permanent political changes cannot be effected without previous
social and moral changes. This is a scheme which may be said to be
wholly new in political philosophy. Every political system of modern
times hitherto has proposed to produce its results by legislative, or at
all events by practical changes, and has started from the point of view
that the desired end could be obtained if the true political machinery
could be hit upon. It is the starting-point of Positivism that no machinery whatever can effect' the end without a thorough regeneration
of the social system; and when that is done, the machinery becomes
of less importance. The principal thing, then, will be to have the ma
chinery as simple and as efficient as possible. Political action, like all
practical affairs, must in the main depend on the practical instinct.
And the chief care will be to give the greatest scope for the rise and
activity of such powers. But as the social system is to be recast, not
by the light of the opinion of the hour, but by a study of the human
powers as shown over their widest field, so the leading principles in
politics will find their rational basis in no corner of modern civilization,
but in the history of the human l’ace as a whole and a complete analy
sis of the human capacities.
Let us see what this involves. From the nature of its aim it can
not be revolutionary in the ordinary sense. The very meaning of revo
lution is a radical and sudden change in the constitution of the state.
Now, apart from its condemnation of all revolutionary methods, Posi
tivism insists that all political changes so made must prove abortive.
But, besides this, it repudiates disorder as invariably evil, and insists
that every healthy movement is nothing but the development of the
past. But at the same time the change to which it looks is of the
greatest extent and importance. It is thus the only systematic attempt
to conciliate progress and order, one which effects revolutionary ends by
a truly conservative spirit. Of all charges, therefore, that could be
�66
THE
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
made against Positivism, that of being anarchical is the most super
ficial. The attempt to connect it with disorder and sedition is scan
dalously unjust. To the charge of being reactionary the best answer is
a simple statement of the future to which it looks forward. That it
contemplates a benevolent despotism is an idle sneer, for it conceives
the normal condition of public life as one in which the influence of
public opinion is at its maximum, and the sphere of government at
its minimum.
But just in proportion to the width of the system on which Positive
politics rest is the degree of opposition which it awakens. Adapting to
itself portions from each of the rival systems, it alienates each of them
in turn. It is impossible to do justice to the greatness o£*past ages, and
still more to revive anything from them, without offering a rock of
offence to all the revolutionary schools. And it.is impossible to pro
pose a reorganization of society at all without alarming the conserva
tive. These alternations of interest in and antipathy towards Positivist
politics, these bitter attacks, these contradictory charges, belong of
necessity to the undertaking, and need surprise no one. But those who
profess to know what they undertake to criticise, those to whom all
matters human and divine are open questions, who spend their time
but to hear or to tell some new thing, such, one would think, would be
careful that they understand the conditions on which a new system of
thought is based.
This hasty outline of the task which Positivism undertakes—the
mere statement of its problem—may suffice to explain the continual
interest it excites, and also the incessant hostility it meets. Let any
one fairly ask himself—if it be possible to accomplish such a task at all
without necessarily provoking a storm of opposition, and if the success
of the system as a whole could possibly be estimated without a patience
which, it may be said, it almost never receives. The mere variety of
the objects which it attempts to combine, while interesting men of the
most opposite views, of necessity presents to each some which utterly
repel him. It is impossible to reconcile a Babel of ideas without for
cing on each hearer many which he is accustomed to repudiate. The
man of science, who is attracted by the importance given to the physi
cal laws, starts back when it is proposed to extend these laws to the
science of society. The student of history, who sees the profound truth
of the philosophy of history, is scandalized by the very idea of a creed
of scientific proof. The politician foi* a time is held by the vision it
presents of social reforms, but he is disgusted at hearing that he must
take lessons from the past. The conservative delights to find his an
cient institutions so truly honored, to be shocked when he finds that
they are honored only that they may be the more thoroughly trans
formed. The man of religion is touched to find in such a quarter a
profound defence of worship and devotion, only to be struck dumb
with horror at a religion of mere humanity. The democrat, who hails
�THE POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
67
the picture of a regenerated society, turns with scorn from an attempt
to lay the bases of temporal and spiritual „authority. The reactionist
fares no better; for if he finds some comfort in the new importance
given to order, he dreads the results of an unqualified trust in popular
education and the constant appeal to public opinion. Those whom the
philosophy attracts, the religion repels. Those whom the moral the
ories strike shrink back from the science. Those who believe in the
forces of religion are no friends of scientific laws. Those who care most
for the progress of science are the first to be jealous of moral control.
It is simply impossible, therefore, to address with effect all of these
simultaneously without in turn wounding prejudices dear to each. It
could not be that the sciences could be organized without hurting the
susceptibilities of specialists everywhere, and it is the spirit of our time
to create specialists. To bridge over the vast chasm between the Past and
the Future, to co-ordinate the opinions and the emotions, to satisfy the
heart as well as the brain, to reconcile truth with feeling, duty with
happiness, the individual with society, fact and hope, order with
progress, religion with science, is no simple task. The task may be
looked on as hopeless, the solution of it may be derided as extravagant;
but if it were presented to men “ by an angel from heaven,” it would
sound strange to the bulk of hearers, men to whom such a notion is
alien, who have sympathy neither with the object nor the mode of pur
suing it. Hence the unthinking clamor which Positivism excites. To
the pure conservative it offers a fair mark for fierce denunciation. To
the jester it offers an opening for easy ridicule, for it offers to him
many things on which he has never thought. But by a critic of any
self-respect or intelligence it must be treated thoroughly, or not at all.
There are persons devoid of any solid knowledge, of the very shreds of
intellectual convictions, of any germ of social or religious sympathies,—
specialists ex hypothesis—to whom a serious effort to grapple with the
great problem of Man on earth is but the occasion for a cultivated
sneer, or a cynical appeal to the prejudices of the bigot. Non ragioniam di lor.
It must be plain to any one who gives all this a fair judgment that
the students of Comte could not possibly suffice for all such contro
versies, were they ten times as numerous as they are. The critics of
Positivism attack on a hundred quarters, and with every weapon, at
once. Only those who seriously interest themselves in the progress of
thought must remember that they are continually listening to mere
travesties, which it is worth no man’s while to expose, and to criticisms
which no one cares to answer. They would have only themselves to
blame if they choose to suppose that no answer could be given. Now
and then some striking case of misrepresentation has to be dealt with ;
but, as a rule, the students of Comte are of necessity otherwise engaged.
Controversy is alien to the whole genius of Positivism, for the range
of objections in detail is entirely infinite. Positivism must make way,
�68
THE
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
if at all, like all efforts at construction, by its synthetic force, by its co
herence, and its fitness for the situation. If it has this, it can be
neither hindered nor promoted by any controversy, however brilliant as
a performance.
It is not an infrequent comment that the points of the Positive sys
tem are so widely remote and heterogeneous, that it appears somewhat
discursive. They are no doubt far apart from each other, and appar
ently, perhaps, disconnected. But it would be a most superficial view
to regard them as desultory. Now and then these principles are heard
of m matters of practical politics,—now in pure science, in religion, in
industry, in history, or in philosophy. But this is a necessity of the
case, and is a consequence of the connection between all these, which it
is the aim of Positivism to enforce, and of their general dependence on
common intellectual foundations. Its great principle is, that the errors
hitherto committed are due to the separate treatment of these cognate
phases of life and thought. And if it treats in turn very different sub
jects, it is by virtue of this very doctrine that each must be viewed in
its relation to the other. That individuals defending these principles
wander out of their course, and fall into inconsistencies, is their weak
ness, not that of the system. Positivism itself stands like an intrenched
camp, presenting a continuous chain of works to the beleaguring forces
around. Within its own circle the system of defence communicates
immediately to, and radiates from, its centre, while the attack, being
unorganized and ranged in a circle without, is spread over a vastly
greater area. It stands as yet almost entirely by the strength of its own
walls and the completeness of its works, and not by that of its defenders
within.
Metaphor apart, let any one in common fairness consider what stu
dents of Comte have to meet. The philosophical basis alone covers a
ground far apart from the ordinary education so wide that nothing but
general views of it can be possible. To be intelligently convinced of
the truth of the Positive Philosophy in a body in such a way as to be a
capable exponent, requires, first, a previous preparation which very few
have gained; and, secondly, a weighing of the system by that knowl
edge step by step, in bulk and in detail, which perhaps not five men in
this country have chosen to give. It need not be said that the present
writer has as little pretension to belong to one class as to the other.
But there is no reason why men, positivist in spirit and in general aim,
should feel bound to defend every point in turn in a vast body of phil
osophy for which they are not responsible, and which in its entirety
they do not pretend to teach. A student of Positivism may hold that
which he believes to be true without being concerned to maintain every
suggestion of Comte’s, which to the infinite wisdom of some critics
may appear ridiculous. Deductions of the kind they are fond of treat
ing are just what a serious student bent on mastering a body of prin
ciples leaves as open or indifferent matters, and trusts to the future to
�THE POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
69
decide. Besides, even on the assumption that many of these deduc
tions, and even some of these principles, were preposterous or false, still,
as Mr. Mill has well pointed out, the same might be said of every known
philosopher. Aristotle, Bacon, and Descartes have sown their whole
works broadcast'with the wildest blunders. What a flood of cheap rid
icule their contemporary critics had at their command I What a mass
of absurdity might not a smart reader discover who for the first time
were to glance through the Ethics of Aristotle, or the Organum of
Bacon 1 Yet even if the system of Comte were as full of absurdities as
those of these philosophers—which I am far from conceding—this
would not prevent his philosophy from being as valuable a step in
thought as any of the three. There seems a disposition to force men
who become students of Comte and accept generally the Positive sys
tem, as they might in their day have accepted the Aristotelian or the
Baconian philosophy, to defend every statement of Comte’s, as if it were
a question of verbal inspiration. It seems that men in this country
are at liberty to profess themselves adherents of every system of thought
but one. A man may—one or two do—study and uphold the princi
ples of Hegel. Benthamism is a creed with living disciples. Mr. Mill
may be called the chief of a school. A fair field is open to all of these,
at least in any field which is open to freedom of thought. But if a
man ventures to treat a public question avowedly from the Positive
point of view, he is assailed by professed friends to free inquiry as if he
were an enemy of the human race, to whom the ordinary courtesies are
denied; and some of the commonest names that he will hear for him
self are atheist, fanatic, and conspirator.
Respecting the actual adherents of Comte, perhaps a few words
may be permitted, and, indeed, a few are required. It is not usual in
this country to “ picket ” the ordinary doings of a school in politics or
opinion, even though you do happen to differ from them. But in the
case of Positivism it seems to be thought allowable to dispense with
such scruples. Accordingly, the most ordinary utterance of one of
those whom they dub as a member of the school is at once set down by
anonymous persons as some fresh act of what they are pleased to call
" this malignant sect.” The mode in use is a very old, a very simple,
but not a very candid plan: it consists only in this—the describing
every one who has adopted any Positivist principle as a professed disci
ple of Comte; next, of attributing to each of such persons everything
that any of them or that Comte has at any time countenanced; and
lastly, of ascribing to Positivism and to Comte, every act and almost
every word of any of these persons. And the world seems to relish
any preposterous bit of gossip about Positivist churches and ceremo
nies, schemes, plots, and what not 1 One can hardly keep one’s coun
tenance in doing it, but it seems necessary to state that all this illnatured gossip is the childish stuff such gossip invariably is. As to
telling the world anything about the “ sect ”—“ malignant ” or other
�70
THE POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
wise—there is nothing to tell. Whatever else may be true about Posi
tivism, publicity is its very essence—vivre au grand jour—in thought,
word, and deed, according to the motto of Comte; and every act and
statement it makes is open to any one who cares to look. The utmost
publicity about persons, congregations, rites, and preaching, by all
means. But the gossip need not be untrue as well as impertinent. As
is well known, Dr. Richard Congreve, who has adopted the system and
practice of Comte in its entirety, has occasionally made an address to
a small audience, and has subsequently published his discourse. He
has also from time to time given a course of lectures open to the
public. Those who like himself definitely accept Positivism as a re
ligion, and regard themselves as a community, of whom it should be
said the present writer is not one, occasionally have met together. But
the various observances instituted by Comte are scarcely practicable
here. It is obvious that it must be so. A religion, a worship, and an
education such as Comte conceived them, are not possible in all their
completeness without a body of persons and families steadily desirous
of observing them. It need hardly be said that the materials for this
do not as yet exist in this country. A system like Positivism does not
easily receive complete adherents. It is not like any of the religious,
political, or socialist systems—like Swedenborgianism or CornmnuiRm
—a simple doctrine capable of awakening a dominant fanaticism. It
cannot possibly be preached beside a hedge or in a workshop, and gain
converts by the score, like Methodism or Chartism. To promulgate it
duly requires a fresh education, followed by a long course of systematic
meditation. To form an honest and solid conviction upon a body of
philosophy thus encyclopedic requires years of study. Accordingly,
the number of those who have completely accepted the system of
Comte as a religion, among whom it has been said the present writer
cannot count himself, is small. To treat every student of Positivism
and avowed adherent of Comte’s system as a member of a sort of
secret society, and then to pretend that this supposed society is engaged
in a series of religious and political plots, the amusement of some
busybodies, is an idle impertinence. These tales are worthy only of an
imperialist journal describing an apparition of the Spectre Rouge.
The fact that there are men not so nervously afraid of being associated
with an unpopular cause as to be engaging in constant controversy or
defence, is no honest ground for including them in a body to which
they do not belong, for fastening on them any design, whether they
have countenanced it or not, and any opinion,whether they adopt it or
not. That there are men who think it their duty to say plainly what
they think, and to say it always under the guarantee of their own
names, is no good cause, though it makes it easy for masked opponents,
to eke out the argumentum ad rationem by a free use of the argumen
tum ad hominem. If all such attacks, which are the portion of any
man who dares to treat a question from the Positivist point of view,
�THE
POSITIV IST PROBLEM.
are for the most part unanswered and unnoticed, the reason most as
suredly is, not that they are true, but- that they are unworthy of
answer.
But enough of such matters. These petty questions of an hour
are but dust in the balance by which this question must be weighed.
However little it may be thought that Positivism has solved its
problem, it can hardly be said that the time is not ripe for its task,
that there is nothing that calls for solution. Into what a chaos and
deadlock is opinion reduced in spiritual as in practical things! Who
seriously looks for harmony to arise out of the Babel of sects which
have arisen amid the debris of the Catholic Church ? Or are any of
the Pantheist or Deist dreams more likely to give unity to the human
race ? The 'dogmas of Christianity have been by some refined and
adapted away until nothing is left of them but an aspiration. Qan an
aspiration master the wild confusion of brain and will ? And has even
the most unsparing of adaptations brought the ancient faith really
more near to true science or to active life ? To science, that which
cannot be reduced to law is that which cannot be known, and the un
knowable is a thing of naught. Activity on earth can be regulated
only by a real not a fictitious, a natural not a supernatural standard.
By their very terms, then, the various forms of spiritualism shut them
selves off from the world of knowledge and the world of action; and,
more or less distinctly, they assume an attitude of antagonism to
both.
And yet, on the other hand, is there any better prospect of harmony
in the ignoring of religion altogether? The men of science and of
action from time to time form desperate hopes for the triumph of their
own ideas and the ultimate extinction of religious sentiment. With
them it is a morbid growth of the human mind—a weakness bred of
ignorance or inaction. They chafe under the grossness of an age which
will not be content with the pure love of truth or with the fruits of
material success. Yet to how shallow and slight a hope do they trust!
Human nature under the influence of its deepest sentiments- venera-.
tion, adoration, and devotion—rises up from time to time, and snaps
their thin webs like tow. Errors a thousand times refuted spring up
again with new life. The instinct of religious feeling is paramount as
well as indestructible, and philosophy and politics are in turn con
founded by its force. It is an internecine struggle, in which they seem
fated eternally to contend, but in which neither can crush its op
ponent.
In political matters is there any foundation more sure ? Constitu
tions, suffrages, and governments are alike discredited. Some cry for
one reform, some for another; but where is the prospect of agreement ?
The best institutions of the age men cling to at most as stop-gaps, as
the practical solution of a shifting problem. But useful as they may
be, who believes in them as things of the future, destined to guide
�72
THE
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
man’s course as a social being ? What a chaos of plans, nostrums, and
watch-cries ?—how little trust, or hope, or rest I
In things social is the prospect brighter? Is the question of rich
and poor, of labor and capital, of health and industry, of personal free
dom and public well-being, so much nearer to its answer than it was ?
With our great cities decimated by disease, famine, pauperism—with
the war of master and servant growing louder and deeper—the corrup
tion of industry increasing—and the whole world of commerce and
manufactures swept from time to time by hurricanes of ruin and
fraud,—is it a time tb indulge in visions of content? We all have
hope, it is true, in the force of civilization, in the noble elements of
progress, and in the destiny of the human race ; but by what patl^or
course they may arrive at the goal, what man shall say ?
In such a state of things Positivism comes forward with its system
of ideas, which, at the least, is comprehensive as well as uniform. To
some its solution may appear premature, to some incomplete, to others
erroneous. But what thoughtful mind, among those to whom the
social and religious forms of the past are no longer a living thing, can
honestly assert that no such problem as it attempts to solve exists at
all, or that this problem is already solved ?
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The positivist problem
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Harrison, Frederic
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [New York]
Collation: [49]-72 p. ; 26 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Extracted from Modern Thinker, no. 1, 1870. Printed in brown ink on green paper.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[American News Company]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1870]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5415
Subject
The topic of the resource
Positivism
Philosophy
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The positivist problem), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Positivism