1 10 9 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/9a1225f4facca4d00538e927cd46596b.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=ktWxHAwlX-JKlv0IC62KDmNP7dmB4VCdx3D-Z97ZhHpV5RcglMgkmeTH%7EjP5sgQ1ffh1EbwMvBUyhn1ifi8gbOCYz9vHx%7ES0VWh1J8rNrUoTiOqfYcbqO8T3WsiOAf5ezuSCP5yXY%7E3wLrJDKBwN7QSP5I%7EkR7whORkg3fLx6poswSHGCce0eCQ3WZwKQilInooLJ8DH9g-i0MDjoYnDpjiTSjwQPh4vsbiDBx23rTLrMdT809QaZPqP1fndzAhebNIqQF7FSnSWVB0pO9eVnSiodpog9FjYtTkDQVKDd0OOAAotRkK9uC8H6XP3WB7HpK8cwNJu1q1o3vp70gsmIQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM ab17a06045aa223e32710066db8f961e PDF Text Text fl ^ertrn 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. ^f’rxA ■ .WlCffl eiIT? *’*r< .hcnyto ^drwf >TTT ®f Yrrfep ftjfe Of! W at | FWtyftslI ‘v-vl’idl u -'skia | «msql liXHBffl I awesrii IMdNaft| Muatjuti uaute s00->Jl£® 4^4w XjdufeM OUM/l'i i£J,h,X;>..t? 'oi_n<{ ydy/UH.I O' Xw*| 7 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. Jf’’ KQ’ro- uajAfd oh ifdte" id gib'. tv* Ha. 'bHfz. ■bite. l5bn&: hoar fMiBih; F<»fct I Rtfcfi I tnemi I 'ited I stite I 'irra j tiiaui I uwirf I I tt-yfi I tibiae | tlvi ' io I ~S.oh on-ar ..*uxid I Ji- (in isoon 1 ?4"-oi I iiLuvit I iiwtii njJoj feudal) W'xiil 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. Macmillan & Co., London. SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY. To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science, —physical,^intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature, and Art; especially in their bearing upon the improvement and social well-being of mankind. President.—W. B. Carpenter, C.B., LL.D., M.D., F.R.S., &c. Vice-Pre sidents. Professor Alexander Bain. Sir Arthur Hobhouse, K.C.S.I. James Booth, Esq., C.B. Thomas Henry Huxley, Esq., LL.D., Charles Darwin, Esq., F.R.S., F.L.S. F.R.S., F.L.S. Edward Frankland, Esq., D.C.L., Herbert Spencer, Esq. Ph. D., F.R.S. W. Spottiswoode, Esq., LL.D., P.R.S. James Heywood, Esq., F.R.S., F.S.A. John Tyndall, Esq., LL.D., F.R.S. THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES ARE DELIVERED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLAGE,. On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o'clock precisely. (Annually—from November to May). Twenty-four Lectures (in three series), commencing Sunday, the 2nd of November, 1879, will be given. Members’ -£1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket, transferable (and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight single reserved-seat tickets, available for any lecture. For tickets, and for the Lectures published by the Society, of which lists can be obtained on application, apply (by letter enclosing cheques, post­ office orders or postage stamps) to the Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15, Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W. The Lectures can also be obtained of Mr. J. Bumpus, Bookseller, 158, Oxford Street, W. Payment at the door:—One Penny; — Sixpence;—and (Reserved Seats) One Shilling. Kenny & Co., Printers, 25, Camden Road, London, N.W. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 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 An entity primarily responsible for making the resource 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 An entity responsible for making the resource available [s.n.] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1875] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G3342 Subject The topic of the resource Unitarianism Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The 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 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/e2ec4f0a0759119152d7e110e1ec2e77.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=YXfJoQmAgLUlnSv%7EeDjH2nRHRzskByLG6MVUhQoxGLDmgcvOEaRAbe%7E95bss6lFcLBBF3bNMudaKS3ait5zpVsgopYiEIQUdAQYzLlFW6GRgMajL-qeoPoegeyThOME6BKNq8Z5SB3YifZSLMWA6qHIlxdRpK93kX0dGSXCaB4Tm4Gq2ZNpiiG89sBYb56HLsUtoYxBKJM9S3h9A51W2HJBfoiTErzVcN7dxgLg33Al6zg6siY1OPnDwRVUHWsv-uUjOALJT96HOQfblxAu2XPYaRlhMJqTeDk7FJvGR89um634BZQ%7Eh-efhqiGKgSfbarD%7EEO%7EZ8Twl7ml1DK7sIA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM f6b98b4c122eb9ccce20cd6647185407 PDF Text Text THE RISING GENERATION A DISCOURSE BEFORE THE SOUTH PLACE SOCIETY, JUNE 27TH, 1880, BY MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A. LONDON : SOUTH PLACE, FINSBURY. PRICE TWOPENCE. �LONDON : Wateblow & Sons Limited LONDON WALL. �THE RISING GENERATION. <^OME of us can remember the time when the heart of England was stirred by Elizabeth Barrett’s poem, “ The Cry of the Children.” A revela­ tion had come from the dark mines of the country telling how little children were held all their lives in gloomy imprisonment, knowing nothing but work. In the mines were subterranean villages gloomy as the chambers of Dante’s Hell; some children were born there, lived, laboured, and died there, and only when dead did they come into the upper world—for burial. Little children were found who did not know what a flowrer was—they had never seen a flower. Then the “ Cry of the Children ” was heard. They uttered none for themselves; down in the pit they silently worked through their miserable lives, while the children of the world danced and were gay; yet their voices were heard in the poet’s lamentation, in the stateman’s eloquence, in the people’s sympathy, and the wrong was swept away. It seems to us now almost incredible that such an �( 4 ) evil should have existed within our own memories. So clear to our eyes are the evils of other times than our own. But, alas, the need is always for eyes that can see the evils of their own time, and how few are they ! In Dante’s Inferno one of the saddest places was the abode of those who moved about in a spiritual fog which obscured everything that was near to them. They could clearly see events in the far past, they could see into the future, but they could not see the present. These, during life, had given no effect to the experience of the past, exerted no influence on the future, because they did not study to discern the facts at hand, the conditions around them. They could not see time’s flowing stream at the point where it passed them, where must be dropped what is to reach the future. It is but a too faithful picture of multitudes who do not seem to themselves to be in any Inferno at all. There are many who can hear the cry of the children in the last generation, but can hear no cry in the present. Yet there is a cry. It comes no longer from subterranean mines, but it comes from unhappy homes; from the gloomy realms of pauperism, ignorance, and disease; and it comes from the sunless dungeons of dogma, where millions of children live and die, never seeing any flower of life, of beauty, or of joy. In speaking to you this morning of the rising �( 5 ) generation I do not propose to enter upon ideal speculations about the future, nor to propose quixotic schemes for abolishing all the evils of the world. I wish rather to limit your attention to facts near at hand, and conditions more or less within our reach. And, first of all, to impress upon you, as practical people, the fact that the visible conditions of the world have invisible foundations. Things are founded on thoughts. The world that man has built up,—the world of society, politics, nationality, religion,—is a phenomenal world, supported by causes always causing it; having for its beams and rafters moral and mental sustainers; and every change of thought or belief in the human mind is followed by a change in the visible conditions of the world. For example, were the Sabbatarian superstition removed from the mind of this country, the bars and bolts which close the refining institutions of the country would also be removed. If the Christian superstition were to die out of the English mind, the wealth and power it freezes up in an iceberg would melt, and streams would flow through the deserts where hearts and brains are famishing. Beware therefore of undervaluing thought, knowledge, beliefs, principles, because they are in­ visible. There are many thousands of Christian people who industriously battle with visible sufferings and vices. They do a little good here and a little good �( 6 ) there, in particular cases ; but the evils invariably return. Like the fabled daughters of Danaus they fill their sieves with water, but it always runs out again, because they do not stop the holes in the sieve’s bottom : they do not stop them because they are invisible; they are the unconscious falsities of their creeds, diverting, human minds and efforts away from the work of practically saving themselves from actual evils, to the fruitless work of saving themselves from unreal evils. The only way'to help men permanently is to enable them to help themselves. To give them resources is to shield them from want and sorrow; to educate their mental and physical strength is to make them rich; to surround them with social interests is to make them good citizens; and all these, and other conditions of human welfare, depend upon the pre­ vailing doctrine of what is the chief end and aim of human life. He who lifts that aim even a little, lifts the lives of millions with it; and a man is never so charitable, never so practical, as when he is destroying an error and affirming a truth. If benevolence wishes to bestow or bequeathe real benefit, let it not give too largely to the institutions which deal with the annual crop of evils that ignorance sows, let it attack the ignorance ; let it not build temperance coffee-houses to be closed on the only day they are much needed, �( 7 ) but attack the superstition which locks the people out of the splendid art-houses already existing, and leaves them no resource but debauchery. I do not disparage the disposition to relieve suffering whenever met with ; but let it not be supposed that such is the highest or the most practical charity to mankind. A single pound given for human culture, for spiritual liberty, for advancement of a high cause or principle, is worth a thousand bestowed to salve over wounds which only knowledge and justice can heal. And 1 will add that as the pound given for the transient mitigation of an evil is but a drop of oil on an ocean of misery, that which is bestowed in freeing a mind from error is strictly economised, and has a fair prospect of being multiplied through generations. This high charity must not only be thus practical and economical in its object, but also in its method. The regeneration of the world must be through its successive generations. You cannot change the habits of an old man. What troubles grow from those habits you may assuage, but they can only be eradicated with the constitution around which they have formed. The best thing a matured generation can do is to run to seed—the seed of experience—to select from these -seeds those that are largest and soundest, and sow •them in the quick soil of youth and vigour. It is the principles so entrusted to the rising generation which �( 8 ) grow with its growth, transmute decays into life, failures into success, and transmit an ever-increasing volume of wisdom and happiness. What then is the present cry of the children ? their perhaps inarticulate, but all the profounder cry ? What are their needs ? How are they being taught ? It is not our business to boast that much has been done, that the children have been taken from the streets and put to school. That was the work of a generation now closed. What work the next is to add to that, is a question more inportant than what has been already done; we can rightly rejoice only if we feel that the best is now being done. It is to be feared we have little reason to felicitate ourselves upon our dealings with the rising generation. To a large extent the young are being taught over again what their elders have painfully unlearned ; they are solemnly and deliberately crammed with that which the best thought of our time has proved to be untrue. A young man recently emancipated from Roman Catholicism gave me an account of how he wasbrought up. When the poor little papist is born, his inborn demon is exorcised. Water is thrown on his head, also salt and oil; the cross signed on its fore­ head ; a candle is held beside it, a Latin formula muttered, and a half-crown demanded. The mother �( 9 ) is also subjected to an exorcism for having borne a demon into the world, and another half-crown is' demanded for the churching. Both of these cere­ monies remain in the Church of England. The water exorcism remains in all denominations. Even some Unitarians are not ashamed to practice a form which is either a mockery, or a proclamation of the diabolical nature of the child. Fortunately the little papist is unconscious of these proceedings ; but unfortunately, his training is on the belief that the exorcised demon is always trying to get back into the form from which he was expelled. He is taught to regard this as the chief danger of his life; he must continually make the sign of the cross, and pray to Jesus, Joseph, Mary, and other saints. He must bow to holy pictures and crucifixes, wear holy medals and charms, and is taught that these are the things which alone protect him from danger every moment. When he enters church or school he sprinkles himself with holy water, bends his knee before an altar, and understands that he inhales mysterious good things with incense. At school he utters “ Hail Mary ” every time the hour strikes. He is fed on miraculous stories of the marvels wrought by saints and holy objects. The Catechism is the . only thing taught him with any real industry : the ■ three principal ideas with which he is impressed are �( IO ) his utter depravity, his utter inability to help himself without the priest, and the diabolical iniquity of presuming to ask any question about the “sacred mysteries.’ At the age of seven or nine he is prepared for confession by what is called ‘ examining the conscience ’ which consists in making him read over a list of all the abominations ever committed by man. The purity of the child’s mind being thus poisoned, he is made to confess all the evil thoughts so awakened. He is then taught the sacredness of penance; worship of the Eucharist as God himself; and so he is given to society. But if all that should succeed in really moulding-him he would be hardly better off mentally than were those children of the mines who never saw a flower. This is the pit from which the Christian child of this country was dug by the Reformation, but was very soon plunged into others where much of its little life is still passed. Puritanism was even a darker pit than Catholicism, and most of the sects were mere variants of Puritanism. The English Church being the church of royalty and wealth, had to accommodate its dogmas to the indulgencies, tastes and sports of the upper classes. The aristocracy preserved many traditions from its barbaric origin, and has steadily refused to be captured by asceticism, or tamed by Puritanism. But unfortunately it did �( IX ) not refuse to submit to hypocrisy; and it goes on still with the supplications of terror on its lips and indifference in its heart. Its catechism indoctrinates in asceticism, its life in worldliness. It cries for mercy on Sunday, and hunts foxes on Monday. It calls itself a miserable sinner at church, and resents the slightest aspersion of its character elsewhere. It were hard to conceive a more continuous drill in hypocrisy than that child undergoes who is taught the church catechism in the intervals of a life practically absorbed in worldly schemes. It is to the credit of human nature that there are so many g&pdjent characters which survive the training of Catrmn8fta, and the repressions of Puritanism; but, still more to its credit that so many frank and earnest men survive the teachings of a church which so baldly separates theory from practice. But statistics show a vast population never going to any church at all. A large number of these are working men, who feel that the church is their enemy, and to whom the sects are unattractive. The labouring masses find in sleep, drink, and public-house gossip, the best compensation for six days’ toil. And there are many literary men, men of science, and gentlemen, who stay away from church and sect out of sheer disbelief and disgust. Yet the families of these generally go to �( 12 ) church, their children are baptised, catechised, and generally taught the dogmas which their parents despise. With the exception of the comparatively few Liberals who have formed Societies of their own, the rising generation is thus instructed in the same catechisms, creeds, confessions in which their prede­ cessors were instructed. Even the learning of the country abnegates its paramount duty to see that the women and children of the nation are taught truth, and consecrated in every way possible to the diffusion of truth. Thus the Catholic procedure, rejected in theory, characterises the actual treatment of the Protes­ tant child, too often of the disbeliever’s child. He is not dealt with as one possessed, but as a moral invalid who must go to the holy doctor every week, and be dosed with piety and texts. It is a terrible misdirection of that child’s mind, and many are mentally hunch-backed for life by it. It is by children being committed to the parsons as to dress-makers. Through this indifferentism, which may almost be called hardened, society goes on repeating the old routine from generation to genera­ tion. Every year rolls up its steady average- of abuses unreformed, evils unchanged, falsities laughed at and maintained. Some progress is made but it is 'mainly through the slow working of natural necessity, �the accompaniment of physical changes incident to the pursuit of wealth. It is as nothing compared with the progress that would be made if all the thinkers and educated people of the community were to seriously set themselves to the work of securing to their families, especially their children, the full benefits of their best knowledge and experience, treating every attempt to teach them fashionable falsities as they would attempts to indoct­ rinate them in sorcery. It is the abstract verdict of science that Christian dogmas are false. That is equally the verdict of moral and mental philosophy. But their verdict remains unexecuted. Until they feel also that these dogmas are so many poisons, the Creeds and Catechisms so many bottles of poison steadily infused into the springs that feed society; until they besiege those sects which so poison spiritual springs as they would water-companies sending corruption through the community, or adulterators of the public food; until then, we need not hope that the best knowledge of this age will enter upon its duty of bringing social institutions out of their barbarous constitution into conformity with reason and right. What is the Creed taught to the millions of children around us ? That they are born totally depraved; that they are in danger of eternal damnation; that they have incurred this danger by no act of their own, and can be saved by no act of their own; that they were �( *4 ) corrupted by a man and woman who lived six thousand years ago, and must be saved by the murder of a man who lived over eighteen hundred years ago. This is what is taught every child, with few exceptions. What does human culture believe? That such teaching is utterly preposterous. It believes every child is born innocent, liable to actual dangers, to be saved from them by others’ care in early life, ultimately by its own intelligence and activities, quite irrespective of any apple eaten in Paradise or murder committed in Palestine. The dogmas are just the reverse of the knowledge, and yet there is no serious combined effort among the intelligent people to substitute knowledge for proven falsities in the training of children. It is too obvious to be insisted on that such a phenomenon is immoral, not to say criminal. Yet many who see the evil are unable to see or suggest the remedy. The impediment that seems to lie in the way is the principle of patriarchal liberty under which the various sects have been able to combine in a political community. We cannot step in between parent and child and interfere with any teaching which professes to be religious. Were such a principle adopted it would be the Liberals who would suffer most. Liberalism cannot afford to advocate any in­ terference by law, not even to protect a child from �( i5 ) having its eyes put out—its intellectual eyes—or its moral back broken by the weight of false dogmas parentally imposed. We are not, indeed, responsible for not doing what we cannot do, but we are responsible for doing our very best with what ways and means are at our disposal. There is no call to quarrel with our tools until we have made the most of them. Have we done that ? Are we aiming to do that! Consider this, for instance : suppose it were no longer for the interest of any social institution, such as a Church, that these dogmas should be taught to any. Suppose, if your imagination is equal to it, that the endowments of the Church were all transferred to institutions which teach no creeds ; all national property going to endow that which all agree to be real knowledge; all sectarian property being taxed because it is private property. That would be the simplest political justice. Because that is not the state of the law, you and I are made to pay every year to support dogmas we abhor. Sadi said that if there were a tax upon reading the Koran in public many holy men would be dumb. Though I would not say that of the Bible, it may safely be said of the Athanasian Creed : if every time those anathemas are uttered from the pulpit the curser of his opponents were taxed instead of bribed, that solemn blasphemy would cease. And many other �( *6 ) things would cease if law, fashion, and respectability did not throw around them a glamour which hides their monstrosity. Without disestablishment of the Church, the dis­ establishment of dogmas generally,—removal of the immunities of the dissenting sects,—cannot take place ; and without disendowment, and the taxation of church property, a vast power would be given up to the unchecked control of superstition. It is, therefore, a plain, legitimate, and not intolerant aim for Liberalism to labour for the total disendowment of all creeds. Parents would then have no inducement, no bribe to submit their children to a catechetical tuition which they did not approve ; and it is very doubtful if many parents, were the matter thus thrown absolutely upon themselves, would summon the catechist to their families. If we could only compel common sense to act upon what is now left to sacerdotal self-interest, many a child would be shielded from inoculation in error. You may smile at the idea of our succeeding in disendowing all creeds. But we may succeed in dis­ endowing them in many minds. Every clear agitation for a rational cause is a process of education; it commands the attention, and if it be right and reasonable it must make its way with the process of of the suns. �( T7 ) Besides this political direction of our influence, we may turn our social advantages, whatever they may be, to the side of what we believe true. The great power of error lies in the social advantages it can bestow upon the young, who can feel such advantages long before they can realise the falsities gilded by them. The desire for polite and attractive society is not only natural but worthy, and liberal thinkers owe it as a duty both to truth and to society that they should contribute all they can to associate their views with the standards of good taste, refinement, beauty, and innocent gaieties. It must be remembered that in the world the decorations and enjoyments of life represent its unorthodoxy. The Church has come to patronise them through compulsion of long experience. It began with nunneries and convents, dust and ashes, cowls and hair-garments; ugly anti-social habits and habiliments were the natural insignia of creeds that taught man’s depravity and despair. Every earthly beauty and joy is a protest against orthodoxy, and they legitimately belong to the religion of Liberalism and Humanity. Social enjoyments, mirth and beauty, are heresies which appeal far more to the young generation than scientific statements. The liberal movement in this country was historically evolved out of the Puritan movement, and some of those sombre traditions still adhere to it; but these should be �( i8 ) outgrown. Carefulness in dress, observance of fashion ■so far as it is healthy, dancing, interchanges of hospi­ tality, should not be regarded as frivolous, but as related to the progressive civility of the world, the true accompaniments of its liberation from sacrificial ideas of religion. Liberalism will be largely benefitted by more generous outlays in this direction, and by ■each thinker taking care to do his and her part that the tastes shall not be starved while the intellect and moral nature are fed. It is of the utmost importance that in the steady effort of the young to improve the style and position of their families, they should less and less have to seek their society chiefly outside of liberal circles at cost of their religious and intellectual principles. It is equally incumbent upon all liberal thinkers to ¿o something towards raising the moral tone of society from its theological depravation into harmony with the standard of personal veracity and honour. It is not veracity and it is not honour that men should submit without an effort to having their children taught pious falsehoods and placed under the influence of priests whose creeds they despise. We need a severer standard of veracity and honesty than that. It is a poor subterfuge to say that the rising generation should be left free to form its own opinions. As well say a garden should be left free to produce what it pleases. �( i9 ) It will produce weeds, and so will the mind not carefully cultured. We owe to all we can influence our very best thought, our maturest experience, and we cannot escape that responsibility. We must tell our children just what we believe true, and let them know that it is a basis for them to build on. They are to think for themselves. Occasions are not wanting to realise for ourselves, and to impress upon the young, the steadily corrupt­ ing influence of proven errors established by law. We have just witnessed in the legislative assembly of this great nation how easily, when a constitutional super­ stition is touched, men, who in worldly affairs are gentlemen, relapse into coarseness, calumny, and lawlessness. In the name of what they call God, but which is no more a God than Mumbo-Jumbo,—a fetish made up of the aggregate ignorance of church­ men who find it a paying stock, recreant Jews courting Christian favour, Catholics sniffing again the burning flesh of Smithfield once mingled with their incense,—in the name of that God who cursed nature, kindled Tophet for man, and founded in the world as under it a government of fire and faggot, they have not hesitated at any meanness, falsehood, or injustice to inflict a blow upon intellectual liberty, and even national liberty which dares disregard dogma. We have seen one bearing the title of Knight, �( 20 ) which used to mean defender of woman, dragging up the name of a lady of spotless character amid brutal laughter, trying to rob of reputation one whom an unjust judge had already robbed of her child. All this we have seen done in the name of an established phantasm called God. The outbreak of fanaticism in some deputies from wild districts is far less base than the partizan fury, which, in its eagerness to strike their conqueror, led a party to vote like one herd upon a question of fact and law. By a remarkable coincidence the law is just what will most annoy their opponentsand most delay public business, so punishing the country for taking its business out of their hands. There’s truth and honour for you! These are the followers of Jesus and protectors of Omnipotence ! These be thy gods, O people of England, who demand that woman should be insulted, law defied, and the sanctuary of law turned into a bear-garden, rather than that a man holding the opinions of the majority of scientific men in Europe shall be admitted to sit beside sanctified sporting squires, priest-ridden papists, and capacious city-men, making gold out of his blood who had not where to lay his head ! The Member for Northampton no doubt has his faults; but now when he suffers not for his faults but for his virtues, and when in his person are assailed the rights of every independent thinker in this nation, I will undertake to affirm that he is nearer to that man whom the Sanhedrim scourged than the best �( 21 ) of his assailants, and that the spirit which pursues him because of his testimony against priestcraft and his fidelity to the people, is the self-same spirit that crowned Christ with thorns and pressed poison to the lips of Socrates. We need not much regret this revolutionary out­ break of superstition allied with the class-interests pre­ served by superstition. A more salient illustration of the wolfish hunger for power underlying the unholy alliance of pious and political tyranny was never given to a people. If the Member for Northampton had lived to Methuselah’s age, and made a daily speech in Parliament, he could not have done so much as his enemies have done in a few days to advance the cause of atheism, so far as that means disbelief in the God of his oppressors. The Bishop of Peter­ borough says the French Revolutionary Assembly decreed the suppression of God; but the revolutionary House of Commons has decreed his disgrace. Their deity is unmasked and turns out to be only a party whip. If John Milton were living he might see in this disgrace of the political deity the hand of the real God overthrowing the usurper of his place. In his time also imperialism made God into a prop of its despotism, and Milton then wrote, “ Sure it was the hand of God to let them fall, and be taken in such a foolish trap as hath exposed them to all derision ; �( 22 ) ........................ thereby testifying how little he accepted (prayers) from those who thought no better of the living God than of a blind buzzard idol, fit to be so served and worshipped.” This nation is more hopelessly sunk in superstition than I believe it to be, if it be not now awakened to the politically destructive tendencies of dogmas imported from barbarous tribes. It is, however, of importance that we should see to it that the lesson is not lost upon the rising generation. We have in this country a great literature in which the highest principles of morality and honour are reflected. On the other hand, we have a so-called religion in which all the massacres of Judaism and Christianity, their treasons to humanity, are sanctified. We have simply to let every unsophisticated mind look on this picture and on that. We have only to point to theological morality in Parliament putting a premium on hypocrisy, by declaring that it is ready to receive an atheist if he conceals his opinions; to theological morality trampling law for party ends; to theological morality foul-mouthed, insolent, treating honesty of mind and honesty of speech as crimes. We have only to ask the con­ science of the mother, whether she would be glad to have her child grow up to so encourage conceal­ ment of thought, so brow-beat honesty, so over-ride �law, slander man and insult woman, all for the sake of God ? We have only to ask the heart of youth whether it is prepared to worship a God so upheld, or for any success or ambition to pretend to believe in a religion so built on baseness ? I believe that these questions are stirring millions of hearts this day, and that the rising generation will show it when fully risen. I believe that it is largely because lessons like this have been impressed upon past generations that the present struggle of freedom against sacerdotalism has come. It is also because our wise fathers taught those now grown gray that their trusty weapons were to be free and honest thought, fact, argument, lawful, that we now see Oppression taking to violence, to revolution, and Progress standing by the law. Let us better their instruction. Let us impress upon the rising generation that in calmness and justice is their strength. Let us teach them the gentle, irresistible force that goes with intellectual power, with study, mastery of their cause, and above all the might that ever gathers to the higher standard of morality and humanity. �SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL* WORKS TO BE OBTAINED IN THE LIBRARY. BY M. D. CONWAY, M.A. Prices. The Sacred Anthology: a Book of Ethnical s. d. Scriptures......................................................... 10 0 The Earthward Pilgrimage................................. 5 0 Do. do.......................................... 2 6 Republican Superstitions ................................. 2 6 Christianity ..................................................... 1 6 Human Sacrifices in England ....................... 1 0 Sterling and Maurice........................................... 0 2 Intellectual Suicide........................................... 0 2 The First Love again........................................... 0 2 Our Cause and its Accusers...................... ... 0 1 Alcestis in England........................................... 0 2 Unbelief : its nature, cause, and cure ............. 0 2 Entering Society ........................................... 0 2 The Religion of Children ... ... ... ... 0 2 What is Religion ?—Max Muller's First Hibbert Lecture ...................................................... 0 2 Atheism: a Spectre........................................... 0 2 The Criminal’s Ascension................................. 0 2 The Religion of Humanity................................. 0 2 A Last Word..................................................... 0 2 NEW WORK BYM.D. CONWAY, M.A. Idols and Ideals (including the Essay on Chris­ tianity ), 350 pages ............. ... ••• 6 0 Jiembers of the Congregation can obtain this Work in the Library at 5s. BY MR. J. ALLANSON PICTON. The Transfiguration of Religion....................... BY A. J. ELLIS, B.A., F.R.S., &c., &c. Salvation ..................................................... Truth Speculation ..................................................... Duty ............................................................... The Dyer’s Hand ........................................... BY REV. P. H. WTCKSTEED, M.A. Going Through and Getting Over ............. BY REV. T. W. FRECKELTON. The Modern Analogue of the Ancient Prophet BY W. C. COUPLAND, M.A, The Conduct of Life........................................... 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 2 2 2 0 2 0 2 0 2 Hymns and Anthems... ... ... 1/-, 2/-, %/■ Report of the Conference of Liberal Thinkers, 1878, 1/- � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The rising generation: a discourse before the South Place Society, June 27th 1880 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 23, [1] p. ; 15 cm. Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 2. Printed by Waterlow and Sons, London Wall. With list of works to be obtained in the Library of South Place Chapel at end of pamphlet. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [South Place Chapel] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1880] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G3348 Subject The topic of the resource Child rearing Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The rising generation: a discourse before the South Place Society, June 27th 1880), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Child Rearing-Moral and Ethical Aspects Children Dogma Education Free Thought Moral Education Morris Tracts Rationalism Youth-Great Britain-Religious Life https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/d0d9a81e6931e6f10138a1779b5c79c1.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=Qk92GdKJiMLGoYjj6fQY9fcXMOMRPvbcK2iorK06RwSjD119tjhRM2kCfVHe-8g%7Eiux-qJ85x-%7EpoPGV8b-uYuoJp0TNgj-Y3tdisvnxUoqXPnacBMbbowUDDc1CaZka3rTCaRV09ut22OBWEXoWTO0YxgdvuXHwN3MdZJHue8N1DCWMW0dHClVBsnFc92MFOqDyMpcWn6ZR5hJCSwsQuaFw5EKmL0t4pB2W%7ER%7EhFCUoKIzGYChiNoLT36VLeiVU7AMzfOib6nUcklPTrxYEmtXtNgp4vNbEgt5BgdhBbUQGrZoXC5JRMAyXolvi3mCthmlRVkwBO-0zvBj22A6NlQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 4bc9ca592c02daad95dc97178afdac43 PDF Text Text Published by Request. THE INFLUENCE OF DOGMA UPON RELIGION. A REPLY TO SOME REMARKS MADE IN CONVOCATION DURING THE DEBATE ON THE ATHANASIAN CREED, APRIL 24, 1872. BY REV. CHARLES VOYSEY, B.A., LATE VICAR OF HEALAUGH. LONDON: PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR, CAMDEN HOUSE. DULWICH, S.E., AND TRUBNER AND CO., PATERNOSTER ROW. Price Fourpence. �LONDON: PRINTED BY WERTHEIMER, LEA AND CO. CIRCUS PLACE, FINSBURY CIRCUS. HHEBHBSBBDEBnSKSB08K9flffl �PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, APRIL 28th, 1872. ; (J . (( Now the axe is laid at the root of the trees.” Matthew iii. 10. • During the debate on the Athanasian Creed last week in Convocation, one of the speakers is reported to have said, 11 Pogma and Religion must go togetherj and the Church cannot unlearn her dogmas.” Statements, so plain and concise as this one, are of great value, and bring out in sharp outlines the chief points of contrast between conflicting opinions or principles. We may be thankful to any bishop or priest for coming forward in this way and throw­ ing down the gauntlet for us to take up. The sooner that both sides in this great dispute between authority and individual freedom see the real issue which is at stake, the less time will be wasted in endless petty discussions about particular doctrines. I therefore take up the challenge, and will this morning endeavour to prove that religion and dogma do not necessarily go together; that, if any­ thing, dogma is a hindrance to religion; and that �4 the cry of 11 Non possumus” is the death-knell of any church. (1.) Religion and Dogma do not necessarily go together. Not to mention the Unitarian body, a large por­ tion of whose ministers and laity have no articles and creeds, no written dogmas at all, we will only speak for ourselves. Religion surely means a sense of the being of God, a belief in His goodness which inspires veneration, obedience and love on our part, and a consciousness of our hearts’ desire to conform our lives to His holy will. This is not in­ tended to be a definition; but, I think, people of every creed in Christendom will admit that so much at least is included under the term 11 Religion.” That this devout reverence towards God, this entire confidence in His fidelity, lies absolutely at the very foundation of our present movement cannot be gainsaid. Many, it is true, have joined us only because they see the falseness and corrup­ tion of the prevailing beliefs; and some few have joined us, not through sympathy with our religion at all, but from sympathy with our principles in the search after truth. But with these exceptions, the rest of that large and influential body who are with us, have undertaken this great work from religious motives; because they love God, and would fain deliver the Christian peoples around them from their unwholesome dread of God, from their gloomy superstitions, and from their degrading and de­ moralising ideas of the Divine dealings with men. • �Does this religion depend on dogma, or does it not ? I answer, this religion not only does not depend on dogma, but owes its very existence to the subversion of dogma. It is born out of the instinctive rebellion of our own reasons, consciences, and hearts, against dogmas which we saw to be false, immoral, and cruel. So far from such a religion and dogma going together, speaking for ourselves, they could not exist side by side. Either the dogma would kill the religion, or the religion crush the dogma. We owe all the light and beauty and gladness of our religion to our having been able to renounce the dogmas of orthodoxy, and to our determination never again to be bound by any of them. And this leads me to say a necessary word or two about the term “dogma.” Dogma must not be con­ founded with doctrine. Doctrine is merely a tech­ nical term for an opinion, say a formal opinion, and in theology doctrine is therefore a theological formal opinion, the expression of a thought or idea about God, or about our relation to Him. Now it is easy to see that there can be no religion without doctrine, ?.e., without some thought or opinion about God; and that every one of us who is religious must have doctrines in his own mind as the basis of his religion. In our case, there is such a general consensus of doctrine or opinion as to draw us together, and enable us to worship together, with a very great degree of unanimity, in the words of one book. But nevertheless, each one’s doctrine is his own to hold or to change as he pleases, and is held only to �6 grow wider and deeper in meaning, or to be abandoned for another which has been found to be more true. There must be many shades of doctrine amongst us which, if they ever came to be petrified into dogmas, would explode our society into frag­ ments; but we have a bond of union deeper still than our doctrines, we are bound together mainly and most securely by our principles, by the princi­ ples on which we consider that all doctrines should be held. The most important of these is the principle of perfect liberty given and received all round to each one to hold his own, without fear of illegitimate pressure or interference, and above all, without fear of God or hell-fire. Such a bond of union, never before tried so thoroughly, so radically, will, we believe, be found strong and lasting— infinitely better than that delusive uniformity in which all churches have placed their trust. Doctrines held on such terms of perfect individual liberty, and by each one in the hope of going on learning more and more of religious truth, and of changing the partial truth of to-day for the more complete truth of the morrow; doctrines which are thus being continually brought to the test of reason, and into the clearer light of advancing science, can never be identified with dogmas. Dogmas are doctrines turned into stone, of which Church walls are built, to shut out the rest of the world, and to imprison those who take shelter behind them. When a doctrine is taken up by a commu­ nity or Church, signed, sealed, stamped, ratified, and �7 passed into law, then it becomes a dogma. Dogmatism is the death of deliberate thought, because it is the enforcement of doctrine. It makes little difference whether the doctrine be enforced by Act of Par­ liament, and its infringement made punishable by pains and penalties, or whether it be urged upon the acceptance of men under threats of God’s dis­ pleasure, or with bribes of heaven hereafter—if it be enforced at all, it becomes dogma. And one of the most hopeful signs of our times is that the very name of dogma is execrated by the wise, and dreaded by the loving. Dogmas are the stones by which priests and people in all ages have killed their prophets. While it is the very nature of doc­ trines to be ever changing, dogmas have congealed them in deadly frost. Doctrines are the living thoughts of living men; dogmas are the lifeless forms of thoughts which are dead, curious only as the contents of a long-closed sepulchre. Doctrines have the power of immortal life and ever increasing beauty and variety; dogmas once written down with the iron pen of Church authority on the stone of stumbling and rock of offence, become first ghastly and then grotesque by the ravages of time. No wonder then that, as doctrine after doctrine died and was buried in the sepulchre of dogma, the collection of thoughts scattered over centuries, but which the dogmas now present for our acceptance en masse, should prove to be nothing but a jumble of incoherent and contradictory propositions. The miserable keepers of this museum of ugly relics in �8 our own times are only still more to be pitied than the unhappy men whose business it was, in the sixteenth century, to build for them a new gallery, and place them in their new niches. Whoever it was who wrote the Thirty-nine Articles began at least with a noble Te Deum, simple and grand, the earnest utterance, no doubt, of a heart overflowing with reverence and love. “ There is but One living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible.” He had only written three lines however, before the religious emotion which had inspired them, fled suddenly away when he was compelled to grope amongst the ashes of the past, and divide the invisible One into three pieces, and then put them together again like a dreadful puzzle. But his grief and perplexity are not to be compared with the despair of those who have to face all these embalmed relics to-day, and to tell the people in solemn time and place that they are all alive and will live for ever. Can we think without pity of one, who knowing, e.g., what the Athanasian creed contains, is obliged to confess: r The Church cannot unlearn her dogmas.” To be placed in such dire and distressing antagonism to the tide of thought in the nineteenth century and in England is far worse than to endure the worst penalties of modern martyrdom. But what will not 11 Dogma” do ? It is backed up by authority. All these mummies of creeds and articles stand and preach �9 to us the dreary echoes of long-dead thought, they tie our hands, direct our steps, and force words upon our lips. Galvanized by Acts of Parliament, and by the still more coercive authority of a spectral Church, they can make slaves of us as we go, can scare us into submission, if a daring thought should venture to rebel, and can, even to-day, darken our last hours by visions of a fathomless despair. No words of mine can describe their fatal power in such vivid imagery as that of the old Hebrew Psalmist. “Not unto us, 0 Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name be the praise, for Thy loving mercy and for Thy truth’s sake. Wherefore should the heathen say of us, ‘ Where is now their God ?’ As for our God, He is in heaven, He hath done whatsoever pleased Him. But their idols are the work of men’s hands. They have mouths and speak not; eyes have they and see not. They have ears and hear not, noses have they and smell not. They have hands and handle not; feet have they and walk not; neither speak they through their throat. They that make them are like unto them, and so are all they that put their trust in them.” (2.) And these words bring me to say, in the second place, that dogma is a hindrance to true religion. Think first what is its influence on the preacher. The enforcement of doctrine, whether by acts of uniformity, by thirty-nine articles, by subscription of clergy, by solemn oath of clerical fraternities, by trust deeds, by inarticulate signs of assent or dis­ �sent on the part of pewholders in any Church— directly or indirectly—the imposition of dogma and its practical enforcement on the preacher’s utterance is a mischief indescribably deep and subtle. No arguments can ever justify the anomaly, the ab­ surdity and the cruelty of telling a man who desires to preach the truth, that he must think in a par­ ticular groove, and speak in conformity with par­ ticular written or unwritten propositions; to be met, at the moment of the discovery of some beautiful idea, by this kind of caution, “ It is all very good, but it is not orthodox, you know,” or that ((it may be ever so true, but it is not safe,” &c., is to sentence a man to lasting hypocrisy, or to temporal ruin. Besides this, every limit put upon the freedom of his utterance diminishes the value of every state­ ment of his own true conviction, and casts discredit upon whatever he may honestly say. How can you be sure that your preacher in his moments of greatest fervour is not saying what his heart belies, if it be in the power of any of his hearers to turn round upon him and say, “ You dare not preach otherwise if you would.” It is therefore for the best interest of all opinions whatsoever, to leave the preacher absolutely unfettered. But if you have a tongue-tied clergy you must have a hood-winked laity. If you have falsehood in the priest, the people will learn to love falsehood, to prefer the poison of a lie to the nourishment of truth. But quite apart from this corruption, dogma most snsHorannHi �11 surely hinders religion, both in its essence and ex­ pression. Have not hundreds and thousands been thrown into frightful confusion and perplexity by the dogma of the Trinity, not because it was a doctrine, but because it was a dogma, to be believed under peril of damnation ? Have not their hearts sunk within them in trying to master a problem which one moment’s free thought would have made them toss aside with ridicule and scorn, but which the awful dread of hell fascinated them to study ? Treated as fanciful speculations, or as modes of expressing theologically some subtle metaphysical abstractions, these old creeds could do but little harm; but as dogmas required to be believed for one’s soul’s salvation, they have done irre­ parable mischief to religion, alienated many and many from the very thought of God, driven them for shelter from Him and His awful mysteries to the arms of a comprehensible and kind-hearted man, and have forced the nations of Christendom into an idolatry scarcely less injurious to reli­ gion than the paganism which it supplanted. If mankind are really at a hopeless distance from God, and alienated from Him by their ignorance and sin, dogma only adds wofully to their miseries, dogma builds a wall between God and man over which every prodigal son must climb, who would 11 arise and go to his father.” Every step which we take under its guidance is, by the confession of its own priests, full of darkness and danger. Clouds of heaven’s wrath are waiting to burst in fury upon �12 our unfortunate heads, pit-falls beneath our feet lie hidden to entrap us into some shocking Sabellian heresy, or some Homoiousian shade of a deadly Arianism. For this and that and the other dogma, however hopelessly contradictory, “is the Catholic faith, which except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be saved.” Now where is religion all this time, that we have been picking our way over this morass and that desert, and climbing over the walls of dogma to get ourselves saved I To me it looks like the religion of the lowest physical type, if it be religion at all. It is fetichism and not religion. It is the worship of ourselves, not of God; it is devotion to our own safety, not to His blessed will; it is the apotheosis of bribery and corruption. But it is dogma and dogma only that thus debases men. Left to them­ selves they would be ashamed to believe those very creeds which “the Church cannot unlearn.” They would hide them away as symptoms of mental and moral disease, lest men should scorn them for their folly or shun them for their madness. Dogma has, alas! laid its fetters over the very worship of mankind, and forbidden aspiration which it could not sanction, has silenced praises which it did not enjoin. If our thoughts of God rise and expand, our forms of prayer and praise are still petrified and all but lifeless. If we have outgrown those conceptions of the Divine Being, and of the early origin of our race, on which the liturgy was based, we are still tied down by dogma to repeat �13 the same old weary platitudes, and to utter the same senseless lamentations, which once suited our unhappy forefathers. If we have grown more bro­ therly towards our fellow-men, under the blessed sunshine of the Father’s love to us all, we are still bound, on the Church’s highest festivals, to curse all Arians and Unitarians, and all the millions of the Greek Church, with a bitter curse, and to pollute our very praises to the Almighty Father by anathemas against our brethren. (3.) It does not require much courage to predict the near dissolution of any Church offering such ob­ structions to true religion, and, moreover, declaring that she “ cannot unlearn her own dogmas.” Bad as the Church of England may be, we must not believe she is so bad as that, or that any Anglican High Churchman is her spokesman. The Houses of Parliament, and not the Houses of Convocation, have the laws of the Church in their own hands. The Queen, and not Christ or Peter, is the real head of the Church, and so there is some chance of her unlearning her own dogmas. Not merely a chance of unlearning these particular ones, which are now embalmed in the Thirty-nine Articles and Creeds, but a chance of her divorcing herself for ever from all dogmas, and of allowing doctrines to resume their proper place, as the living thoughts of living men, whose goal is the truth, and whom neither terror nor greed can hinder from its pursuit. Has the past no lesson to teach the dogmatist ? What are his own dogmas, and what is the origin of �14 his own creeds? Were not each and all in turn the heresies of the successive ages in which they first appeared ? Did not the dogmas of the dying systems struggle long and manfully against the new opinions, and was not their fall certain only because the new opinions were more true than those which they displaced? Neither priests of Jupiter nor silversmiths at Ephesus could keep their petrified dogmas from sinking in the sands of time, and going down into the darkness where all that is dead must finally be laid. Tell us, ye chief priests and rulers, you will not, you cannot unlearn your dogmas, then we tell you that your day has come and is gone. The thing that will not grow and keep pace with the march;of intellect, that cannot move with the progress of scientific knowledge, nor expand with the enlarging hearts of men who have found a loving God for themselves, that thing, we say, must die, it is dead as soon as it ceases to move onward. Your best, your noblest dogma of all, if it be dogma and no longer living thought, is dead already, and you cannot for long pass off that lifeless corpse for a living man, dress it how you will, and paint its withering parchment with the glowing carmine, prop it up in your busiest thoroughfares, and give it attitudes like the attitudes of the living throng; speak for it too, be the interpreter of its wakeless silence to the ears of men and women who have been scared by its cold fixed gaze; but you will not long succeed in deluding your fellow-men. They �15 will soon find out that you have been playing upon their childish and groundless fears, that you have been amusing yourself in the twilight at their ex­ pense, and they will sweep you and your mummified creeds quickly, and perhaps rudely, out of the path­ way of mankind. If religion itself were worthless, dogma would never give it worth. But if religion still holds its own amongst human hearts, men will find one for themselves which shall best accord with the highest and not with the lowest aspect of their nature, one which can lead them on instead of drawing them back. But one thing they will not do. They will not give up their manly souls to the dictates of the dead, nor suffer themselves to be enslaved by those whom they have once discovered to be the dupes of their own fears, who shamelessly confess that for all time to come, no one among mankind will ever dis­ cover any truth about God and man not already known, and that no one will discover any error in the little patch of dogmas round which the’ Church has built its ugly stone wall. What? errors in Paganism, errors in Judaism, errors in Mahometanism, errors in Brahmanism, errors in Buddhism, but none in Christianity ? No, not one I il The Church cannot unlearn her own dogmas.” Then the Church is dead. Cover her tenderly, bury her reverently—but pile over her tomb the stumbling blocks of creed and dogma, which she had strewn in our way. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The influence of dogma upon religion. A reply to some remarks made in convocation during the debate on the Athanasian creed, April 24 1872 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Voysey, Charles [1828-1912] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 15 p. ; 19 cm. Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 6. Printed by Wertheimer, Lea and Co., London. Title page states: Published by Request. The sermon was preached at St George's Hall, April 28th 1872. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Author; Trubner and Co. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1872] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G3391 Subject The topic of the resource Religion Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The influence of dogma upon religion. A reply to some remarks made in convocation during the debate on the Athanasian creed, April 24 1872), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/admin/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Athanasian Creed Dogma Morris Tracts https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/5a7bb7e347950d015d9378774e0a302d.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=GCspau5WY4qxJwaCE1fp4hUhzubMwtVaR0iLrdgs1cfkNNJIkyhQskw%7EhftHXl0KaFbQZiiaBmzAQGCQBNXSgw3UcAdrJCA7dvzSqmEd8mAwP3aYE%7ExxnkX4BZjqWoM%7E3GKRH55A2fvAXe6j0vSEpvkNL8xAZLZpvN3hWjSVeC0h6lVizFLF8DJs8BGXdBfnmYnQ0NafpXX9WOu3zE6moslSE78UtX68aTIGoGp4yo9tmqOGaPqcpuN-rWX-0PVf27qKJyO9cBiuBewOS2OZaRcz8z0JoQfw96DH7xDYZz3K3THgB1vZXTlVm%7ETT%7EJO6zwP4hUWQWzXC6EnRs7Hp9A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 483a75826e6765c06c64cb7de79ed0ff PDF Text Text THE CARDINAL DOGMAS OP CALVINISM TRACED TO THEIR ORIGIN. MATT. M A C FIE. PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT, NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E. Price Sixpence. ��THE CARDINAL DOGMAS OF CALVINISM TRACED TO THEIR ORIGIN. T is not my business at present to dogmatise. I propose to submit to the reader a historical sketch, rather than a doctrinal disquisition. A rational mind finds the ground on which to reject orthodox dogmas conclusive enough, in the fact that they are felt to be at variance with reason. But it cannot fail to strengthen the convictions which spring directly from the exercise of common sense, to be assured that those convictions are supported by history. The inductive method to be applied here in disproving the doctrine of unconditional and eternal election, may be applied with equal success in demolishing, point by point, the entire system of Calvinistic theology. Ex uno disee omnes. It is much more rare to hear the repulsive dogmas of Calvinism preached now than it was a quarter of a century ago. They still linger, however, under a more or less austere aspect in town and country. They are publicly taught by not a few clergymen who received them as a traditional inheritance, which they would deem it sacrilegious to inquire narrowly into. They are professed by many laymen also. Some of these laymen have outlived Calvinism in heart, though they are unable to muster the courage necessary to avow their opinions openly; others of them, with yet less independence of thought, cling to the system with simply a blind sentimentalism which rests in the wor­ ship of the past. I �4 The Cardinal Dogmas of Calvinism The doctrine of eternal and unconditional election would have no place in Calvinistic theology, but for the alleged “fall” of Adam, and the supposed fatal conse­ quences of this catastrophe to the human race. The doctrine under notice represents God as foreseeing that such an untoward event would happen, and as, in con­ sequence, proposing in a past eternity to save a limited portion of mankind from the eternal ruin which their own sin directly, and the imputed sin of the first man indirectly, should bring upon them. This deliverance of the elect from the ceaseless punishment of hell, to which the non-elect were exposed, was determined upon by God unconditionally—one might almost say, arbitrarily, according to Calvinism. The choice is said to have been sovereign, absolute, spontaneous,__ without any perception on the part of Deity of’in­ herent merit as distinguished from ill-desert in the elected persons, in order that all pretext for their taking any credit to themselves in the transaction should be excluded, and that the unreasoning pre­ ference of the infinite chooser might be vindicated and extolled. The web of metaphysical exposition that has been woven round this tenet of orthodoxy is indescribably ingenious and complicated. The profound treatises which have attempted to deal with the topic during the last fourteen centuries, have been legion. The controversies that have been waged all through that period about it, are they not familiar to every student of that most unsatisfactory branch of theolo­ gical learning- Churcli History ? "Who can number the honest minds that have been narrowed and twisted by the dismal teaching of the creed of which this doctrine is the central element! The Pantheist is consistent and intelligible, however strongly we may disagree with him, when he frankly says that “he cannot frame to himself the conception of a personal God j that he cannot understand sin as real, but only as apparent in the universe, and that �Traced to their Origin. 5 what physical and moral disorder exists no power can remove, till, in the slow progress of events, the world has gained sufficient scientific knowledge and experience to swamp what we are accustomed to call wrong-doing and folly. All error, absurdity, and evil work their own cure by wearing themselves out. What we technically call sin, marks the fact that mankind has on certain matters to pass from a state of ignorance to a state of knowledge.” This view may be right, or it may be wrong, but it has at least the advantage of leaving out all implied moral imputations upon the character of a personal deity. The assertion that an intelligent God predestined only a certain number to everlasting life necessarily carries with it the anterior condition, that he must have fated the circumstances which made that predestination inevitable. Unless the Calvinist is pre­ pared to believe that there is a devil in the universe equally potent with the Almighty—a conception as im­ possible as it is monstrous,-—he is bound to hold that God deliberately arranged for corruption and death, material, spiritual, and everlasting, to flood the world. For without this supposition the theory of a media­ torial ransom for the favourites of the Calvinistic deity would be meaningless. I pass over the horrid but necessary counterpart of the doctrine of the eternal and unconditional election of some, namely, the eternal and unconditional reprobation of others. With such a representation of God constantly before the mind, the Predestinarians must from the first have been unique in the grounds of their reverence for their deity. Con­ flict with reason could surely no further go than appears in the spectacle of their professed devotion and affec­ tion for his character and will, in spite of the crimes and cruelties ascribed to him by their creed, which traces to his agency and permission acts totally irreconcileable with the principles of human reason, right, and benevolence. That there should be found in Europe and America a section of civilised men venerating the �6 The Cardinal Dogmas of Calvinism Calvinistic God, despite characteristics in him which would be denounced as intolerable if seen in a human being, is itself an unanswerable reply to all the theolo­ gical rant about the universality of human depravity. If ever argument was wanting to retrieve the libelled character of mankind, and atone for its imperfections, it is abundantly supplied in the worship and consecra­ tion shown by so many to the God of eternal and un­ conditional election ! Never was the mantle of charity so forbearingly thrown over the vices of man by man, as has in this case been thrown over the vices of deity by man. The dogma under consideration is somewhat anachronously designated when associated with the name of Calvin; The origin of the doctrine dates back just eleven centuries before the Reformation, and, to no earlier a period. Its real author was Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, who flourished in the fifth century; The system known as Calvinism is little more than a revival of Augustinianism. A section of the Roman Catholic Church in the time of the Genevan Reformed had veered round into the track of practical Pelagianism, and in order to beat down what Calvin held to be deadly error, he repaired to the armoury of Augustine, and furbished up the old weapons of the saint to fight over again the battle of Grace versus Works. The question returned, “ Can man think or do any right thing of himself ? ” “ Yes, certainly,” said the semi­ Pelagian of Calvin’s day. “ No, nothing,” replied Calvin, “ without the inspiration of the sovereign, eternal, and electing grace of God.” The two postu­ lates on which the entire predestinarian scheme, as originated by Augustine, and revived by Calvin, rested, were original sin inherited from Adam, and the irrespon­ sible sovereignty of God. Prom these premises it was plausibly argued by Augustine that “ an absolute election of certain individuals to eternal life, though resulting from the divine will purely, is not on the �Traced to their Origin. 7 part of the supreme ruler abstractedly unjust. For since, both by original and actual sin, all are trans­ gressors of God’s law, it were assuredly no injustice if all had been left to perish. Therefore, if all might justly be left to perish, clearly no breach of justice can be committed in the free election of some to eternal life.” Strange metaphysical infatuation to blind a great mind like Augustine’s ! What caused “ original sin ? ” The predetermination of God. What caused “ actual sin ? ” Proximately it miist have been original sin. Therefore, for God to save a few sinners, and to hold the rest responsible fortheir doom—-a doom which could only be averted either by his predestinating that sin should not enter in any shape into the world, or by his exerting some irresistible influence in redeeming the non-elect, is a palpable and cruel injustice. But the exigencies of a theological system with a polemical divine are vastly more urgent than any scruples about the moral issues of the system. Consequently, Augus­ tine, with all the partisan zeal of a retained counsel, rushed blindly on in the narrow ruts of his scholasti­ cism, and we need not be surprised, therefore, to read these words of his respecting the elect and the repro­ bate :—“ Although in the present state we cannot cer­ tainly know the elect from the reprobate (for as the reprobate may seem for a time to be leading holy lives, so the elect, anterior to their effectual calling may for a time appear to be in nowise actuated by godliness), yet a definite number of individuals, as well from among the existing members of the visible church as from the great mass of the unbelieving world at large, who shall hereafter become members of the visible church, are, by the mere sovereign pleasure of God, personally elected to eternal salvation.” So strong a passage prepares us for one still stronger in the same direction, written apparently under the in­ fluence of a remorseless logic which utterly tramples on the sentiments of even common humanity, to say �8 The Cardinal Dogmas of Calvinism nothing of deity. “ Since the number of the elect can neither can be increased or diminished, all the rest of mankind, equally by the mere sovereign pleasure of God, being ultimately given over to the unrestrained exercise of their own free will, are personally repro­ bated to eternal damnation.” In natural sequence to this terrific assertion we next encounter the theory of “particular redemption,” the necessity for which latter dogma previous links in the chain of argument had created. “ When it is said,” says Augustine, “that God will have all to be saved, though in point of fact, all men are not saved, this language relates exclusively to the elect, who, through God’s sovereign pleasure are out of all classes of men predestined to eternal life.” True to his favourite tenet of originale pjeccatum, which he believed to involve the mass of men in hopeless spiritual insensibility, Augustine summons to his aid the correlated dogma of “ effectual calling ” and dovetails it into his system. “ In due season,” he says, “vrhile to the reprobate reproof acts only as a penal torment, to the elect that same reproof is instru­ mentally blessed as a salutary medicine.” Having thus reasoned out to his own satisfaction the remote and proximate causes of human depravity ; having set forth the outward provision for the cure of this evil which he tells us was expressly and exclusively ordained for the benefit of the elect; having further put forward the doctrine that the elect were supernaturally inspired with an inclination to appropriate effectually the provided cure, only one more theological extravagance was wanted to round off and cap this dismal system. Augustine taught “the final perse­ verance of all the elect through the indefectible grace of God; ” that is to say, their safe conduct to heaven. This synopsis of the bishop’s theory, stated for the most part in Iris own words, covers all that need be said now in the way of preliminary exposition. It is not generally known, however, that the contem- �Traced to their Origin. 9 poraries of Augustine rejected the views which I have summarized, as “ novelties,” and demanded his authority for dogmas so unheard of in the previous experience of the church. But the following facts will enable us to judge for ourselves the actual -worth of the testimony he laboured to adduce in their support. The first occasion on which he is known to have promulgated his peculiar theories was in his contro­ versy with Pelagius, Celestius, Julian, and their followers, on “ Divine grace and human nature.” The points at issue between the combatants are briefly as follows: the Church asserted first that “ the grace of God is not given according to man’s antecedent merits.” Secondly, that “whatever may be the comparative righteousness of one man in particular, no person lives in this corruptible body without incurring the actual guilt of a certain degree of positive sinfulness.” Thirdly, that “we are all born obnoxious to the sin of the first man, and consequently are all subject to damnation unless the guilt which is contracted in our generation be removed by our regeneration.” These were the points stoutly argued by Augustine in .behalf of the church. The Pelagians, on the contrary, insisted that “we only sin by vicious imitation and that grace is given according to antecedent merit.” Augustine appealed in favour of his views—which all orthodox people have done ever since—to the bible,* * What orthodox ism cannot be proved from the bible? It is on record that a Cambridge professor a century or two back, got the notion into his head that the book of Psalms could be interpreted throughout on a new hermeneutical principle, viz.: that of rain. He solemnly believed and maintained that the Psalmist had before his mind the idea of moisture in composing every verse of his Psalms, and when the Professor comes upon the beautiful words, “Light is sown for the righteous • and gladness for the upright in heart,” as might be expected, he canters easily over critical difficulties. He gravely explains, “ Light was produced among the Orientals by oil expressed from the castor tree, and the castor tree was nourished and refreshed by rain!” �io The Cardinal Dogmas of Calvinism as interpreted by the fathers, and in particular, as interpreted by Polycarp (who was reported to have received his theology direct from the Apostle John), St Cyprian of Carthage, and his own personal friend and patron, Ambrose of Milan. In the course of the controversy Augustine was induced to publish a treatise on “ Correction and Grace ” for the purpose of crushing the heresy against which he fought. This treatise contains theological speculations never before elaborated in support of ortho­ doxy. Id this work the doctrinal system now known as Calvinism first saw the light, and the theories of unconditionalism and necessitarianism, now for the first time propounded, were strongly objected to by the author’s most intimate friends and denounced by the great majority of Augustine’s orthodox contemporaries as “novelties.” When this work on “ Correction and Grace ” reached Gaul, Augustine’s notions in the book which were ac­ counted “novel” were openly opposed. Prosper of Aquitane, formerly a disciple of the bishop of Hippo, and Hilary of Arles remonstrated with Augustine in letters which they addressed to him on the subject in the name of the believers of Massilia. In one of these epistles we are told that many of “ the servants of Christ ” who lived in Marseilles and in other parts of Gaul (the description is given by Prosper himself) had instructed Prosper and Hilary to expostulate with Augustine. The following are the words of the ex­ postulation: “We heartily approve of your general confutation of Pelagius and his followers. But why do you superfluously mingle with it a system of novel peculiarities which we cannot receive 1 [The reference here is to the distinctive Augustinian dogmas of uuconditionalism and necessitarianism now known as the fundamentals of Calvinistic theology.] To say nothing of what we at least deem the utter inconsistency of that system with scripture, it is, in truth, quite new �Traced to their Origin. ii to us. We never even so much as heard of it before. We find it unsanctioned by any of the preceding fathers, and we perceive it to be contrary to the sense of the whole Catholic church.” The weight attaching to this communication of the Massalian believers con­ sists in the fact that they were general admirers of the bishop of Hippo, whom, in this instance, however, they felt bound to take to task, and they were not likely to be animated by silly prejudice against him. For the letter referred to, concludes in these flattering terms : “ Be assured, however, that, this one matter excepted, we cordially admire your holiness both in all your doings and in all your sayings.” Now the gist of the inquiry turns upon this point: were the suspicions of the Massilians as to Augustine’s novelties well-founded ? If they were, clearly the dogmas of unconditionalism and necessitarianism had no existence within the knowledge of the orthodox church prior to the Pelagian controversy. The remonstrance of Prosper and Hilary called forth from the irrepressible bishop a published defence of the “ novel ” positions he had taken up, in a second treatise entitled “The predestination of the Saints and the gift of Perseverance.” How does he attempt to vindicate himself from the charges brought against his doctrine by the Christians of Marseilles ? He falls back on two sources of proof: the authority of the Catholic church, and the testimony of the preceding fathers, though the Massilian Christians denied that support could be found for his views either in the one quarter or in the other. In reference to the former of these sources of proof he admits that the church “ was not wont to bring forward in preaching, the doctrine of predestination, because formerly there were no adver­ saries to answer.” But yet he maintains that “not­ withstanding her habitual silence on the topic, she must have held the doctodne in question because she has always prayed that unbelievers might be converted �12 The Cardinal Dogmas of Calvinism to the faith and that het levers might persevere to the end.” So much for church authority and Augustine’s way of manipulating it! Let us now see how he manages to manufacture en­ couragement for his “ novelties ” out of the testimony of the fathers. Strange to say, from the whole host of them he can only find three names as pillars for the fabric of his “ novel peculiarities : ” Cyprian, GregoryNazianzen, and Ambrose, and the only assistance his ingenuity could extract from these fathers consists only of a very few brief and extremely ambiguous passages from their writings. From these few vague passages he draws the sweeping inference that “ these all har­ moniously teach his system of predestination.” He had already based his necessitarian dogmas on the plea that the church had held the doctrine of final perseverance, forgetting, as he did, that such a doctrine as that of final perseverance might be logically enough held by persons who repudiated altogether the notion of unconditional election and predestination. We shall soon find that his appeal to the fathers is as meagre, frivolous, and unsatisfactory, as his appeal to the autho­ rity of the church. We may be quite sure, from the vast array of ancient names he opposed to Pelagianism that had he been able to bolster up his predestinarian system, especially by patristic authority, he would not have contented himself, as he felt compelled to do in this instance, with naming only three solitary fathers as favouring his side of the question. Now for the testimony from the fathers which he adduces. Cyprian, the first of the three cited by Augustine, flourished about the middle of the third century, and the two others—Gregory Nazianzen and Ambrose—in the latter part of the fourth century, the two last named fathers actually belonging to the patristic generation immediately preceding his own. So that, after all his boasted claims for the antiquity and inspired authority of his theories, he relied upon fathers, �Traced to their Origin. 13 the earliest of whom lived as late as a century and a half, at least, after the death of St John, and the latest of whom was only his own senior by about twenty years. Had these three fathers yielded any distinct support to the Augustinian theories, we might have been dis­ posed to lay less stress on their remoteness from the Apostles. But the passages the bishop of Hippo brings forward from their writings, are found to be utterly irrelevant, and show the desperate shifts to which he was driven in attempting to make out his case. What says Cyprian, on this subject of eternal and unconditional election 1 He simply prayed along with the “ Church Catholic ” that “ infidels might be con­ verted, and that believers might persevere to the end.” ‘‘Therefore,” concludes Augustine, “this father must have held my sentiments respecting Election and Re­ probation.” Could logic be more completely set at defiance ? Again, Gregory-Nazianzen, exhorting his flock to confess the Trinity in Unity, stated that “ he who gave them in the first instance to believe that doctrine would also give them in the second instance to confess it.” A conclusion similar to the one just indicated, is instantly drawn also from these words. Gregory is supposed to be at one with Augustine. Ambrose said that “ when a man became a Christian he might fairly allege his own good pleasure in so doing, without, in anywise, denying the good pleasure of God; for it is from God that the will of man is pre­ pared, and Christ calls him whom he pities.” For any man in his senses—and especially a man of the unquestioned talent of Augustine—-to clutch at such a pretence of proof as is afforded by this passage, of the doctrines of unconditional election and reprobation—reveals an ignorance of the first principles of reasoning perfectly astounding. Another passage from the writings of the same �14 The Cardinal Dogmas of Calvinism father, is quoted by the Bishop of Hippo for the same purpose. It occurs in a comment by Ambrose on a certain verse in St Luke’s gospel. Ambrose expresses himself thus : “ Learn, also, that Christ would not be received by those whom he knew had not been con­ verted in simplicity of mind. For if he had so pleased, he might, from being undevout, have made them devout. But why they did not receive him, the Evangelist him­ self shows us, when he says, ‘ because his face was as of one going to Jerusalem.’ For the disciples were wish­ ing him to be received into Samaria. God calls them whom he deigns to call, and him whom he wills he makes religious.” On these two statements of Ambrose unitedly, Augustine, with touching simplicity, based the opinion that this father and himself were agreed on necessitarian doctrines. But, in point of fact, so far from Cyprian, Gregory and Ambrose intending to lend any counte­ nance to Augustinian “ novelties,” passages might easily be adduced from the works of all three demonstrating that they were flatly opposed to these novelties. But even had their teachings been apposite to Augustine’s purpose, when it is remembered that the very earliest of these witnesses was not born till a hundred and fifty years after the last of the Apostles, the value of their testimony becomes seriously impaired. There are one or two further considerations worthy to be noted as supplying evidence that the origin of the specious opinions of Augustine could only be traced to himself. After Augustine’s death, Prosper, who became a convert to the dogmas of Augustinianism, and was carried away by heroic loyalty to the memory of his great teacher, continued to defend them zealously. This being the case, an appeal was made to the judgment of Pope Celestine on the subject, and that pontiff, while commending the skill and earnestness of Augustine in contending with the Pelagians for “ the doctrines of �Traced to their Origin. J5 grace,” significantly enough passed over in silence the two elaborate treatises which develop his “novel” views, viz., “ Correction and Grace,” and “The predestination of the saints and the gift of perseverance.” The Pope, sensible of the obligation under which the Church of Pome was laid to the learning, ability, and devotion of Augustine, was naturally unwilling to deal out formal censure against his controverted opinions, and thus ex­ pose his memory to reproach. Celestine and his suc­ cessors, therefore, chose to evade the appeals made to them to pronounce against the necessitarian dogmas of the Bishop of Hippo. From an early preface to “ the Predestination of the Saints and the gift of persever­ ance,” we learn that, in the time of Leo the Great, the dispute as to Augustine’s new views, was still un­ settled in the church, and ultimately this pope adopted the evasive method of referring it to the Council of Orange, which sat in the year 441, that the Council might bear the responsibility of gravely deliberating and of finally deciding on the subject. It must be candidly owned that the judges in this council were as far removed from prejudice as men of their type and times could possibly be, and yet they found Augustine’s sentiments to be contrary to the most ancient and authorised interpretations of the Bible, and though they make no direct allusion to his “ novelties ” in the first twenty-four canons framed by them, still, in the closing canon, they assert in manifest opposition to these novelties, that “ all baptised Christians may, through grace, if they will only labour faithfully, accomplish those things which appertain to their salva­ tion, and that the doctrine of God’s predestination of some certain individuals to evil is not only to be dis­ believed, but also TO BE ANATHEMATISED WITH ALL detestation.” The Council of Orange met expressly to consider all matters relating to the Pelagian contro­ versy, but nevertheless, when they had occasion to mention the Augustinian dogmas in question, it was �16 The Cardinal Dogmas of Calvinism only to repudiate them. This Council searched, in vain, the records of the four preceding Councils of the church for support to the views of the Bishop of Hippo, and were forced to the conclusion that these views were at variance with the received articles of the Catholic faith. John Calvin appeared about eleven centuries after Augustine, revived the 11 novelties ” of his great theo­ logical master, and followed in the wake of his argu­ ments. But, with clearer and more discriminating per­ ceptions than the bishop seems to have had of the com­ parative weight of patristic authority on the side of predestinarian tenets, Calvin rejected the testimony of two of Augustine’s witnesses—Cyprian and GregoryNazianzen—altogether on this head. But Calvin laid special emphasis on the statements of Ambrose, as a certain writer remarks, “ with more complacency than fairness.” We have already seen that the citations from this father are just as futile as a buttress for Augustinianism or Calvinism, as are the citations from the other two fathers mentioned above. Yet, with a strange inconsistency, Calvin speaks as if the Bishop of Hippo were united in opinion with all his ecclesiastical predecessors and contemporaries ; for, says the Genevan Reformer, “ Augustine does not suffer himself to be disjoined from the rest, but, by clear testimonies, shows that any such discrepancy from them as that with the odium of which the Pelagians attempted to load him, is altogether false. For out of Ambrose he cites : ‘ Christ calls him whom he pities,’ and also, ‘ if He had pleased, he might from undevout have made them devout; but God calls those whom he deigns to call, and him whom he wills, he makes religious.’ ” So that in spite of Calvin’s assertion that Augus­ tine was in harmony with the entire body of the preceding fathers, he himself only ventures to quote from one of them, for the obvious reason that he could obtain no plausible show of aid from any of the rest; �Traced to their Origin. 17 and the one brief passage he does cite is essentially vague, and even inappropriate. Again, with more zeal for his cause than pure regard for fairness, Calvin attempts, in his remarks on this subject, to produce the impression upon his readers that the only persons who accused Augustine of error were the Pelagians, whereas the plain truth is, that this charge was made against him by individuals whom he himself, on several occasions, addressed as “ Christians,” and who were designated “servants of Christ” by his disciple Hilary, as well as by the judicious Council of Orange. There is a further consideration of some importance as bearing on the same point. In the reply which Augustine sent to the letters of Prosper and Hilary, when they wrote in the name of the Massilian Chris­ tians, and expressed their surprise at his “ novel pecu­ liarities ” (while approving his general confutation of the Pelagians), the following passage occurs: “ Pro­ vided they (j.e., the believers of Marseilles) walk in such doctrines (viz., as those with which he opposed the Pelagians), and pray to Him who giveth under­ standing if they differ from us, He will also reveal this to them ! ” In the whole of his epistle he never once attempts to strengthen the faith of his wavering friends, by supplementing the empty show of historical proof he had before adduced, but takes the easy method—so fre­ quently resorted to in all ages by ecclesiastics when in similar straits—of making the acceptance of his dogmas a test of their general fidelity to truth. If they walked in the right path they would be sure to become dis­ posed to embrace his novel tenets ! What does this imply, but that with all the acquaintance of the Chris­ tians of Marseilles with the historical foundations of their faith, the favourite necessitarian theories of Augus­ tine had never before been heard of by them ! I will mention a circumstance, in conclusion, which stamps Augustine, beyond the possibility of doubt, as �18 The Cardinal Dogmas of Calvinism the originator of the cardinal points of the system more recently known as Calvinism. This father distinctly avers in the treatise, “ The Predestination of the Saints,” that he had “diligently searched it (his necessitarian system) out and discovered it,” and frankly owns that there was a time when he had maintained entirely dif­ ferent opinions. But if, as he elsewhere holds, these peculiarities were recognised as orthodox by the Chris­ tian Church in his day and before it, with what con­ sistency can he be said to have diligently searched them out and discovered them? Besides, if they were not new in the theological world, how comes it that none of his religious compeers had happened to hear of them previous to the Pelagian controversy, and that it was so difficult for him to find a single definite passage favour­ ing his views in the writings of preceding fathers 1 Such is a brief, but, as I cannot help believing, a convincing summary of the facts connected with the rise and progress of what still passes under the name of Calvinistic theology. The father who has been justly credited with the paternity of the system was a superior type of the class of controversial theoi gians who have become distinguished in church his­ tory. He inherited the fiery temper of his father, blended with something of the gentleness and dreamy piety for which his mother was remarkable. Up to manhood he held aloof from dogmatic fetters of all kinds, and gave his mind to bold and free thought* in all directions, equally proof against the influence of bribes on the one hand, and of threats on the other. He had mastered in his twentieth year, by his own efforts, as he tells us, “ omnes libros artium quos libe_ * As an instance of the once rationalistic tendency of Augus­ tine’s mind, we find the following indisputably theistic senti­ ment in his writings : Res ipsa quae nunc Religio Christiana nuncupatur, erat apud antiquos, nee defuit ab initio generis humani, quousque Christus veniret in carnem unde vera Reli­ gio quae jam erat, ccepit appellari Christiana.—(Awpwsi. Retr., �Traced to their Origin. r9 rales vocant,” but the organising and logical attributes of his mind inspired him specially with a love of Aris­ totle, and soon inclined him strongly towards the Manichseans. After a time he made the acquaintance of Ambrose, bishop of Milan, and under the influence of the bishop’s kindness, eloquence; and piety, Augustine was induced to renounce Manichseanism. But it was not till he had long struggled in the abysses of scepti­ cism that he received Christianity, and was baptised. His aspiring and unquiet spirit, ever panting for some high occasion to put its powers on tension; seized the opportunity offered by the heresy of Pelagius to render eminent service to the church, and achieve fame in de­ feating the heresiarch. The germ of fatalism which had been nourished in him under Manichaeanism was singularly developed in the heat of controversy. In fact, his supreme effort consisted of incorporating fatal­ ism with the dogmas of the church But in the learn­ ing requisite to trace the history of church dogmas, as well as in the patience of an inductive student, he was essentially wanting. He understood the Latin language, and had read extensively in it ; but with much naivett he states that he “ hated the Greek,” probably owing to its being to him a foreign tongue, and to the fact of the harshness of his teacher, who enforced his lessons “ saevis terroribus ac poenis.” Of Hebrew he knew absolutely nothing. Calvinism, or, more -correctly, Augustinianism, has cropped up on four successive occasions in the history of religious controversy, and each time has been asso­ ciated for a while with intense religious activity. In the fourth century, the attempt to unravel the alleged eternal decrees of a personal God brought together on one side Augustine, Fulgentius, and othersj and on the other side Chrysostom; Ambrose, and other bishops of the Greek and Latin Churches. Next, the necessitarian dogmas of Augustine were the subject of keen debate among the Schoolmen, and were long the cause of bitter �2o The Cardinal Dogmas of Calvinism strife between the Franciscan and Dominican orders. Again, at the Reformation, there was a diversity of opinion on the subject of divine predestination. Calvin, Reza, and Knox, defended the Augustinian view; and. Luther, Erasmus, Melancthon, Bullinger, Sacerius, Lati­ mer, and other leaders of the Reformed faith, op­ posed it. At the end of the seventeenth century, that ten­ dency to rationalism set in, which, in the course of a generation or two, swept 6ver all Europe. This change in theological thought was largely due in Eng­ land to the inductive method of inquiry applied to science by Newton in his Principia, and applied to psychology by Locke in his Essay; both of which works, finished in the same year, inaugurated an epoch, not only in the history of science and literature, but also of theology. In Germany a similar sceptical spirit was developed by the works of Leibnitz. In France the rebound from church faith to human reason culmi­ nated in Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists. In this in­ fluence of inductive science and inductive philosophy we have a remarkable illustration of the superior potency of these two agencies as compared with theo­ logy. There is no instance on record since the induc­ tive method was first propounded by Bacon, of science and philosophy following theology. On the other hand, for all the progress theology has made and is making towards truth, courage, and freedom, it is solely indebted to the inoculating power of philosophy and science. The stern aspect of dogma gradually becomes softened in an age distinguished for scientific research and philosophic analysis ; but theology has no influence in moulding science and philosophy. The wave of free thought just referred to overtook all evangelical churches throughout Europe, and a real though unavowed Arian­ ism prevailed among the Lutherans of Germany, the Calvinists of Switzerland, the Reformed Church of Holland, the Established Churches of England and �Traced to their Origin. Q. I Scotland, the Presbyterians of Ireland, and even the English Evangelical Dissenters. Beligious fervour throughout the whole of Protestant Christendom was in consequence wholesomely moderated by the rational­ istic spirit which then predominated. It was in recoil from “ moderatism ”—as the sober religious condition of this period was called—that Augustinianism for the fourth time revived. Vice and sensuality abounded in the masses of the people; the middle class, as a rule, were indifferent about the dogmas and ceremonies of the church, and thus an opening was made for some stern dealing with the universal religious indifferentism that existed. Hence arose the “Pietists” of Germany, the “ Evangelicals ” of England, and the followers of Jonathan Edwards in America. These parties made a capital point of “ personal ” and “ sub­ jective” religion. The adherents of- Whitfield and Wesley equally did so. But, for a while at least, the Calvinistic dogmas of Edwards, Whitfield, and Simeon took a deeper hold of the “ low church party ” north and south of the Tweed, and of the Evangelical Non­ conformists than the Arminianism of Wesley did. All the old terrorism of threatened fire and brimstone against the “unbeliever,” and of the restricted provision of “sal­ vation ” for “ the elect; ” all the mystery of “predestina­ tion,” “ reprobation,” and “ irresistible grace,” was once more brought to bear in order to awe the penitent, and narrow the way to heaven. The temptations to sin and eternal death were represented as many and strong, and the chances of being saved as few and weak 1 Under this latest phase of Calvinism religion became a dismal business, and up till recently it has in general con­ tinued to be so, wherever “ the doctrines of grace ” have been logically held by the orthodox. The altered phase of religious controversy within the last twenty years is the accident that mainly keeps Calvinistic dogmas in the background. But these dogmas have not yet died out. "They are still avowed, however �22 The Cardinal Dogmas of Calvinism tacitly, by a considerable section of the religious world, and a certain school of professional religious teachers are still expected, by way of saving their theological reputation, now and then to declare their belief in them. But the day of Calvinism, as a theo­ logical power, is nearly over. It is at best but a metaphysical relic of the dark ages, and has no mission to the strongest minds of the present, far less to the ordinary minds of the future. Like most other ques­ tions capable of being treated inductively, theology is now dealt with from its historical side. Even highchurchmen are faintly imitating the inductive method in their inquiries, for they profess to go back to the early fathers for their faith and their ceremonials. The doctrines of the Reformation professed by the “ Evan­ gelicals ” are too modern and uncertain for high church acceptance. High-churchmen ground their very reasons for receiving the authority of the Bible on the traditions of the church. Theological sceptics are pursuing a similar course, only with a more unbiassed and un­ sparing historical analysis. These last claim the right of searching out the history of The Canon of Scrip­ ture itself as well as the history of the church, and of rejecting whatever asserted facts cannot stand the test of rational consistency, and produce satisfactory evidential vouchers in their favour. The biblical criticism of to­ day is not of the flimsy character of “ Paley’s Evi­ dences ” or “ Lardner’s Credibility of Gospel History.” These works are now impotent and effete, as far as they claim to prove a supernatural Christianity. Paley and Lardner now seem antiquated indeed, in defending the dogma of New Testament infallibility on the plea that some scraps of passages contained in Irenaeus and Justin Martyr-resemble certain sayings in the Gospels. Tradi­ tional authority in the matter of churches and doctrines is now with all independent and cultured minds a thing of the past, and only statements in the “ Canon ” which will bear the sifting of modern historical criticism and �'Traced to their Origin. 23 dispassionate reason are accepted as true by enlightened scholars. No array of tradition or gush of sentiment can possibly supply the deficiency of historical evidence. For “supernatural Christianity,” as a historical system, must stand or fall by historical tests. Dogmatic theo­ logy is fast being relegated to the last resting-place of exploded superstitions. The intellectual power and spiritual life of civilized communities in the future will be nourished and developed from a totally different source. Theological dogma, with the countless figments of the priestly brain, will be superseded by the inspi­ ration of devout genius, the manifold discoveries of science in the realms of material and spirit life, and by the universal religion of the moral intuitions, another name for which is The Religion of Humanity. TURNBULL AND SPEAKS, PKINTEBS, BDINBUKGH. ��RECENT THEOLOGICAL ADDRESSES. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The cardinal dogmas of Calvinism traced to their origin Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Macfie, Matthew Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 23 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Thomas Scott Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1873?] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CT162 Subject The topic of the resource Calvinism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The cardinal dogmas of Calvinism traced to their origin), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Calvinism Conway Tracts Dogma https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/69c585a8d0567a14830ea2e1cbe5a175.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=GyJSfat3uIomXE0KieSOQWLjGzsjqKqbAHAzU0yTblRfpU1K6ApyqK1233pMqmg7ZRf9nEh%7EbTZP5uDZNBreTej6twwq174ipJ4kQoo7rFIKfnOT%7EpvfhHqeEMXqLH5O8cQ-k%7EIGEPVF33Fu%7EFvuD4EEaNV67aqu2i4bDC2BstjO7D%7EMsvqNjO4%7EwaBG9I-bGpqZGC1-UcEQ4fTKnGKiHYoZWwT%7EF5s3m93wmEtWYwOWrHlHmVoJGWc5IFfjyqEmwN1ar1E1IfrzyAtL1tsmiw5GBFsmQJ6q0sE6yQD4enopEkj0UTUlzLJq0SH66JVUDz6FloVNIpYHtKJ1lw6j-w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM efa07514c2a5b6205b97aac72633080d PDF Text Text 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 ..................................... 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. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Intellectual suicide: a discourse Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [South Place Chapel] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1875] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G3332 Subject The topic of the resource Free thought Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (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> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Belief and Doubt Doctrines Dogma Free Thought Morris Tracts https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/035a9e7216e7d6a1a583c714f33f7f12.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=GgqrJ5aE6IPUAa1C0cwmsxUGYIOnKkZhf648kj3wppk4KyplofuQInRgg7ToAi8iIQN7IfYx9tb70f6yb1e3csa5BphBCjrSu-uK-mu%7EmY2-qMw-byhzJ2K9MjAbOSb1viJtIRhiIUB%7E4F1bBd0d7gFD1WQaDfnw5VgRPl31z0PIj0%7EUkiy8meH9E9uyjlk4GLxYBEJDA%7EozgYeV6aythgtMETPftg0%7EzanhuReSvBH%7E5PZK1ruqT9MOguOmG-q3bsrKddrLTXqvNCVT-h-kTeK89BIkruAitqLtzXDIYVr2AqJmh-ozm2NaRhY%7EPbK3KkRRRDxoOn86UmMcvv7OTA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM b0e7f432518d919cc16c5faa77f2a63a PDF Text Text IN MIND AS IN MATTER AND ITS BEARING UPON CHRISTIAN DOGMA AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY.” PART II. THE TRUE MEANING OF RESPONSIBILITY. BY CHARLES BRAY, AUTHOR OF “A MANUAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, OR SCIENCE OILMAN,” “MODERN PROTESTANTISM,” “ILLUSION AND DELUSION,” &C. PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT, NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E. Price Sixpence. �J �THE REIGN OF LAW IN MIND AS IN MATTER Part IL THE TRUE MEANING OF RESPONSIBILITY. ‘ ‘ In the eternal sequence we take the consequence.” —H. G. A. UT it is said, if men are not free, if they must act in accordance with the laws of their being, if no act could therefore have been otherwise than it was, what becomes of virtue, what of morality ? If a man could not have done otherwise, where was the virtue ? This doctrine of necessity or certainty, it is alleged, is “ fatal to every germ of morality.” For what, if it is true, becomes of Responsibility? You cannot, it is said, properly or consistently use either praise or blame, reward or punishment, if a man is not free. The opposite, as I shall show, is really the case. Let me answer these questions as shortly as I have put them. Virtue is not that which is free, but that which is for the good of mankind, for the greatest hap­ piness of all God’s creatures. Our goodness or virtue, it is said, if necessary or dependent upon our nature, is no goodness at all; but the goodness of God, which also is dependent upon his nature, and could not be otherwise, is the highest goodness of all. Man is good, because he might, it is supposed, be otherwise; God is B �4 The Reign of Law good, because he could not be otherwise. “ The good­ ness of the nature of the Supreme, we are told, is neces­ sary goodness, yet it is voluntary,” that is, in accordance with the will, but which will is governed by the nature. Still I do not suppose that if a man’s nature and training were such that he could not do a mean thing, he would be thought the worse of on that account. Morality concerns the relation of man to his fellows, —it comprises the laws and regulations by which men can live together most happily, and the more they can be made binding upon all, and not free, the better for all. Responsibility only means that we must always take the natural and necessary consequences of our actions, whether such actions are free or not. Responsibility, or accountability, in the ordinary acceptance of the term, means—and this is the meaning usually thought to be essential to virtue and morality— that it will be just to make people suffer as much as they have made others suffer; it means retribution, retalia­ tion, and revenge. Some one has done wrong, some one must make atonement—that is, suffer for it; it does not much matter who it is, so that some one suffers, and particularly since it is supposed that the wrath of God has been appeased by an arbitrary substitute of the innocent for the guilty. This kind of responsibility or retribution is not only unjust, but useless. External things or objects are moved by what we call Force; the mind is moved by motive, which is mental force; but equally in each case the strongest force prevails. “ It may be, or it may not be,” in any supposed two or more courses—not because this action is free or contingent, but according as one or other force or motive shall become the strongest and prevail. The strongest force always does prevail, and any uncertainty we may feel is only consequent on our want of know­ ledge. In'Physics we know the force must always be made proportionate to the end we wish to_attain; in �in Mind as in Matter. 5 Mind this is overlooked, or left to what is called the Will; hut it is equally true. This fact is overlooked both by the Fatalists and by those who believe in the freedom of the will. The first hold that things come to pass in spite of our efforts; the latter, that they are not necessarily dependent upon them. The will is governed by motive, and as the strongest always neces­ sarily prevails, what we have to do is to increase the strength of the motive or moving power in the direction we wish to attain. The Eev. Daniel Moore speaks of “ his consciousness as prompting him to put forth an act of spontaneous volition, and thus proving the moral agent free.” “The force of instinct,” he says, “is stronger than the conclusion of logic.” Certainly it must be so in this case, or logic would say an act lost its spontaneity just in proportion as it was prompted or influenced. Praise and blame, reward and punishment, are the ordinary means taken to strengthen motives. If the will were free—that is, capable of acting against motives, or if it acted spontaneously—these meaijs would be useless and unavailing. It is not till an action is passed that our power over it ceases ; then God himself could not prevent it. We may always say we can; never that we could. The motive may have been good or bad, but whichever it was, the strongest must have prevailed, and the action could not thus have been different to what it was. Eesponsibility can have relation to the future only— the past is past. Punishment for an act that could not have been otherwise would be unjust, and as the act is past it would be useless. Punishment, therefore, that has reference to the future, and that has for its object the good of the sufferer, or of the community of which he is a member, alone can be just and useful. As every act was necessary, and could not have been otherwise, there is no such thing as sin, as an offence against God—only vice and error. �6 The Reign of Law All vice and error must be to the detriment of the person erring, and punishment that prevents it in future must be for his good. To pray, therefore, to be delivered from such pm-iishment—that is, for the forgiveness of sin—is praying for that which would injure us rather than benefit. Let us take an illustration. A schoolboy may have been told that “we should not leave till to-morrow what we can do to-day,” so he eats all his plumcake before he goes to bed. He takes the natural conse­ quences, and is ill the next day, and the master is very angry; but the boy says very truly, “Please, sir, I could not help it.” “ I know you could not, my dear boy,” says the master, “ but when you have had a black draft and a little birch added to your present intestinal malaise, it will enable you to help it for the future, and will teach you also that there is no rule without an exception.” Responsibility means that we must take the natural and necessary consequences of our actions—of the “ eternal sequence we take the consequence,” and which natural consequence may be added to by others to any extent, with the object of producing in the future one line of conduct rather than another; but it does not mean that a person may be justly made to suffer for any action that is past. Responsibility or accountability also includes that if a person has done another an injury, he owes him all the compensation in his power. Dr Irons says :—“ To incur the consequences of our actions, and feel that it ought to &e so—to be subject to a high law, and feel it to be right, this is moral responsibility” (“Analysis of Human Responsibility,” p. 25). I accept this definition entirely, but in a dif­ ferent sense to that accorded to it by Dr Irons. We accept the consequences of our actions, and feel that “ we ought to do so,” and therefore “ that it is right,” because it is by its consequences that a reasonable man �in Mind as in Matter. 7 guides his conduct; they govern his motives, and the motives govern the will. But this is on the supposi­ tion that the consequences of our actions will be always the same in like circumstances—that the causes, under like conditions, will always produce the same effects, which could not be the case if the will were free, and obeyed no law. It is this feeling, this intuitive perception of consequences, that people call feeling accountable —“the great and awful fact of human responsibility.” This feeling is transmitted, or becomes hereditary, and then it is called Conscience, and gives the sense of “ ought.” Dr Irons also says:—“ It is a fact of our nature that wrong-doing, such as stirs our own disapproval, is haunted by the belief of retribution.” No doubt of it. In the early ages this retribution or revenge was the ■only law, and the fear of it was often the only thing that kept people from doing wrong, and this fear has been transmitted, and now haunts us; but that is no reason why revenge, or retributive justice, as it is called, is right. A sense of duty and responsibility— that is, of what is due to our own sense of right, and -of the consequences to ourselves and others—still influences, and ought to influence, our conduct; but it ■cannot be otherwise than that the strongest motive must prevail, and when the action it dictates is past, it could not have been otherwise. It may have been very well for a young world, when man had to fight his way up from the lower animals, to entertain the ■delusion that things might have been otherwise, but we require now an entire reconstruction of the accepted modes of thought, which shall not only accept the inevi­ table in the past, but conscience must cease to blame us or others for what must have happened exactly as it did happen. The great question, as we are told, is, whether the universe is governed and arranged on rational or nonrational principles ? and this question is asked by those �8 The Reign of Law to whom free will is a necessary article in their creed. Certainly, if the mind or will obeys no law, then theuniverse must be governed on non-rational principles, for reason is based upon certainty, as opposed to con­ tingency, in the order of nature. Science alone gives prevision, necessary to the guidance and regulation of action. If prayer had the efficacy which is ordinarily assigned to it, it would make this “ order of nature ” impossible, there would be a constant breach in the chain of cause and effect, and prevision and the exer­ cise of reason, which is based upon unbroken law and certainty, could not exist. “ Requests for a particular adjustment of the weather,” says the Rev. W. Knight, “ are irrelevant, unless the petitioner believes that the prayer he offers may co-operate to the production of the effect.” The same must be said of all prayers; they are efficacious only so far as they tend to answer themselves, and they themselves produce the effect desired. But wherever prayer is sincere, and not gabbled over by rote in our public service, this is generally the case. We are governed or moved by motive, and sincere prayer is the greatest possible strengthener of motive. Prayer thus acts through motive upon man, and through man upon matter and the universe. But in proportion as we recognise the Reign of Law, and we become conscious that there is a natural way by which all we desire may be brought about, prayer will no longer take the form of asking for what we can and ought to do for ourselves, but of simple aspiration and devotion to that unity of which we all form a part. We feel that we ought to take the consequences of our actions, and that it is right we should do so, because we have no other rule to discriminate between right and wrong. It is not in actions themselves, or in the motives that dictate them—being all equally necessary—that the right or wrong consists, but in. �in Mind as in Matter. 9 their consequences to ourselves or others. If, as a rule, the actions are attended with pain, they are wrong; if with pleasure, they are right. This is God’s simple and intelligible revelation to all the world alike. The floral Governor carries on his moral government, not by calling people to account ages after, when the record of every idle word would be rather long and prosy even in eternity, but by immediate intervention—by the direct punishment or reward or pain or pleasure attend­ ing their actions. Jeremy Bentham says:—“No man ever had, can, or could have, a motive different to the pursuit of pleasure or the avoidance of pain.” This has not been generally accepted, because it has not been understood. It has been supposed to refer only to physical or bodily pains, and not mental. We must discriminate also between pleasure and what are usually called pleasures. The stern delight of fortitude would hardly be called a “plea­ sure;” still delight is a highly pleasurable sensation. Men have certain impulses to action to attain certain ends. When these ends are legitimately attained, .pleasure attends the action; when the ends are not attained, then there is pain. It is these ends that are pursued, not pleasure or pain, but pleasure or pain attending for our guidance and compulsion. The .aggregate of these pleasures we call happiness—of the pains, which are the exception, misery. These impulses, which we call propensities and senti­ ments, have various objects, and are more simple and •calculable than is generally supposed. They are self­ protecting, self-regarding, social, moral, and aesthetic. They are all connected with the brain, and the im­ pulses to action are ordinarily strong in proportion to the size of the parts of the brain with which they are connected, the dynamical effect being dependent upon statical conditions in mind as in matter. The impulse to action is pleasurable, becoming painful if not gratified. Appetite is slightly pleasurable, hunger is painful, and �io The Reign of Law the pleasure of eating is in proportion to the appetite or hunger. All the other feelings have their appetites, hunger, and gratification, with the pleasures and pains attending them. The object of the intellect, the action of which is very little pleasurable in itself, is the guid­ ance of these feelings towards their proper ends, and involves the element of choice in the selection of means. Locke says, “The will is the last dictate of the under­ standing,” but it is not the dictate of the understanding itself, but of the impulses it may set in motion. It is the feelings, not the intellect, that ordinarily govern the will. Bentham’s “ pursuit of pleasure or avoidance of pain” means the pleasures or pains attending the action of all our mental faculties. If the propensities predominate in a character, then the pleasures are only of an animal nature ; if the moral feelings predominate, then our pleasures are as intimately connected with the interests of others as -with our own ; and these feelings may be so trained and strengthened as to give the in­ terests of others a preference over our own (i.e., we may have more pleasure in promoting the interests of others than our own). It is these moral feelings that make the principal distinction between men and other animals, subordinating individual interests to that of the com­ munity. They enable men to combine and co-operate; upon which their principal strength depends. They probably do not so much differ in kind from those of other animals as in degree. They are dependent upon parts of the brain, which in animals are either absent or merely rudimentary. The pains of conscience are often stronger than any mere physical pains, and the pain attending the breach of his word and the outrage to all his highest feeling must have been greater to Regulus than the fear of any physical pain, or other consequences to which he could be subjected by his enemies. Of course a man without these higher feel­ ings would have sneaked away—there was no free-will in the matter. But we do not admire Regulus the less,. �in Mind as in Matter. 11 though few of us perhaps would be able to follow his example. The habitual exercise of the highest, or un­ selfish feelings as they are called, regardless of imme­ diate consequences, produces the highest happiness, although it may sometimes lead, as in Regulus’s case, to the barrel of spikes; and this is only to be attained, not by free-will, but by careful training and exercise. It is exercise that increases structure, and the strength of the feeling, and its habitual or intuitive action, de­ pends upon its size. We love that which is loveable, and hate that which is hateful; and if we are to love our neighbour he must make himself loveable, or love falls to the colder level of duty. The poor toad, not­ withstanding the jewel in its head, aesthetically is not beantiful, and it has few friends or admirers, and few find out its virtues, and the blame that belongs to others is laid upon its poor ugly back. We never in­ quire if the toad made itself, or if it was its own free­ will to be ugly. It is precisely the same with every­ thing else—that which gives us pleasure we love, and that which gives us pain we hate, with small reference to whether this pain or pleasure was voluntarily given to us or not. It is the same with all consequences ; as they are required for the guidance of our actions, they follow just the same, whether our actions are voluntary or not. Whether we burn ourselves by accident or voluntarily, the pain is just the same—the object of the pain being to keep us out of the fire. This is true responsibility or accountability which governs the will, which is not free—no freedom fortunately being allowed to interfere with God’s purposes in creation. We are told that “no cogent reason has yet been advanced why men should not follow their, own wicked impulses, as well as others follow their virtuous ones.” The best of all reasons I think has been assigned— viz., that painful consequences attend the vicious im­ pulses, and pleasure the virtuous ones; so that unless a man prefers pain to pleasure, he has the strongest of �12 The Reign of Law all possible motives for good conduct. We indefinitely increase the pains as additional motives, and where no punishment is deterrent, as in some exceptional cases, restraint, or even capital punishment, is justly re­ sorted to. The writer in the Edinburgh, to whom we have be­ fore alluded, says : “ If these anti-christian and atheistic sentiments should gain the wide acceptance which Dr Strauss and his school anticipate for them, what is to prevent a reign of universal chaos ? What is to stave off the utter shipwreck of human society ? What hope can survive for man when every redeeming ideal is de­ stroyed; when blind destiny is enthroned in the seat of God; and when the universe is come to be regarded by all mankind as a dead machine, whose social law is, that ‘ He may get who has the power, And he may keep who can. ” That universal anarchy will then begin, and that the unchained passions of a human animal, devoid of the usual animal instincts of restraint, will plunge both himself and the social fabric he has for ages been erecting into ruin, no one in his senses can reasonably doubt. And such is the consummation for which writers like these are diligently working. Such is the chaos into which a merely destructive criticism, and a ‘ positive ’ science which, in the domain of religion, is purely negative, and is therefore falsely so called, are hurrying the deluded votaries of a godless secularism.” This “ godless secularism,” as if there were any part of the creation from which God could be excluded, would appear to point clearly to the authorship of this article, as none but a person whose “ calling ” was supposed to be in danger could write like this, except it were the American newspapers on the eve of a presidential elec­ tion. The New York Herald has also its pious as well as its political side. In commenting lately upon the death of a rather notorious character, it says : “He �in Mind as in Matter. J3 •calmly fell asleep without a struggle, when, no doubt, angels accompanied his soul to the peaceful shores of eternity, there to dwell with his Maker for ever.” The Edinburgh used to be considered an organ of advanced liberalism, but think of being able to find a writer in the present day who evidently knows something of science, who believes that social order and progress de­ pend upon a creed, and such a creed ! li It is the business of morality or moral science,” says Herbert Spencer, “to deduce, from the laws of life and the conditions of existence, what kinds of actions necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness; and having done this, its de­ ductions are to be recognised as laws of conduct.” Morality relates, notwithstanding the high-flown lan­ guage usually used with respect to it, simply to the laws and regulations by which men may live together in the most happy manner possible—the laws, in fact, ■of their wellbeing—and as it is the “law” of their nature to seek their happiness or wellbeing, the interests of morality are fortunately sufficiently assured. Of -course this will be called a “ godless secularism,” and it is said that these natural motives will be very much .strengthened if we add to them the rewards and punish­ ments of another world; but the highest morality is independent of such low personal motives, and people -do what is right because it is right—that is, because it promotes the best interests of the community at large— -of others besides themselves. As to the laws of “ an eternal and immutable morality,” the laws of morality have always varied according to the varying interests of mankind, and with advancing civilisation; as the family has extended to the clan, the clan to the country, the country to the world. What has been right in one age -and country has been wrong in another, as the interests of the community were different at one time and place to what they were in another. It is rather singular that we should hear most of eternal and immutable �14 The Reign of Law morality from those whose whole theological system isbased upon vicarious atonement, upon the sacrifice of the just for the unjust. Coleridge says : “ It is not the motive makes the man, but the man the motive.” This is ordinarily ad­ duced to prove that as man makes the motive, and the motive governs the will, the man must be free, and his will also; but it is just the reverse. Objectively, a man is judged by his motive; subjectively, it is man— that is, the man’s nature that dictates the motive. If he is of a benevolent disposition, this furnishes the motive to kindly action; if he is conscientious, the motive to act justly. The appeal of outward circum­ stances will be answered according to the nature of the man, and whatever you may want to get out of him, if it is not in him, you cannot get it out of him. A man does not always act in accordance with his conscience, or sense of right and wrong; he acts according to his nature, and the strongest feeling predominates, whetherthat be conscience, fear of punishment, or self-indul­ gence at the expense of others. A man with the natureof a pig will act like a pig, whatever may be his know­ ledge of his duties to others. To say that he has the ability to act otherwise, is to say that a pig might be an angel if he pleased, or at least act in accordance with those higher human attributes which he does not possess. As to an appeal to his free-will, there is no free-will in the case, any more than a blind man is free to separatedifferent colours. All the preaching in the world would not turn him into the higher man, any more than it would the pig itself. He might be taught to talk piously, but he would not be less a pig underneath. Very little can be done towards a change of nature in one generation. I am quite aware of the effect of what has been called “ conversion,” but it does little more than keep people outwardly correct in their conduct, and give selfishness another direction; that is, turn worldliness into other-worldliness. A man, however,. �in Mind as in Matter. 15 is not the less responsible—i.e., is not the less liable to take the consequences of his actions, whatever his nature may be; the consequences, if painful, being intended to improve that nature, and push him forward to a higher grade. The conviction that different circum­ stances act upon different individuals according to their nature--which nature depends upon race, organisation, civilisation, and education—is gradually extending, and it must continue to extend, till all admit that no action could have been otherwise than it was under the cir­ cumstances. If you want to alter the action, you must alter the man or alter the circumstances, and cease to trust anything to free-will. In the early days of our missionary societies, a savage presented himself for baptism. Among other things he was asked how many wives he had. He said five. He was told that Christianity only admitted of one wife, and that he could not be received into the Church. The next year, when the missionary was on the station, he presented himself again as a candidate, with only one wife. He was asked what had become of the other four. He said he had eaten them. This is among the conditions to which wedlock is liable in some other countries. The way in which the marriage ceremony is initiated among the bushmen of Australia is equally simple and humane, not to say loving, and it is less costly than with us. The man, having selected his lady-love, knocks her down with a club, and drags her to his camp. Sir Samuel Baker has lately told us of the interesting customs of the people whom he has lately sought to emancipate and bring within the borders of civilisation in Africa. The king, who attacked his stronghold in his absence, and whom he afterwards defeated, had just celebrated his accession to the throne by burying all his relations alive. If the young child of a chief dies, the nurse is buried with it—sometimes alive, sometimes she has her throat cut—that she may look after it in �16 The Reign of Law the next world. Sir Samuel found the natives verymuch opposed to slavery, and solicitous to aid him in putting it down. They objected to it because the traders took their wives, daughters, children, and fol­ lowers without compensation. One of the strongest objectors offered to Sir Samuel to sell his son for a spade ■, this he thought the right thing. These little differences of thought and custom be­ tween these interesting people and ourselves will scarcely, I think, be laid altogether to free-will. The people and circumstances surely had something to do with it. But even this seems matter of opinion. Thus the Bev. J. A. Picton, agreeing with me, says, “ Is the will as free to give its casting vote for generosity and righteousness in a Troppman, or a Nero, or a savage, as in a civilized St. Francis, or a Washington ?” But why not, if the will rules the motives, and not the motives the will ? On the contrary, the Spectator thinks that we can, by a heave of the will, without motive, and undetermined by the past, alter our whole life. It says, “ Certainly we should have said that if there is one experience more than another by which the “ I ” is known, and known as something not to be explained by “ a series of states of feeling,” it is the sense of creative power connected with the feeling of effort, the consciousness that you can by a heave of the will alter your whole life, and that that heave of the will, or refusal to exert it, is not the mere resultant of the motives present to you, but is undetermined by the past —is free.”—(Feb. 21, 1874, p. 234.) It certainly must have required a very considerable “ heave of the will ” to have enabled the Spectator to arrive at such a state of consciousness, and it must have been quite “undetermined by the past” experience, or present reason 1 I have no such consciousness of truly creative power, that is, of something made out of nothing. �in Mind as in Matter. 17 Quite as great differences as between these savages and ourselves exist in the very midst of our civilisation. There are a class of people amongst us whose animal propensities so decidedly predominate, that, turned loose upon society, they cannot help but prey upon it. There are others whose animal and human faculties are so nicely balanced that their conduct depends entirely upon education and circumstances. Others are so far a law unto themselves that if they fall it must be inadvertently, or from strong temptation. All these may plead “Not guilty” to our ordinary notion of responsibility. Each may say truly, whatever he had done, “I could not help it.” What, then, vrould be our conduct towards them1? Why, exactly that, and no more, which would enable them to pre­ vent it for the future. The first we should confine for life, or if it was a very dangerous animal, perhaps put it out of the way altogether (capital punishment). But if society will breed such animals, it ought to take the responsibility, and be obliged at least to go to the expense of keeping them for life. To the second we should apply just that discipline that would incline the balance of motive and action in favour of society for the future. The third would require only to be put into the path of right to go straight for the future. “ Turn to the right, and keep straight forward,” are the only directions required to be given to them. The only effort that I know of to induce our legislators to apply science in this direction, in the discrimination of character and the classification of criminals, was made by Sir George S. Mackenzie, in February 1836. He petitioned the Right Hon. Lord Glenelg, the then Secretary for the Colonies, that a classification might be made of criminals in accordance with the above threefold division. This was accom­ panied by certificates from a long list of eminent men that the Science of Mind we possessed was quite adequate to the purpose. Sir George says, “ that a discovery of' �18 The Reign of Law the true mental constitution of man has been made, and that it furnishes us with an all-powerful means to improve our race. . . . That man is a tabula rasa, on which we may stamp what talent and character we please, has long been demonstrated, by thousands of facts of daily occurrence, to be a mere delusion. Dif­ ferences in talent, intelligence, and moral character, are now ascertained to be the effects of differences in cerebral organisation. . . . These differences are, as the certificates which accompany this show, sufficient to indicate externally general dispositions, as they are proportioned among one another. Hence, we have the means of estimating, with something like precision, the actual natural characters of convicts (as of all human beings), so that we may at once determine the means best adapted for their reformation, or discover their incapacity for improvement, and their being propdr subjects of continued restraint, in order to prevent their further injuring society.” Sir George says, with reference to cerebral physiology, that “ attacks are still made on the science of phrenology; but it is a science which its enemies have never, in a single instance, been found to have studied. Gross misrepresentations of fact, as well as wild, unfounded assertion, have been brought to bear against it again and again, and have been again and again exposed.” This kind of injustice I firmly believe to be quite as applicable, if not more so, to the present time as it was then. The testi­ mony then given by the anatomists, surgeons, eminent physiologists, and others, was generally to the effect ■that “the natural dispositions are indicated by the form and size of the brain to such an extent as to render it quite possible, during life, to distinguish men •of desperate and dangerous tendencies from those of good disposition;” and that “it is quite possible to determine the dispositions of men by an inspection of their heads with so much precision as to render a knowledge of phrenology of the utmost importance to �in Mind as in Matter. *9 persons whose duties involve the care and management ■of criminals?’ And, allow me to add, it will be found of equal importance to all persons who have the care and management of any one, whether schoolmasters, doctors, or parsons. For want of this knowledge of cerebral physiology, James Mill was very nearly killing his son, John S. Mill, or making him an idiot for life, by overworking a brain whose activity already amounted -almost to disease. The brain gave way, however, when he was above twenty years old, and he had one of those fits of mental depression which are well known to -attend its overwork. It is a singular fact that neither he nor any of the reviewers of his autobiography seem to be aware that it was not Marmontel’s “ Memoires ” •or Wordsworth’s “Poems” to which he was indebted for recovery, but to his wanderings in the Pyrenean mountains, the love of natural beauty, and the rest of brain. It has been J. S. Mill’s ignorance of cerebral physi­ ology, and his diversion of the public mind from the subject by his “Logic” and “Examination of Sir William Hamilton,” that has mainly helped to bring back P>erkeley and the reign of Metaphysics, and to put off the true science of Mind, based on physiology, half a century. The discrimination of character is not so great a mystery as some people suppose. Statistics show that people act very much alike under the same circum■stances. People fall in love, and marry according to the price of bread, and even the number of people who put their letters into the post without an address are the same in a given area; knowledge is constantly narrowing the space between general rules and particular cases. Of course Sir George Mackenzie’s advice could not be taken; public opinion was not prepared for it; neither is it at present, as is evidenced by the return to torture (flogging) during the last few years, and the whole spirit of the public press. Take an illustration from one of our first-class Journals. The Pall. Mall -Gazette of January 9, 1874, says :— �20 The Reign of Law “Imprisonment is not only fast losing its terrors, but,, owing to the kindness of magistrates and judges, it is becom­ ing a real boon to the dishonest and violent, to whom it is doled out, like funds from the poor-box, according to their necessities. The other day ‘ a novel and suggestive applica­ tion,’ it is stated, was made to the Recorder in Dublin by a female prisoner, aged twenty-nine years, who had been forty­ eight times convicted of indictable offences, and pleaded guilty to a charge of stealing 7s. 6d. from the pockets of a drunken man in the streets. The Recorder was proceeding to sentence the prisoner to twelve months’ imprisonment, when she earnestly implored him to make the sentence one of five years’ penal servitude, alleging as a reason for desiring the change that she might then have a chance of earning an honest livelihood, whereas if she only got twelve months’ imprison­ ment she could do nothing but return to the streets. The Recorder, ‘ believing her to be sincere in her desire to lead an honest life, complied with her wish. ’ This was very kind to the prisoner, but rather hard on those who will have to support her for five years instead of for one, because she requires the lengthened period for her own convenience. It is of course most desirable that prisoners, when they leave gaol, should ‘earn an honest livelihood;’ but imprisonment is intended as a punishment, and not as a boon.” That is, punishment is retributive, and not reformatory. But I wonder society does not discover that this rough and ready method of dealing with criminals does not pay, and that forty-eight convictions in a person only twenty-nine years old is a very expensive way of taking its revenge. No, I suppose it would never do to. admit that a man’s conduct was the result of his mental constitution and the circumstances in which he was placed—that there was no freedom in the matter, except the freedom to act in accordance with the dic­ tates. of the will. It would be most dangerous doctrine to allow that no man could have acted differently to what he did act—that the strongest motive, whatever it was, must of necessity have prevailed; and that all we had to do, therefore, was to alter the constitu­ tion and circumstances, and prevent such motives, whether of conscience—that is, sense of right—or of fear, that would enable him to do differently for the �in Mind as in Matter. 21 -future. No, the vengeance of the law must continue still to be visited upon our Bill Sykeses, and Fagins, and Artful Dodgers, although it is well known to others besides M. Quetelet that “ society prepares crime, and the guilty are only the instruments by which it is ■executed?’ We must still continue to dole out so ■much suffering for so much sin, without reference to ■cause and effect, either past or future; for is not a man responsible for his actions—that is, may we not justly ■retaliate and make another suffer as much as he has •entailed upon us ? To the popular mind vengeance seems a divine institution; and it is impossible ‘ to love •our enemies and to do good to those who despitefully use us and persecute us,’ as long as this vulgar notion of moral desert prevails. It is only Science—the Science of Mind—that can put an end to this; and that there is a Science of Mind is at present not even recognized by the President of the Social Science Asso­ ciation. When we have a Science of Man we may have a Science of Society, and we shall then advance as rapidly towards its improvement as we have done in Physics since Bacon’s time. Induction is equally -applicable to mind and matter, any supposed difference is consequent upon our ignorance. Bree-will and spon­ taneity will disappear as our knowledge extends, and all will be brought within “the reign of law.” When we have a Science of Mind we shall cease to take the absorbing interest we now do in kitchen-middens and the dust heaps and bones of the past, and shall take to the study of cerebral physiology, upon which the laws ■of mind depend. Our attention will not be given, as now, exclusively to short-horns and south-downs, or to horses and dogs, but to improving the race of men. If we wish to induce any special line of conduct which we call moral—that is, more to the interest of society at large than another—we must collect and direct the force of mind that will produce it. This can only be done and become habitual by growing the organization �' 22 The Reign of Law upon which it depends. Preaching and dogma go only a very little way towards it; and education, upon which so much reliance is now placed, will not do much more. Education has a refining influence, and so far as it may tend to direct the propensities, and call the higher feelings into activity, it is of value. Its influence is very much overrated; for, as we have said, it is the feelings and not the intellect that govern the will, and reading, writing, and arithmetic have little direct in­ fluence upon them. It is on this account that many well-disposed people are so anxious to add religion to the instruction in our common schools. By religion here little more is meant than, “ Be good, my boy, or Bogie ’ll have you,” and surely it is not worth drag­ ging religion into all the dirt, and familiarity which breeds contempt, of our common schools for this, to the injury of all that deserves to be called religion in after life. It would be much better to teach the natural consequences—the real responsibility that attends all the children’s actions—how, if they lie, no one will believe them; if they steal, no one will trust them, &c., attended with short and sharp immediate punish­ ment. Future rewards and punishments have a very remote bearing upon immediate conduct, and I doubt the policy of turning the Almighty into a sort of head policeman, with his eye always upon them, ready to strike if they do wrong. This may beget fear, but never love, and children soon find out that as far as the imme­ diate consequences to themselves are concerned it is not true, and this damages their faith in their real liability. But the Science of Mind will introduce a truer knowledge of what really constitutes Education, which means the developing and perfecting of all our facul­ ties, social, moral, religious, and aesthetic,* as well as the intellect. This only will make a complete man, this only will make him find his happiness and there* See “Education of the Feelings,” 4th edition. ■& Co. Longmans �in Mind as in Matter. 23 fore his interest in virtue, and enable him to do his duty here, without either hope of heaven or fear of hell. The study of the nature of each mental faculty, and-its direction towards its legitimate objects, is what is required by Education. Of how much may be done by education is seen in the cultivation of musical talent. Social evolution follows the law of organic modi­ fication. It is the exercise of the feelings we wish to predominate that alone will strengthen them and in­ crease the size of the organs with which they are con­ nected. The commercial age in which we live-—its machinery and facility of intercourse—is making all men better off, and binding all together by a common tie of interest. When a man is well off and happy he desires to make others so, exercising his benevolence. When he is in daily close intercourse with his fellows it shows him the necessity for honesty and integrity, and this exercises his conscientiousness or sense of justice. Men are thus obliged to live for others as well as for them­ selves ; they everywhere find it their interest to help one another, and as combination and co-operation thus increase, so do civilization and the growth of those mental habits which enable men to live most happily together. We thus progress surely, but slowly, not in con­ sequence of, but in spite of, our conflicting creeds, and when at last we arrive at the conviction that nothing could have happened otherwise than it did; that the present and the future only are in our power—-when we have determined to “let the dead past bury its dead ”—we shall have made a great advance towards the more easy practice of justice and benevolence. Of course, the usual cry about gross matter and materialism and iron fate may be expected, but all that is highest which man has ever reasonably looked forward to may be more immediately expected when science and cer­ tainty are welcomed in the place of chance and spon­ �24 The Reign of Law taneity. We are approaching daily in practice, if not in theory, in this direction. At present our religious creeds stand directly across our path. But utility, if not philosopy, is teaching our law-makers that they cannot mend the past, and this gradual application of the Science of Mind to legislation will ultimately ex­ tend to the people for whose benefit the laws are made, until all will feel that nothing must be left to accident in the moral world any more than in the physical. The effect upon the individual of the reconstruction of his ethical code upon a scientific basis is most favourable to the growth of all the higher feelings upon which conduct and happiness depend. The sup­ position that things ought to have been otherwise, and might have been otherwise, is the source of half the worry in the world, and revenge, remorse, and retri­ butive punishment cause half its misery. Revenge is not only wicked, but absurd; as applied to the past, it is like a child beating a table. When we have done wrong, the experienced consequences are generally suf­ ficient for our future guidance, and “ repentance whereby we forsake sin” is admirable, but remorse for that which could not have been otherwise is both absurd and useless. An Irish priest told his congregation that it was a most providential thing that death had been placed at the end of life, instead of at the beginning, as it gave more time for repentance. With this we can scarcely agree. Our verdict, as it must be now, would be rather that of the Irish jury, “ Not guilty, but would advise the accused not to do it again.” But is this verdict of not guilty just ? Certainly it is, as regards the past; it could not have been otherwise. But surely it will be said this is dangerous doctrine. Is no one to be blamed for anything he has done? Blame is both unjust and useless as applied to the> past ; it is only so far as it may influence the future that it can be of any use. This praise and blame is a rough-and-ready way of influencing future action, which �in Mind as in Matter. 25 has a very uncertain effect upon conduct. We assume that people might have done differently, and, after scolding or punishing, we leave them to do so, but there is no certainty that they will. Would it not be better to inquire into the causes that induced them to act as they did, and alter them, otherwise they are certain to do the same again. Society’s conduct with respect to offences at present is very much like Bartie Massey’s ideal of woman as cook, -— “ the porridge would be awk’ard now and then; if it’s wrong, it’s summat in the meal, or it’s summat in the milk, or it’s summat in the water.” Is it not time that we, as well ■as our cooks, began to measure the proportion between the meal and the milk ? As to dangerous doctrine, we must not forget that “ philosophical certainty ” implies that everything that will influence conduct in the pre sent or the future is still open to us, only in one case we trust to science and law, in the other to chance and free will. In proportion as we extend our dominion over the darkness of ignorance, and are able to conquer fresh fields of knowledge, as the domain of law becomes every year wider and wider, and we gain enlarged views of the eternal sequence and universal order, all contingency and spontaneity must vanish. What we call chance or free-will is nothing more than the action of hitherto undiscovered causes. As to the past, that we feel is inevitable, and more, it could not have been otherwise—the causes then in operation must have pro­ duced the effects they did—and when we know a thing is inevitable we can “grin” and bear it; it is the mental worry, not the mere physical pain that is hard to bear. As the proverb says, “ It is of no use crying over spilt milk.” Few know the peace of mind and internal quiet which the habitual practice of this mental attitude secures, but all may know it as science ad­ vances, and it is this state of mind which it is the true function of philosophy to enable us to attain. There is infinite peace also in the conviction that we �26 The Reign of Law. are in higher hands than our own ; that the interests of morality and virtue are ultimately assured, being based upon law; that we may forget ourselves in the glory of the whole of which we are so infinitely small a part; and that we may thus rest satisfied that something much better is being secured than the freedom of the will, and with which that Will will not be allowed to interfere. TURNBULL AND SPEARS. PRINTERS. EDINBURGH. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "The reign of law in mind as in matter, and its bearing upon Christian dogma and moral responsibility." Part II. The true meaning of responsibility Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bray, Charles [1811-1884] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 26 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway and part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Thomas Scott Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1874 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CT156 N109 Subject The topic of the resource Christianity Ethics Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work ("The reign of law in mind as in matter, and its bearing upon Christian dogma and moral responsibility." Part II. The true meaning of responsibility), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conway Tracts Dogma NSS Responsibility https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/f252b932919940935f9f7d1a35295012.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=frPvRHuKbkHl7p14U3JwqfBffgTc8S9fznBzc5-w95WmU9KfsLPfDLCT98dLTlhgzIruWGVgmMlaKAoNCBzMFDOIoJpvpTrnNqnpc2T6zzEoV6V2WTBJksNbjV00G3r27wyyemc6sB5AMK7C-29MmmBPFcvJ8mkhm0-IuNUGrGgmBDmaifu%7E0sE3wbcY%7EuYdBpwzm7qDhBf%7ECm%7EZ8b4jEWGitdOBUZk5lw7yjfUNMOs7LjFw0aadFPWrMhrQnLvc0ZmYn4K1hjkbsMtiwu9By%7EPoayiQjVhIAeATZNsjm8wbNjyUuo6yG%7EOpmKO%7ExP7Ff-DF-NovvhH%7ER-P0sbL60Q__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM e72501d12bceffcfcc7275f45ac1ae4b PDF Text Text THE REIGN OF LAW IN MIND AS IN MATTER, AND ITS BEARING UPON CHRISTIAN DOGMA AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY. FART I. BY CHARLES BRAY, AUTHOR OF “A MANUAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, OR SCIENCE OF MAN,” “ MODERN PROTESTANTISM,” “ILLUSION AND DELUSION,”„&C. PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT, NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E. Price Sixpence. ��THE REIGN OF LAW IN MIND AS IN MATTER, AND ITS ■ BEARING UPON CHRISTIAN DOGMA. “At first laying down, as a fact fundamental, That nothing with God can be accidental.” Longfellow. ECKY’S admirable histories of Rationalism and European Morals, show most clearly that there is a law of orderly and progressive transformation to which our speculative opinions are subject, the causes of which are to be sought in the general intellectual con­ dition of society. Every great change, therefore, in the popular creed is always preceded by a great change in the intellectual condition of the people, and speculative opinions which are embraced by any large body of men, are accepted, not on account of the arguments upon which they rest, but on account of a predisposition to receive them. Opinion pervades society as water does a sponge, or like yeast­ cells growing in a fermented mass. Reasoning, which, in one age, would make no impression whatever, in the next is received with enthusiastic applause. This is owing to the fact, that, as a general rule,—not entirely, however, without exception,—it is our feelings and not the intellect that rule us; it is the feelings that connect us with the prevailing state of public opinion with which we are en rapport that shape our conduct, and not our theoretical convictions. It is this that makes L �4 The Reign of Law missionary efforts so fruitless, and proselytising almost impossible in old and partially civilized countries which have already a religion of their own. Mr Becky shows us that the history of the abolition of torture, the history of punishments, the history of the treatment of the conquered in war, the history of slavery, all pre­ sent us with examples of practices which in one age were accepted as perfectly right and natural, and which in another age were repudiated as palpably and atrociously inhuman. In each case, the change was effected much less by any intellectual process than by a certain quickening of the emotions, and consequently of the moral judgments. Galileo was condemned because the Scripture says, that “ the sun runneth about from one end of the earth to the other,” and that “ the foundations of the earth are so firmly fixed, that they cannot be moved.” Science might show that the earth did move notwith­ standing, but then many refused to look through Gali­ leo’s telescope, and those who did were disposed to compromise the matter like the young student who, when asked by the examiners whether the earth moved round the sun, or the sun round the earth, said, with a spirit of “ reconciliation ” worthy of the present age, “ Sometimes one, and sometimes the other.” Even the great Lord Bacon was sceptical on this question of the earth’s motion, although not quite in the same direc­ tion ; he said, “ It is the absurdity of these opinions that has driven men to the'diurnal motion of the earth, which I am convinced is most false.” It took a cen­ tury and a-half to reconcile mankind to the Copernican Astronomy, and there are many now who refuse to believe that the earth is round, the fact being con­ trary to Scripture : for how in such case could people at the antipodes see the Son of God descending in his glory ? If there are some who thus suspect their geo­ graphy to be unorthodox, there are others equally at fault in their natural history. Being religiously �in Mind as in Matter. 5 "brought up, and therefore in early possession of a Noah’s Ark, they know perfectly well the truth of the story about it■ but as they get older, they do not see very well how all the animals could be got into it, and in this discrepancy between Science and Scripture, df ■course, the former has to give way. They are not pre­ pared to accept St Augustine’s road out of the difficulty, that the assembling the animals in the ark must have been for the sake of prefiguring the gathering of all nations into the Church, and not in order to secure the replenishing of the world with life. But if it took so long to introduce the Copernican system, it took much longer to get rid of witchcraft, or the firm conviction which all had, that the Devil, through ugly old women and others, interfered per­ sonally in our affairs. The horrors attending this be­ lief it is impossible to describe or even to conceive. The way in which the truth of the accusation was tested, had the logic that peculiarly distinguishes theo­ logical controversy ; the witch was put into water, and if she was drowned, she was innocent, if not, she was guilty, and burned alive. Chief Baron Sir Matthew Hale’s reasoning seems almost equally conclusive. Charging the jury in the trial for witchcraft of Amy Duny and Rose Callender in 1664, he says, “That there are such creatures as witches, I make no doubt at all ; for, first, the Scriptures have affirmed as much ; and secondly, the wisdom of all nations, particularly of our own, hath provided laws against them.” Among •others, an Anglican clergyman, named Lower, who was now verging on eighty, and who for fifty years had been an irreproachable minister of his church, fell under suspicion. He was thrown into the water, con­ demned and hung, and we are told that, “ Baxter re­ lates the whole story with evident pleasure.” Lecky, Rationalism, Vol. i. p. 117. “As late as 1773, the divines of the Associated Presbytery passed a resolu­ tion declaring their belief in witchcraft, and deploring �6 The Reign of Law the scepticism that was general,” Lecky, Vol. i. p. 147.. John Wesley also was a firm believer in witchcraft, and for some time we know inhabited a haunted house. He said that the giving up of witchcraft was in effect giving up the bible. But, notwithstanding the strenu­ ous opposition of the clergy everywhere, the belief in witchcraft died a natural death. It was not argument that killed it, but it could not breathe the spirit of the age, and it was then very naturally discovered that the word translated witch in Leviticus may be translated “ poisoner.” Both the translation and explanation of the Bible have always admitted of great adaptation and reconciliation. The belief in the devil’s agents and imps having gone out in the light of the age, the belief in the devil himself is fast following ; he is getting very faint; in fact, he is not admitted at all into polite society. The belief in the existence of a personal embodiment of the principle of evil may be said no longer to exist among educated people, but at one titne it was a most vivid reality. To Luther he was a constant presence, and the black stain is still shown in the castle of Wartburg, where he threw his inkstand at him. He gradually, however, got more accustomed to him, and he tells us how, in the monastery of Wittemberg, hearing a noise in the night, he perceived that it was only the Devil, and accordingly he went to sleep again. We now ask, Is public opinion prepared to accept the doctrine that the Reign of Law is universal in Mind as in Matter ? That there is no exception to the Reign of Law ? That there is no such thing as chance or spon­ taneity, or a free-will, or a free anything, but that there is a sufficient cause for everything ? I fear this ques­ tion must be answered in the negative. Natural Science has gradually substituted the conception of har­ monious and unchanging law, for the conception of a universe governed by perpetual miracle, or capricious will, or chance in the world of matter; but that law, or �in Mind as in Matter. 7 necessity, or certainty, equally pervades tlie world of mind, is at present confined to philosophers, and to those only who have made the Science of Mind their study. Still it is a great truth which must ultimately prevail, and when it does, it will bring as great and beneficial a change in our system of ethics, as the Coper­ nican system has in our Astronomy. By reference to the first volume of Grote’s Greece, we find that Socrates treated Physics and Astronomy as departments reserved by the gods for their own actions, and not subject to ascertainable laws, and that human research was even impious. “ In China at the present day,” says Eitel, “ the Chinese sages see a golden chain of spiritual life running through every form of existence, and binding together as in one living body everything that subsists in heaven above, or in earth below. But this truth is with them a mere hypothesis, not a generalization from observed facts. Experimental philosophy is unknown in China. They invented no instruments to aid them in the observation of the heavenly bodies, they never took to hunting beetles and stuffing birds, they shrank from the idea of dissect­ ing animal bodies, nor did they chemically analyse in­ organic substances, but with very little actual know­ ledge of nature they evolved a whole system of natural science from their own inner consciousness, and ex­ panded it according to the dogmatic formulae of ancient tradition.” This is precisely the condition of our clerical sages at the present time in the department, not of physics, but of mental science. Things may or may not happen, not according to any known or calcul­ able law or order, but according to the free will of the actor, which is supposed to obey no law. And this free will is the key-stone of both their morality and religion. Mr Herbert Spencer truly says, “ There can be no complete acceptance of sociology as a science, so long as the belief in a social order not conforming to natural �8 The Reign of Law law, survives. Hence, as already said, considerations touching the study of sociology, not very influential even over the few who recognise a social science, can have scarcely any effects on the great mass to whom a social science is an incredibility.” “I do not mean,” he says, “that this prevailing imper­ viousness to scientific conceptions of social phenomena is to be regretted. . . . The desirable thing is, that a growth of ideas and feelings tending to produce modi­ fication, shall be joined with a continuance of ideas and feelings tending to preserve stability . . . That in our day, one in Mr Gladstone’s position should think as he does, seems to me very desirable. That we should have for our working-king one in whom a purely scientific conception of things had become dominant, and who was thus out of harmony with our present social state, would probably be detrimental, and might be disastrous.” * Mr Gladstone has, how­ ever, since explained (Contemporary, December 1873), that he was misunderstood; that he does not either affirm or deny either evolution or unchangeable law, but that what he wished to imply was, that, be they either true or false, certain persons have made an un­ warrantable use of them. That a law-maker should not be much in advance of his age may be true enough, but that the “ prevailing imperviousness ” to the great truth, that law and order equally prevail in mind as in matter, is, I think, much to be regretted. The induc­ tive philosophy applied to mind will work as great a revolution as its application to physics has done since Bacon’s time. I shall first consider, then, what this great truth is, and then its application both as to what it would de­ stroy, and what it would build up. The great truth is, that there is no such thing as freedom of will. Men formerly believed that the sun went round the earth : they saw and felt that it did. The supposed freedom of will is equally an illusion and delusion. * The Study of Sociology, p. 365. �in Mind as in Matter. 9 J. S. Mill tells us that ££ The conviction that pheno­ mena have invariable laws, and follow with regularity certain antecedent phenomena, was only acquired gra­ dually, and extended itself as knowledge advanced, from one order of phenomena to another, beginning with those whose laws were most accessible to observa­ tion. This progress has not yet attained its ultimate point; there being still one class of phenomena (human volitions) the subjection of which to invariable laws is not yet recognised. ... At length we are fully warranted in considering that law, as applied to all phenomena within the range of human observation, stands on an equal footing in respect to evidence with the axioms of geometry itself.” Such, I believe, is the conviction of all the great leaders in science—certainly in mental science—of the present day. I need quote only a few. Let us first go back a generation. Jona­ than Edwards, in his work on the freedom of the will, has always been considered as unanswerable, but having proved the certainty of all events by reason, he accepts free-will from Scripture. Now, that any thing can be certain but at the same time contingent is a contradiction. He says, “ Nothing comes to pass without a cause. What is self-existent must be from eternity, and must be unchangeable; but as to all things that begin to be, they are not self-existent, and therefore must have some foundation for their exist­ ence without themselves.” ££ In no mind,” says Spinoza, ££ is there an absolute or free volition ; but it is determined to choose this or that by a cause, which likewise has been fixed by another, and this again by a third, and so on for ever.” He also says, ££ Human liberty, of which all boast, consists solely in this, that man is conscious of his will, and unconscious of the causes by which it is determined.” That is, he is often unconscious of the motives that govern the will, and still more so of the causes that govern his motives—the same action that always accompanies and B �]o The Reign of Law precedes every feeling and volition always goes on un­ consciously, and the conscious volitions tell him nothing of it. Consciousness thus deludes us into the conviction that our volitions originate in ourselves, we being un­ conscious of the train of physical forces in which they originate; hy ourselves meaning the aggregate of our mental powers, and if there is no impediment to their action that is what we call “ freedom.” Locke used to say, “ That we should not ask whether the will is free, hut whether we are free to follow its dictates,” for this is really all that men mean hy their boasted freedom. A free action, as to an accomplished result, can only mean that the agent was not externally forced to do it. This is probably all that Lord Houghton means by freedom, hut he confounds this freedom of action with freedom of will. He says, as president of his section on Social Economy (1862), “I think we shall see that there enters into this question an element which is almost contradictory of strict scientific principle. That element is human liberty, the free-will of mankind. Without that free-will no man can have individual power of action, no man can call himself a man,” &c. It is this confounding the freedom from physical con­ straint which enables us to act in accordance with the will, with the freedom of the will itself, which dictates the action, that produces the confusion on the subject. When it is said freedom of will is a fact, that we feel we are free to do as we please, &c., all that is meant is this freedom from the constraint that would oblige us to do, or leave undone, one thing rather another, and not that the mind, or will, or what we please to do, is free or independent of causation. Professor Mansel, however, believed differently; he says (Prolegomena Logica, p. 152), “ In every act of volition I am fully conscious that I can at this moment act in either of two ways, and that, all the antecedent phenomena being precisely the same, I may determine �in Mind as in Matter. 11 one way to-day and another to-morrow.” That is, the same causes (all the antecedent phenomena) may pro­ duce one effect to-day and another to-morrow, and all who believe in the freedom of the will are obliged logically to accept this conclusion. Choice, or to “ act in either of two ways,” implies a preference or motive for choosing one rather than the other ; if, as is almost impossible, the mind is equally balanced, then somephysical cause, not within the field of consciousness, dictates the choice. That the action has no cause is impossible. This power of choice that we feel we pos­ sess is simply that, when freed from physical constraint, we can do as we please, but what we please to do de­ pends upon our nature, which, in both mind and body, is governed by its own laws. It is upon this freedom from external constraint by which we can do as we please, i.e., act in accordance with our will, that the intuition, which with the many is stronger than reason, is founded. Kant says, “ No beginning which occurs of itself is possible,” and yet he believed in the freedom of the will, thinking that the intuition, based upon a delusive experience, was more reliable than the reason. Dr Laycock (Mind and Brain) says, “ There is, in fact, no more a spontaneous act of will than there is spontaneous generation. Strictly, such an act is a creation, and belongs only to creative power.” There are those who think that the creative power of God is, or may be, exercised without cause or motive, and that He has bestowed upon man, in a minor degree, the same power, and that this is man’s distinguishing cha­ racteristic from the brutes; but if so, this dignified attribute is only that of a madman, who alone is sup­ posed to act without cause or motive. Lewes, in his new work, “ Problems of Life and Mind,” p. 128, also gives his testimony in favour of ne­ cessity ; thus, he says, “ The moralist will be found pas­ sionately arguing that the conduct of men, which is �12 The Reign of Law simply the expression of their impulses and habits, can be at once altered by giving them new ideas of right conduct. The psychologist, accustomed to consider the mind as something apart from the organism, individual and collective, is peculiarly liable to this error of over­ looking the fact that all mental manifestations are simply the resultants of the conditions external and in­ ternal.” Professor Huxley’s utterances are a little more ob­ scure. He is represented by C. B. Upton, B.A., as “ rejecting almost contemptuously the freedom of the will,” and he himself says (On the Physical Basis of Life), “ Matter and law have devoured spirit and spon­ taneity. And as sure as every future grows out of every past and present, so will the physiology of the future gradually extend the realm of matter and law until it is co-extensive with knowledge, with feeling, and with action.” But he elsewhere says (Fortnightly Review), “ philosophers gird themselves for battle upon the last and greatest of all speculative problems. Does human nature possess any free volition or truly anthropomorphic element, or is it only the cunningest of all nature’s clocks ? Some, among whom I count myself, think that the battle will for ever remain a drawn one, and that, for all practical purposes, this result is as good as anthropomorphism winning the day.” Would not “ sometimes one and sometimes the other,” do quite as well as a drawn battle ? The Doc­ tor evidently agrees with Kant, that “ no beginning that occurs of itself is possible he appears to be also of opinion :— “ That what’s unpossible can’t be, And never, never conies to pass.” Colman’s “ Broad Grins.” that is, very seldom, comes to pass ! There is nothing perhaps more remarkable in the whole history of thought, than the intellectual shuffling of all our great thinkers, to avoid meeting this fact of �in Mind as in Matter. *3 “ certainty ” face to face. I hope, however, to be able to show that for all practical purposes it is most impor­ tant that “ the realm of law should be co-extensive with knowledge, with feeling, and with action.” But the comparative recent discovery of the persistence of force or the conservation of energy, furnishes the modern practical proof that law is present everywhere; as Herbert Spencer concisely puts it, “Force can neither come into existence nor cease to exist. Each manifestation of force can be interpreted only as the effect of some antecedent force ; no matter whether it be an inorganic action, or animal movement, a thought, or a feeling. Either this must be conceded, or else it must be asserted that our successive states of consci­ ousness are self-created.” Which, of course, they must be if the will is free : to determine is to use force, which can “ be interpreted only as the effect of some antecedent force.” Mr Spencer also says, “ If such co­ existences and sequences as those of biology and socio­ logy, are not yet reduced to .law, the presumption is, not that they are irreducible to law, but that their laws elude our present means of analysis for as Buckle shows, “ the actions of man have the same uniformity of connection which physical events have ; and the law or laws of these uniformities can be inductively ascertained in the same way as the laws of the material world.” The causational theory of the Will has hitherto been called Philosophical Necessity, but just exception has been taken to this, as we know of no necessity, we know only of certainty. Mr J. S. Mill says, “ A voli­ tion is a moral effect, which follows the corresponding moral causes as certainly and invariably as physical effects follow their physical causes. Whether it must do so, I acknowledge myself to be entirely ignorant, be the phenomenon moral or physical; and I condemn, accordingly, the word necessity as applied to either case. All I know is, that it always does." For myself, �14 The Reign of Law I regard all power or cause as will-power, and every cause and effect as at one time consciously and volun­ tarily established to serve a set purpose ; this mental relation has passed in the ages into what we call physical laws, that is, the unconscious or automatic mental state, but the connection is not necessary, and might be dissolved when the purpose was no longer served. We have some curious illustrations, however, of the habit being continued where the purpose is no longer served; where organs that were useful lower down in the scale are passed on to higher grades when they are no longer of any use,—Nature, for instance, having got into the habit of making teeth, makes them some­ times—as in the guinea pig, who sheds them before it is born—when they are not wanted. These apparent exceptions to design are made the most of for atheist­ ical purposes. This view of things at present, I suppose, may be said to be exclusively my own, but I do not see why we may not fairly infer that what takes place at present in man on a small scale, has previously been the law of mind in Nature. If an action serves its purpose we repeat it, and the action becomes habitual, then struc­ tural, and is transmitted and becomes what we call instinct, and what is instinct in men and animals becomes invariable law in nature. We know of no mind in the universe unconnected with body, and therefore not liable to follow the same law. As Pope well expresses it:— “ All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body nature is, and God the soul.” That the order of nature was originally voluntary to serve a purpose, and that its uniformity and invari­ ability is consequent upon its being the nature of all mind connected with structure to become automatic, I think we may regard as highly probable. The prin­ cipal purpose that this invariability now serves is that �in Mind as in Matter. *5 it enables men and animals to regulate their actions and to adapt their conduct to the fact that what has been will be. Of course, if the will, or anything, were free, this invariability would not exist, and men could not look forward or reason at all. This certainty is very different to the iron-bound necessity of the mere physicist and positivist, and leaves room for special intervention if such should be required j and as animal instincts adapt themselves to new conditions, so according, at least, to our present knowledge, there appears to be many a gap in evolu­ tion, and many a space in Natural Selection and the 'Origin of Species to be filled up, that do so require it. The missing link, after all, may be found in the direct will-power of conscious intelligence, which has been called' special providence. There is a whole field of mesmerism, of clairvoyance, and of animal instinct at present altogether inexplicable on what is known of the natural laws of mind. It is said God cannot inter­ fere with his own laws, but as their permanence—the present connection between cause and effect—depends entirely upon its utility, I do not regard this as a rule without exception. But this great truth of the philosophical certainty of human volitions is at present a mere abstraction, existing only in the brains of mental philosophers, thought to be impractical and even dangerous by those who acknowledge its truth; but is it for ever thus to lie buried, and is it altogether at present incapable of a practical application ? Popular prejudice and clamour may be expected for some time to be against it, but is it not a truth that even now ought to form the basis of our legislation? There are two writers and lecturers who have lately taken up this subject on the orthodox religious side: the Rev. Daniel Moore on the part of the Christian Evidence Committee of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and the Rev. Dr Irons. The first, one of the clearest writers and reasoners on �16 The Reign of Law ■ the orthodox side, and the other, as it seems to me,, with the especial gift of “ darkening counsel by words without knowledge.” The Rev. D. Moore says, “■ Take the theory of philosophical necessity. As an abstract truth we accept it. As a fact of life-experience we ignore it altogether.” {The Credibility of Mysteries, p. 14.) Again he says, “ The will, of course, is deter­ mined by motives, and so far the will is not free. But, then, what governs the motives ? Why, the life, the habits, the cherished states of mind and feeling, all that enters into the liberty and spontaneity of the personal man.” Of course, those things were as much determined by motives as the present, so that it only throws the difficulty, if there be one, a few stages back, and there is evidently no more freedom or spontaneity in one case than the other. He says, “ With the free­ dom of the will, therefore, we have nothing to do. We have only to do with the liberty of acting accord­ ing to the determination of the will, — a liberty which, as Hume observes, is universally allowed to belong to every one who is not a prisoner and in chains.” {Man's Accountableness for his Religious Belief, p. 15.) It is evident that in theory there is no difference between Mr Moore and ourselves,—freedom from ex­ ternal constraint is all he contends for, and this is all that people generally mean by freedom of will—the freedom, for instance, to walk which way they choose when their legs are not tied. Dr Irons says {Analysis of Human Responsibility, p. 11, in a paper read before the Victoria Institute) : “ The position supposed in the Duke of Argyll’s thoughtful and popular book, The. Reign of Law,— viz., ‘ that all human actions are calculable beforehand^ may indicate a point now reached in England by the prevailing ethics; and it may well arouse our attention, though it would be wrong to conclude at once that the calculable may not be contingent, a priori, as the doc­ trine of chances may show. �in Mind as in Matter. *7 “ That this doctrine of the ‘ Reign of Law ’ is by no means peculiar to a Scottish philosophy, will be felt indeed by all who mark the ethical assumptions of our best-known literature. The writings of Mr Buckle, Mr Lewes, Mr Tyndall, Mr Mill, and others, are per­ vaded by a kind of fatalistic tone, which society inclines to accept as ‘ scientific,’ though an open denial of responsibility is of course rarely ventured upon. What is absolutely needed now is that men should he compelled to say carefully and distinctly that which they have been assuming vaguely, so that the prin­ ciples may be known and judged.” I quite agree with Dr Irons; it is quite time that men did speak out, and I intend to do so, “ carefully and distinctly,” and, I trust, truthfully and intelligibly. Sir Wm. Hamilton is of opinion that the study of philosophy, or mental science, operates to establish that assurance of human liberty, which is necessary to a rational belief in the dogmas of the church. Free-will was a truth to him, mainly, if not solely, because it is a necessary foundation for theology, i.e., for orthodox theology. The Rev. Baden Powell is obliged to admit (Chris­ tianity without Judaism, p. 257) that 11 nothing in geology bears the smallest resemblance to any part of the Mosaic cosmogony, torture the interpretation to whatever extent we may,” and we may say, with equal truth, that “ The Reign of Law,” or the causational or scientific view of human nature, is equally irreconcil­ able with the Pauline cosmogony of the New Testa­ ment, that is, with the popular or orthodox religion. For although it brings us nearer to God, making it a reality “ that in Him we live and move and have our being,” yet it completely cuts up by the root the com­ monly-received religious creed. Science and Religion are here altogether irreconcileable. Let us translate the scientific truth into more popular language, and say exactly what it means, and then w& �18 The Reign of Law shall see better how to apply it. It means that no act under the circumstances—the then present conditions —could possibly have been other than it was. That the same causes must always again produce the same results, and that, consequently, if you wish to alter the effect, you must alter the cause. God, therefore, in placing our first parents in the garden of Eden, must have known perfectly well what would happen; and if He had wished things to have happened differently, He must have altered the condi­ tions. Either the “ forbidden fruit ” would not have been forbidden, or He would have made Eve stronger, or He would have kept out the serpent. Knowing perfectly well what must happen, elaborately to prepare a beautiful paradise, from which our parents were immediately to get themselves turned out, was a mere “ mockery, delusion, and a snare.” What could Eve know of the consequences, which were death, never having known death ? “ In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,”—this was the threat, but it was never kept. If it had been, we should have had either another mother, or no race of men, a thing comparatively of little consequence. But the conse­ quences to Eve were to be, not death to herself on that day, but death and damnation to all her posterity. I should not think it worth while to mention this libel upon our Creator, if this alleged fact of the Eall of Man, now looked upon by intelligent people as a mere allegory,* were not made the foundation of a libel against our Creator still more atrocious. But it is * “ Immediately after the return of the Jews from captivity we find them re-editing their literature, and prefacing their own book •of early traditions (Genesis) with the myths of the Persian cosmo­ gony. . . The first chapter of Genesis, which relates the story of Eve’s temptation and of Adam’s fall, is a plain and unmistakeable reproduction of one of the myths or legends of this ancient (Pagan) faith. It is a copy of a tradition, or rather of a poetic allegory, that belonged to the earlier world. But on this narrative all the doctrinal systems of our modern churches depend,— it is the •common foundation upon which they have all been built. The �in Mind as in Matter. *9 said Eve was free, and might have done otherwise. If the will was free, what she would do was uncertain, ■contingent, dependent upon chance, upon her sponta­ neous action, and not upon any rule or law : any speci­ fied action might be, or might not be, and therefore God himself could not tell what she would do : for how nan that be foreseen which is uncertain and may not -come to pass ? Dr Irons, however, thinks that it would he wrong to conclude at once that the calculable may not be contingent. I should also say, and I think with more reason, that it would be wrong to conclude at once that God would have left the beginning of a new world and such awful contingencies to mere chance .as to how a woman would act whose will was governed by no motive and no law. This awful gift of free-will, if it were possible to bestow it, which I deny, as every thing or agent must act in accordance with its nature, —the power to use this attribute to damn herself and all her posterity no wise and benevolent being could possibly bestow upon another. This supposed fact of the Eall of Man is not only opposed to reason and common sense, and all the higher feelings of our nature, but it is equally opposed to all history and experience. Geology, ethnology, anthropology, all show man to have been very gradu­ ally rising from the savage to a civilized state. Pro­ gress, not retrogression, has been the law. It is true people and states die like individuals, but it is only fall of man is the only basis on which the doctrine of the atonement can rest. If there was no fall, the atonement is a manifest super­ fluity, and it could not then have been the mission of Jesus of Na­ zareth to have made one. Our knowledge of the ‘ Tree and Serpent worship’ of the ancient heathen world proves that the Jewish nar­ rative of Adam and Eve, and the forbidden fruit, is but an old heathen fancy—a fable, and not a fact—and, being so, there is but one opinion at which reasonable men can arrive with regard to the doctrine of the atonement which rests so exclusively upon it, and which, apart from it, has no possible basis.” (Tree and Serpent Worship, by J. W. Lake.) �20 * The Reign of Law that, as with individuals, new and increased life and vigour may spring up elsewhere. If, then, there has been no fall of man; if, also, man could in no case have acted otherwise than he did act, the elaborate theological system, based upon the oppo­ site suppositions, must fall to the ground. Nothing has taken place contrary to the will of Om­ nipotence, and it would be a contradiction even to suppose that it could ever have done so; for if it were really His will nothing could prevent it. Neither is God expected to know that which may not take place,—that is, is contingent or free,—that is, may happen or may not happen. Neither have we to reconcile God as Supreme Euler, or as governing all things, with man’s freedom: also God does not require to be reconciled to a world which He himself has created. God’s justice does not require to be satisfied by the sacrifice of an innocent person for a guilty one, nor that one “ who knew no sin should be made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him,” —if any one knows what this means, or how it is possible. God is not wroth with that which He has ordained, and which could not have been otherwise ; neither are His anger and vengeance to be feared, for they would be unjust. Atonement is not required, and vicarious atonement is unjust. Neither are we required to believe that an infinitely benevolent God is the creator of hell. Those things, which are palpable contradictions to all who dare to use their reason, are, in the Christian scheme, only mysteries to be cleared up in another world. This will be evident if we proceed to examine what the orthodox creed requires us to believe about them. Justification by faith is the fundamental doctrine of the Church; belief in the atonement—that Christ’s �in Mind as in Matter. 21 -death was necessary as a satisfaction of God’s offended justice. But let me, as far as possible, use the words of the creeds themselves, lest I be accused of miscon­ ception and misrepresentation. The Athanasian Creed, which the English Church has recently resolved to retain, as truly and clearly expressing the meaning of Scripture, says, among other things— “ Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith. “ Which faith, except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. “ The Son is of the Father alone; not made nor created, but begotten (and therefore, I suppose, began to be, and yet) “ The whole three persons are co-eternal together, and co-equal. He therefore that will be saved must thus think of the Trinity, . . . who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, rose again the third day from the dead. “ He ascended into heaven, He sitteth on the right hand of the Father, God Almighty; from whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead (His dis­ ciples saw Him taken up, bodily into heaven; and a cloud received Him out of their sight, and afterwards St Stephen, looking up steadfastly into heaven, saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God). “ At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies, and shall give account of their own work. (The hour is coming, Jesus said, when they that are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of man, and they that hear shall live). “ And they that have done good shall go into life ■everlasting; and they that have done evil into ever­ lasting fire. “ This is the Catholic faith : which, except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be saved. “ Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. �'ll The Reign of Law “ As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.” Perhaps no single error has produced more misery­ in the world than the supposition that a man is “free” to believe what he pleases. It is this that lighted the fires of the Inquisition ■ and yet a man can only believe what appears to him to be true j he could not believe black to be white, even although he was to be damned for not doing so ; and it is the same of all minor degrees of belief. We can only believe what is credible, and love what is loveable. It is true a man may play the hypocrite, and profess to believe what it is made to appear to be his own interest to believe ; he may de­ ceive himself; he may hide the truth by refusing to examine, and to this extent only is belief in his own power. And yet salvation depends upon faith, and in the early days of the Church “ in every prison the crucifix and the rack stood side by side,” and good men in their “ sweet reasonableness ” burnt their fel­ low-men alive by a slow fire, to give them more time to believe what appeared to them to be incredible, and to repent that they had not done so. “That the Church of Rome,” Lecky tells us, “ has shed more inno­ centblood than any other institution that has everexisted among mankind, will be questioned by no Protestant who has a competent knowledge of history. . . . The victims who died for heresy were not, like those who died for witchcraft, solitary and doting old women, but were usually men in the midst of active life, and often in the first flush of active enthusiasm, and those who loved them best were firmly convinced that their agonies upon earth were but the prelude of eternal agonies hereafter.” “ What,” said St Augustine, “ is more deadly to the soul than the liberty of error,” that is, the liberty which we must all take, whether we will or no, of be­ lieving what appears to us to be true. The error was in the system and not in the persecutions which were �in Mind as in Matter. ^3 only its logical and humane result, for what was the burning here to an eternal burning. Consequently, when Protestants got the upper hand, they did just the same things ; Catholics are tortured and hung, and as Lecky shows us, “ the Presbyterians, through a long suc­ cession of reigns, were imprisoned, branded, mutilated, scourged, and exposed in the pillory/’ These efforts to make men profess a religion they could not believe, were of course attended with the fruits that might have been expected. The fathers laid down the distinct proposition, that pious frauds were justifiable and even laudable, till the sense of truth and the love of truth were completely obliterated, so far at least as their influence extended. God was re­ presented as He is now in the Athanasian Creed, as inflicting eternal punishment for religious error; as “ confining his affection to a small section of his crea­ tures, and inflicting upon all others the most horrible and eternal suffering j ” the fathers felt with St Augustine that “ the end of religion is to become like the object of worship,” and, as Lecky shows, “ the sense of divine goodness being thus destroyed, the whole fabric of natural religion crumbled in the dust.” But it is not he that believeth, but he only that helieveth and is baptized that shall be saved, consequently the belief of the Church is, that infants that have not been baptized cannot be saved, but “ be punished, as St Pulgentius says, by the eternal torture of undying fire; for, although they have committed no sin by their own will, they have, nevertheless drawn unto them the condemnation of original sin, by their carnal conception and nativity.” As some other equally pious saint expressed it, “ he doubted not there ■were infants not a span long crawling about the floor of hell.” The Gorham controversy with the late Bishop of Exeter must remind us that Baptismal Regeneration, or the necessity for infant baptism, is still the doctrine of the Church of England. St Thomas Aquinas suggested the possibility of the infant being saved who died �.24 The Reign of Law within the womb. “ God,” he said, “ may have ways of saving it for ought we know,” a heresy, for which, doubtless, in his time, he would have been burned if he had not been a saint. In the English Church, Chillingworth and Jeremy Taylor have also thought it possible infants might be saved. The opposite, how­ ever, has generally been deemed a mere truism, con­ sequent on original sin and transmitted guilt. Tertullian was of opinion that the Almighty can never pardon an actor, who, in defiance of the evan­ gelical assertion, endeavours, by high-heeled boots, to add a cubit to his stature (De Spectaculis, cap. 23). But as the late Professor Mansel and other eminent theolo­ gians believe in “ complete fore-knowledge co-existing with human freedom,” or, in other words, that God has some means of foreseeing that which is contingent, or may happen, or may not happen, let us hope that he may find some way even of saving poor actors. The Scotch Calvinists, following Jonathan Edwards, are more logical than the Anglicans. They are quite aware that what has been foreknown must come to pass, with as much certainty as if it had already hap­ pened. They, therefore, see clearly, that as God is Almighty, and has created all things with a full know­ ledge of all that would take place, that what is fore­ known must have been also foreordained. The Westminster Confession of Eaith, upon which the Scotch creed is based, tells us here :— “ By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death. “ These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably de­ signed ; and their number is so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished. “ Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectu­ ally called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only. �in Mind as in Matter. 25 “ The rest of mankind, God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.” “ To the praise of his glorious justice,” is not meant ironically, as may be seen from the sermon of Jonathan Edwards “ On the justice of God in the damnation of sinners,” and from the diary of Mr Carey, which tells us of the “pleasure ” and “ sweetness ” he had expe­ rienced in reading that sermon. We are told some must be saved, others cannot, still it is their own fault. There we have free-will and necessity, and as all things seem to have been fixed beforehand, it does not seem to matter much, if, as Huxley says, it should always be a drawn battle between them ! We must not suppose that this belief has become obsolete as some would have us believe. The Rev. Fergus Ferguson, of Dalkeith, in May 1871, was brought to book by the U. P. Church, when, among others, the following proposition was submitted to him :— “ That notwithstanding the inability of the will through sin, as taught in our Confession, unbelievers are fully answerable for their rejection of the offer of salvation which the gospel makes to them.” Or, as I lately heard it put in a good evangelical -discourse in an English Church, “We are all dead in trespasses and sins, with literally no more power to help ourselves than a dead man, yet, if we would but get up and go to Christ, he would save us.” Mr Ferguson intimated his unqualified assent to the proposition submitted to him, and Dr Cairns “ offered thanks to God for the harmonious and happy result.” Thus, here also as in the Garden of Eden, we have another “ mockery, delusion, and a snare.” We are called upon to believe, that God, “for the �26 The Reign of Law manifestation of His glory,” and “ for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures,” and “ to the praise of His glorious justice,” doomed the great majority of mankind from eternity to damnation, and then sent His Son into the world to mock them with the false promise of redemption He had previously decreed for them should never be. Here we have the logical outcome of the “ drawn battle ” between free-will and necessity, or rather of accepting both doctrines, but is there any one who really believes it, whatever they may profess ? If any one tells me that I must believe it, and “ without apology,” that I shall be damned if I don’t, all I can say is, I’ll be damned if I do. Surely, as Lord Bacon says, “It were*better to have no opinion of G-od at all, than such an opinion as is unworthy of Him.” And yet this is the religion which a large party think it necessary to have taught at the public expense in our public schools. For instance in the New Board Schools in Scotland, supported by a public rate, on December 8th, 1873, a motion by Dr Buchanan, that instruction in the Bible and Catechism should be given, was carried by nine votes to six. The Catechism is the Shorter Catechism, and contains all the above soothing and salutary doctrine. Neither are we much behind this in England. The chairman of the London School Board, Mr Charles Heed, M.P., speaking recently at the annual soiree of the Leeds Young Men’s Christian Association, says he does not see “ how it is possible to separate entirely the secular and religious.” “ How, for instance, he says, could I teach my child geology without referring to Him who, having made all things, pronounced them good ? How could I teach my child astronomy without referring to Him of whom the Psalmist says, £ When I consider Thy Heavens, the work of Thy hands, and the moon and the stars which Thou hast created?’ I cannot understand why it should be necessary, even if �in Mind as in Matter. it were possible, that these things which are so closely and inseparably united should be disunited by any act of man in the instruction of those who are under his care.” But surely Mr Reed would not teach geology and astronomy from the old Jewish Traditions. He must know that “ nothing in geology bears the smallest resemblance to any part of the Mosaic Cosmogony, and the astronomy which makes our little world the centre of the universe, is worse than the geology. “ Pronounced them good,”—good for what 1 If Adam was to be immediately turned out of paradise, the earth was to be cursed for his sake, and he and his posterity damned from all eternity to all eternity, I can­ not see the good of this, neither could the children, I should think. “ A salvation ordained before the foundation of the world ” means, also, according to the popular creed, a damnation equally ordained, and that, too, for the great majority, and yet Diderot is accused of blasphemy for saying, “ il n’y a point de bon pere qui voulut resembler a notre Pere celeste.” And this creed that makes evil absolute, and God the ordainer of it, is to be taught in the common schools and at the public expense. No doubt all is good, if men will but see things rightly. The largest amount of enjoyment possible for all God’s creatures is provided ; the greatest happiness of the greatest number is secured. To the Necessitarian good and evil are purely subjective, the mere record of our own pleasures and pains—the pains the stimulant to, and the guardian of, the pleasures. I recollect, when a young man, being very much impressed by John Foster’s Essay “ On some of the Causes by which Evangelical Religion has been rendered unacceptable to persons of cultivated taste.” Polite literature was proclaimed to be hostile to that religion, and Pope’s Essay on Man, which I had for years carried about with me in my pocket, was �28 The Reign of Law peculiarly anti-Christian. I am not now surprised at the distaste, as it is, and as it was by Foster stated to be, opposed to the natural man, that is, to all the higher instincts of our nature. A man must indeed be born again to accept it. Vicarious suffering is opposed to the moral sense, and every gentleman would at once object to allow another to suffer for his sins, and we cannot be surprised, therefore, at the exclama­ tion and commentary of the old Scotchwoman, who, bedridden, and living on the borders of a large parish, had never before been visited by a parson, and had the mysteries of redemption explained to her. When she was told how Christ was crucified, not for any fault of his, but to save sinners, that is, the few who were of the elect, she replied, “ Eh, Sir ! but it is so far off, and so long sin’ that we’ll e’en hope it is not true.” * The Edinburgh Review, October 1873, accuses Dr Strauss of “ ignorant blasphemy or hypocritical sarcasm” for professing to understand these things literally, and says that he had better go to school once more and learn “what that really is which he blasphemes, and what those precious truths really are which lie enshrined in ‘ Oriental Metaphor,’ and mediaeval •dogma.” . . . “What,” the writer asks, “has been discovered, that should really justify any honest * If the reader wishes to see the opposite view to this well put, let him read the article in the January Contemporary .Review, “ Motives to Righteousness from an Evangelical Point of View,” by the Rev. F. R. Wynne. Of course, the elect regard the dam­ nation, from which they are exempt, very differently, but how any one can be so joyous and grateful over his own salvation, when only one, much more the great majority, were left to an eternity of misery, I cannot understand, and therefore cannot appreciate. It appears to me to be the very essence of selfishness. The Evan­ gelical creed is only possible by our completely ignoring the fact that God is the author and disposer of all things—the evil (as it is called) as well as the good. If it is to be regarded as a fight between God and the Devil, in which the devil, in spite of all God’s efforts, gets by far the best of it, then it is just possible to understand the thankfulness and the enthusiasm of the reverend gentleman that “a crown of glory” has been reserved for him through his Saviour’s merits. Still we might wonder why it should �in Mind as in Matter. man in breaking -with the church as it is presented in England ? ” I think we might ask him that ques­ tion, and also whether the English Church admits, as he affirms, that its “precious truths lie enshrined, in Oriental Metaphor and mediaeval dogma,” or whether it is yet willing to throw over the Old Testa­ ment altogether, which he recommends. “We are not Jews,” he says, “and there is no reason in the world why we should be weighted with this burden of understanding, and defending at all risks, the Jewish. Scriptures.” Certainly there is increasing difficulty in “ reconciling” the Old Testament either with science or the modern conscience, but what becomes of the fall of man and the whole scheme of redemption if we give it up ? He also says, “ Is it right, is it truthful, is it any longer possible in the face of all that is now known upon the subject, to pretend that legendary matter has not intruded itself into the New Testament, as well as into the Old.” I should think not, but will the church admit as much ? Dr Strauss is accused of having been “so long absent from his place in church that he is unaware of the great change which has come over the minds of our ‘ pious folk ’ during the last twenty years.” The Doctor is evidently unacquainted with the new truth dug out of “ Oriental Metaphor and mediaeval" dogma,” but, no doubt, great progress has been made be laid up for him in particular, as he admits it was from no merit, on his part. Mr Wynne says, “ What can bring hope for time and eternity to the saddened heart, what can touch it with the sense of God’s loving-kindness, like the simple faith that God forgives all sin the moment the sinner takes refuge in Jesus Christ ? ” But what of those who are left out and who do not take refuge ? And how are we to reconcile God’s loving-kindness with his omnipotence if any are left out ? Surely the fact that all punishment is for our good, to warn us from evil and to effect our reformation, and that forgiveness, therefore, would be an injury, and to show this direct connection between sin and suffering, would be far higher and more salutary doctrine. I do not doubt, however, all that is said of the effect of Evangelical teaching among the lower class of' minds, for I have often witnessed it, but it is not “the pure and noble feeling that is fanned into a flame,” but the selfish fear of punishment or hope of reward—the fires of hell or the crown of ’ glory. ” t �jo The Reign of Law in reconciling the spirit of the age to theological doctrines. “ They may not,” as the writer in the Edinburgh says, “ hitherto have been quite rightly explained, they may not yet have been wholly divested of their graceful drapery of fancy.” Principal Tulloch, in an article in this month’s Contemporary Review (January 3, 1874), entitled “ Dogmatic Extremes,” seems to De little less angry with Mr James Mill than the Edinburgh is with Strauss. He complains of a “passionate and conten­ tious dogmatism on the side of unbelief,” that literary and philosophic unbelievers do not do justice to Christian dogmas. They state them “ in their harshest and most vulgar form,” instead of looking at them from the spiritually appreciative point of view. J. S. Mill, for instance, reports his father as speaking with great moral indignation of “ a being who would make a hell, who would create the human race with the in fallible fore-knowledge, and, therefore, with the intention, that the great majority of them were to be consigned to horrible and everlasting torment.” “ Surely we are ■entitled,” he says, “ in the case of such men as James Mill, to look for some wider thoughtfulness and power of discrimination than such a passage implies.” Principal Tulloch tells us that “ all creeds and confessions, from the apostles downwards, are nothing else than men’s thoughts about the Christian religion. . . . Tn so far, as it is supposed possible or right to bind men’s faith in the present age absolutely to the form of Christian thought of the seventeenth century, or the fourth century—in so far such a church is opposing itself to an inevitable law of human life and history. . . . . Creed subscription, in so far as it interferes with this freedom, is a wrong at once to the people and the clergy. . . . The question which is really interesting and pressing is not how to get outside of the church, but how to enlarge and make room inside it for varieties of Christian intelligence and culture. . . . To call in (with our scientific dogmatists) the • �in Mind as in Matter. 31 "Coarser conceptions of popular religion, those forms of thought as to heaven or hell, or any other aspect of the spiritual world, to which the religious mind naturally falls, from sheer inability in most cases to preserve any ideal of thought—to call in such coarser types of the religious imagination as the normal dogmas of Chris­ tianity, entering into its very life and substance, is as poor and unworthy a device of controversy as was ever attempted. Popular Christianity is no product of religious thought. It is a mere accretion of religious tradition. And “ the whole function of thought is to purify and idealize inherited traditions here as in every other region of knowledge.” Consequently, any allusion to “ the naughty place ” and its occupants is never made now in the week days; it is thought coarse and vulgar, and only a “ purified and idealized ” version of it is hinted at on Sundays, while devils “with darkness, fire, and chains” are only kept to frighten children within our common schools, and without which religious instruction, it is thought, it would never do to trust them with secular knowledge. The fact is, the tendency of a large party in the church is to judge al] doctrines by their intuitive sense of right, and when Bible doctrines do not accord, they re-translate them to make them fit. Still admitting to the full the usefulness of the church and the pre­ sent necessity for its continued existence, the question will recur to every honest man, as it has done to Dr Strauss and to others, Are we Christians ? The ethics of the New Testament we must reject as not based on science, as we have already done the physics of the Old, and the question is, Is it true, as a critic affirms, that the religion which calls itself revealed, contains, in the way of what is good, nothing which is not the incoherent and ill-digested residue of the wisdom of the ancients ? Still it is affirmed, and very generally believed, that the difference between the Caucasian and the inferior races of men is entirely �32 The Reign of Law. owing to Christianity, as also is the whole difference between civilization and barbarism. Our progress, it is said, is not owing to science and induction, but to the Christian religion. The tendency of the age, of the Broad Church party especially, is not now to insist on dogma, but to fall back on the morality of the New Testament. But the Rev. J. M. Capes says that even “ The Sermon on the Mount altogether must be interpreted by what people popularly call common sense, or else it becomes imprac­ ticable or even mischievous, and what is common sense but the application of the test of general utility ? {Contemporary, December 1873). Barrington {On the Statutes, p. 461) proves the superiority of Englishmen, because, as he says, more men were hanged in England in one year than in Erance in seven, and writers on the “Evidences” show that the discrepancies and contradictions in the gospels prove their inspiration a.nd genuineness, and Butler isof opinion that even the doubting about religion implies that it may be true; but if the creed of either the Catholic or Protestant Churches is really to be found in Scripture, then we must agree with Matthew Arnold “that the more we convince ourselves of the liability of the New Testament writers to mistake, the more we really bring out the greatness and worth of the New Testament. . . . That Jesus himself may, at the same time have had quite other notions as to what he was doing and intending .... That he was far above the heads of his reporters, still farther above the head of our popular theology, which has added its own misunderstanding of the reporters to the reporters’ mis­ understanding of Jesus.” {Literature and Dogma, pp. 149, 150, 160). With these admissions, which are becoming more common every day, much may yet be made of the Bible by way of popular instruction, and which may help to carry us on to the general acceptance of the Reign of Law in Mind as in Matter. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "The reign of law" in mind as in matter, and its bearing upon Christian dogma and moral responsibility. Part I Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bray, Charles [1811-1884] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 32 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway and part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Thomas Scott Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1874 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CT161 N108 Subject The topic of the resource Christianity Ethics Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work ("The reign of law" in mind as in matter, and its bearing upon Christian dogma and moral responsibility. Part I), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conway Tracts Dogma NSS Responsibility https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/871bce50a54e71754c2ea79416ed127a.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=EZEsV97Nfl9LHdjW4zKcbPuk2xP00BmJ-Kev1ufs6uMSbMX0VdUHFoBcPbjzsx1UeRzSWXNczWf4rzgS%7EPwTsJ0u3v7L49%7E0kEcHen2y1GChKbksEp910%7Em4wI25REnEYVYFEKL47AJEgMsarLdTtaMxDAmJCyXRFOZSt8GjneQx5iKZQXpqyaurhf0Tb1LqYcmB5b1Gh0KDut7txWDwdhYNAdlfBeReXsPRvfdsUohD5WBettlZL1iPQka5PRJvruHYhZ8WpRUxYrmFIaXRc7U0njvFuNLWFXTl2dA2KXXmB3MYl4-XLJdZwU3Cyii6-KqDfnr340OD7jiOwxoZLQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM f351fd1ee62b16d775dd9c8b336df035 PDF Text Text s 33 37 MATIONAL secular society DOGMA AND SCIENCE: 51 Inta DELIVERED BEFORE THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY, ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE, ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 19th NOVEMBER, 1876. BY Dr. G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.R. Hist. S., One of the Lecturers of H. M. Department of Science and Art. LONDON: PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY. Price Threepence. �SYLLABUS. Impressions and Sensations. Our Reflective and Reasoning Faculties. Imagination, Intellect, and Reason. Ignorance of the Causes of the Phenomena of Nature the only source of Dogmatism. Science and its aim. Difference between Dogma and Science. Dogmatism is as pernicious in Science as in Ethics. Dogmatic mode of persuasion.—Hudibras. “ Inherited Sin ” treated Dogmatically and Scienti­ fically. “Grace” in its religious working, and as a' stimulus of our intellectual faculty. Dogma in Astronomy, Geology, and Geography. Dogma in dates. Dogma, a proof of man’s greatest fallibility. Dogma and Science in their historical development. War and bloodshed ; progress and peace. Science combined with Art, and their mission. How far Dogma and Science may work together. Conclusion. �DOGMA AND SCIENCE. ---------♦--------- ABENT.suafata libelli,”—..not only books, essays, and lectures, but,often. sudden flights of thought have, all their own origin, ^qu must .kindly > attribute thisifleeture, “ On Dogma* and Science,” io the -second instalment of. the Archbishop of Canterbury’s charge, to the, clergy of his diocese. The, conflict; between “Dqgma and Science ” was .stated in- that charge with a fijariknessj.and.-courage which testify . to ;fhe Jpglr scientific standing r of the wery highest authority in dogmatic matters. I have ioften taken occasion,frorndh^ platform to exult:in fhe. progressive movementf,thrQ.ughQutc,the world. in general, .in, spite of some gloomy .phenomena that* appeared here and. there, and seemed, to imply fhat the wheel of time had been stopped, or was eyen to 'be turned baokwards. We are.steadily advancing; if only every idealistic or realistic pioneer of our times will put his shoulder to the wheel, we are sure to rescue.humanity from the; mire of inherited; pjrejudices aud musty incre­ dibilities. , Brom' time,immemorial man’s intellectual powers have been continually .directed ,towards answering three grand questionShtbat, must -have impressed the conscious mind of; humanity with naysiticmnd. mysterious force. Where from ? What for? -And where to ? To a more or less direct .attempt toj answer these three questions all the religious ;and scientific,.efforts of humanity, from the times of Vaiwaqvata.down to,,John Stuart Mill, may be traced. We find this in the ‘Tanjura’ in 225 folio volumes,, in. the Greek philosophers, the writings of the Bathers, .and ,the,mass of scholastic effusions of the Middle Ages. It is,no .less evident in Bacon’s first scientific revelations, .in the works of Jieibnitz, Hume, Locke, Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, and in innumerable books, pamphlets, and essays, written -and printed. The millions of sermons, whether dull or lively, that have H �4 Dogma and Science. been preached, the numberless lectures that have been delivered in universities, in colleges, and on platforms, may all be reduced to an endeavour to find answers to the three questions, which in reality form the basis of man’s whole bodily and mental activity. This universal sameness or oneness is of the utmost importance to the student of history. We need not fear that the unbiassed knowledge of the different answers that have been given in time, according to the available elements of our mental culture, will in any way endanger the sanctity of ethics or the onward progres­ sive striving of humanity. On the contrary, the more we make ourselves acquainted with the slow and gradual struggle of dogmatism and science, the more we sur­ round ourselves with the bright halo of inquiry; the more we stand on the basis of a well-tutored conscious­ ness of the past, the more we are able to approach truth by means of firm conviction; and the less we are enve­ loped in symbolism, mysticism, or any other incom­ prehensibility, the higher will be our real moral stand­ point. The forms in which ethics are given may change, just as the answers given to the three questions have varied and will vary, but the primitive essences of ethics and science have never changed, do not change, and cannot change. Man has grown out of this earth; “ he is but a de­ tached radius of this globe,” as I have often said, and his language and mode of thinking have developed into shape and form with his increasing consciousness. Not the “ fear of God,” but the love and consciousness of God, is the beginning of all wisdom. The fear of God led to a variety of idolatries and dogmatic monstrosities; whilst the love and consciousness of God, as He mani­ fests Himself from eternity to eternity in the phenomena of nature, led to inquiry and science. This assertion in itself may serve as a starting-point to enable us to include the whole range of our possible impressions from the phenomena of nature in a systematic circle, followed by a corresponding circle of sensations, leading to a third circle of consciousness, and a fourth symbolic of the three others. All our outward impressions may be reduced to the following elements :— �Dogma and Science. 5 Beauty is the positive pole, and ugliness the negative. Beauty is flanked by the sublime and charming, whilst the ugly, in strict opposition to beauty, is encompassed by the vulgar and awful. On the line dividing the I. CIRCLE OF IMPRESSIONS. The Sublime The Terrible The Awful The Ugly. circle stand the Ridiculous and the Terrible. All other possible impressions are mere combinations of these six elements striving towards the positive or negative poles of the Beautiful or the Ugly. Impres­ sions can only be conveyed through our senses to our mind, the operations of which are three-fold: emo­ tional, affecting our imagination ; reflective, exciting our intellect; and sifting, combining, and systematising, as the functions of our reason. In placing the sensations engendered by the possible impressions of outward phenomena on our mind in a systematic circle, we find that beauty engenders love, the positive pole of all our mental and bodily powers, whilst ugliness produces its negative pole, hatred. Love is flanked by sympathy and veneration, whilst hatred oscillates between contempt and horror. On the line dividing this circle we have Indifference and Fear. Whatever our sensations may be, however complicated they may appear, they are but combinations of these six sensations, caused by the corresponding six impres- �6 Dogma and Science. sions, striving towards the positive or negative poles of iJove or Hatred. ii. CIRCLE OF SENSATIONS. Veneration Fear Horror Hatred. > These two circles' led iir time to a third, the circle ofyConsciousness with its- positive pole Truth, flanked by III. CIRCLE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. Truth. Probability Dogmatism Hypothesis Falsehood’. Probability and Theory, and its negative pole Falsehood, flanked by “ the fool’s paradise,” Chattoe and Hypothesis. �Dogma and Science. 7 On the stern line dividing the two opposite elements are Ignorance and Dogmatism, engendered by a mixture of ridiculous and terrible impressions, producing the corresponding sensations of indifference and fear. I have endeavoured to trace clearly through the circles of impressions, sensations, and consciousness the origin of Dogmatism in fear. Dor those who are inclined to look upon the spiritual world from a more realistic point of view., I have a fourth circle, that of Primary and complementary colours, which may serve to symbolically confirm the three previous circles. White is the combination of all colours, and, like Beauty, Love, and Truth, in the spheres of impressions, sensations, and consciousness, the positive pole-; whilst black, as the absence of all colour, is, like Ugliness, Hatred, and Falsehood, the negative pole. Correspond­ ing to the impression of the Sublime, Veneration, and Probability is blue, filling us with the feeling of the in­ finite. Green has an indisputably charming influence, inviting us to repose. Who has not felt its.power on a lovely plain covered with bright grass ? Orange, the colour of destructive fire, corresponds to the terrible, producing fear and dogmatism; and purple to the awful. Tyrants and cardinals have generally clad them­ selves in purple. Yellow is the representative of in­ difference and the ridiculous, it is the jaundiced colour of ignorance; whilst red is the very essence of vul­ garity. Children and savages delight in its loud hues, whilst bulls, with better sesthetical taste, are filled with rage at the very sight of it. It will rest with Dogmatism, whether it will try to leave the lower regions of these circles, and give up its twin-brother or sister^ Ignorance, and rise through a correct appreciation of the impressions of the beautiful, the charming, and the sublime, to build its future on sympathy, veneration, and love. In fostering proba­ bilities through theories it may reach the serene regions of Truth, and, standing hand in hand with Science, attain the most glorious aim of humanity, endowed with activity of mind by the infinite Creator. The more we study, and the more we inquire into the formation of ancient creeds, the. more firmly we shall �8 Dogma and Science. become convinced that these circles exhaustively place before us the origin and elements of our sensations and consciousness through the outer-impressions of the phenomena of nature. The more ignorant we were of these impressions and their causes, the less we were able to group them or to reduce them to an intelligible system the more we dogmatised. Starting with stupid fear in their minds, produced by the terrible, men were led to a ridiculous indifference with regard to everything charming, sub­ lime, and beautiful. They discarded all higher feel­ ings of sympathy, veneration, and love, derided proba­ bilities and theories even when based on facts, and clung to self-concocted hypotheses. They appealed to the mighty powers of chance, predestination, or fatalism, or fancied they could see inconsistency and variability in the laws of nature; they worshipped incredible false­ hoods as truths, and barred the way or progress and inquiry as mischievous and sinful. No honest student of Universal History can grow angry when he con­ siders these childish efforts of humanity, lor he must know to conviction,that as little as the creative elements of inorganic and organic material nature could have developed at once into the highest form>, our intellec­ tual progress could have possibly attained either beauty, love, or truth without a slow and gradually progressive development. To further this progressive development is the province of science. Whether we look to the scientific attempts of the Brahmans and Egyptian priests, to the ethic efforts of the Hebrew prophets, to the different, systems of the Greek philosophers, or to the teachers of pure Christianity, we everywhere sec men of science impressed by the beautiful, charming, ami sublime in God’s creation. They contemplate the smallest pebble, the tissue and colours of flowers, the solar systems-, comets,? meteors, glaciers, and volcanoes with equal reverence inspired by the sensations of love, sympathy, and veneration. They seek to find out the law of pro­ bability, and build up theories, striving after truth, so far as our limited faculties may grasp it, but, if they are true scientific men, never dogmatising. The great­ est gain of learning and study is the glorious and humble consciousness that we know so little. �Dogma and Science. ‘9 I do not mean to assert by this, that all is vanity in the old Hebrew sense, which must check all mental and bodily activity,—this uncertainty of knowledge should exite our mental activity, so that we may add day by day an atom to our previous knowledge. The sum total of human knowledge has resulted from the efforts of single individuals to add their little mite to a grand total, which is increased even by the very smallest con­ tribution of ideas. The task of science, through its very aim, is extremely arduous. Men abhor nothing more than the trouble of reasoning, especially if business goes on briskly without reasoning. Why should men give up their prejudices, their comfortable social intercourse, and the noisy din of parties, for some ideal “ terra incognita ”—of which they know as little as of the North Pole, after so many ex­ peditions ? What is the use of sacrificing an inherited notion of ignorance to some universal, unalterable prin­ ciple, especially if such principles demand study, cool hours of reflection, an honest application to never ceasing inquiry, with the constant conviction that, after all, absolute and real truth will not be attained. Besides can that be false which has tilled thousands and thou­ sands of nice little and big books with weighty words ? Could anything capable of lightening the purses of some 2-5,000,000 human beings to the extent of not less than 30,000,000 pounds sterling, during the last forty years, be either wrong or false ? Is there any clearer proof of the genuineness of the supply than the brisk­ ness of the demand ? The scantily aided men of science are obliged to listen to such arguments, and are expected to crouch in devout annihilation—before what ? Before the golden Nundi, or golden Apis, or golden calf that is everlastingly raised before the ignorant masses to be worshipped in humble submission. False principles that pay, are undoubtedly better than truth that does not pay. “Hine illae lacrymae! ” How titanic were and are the efforts of science in the face of such a phenome­ non. Bare and naked, only veiled in scepticism and doubt, house and homeless—an outcast from the masses, laughed at, mocked, derided, abused, cursed, trampled under foot, baffled in its own efforts, contradicted, dis­ torted, crucified, and burned often by its own votaries, Science has gone onward to truth step by step. �io Dogma and Science. Here a mighty bastion of dim hypotheses has been stormed,—there a huge castle of ignorance has been taken. It has demolished miles and miles of Chinese walls built up of huge stones of chance, of bigoted surmises, cemented together with the chalk and mortar of scarcely destructible mysticism, decorated with symbolic niceties, the more confused and muddled the better, and yet science is neither tired out, nor vanquished. How many falsehoods, that were once raised on the pedestal of truth, have been hurled into the dust by Science, unaided by State support, by voluntary contributions, collections, and extorted monetary help in one shape or another? Facts had to be detached from myths; myths had to be traced to their dim origin. Different authors of different periods, in different languages, had to be studied ; an infinite variety of methods and forms of thinking, seeing, and arguing at different times under different influences, with totally different dialectics, had to be gone through ; order had to be traced, laws had to be found out, groups had to be created, analogies to be drawn, and differences to be established, in order to attain what science lias attained. And Science has had to do all this without flourish ; it has always tried the shortest, the clearest way—but this shortest and clearest way is also the most difficult, the steepest, the least in­ viting and comfortable. Lactantius, one of the fathers, called the Christian Cicero, who was not yet altogether blinded by dogma­ tism, having lived so much nearer to the foundation of Christianity, says : “ Pure and naked truth is so much the clearer, because it has ornaments enough of its own; and therefore, when it is daubed over with external additional ornaments, it is corrupted by them ; so that a lie is therefore pleasing, because it appears in the shape that is not its own.” What would Lactantius have said to all the dogmas as additional ornaments with which Christ’s simple ethics have been daubed over ? In dis­ cussing only one single phenomenon, its origin, cause, or effect, science strives to make use of all our mental powers to correct the phantoms of our imagination. Our sensations are combined, divided, and traced by the unbiassed power of our intellect, which turns them over �Dogma and Science. 11 in our memory, enters and registers them, draws balances, and collects axioms, theorems, experiments, and observations. When our mind with its threefold functions has imagined, reflected, and reasoned, collected its materials from all quarters of the globe, from all ages, then only it can come to some probable conclusion based on some probable premisses. Whilst probability is the starting point of the scien­ tific inquirer, leading to theory and truth, the starting point of dogmatism, whether in science or ethics, is ignorance. The dogmatist also uses the three func­ tions of our mind, but in an inverted ratio. He uses reason and intellect to prove the outgrowths of an ignorant, terrified, overawed imagination to be facts. The man of science has continually to fight against wild hypotheses, based on chance and falsehood, that have been sustained, fostered, and promoted by igno­ rance, often for thousands of years. The man of science has to use his intellect to combat mysticism, and to exert his reason to show that the probable only is possible, if based on a succession of causes producing the same effects. The dogmatists arose in the childhood of humanity, and became, with their fairy tales,the nurses of mankind. Humanity, in the meantime, has gone through its boy­ hood, youth, and manhood, and is approaching more and more the bright, passionless, serene, and moral age of wisdom, yet the dogmatic nurses, with wrinkled faces, still repeat the same nursery-tales. Here and there they try to disguise them with affectedly scientific interpolations made to fit their little myths and legends. No one could venture to assert that our scientific reasoning has not sprung from these nursery­ tales, just as the human form has developed from a scarcely microscopically visible embryo ; but the embryo must not assume the judge’s ermine and wig, and at­ tempt to teach the learned grown-up man that he is still an embryo and nothing else. The embryos should not continually make use of the outgrowths of the awful, the vulgar, the false, and the ugly, which have fostered horror, contempt, and hatred, to contradict science, abuse science, abhor science as only an embryo in intellect could do. Let them not— �12 Dogma and Science. ‘ ‘ Decide all controversy by Infallible artillery ; And prove tlieir doctrine orthodox By apostolic blows and knocks ; ” for they are still where the pious arguers of Hudibras were. ‘‘They still talk of the talking serpent; they know the seatof Paradise to an inch, how sin came into the world, and what it is and that in fact we, the fairest creatures of the Creator, endowed with intellect and reason, are but wretches conceived in wrath and sin. It would be considered most unfair to any well-bred gentleman continually to tell him that all he said or wrote was utter nonsense. Yet this is what some people are really doing when they abuse the fairest creation of God as the most abject of His performances. What w'ould an artist think of a person who entered his studio and there proclaimed all his works daubs, all his statues terrible monsters ? Yet men have built up on such ideas whole systems of ethics, amongst the Indians, Egyptians, Persians, and Hebrews. First God is said to create, then He is said to tempt and seduce, if not directly, indirectly, and then He is supposed to allow humanity to continue to be conceived in sin and wrath. This is anything but an excellent basis for the evolu­ tion of a glorious system of ethics. What do we really mean by an inherited sin ? In one of my former lectures I had the pleasure of tracing before yon “the Origin and Nature of the Devil,” and the closer we looked at hims.the more we lifted him out of the regions of hypo­ thesis, chance, and falsehood, the more we gazed by the dim lamp of probability, the torch of scientific theory, and the bright rays of truth, into his stupid face, the more he vanished into the past as a phantom of our terrified, untutored childhood. Permit me, now, to treat,, with every regard and reverence for inherited prejudices, the inherited sin, first dogmatically, and then scientifically.. A society based on the assumption that our animal passions: are the consequence of an Indian, Assyrian, Egyptian, and Hebrew myth,, must look on every one as a creature of sin and wrath. That such an assumption must create an immense a/mouiat of uncharitableness, it is not difficult to imagine. TTie little innocent child to �Dogma and Science. whom such notions are taught, must become altogether bewildered. Of course he is accustomed to look upon this horrible inheritance with a kind of mystic fear; he spills some milk, and sees in this fact the con­ sequences of a frightful legacy; he breaks a tumbler or smashes a wine-bottle, and is punished, to drive out of him the original sin. The child thus grows by degrees stubborn, and begins to fear and tremble; fear and trembling produce hypocrisy and falsehood, and, under these impressions and sensations, hatred instead of love is fostered in his little heart. Into what, monsters even tender women may be transformed by such pious assump­ tions could be seen not long since in the pages of the higbly'-religious Guardian, where a widow lady adver­ tised for a person experienced in the art of whipping, and able to administer a severe flogging with a new birch-rod on the tender bodies of her fatherless children, aged nine and ten respectively. Bulgarian atrocities are exciting our horror and indignation, whilst in our enlightened Christian country the birch-rod is looked upon as the only means of educating ! With terrible anxiety to get rid of an inheritance that has cost so many bitter tears, and has tormented his childhood, the growing human plant or creature enters school. Here he meets again with nothing but inherited wickedness ; he has a head-ache and does not know his Latin verb. What else could this be but the inherited sin! He grows angry at the ruffianism of the elder schoolboys, gets involved in quarrels, and fights, and is thrashed and beaten in order that he may be purged of the remnants of his inherited sin. At last he becomes a young man; life lies before him with all its temptations and seduc­ tions ; the inherited sin does not forsake him, it clings to him like an unseen but ever present demon ; he wastes his time in bad company, saves himself at last by be­ coming a dreamy hypocrite, renouncing the Devil and his temptations, and in his turn has children, and thinks nothing can be better than to frighten the inherited sin out of them in the way suggested by our widow lady. It is this terrible dogma that leads to morbid longings and carnal criminalities; that peoples our workhouses, creates drunkards and criminals, pauperism and over­ population. At the very dawn of man s growing con- �14 Dogma and Science. sciousness, when still ignorant of his nature, he con­ cocted this “ inherited-sin dogma,” and degraded his own position as God’s fairest creature. This dogma gave rise to mystic explanations, incantations, allegories, arbi­ trary commentaries, Jewish, Mahometan, and Christian formularies in theology ; in philosophy it led to fantastic explanations and meaningless dialectics, and in natural sciences to a systematising parallelism. We see in all these efforts nothing but the tendency to improve and enlighten man; the means are, how­ ever, now obsolete, having led by degrees to a scientific treatment of this grand mystery—the inherited sin. We began to study the component parts of man, and built up on experience physiology; we tried to assign a cause to man’s false reasoning, and we embarked on the study of psychology and the functions of the brain ; we endea­ voured to discover the cause of man’s passion for mar­ riage and the possession of children, and found ourselves launched into political economy and ‘ Malthus on Popu­ lation.’ We wanted to learn whethei' man was exempt from the laws of creation, and found him to be the same outgrowth of the cosmical forces as the smallest crystal­ lisation or the most insignificant cellule. We have thus gained a rational consciousness of our calling, and can regulate our passions. Through education we attempt to diminish poverty, to free our workhouses from super­ fluous inmates, and to place society on a firm scientific footing of comfort and happiness. The same change has befallen the dogma of “ Grace.” The amount of inordinate pride this little word in all its humility has created, is almost incredible. The Brahman by his very birth was endowed with a special divine grace. Only he could understand how God’s breath condensed and formed sounds, how these sounds were turned into letters, the letters into syllables, the syllables into words, the words into sentences, and the sentences into periods. The same special grace was claimed by the priests of Buddha, by the Magi, the initiated Egyptian hierophants, the Hebrew prophets, and the Romish clergy. They only knew through special grace what suited humanity; how society could exist; what ought to be believed and what not; they often distorted all the principles of right and wrong, �Dogma and Science. 15 and peopled heaven and earth with phantoms. They could hear the grass grow, could transfer their inherited grace to others, remit sins, and use humanity as one big flock of sheep, of which they pretended to be the only appointed shepherds, distributing the pastures, and ex­ cluding any reasoning thinking sheep as a black sheep from the universal fold. But “ grace,” in a scientific sense, has worked perfect marvels. Without faith in man’s real inborn grace, manifesting itself in intellect and reason, Christianity would have sunk into a kind of heathenish idolatry; the Reformation could never have dispersed the dark and oppressive shadows of the Middle Ages ; the gates of our modern times would not have been torn open by the immortal thinkers of Eng­ land, always a grand and mighty country in the realms of free thought, in spite of the efforts of obscurantists and bigots. The Germans could never have followed up the English philosophers and established on their principles that mighty fabric of progressive inquiry in philology, biology, chemistry, and cosmology that now places them intellectually in the van of all other nations. Had the grace of our intellectual consciousness not touched us, we should still be writing learned books “ on the number of angels that might dance on the tip of a needle,” or on the all-important question “ whether a man in a regenerated state commits sin.” We should still study the fifty-three folio volumes by Bolland, a most learned Jesuit, whose work contains the lives of more than 25,000 confessors, martyrs, ascetics, and self­ tormentors. We should pore over Father Jocelyn’s ‘ Life of St. Patrick,’ in 146 chapters, and learn how the Saint conferred beauty on an old man and increased his stature ; how he miraculously fed 14,000 men (pro­ bably on nothing) ; how he changed flesh-meat into fishes ; how the tooth of St. Patrick shone in the river ; how he converted certain cheeses into stone ; how St. Patrick’s goat, stolen and eaten by a thief, bleated in the thief’s stomach, and other similarly incontrovertible facts and truths. Prior to the Reformation the litera­ ture of enlightened Europe consisted of Psalters, can­ ticles, miracles, tales, legends, numberless Hours of devotion, chronicles full of incredible deeds, and some sharply satirical works foreboding the coming �16 Dogma and Science. change. After the Reformation, philosophical and political books were printed, and we had ‘ News from Hell’ (1536), proving the impossibility of its geo­ graphical position, as there was no above or below. Works appeared against “ The power of the Clergy,” on ‘The Enormities of the Clergy,’ on ‘The Beginning and Ending of Popery’ (1546), on ‘ The Practices of the Inquisition,’ and on ‘ The Discovery of the Inquisition.’ Now we analyse the rays of the sun, and leave discus­ sions on unintelligible matters to men who are mere “ survivals ” of the Middle Ages amongst us. Bernhard, of Clairvaux, who repudiated the dogma of the “ Immaculate Conception,” and preached in favour of the Crusade of 1146, though he tried to hinder the merciless and sanguinary crusades against the Jews, in which he did not succeed, says that: “ Faith is a pre­ sentiment of some not yet discovered truth, and is based on authority and revelation, whilst our inner vision (contemplatio) is the certain, and, at the same time, clear cognition of the invisible.” Buddhists and Brah­ mans have given utterance to an abundance of equally obscure and unintelligible sentences. This is the mighty charm of the so-called “ supernatural it enlists in­ terest, and is the more cherished, the less it is under­ stood. It was the presentiment of truth, wrapped in authority and revelation, that proclaimed the earth to have sprung ready made from a cosmical egg ; what hen, however, laid the egg, neither authority nor revela­ tion told us. It was the presentiment of truth, based on authority and revelation, that made the earth a square, resting on pillars, firmly fixed on a foundation, and the sun revolve round this flat square, which was studded with mountains to serve as footstools for the Deity. It was again the presentiment of truth, based on authority and revelation, that decreed how the world had been created in. six days. Our inner vision, however, after having studied geology, has come to a totally different cognition of the now visible strata of the earth’s crust, and has built up, in going backwards, the slow forma­ tion of our earth, which is not square, but globular, which does not rest on pillars, is not fixed, and therefore a very uncomfortable footstool, unless the Deity re­ volves with it at the rate of about 1,220 miles per �Dogma and Science. 17 minute; an idea which is far from respectful to the Creator of more than 20,374,000 visible stars; amongst which our earth is one of the least significant planets. The inner vision and cognition of the percep­ tible and visible, having so gloriously failed us, in spite of authority and revelation, we certainly need not trouble ourselves much with the certain and clear cogni­ tion of the invisible arrived at by Bernhard of Clairvaux, who is now a canonised saint of the Roman Church. The most objectionable confusion was created by dog­ matists in dates. Now, a date is certainly nothing particularly important, except to small-minded indi­ viduals, who think that if they know the date of the birth of some king, or the dates of battles, or other in­ cidents, they know history, as though history were but a chronological register of dry facts. Dates are im­ portant to ascertain certain incidents, especially in legal matters, but who is to fix dates for the creation of the world, the growth of the Assyrian Empire, the produc­ tion of the Vedas, or the age in which the laws of Manu were compiled, and astronomy was brought into a system ? Who can date the age, which must have preceded the 331 Kings of Manetho, the age in which Atalanta formed part of the Eastern Continents, and mammoths and elks roamed through the earth, whilst palm-trees, sigillaria, stigmaria, &c., grew to a height of 120 to 150 feet on our island ? All these phenomena could not have happened during the short lapse of 5,376 years, as some dogmatists assume, teach, and piously believe, if we read history backwards and consider how slowly we advance in spite of telegraphic wires and steam engines. For the merely natural development of languages, works of art, stone constructions, sculpture, tile-making, and the formation of languages much more time is required than dogmatists are willing to allow. This obstinacy in dealing with dates has its pernicious influence. It helps people to falsify facts as to time, by degrees also as to space, and finally, as to their mode and possibility of having happened at all. Nothing is so pitiful as to see men of learning twisting facts in order not to sin against the chronology of Rabbi Hillel or Bishop Usher. If dates are dogmas, they only serve, �18 Dogma and Science. like all other dogmas, to prove the utter fallibility of man, Thus it was asserted that the sun moves and the earth stands; that there are no antipodes. Every one who dared to doubt these dogmatic assertions was branded as a perverter of truth, an infidel, and a “ godless wretch.” Dogmatists ought to be contented with the innumerable disenchantments and disappoint­ ments they have had to suffer. To remedy this fallibility they have invented a new dogma in opposition to all experience of sound reason and common sense, the dogma of the Infallibility of a hnman Being. That there should be people who cling to the infallibility of some small sectarian preacher, and oppose with inordinate vehemence the infallibility of the Pope, is not surprising. Such persons see themselves wronged in their own infallible understanding of what they assume to be essential dogmas, and fear they might see themselves outdone; they are angry that a chosen high priest should do what the unchosen crowd of talkers on holy matters do for themselves. There can be no doubt that a narrow-minded dogma­ tism has blighted for thousands of years all our better progressive efforts. Like the Colorado beetle it has eaten away the very best roots of our mental seeds. It crept slowly and gradually into Christianity—that bright doctrine of mutual love ; it has undermined those pre­ cepts which were as little dogmatic for the welfare of our souls as the prescriptions of a physician for the health of our bodies. Christianity, according to Dr. Barlow, had no other laws but such “as politicians would allow to be needful for the peace of the State ; as Epicurean philosophers recommend for the tranquillity of our minds, and pleasures of our lives; such as reason dic­ tates, and daily shows conducive to our welfare in all respects ; which, consequently, were there no law enact­ ing them, we should in wisdom choose to observe, and voluntarily impose them on ourselves ; confessing them to be fit matters of law, as most advantageous and requisite to the good, general and particular, of man­ kind.” These are truly Christian words. For Christianity in its beginning was as free from dogmas as the rays of the sun, the formation of the earth, or the eternal laws of �Dogma and Science. 19 nature. Christ taught us one grand law—love, founded on beauty, leading to truth, that holds us as self-con­ scious beings together in one brotherhood, just as the law of attraction holds the universe eternally united. Historically both dogma and science had their growth and decay—with this difference—that dogmas grew to might and activity in the dark ages, when no science was possible. In 325, A.D., the Trinitarian dogma was borrowed from Indians and Egyptians; 346, a.d. some ritualistic innovations, such as the worship of relics, were adopted from the Buddhists ; the worship of images was taken from the Indians and Egyptians; asceticism, self-abnegation and self-torture from Brah­ mans and Buddhists ; Jubilees from Romans and Egyp­ tians ; the Confession from Plato. Tran substantiation came from the Egyptians in 1215 at the Council of Lateran under Pope Innocent III. The worship of Mary is to be traced to the Assyrians and Babylonians, for it was a revival of the worship of Alilatt, Astarte, or Astaroth. Processions were taken from Indians, Romans, and Egyptians. The incarnation, resurrec­ tion, descent to hell and ascension into heaven, are dogmas of Brahmanic and Buddhistic origin. St. Jerome tells us that “ we ought to worship where the feet of our Lord stood,” chiefly meaning his last foot­ steps, when be mounted up to heaven ; the print of which, say Sulpicius Severus and Paulinus remains to this day. This was, however, exactly the case with Buddha, the ninth incarnation of the second person of the Indian Trinity, who ascended into heaven from Peak Adam, on the Island of Ceylon, and who there left his extremely large footprints, casts of which we possess in our British Museum. It was dogmatism that led the Romish Church to the establishment of the In­ quisition under Popes Innocent III., and Gregory IX., in the 13th century after Christ. The Inquisition and its sanguinary crimes afford the historian clear proofs that dogmatism and fanaticism will lead men to wild atroci­ ties, whether committed by learned Christian priests and judges in the sixteenth century against Protestants, or by Protestants against Dissenters in the seven­ teenth century, or by Radicals against Royalists in the eighteenth century, or by Mahometans against �20 Dogma and Science. Bulgarians in the nineteenth century, or by Russians against Poles in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen­ turies. Bloodshed and murder follow in the track of all those who base the welfare of humanity on dry, unintelligible dogmas. The dogma can only begin where knowledge ceases, and no mystic, symbolic, allegorical, parabolical, metaphorical, metonymical, hypostatical, and anagogical verbiage can turn nonsense into sense, the unseen into the seen, the invisible into the visible, or the unknown into the known. Bloodshed and war will always be the outgrowths of dogmatic fanaticism. For any wilful assertion, based on ignorance, must necessarily lead to falsehood, and the mighty endeavour to impose incredibilities by force and violence on those whom we cannot persuade by means of arguments and sound reasoning. The dogma can only exist in annihilating our independent judgment; whilst science can only prosper in trying to prove even those intuitions, which hypothetically approach probabilities. But the scientific men of all ages and times have willingly given up their most cherished prejudices, as soon as better reasons have been adduced for the assumption of different theories. Spinoza’s “ Substance ” had to yield to Fichte’s “Ego,” Shelling’s “ Subject-object,” to Hegel’s “World’s soul” (Weltseele), this to Schoppenhauer’s “ Will,” and this to Hartmann’s “ Unconsciousness,” or Agnosticism. We in England must turn back, if we seek to study the reasonable grounds on which the Christianity of the future was established by those glorious prelates of the English Church, Hooker, Chil­ lings worth, Hale and Tillotson, who all tried to find for Christianity a firm basis in sound reason. They were seconded in their efforts by the immortal writers of the 17th and 18th centuries. The third Earl of Shaftes­ bury would have heard with amazement the asser­ tion made by one of his descendants that we wanted 500 Spurgeons for London alone to oppose some of our most enlightened preachers. Such names as Collins, Tyn­ dall, Wolleston, Chubb, and Bolingbroke, and the princi­ ples they represent are familiar even to the students in German Ladies’ Schools, whilst with ns they are alto­ gether passed over in silence, none of these titans of freethinking being so much as mentioned in a primer, which �Dogma and Science. 21 is to serve our boys as a school-book. These writers more that 150 years ago felt that dogmatism ought to unite with science and art, with truth and beauty to rouse in us all our higher faculties. The strains of harmonies on the wings of sound, the chisels of sculptors, the pencils and paint-brushes of the painters, the pro­ ductions of the architects, were all at the disposal of the holy cause—but when and under what circumstances ?— When the divine light of freer thinking vivified the brains of humanity. Ecclesiastics of whatever denomi­ nation, w’ho inveigh against our progressive Free-think­ ing, encourage falsehood and immorality ; for nothing can be more immoral than the concealment or with­ holding of truth. In order to preserve some obsolete incredibilities, as little necessary to the genuine mo­ rality of man as the wearing of a coloured chasuble, with or without an embroidered gilt cross at the back, dogmatists are prone to persecute the most moral men, if they differ from them on unintelligible, speculative, or symbolic points, and force the respectable to play the hypocrite. Against whom do the preachers of the gospel of love show more inveterate hatred and uncharit­ ableness than against their very best men, if these wish to use their rights as true Protestants? Need I quote facts ? Are not the persecutions of the Essayists and Reviewers, of Bishop Colenso, and others fresh in our memories ? It is the very nature of Protestantism to be progres­ sive, else it would have even less raison d etre than Romanism. From the period of the establishment of the Reformation the minds of men, now advancing and then retrograding in certain countries, at certain times, have become intellectually more and more enlightened. Our increased love of natural and historical sciences, a neglect of metaphysics, and a growing fervour for genuine art are laudable Signs of our Times. What the Primate of England has been pleased to call “ the seething thoughts of this anxious age ” are but the visible efforts of the progressive development of humanity, to leave the wilderness of mysticism and dogmatism, and to seek goodness, beauty and truth, no more in formulae and assertions contradicting the very first principles of our commonest common sense, but in science and art, leading to the purest morality. �22 Dogma and Science. It remains to be seen whether the dogmatists will play the part of the merchant’s honest old clerk,'who wrote a remarkably fine hand, and who thought so highly of it that, undei’ the idea that calligraphy must sooner or later supersede the press, he wrote out an entire copy of (the Bible for fear the sacred volume should ever get out of print. Dogmatism is calligraphy, science is print. Bnint will no more be superseded by calligraphy. Let the priest give up i his eternal looking backwiards; let him look courageously forward. Let . him viewihh:the lay­ man in all the branches of our modern knowledge ; let him study comparative philology, comparative).mytho­ logy, the growth of dogmas at various times: amongst various nations. Let him mot be ashamed to confess that the'borrowed symbolic plumage has nothing to xlo with the inner soul of Christian ethics, and he rifill stand firm as a > rock. Let ■ him > strive < (to > act on aur reflective'andreaso®ingfaculties, andieaaiting us ta deeds of beauty and truthfulness, ■ be jagain whati he ought to be—a conscientious "teacher of i;h.umanity,i<who does not tremble before every glimmer of light, but can boldly face thejsuniof 'scientific truth and the glorious beauties of art. In'-one shape or another teachers will .always be wanted, and it should'be fer more comforti/ng.to our teachers fear­ lessly to work on our higher intellectual faculties, through love, than to mourn over our wicked? nature, and continu­ ally try to impress theenaotional element in \us th roughfear, or promises of ^‘Sweebmeats-ao cbaugafr-pLnms ”rin another world. Truth ought not toibe represented as attainable without any trouble by mere inspiration ; rnothing nseful or practical being done, whilst the advent of such inspi­ ration is waited'for, nor should any (unnatural thought, that may have been thrown outinignorantiages, be.mis­ taken for the result of such inspiration. Let our instructors teach men rand women to treiy upon their mental culture, and not on gnardian.angels, incense, candles, or coloured chasubles bright: with; the green of hope, or dipped in the white. d£ dearlyI beloved innocence, the red of heavenly love, the.blue of holy constancy, the orange of glorious iihehtitnde,. or) the purple of supernatural dignify, all enveloped in ztthe thick black cloak of superstition and ignorance. JLet �Dogma and Science. 23 them work as men on men, and not as emotional women on women ; let them take an example from oar strongminded women, who do study .and do know. That which they would then lose as dogmatists, they would gain as influential leaders of our ideal better nature; for our age is a practical' age. We want men of higher sen­ timent, for without them we might altogether sink into wretched materialism, and become mere calculating, buying and selling machines, without any higher aspi­ rations, pursuing even science only so far as it pays. We may, however, confidently look forward to a time when humanity will be one great universal priesthood, worshipping in- boundless love, truth and beauty, science and art, leading us. to the purest ethics. SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY, To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science, —physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature, and Art; especially in their bearing upon the improvement and social well-being of mankind. THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES ARE DELIVERED AT ST GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE, On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o’clock precisely. (Annually—from November to May). Twenty-Four Lectures (in three series), ending April,) 1877, will be given. Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual (ticket (transferable and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight single reserved-seat tickets available for any lecture. Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,— To the Shilling Reserved Seats—5s.' 6d. To the Sixpenny Seats—2s. being at the rate of Threepence each lecture. ’ For tickets and the published lectures apply (by letter, enclos­ ing postage stamps, order, or cheque), to the Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15 Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park,'W. Payment at the door :—One Penny Sixpence ;—and (Reserved Seats) One Shilling. �The Society's Lectures now Printed are— Miss MARY E. BEEDY. On “ Joint Education of Young Men and Women in the American Schools and Colleges.” Mr. GEORGE BROWNING. “ The Edda Songs and Sagas of Ireland.” Dr. W. B. CARPENTER. On “ The Doctrine of Human Au­ tomatism.” Professor CLIFFORD. On “ Body and Mind.” On “ The first and the last Catastrophe : A criticism on some recent speculations about the duration of the Universe.” On “ Right and Wrong ; the scientific ground of their dis­ tinction.” Mr. EDWARD CLODD. On “The birth and growth of Mvth, and its survival in Folk Lore, Legend and Dogma.” Mr. WM. HENRY DOMVILLE. On “The Rights and Duties of Parents in regard to their children’s religious education and beliefs.” With notes. Mr. A. ELLEY FINCH. On “Erasmus, his Life, Works, and Influence upon the Spirit of the Reformation.” On “Civilization; its modern safeguardsand future prospects.” Mr. CHARLES J. PLUMPTRE. On “The Religion and Morality of Shakespeare’s Works.” Dr. G. G. ZERFFI. “ A Dissertation on the Origin and the abstract and concrete Nature of the Devil.” On “ Dreams and Ghosts.” On “ The spontaneous dissolution of Ancient Creeds.” On “ Ethics and Esthetics; or, Art in its influence on our Social Progress.” On “ Dogma and Science.” The price of each of the above Lectures is 3d., or post-free 3jd. Professor CLIFFORD. On “ Atoms ; being an Explanation of what is Definitely Known about them.” Price Id. Two, post-free, 2|d. Mr. A. ELLEY FINCH. On “The Pursuit of Truth; as exemplified in the Principles of Evidence—Theological, Scientific, and Judicial.” With copious Notes and Authori­ ties. Price 5s., or post-free 5s. 3d., cloth 8vo., pp. 106. On “ The Inductive Philosophy: with a parallel between Lord Bacon and A Comte.” With Notes and Authorities. Same price. Cloth 8vo., pp. 100. Mr. EDWARD MAITLAND. On “ Jewish Literature and Modern Education ; or, the use and misuse of the Bible in the Schoolroom.” Price Is. 6d., or post-free Is. 8d. Dr. PATRICK BLACK. On “ Respiration ; or, Why do we breathe ? ” Price Is. 6d. or Is. 8d. post-free. Can be obtained (on remittance of postage stamps) of the Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15 Gloucester Cres­ cent, Hyde Park, W., or at the Hall on the days of Lecture. PRINTED BY C. W. BEYNELL, LITTLE PULTENET STREET, HAYMARKET. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Dogma and science : a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 19th November, 1876 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George) Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 23 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher's list of lectures on p. 23 and on back cover. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Sunday Lecture Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1876 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context N700 Subject The topic of the resource Religion Science Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Dogma and science : a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 19th November, 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> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Dogma NSS Science https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/188bb0cc0e740da559b4989528399104.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=JD-ZGOHGKcuxJAtghJb2PE8GS34xyuPhg9VyR6jzJFwrW%7EZroclU0qMVhr9yWLj2O1nge6rDbi-XGnytLU0I03Bq1f0UNQhN2kPoOHKu8pGgvQIc4b43kso6pcv6SCAf60OpBrdowSPpCdsi-fgPZhoNGwW%7EssMR0v63OrAoBQ5Vm16TwazXF9w9MHqMz98j%7Ep8DrwMgXpTSLNrmkesmPlw7ggbmuBpc%7Ey%7Exzb58oVccgCe-4zyZYzDGiJ3-bkCqIhVcYeQA6wewyqRgtfr8iWyEqMgYIEsrkRehmh9RNvrjbUYa-WXGCNgwFxaqi21Y6x9OGqEDa-zi7mEfAKhVUA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 50c62fa2fbc0dd1d276b094bdd90359b PDF Text Text THE BIRTH AND GROWTH OF MYTH, AND ITS SURVIVAL IN FOLK-LORE, LEGEND, AND DOGMA. DELIVERED BEFORE THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY, ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON, FEBRUARY, 1875. BY EDWARD CLODD, F.R.A.S. PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT, NO. 11 THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E. 1875. Price Threepence. �LONDON: PRINTED BY- C. W. REYNELL, 16 LITTLE BULTENEY STREET HAYMARKET, W. �THE BIRTH AND GROWTH OF MYTH, AND ITS SURVIVAL IN FOLK-LORE, LEGEND, AND DOGMA. HE birth-place of myth is in. man’s endeavour to interpret the meaning of his surroundings. He has adapted much, but created nothing. The rudest of his race built the fabric of his fancy out of pre-existing materials which earth and sky supplied, and for the greater works of imagination with which the poet and the painter have enriched ns, they have drawn upon those materials and upon that experience of nature and life which has come down from the past as an intel­ lectual inheritance. Whether it be the origin of a universe or the rhythmic setting of a great product of the human mind, the maxim—ex nihilo nihil fit—holds good through all space and time. Man, in his first outlook on Nature, altogether igno­ rant of the character of the forces by which he was environed, ignorant of the unaltering relation between cause .and effect—a relation which it needed the expe­ rience of ages and the generalisations therefrom to enable him to apprehend—regarded every moving thing as impelled by a force akin to that which impelled him, and differing only in degree. The only force of which he. was conscious was what we call the force of wifi. His own voluntary movements were governed by his will; and so he argued that everything else. which moved did so because it' was ’Endowed with will-force and directed -by it. A personal life and will was there­ fore attributed to sun, moon, clouds, river, waterfall, ocean, and tree, and the varying phenomena of the sky at dawn or noonday, at grey eve or black-clouded yight, was the product of the controlling life that dwelt in a . JL �4 The Birth and Growth of Myth, and its In a thousand different forms this conception was expressed. The clouds were cows with swelling udders to be milked by the winds of heaven; the thunder was the roar of a mighty beast; the lightning a serpent darting at its prey, an angry eye flashing, the storm­ demon’s outshot forked tongue ; the rainbow a thirsty monster; the waterspout a long-tailed dragon. This was not imagery, but an explanation. Primitive man did not embody his concepts in pretty conceits, but meant exactly what he said. ‘ A thing is said to be explained when it is classified with other things with which we are already acquainted. We explain the origin, progress, and ending of a thunder-storm when we classify the phenomena presented by it along with other more familiar phenomena of vaporisation and condensa­ tion. But the primitive man explained the same thing to his own satisfaction when he had classified it along with the well-known phenomena of human volition,’ by ' constructing a theory of a great black dragon pierced by the unerring arrows of a heavenly archer, who releases the treasures of light and rain which the monster had stolen. The myth-making stage in human progress finds an analogy ready to hand in the child’s nature. To him not only are all living creatures endowed with human intel­ ligence, but everything is alive. He beats the chair against which he has knocked his head, and afterwards kisses it in token of renewed friendship • in his Kosmos wooden soldiers and wooden horses are actuated by the same sort of personal will as nursemaids and kittens. Even among full-grown civilised Europeans, as Mr. Grote remarks, “ The force of momentary passion will often suffice to supersede the acquired habit, and even an intelligent man may be impelled in a moment of agonising pain to kick or beat the lifeless object from which he has suffered.” Mr. Tylor tells us that “the wild native of Brazil would bite the stone he stumbled over, or the arrow that wounded him. Such a mental condition may be traced along the course of history, not merely in impulsive habit, but in formally enacted law. �Survival in Folk-Lore3 Legend, and Dogma. ■ $ The rude Kukis of Southern Asia were very scrupulous in carrying out their simple law of vengeance, life for life; if a tiger killed a Kuki, his family were in disgrace till they had retaliated by killing and eating this tiger or another; but, further, if a man was killed by a fall from a tree, his relations would take their revenge by cutting the tree down, and scattering it in chips. A modern king of Cochin-China, when one of his ships sailed badly, used to put it in the pillory as he would any other criminal.” Mr. Grote adds “ that a court of justice was held at the Prytaneum, in Athens, to try any inanimate object, such as an axe or a piece ot wood or stone, which had caused the death of any one without proved human agency, and this wood or stone, if condemned, was in solemn form cast beyond the border. The spirit of this remarkable procedure re­ appears in the old English law (repealed in the present reign), whereby not only a beast that kills a man, but a cart-wheel that runs over him, or a tree that falls on him and kills him, is deodand, or given to God, i.e., forfeited and sold for the poor.” ('Primitive Culture,’ I., 259). Among ancient legal proceedings in France we read of animals condemned to the gallows for the crime of murder, and of swarms of caterpillars which infested certain districts being admonished to take themselves off within a given number of days on pain of being declared accursed and excommunicated 1 The wide-spread attribution of life and consequent personification of all things, which has just received illustration, is further seen in the attribution of sexual qualities which survives, frequently in most perplexing form, in gender. In some simple and early languages there are but two genders, masculine and feminine, the classification of certain things as neutrius generis “of neither gender,” being of later origin. An inquiry into the origin of myths throws light upon the practice of attributing sex to lifeless objects, the personification of anything being followed by division into gender accord* ing to certain distinctive qualities, the major and inde­ pendent being classed as male, the minor and dependent �6 The Birth and Growth of Myth, and its as female. Our language has happily got rid of the false distinctions which encumber some ancient and modern languages, and for the most part attributes sex only to living beings, while in' German, for example, a spoon is masculine, a fork is feminine, and a knife is neuter, the mention of which, by way of illustration, in­ dicates what an interesting field of inquiry into the par­ ticular causes which have determined the attribution of masculine gender to certain lifeless objects and of femi­ nine gender to others, lies open to the student of the subject. Were further illustration needed of the material source from whence all expression has come, we find it in our abstract terms, every one of which had originally a con­ crete meaning, “ its present use being the result of a figurative transfer founded on the recognition of an analogy between a physical and a mental act or product. For example, ‘ abstract ’ is ‘ drawn off, dragged away ‘ concrete ’ is ‘ grown together,’ comported into something ‘ substantial,’ as we say, that is, something that ‘ stands beneath.’ ‘ Apprehend ’ signifies literally ‘ to lay hold of,’ and we still use it in that sense, as when we say that the officer ‘ apprehends ’ the felon ; to ‘ possess ’ is ‘ to sit by, to beset.’ When we employ the phrase, ‘ I pro­ pose to discuss an important subject,’ we use words signifying originally something apprehensible by thesenses. To ‘ propose ’ is ‘ to set in front ’ of us; to ‘discuss’ is ‘to shake to pieces ;’ a ‘ subject’ is a thing ‘ thrown under,’ something brought under our notice ; ‘ important ’ means ‘ carrying within ’—that is, having a content, not empty or valueless.”—(See Prof. Whitney’s ‘ Lectures,’ p. 112.) Happily abundant evidence is at hand to establish the main position advanced as to the origines of myth. There are savage tribes still in the myth-making stage of human development, whose present condition repre­ sents that out of which the higher races have emerged, and the relation of whose mythology to that of those races it is needful to determine. As a proof of the personification of the phenomena of �Survival in Folk-Lore, Legend, and Dogma. 7 nature, let us take the dark patches on the face of the moon. In the Samoan Islands these are said to be a woman, a child, and a mallet. A woman was once hammering* out paper-cloth, and seeing the moon rise, looking like a great bread-fruit, she asked it to come down, and let her child eat a piece of it. Hut the moon was very angry at the idea of being eaten, and gobbled up woman,, child, and mallet; and there they are to this day. In Ceylon, it is said that when Buddha was wandering hungry in the forest a pious hare offered itself to him to be killed and eaten, whereupon that holy man set it on high in the moon that all men might see it, and marvel at its self-sacrifice and piety. The Selish Indians of North-Western America say that the little wolf was in love with the toad, and pursued her one moonlight night till, as a last chance, she made a desperate spring on to the face of the moon, and there she is still. Comparing these with familiar myths upon the same object, we have our own “ Man in the Moon,” who was put up there for picking sticks on a Sunday; the Ger­ man version, which places him there, with a woman, for the crime of churning butter on Sunday; the Ice­ landic myth, in which the two children familiar to us, as Jack and Jill, have been kidnapped by the moon, and carried up to her, where they stand to this day with the bucket on the pole across their shoulders, falling away, one after the other, as the moon wanes—a phase em­ balmed in the couplet— “ Jack fell down and broke his crown, And Jill came tumbling after. ” Take again the stars, to which personal life and action is attributed in savage mythology. The natives of Aus­ tralia say the stars in Orion’s belt and scabbard are young men dancing a corroboree; the Esquimaux speak of the stars in Orion’s belt as seal-hunters who missed their way home ; the Kasirs of Bengal declare that the stars were once men—they climbed to the top of a tree (of course, the great heaven-tree of so many myths, of the Jack and Beanstalk genus), but others below cut �8 B'he Birth and Growth of Myth, and its the trunk and left them up there in the branches. According to the ancient Aryan, they are the offspring of the first man, Tama, giving light from heaven to men below; and hence the superstitious peasant of our own land, for a reason he cannot tell, will teach his children that it is wicked to point at the stars. The names given to our constellations, and the grave belief of men like Origen and Kepler that the stars are animated, show what kindred explanations races in very different states of development give of similar pheno­ mena. Along the line, too, wherever earthquakes are felt, there are myths of an animal underneath the earth. The Hindu notion of a great tortoise beneath the earth, which is thus kept from falling, at once occurs to us. That myth is developed there in many forms, but we are now more concerned with its form among barbarous races. In Celebes we hear of the world-supporting hog, who rubs himself against a tree, and thereby shakes the earth. The Caribs say that when there is an earth­ quake Mother Earth is dancing; the Thascalons that the tired world-supporting gods cause it by shifting their burden to a new relay ; the Kamchadals tell of the earthquake-god who sledges below ground, and whose dog causes the earthquake when he shakes off fleas or snow; the Japanese think that earthquakes are caused by the huge whales creeping underground, having been probably led to this idea by finding the fossil bones, which seem to them the remains of subterranean monsters. Erom all this a short step leads us to the popular belief which, in ancient times, connected the eruptions of 2Etna and Stromboli with the infernal regions, and credited the fiends below with the accom­ panying noises. I must not dwell any longer upon these nature-myths, which it is obvious are capable of very expanded comparison; but perhaps enough has. been said to show that the mythology of the lower races gives us a basis for studying nature-myths in their historical development among higher races, and affords very strong evidence in favour of the thesis advanced at starting—namely, that the birth-place of.myth is in �Survival in Folk-Lore, Legend, and Dogma. 9 man’s endeavour to interpret the meaning of his sur­ roundings. The larger number of investigators in the field of what is known as comparative mythology are of this opinion; but it is to be borne in mind that there are limits thereto, and it is to be regretted that some of our com­ parative mythologists have committed themselves to a theory which refers all the myths, both in outline and detail, of one great section of the human family, to the sun and dawn, basing such theory on the results of a comparison between classic and Vedic myths, to which I shall have occasion presently to refer. Upon this theory not only are all Aryan myths in the last resort to be adequately explained by reference to the phenomena just named, but the great epic poems which sprang into existence in the ages which followed the dispersion of the tribes, and which exhibit an identical framework, are explained in like manner. Without at all abating what has been said in support of the nature­ origin of myth, one may adhere to the general principle while rejecting its universal application, and it does seem hard to admit that the Trojan war is but the story of the contest waged in the East to recover the treasures of which the powers of darkness have robbed the day in the West; that Helen is the dawn, and Achilles a solar figment; that the heroes of the Volsungs and King Arthur and his Table Knights are but sunbeams and shadows ; and that many of them have not “ clus­ tered round some historic basis.” Upon this solar theory of myths Mr. Tylor appositely remarks :—“ The close and deep analogies between the life of nature and the life of man have been for ages dwelt upon by poets and philosophers, who in simile or in argument have told of light and darkness, of calm and tempest, of birth, growth, change, decay, dissolution, renewal. But no one-sided interpretation can be permitted to absorb into a single theory such endless many-sided correspondences as these. Rash inferences which, on the strength of mere resemblance, derive episodes of myth from episodes of nature, .must be regarded with utter mistrust, for the �io 'The Birth and Growth of My th, and its student who has no more stringent criterion than this for his myths of sun and sky and dawn, will find them wherever it pleases him to seek them. Should he, for instance, demand as his property the nursery ‘ Song of Sixpence,’ his claim would be easily established: obviously the four-and-twenty blackbirds are the fourand-twenty hours, and the pie that holds them is the underlying earth covered with the overarching sky; how.true a touch of nature it is that when the pie is opened, -i.e., when day breaks, the birds begin to sing, the King is the Sun, and his counting out his money is pouring out the sunshine ; the Queen is the Moon, and her transparent honey the moonlight; the Maid is the rosy-fingered Dawn who rises before the Sun, her master, and hangs out the clouds—his clothes—across the sky; the particular blackbird who so tragically ends the tale by snipping off her nose, is the hour of sunrise.” I will now pass from this good-humoured banter against the extreme application of a sound principle, to the evidence of a common mythology among the IndoEuropean peoples before their separation. Most of those present are doubtless aware that the languages spoken in Europe by the Celts, Teutons, Slaves, Greeks and Romans ; and in Asia, by the Hindus, Persians, and some lesser peoples; are all proved to be descendants of a single mother-tongue, known as the Aryan, or, as better defining the races included thereunder, the IndoEuropean. From this fact, the inference that these peoples are blood-relations is beyond all question, although physical causes, such as climate, food, and intermixture with inferior races, have in the long course of time brought about certain marked divergences. Language, the instrument which has been applied with such signal success in revealing this common ori­ gin of the Aryan nations, has also brought to light the fact that before the several tribes dispersed in slow succession, some westwards towards Europe, and the rest, at later intervals, southwards through the passes of the Hindu-Kush mountains into Hindustan, they had a common religion, the observance of whose rites had �Survival in Folk-Lore, Legend, and Dogma. 11 not become the usurped functions of a priestly caste, and a common mythology, closely linked to that religion, which survives among European nations in departing beliefs and in legends which have been promoted into history, or mingled with it; in nursery tales, proverbs, superstitions, and all their kith and kin, so that the Hindu mother amuses her child with fairy tales which often correspond, even in minor incidents, with stories in Scottish or Scandinavian nurseries; and she tells them in words which are phonetically akin to words in Swedish and Gaelic. The key which unlocked these interesting facts is the Sanskrit language, for, as in the history of the IndoEuropean languages, it served as the starting-point, because, although related to them not as ancestor, but as elder member of the same family, it has, more than any other member, preserved traces of the common parent from which they sprang, so in the history of IndoEuropean mythology it is in the ancient Vedic texts written in Sanskrit, and especially the Rig-Veda, that we find the materials for a comparative study, since therein are preserved the first, fresh meaning of Aryan myth. The investigation itself was prompted by the absence of any satisfactory canon of interpretation of the Greek myths. They had been degraded into dull chronicle by the method of Euhemeros, which made Herakles a vulgar thief, carrying off a crop of oranges guarded by mastiffs, and Jove smiting the giants a king repressing sedition; they had been credited by Lord Bacon with an allegorical meaning which was precisely what the fancy of the expositor chose to make it, but which was at least an advance upon the coarse and revolting stories of which the Greeks regarded them as the vehicle. It did not seem likely that a people who have made the world more beautiful for all of us, whose works of art are alike the delight and unrealised ideal of our sculptors, and from whose wise ones the wise of our day gladly learn, had deliberately cultivated a mass of repulsive myths, degrading to their framers and accep­ tors ; and no small credit is due to those comparative �12 The Birth and Growth of Myth, and its mythologists who have recovered that hidden and purer meaning enshrined in classic myth, and which throws light upon the intellectual condition under which it was born. This work was accomplished by comparing a large number of the Greek names of gods and heroes, whose meaning is obscure, with names allied to those in San­ skrit whose meaning is clear, the relationship between the two, hidden as it is by the substitution of one sound for another, which extends to all the Indo-European languages, being explained by the law which governs such changes, or “ permutations of consonants,” and known as “ Grimm’s law.” In many cases the Sanskrit words were found to be common names for the sun, the sky, the dawn, and so on, the words in each case having plain physical meanings. As an illustration of the method and its successful application, let us take the familiar myth explaining the birth of Athene. She is said to be the daughter of Zeus, and to have sprung from his brain or forehead. Now the Greek Zeus, like the Latin Deus, is the Sanskrit Dyaus, which means the bright sky, or Heaven—Dyaus-pitar being the same as Zeupater, and Lat. Jupiter. Athene is probably the Sanskrit Ahand, which is one of the many Vedic names for the dawn. Thus the meaning of the Greek myth is obvious. The dawn springs from the forehead of the sky : the day­ break appears rising from the East. But to the Greek, in whose language this physical meaning was lost, Zeus did not mean the bright sky, but the greatest of the Olympian deities, father of gods and men. Such a result might be naturally expected when the Aryan communi­ ties became more widely severed, the personal elements in each myth undergoing great changes accounted for by geographical reasons, changes which caused the divine of one mythology to be the demoniacal’ of another, which gave to the myths of the North their rugged grandeur, and to the myths of the South their stately grace. The theory that the similarity between Aryan myths is caused by one nation having borrowed or adopted �Survival in Folk-Lore, Legend, and Dogma. 13 those of another is not tenable, unless there was an inter­ course between them after their separation far more active than history warrants ; and we shall presently see that the argument between the stories of India and Scandinavia makes it incredible that there has been any borrowing, and, still less, any independent fabrication, while there is just that unlikeness in certain detail which might be expected from the different geographical posi­ tions of the two nations, explaining how impossible it was that the elephant, the giant ape and gigantic turtle, which occur so frequently in the Brahmanic mythology, should find a place in the mythical legends of Northern Europe. There is one class of myth which affords interesting evidence of descent from a common source, and of survival in an unlooked-for form. All the Aryan nations, and some other nations which have had intercourse with them, have, among their legends, the story of a battle between a hero and a monster, in each case the hero becoming victor, and releasing treasures, or in some way rendering help to man. In Hindu myth this battle is fought between Indra and the dragon Vritra; in Persian between Rustem and a huge wild ass ; in Roman between Hercules and the three-headed monster Cacus; in Greek, among other like tales, between Apollo and the snake Python ; in Norse between Thor and Midgard and between Sigurd and Pafnir; in Jewish between Satan and God;, in Christian between St. George and the Dragon. To explain these, it is needful to turn for a moment to the civilization of the Aryan tribes. The efforts of that people were mainly directed to increasing the numbers of their herds and flocks. (The identification of these with wealth is familiar to us in the word “pecuniary, which is derived from Latin “ pecus,” cattle). The cow yielded milk for the Aryan and his household ; her dung fertilised the soil; her young multiplied the wealth of the family at an ever-increasing rate, and she naturally became the symbol of fruitfulness and prosperity, and ultimately an object of veneration; while for the functions �14 The Birth and Growth of Myth, and its which the bull performed he was the type of strength. The Aryan’s enemy was he who stole or injured the cattle ; the Aryan’s friend was he who saved them from the robber’s clutch. That personification of phenomena to which reference has been made already being brought into play, the great heaven was to the Aryan a vast plain over which roamed animals of as varied a kind as the ever-shifting clouds indicated, the two most prominent animal figures in the mythical heaven being the cow and bull. The sun, giver of light, most welcome blessing, was the bull of majesty and strength; the white clouds were cows from whose full udders dropped the milk of heaven for the support of the children of earth, the blessed rain. But there were dark clouds also, and these were the dwelling-place of the monster who conceals the herds of cattle, and withholds from earth both light and rain. Chiefest among the exploits of Indra in his battle with Vritra, the thief, serpent, wolf, wild boar (as he is variously called in the Rig-Veda), and his crushing defeat of that enemy, through which he releases the im­ prisoned cows ; the hidden treasures bursting forth from the sky as the monster dies, killed by the darts of Indra. This myth, of course, depicts that battle between light and darkness which is probably the most striking phe­ nomenon in nature, and, in addition to its existence in this form, it is the main source of the endless tales of lovely ladies in durance vile, from which the chivalry and bravery of knights releases them ; as is the wintry sleep of nature the parent of myths of spell-bound maidens and of heroes in repose. Passing by any analysis of the myths of light and darkness among the Western Aryans, since they would yield the same results as that furnished by the Vedic myth, we have to note what a marvellous change has converted this myth of Indra and Vritra into a religion and a philosophy. Amid the conflicting powers of nature and the analogy presented to them by the cease- �Survival in Folk-Lore, Legend, and Dogma. 15 less warfare between good and evil, there was deve­ loped in the Persian religion that dualism which has so mightily influenced for evil the beliefs which flourish among us to-day. The demon Vritra becomes the arch­ fiend Ahriman, who struggles with Ormuzd, not like Indra, for the rescue of cattle, but for the citadel of Mansoul, the dominion over the universe. Ahriman mars the earth which Ormuzd has made. He quenches its light, keeps back the rain from its thirsty soil, and is the author of evil thought, evil words, and evil deeds. Like his physical ancestor, Vritra, he is represented as a serpent, and his name is the “ Spirit of Darkness.” It was with this dualism that the Jews came into asso­ ciation during their memorable exile in Babylon. There is no evidence that previous to their captivity they possessed the conception of a Devil as the author of all evil. In the earlier books of their Old Testament Jehovah is represented as dispensing with his own hand good and evil, and the notion of an arch-demon occurs only in those books composed after the close con­ tact of the Semitic Jew with the Aryan Persian. The Jewish mind was ripe to receive this belief, because it was already familiar with the notion of a being who was a minister of God, and whose office it seems to have been to act as a sort of detective or public accuser, as well as seducer. This would cause him to be regarded as an object of dread, and at last to be credited with the authorship of evil, and hence the Persian Ahriman found a place in Jewish theology as the being familiar to us as the Devil; and his hierarchy of spirits as the swarm of demons upon whom every evil was charged. With goat-like body, horns and cloven hoofs borrowed from the sylvan god Pan ; with red beard and pitchfork bor­ rowed from the Norse god Thor ; with person black and sooty as befitted his abode, we might smile at this Devil decked in the dress of different climes and ages, if the conception of him as stupid, gullible, and lame, which obtained in the Middle Ages was the only conception. But the legends of his pristine purity, of his failure to grasp supreme power, of his expulsion from heaven with �16 The Birth and Growth of Myth, and its liberty to thenceforth torment mankind ; the ascription of all physical and moral evil to him and his agents ; the gross materialism which incarnated millions of demons, and credited them with sway over the elements of nature and the bodies -and souls of men, giving rise to that belief in witchcraft through which it is com­ puted nine millions of so-called witches were burned during its existence; these repress the smile, for they have rested as a blighting curse upon the world, and are not yet bereft of all power to harm. But the world is waking from this hideous nightmare, which, like the Trolls of Norse mythology who burst at sunrise, will altogether disappear uuder the full light of the know­ ledge of our time. In view of the few minutes remaining at disposal, I must now proceed by way of illustration, which, in this matter, is argument and evidence as well, to show that certain stories long accepted as veritable history have their source in legends common to many peoples. . Every one is familiar with the story of William Tell; how, in the year 1307, Gessler sat a hat on a pole as the symbol of Imperial power, and ordered every one who passed by to do obeisance towards it, and how a moun­ taineer named Tell, who hated Gessler and the tyranny which the symbol expressed, passed by without salutingit. Reputed to be an expert archer, he was ordered, by way of punishment, to shoot an apple off the head of his own son, and obeyed. The apple was placed on the boy’s head, Tell bent his bow, the arrow sped, and both apple and arrow fell together to the ground. Gessler noticed that Tell, before shooting, had stuck a second arrow in his belt, and asked the reason. “It was for you,” replied Tell; “ had I shot my child, it would have pierced your heart.” The silence of contemporary historians concern­ ing this tale of skill and bravery caused doubt to be thrown upon it in the sixteenth century ; but so strong was popular belief in the event, confirmed as it was by evidences of a kind quite conclusive to people both before and since, namely, the lime-tree in the market-place at Altdorf to which Tell’s boy was bound, and the crossbow �Survival in Folk-Lore, Legend, and Dogma. 17 itself preserved in Zurich arsenal, that one daring sceptic is said to have been condemned to be burnt for doubting the truth of the story, contending that it was of Danish origin. But the sceptic was right, for the old Danish historian, Saxo Grammaticus, tells of a certain Palnatoki, who, for some time among Harold’s body-guard, had made his bravery odious to many of his comrades by his continual boasting. Talking one day with them when in his cups, he bragged that he could hit the smallest apple placed a long way off a wand at the first shot, which boast came to the hearing of the King, who com­ manded that, instead of a wand, the head of Palnatoki’s own son should have the apple placed upon it, and that, failing to hit at the first flight of the arrow, Palnatoki should lose his head. “ Yet,” says the old chronicler, “did not his sterling courage, though caught in the snare of slander, suffer him to lay aside his firmness of heart; he warned the boy urgently, when he took his stand, to await the coming of the hurtling arrow with calm ears and unbent head, lest he might defeat the practised skill of the bowman.” At the first shot the apple was pierced, and when Palnatoki was asked by the King why he had taken more arrows from the quiver, he made answer, “ That I might avenge on the swerving of the first, lest, perchance, my innocence might have been punished, while your violence escaped scot-free.” Saxo gives this as occuring in the year 950. But the story appears not only in Denmark, but in England, Norway, Finland, Russia, Persia, and Dr. Dasent says that a legend of the wild Samoyedes, who never heard of Tell, or saw a book in their lives, relate it, chapter and verse, of one of their marksmen. And in all these stories we find an unerring archer who, at some tyrant’s bidding, shoots from the head of some dear one a small object, and who provides himself with a second arrow, the purpose of which is to kill the tyrant if the archer’s son be shot. Whether Tell be, as Max Muller suggests, the last reflection of the Sun-god, be he called Indra, or Apollo, or Ulysses, who, with unerring light-shaft, or arrow of �18 ,1 ‘The Birth and Growth of Myth, and its lightning, hit the apple or any other point, and destroy their enemies with the same bow, matters not; we must, I think, ask the writers who wish to point their sentences with an historic reference, not to speak of Switzerland in future as “ the land of Tell.” The same ruthless iconoclasm must sweep away that image of the faithful brute Gellert, whose sad fate in the story has dimmed many an eye; how, after killing the wolf which would have devoured Llewellyn’s child, the prince came home, and finding the cradle upset and the dog’s mouth blood-smeared, slew the faithful fellow before he could see from what a death the dog had saved his boy. Although to this day the tourist is shown the dog’s grave at Beth-Gellert, the truth must out that the story occurs in the folk-lore of nearly every Aryan people. It exists in Russia and Germany ; it was popu'lar among the mediaeval monks; it occurs in Persia, India, and among non-Aryan races, as the Egyptians and Chinese. In the Egyptian story a Wali once smashed a pot full of herbs which a cook had prepared. The angry cook thrashed the offender within an inch of his life, and when he afterwards came to look at the broken pot, he found among the herbs a poisonous snake. In the Panchatantra, a Hindu collection of fables made many centuries ago, the story takes this form :— An infirm child is left by its mother while she goes to fetch water, and she charges the father, who is a Brah­ man, to watch over it. But he leaves to collect alms, 1 and soon after a snake crawls towards the child. In the house was an ichneumon, a creature often cherished as a family friend, who sprang at the snake and killed it. When the mother came back, the ichneumon went gladly to meet her, his jaws and face smeared with blood. The poor mother, thinking it had killed her child, threw the water-jug at it and killed it; then seeing her child safe, and the body of the venomous snake torn to pieces, she beat her breast and face with grief, and scolded her husband for leaving the house. The class of stories of which the foregoing are a type, is �Survival in Folk-Lore, Legend, and Dogma. 19 not likely to have arisen spontaneously in each land. Tales of bravery and faithfulness have, happily, every­ where a residuum of fact, but it does not usually extend to likeness in minute detail, and they are not to be con­ fused with inferences which, cast into forms of myth and tradition, are drawn from wide-spread facts suggesting to the mind of man a common explanation. For example, the discovery of huge bones may give rise to a belief in an age of giants; the tradition of a diminutive race, as of the Lapps, in Europe, to a belief in dwarfs; cer­ tain marks on the solid rock to myths of footprints of the gods; the finding of bones of mammoths at some depth below the surface to the myth of a huge burrow­ ing creature that lives underground; the observation of marine shells on very high mountains to legends of a great Deluge; but no such reasoning can apply to the myths of Tell and Gellert. Of course, further research will show that many of our popular tales are neither survivals of legends common to the undivided Aryan tribes nor indigenous products, but foreign importations conveyed into Europe by the pilgrims, students, mer­ chants, and warriors who travelled from West to East and East to West in the Middle Ages ; but the applica­ tion of the comparative method gives the clue to the source of each. It is no small gain that the science of comparative mythology has rescued the folk-lore, popu­ lar legends, and nursery tales of many lands from the neglect which was fast consigning them to oblivion, and discovered in them a valuable aid to our knowledge of the past. The collection of stories which are now accessible, and which have been taken down from the lips of narrators in the Highlands and the Dekhan, in Iceland and Ceylon, in South Africa and New Zealand, in Japan and Serbia, are not only interesting in them­ selves as products of the story-tellers’ art, but valuable in the materials which they furnish for comparison and classification. They indicate composition out of but few materials originally : their variations being the result of admixtures of local colouring, historical fact, popular belief and superstition, all largely affected by the skill of �20 The Birth and Growth of Myth, and its the professional story-teller. Under many disguises the same fairy prince or princess, the same wicked magician and clever Boots peeps through, disclosing the near relationship of Hindu nursery tales to the familiar tales of our childhood. As illustration let us take the familiar story of Cin­ derella, for the original of which we travel to the East, finding it in that most venerable sacred book of the Brahmans, the Rig-Veda. Cinderella is the aurora, the swift one without feet; as the first of those who appear every day in the eastern sky, as the first to know the break of day, the aurora is naturally represented as one of the swiftest among those who are the guests of the sun-prince (Mitra) during the night; and, like her cows, which do not cover them­ selves with dust, she, in her onward flight, leaves no footsteps behind her. The word used (“ apad,” wtfhcmt feet} may, indeed, mean not only she who has no feet, but also she who has no slippers, the aurora having, as it appears, lost them ; for the Prince Mitra, while following the beautiful young girl, finds a slipper, which shows her footless, the measure of her foot,—a foot so small that nootherwoman has a foot like it,—and th us we have herein the point round which the interest of the well-known story gathers. It is, as is clear, a myth of the sun chasing the dawn, and just as Cinderella is brilliant and beautiful only while in the ball-room, so the dawn is rosy only when the sun is near. (Cf. ‘ Angelo de Gubernati’s Zool. Myth.,’ I., 31). In the charming Hindu fairy tales collected by Miss Frere, under the title of ‘ Old Deccan Days,’ the story is told of a Rajah who gave his only daughter a pair of slippers made of gold and jewels. She always wore them when walking, and one day, while picking wild flowers on a mountain-side, one of the slippers fell off and was lost in the jungle below. Not long after it was found by a prince when hunting, and taken home by him to, his mother, who urged him to seek for the woman to whose foot it belonged, that he might wed her. Then they sent to every town in the kingdom, but in vain; �Survival in Folk-Lore, Legend, and Dogma. 21 at last, hearing through travellers of a princess who had lost a jewelled slipper, the prince set off for the court of her parents to take the missing treasure, and ask for the princess as his wife, to which both she and her parents consented. The rest of the story is beautifully touching, but I cannot dwell further upon it. The same incidents of search, discovery, and marriage occur in the German version, ‘ Aschenputtel,’ the Serbian story of 1 Papalluga,’ and others; while in the Greek it is the slipper of Rhodbpis, which an eagle steals while she is bathing. Flying with it to Memphis, the bird drops it into the lap of the Egyptian king as he sits on his seat of judgment, with, of course, the same result—search after, discovery, and marriage of its owner. The same marked correspondences are exhibited in the wide-spread tale of Beauty and the Beast. In its Greek form of Psyche and Love ; its German form, 11 the Soaring Lark its Norse form, “ East of the Sun and West of the Moon;” its Gaelic form, the “ Daughter of the Skiesit is a bear, or lion, or dog, or loathly monster of some kind, who, being under the spell of a sorceress, is a splendid man at night, but has to resume his hideous form by day, and who will vanish from his bride if the light fall upon him. “ In the Panchatantra there is the story of a king who asked his pet monkey to watch over him while he was asleep. A bee settled on the royal head, the monkey could not drive her away, so he took his sword, killed the bee, but in killing her killed the king.” A similar parable is put into the mouth of Buddha ; while in the fables of Phsedros a bold man gives himself a severe blow on the face in trying to kill a gnat. In Dasent’s ‘ Tales from the Norse,’ a man saw a goody hard at work banging her husband across the head with a beetle, and over his head she had drawn a shirt without any slit for the neck. 1 Why, goody,’ he asked, ‘ will yon beat your husband to death ? ’ ‘ No,’ she said, ‘ I only must have a hole in this shirt for his neck to come through.’ These illustrations of correspondence could be multi­ plied indefinitely, while a mere list of stories common to �22 The Birth and Growth of My th, and its the different branches of the Aryan stock, and which are older than the dispersion of the Aryan race, would easily transform this lecture into a catalogue occupying some time in detailing. With the exception of allusion to the change effected in Jewish theology by the importation therein of the Persian Ahriman, no reference has been made to the myths of the Semitic family. The complicated mythology of the Aryan races is absent from the Semitic, which may be explained, in a large degree, by the permanence of the radical elements in Semitic words. For example, whereas in the Aryan, the Sans. “ Dyaus ” appears in Greek, not as “Zeus” “the sky,” but as the “god” Zeus, in the Semitic no such alteration would occur. It had a name for the sky and the dawn, but these names were so distinctly felt as appellatives, that they did not become proper names for the gods. There is, however, none the less a large body of Semitic myth awaiting that scientific criticism which has been applied with such signal success to Aryan myth, and when the re­ straint imposed by artificial notions concerning the exceptional character of the writings embodied in the Old Testament are removed, the mythology of the Jews and of kindred races will contribute its share of evidence in support of the similar conditions under which it is held that myth has its birth and growth. Already the identity of some Semitic myths with Aryan myths is apparent, such as those relating to the Creation, the Deluge, the building of Babel, the passage of the Red Sea, the translation of Elijah, and the stories of Abraham and Isaac, of Joseph, and of Job; while Delilah has her representatives in Hindu and Horse legends; the strength of Samson challenges comparison with that of Hercules ; and the story of Jonah’s fish is related to a group of legends with which the Greek myth of Herakles and Hesione, and the nursery tales of Tom Thumb swal­ lowed by the cow, and Little Red Riding Hood by the wolf, are intimately associated. As a concluding illustration, the originals of the familiar “house that Jack built,” and of the “ old woman who couldn’t get her pig over �Survival in Folk-Lore^ Legend^ and Dogma. 23 the stile,” appear to exist in a poem regarded by some Jews as a parable concerning the past and future of the Holy Land. It begins, “ A kid, a kid, my father bought for two pieces of money;” and it goes on to tell how a cat came and ate the kid, and a dog came and bit the cat, and so on to the end. “ Then came the Holy One, blessed be He! and slew the angel of death, who slew the butcher, who killed the ox, that drank the water, that quenched the fire, that burnt the stick, that beat the dog, that bit the cat, that ate the kid, that my father bought for two pieces of money, a kid, a kid.” This composition is in the “ Septer Haggadah,” and is printed at the end of the Jews’ book of Passover ser­ vices in Hebrew and English. (See ‘Halliwell’s Nur­ sery Rhymes,’ pp. 112-17;’ ‘ Tylor’s Prim. Cult.’ I. 78.) I am very conscious how inadequate the treatment of this important subject has been ; but I hope that enough has been said to indicate its importance in its intimate relation to our present intellectual condition. Of its survival in custom, traditional phrases, forgotten ety­ mology of familiar words, occult sciences, &c., I have had no time to speak, and all that must now be said by way of final word is that Mythology, so far as it has been investigated, points to conclusions concerning man’s primitive state identical with those indicated by pre­ historic Archaeology—namely, that the savage races of to-day represent, not the degradation to which it is asserted man has sunk, but the condition out of which all races above the savage have emerged. The advocates of the development-theory do not over­ look tbe fact that civilization has been checked occa­ sionally and locally, for both hemispheres witness to that; neither do they forget that knowledge has been here and there used as an instrument hurtful to culture, nor that civilization intensifies vice as well as virtue; but these do not militate against the general result—a progress in which, marked as it is to-day, none of us see, or, if healthily constituted, desire to see, finality. FEINTED BY C. W. BEYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The birth and growth of myth, and its survival in folk-lore, legend and dogma. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Clodd, Edward [1840-1930] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 23 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: A lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society on Sunday afternoon, 14th February, 1875. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway and part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Printed by C.W. Reynell, London. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Thomas Scott Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1875 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CT126 CT2 N157 Subject The topic of the resource Mythology Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The birth and growth of myth, and its survival in folk-lore, legend and dogma.), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conway Tracts Dogma Folklore Legends Mythology NSS