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INTELLECTUAL
SUICIDE.
A
DISCOURSE
BY
MONCURE
Dm
CONWAY.
PRICE TWOPENCE.
�Smdlj ^laa $Ija^L
WORKS TO BE OBTAINED IN
THE LIBRARY.
BY MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A.
The Sacred Anthology:
A book of
PRICESs.
d.
10
0
The Earthward Pilgrimage
5
0
Republican Superstitions.........................
2
6
David Frederick Strauss.........................
0
3
John Stuart Mill....................................
0
2
Sterling and Maurice.........................
0
2
Mazzini................................................
0
1
Revivalism................................................
0
1
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0
3
0
3
Religious Enthusiasm............................... 0
3
Ethnical Scriptures.........................
Thomas Paine
BY FRANCIS W. NEWMAN.
The Service at South Place Chapel,
Sunday, May 20th, 1860 ...
..
BY HENRY N. BARNETT.
�INTELLECTUAL SUICIDE.
Finsbury, June, 27^, 1875.
t
A great Italian actor has for some time been
bringing before our community a vivid representation of as sad a tragedy as ever haunted even the
imagination of Shakespeare.
The drama of
Othello may remind us of the demon of ancient
fable, which at first is a tiny worm, but gradually
swells to an enormous serpent, binding a giant in
its coils. It is the picture of a noble man,—brave,
generous, loving, simple. We see the first entrance
of a faint suspicion into his mind, through the de
vice of one who has found his vulnerable point; we
observe its growth to jealousy; we see it worming
its way upward, coiling around reason, eating into
the heart of love, till at last the hero is laid low, with
life, love, hope, fallen into ruin with him.
That is the tragedy of a very familiar plane of
our nature—-a border-region in us, where animal
�4
and moral instinctshave their interplay, manifested
in palpable results. But there are tragedies that
belong altogether to the invisible realm within
us, whose desolations make no such impression
on the senses. There is a man greater than the
bravest warrior. It was of that nobler being that
Shakespeare thought when he exclaimed, “What
a piece of work is man I how noble in reason ! how
infinite in faculties ! in form and moving how ex
press and admirable ! in action, how like an angel!
The pure
in apprehension, how like a god!
reason of man is that high and costly product which
all the ages were appointed to bear ; ’tis that con
summate flower of the world which reduces all
other things to mere leaves on its stem,—passions,
affections, actions, worthy as they are tributary to
its perfection. Who, then, can measure the tragedy
when some small intellectual cowardice, some little
compliance with falsehood, some apparently slight
error admitted through a crevice in the judgment,
swelling as it climbs, coils round the will, mounts
to the throne of reason, and degrades to a bond
slave of superstition, sect or party, the eye and
front that gave assurance of a man !
Throughout the earth the gospel preached by
nature to man is that of growth. This is the glori
ous marvel that is ever with us. Seed-grain climbing
�5
to waving harvest, acorn springing up to towering
oak; black coal crystallising to diamond, and
flint gathering the heat of the earth till as opal it
meets the dawn with tints pure as its own. On
every lowliest grass blade and leaf is written the
story of Ascension. And how great does that theme
become when it is seen in the growth of weak in
fancy to heroic manhood ! Behold the helpless babe
become ‘ a palace of sweet sounds and sights,’ or
culminating in the brain of Plato, of Shakespeare,
foreheads mated with the dome of Heaven. Or see
small barbarous colonies of rude men forming reli
gions, laws, arts—creating civilisations. All this
natural history and human history is the preface
to each individual existence, assigns its present
task, and surrounds it with the means and methods
of accomplishment. We have arrived at a period
when the secret which nature has been so long
striving to communicate to her human child has at
last been caught. It is, that what is mere renewal
in the earth must in man be improvement; that
which in lower nature is mere routine seed, and
blossom and fruit, and back to seed again—must
rise by reason to be progress that never returns on
its track. It must be seed and blossom, and fruit,
and then a permanently better fruit. Art appears—
the pictorial alphabet of natural forms and forces
�6
combined by reason and taste to convey ideas. Art
appears ; and briars climb to roses, wild gourds
to melons, bitter almonds to peaches—things which
nature never produced, only through ages suggested
until at last intelligence took the hint. But now
again—how slowly do we learn the secret which all
this outward culture is trying to tell us, the secret
of the mighty forces of inward culture ! The average
man is swiftly borne by a power realising the
fabled carpet, which transportedits possessor through
the air at his will : that power of steam for ages
slept unknown in fire and water ; but does it occur
to the wayfarer that nobler powers may be sleep
ing in his own mind ? Does it occur to the man
and woman admiring the artificial triumphs of the
horticultural show, that if the inner world of mind
and heart were suddenly to become visible and
made into a show it might appear as a jungle of
superstitions, a swamp of rank weeds of prejudice
and passion, with only here and there a stately
growth cultured by science ?
Every human intellect is a splendid possibility.
It has a natural history; it is endowed with poten
tial seeds that have a normal growth through
which they will certainly run. But what does that
natural normal growth amount to ? It is only an
increase of size and strength. You may say just
�7
the same of a gourd. The seed of it will grow, it
will creep along in the mud, it will spread, and
end in a bag of seeds worthless as itself. That
sweet fruit hid in each seed will remain for ever
hid unless art brings it out. That high product,
hid in each mind, will equally remain hid unless
art brings it into existence. You cannot get the
best of any mind without education. And this does
not supersede nor change a single law of the thing
cultivated, be it a flower or a mind; it is indeed
effected by the closest obedience to, and co-opera
tion with, the laws of that thing; it brings all that
is kno wn of those laws generally to bear upon the
individual seed or mind specifically, as the accumu
lated science of a thousand years may enter a room
to save one child’s life.
Now, the discovery that each mind represents
the possibility of a new variety of fruit, at once
raises our definition of intellect. We find that the
mass of minds go on reproducing the fatal averages
of opinion and belief: their creeds and customs are
hereditary; when they speak, you listen to their
great grandfather, as he listened to his, and so on
all the way back to some ancient Pope or Bishop,
historically dead, but really immortal as mental im
penetrability. "We must define intellect as that
which emerges out of this conventional mass, not
�8
indeed unrelated to it, but carrying its slumbering
powers to conscious realisation and effective action
through individual thought and will. Intellect must
become individual that it may be universal: that
is, each real mind must have had its own history,
exercised its actual faculties, and fought its own
obstacles all the way up to conscious unity with
great principles, which work on the unthinking
mass only, as it were, chemically.
And if, with this long genealogy, there is pro
duced at last a mind that really inquires and thinks,
holding for all a promise of real addition to their
higher nature, how bitter is the disappointment
when that new power is turned to ends that debase
and corrupt it! Ordinarily, indeed, this sad result
comes of the merest moral weakness. Intellect is a
marketable commodity, and unhappily it brings
most when put up at auction: still more unfor
tunately, error is able to bid higher than truth. All
around us we hear the outcries of fine intellects
sold to that miserable servitude—not always by
themselves either, but by the cruel kindness of
friends in the days of their immaturity. Were there
ever words more pathetic than those of the Dean
of highest position in England. A great news
paper asked, Why can not he be contented with
Westminster Abbey, without trying to mingle with
�9
dissenters ? Alas, sighs the great clergyman,
how can I be contented with Westminster Abbey
while it cuts me off from fellowship with so many
noble souls in all ages? Fetters are not less gall
ing because golden, nor even because they are his
torical. But wherever such groans are heard there
is life : wherever men are struggling with their
chains, they may be broken: the shadow of intel
lectual death is there where scholars, have suffo
cated doubt, denied their ideals, whom no cockcrow
can now awaken to their treason against Truth.
But besides this familiar form of mental extinction
through moral failure, there have arisen in these
last days certain temptations of a different kind
which threaten arrest of intellectual development.
Some minds seem to grow finely to a certain stage,
and then become weary of growth. Their powers
from growing upward turn downward like branches
of the weeping ash. They seem to give up all
they have won for the sake of rest, or impatience
of everything tentative and provisional. Having too
much character to relapse into worn out creeds,
they try to find it in some hard and fast system of
more modern invention, but equally fatal to evolu
tion of thought. A dogma need not be ancient in
order to be destructive of intellectual freedom. It is
the dogmatic spirit which is injurious; and by that I
�10
mean the holding on to an opinion without submit
ting it to the test of universal reason, without recog
nising facts that may be urged against it, or for its
modification. Every mind must form opinions, but
each opinion so gained is for a healthy mind held
only as a vantage point for farther attainment. Nor
will such a mind maintain its opinions less earnestly
than the dogmatist: for it knows well that so far as
any opinion is true it will still live in each new and
further truth. Each opinion is held as a seed to be
sown that it may be quickened to its more spiritual
body. But dogma means the petrifaction of opinion;
to commit one’s mind to stand by any incidental
form of thought in hostility to the thinking power
itself, is burial, not in fruitful earth, but mummied
imprisonment. I call it intellectual suicide. For
thought is mental motion. A poet has said—
The firefly only shines when on the wing :
So is it with the mind ; when once we rest,
We darken.
To put an end to intellectual movement is to bring
the intellectual life itself to its term; and that is
done whenever a mind yields itself to any theory or
system which claims to have reached final truth and
so bars the door against farther inquiry.
Now, this suicidal tendency has appeared in some
quarters where it might least have been expected.
We even see cropping up a sort of dogmatic atheism.
�11
The term 1 Atheism ’ was originally hurled as an
epithet by superstitious people against certain honest
minds who refused to bow down to deities demon
strably fictitious. Such minds said,“ Very well; if not
to believe in your jealous, wrathful,unjust god or your
anthropomorphic creator, make us atheists, have it
your own way.” But that brave and critical attitude
towards religious fictions did by no means raise the
particular denials into a dogmatic position, such as
atheism, if adopted as a philosophy, assumes. Does
any one know enough about this universe to lay it
down as a hard and fast principle that there is no
god ? He may say that the facts prove the non-exist
ence of such a being as Jehovah, or Allah, or the
Trinity of India, Egypt or Christendom ; but only a
being who has scaled all the heights and fathomed
the depths of this universe, can assume to set limits
to inquiry by affirming the non-existence of deity as
an everlasting principle. It is perfectly true that so
long as every question was answered by the word
“god,” scientific inquiry was impossible; but it is
equally true that to conduct every inquiry on the
assumption that there cannot be any god is to fore
close a legitimate direction of thought. Nor is it
philosophical to build a positive theory on a basis of
mere negation ; it is the poorest outcome of discus
sion to take for my creed that somebody else’s is
�12
false. It is often necessary to show that an existing
creed is not true; but that does not exonerate any
from trying to ascertain what is true; nor can any
healthy mind be content that inquiry shall end either
in the bog of bigotry on the one hand, or on the
other in the empty abyss of negation.
If it be thought a vain apprehension that freethinking is in danger of impawning both freedom
and thought by raising Atheism into a dogma, let
those who think so observe what has come of its par
tial organisation in Comtism or Positivism. Some
of the finest minds gave themselves up to that system,
which invested a series of negations with the import
ance of affirmations, and expressed them through
forms that had grown around discredited creeds. It
was rightly called Catholicism without a god. True,
the Positivist Church instituted the worship of Huma
nity as a divine entity; but such deification of Huma
nity was based upon the negative dogma, by repudia
tion of the sceptical method. Do not misunderstand
me as sharing the orthodox objections to their posi
tion. In every respect they are superior to their con
ventional censors. I have not the least idea that they
are grieving or insulting any being in this universe.
Nor are the Atheists and the Comtists among in
tellectual suicides. I do believe, however, that they
have cut some of their intellectual sinews. They
�13
have seriously diminished their power in the com
munity by assuming- that to be settled which is not
settled, and foreclosing- a true path of inquiry
marked out by the aspiration of all ages.
But there are some other modern systems which
appear to me fatal. There are minds which are
committing themselves to the delusion that the work
of intelligence is ended; the problems all solved;
God, heaven, hell, immortality, matter, spirit, all
at the finger-ends of any one who chooses to read
Swedenborg or visit some pretended seance of
ghosts. It is most painful to witness how many
fine minds have through years built up their edifice
of culture only to lay it in ruins under the insanity
which fell on that Swedish thinker, or still worse,
under the subtle art that now plays upon the weak
nesses of fine natures, and poisons minds with su
perstition through their tender longings for the loved
and lost. If the visions of Swedenborg and the
spirit-mediums who ape him be true, then there is
no use for either inquiry or intellect any more. All
science is an impertinence, and it would be better
that all libraries were burnt to-morrow. The vulgarest spirit-medium knows more than all the sages,
thinkers, philosophers, and scientific men that have
lived or now live—more than all of them put together
have ever attained. The collective intelligence of
�14
Germany, France, England, America is superseded,
and all their knowledge abolished completely—nay,
all the laws of thought abolished—so soon as we
agree that the secrets of an invisible universe are
made known to sheer ignorance without research,
without intellectual effort, and in utter defiance of
all verifiable knowledge.
*
Whether the great problems stated in the very con
stitution of the human mind, and by which that mind
must grow, be dogmatically solved by authority
or dogmatically ignored, or settled by the
solutions of insanity or of ignorance, in either case
it is the end of investigation and growth, the grave
of the intellect. That which a man seeth why doth
he yet seek for ? Man can, indeed, humanly find
truth; but what these familiars of the universe claim
is the truth that is ultimate. The mind of man can
distinguish truth and falsity by no surer test than
the invitation they offer it; error never points the
mind beyond itself, but every truth buds at the
moment it is attained to a larger truth; each truth,
like the fabled rod, blossoms in the hand of its right
master—the aspiring reason of man.
* Since this was written tidings have come that another fine
intellect has fallen into madness through Spiritism,—that of
Robert Dale Owen.
�15
It is melancholy enough when infirmity brings
on the decline of intellectual power, and man feels
the shadow of the night in which he can no longer
work. It is related of the sculptor Canova that
when he had just finished his figure of Christ, a
friend entering found him in tears. “ Alas ! ” said
the sculptor, “ I have for the first time produced a
work with which I am satisfied.” The premonition
of Canova was true; he never produced another
important work; he had recognised the sure sign
of decay when above his completed work no higher
ideal hovered with larger promise. But the fatal
sign is none the less certain where any mind reaches
that kind of certainty on great subjects which sees
no space beyond, no room for doubt, and feels no
desire for a larger view. This, too, may come in
due time, when man’s best is done, and the hands
may be fitly folded on the breast. But it is tragical
when a mind that should be growing rushes rashly
on that fate. I suppose it was shuddering at this
the German wrote :—“ If God held absolute truth in
his right hand and pursuit of truth in his left, and
offered me the choice of either, I would say, ' Truth
is for thee alone; for me, I cannot live but by the
endless pursuit of Truth.’ ”
It is even so. Absolute truth is not for man. I
know we all sometimes long for it. We are envi-
�i6
roned by doubts that sometimes reach very far;
there are veils that hang between the heart and
that destiny of its own love it longs to read. Little
wonder, perhaps, if craving ease for its pain, repose
from its weary search, it should consent to take the
opiate of superstition. But that is no true repose
or ease. The true satisfaction is to school heart
and mind into harmony with their law, and the
perpetual increase of attainment. Amid all the
fluctuations of thought, the floating of things worn
out, the streaming on of the tide of knowledge,
we must make up our minds to find a repose in
activity, like that of the lone albatross above the
seas, which sleeps on the wing. We must find
repose in the inward peace of a soul fitted to its
sphere. And when at last life faints, and nature
fails, the truth you have earnestly pursued through
life will be the one soft and sweet support on which
you may pillow your head for eternity.
WATERLOW AND SONS, PRINTERS, GREAT WINCHESTER STREET, E.C.
�
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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>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Intellectual suicide: a discourse
Creator
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Conway, Moncure Daniel, 1832-1907
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 16 p. ; 15 cm.
Notes: Printed by Waterlow and Sons, [London] E.C. Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 1. A list of the author's works available from South Place Chapel Library listed on preliminary page. Discourse delivered Finsbury, June 27th 1875.
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[South Place Chapel]
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[1875]
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G3332
Subject
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Free thought
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<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 (Intellectual suicide: a discourse), 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>
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Text
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English
Belief and Doubt
Doctrines
Dogma
Free Thought
Morris Tracts
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73dca28b59ad50e62153b3000febd6ca
PDF Text
Text
THE
DOCTRINE
of the
TRINITY.
A DISCOURSE
DELIVERED IN
UNITY CHURCH, ISLINGTON,
ON
TRINITY SUNDAY, JUNE 11th, 1876,
BY
T. W. FRECKELTON.
PRICE TWOPENCE.
��THE HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE
OF THE TRINITY.
“In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the
commandments of men.”—Matt. 15 chap. 9thverse.
The purpose of this discourse, which was originally
delivered upon what, in the ecclesiastical calendar is
called Trinity Sunday, is to give a brief and simple
digest of the history of the doctrine of the Trinity;
not so much for directly controversial ends, as to put
before younger persons, and those who may not have
hitherto given any close attention to the subject, such
material as will be useful in the foundation of an
opinion upon one of the questions which divide us
from the large majority of the religious people in
Christian churches.
If the dogma of the Trinity were merely one
amongst the many other ideas different men have of
�4
' God,—a mode of thought by which some minds
sought to shape to their reason and understanding the
Great Mystery which surrounds us all, and, as a product
of the human intelligence feeling after God, consented
to stand or fall according to its consonance with right
reason and the order of nature,—it need not especially
concern us, and certainly ought not to divide religious
men from fellowship with each other. But they who
believe it rest it upon other claims, and press it to
other issues. They affirm it to be the foundation fact
of a compact and co-ordinated scheme of supernatural
revelation, which is of divine origin, and has an abso
luteness of truth supported by miraculous attestation,
illustration, and preservation in history. They declare,
also, that, as a doctrine to be believed, it is the key
stone of the one only system of human salvation, and
is to be accepted upon supernatural authority, even
against reason; as the imperative condition of the
grace of God, the forgiveness of sins, and the inheri
tance of eternal life. It is these pretentious and highsounding claims for the dogma which arouse, and we
think justify, our opposition to it. If it can be clearly
shown that this doctrine in all its forms has had not a
history only, but a development in time, and especially
that it did not originate with the Jewish, nor even the
Christian religion, but was bom and reached a certain
culmination in purely heathen philosophy, then it will
be evident that it cannot, as we know it to-day, have
�5
been given by supernatural revelation; that it was no
distinctive and original part of Christianity; and that
it must take its chance in the intellectual conflicts of
the time, and stand or fall with all the other elabora
tions of the restless, speculative ingenuity of mankind,
according as it may be justified or condemned by the
matured reason, and harmonised with the practical
experience of the world.
They who differ from us, very sincerely suppose that
a strong point exists in their favour, in the fact that the
great mass of Christians believe this doctrine of the
Trinity to be distinctly taught in many passages of
Scripture, especially in the New Testament; and to be
plainly involved and inwrought into the whole tissue
of the Bible and of Christianity. We are not unwilling
to bring the question to this test, if the object be to
discover what the Scriptures really do teach; but as
to the truth of the doctrine itself, such a course could
never be final, for it rests upon the assumption that
whatever the Scriptures teach must be true, and is to
be accepted as religious truth without further inquiry ;
—a prepossession of such a tremendous nature, and
drawing after it such startling consequences, as must
give us pause. It is a very interesting question to
settle, as far as is now possible, what the various
writers in the Scriptures intended to teach; but that
done, there yet remains the far more interesting, and
indeed the only practical question, whether the things
�6
so taught are true and fitted to help us in the attain
ment of righteousness. We think that it is fairly
questionable whether the Scriptures do teach the
doctrine of the Trinity. That point in it around which,
in our day, controversy and dogmatic assertion tend to
intensify themselves, is the idea of the Deity of Jesus
Christ; that is, that in some quite real sense he is
God. There surely must be serious difficulties in the
way of justifying this doctrine from a book in which
occur such passages as these;—“ The Lord our God
is one Lord.” “ There is no God else beside me; a
Just God and a Saviour: there is none beside me.”
“ Before me there was no God formed, neither shall
there be any after me. I, even I, am the Lord; and
beside me there is no Saviour.” “ I, even I, am he,
and there is no God with me.” “ I am the first, and
I am the last, and beside me there is no God.” “ I
am God and there is none else.”—These are from the
Old Testament. In the New Testament the same
doctrine is constantly affirmed; Jesus himself is re
presented as saying, “ This is Life Eternal, that they
may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ
whom thou hast sent.” “ Of that day and that hour
knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are
in heaven; neither the Son, but the Father.”
I came not to do mine own will.” “I can
of myself do nothing.” “ If I honour myself my
honour is nothing; it is the Father that honoureth
�1
me.” “For as the Father hath life in himself, so
hath he given it to the Son to have life in himself.”
“ As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the
Father.” “ I have not spoken of myself, but the
Father who sent me, he gave me a commandment
what I should say, and what I should speak.” “ The
word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s who
sent me.” “ I ascend to my Father and your Father,
and to my God and your God.” “ I do nothing of
myself, but as my Father hath taught me I speak
these things.” These are but very few of a large class
of such passages. The words of Paul are often quoted
in defence of the idea of the Deity of Jesus, and some
of them, especially when viewed apart from their con
text, seem to bear in that direction; but it must not
be forgotten that in the Epistles attributed to Paul
we find such passages as these: “ But to us there is
but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and
we in him.” “There is one Lord, one faith, one
baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above
all, and through all, and in you all.” “Jesus Christ,
who was bom of the seed of David according to the
flesh.” This is, however, quite enough quotation to
show that the Scripture proof is not so simple and
unanimous as is often assumed. Many passages can
be cited on both sides, but if the simpler and plainer
ones are taken to explain those that are figurative and
mystical, the Scriptural basis for the Trinity disappears
�8
altogether. We do not, however, seek to disguise the
fact that such a question can never be settled by book
authority at all. Mere quotation will not settle any
thing. The last appeal is to the highest critical
judgment and reverent conscience of men.
It may be said that, even though the doctrine of
the Trinity cannot be found, as we know it now, in
the Scriptures, it is nevertheless true, and its formula
tion has been the result of the Holy Spirit enlighten
ing and guiding the Church, in the persons of its
Councils, Popes, Bishops, and the successors of the
Apostles generally. This is but shifting the ground
of an authority which is still external, and simply
incapable of proof. There are those of the less
rigidly orthodox school who think that the dogma of
the Trinity is fairly deducible from natural facts and
the order of things; being indicated by many relations,
prefigured by many analogies, and therefore a highly
probable and reasonable doctrine. Upon this ground
we are perfectly willing to join issue on fit occasions,
and to abide by the result; but now it is sufficient
to show, by mentioning it, that we do not ignore this
view of the case; but, except as it may receive
illustration from the history of the doctrine itself, it
does not enter into our present purpose, which is to
show that the conception is of heathen origin, and
that it has a history, which is also a development, in
the continuity of which there is no break.
�9
It is unfortunate that Ecclesiastical history has had
to indicate the march of its progress much more by
the angry controversies which have agitated the
Church, than by the development and deepening of
its spiritual life, and the enlargement of its cleansing
and healing power upon the souls of men and the life
of the world. What is best in the Church has been
least obtrusive, and has been lost siglt of in the noise
and heat of perpetual and manifold controversy.
The great Councils of the Church have not once been
convened to devise methods for saving men, purifying
society, or resisting tyranny, oppression, or ignorance;
but, without exception, to attempt to settle vexed
questions of controverted dogmatic theology, or of
Church discipline in relation to heretics. Hence,
while the river of the Church’s spiritual life, and the
currents of purer, freer thought, seem often to flow
underground, and altogether out of sight and follow
ing, the developmental history of some hard, un'spiritual, and outward dogma, like tlqs of the Trinity,
is clearly traceable.
He has read the New Testament to little purpose,
who so misunderstands Christianity as to imagine that
what is now called by that name was given to the
world by Jesus, formulated into a creed, and system
atised into a set of dogmas from which there is no
appeal. It is freely admitted by the most orthodox,
that, in some sense and degree, Christianity was
�IO
developed out of Judaism, and owed to it some of its
most marked ideas; but it is not always seen, and
seldomer admitted, that the Christianity of to-day
owes quite as much, probably more, to the heathen
authors of pre-Christian times. We must go much
further back than the times of the Apostles and Jesus
himself, if we would see the birth of the doctrine of
the Trinity, that is, if we could see it at all for the
dim haze of antiquity in which it is lost; but from
very early times indeed, we are able to trace its course
and growth in the history of religious thought.
It was known, long since, to the fathers of our
modern school of free faith,—Priestley, Belsham, and
the rest,—that in the far time before Plato (B. C. 429347) there was a kind of conception of the Trinity in
Greek philosophy; but we know what they did not
know, that it is traceable backward for many ages
beyond that time, to the very roots of the Aryan stock
from which the Greeks had descended, on the one
hand; and, on the other, it can be traced to the re
motest times, as a part of the Egyptian theosophy, long
before the Greeks came into contact with Egypt. In
deed, there is now more than a suspicion that its origin
is to be sought in those Sun-myths, and myths of a
kindred character, which seem to have been the very
earliest forms taken by the religious sentiment of man
kind. It was, doubtless, from these ancient sources
that Plato derived it, modifying it into harmony with
his general system of thought, in which it sustained
�II
clear and logical relations to all the rest. In his philo
sophy the idea of God did not at all take the form of
a Trinity of persons, but simply a triad of qualities, or
manifestations, like the later Christian Sabellianism of
which it was the parent and type. He was well in
formed concerning the religions of India, of Egypt,
and of his own country Greece; and, in an eclectic
spirit, borrowed from them all in the construction of
his own philosophy. He affirmed the existence of
One Supreme God; eternal, immaterial, immutable,
omnipotent, omniscient, the first and the last, the
beginning, middle, and end of all things; as ab
solute essential Being, unknown,—perhaps unknowable,
—but unfolded in the universe as the supreme mind,
the active thought, the quickening spirit of all things,—
a distinction which may have certain conveniences in
a philosophic terminology, but which becomes absurd
and mischievous when hardened into the dogmatism
of a creed. After the time of Plato his philosophy
became the favourite form of religious thought in
Greece, and followed everywhere the lines of Greek
conquest and influence; modifying, and itself being
modified by, the various theosophies with which it
came into contact. It thus came to be prevalent in
Egypt; and when, shortly after the death of Plato,
Alexander the Great founded the city of Alexandria
there (B. C. 332), Platonism took vigorous root in
the new city, and flourished greatly.
Of the condition of the Jews before the captivity in
�12
Babylon we do not know much that is certain. The
so-called history up to that time, is too legendary and
traditional to be trusted implicitly; but this much may
be safely said, that they were very rude and lawless;
and mingled with the worship of Jehovah, who was to
the mass of them but a local god, many gross idola
tries, such as those of Baal and Astarte. They were
carried to Babylon in two instalments divided by a
period of ten years (B. C. 598 and 588); and remained
there until the reign of Cyrus the Persian, who, after
the fall of Babylon, granted them a decree by virtue of
which a large portion of them returned to their own
land (B. C. 536), purposing to set up the altar of
Jehovah, and to erect a new temple. This was for the
time frustrated by their own exclusiveness; it was, how
ever, accomplished some twenty years after. Later
still (B.C. 458) there was a second return, in the
reign of Artaxerxes; and under the auspices of the same
King a third (B.C. 445). The Jews, as they returned
from Babylon, were considerably changed both in cha
racter and religion. They were less agricultural and
more mercantile; less secluded and more enterprising;
and, under the fervent prophets of the exile, they had
lost their proclivities to idolatry, and returned to their
land not only confirmed monotheists, but purists, with
no small degree of narrowness and religious exclusive
ness. They had, however, absorbed into their religion
many ideas and legends from the Chaldees; and later,
while they remained under Persian, and afterwards
�13
Macedonian or Greek protection, they imbibed much
of the more intense and ethical spirit of the Zoroastrian
faith. These, engrafted upon the Mosaic stock, pro
duced the school of Talmudist or Jerusalem Jewish
thought; which, having Jerusalem, the Temple, the
Priesthood, and the resuscitated ritual as a centre, did
not prove itself to be a growing philosophy.
It must be remembered that all this applies almost
exclusively to the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin.
When Cyrus granted them permission to return, the
ten tribes, who originally revolted under Jeroboam to
form the Kingdom of Israel, had been in exile for two
centuries. They must have become naturalized in
their eastern settlement; perhaps very much absorbed
by intermarriage. In any case, Jerusalem had never
been the centre of proud aspirations to them, and
probably very few, if any, of them would return.
Nor is it likely that all even of the two tribes would
return; there was no compulsion to do so.
As far back as the time of the exile a number of
Jews had formed a settlement in Egypt (Jeremiah,
xliii. 7). When Alexandria was built, there is reason
to suppose that many trading Jews settled there; and
shortly after the erection of that city, Ptolemy, son
of Lagus, when he captured Jerusalem (B. C. 320).
carried to Alexandria a large number of Jewish
and Samaritan captives, where he gave them all the
privileges of citizenship.
There was thus, away
from Palestine, a large number of Jews, a great pro-
�14
portion of whom would be the most active minded,
and the most free thoughted. This was especially the
case with those of Alexandria. That city was a great
trading mart, and a still greater centre of intellectual
and literary activity. Creeds from the East and West,
commingled there. The philosophy of Plato was
fashionable. The Jews became eclectic, and wedded
Platonism to the religion of their fathers. So many
of them had forgotten their own tongue that, in the
reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus (B. C. 260), and some
say by his direction, the Hebrew scriptures were
translated into the Greek language, and subsequently
used by the Jews in their synagogues. This fact serves
well to mark the great divergence of thought which had
already taken place between the Hellenist or Alex
andrine School of Jews and that of Jerusalem; for
while the former accepted, indeed, in fact, actually
made this translation, the latter exclaimed in hysterical
agony, “ The law in Greek ! Darkness ! Three days’
fast! ”
This then was the situation during the two cen
turies before the Christian era. Plato had gathered
into his philosophy the trias of the old Aryan Sun
myths and faiths, and that of the, perhaps, equally
old Egyptian theosophy. Platonism had migrated
from Athens to Alexandria; and, there, Judaism
coming into contact with it, had evolved a school
of thinkers who spiritualised and rationalised the
Scriptures, and sought thus to show that the ideas of
�15
Plato were involved and prefigured in the Jewish
faith. They were eclectic, and sought religion in
universal principles ; and, hence, were ready to admit
new light upon it from any direction. With these
Jews of Alexandria, other colonies of Jews scattered
about Greece were in sympathy, and there was, there
fore, a large section of the Jewish people who held
the Law very loosely, and who more than coquetted
with the Greek philosophy. How thoroughly Platonic
they were is evident from their literature, which re
mains to us in some of the books of the apocryphal
Old Testament and the writings of Philo, which
emanated from this Alexandrine School, and in which
the various divine manifestations, as the Word of God,
and the Wisdom of God, are personified; and it is
worthy of note that the personification is harder and
more defined than in the Platonic trias. On the
other hand, there was what we may call the more
orthodox Jerusalem School of Jews, who held by the
old interpretations of the law of Moses; held hea
thenism in contempt and abomination ; and were
especially rigid in their ideas of the unity of God. It
is true they were not without tincture of Chaldean,
and especially Persian thought; but they held all in
an exclusive, unfruitful kind of way which forbade
progress. The Hellenised Jews were generally well
content with their political situation, and had no very
strong enthusiasm for the Holy Land or the Holy
City; but these of Jerusalem were restless, and did
�but wait in a smothered impatience until Messiah
should come to crush their heathen enemies under
his feet, and more than restore the ancient glories of
their city and nation.
After the time of Jesus, his doctrine first took root in
Jerusalem and its neighbourhood; and was little more
than a sect composed of such Jews as actually believed
Jesus to be the Messiah, and who expected his speedy
return to establish his kingdom; but by the agency
of Paul, chiefly, it was extended to the Gentiles. In
due course it came to Alexandria, most probably
about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. Many
of the Platonising Jews there and elsewhere at once
accepted it,—not absolutely, but in a purely eclectic
spirit, after their manner; adding it, as it were, to
their Judaic-Platonism, making each interpret and
dovetail into the other. In this way the new faith first
came into contact with worldly philosophy, and a
strong and vigorous church arose, in the speech and
terminology of which Christian and Platonic words
and phrases were about equally mixed. There was
also a church in existence which had arisen amongst
the Jerusalem school of Jews, and had been largely
extended by the dispersion consequent upon the
destruction of Jerusalem, and the deportation of the
population out of Palestine. This church was not at
all philosophic, but continued very Jewish in thought
and practice, and still clung to Jewish rites and cere
monies ; and so long as it existed it never accepted
�i7
any form of the Platonic trias as a part of Christianity ;
or, in any way, the doctrine of the Deity of Jesus, or
its logical corollary of the Incarnation. We see then that, before the end of the Apostolic
age, there were the elements of two opposing tenden
cies in the Church, and each charged with a fundamental
antagonism far older than Christianity itself, which
began to manifest itself very early indeed, as we find
from the ‘ Acts of the Apostles’; and especially from
the Epistles of Paul, which are decidedly Hellenic
in their spirit. As the second century opened and
advanced this antagonism did but deepen. The sy
noptic Gospels arose out of the Jewish-Christian
Church, and were unfavourable to the high-wrought
mysticism of the Alexandrine and Hellenist school;
out of which came,—probably late in the second
century,—the fourth gospel. The date cannot be con
sidered as certainly settled, but its character and origin
are unmistakable. It has all the Platonic mysticism,
with all the Greek ethnic breadth, and profound
spiritual insight characteristic of the Christian Platonist
of Alexandria. It uses the word “Logos” as applied
to Jesus, and thus identifies him with the second prin
ciple of manifestation of the Platonic trias; and the
phrases “ Son of God,” “ First begotten Son,” and
others, appear in it, which at this time were commonly
used by the Hellenist Christians of Alexandria and all
the cities of Asia Minor, to describe the relation of
Jesus to God his Father; but, as yet, there was no
�i8
thought of a second person of the Trinity, or of any
theory of the proper Deity of Jesus. It was in the
cities just referred to that Christianity grew the fastest,
and, almost everywhere, the two opposing tendencies
we are considering took strong controversial aspects.
At length the dispute became serious, assuming this
particular form, “ Was Jesus a man simply—a prophet
and sent of God—or was he a Being, uncreated, and
of the same class as God ? ” in fact the “ Logos; ”
the former being maintained by the Ebionites, as the
lineal descendants of the Jerusalem School of Jews
were now called; the latter, by the Gnostics, who
were the representatives of the Alexandrine school.
This brings us to the beginning of the fourth
century when Constantine called a Council at Nice,
(A. D. 325) which, after much unseemly display, and,
as it appears, almost by accident, decided in favour of
the Gnostic doctrine; and Christ was declared to be
of the same essence as God, but as yet there was no
third person of the Trinity. Up to this point, what
we now call the Apostles’ creed had been for some
time the recognised symbol of the church. It is
practically a Unitarian Creed. Now a new creed was
imposed, which we call the Nicene Creed, but it was
not at first in the form we know it now. The remainder
of the fourth century was taken up in the persecution
of the Ebionites, or Arians, as they were now called;
but the forces were not as yet very unequal. There
were, during the century, thirty minor councils held,
�19
at which the decisions were thirteen times against
Arius, and seventeen times for him; and, yet, ulti
mately, the Nicene doctrine was declared orthodox.
During these controversies there arose into prominence
the question of what the Holy Ghost is; and the
dispute grew as hot and rancorous as before; but at
the General Council of Constantinople (A. D. 381.)
the Holy Ghost was also declared to be of the same
essence with God, and an addition accordingly was
made to the Nicene Creed. It was not, however,
fixed as we now have it until the ninth century. A
controversy next arose concerning what was the
relation in Jesus Christ, of his deity to his humanity.
One party, of which Appolinarius was the leader,
completely submerged the humanity in the deity x
the other, under Nestorius, brought the humanity into
greater prominence. Nestorius was the Bishop of
Constantinople. Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria, his
rival for supremacy in the Church, was the alarmist,
not to say the persecutor, on this occasion. The
precise form the question took was, whether Mary was
the mother, only of the Son of Man, or whether she
was the Mother of God. Theodosius the younger
convoked a Council (A. D. 431) which Cyril
manoeuvred to get fixed at Ephesus, a city which,
prided itself upon being the burial place of Mary,
who had superseded the goddess Diana as the
tutelary divinity of the place. Cyril was also
president, and forced on the debate to a decision.
�20
■against Nestorius, before many of the friends of the
latter had arrived; one of whom, and probably the
most powerful, was Paul, Bishop of Antioch. Cyril
had with him almost an army of half-wild Nitrian and
Thebaid monks who were devoted to him, and
had done him many a piece of rough, shameful
service. These overawed the Council, and the
decision was against Nestorius; it was, “that the
union in Jesus of the divine and human was so in
timate, that Mary might justly be called the Mother of
God.” Many of the Bishops present were so illiterate
that they could not write their names, or even read;
and they acted simply at the direction, and under the
intimidation of Cyril. He bribed the royal house
hold. He cursed Nestorius ; and every way behaved
himself so badly, that the Emperor, when he dismissed
the Council, said, “ God is my witness that I am not
the author of this confusion. His providence will
discern and punish the guilty. Return to your pro
vinces, and may your virtues repair the mischief and
scandal of your meeting.” This was the third General
Council. The orthodox were emboldened by success,
and rushing off to the logical result of their dogma,
taught that there was but one nature in Christ,—that
he was all divine,—that there was no God but the
incarnate word. Again the Church was aroused;
and the Emperor called another Council (A. D. 449.)
which reversed the former decision. This Council,
however, is not generally reckoned, owing to the fact
�21
that it was opposed by the Bishop of Rome. Two>
years later the Church was again so unsettled that
another Council was called at Chalcedon; when it
was decided, that Jesus, as to his divine nature, was of
the same essence as God, in the same way in which, as
to his human nature, he was of the same essence as
other men;—that is, that he was one person in two
distinct natures,—very much the same doctrine that is
considered orthodox now.
Even yet, the conception of the Trinity was not
complete; for during the dark ages, at a time subse
quent to the fifth century, and before the njnth, what
we now know as the Athanasian Creed came into
existence. There is no reason but long usage for
connecting it with Athanasius, who certainly did not
write it. It came into gradual use in the Church, and
was formerly endorsed by the fourth general Lateran
Council (A.D. 1215.) And it is probably to the
entering of this creed, with its contradictory state
ments, and its damnatory clauses amongst the author
itative symbols of the church, that we are to
trace the persecutions of the succeeding five
hundred years, and all the horrors of the in
quisition. The doctrine of the Trinity has been
by no means an unfruitful doctrine; but its fruits
have been faggots and martyrs’ fires; scaffolds, tortures,
and death ; “ red ruin and the breaking up of laws;”
and an inheritance, not yet expended, of weakness,
bigotry, and uncharity. The last martyr who was
�22
burned in Smithfield was one who suffered for denying
it. (Bartholomew Legate, A.D. 1612).
Such is a brief resume of the history of this doc
trine ; much of it has not been a pleasant story to tell.
It has been necessarily very imperfectly, but not un
faithfully, told. It is one of which we should remind
ourselves sometimes, and which young people ought
to know and thoughtfully ponder. But there is
enough of it now;—enough surely “ of crucifying the
Lord afresh, and putting him to open shame.” As
we gather in our church, built upon one of the open
thoroughfares of this great city,—and so built as to
challenge every passer-by,—here, with loud organ
music and song, and with the summer sun mellowed
into “ dim religious light,” streaming upon us “ through
storied windows richly dight,” worshipping our God
according to our own consciences, not only no man
making us afraid, but under the protection of our
-country’s laws, it seems hard to realise how in by
gone times, even in this very London, our forefathers,
•of but a few generations ago, were fain to worship
God in obscurity,—to hide their unobtrusive meeting
houses up narrow courts and in unfrequented places;
and to come sometimes to worship, and find them
-only a heap of ruins;—nay, even how, few and scat
tered, they were hunted from place to place, in
poverty, and fear, and outlawry, and not seldom the
end of it all was the scaffold, or the pile, from whence
they went out to God—“ pale martyrs, ascending in
�23
robes of fire ” to tell Jesus in heaven how men traves
tied on earth his doctrine of peace and good-will
Yet so indeed it was. This was our heroic time; our
age of saints and confessors. Many of our churches
have their very foundations laid in the ashes of these
heroes; because, when dead, there was no place to
find them a grave except where they had worshipped
their God. It is well!
“ The feet of those they wrought for,
And the noise of those they fought for,
Echo round their bones for evermore.”
How little we think of all this now! And how
loosely, and at how little cost, we hold the principles
which they passed down to us,—nay, secured for us
with such a glorious abandonment of self-sacrifice.
Surely, we should not forget this ! or that men and
women far down the future, will be the better or the
worse for the way we use these privileges of to-day.
Let us hold the truth firmly; exercise it in charity;
follow it faithfully; and, most of all, illustrate by our
daily lives the doctrines we hold, that we also are the
sons of God • that He is our Father whom all holy
souls can see face to face; that religion is not the re
ception of abstruse mysteries or logical contradictions,
but the cherishing of a reverent spirit and the living
of a righteous life.
Our young people who are born and trained
amongst us, are apt sometimes to be a little ashamed
of belonging to an unpopular faith; would fain not
�24
have it known; and shrink away, attracted by the more
fashionable churches. This is wrong, no less than
undignified and cowardly. Who should be ashamed
of such a grand heroic parentage and history ?—of
such a splendid wealth of truth handed down for an
inheritance, and to which we are free-born ?—and of
such a promise as we have that the world will one
day be at our feet ? Of what is there to be ashamed ?
We have amongst us men and women, the children of
other faiths, who were taught from their cradles almost,
to curse our heroes, and to count our freest and
highest thought, but as poison for men’s souls,—who,
when they came to mature estate, and saw the grandeur
of our history, and felt the compelling power of our
free faith, were content to purchase the privilege of
citizenship with us at a great price. They are
alien in our ranks, but are proud to be 'with us;
and ask of God no higher thing than to be worthy
of such a company. Let us learn on our knees to"
be ashamed of our shame, and rise from kneeling to
gather our heresy about our brows like a crown of
glory, as it is; and learn to use it, as it is, a
wealth of power for what is noblest in ourselves, and
most fruitful for the service of mankind.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
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Title
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The doctrine of the Trinity. A discourse delivered in Unity Church, Islington, on Trinity Sunday, June 11th, 1876
Creator
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Freckelton, T.W.
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 24 p. ; 17 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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[1876]
Identifier
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CT11
G3368
Subject
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Christianity
Rights
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<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 doctrine of the Trinity. A discourse delivered in Unity Church, Islington, on Trinity Sunday, June 11th, 1876), 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>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Doctrines
Trinity
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DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY
LECTURE SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
ON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 6th APRIL, 1879,
By H. MAUDSLEY, M.D.,
Professor of Medical Jurisprudence, University Colleye, London.
[Reprinted from the “ Fortnightly Review,” by kind permission of the
Editor.]
Honbon:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1879.'
PRICE THEEPENCE.
�SYLLABUS.
The doctrines of Materialism and Spiritualism.
Why Materialism is looked upon as inferior and degrading.
Every function of mind dependent upon organization.
Milton an avowed Materialist.
Materialism not inconsistent with the belief of a future life, but incon
sistent with the doctrine of a contempt of the body.
The human body the last and greatest product of organic development.
Differences of size and development between the brain of the lowest savage
and that of an ordinary European.
Corresponding differences of intellectual and moral capacities.
The reign of law in human evolution.
The reign of law in human degeneracy.
Morality the essential condition of complex social development.
Intellectual and moral lessons of Materialism.
�LESSONS OF MATERIALISM.
is well known that from an early period of speculative thought
two doctrines have been held with regard to the sort of
connection which exists between a man’s mind and his body. On
the one hand, there are those who maintain that mind is an
outcome and function of matter in a certain state of organization,
coming with it, growing with it, decaying with it, inseparable
from it: they are the so-called materialists. On the other hand,
there are those who hold that mind is an independent spiritual
essence which has entered into the body as its dwelling-place for
a time, which makes use of it as its mortal instrument, and which
will take on its independent life when the body, worn out by the
operation of natural decay, returns to the earth of which it is made:
they are the spiritualists. Without entering into a discussion as
to which is the true doctrfrie, it will be sufficient in this lecture to
accept, and proceed from the basis of, the generally admitted fact
that all the manifestations of mind which we have to do with in
this wprld are connected with organization, dependent upon it,
whether as cause or instrument; that they are never met with
apart from it any more than electricity or any other natural force
is met with apart from matter ; that higher organization must
go along with higher mental function. What is the state of things
in another world—whether the disembodied or celestially embodied
spirits of the countless myriads of the human race that have come
and gone through countless ages are now living higher lives—I do
not venture to inquire. One hope and one certitude in the matter
every one may be allowed to have and to express—the hope that
if they are living now, it is a higher life than they lived upon
earth ; the certitude that if they are living the higher life, most of
them must have had a vast deal to unlearn.
Many persons who readily admit in general terms the depend
ence of mental function on cerebral structure are inclined, when
brought to the particular test, to make an exception in favour of
the moral feeling or conscience. They are content to rest in the
uncertain position which satisfied Dr. Abercrombie, the dis
tinguished author of the well-known Inquiry concerning the In
tellectual Powers, who, having pointed out plainly the dependence
of mental function on organization, and, as a matter of fact which
t
I
�4
Lessons of Materialism.
cannot be denied, that there are individuals in whom every correct
feeling in regard to moral relations is obliterated, while the
judgment is unimpaired in all other relations, stops there, without
attempting to prosecute inquiry into the cause of‘ the remarkable
fact which he justly emphasises. “ That this power,” he says,
“ should so completely lose its sway, while reason remains un
impaired, is a point in the moral constitution of man which it does
not belong to the physician to investigate. The fact is unquestion
able ; the solution is to be sought in the records of eternal truth.”
And with this lame and somewhat melancholy conclusion he leaves
his readers impotent before a problem, which is not only of deep
scientific interest, but of momentous practical importance. The
observation which makes plain the fact does not, however,
leave us entirely without information concerning the cause of it,
when we pursue it faithfully, since it reveals as distinct a depen
dence of moral faculty upon organization as of any other faculty.
Many instructive examples of the pervading mental effects of
physical injury of the brain might be quoted, but two or three,
recently recorded, will suffice. An American medical man was
called one day to see a youth, aged eighteen, who had been struck
down insensible by the kick of a horse. There was a depressed
fracture of the skull a little above the left temple. The skull was
trephined, and the loose fragments of bone that pressed upon the
brain were removed, whereupon the patient came to his senses.
The doctor thought it a good opportunity to make an experiment,
as there was a hole in the skull through which he could easily
make pressure upon the brain. He asked the boy a question, and
before there was time to answer it he pressed firmly with his finger
upon the exposed brain. As long as the pressure was kept up the
boy was mute, but the instant it was removed he made a reply,
never suspecting that he had not answered at once. The experi
ment was repeated several times with precisely the same result,
the boy’s thoughts being stopped and started again on each
occasion as easily and certainly as the engineer stops and starts
his locomotive.
On another occasion the same doctor was called to see a groom
who had been kicked on the head by a mare called Dolly, and
whom he found quite insensible. There was a fracture of the
skull, with depression of bone at the upper part of the forehead.
As soon as the portion of bone which was pressing upon the brain
was removed the patient called out with great energy, “Whoa,
Dolly 1 ” and then stared about him in blank amazement, asking,
I
I
�Lessons of Materialism.
5
“Where am I?”
Three hours had
“Where is the mare?”
hw-8<-£fi passed since the accident, during which the words which he was
just going to utter when it happened had remained locked up, as
they might have been locked up in the phonograph, to be let go
it
mi' eiw the moment the obstructing pressure was removed. The patient
pa'bin did not remember, when he came to himself, that the mare had
kicked him ; the last thing before he was insensible which he did
ijjeirr^i remember was, that she wheeled her heels round and laid back her
:v OTBe ears viciously.
Cases of this kind show how entirely dependent every function
of mind is upon a sound state of the mechanism of the brain.
r/tewl Just as we can, by pressing firmly upon the sensory nerve of the
[ .nna arm, prevent an impression made upon the finger being carried to
the brain and felt there, so by pressing upon the brain we can as
rrirhe’i certainly stop a thought or a volition.
In both cases a good
tyri&w recovery presently followed the removal of the pressure upon the
rwfi<d brain; but it would be of no little medical interest to have the
after-histories of the persons, since it happens sometimes after a
>W0W<W serious injury to the head that, despite an immediate recovery,
h -v/ofc slow degenerative changes are set up in the brain months or years
jrwJtf: afterwards, which go on to cause a gradual weakening, and perhaps
LJtiIOV«| eventual destruction, of mind.
Now the instructive matter in this
case is that the moral character is usually impaired first, and some
■-asinrJ times is completely perverted, without a corresponding deterior
jtuoiM ation of the understanding; the person is a thoroughly changed
affl-Sflf) character for the worse. The injury has produced disorder in the
jKom most delicate part of the mental organization, that which is
iiusti-a® separated from actual contact with the skull only by the thin
ifewni investing membranes of the brain: and, once damaged, it is
miuied seldom that it is ever restored completely to its former state of
folium soundness. However, happy recoveries are now and then made
: .jGihoai from mental derangement caused by physical injury of the brain.
eiacb Some years ago a miner was sent to the Ayrshire District Asylum
F. ,ofi/w who, four years before, had been struck to the ground insensible
i 'li' vd by a mass of falling coal, which fractured his skull. He lay
miqqcw unconscious for four days after the accident, then came gradually
niiiloi to himself, and was able in four weeks to resume his work in the
F“ .fiq pit. But his wife noticed a steadily increasing change for the
fo&TOW worse in his character and habits ; whereas he had formerly been
idresiid cheerful, sociable, and good-natured, always kind and affectionate
•serf oJ to her and his children, he now became irritable, moody, surly,
mq&jja suspicious, shunning the company of his fellow-workmen, and
�6
Lessons of Materialism.
impatient with her and the children. This bad state increased;
he was often excited, used threats of violence to his wife and
others, finally became quite maniacal, attempted to kill them, had
a succession of epileptic fits, and was sent to the asylum as a
dangerous lunatic. There he showed himself extremely suspicious
and surly, entertained a fixed delusion that he was the victim of a
conspiracy on the part of his wife and others, and displayed bitter
and resentful feelings. At the place where the skull had been
fractured there was a well-marked depression of bone, and the
depressed portion was eventually removed by the trephine. From
that time an improvement took place in his disposition, his old self
coming gradually back; he became cheerful again, active and
obliging, regained and displayed all his former affection for his
wife and children, and was at last discharged recovered. No
plainer example could be wished to show the direct connection
of cause and effect—the great deterioration of moral character
produced by the physical injury of the supreme nerve-centres of
the brain: when the cause was taken away the effect went also.
Going a step further, let me point out that disease will some
times do as plain and positive damage to moral character as any
which direct injury of the brain will do. A fever has sometimes
deranged it as deeply as a blow on the head; a child’s conscience
has been clean effaced by a succession of epileptic convulsions, just
as the memory is sometimes effaced; and those who see much of
epilepsy know well the extreme but passing moral transformations,
which occur in connection with its seizures. The person may be
as unlike himself as possible when he is threatened with a fit;
although naturally cheerful, good-tempered, sociable and obliging,
he becomes irritable, surly, and morose, very suspicious, takes
offence at the most innocent remark or act, and is apt to resent
imaginary offences with great violence. The change might be
compared well with that which happens when a clear and cloudless
sky is overcast suddenly with dark and threatening thunder-clouds;
and just as the darkly clouded sky is cleared by the thunderstorm
which it portends, so the gloomy moral perturbation is discharged
and the mental atmosphere cleared by an epileptic fit or a succes
sion of such fits. In a few remarkable cases, however, the patient
does not come to himself immediately after the fit, but is left by it
in a peculiar state of quasi-somnambulism, during which he acts
like an automaton, doing strange, absurd, and sometimes even
criminal things, without knowing apparently at the time what he
is doing, and certainly without remembering in the least what he
�Lessons of Materialism.
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hag done when he comes to himself. Of excellent moral characterhabitually, he may turn thief in one of these states, or perpetrate
some other criminal offence by which he gets himself into trouble
with the police.
There are other diseases which, in like manner, play havoc with
moral feeling. Almost every sort of mental derangement begins
with a moral alienation, slight, perhaps, at the outset, but soon so
great that a prudent, temperate, chaste, and truthful person shall
be changed to exactly the opposite of what he was. This alienation
of character continues throughout the course of the disease, and
is frequently found to last for a while after all disorder of intelli
gence has gone. Indeed, the experienced physician never feels
confident that the recovery is stable and sure, until the person is
restored to his natural sentiments and affections. Thus it appears
that when mind undergoes decadence, the moral feeling is the first
to suffer ; the highest acquisition of mental evolution, it is the first
to witness to mental degeneracy. One form of mental disease,
known as general paralysis, is usually accompanied with a singu
larly complete paralysis of the moral sense from the outset; and a
not uncommon feature of it, very striking in some cases, is a
persistent tendency to steal, the person stealing in a weak-minded
manner what he has no particular need of, and makes no use of
when he has stolen it.
The victim of this fatal disease is
frequently sent to prison and treated as a common criminal in the
first instance, notwithstanding that a medical man who knows his
business might be able to say with entire certitude that the
supposed criminal was suffering from organic disease of the brain,
which had destroyed moral sense at the outset, which would go on
to destroy all the other faculties of his mind in succession, and
which in the end would destroy life itself. There is no question in
such case of moral guilt; it is not sin but disease that we are con
fronted with: and after the victim’s death we find the plainest
evidence of disease of brain which has gone along with the decay
of mind. Had the holiest saint in the calendar been afflicted as he
was, he could not have helped doing as he did.
I need not dwell any longer upon the morality-sapping effects of
particular diseases, but shall simply call to mind the profound
deterioration of moral sense and will which is produced by the
long-continued and excessive use of alcohol and opium. There is
nowhere a more miserable specimen of degradation of moral feeling
and of impotence of will, than the debauchee who has made
himself the abject slave of either of these pernicious excesses.
�8
Lessons of Materialism.
Insensible to the interests of his family, to his personal responsi
bilities, to the obligations of duty, he is utterly untruthful and
untrustworthy, and in the worst end there is not a meanness of
pretence or of conduct that he will not descend to, not a lie he will
not tell, in order to gain the means to gratify his overruling
craving. It is not merely that passion is strengthened and will
weakened by indulgence as a moral effect, but the alcohol or opium
which is absorbed into his blood is carried by it to the brain and
acts injuriously upon its tissues : the chemist will, indeed, extract
alcohol from the besotted brain of the worst drunkard, as he will
detect morphia in the secretions of a person who is taking large
doses of opium. Seldom, therefore, is it of the least use to
preach reformation to these people, until they have been restrained
forcibly from their besetting indulgence for a long enough period
to allow the brain to get rid of the poison, and its tissues to regain
a healthier tone. Too often it is of little use then ; the tissues
have been damaged beyond the possibility of complete restoration.
Moreover, observation has shown that the drink-craving is oftentihies hereditary, so that a taste for the poison is ingrained in the
tissues, and is quickly kindled by gratification into uncontrollable
desire.
Thus far it appears, then, that moral feeling may be impaired or
destroyed by direct injury of the brain, by the disorganizing action
of disease, and by the chemical action of certain substances which,
when taken in excess, are poisons to the nervous system. When
we look sincerely at the facts, we cannot help perceiving that it is
just as closely dependent upon organization as is the meanest
function of mind; that there is not an argument to prove the
so-called materialism of one part of mind which does not apply
with equal force to the whole mind. Seeing that we know
no more essentially what matter is than what mind is, being
unable in either case to go beyond the phenomena of which we
have experience, it is of interest to ask why the spiritualist
considers his theory to be of so much higher and intellectual and
moral order than materialism, and looks down with undisguised
pity and contempt on the latter as inferior, degrading, and even
dangerous ; why the materialist should be deemed guilty, not of
intellectual error only, but of something like moral guilt. His
philosophy has been lately denounced as a “ philosophy of dirt.”
An eminent prelate of the English Church, in an outburst of moral
indignation, once described him as possibly “ the most odious and
ridiculous being in all the multiform creation; ” and a recent writer
�. Lessons of Materialism.
9
in a French philosophical journal uses still stronger language of
abhorrance—“ I abhor them,” he says, “ with all the force of my
soul. ... I detest and abominate them from the bottom of
my heart, and I feel an invincible repugnance and horror when
they dare to reduce psychology and ethics to their bestial phy
siology—that is, in short, to make of man a brute, of the brute a
plant, of the plant a machine. . . . This school is a living
and crying negation of humanity.” The question is, what there is
in materialism to warrant the sincere feeling and earnest expression
of so great a horror of it. Is the abhorrence well founded, or is
it, perhaps, that the doctrine is hated, as the individual oftentimes
is, because misunderstood ?
This must certainly be allowed to be a fair inquiry by those who
reflect that no less eminent a person and good a Christian than
Milton was a decided materialist. Several scattered passages in
Paradise Lost plainly betray his opinions ; but it is not necessary
to lay any stress upon them, because in his Treatise on Christian
Doctrine he sets them forth in the most plain and uncompromising
way, and supports them "with an elaborate detail of argument. He
is particularly earnest to prove that the common doctrine that the
spirit of man should be separate from the body, so as to have a
perfect and intelligent existence independently of it, is nowhere
said in Scripture, and is at variance both with nature and reason ;
and he declares that “ man is a living being, intrinsically and
properly one and individual, not compound and separable, not,
according to the common opinion, made up and framed of two
distinct parts, as of soul and body.” Another illustrious instance
of a good Christian who, for a great part of his life, avowed his
belief that “ the nature of man is simple and uniform, and that the
thinking power and faculties are the result of a certain organization
of matter,” was the eloquent preacher and writer, Robert Hall.
It is true that he abandoned this opinion at a later period of his
life; indeed, his biographer tells us with much satisfaction that
“ he buried materialism in his father’s grave ; ” and a theological
professor in American college has in a recent article exultantly
claimed this fact as triumphant proof that the materialist’s “ gloomy
and unnatural creed ” cannot stand before such a sad feeling as
grief at a father’s death. One may be excused, perhaps, for not
seeing quite so clearly as these gentlemen the soundness of the
logic of the connection. On the whole, logic is usually sounder
and stronger when it is not under the pressure of great feeling.
The truth is that a great many people have the deeply-rooted
�10
Lessons of Materialism.
feeling that materialism is destructive of the hope of immortality,
and dread and detest it for that reason. When they watch the
body decay and die, considering furthermore that after its death it
is surely resolved into the simple elements from which all matter is
formed, and know that these released elements go in turn to build
up other bodies, so that the material is used over and over again,
being compounded and decompounded incessantly in the long
stream of life, they cannot realise the possibility of a resurrection
of the individual body. They cannot conceive how matter which
has thus been used over and over again can remake so many
distinct bodies, and they think that to uphold a bodily resurrection
is to give up practically the doctrine of a future life. It is a
natural, but not a necessary conclusion, as the examples of Milton
and Robert Hall prove, since they, though materialists, were
devout believers in a resurrection of the dead. Moreover, there
are many vehement antagonists of materialism who readily admit
that it is not inconsistent with the belief in a life after death.
Indeed, they could not well do otherwise, when they recollect
what the Apostle Paul said in his very energetic way, addressing
the objector to a bodily resurrection as “ Thou fool,” and what
happened to the rich man who died and was buried; for it is told
of him that “ in hell he lifted up his eyes, and cried and said,
Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he
may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I
am tormented in this flame.” Now if he had eyes to lift up and a
tongue to be cooled, it is plain that he had a body of some kind in
hell; and if Lazarus, who was in another place, had a finger to dip
in water, he also must have had a body of some kind there.
Leaving this matter, however, without attempting to explain the
mystery of the body celestial, I go on to mention a second reason
why materialism is considered to be bad doctrine. It is this : that
with the rise and growth of Christianity there came in the fashion
of looking down on the body with contempt as the vile and
despicable part of man, the seat of those fleshly lusts which warred
against the higher aspirations of the soul. It was held to be the
favourite province of the devil, who, having intrenched himself
there, lay in wait to entice or to betray to sin ; the wiles of Satan
and the lusts of the flesh were spoken of in the same breath, as in
the service of the English Church prayer is made for “ whatsoever
has been decayed by the fraud and malice of the devil, or by his
own carnal will and frailness ; ” and all men are taught to look
forward to the time when “ he shall change this vile body and make
�Lessons of Materialism.
11
it like unto his glorious body.” It was the extreme but logical
outcome of this manner of despising the body to subject it to all
the penances, and to treat it with all the rigour, of the most rigid
asceticism—to neglect it, to starve it, to scourge it, to mortify it in
every possible way. One holy ascetic would never wash himself,
or cut his toe-nails, or wipe his nose; another suffered maggots
to burrow unchecked into the neglected ulcers of his emaciated
body; others, like St. Francis, stripped themselves naked and
appeared in public without clothes. St. Macarius threw away his
clothes and remained naked for six months in a marsh, exposed to
the bite of every insect; St. Simeon Stylites spent thirty years on
the top of a column which had been gradually raised to a height of
sixty feet, passing a great part of his time in bending his
meagre body successively with his head towards his feet, and so
industriously that a curious spectator, after counting one thousand
two hundred and forty-four repetitions, desisted counting from
weariness. And for these things—these insanities of conduct may
we not call them—they were accounted most holy, and received
the honours of saintship.' Contrast this unworthy view of the
body with that which the ancient Greeks took of it. They found
no other object in nature which satisfied so well their sensejof
proportion and manly strength, of attractive grace and beauty; and
their reproductions of it in marble we preserve now as priceless
treasures of art, albeit we still babble the despicable doctrine of
contempt of it. The more strange, since it is a matter of sober
scientific truth that the human body is the highest and most
wonderful work in nature, the last and best achievement of her
creative skill; it is a most complex and admirably constructed
organism, “ fearfully and wonderfully made,” which contains, as it
were in a microcosm, all the ingenuity and harmony and beauty
of the macrocosm. And it is this supreme product of evolution
that fanatics have gained the honour of saintship by disfiguring
and torturing!
These, then, are two great reasons of the repugnance which is
felt to materialism, namely, the notion that it is destructive of the
hope of a resurrection, and the contempt of the body which has
been inculcated as a religious duty. And yet on these very points
materialism seems fitted to teach the spiritualist lessons of humility
and reverence, for it teaches him, in the first place, not to despise
and call unclean the last and best work of his Creator’s hand; and,.
secondly, not impiously to circumscribe supernatural power by the
narrow limits of his understanding, but to bethink himself that it
�12
Lessons of Materialism.
were just as easy in the beginning, or now, or at any time, for the
omnipotent Creator of matter and its properties to make it think
as to make mind think.
Passing from these incidental lessons of humility and reverence,
I go now to show that materialism has it moral lessons, and that
these, rightly apprehended, are not at all of a low intellectual and
moral order, but, on the contrary, in some respects more elevating
than the moral lessons of spiritualism. I shall content myself
with two or three of these lessons, not because there are not more
of them, but because they will be enough to occupy the time at my
disposal.
It is a pretty well accepted scientific doctrine that our fardistant prehistoric ancestors were a very much lower order of
beings than we are, even if they did not inherit directly from the
monkey; that they were very much like, in conformation, habits,
intelligence, and moral feeling, the lowest existing savages ; and
that we have risen to our present level of being by a slow process
of evolution which has been going on gradually through untold
generations. Whether or not “ through the ages one increasing
purpose runs,” as the poet has it, it is certainly true that “ the
.thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.” Now
when we examine the brain of the lowest savage, whom we need
not be too proud to look upon as our ancestor in the flesh—say a
native Australian or a Bushman—we find it to be considerably
smaller than an ordinary European brain ; its convolutions, which
are the highest nerve-centres of mind, are decidedly fewer in
number, more simple in character, and more symmetrical in
arrangement. These are marks of inferiority, for in those things
in which it differs from the ordinary European brain it gets nearer
in structure to the still much inferior brain of the monkey; it
represents, we may say, a stage of development in the long dis
tance which has been traversed between the two. A comparison
of the relative brain-weights will give a rude notion of the
differences : the brain-weight of an average European male is
49 oz.; that of a Bushman is, I believe, about 33 oz.; and that of
a Negro, who comes between them in brain-size, as in intelligence,
is 44 oz. The small brain-weight of the Bushman is indeed
equaled among civilised nations by that of a small-headed or socalled microcephalic idiot. There can be no doubt, then, of a
great difference of development between the highest and the lowest
existing human brain.
There can be no doubt, furthermore, that the gross differences
�Lessons of Materialism.
13
which there are between the size and development of the brain of
a low savage and of an average European, go along with as great
differences of intellectual and moral capacities—that lower mental
function answers to lower cerebral structure. It is a well-known
fact that many savages cannot count beyond five, and that they
have no words in their vocabulary for the higher qualities of
human nature, such as virtue, justice, humanity, and their
opposites, vice, injustice, and cruelty, or for the more abstract
ideas. The native Australian, for example, who is in this case,
having no words for justice, love, mercy, and the like, would not
in the least know what remorse meant; if any one showed it in
his presence, he would think probably that he had got a bad
bellyache. He has no words to express the higher sentiments and
thoughts because he has never felt and thought them, and has
never had, therefore, the need to express them ; he has not in his
inferior brain the nervous substrata which should minister to such
sentiments and thoughts, and cannot have them in his present
state of social evolution, any more than he could make a particular
movement of his body if the proper muscles were wanting. Nor
could any amount of training in the world, we may be sure, ever
make him equal in this respect to the average European, any more
than it could add substance to the brain of a small-headed idiot
and raise it to the ordinary level. Were any one, indeed, to make
the experiment of taking the young child of an Australian savage
and of bringing it up side by side with an average European child,
taking great pains to give them exactly the same education in
every respect, he would certainly have widely different results in
the end: in the one case he would have to do with a well-organized
instrument, ready to give out good intellectual notes and a fine
harmony of moral feeling when properly handled; in the other
case, an imperfectly organized instrument, from which it would be
out of the power of the most patient and skilful touch to elicit more
than a few feeble intellectual notes and a very rude and primitive
sort of moral feeling. A little better feeling, certainly, than that
of its fathers, but still most primitive ; for many savages regard as
virtues most of the big vices and crimes, such as theft, rape,
murder, at any rate when they are practised at the expense of
neighbouring tribes. Their moral feeling, such as it is, is extremely
circumscribed, being limited in application to the tribe. In Europe
we have happily got further than that, since we are not, as savages
are and our forefathers probably were, divided into a multitude of
tribes eager to injure and even extirpate one another from motives
�14
Lessons of Materialism.
of tribal patriotism; but mankind seems to be far off the goal of
its high calling so long as, divided into jealous and hostile nations,
it suffers national divisions to limit the application of moral feeling,
counts it a high virtue to violate it under the profaned name of
patriotism, and uses the words “ humanitarianism ” and cosmo
politanism ” as crushing names of reproach. There is plainly room
yet for a wider expansion of moral feeling.
Now what do the discoveries of science warrant us to conclude
respecting the larger and more complex brain of the civilised man
and its higher capacities of thought and feeling ? They teach us
this : that it has reached its higher level not by any sudden and
big creative act, nor by a succession of small creative acts, but by
the slow and gradual operation of processes of natural evolution
going on through countless ages. Each new insight into natural
phenomena on the part of man, each act of wiser doing founded
on truer insight, each bettered feeling which has been developed
from wiser conduct, has tended to determine by degrees a corre
sponding structual change of the brain, which has been transmitted
as an innate endowment to succeeding generations, just as the
acquired habit of a parent animal becomes sometimes the instinct
of its offspring; and the accumulated results of these slow and
minute gains, transmitted by hereditary action, have culminated in
the higher cerebral organization, in which they are now, as it
were, capitalised. Thus the added structure embodies in itself the
superior intellectual and moral capacities of abstract reasoning and
moral feeling which have been the slow acquisitions of the ages,
and it gives them out again in its functions when it discharges its
functions rightly. If we were to have a person born in this
country with a brain of no higher development than that of the
low savage—destitute, that is, of the higher nervous substrata of
thought and feeling—if, in fact, our far remote prehistoric ancestor
were to come to life among us now—we should have more or
less of an imbecile, who could not compete on equal terms with
other persons, but must perish, unless charitably cared for, just as
the native Australian perishes when he comes into contact and
competition with the white man. The only way in which the
native Australian could be raised to the level of civilised feeling
and thought would be by cultivation continued through many
generations—by a process of evolution similar to that which lies
back between our savage ancestors and us.
That is one aspect of the operation of natural law in human
events—the operation of the law of heredity in development, in
�Lessons oj Materialism.
15
carrying mankind forward, that is, to a higher level of being. It
teaches us plainly enough that the highest qualities of mind bear
witness to the reign of law in nature as certainly as do the lowest
properties of matter, and that if we are to go on progressing in
time to come it must be by observation of, and obedience to, the
laws of development. But there is another vastly important
aspect of the law of heredity which it concerns us to bear sincerely
in mind—its operation in working out human degeneracy, in
carrying mankind downwards, that is, to a lower level of being.
It is certain that man may degenerate as well as develop; that he
has been doing so both as nation and individual ever since we have
records of his doings on earth. There is a broad and easy way of
dissolution, national, social, or individual, which is the opposite of
the steep and narrow way of evolution. Now what it behoves us
to realise distinctly is that there is not anything more miraculous
about the degeneracy and extinction of a nation or of a family
than there is about its rise and development; that both are the
work of natural law. A nation does not sink into decadence, I
presume, so long as it keeps fresh those virtues of character
through which it became great among nations ; it is when it suffers
them to be eaten away by luxury, corruption, and other enervating
vices, that it undergoes that degeneration of character which
prepares and makes easy its over-throw. In like manner a family,
reckless of the laws of physical and moral hygiene, may go through
a process of degeneracy until it becomes extinct. It was no mere
dream of prophetic frenzy that when the fathers have eaten
sour grapes, the children’s teeth are set on edge, nor was it a
meaningless menace that the sins of the fathers shall be visited
upon the children unto the third and fourth generations; it was
an actual insight into the natural law by which degeneracy increases
through generations—by which one generation reaps the wrong
which its fathers have sown, as its children in turn will reap the
wrong which it has sown. What we call insanity or mental
derangement is truly, in most cases, a form of human degeneracy,
a phase in the working out of it; and if we were to suffer this
degeneracy to take it course unchecked through generations, the
natural termination would be sterile idiocy and extinction of the
family. A curious despot would find it impossible, were he to
make the experiment, to breed and propagate a race of insane
people; nature, unwilling to continue a morbid variety of the
human kind, would bring his experiment to an end by the
production of sterile idiocy. If man will but make himself the
�16
Lessons of Materialism.
subject of serious scientific study, he shall find that this working
out of degeneracy through generations affords him a rational
explanation of most of those evil impulses of the heart which he
has been content to attribute to the wiles and instigations of the
devil; that the evil spirit which has taken possession of the
wicked man is often the legacy of parental or ancestral error,
misfortune, or wrong-doing. It will be made plain to him that
insanity, idiocy, and every other form of human degeneracy is not
casualty, but defect which comes by cause ; that it is just as much
the definite consequent of definite antecedents as any other event
in nature; and that these antecedents many times are within human
controul, being the palpable outcome of ignorance or of neglect of
the laws of moral and physical hygiene. Let me illustrate by an
example the nature and bearing of this scientific study.
I will take for this purpose a case which every physician who
has had much experience must have been asked some time or
other to consider and advise about: a quite young child, which is
causing its parents alarm and distress by the precocious display
of vicious desires and tendencies of all sorts, that are quite out of
keeping with its tender years, and by the utter failure of either
precept, or example, or punishment to imbue it with good feeling
and with the desire to do right. It may not be notably deficient
in intelligence; on the contrary, it may be capable of learning
quickly when it likes, and extremely cunning in lying, in stealing,
in gratifying other perverse inclinations; and it cannot be said
not to know right from wrong, since it invariably eschews the
right and chooses the wrong, showing an amazing acuteness in
escaping detection and the punishment which follows detection.
It is, in truth, congenitally conscienceless, by nature destitute of
moral sense and actively imbued with an immoral sense. Now
this unfortunate creature is of so tender an age that the theory of
Satanic agency is not thought to offer an adequate explanation of
its evil impulses ; in the end everybody who has to do with it feels
that it is not responsible for its vicious conduct, perceives that
punishment does not and cannot in the least reform it, and is
persuaded that there is some native defect of mind which renders
it a proper case for medical advice. Where, then, is the fault that
a human being is born into the world who will go wrong, nay, who
must go wrong, in virtue of a bad organization ? The fault lies
somewhere in its hereditary antecedents. We can seldom find
the exact cause and trace definitely the mode of its operation—the
study is much too complex and difficult for such exactness at
�Lessons of Materialism.
17
present—but we shall not fail to discover the broad fact of the
frequency of insanity or other mental degeneracy in the direct line
of the child’s inheritance. The experienced physician seldom feels
any doubt of that when he meets with a case of the kind. It is
indeed most certain that men are not bred well or ill by accident
any more than the animals are; but while most persons are ready
to acknowledge this fact in a general way, very few pursue the
admission to its exact and 'rigorous consequences, and fewer still
suffer it to influence their conduct.
It may be set down, then, as a fact of observation that mental
degeneracy in one generation is sometimes the evident cause of an
innate deficiency or absence of moral sense in the next generation.
The child bears the burden of its ancestral infirmities or wrong
doings. Here then and in this relation may be noted the in
structive fact, that just as moral feeling was the first function to
be affected at the beginning of mental derangement in the
individual, so now the defect or absence of it is seen to mark the
way of degeneracy through generations. It was the latest
acquisition of mental evolution; it is the first to go in mental
dissolution.
A second fact of observation may be set down as worthy of con
sideration, if not of immediate acceptation, namely, that an absence
of moral feeling in one generation, as shown by a mean, selfish,
and persistent disregard of moral action in the conduct of life, may
be the cause of mental derangement in the next generation. In
fact, a person may succeed in manufacturing insanity in his
progeny by a persistent disuse of moral feeling, and a persistent
exercise, throughout his life, of those selfish, mean, and anti-social
tendencies which are a negation of the highest moral relations of
mankind. He does not ever exercise the nervous substrata which
minister to moral functions, wherefore they undergo atrophy in
him, and he runs the risk of transmitting them to his progeny in
so imperfect a state, that they are incapable of full development of
function in them ; just as the instinct of the animal which is not
exercised for many generations on account of changed conditions
of life, becomes less distinct by degrees and in the end, perhaps,
extinct. People are apt to talk as if they believed that insanity
might be got rid of were only sufficient care taken to prevent its
direct propagation by the marriages of those who had suffered it
or were like to do so. A vain imagination assuredly I Were all the
insanity in the world at the present time clean sweptaway to-morrow,
men would breed it afresh before to-morrow’s to-morrow by their
�18
Lessons of Materialism,
errors, their excesses, their wrong-doings of all sorts. Rightly,
then, may the scientific inquirer echo the words of the preacher,
that however prosperous a man may have seemed in his life, judge
him not blessed before his death: for he shall be known in his
children: they shall not have the confidence of their good descent.
In sober truth, the lessons of morality which were proclaimed by
the prophets of old, as indispensable to the stability and well-being
of families and nations, were not mere visions of vague fancy;
founded upon actual observation and intuition of the laws of
nature working in human events, they were insights into the
eternal truths of human evolution.
Whether, then, man goes upwards or downwards, undergoes
development or degeneration, we have equally to do with matters
of stern law. Provision has been made for both ways ; it has been
left to him to find out and determine which way he shall take. And
it is plain that he must find the right path of evolution, and avoid the
wrong path of degeneracy, by observation and experience, pursuing
the same method of positive inquiry which has served him so well
in the different sciences. Being pre-eminently and essentially a
social being, each one the member of one body—the unit, that is,
in a social organism—the laws which he has to observe and obey
are not the physical laws of nature only, but also those higher laws
which govern the relations of individuals in the social state. If
he make his observations sincerely and adequately in this way, he
cannot fail to perceive that the laws of morality were not really
miraculous revelations from heaven any more than was the
discovery of the law of gravitation, but that they were the essential
conditions of social evolution, and were learned practically by the
stern lessons of experience. He has learnt his duty to his
neighbour as he has learnt his duty to nature; it is implicit in
the constitution of a complex society of men dwelling together in
peace and unity, and has been revealed explicitly by the intuition
of a few extraordinary men of sublime moral genius.
As it is not a true, it cannot be a useful, notion to foster, that
morality was the special gift to man, or is the special property, of
any theological system, and that its vitality is in the least bound
up with the life of any such creed. Whether men believed in
Heaven and Hell or not, in Jupiter or in Jehovah, in Buddha or in
Jesus, they could not fail to find out that some obedience to moral
law is essential to social evolution. The golden rule of morals
itself—“ Do unto others as ye would have others do unto you”—
was perceived and proclaimed long before it received its highest
�Lessons of Materialism.
19
Christian expression.* We ought to be just and to confess
the truth: there were good Christians in the world before
Christ. It is not, indeed, religious creed which has invented
and been the basis of morality, but morality which has been the
bulwark of religions. And as a matter of fact it is too true that
morality has suffered many times not a little from its connection
with theological creeds ; I that its truths have been laid hands on
and used to support demoralising super sitions which were no part
of it; that doctrines essentially immoral have been even taught in
the name of religion; and that religious systems in their struggles
to establish their supremacy have oftentimes shown small respect
to the claims of morality. Had religion been true to its nature and
function, had it been as wide as morality and humanity, it should have
been the bond of unity to hold mankind together in one brother
hood, linking them in good feeling, good-will, and good work
towards one another; but it has in reality been that which has most
divided men, and the cause of more hatreds, more disorders, more
persecutions, more bloodshed, more cruelties than most other
causes put together. In order to maintain peace and order, there
fore, the State in modern times has been compelled to hold itself
practically aloof from religion, and to leave to each hostile sect
liberty to do as it likes so long as it meddles not by its tenets and
ceremonials with the interests of civil government. That is the
present outcome of a religion of peace on earth and goodwill
among men 1 On the whole it may be thought to be fortunate for
the interests of morality that it is not bound up essentially with
any form of religious creed, but that it survives when creeds die,
having its more secure foundations in the hard-won experience of
mankind.
The inquiry which, taking a sincere survey of the facts, finds
the basis and sanction of morality in experience, by no means
* There appears to be no doubt that Confucius, among others, has the
clearest apprehension of it and expressly taught it; and the Buddhist
religion of perfectron is certainly founded upon self-conquest and self
sacrifice. They are its very corner-stone: the purification of the mind
from unholy desires and passions, and a devotion to the good of others,
which rises to an enthusiasm for humanity, in order to escape from the
miseries of this life and to attain to a perfect moral repose. “ Let all the
sins that have been committed fall upon me, in order that the world may
be delivered,” Buddha says. And of the son or disciple of Buddha it is
said, “ When reviled he revileth not again; when smitten he bears the
blow without resentment; when treated with anger and passion he returns
love and good-will; when threatened with death he bears no malice.”
�20
Lessons of Materialism.
arrives in the end at easy lessons of self-indulgence for the
individual and the race, but, on the contrary, at the hardest
lessons of self-renunciation. Disclosing to man the stern and
uniform reign of law in nature, even in the evolution and
degeneracy of his own nature, it takes from him the comfortable
but demoralising doctrine that he or others can escape the penalty
of his ignorance, error, or wrong-doings either by penitence or
prayer, and holds him to the strictest account for them. Dis
carding the notion that the observed uniformity of nature is but a
uniformity of sequence at will which may be interrupted whenever
its interruption is earnestly enough asked for—a notion which,
were it more than lip-doctrine, must necessarily deprive him of his
most urgent motive to study patiently the laws of nature in order
to conform to them—it enforces a stern feeling of responsibility
to search out painfully the right path of obedience and to follow it,
inexorably laying upon man the responsibility of the future of his
race. If it be most certain, as it is, that all disobedience of natural
law, whether physical or moral, is avenged inexorably in its conse
quences on earth, either upon the individual himself, or more often,
perhaps, upon others—that the violated law cannot be bribed to
stay its arm by burnt-offerings nor placated by prayers—it is a
harmful doctrine, as tending directly to undermine understanding
and to weaken will, to teach that either prayer or sacrifice will
obviate the consequences of want of foresight or want of self
discipline, or that reliance on supernatural aid will make amends
for lack of intelligent will. We still pray half-heartedly in our
churches, as our forefathers prayed with their whole hearts, when
we are afflicted with a plague or pestilence, that God will “ accept
of an atonement and command the destroying angel to cease from
punishing; ” and when we are suffering from too much rain we
ask him to send fine weather “ although we for our iniquities have
worthily deserved a plague of rain and water.” Is there a person
of sincere understanding who, uttering that prayer, now believes
it in his heart to be the successful way to stay a fever, plague, or
pestilence ? He knows well that, if it is to be answered, he must
clean away dirt, purify drains, disinfect houses, and put in force
those other sanitary measures which experience has proved to be
efficacious, and that the aid vouchsafed to the prayer will only be
given when, these being by themselves successful, the prayer is
superfluous. Had men gone on believing, as they once believed,
that prayer would stay disease, they would never have learned and
adopted sanitary measures, any more than the savage of Africa,
�Lessons of Materialism.
21
■who prays to his fetish to cure disease, does now. To get rid of
the notion of supernatural interposition was the essential condition
of true knowledge and self-help in that matter.
. Looking at the matter in the light of scientific knowledge, it is
•hard to see how any one can think otherwise. However, one may
•easily overrate the depth to which such knowledge goes in the
general mind: at best it is but a thin surface-dressing. Only a
few days ago, on opening a book at random, I hit on the following
extract from a sermon on the Miracles of Prayer, by a well-known
clergyman :—
“ But we have prayed, and not been heard, at least in the present visita
tion. Have we deserved to be heard? In former visitations it was
observed commonly how the cholera lessened from the day of public
humiliation. When we dreaded famine from a long-continued drought,
on the morning of our prayers the heaven over our head was of brass; the
clear burning sky showed no. token of change. Men looked with awe on
its unmitigated clearness. In the evening was a cloud like a man’s hand;
the relief was come.”
This is from a sermon preached by no mean citizen of no mean
city; it was preached at Oxford, in 1866, and the preacher was
Dr. Pusey, who goes on to say that it describes what he himself
saw on the Sunday morning in Oxford, on returning from the
early communion at St. Mary’s, at eight. The change occurred in
the evening. A good instance, one would be apt to say, of a very
common fallacy of observation and reasoning—the fallacy that an
event which happens after another necessarily happens in conse
quence of it! But what I would point out is, that if Dr. Pusey’s
interpretation of the matter be true, all our scientific knowledge of
the order of nature has no stable foundation; it is no better than
a baseless fabric, which has come like wind and like wind may go.
And most certain it is that if such views were universal, the result
would be to carry us back straight to the ignorance and barbarism
which prevailed in Europe before the Reformation and the dawn
of modern science. Consider how much it means, that a man of
Dr. Pusey’s culture and eminence should so little apprehend the
fundamental principles of modern science, should be so blind to
the conception of the reign of law in nature ; consider again how
the great majority of the people are in his case, and that the torch
of modern science is after all really carried by some hundred men
or so in Europe and America, and would be pretty nigh extin
guished by their simultaneous deaths ; and consider, lastly, that
we have everywhere in our midst a most complete and powerful
organisation which, holding that all truth has been given into
�22
Lessons of Materialism.
the keeping of the church from the beginning, and cannot be
either added to or taken from, is truly a gigantic and unsleeping
conspiracy against the human intellect;—consider these things
fairly, I say, and then ask yourselves soberly whether modern pro
gress is so stable and assured a thing as we are apt to take it for
granted it is. For my part, I would not give much for it if the
Homan Catholic Church had its way for fifty or a hundred years.
In all ages of the world, I make no doubt, there have been a few
persons with too much insight to accept the fables which have
satisfied the vulgar, but who dared not utter their thoughts, or,
uttering them, were quickly extinguished; the torch of knowledge
has been again and again lit and again and again put out; and
truth never will be made secure until it has been driven down
into the hearts of the masses of the people by a right method of
education from generation to generation.
Many persons who could not confidently express their belief in
the power of prayer to stop a plague or a deluge of rain, or who
actually disbelieve it, still have a sincere hold of the belief of its
miraculous power in the moral or spiritual world. Nevertheless, if
the matter be made one simply of scientific observation, it must be
confessed that all the evidence goes to prove that the events of
the moral world are matters of law and order equally with those
of the physical world, and that supernatural interpositions have no
more place in the one than in the other; that he who prays for
the creation of a clean heart and the renewal of a right spirit
within him, if he gets at last what he prays for, gets it by the
operation of the ordinary laws of moral growth and development,
in consequence of painstaking watchfulness over himself and the
continual exercise of good resolves. Only when he gets it in that
way will he get the benefit of supernatural aid; and if it rests in
the belief of supernatural aid, without taking pains to get it
entirely in that way, he will do himself moral harm; for if he
cannot rely upon special interpositions in the moral any more than
in the physical world, if he has to do entirely with those
secondary laws of nature through which alone the supernatural is
made natural, the invisible visible, it needs no demonstration that
the opposite belief cannot strengthen, but must weaken, the under
standing and will. It is plain that true moral hygiene is as
impossible to the person who reEes upon his fetish to change his
heart in answer to prayer, as sanitary science is impossible to the
savage who relies upon his fetish to stay a pestilence in answer to
prayer.
�Lessons of Materialism.
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23
So far from materialism being a menace to morality, when it is
properly understood, it not only sets before man a higher intellec
tual aim than he is ever likely to reach by spiritual paths, but it
even raises a more self-sacrificing moral standard. For when all
has been said, it is not the most elevated or the most healthy
business for a person to be occupied continually with anxieties and
apprehensions and cares about the salvation of his own soul, and
to be earnest to do well in this life in order that he may escape
eternal suffering and gain eternal happiness in a life to come. The
disbeliever might find room to argue that here was an instance
showing how theology has taken possession of the moral instinct and
vitiated it. Having set before man a selfish instead of an altruistic
end as the prime motive of well-doing—his own good rather than the
good of others—it is in no little danger of taking away his strongest
motive to do uprightly, if so be the dead rise not. Indeed, it
makes the question of the apostle a most natural one : “ If, after
the manner of man, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what
advantageth it me if the dead rise not ? ” Materialism cannot
hesitate in the least to declare that it is best for a man’s self and
best for his kind to have fought with the beasts of unrighteousness,
at Ephesus or elsewhere, even if the dead rise not. Perceiving
and teaching that he is essentially a social being, that all the
mental faculties by which he so much excels the animals below
him, and even the language in which he expresses his mental func
tions, have been progressive developments of his social relations,
it enforces the plain and inevitable conclusion that it is the true
scientific function, and at the same time the highest development,
of the individual, to promote the well-being of the social organiza
tion—that is, to make his life subserve the good of his kind. It
is no new morality, indeed, which it teaches ; it simply brings men
back to that which has been the central lesson and the real stay
of the great religions of the world, and which is implicit in the
constitution of society; but it does this by a way which promises
to bring the understanding into entire harmony with moral
feeling, and so to promote by a close and consistent interaction
their accordant growth and development; and it strips morality
of the livery of superstition in which theological creeds have
dressed and disfigured it, presenting it to the adoration of mankind
in its natural purity and strength.
�“ The Pathology of Mind.” By H. M AUDSLEY, M.D. Being the Third
Edition of the Second Part of the “Physiology and Pathology of
Mind,” recast, much enlarged and re-written. In 8vo, price 18s.
liy the same Author.
“ The Physiology of Mind.” Being the First Part of a Third Edition
revised, enlarged, and re-written, of “ The Physiology and Pathology
of Mind.” Crown 8vo, 10s. 6d.
“Body and MindAn Inquiry into their Connection and Mutual Influ
ence, specially with reference to Mental Disorders. Second Edition,
enlarged and revised, with Psychological Essays added. Crown 8vo.,
6s. 6d.
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Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
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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
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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
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The first love again : a discourse delivered in the Church of the Redeemer, Cincinnati, Ohio, Nov. 28,1875, on the occasion of the re-union of the two Societies, which had divided fifteen years previously, chiefly on the issue of supernaturalism
Creator
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CONWAY, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 21 p. ; 15 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 1. Reprinted from the Cincinnati Daily Commercial (revised by the author). With a preface about the doctrinal differences between the first Congregational Church and the Church of the Redeemer in Cincinnati.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1875]
Identifier
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G3342
Subject
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Unitarianism
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Rights
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<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 first love again : a discourse delivered in the Church of the Redeemer, Cincinnati, Ohio, Nov. 28,1875, on the occasion of the re-union of the two Societies, which had divided fifteen years previously, chiefly on the issue of supernaturalism), 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>
Doctrines
Dogma
Liberalism (Religion)
Morris Tracts
Rationalism