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ILLUSION AND DELUSION;
OK,
MODERN
PANTHEISM
versus
SPIRITUALISM.'
“The burden of the mystery of all this unintelligible world."—Wordsworth:.
CHARLES BRAY,
AUTHOR OF UTHE PHILOSOPHY OF NECESSITY,” “ A MANUAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY.” ETC.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Sixpence.
��ILLUSION AND DELUSION, ETC.
N Mathematics we can all agree ■ in Physics we have
at least learned to call things by the same name;
we understand what we are talking about so far as to
have certain definite admitted facts in common; but in
Psychology every one at present appears to use words
in a different sense, and we talk of Body and Soul,
Matter and Mind, Spirit and Spirits, Knowledge and
Ideas, Matter andMotion and Borce,without any common
ground of assent, or even knowing whether such things,
in the sense in which we use the terms, have any real
existence or not. In this unfenced, hazy, uncultivated
ground superstition still rides supreme. But is it not
possible, and if so, will it not be desirable, to divest
ourselves of the preconceptions time and authority
have attached to these names, and to see how far known
facts will carry us in the knowledge of such things, as
in others in which we are all agreed 1 Accuracy in
Mental Science is the more important, as all sects and
denominations take advantage of the want of it, and of
the darkness that exists to introduce all sorts of ground
less assumptions, and to reason upon them as established
truths. The differences between metaphysicians, and
much misconception and error at present arise, from
their confounding motion and the thing moving ; force
■with that of which it is the force; passive force, which
I
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Illusion and Delusion.
they call matter, with active force, which they call
spirit. The question is, have we knowledge enough
to enable us to substitute such very vague conceptions
on these and similar fundamental principles for the
more accurate ones which science requires? I think
we have.
“ All our conceptions,” says James Hinton, in 1 Man
and his Dwelling-Place,’ “ are based on the implied pos
tulate that the world is as it appears. . . . The
advance of knowledge consists in the substitution of
accurate conceptions for natural ones.” This implies
that our natural conceptions are not accurate ones, and
such will be found to be universally the case. In no
single instance is the world what it appears to be tothe common sense or to the vulgar eye. It is a com
plete illusion to all, and delusion to those who believe
in its real existence as it appears to us. The delusion
is not more complete in those who believe that Heaven
is above, in a world that turns round every twenty-four
hours, and in which therefore there can be no above
and below, than it is with respect to the existence of
the earth itself. Let us take a single illustration of the
common belief, and examine it thoroughly by the light
of science. The world, as it appears to the common
sense, is based on the conception that colour is some
thing that belongs to bodies outside ourselves, and the
world without colour would lose all its beauty. And
yet what we call colour is a nervous sensibility, an
idea, a feeling within ourselves. The vulgar idea is
that the green is in the grass, whereas the green is in
ourselves. Equally it will be found that all the other
attributes or qualities ascribed to matter are attributes
of mind and not of matter, and that the world itself is
but an illusion and delusion—a great ghost or mental
spectre. All that is known of matter is its capability
of creating within us these Illusions. Professor Tyn
dall says, “ The atoms of luminous bodies vibrating,
communicate their vibrations to the ether in which they
�Illusion and Delusion.
5
swing, being propagated through it in waves ; these
waves enter the pupil, cross the ball, and impinge upon
the retina, at the back of the eye. The motion of the
ether then communicated to the retina is transmitted
thence along the optic nerve of the brain, and there
announces itself to consciousness as light;.” It would
take, he tells us, 699 million of millions of such waves
to enter the eye in a single second to produce the im
pression we call violet in the brain. We are not
required to count these waves, because that would take
some little time, but as 57,000 of such waves fill an
inch, and light travels at the rate of 192,000 miles in a
.second, we have only to bring the miles into inches
and then multiply one by the other to get the million
■of millions required. It takes 477 millions of millions
of such waves to produce the colour we call red, and
577 millions of millions to produce green. Now let
us examine these facts. The effect produced by this
wonderful motion from without is a nervous impression,
a sensation of light, an idea of colour. Our perception
of colour, it is now known, is dependent upon a parti
cular part of the brain, for if that part of the brain is
not there, or deficient in quantity, people have no
*
perception of colour, i.e., are colour blind, or can only
partially distinguish colours. How, then, can colour
be in the object ? or what possible resemblance or sim* Sir David Brewster says that as many as one person in
twenty-eight cannot distinguish some colours from.others, and
that about one in ninety are colour blind, that is, cannot see
colours at all. Any one, in such cases, may easily satisfy
himself that it is the brain that is deficient; for if he puts his
thumb on the centre of the eye-bsow he will find an indenta
tion enabling him to touch the eye—his thumb will rest upon
the eye-ball. People are equally blind, in about the same
proportion, in other mental faculties. They may be fluent in
speech, full of facts, well read in history, with a generally
good memory, so as to be able to make a great display, and
yet be blind in the reasoning power ; and people are seldom
conscious of their own mental deficiencies, even in colour,
unless they are quite colour blind.
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Illusion and Delusion.
ilitude can there be between our feeling or idea and the
object which we say is coloured? The immediate
antecedent of our idea of colour is the motion of the
brain; this motion is communicated, through the eye
and retina, by the ether, and the ether is set in motion
by the reflex action of what we erroneously call the
coloured body. What this particular action is that
produces this effect upon the ether we have no means
whatever of knowing; we only know that it has tn
produce 122 millions of millions of knocks on the eye
less per second from the ether waves to produce the
green colour than the violet, and 100 millions of mil
lions less to produce the red than the green. Then
what is colour ? An idea or feeling within ourselves,
requiring all these links in the chain, and all their
wonderfully varied modes of motion, to produce it. If
any link in the chain is absent—if the brain, or the
retina, or the eye-ball, or the waves of ether, or the
reflex action on the ether, are not there, the effect is
not produced. ' It has probably taken millions of years
to perfect this relationship—to create this faculty of
mind which entirely depends upon this continuous
adjustment of internal relations to external ones. Tyn
dall says, “ We have rays of too high and too low a
pitch to be visible, that is, they are incapable of excit
ing any sensation, or creating within us any idea of
colour.'” Where, then, is the colour? Very nearly the
same motions go on outside of us without creating any
idea of colour or consciousness on our part. The
same, he -says, “ may be said of sound, and probably
sounds are heard by injects, which entirely escape our
perceptions ; and both as regards light and sound, our
organs of -sight and hearing embrace a certain practical
range, beyond which, on both sides, though the ob
jective cause exists, our nerves cease to be influenced
by it.” Metaphysicians used to divide the qualities or
properties of matter into primary and secondary; the
primary—extension, &c., were supposed to belong to
�Illusion and Delusion.
7
things themselves : the secondary—colour, &c., to our
selves ; but observation has shown that there is no
ground for this distinction, no difference between
primary and secondary, that all are equally dependent
upon the action of the brain. Extension, that is, form
and size, as well as weight, order, relative position, &c.,
are all formed in the mind like colour by the action of
forces from without, which set the brain in motion. It
is an illusion and delusion to suppose that there is
anything without ourselves resembling these percep
tions. Our perceptions are all we know or are con
scious of, and how can a perception be like an object,
or anything but itself ? There are no coloured forms
without us ; coloured forms are perceptions. All that
we know of without us are certain powers or forces,
producing certain motions which produce within us
these perceptions, the aggregate of which perceptions
we call the mind, and we are under the delusion that
they really exist out of our own minds, constituting
the external world. The world, however, as we con
ceive it, is created by the peculiar constitution of the
nervous system, which nervous system has been grad
ually increasing in size and complexity since the first
appearance of life on this earth, supposed to be some
100 millions of years ago. Each creature’s ideas, or
forms of thought, depend upon its nervous system, and
vary as that system varies, so that each animal creates
its own world, and carries it about in its own head, that
world varying as the size and Rapacity of that head
varies.
There is not one world, then, but thousands of
worlds, as each creature creates its own, and all made
out of the same stuff, which is not matter, but mind.
What we call matter is an illusion and delusion.
What there may be in reality we do not know, we only
know of something that affects us in a certain way, for
“ we know nothing of- objects, but the sensations we
have from them.” Locke says (book ii., chap. 23, § 29),
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Illusion and Delusion.
“ The simple ideas we receive from sensation and reflec
tion are the boundaries of our thoughts, beyond which
the mind, whatever effort it would make, is not able to
advance one jot.” David Hume only puts this a little
more emphatically. He says, “We may observe that
it is universally allowed by philosophers, and is besides
pretty obvious of itself, that nothing is ever present with
the mind but its perceptions or impressions and ideas,
and that external objects become
k
*nown
to us only by
the perceptions they occasion. Now, since nothing is
ever present to the mind but perceptions, and since all
ideas are derived from something antecedent to the
mind, it follows that it is impossible for us so much as to
conceive or form an idea of anyth ing specifically different
from ideas and impressions. Let us fix our ideas out
of ourselves as much as possible; let us chase our
imaginations to the heavens, or to the utmost limit of
the universe; we never really advance a step beyond
ourselves, nor can perceive any kind of existence but
those perceptions which have appeared in that narrow
compass.” That is, no creature can advance a single
step beyond the little world its own brain has created.
He knows nothing of matter, but only of his idea of
matter ; nor of spirit, but of his idea of it; and what
relation these ideas bear to the real truth, and whether
there is any real difference between matter and spirit
he has no means of knowing. .Knowing and perceiving
are to us the same thing. We know or are conscious of
our own perceptions, and what those perceptions are in
themselves we do not know. We know nothing of the
real or essential nature of anything. Any supposed
difference, then, between matter and spirit or between
mind and matter, may be, as far as we know, and pro
bably is, as we shall see, a delusion. All dogmatizing
about such supposed differences proceeds from ignorance,
and all theories based upon them must fall to the
ground, for if we do not know what matter is or what
spirit is, only their different modes of motion or mani
�Illusion and Delusion.
9
festation, how can we know that they differ from each
other, except in such manifestations ?
The brain, and the nervous system that travels to and
from this great nervous centre, have been of> very slow
growth. The brain of a fish bears about the average
proportion to the spinal cord of 2 to 1 ; of the reptile,
of 2 J to 1 ; the bird, 3 to 1; the animal, 4 to 1; and,
lastly, man averages 23 to 1. Sensibility or power of
feeling, which in man we call mental energy, increases
as we thus rise in the scale of being, and always in
proportion to the enlargement and complexity of the
brain and nervous system ; from the creature who is all
stomach to a London Aiderman, who is sometimes
supposed to possess feelings and faculties beyond.
The faculties, both of feeling and intellect, have been
gradually formed during countless ages by the continu
ous adjustment of internal relations to external neces
sities. First, we have exercise, then habit, attended
with increase of structure, this structure is transmitted
to offspring with its functions, and we have then spon
taneous action or instinct as it is called. All our faculties
are instincts,-—organized experience or habits that have
become structure transmitted from parent to offspring,
through innumerable generations, from variety to
variety. It is a most complicated relationship this be
tween external forces and our perceptions, as we have
seen in the faculty which enables us to perceive colour,
and has been doubtless countless ages forming, so that
the whole body upon which it and our other faculties
depend is the most wonderful contrivance of creative
skill with which we are acquainted or can conceive.
The way in which this body and mind have been built
up, part added to part, and function to function, through
the chain of being, since life first appeared on this earth,
probably 100 million years ago, is the great marvel,
and yet we hear endless talk of spirits that possess all
these attributes without this previous probation, and of
souls to whom this wonderful body is only a clog and
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Illusion and Delusion.
hindrance to its naturally more perfect action; but
there is not a single fact on record from which we can
infer that there is or can be anywhere such a thing as a
disembodied spirit, and as to this soul, whatever that
may be, we know its action is determined entirely by
the body.
First, we have the monad, the simplest of all organisms,,
of which seven species are at present known. These
do not present any division of functions or of organs.
One of these species, discovered by Huxley, inhabits
the sea at great depths, covering the ground with a sort
of network, and is so homogeneous in its construction
that its spontaneous generation is not thought improb
able. This monad becomes a cell, the original starting
point of all plants and animals. Man at the out
set of his existence, like every other animal, is only an
egg, a simple cell, of almost invisible proportions. This
egg after fecundation becomes an embryo. The female
supplies the egg, the male the fecundation, and there
is considerable dispute as to which performs the most
important part in the production of the new being. It
is asked, “ Does the mother merely supply, as it were,
by the ovum a cradle for the incipient man, and after
wards feed and nurse it until birth; or is it that the
germ is in the ovum of the mother, to which nothing
more than vital action stimulating it to growth is
imparted by the father1?” We know that, however
important a part the woman may play in influencing
through her own nervous system the nervous organiza
tion of the child, yet that the man supplies the germ, and
often thus transmits to his offspring his colour of hair, or
other bodily features, tendencies to disease, and other
characteristics, and also his mental aptitudes, habits, and
idiosyncracies,—some peculiar habits that belonged to the
father not manifesting themselves till late in life. So
early is the soul under the influence of structure and
organisation, that is, of the body. It is significant that the
grades through which man passes in his passage through
�Illusion and Delusion.
[i
the womb are the same in order as the history of the
earth- shows us the different forms of animals have
been, viz., fishes, amphibia, reptiles, birds, and mam
mals, so that we have not only the evolution of the
ages, but the same thing repeated at the gestation
of every superior animal, and this development of the
individual from his cell is, if anything, more difficult to
explain than that of the species, inasmuch as it is ac
complished in so comparatively short a time. There is
nothing more wonderful than the hatching of a bird’s
egg, unless it is the hatching of a man. The different
classes in the earliest stages of their embryonic develop
ment cannot be distinguished from each other, and later
man and the dog are almost identical, and when develop
ment in man is arrested, as in the idiot, no higher
functions are manifested than in some of the lowest
animals, and vastly inferior to the dog. “ Mr Marshall
has recently examined and described the brains of two
idiots of European descent. He found the convolutions
to be fewer in number, individually less complex,
broader, and smoother than in the apes.” “ In this
respect,” he says, “the idiot’s brains are even more
simple than that of the gibbon, and approach that of
the baboon.” The proportion of the weight of brain
to that of body was extraordinarily diminished. We
learn, then, that when man is born with a brain no
higher —— indeed lower —- than that of an ape, he
may have the convolutions fewer in number, and
individually less complex than they are in the brain of
a chimpanzee and an orang; the human brain may
revert to, or fall below that type of development from
which, if the theory of Darwin be true, it has gradually
ascended by evolution through the ages.” * “ The
native Australian, who is one of the lowest existing
savages, has no words in his language to express such
exalted ideas as justice, love, virtue, mercy; he has no
such ideas in his mind, and cannot comprehend them.
* Body and Mind, p. 46. By Dr Henry Maudsley.
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‘
Illusion and Delusion.
The vesicular neurine, which should embody them in
its constitution and manifest them in its functions, has
not been developed in his convolutions ; he is as incap
able, therefore, of the higher mental displays of abstract
reasoning and moral feeling as an idiot is, and for a
like reason.” * M. Taine, speaking of the Bearn
peasants, says, “ Here men are thin and pale ; their
bones protrude, and their features are large and severe,
like their mountains. An eternal struggle with the soil
has made-women stunted as well as plants ; it has left
in their eyes a vague expression of melancholy and
reflection. . . . The impressions of the soul and
body modify in the long run the body and the soul;
the race moulds the individual, and the country moulds
the race. A degree of heat in the atmosphere and of
inclination in the soil is the primary cause of our
faculties and passions. . . . The productions of
the human mind, as well as those of organic life, are
only to be explained by the atmosphere in which they
thrive.” On the other side, when the climatic influences
are not too depressing, the necessity which is the
mother of invention, gives increased activity to the
brain, and with it increased size. Centuries of skinning
flints have bred the finest race in Scotland that there is
in the world, and the Scotch brain is the largest in the
world.
These are now well known and acknowledged facts.
The mind depends upon the brain, and the brain upon
the body of which it is part, and the body, not upon
the soul, but upon Life. “ Our thoughts,” says Huxley,
“ are the expression of molecular changes in that matter
of life which is the source of our other vital phenomena.”
Those molecular changes depend upon the perfect action
of every other part of the body, and “ it behoves us
clearly to realize the broad fact, which has most wide
reaching consequence in mental physiology and pathol°gy, that all parts of the body, the highest and the
* Body and Mind, p. 56.
�Illusion and Delusion.
13
lowest, have a sympathy with one another more intel
ligent than conscious intelligence can yet or perhaps
ever will, conceive ; that there is not an organic motion
visible or invisible ministrant to the noblest or to the
most humble purposes, which does not work its appointed
effect in the complex recesses of mind ; that the mind
as the crowning achievement of organization, and the
. consummation and outcome of all its energies, really
comprehends the bodily life. . . . Lower the
supply of blood to the brain below a certain level, and
the power of thinking is abolished ; the brain will then
no more do mental work than a water-wheel will move
the machinery of the mill when the water is lowered
so as not to touch it.” *
The Spiritists, 'or Spiritualists, as they improperly
call themselves, disregard or altogether ignore this close
and necessary connection between mind and body,—
this nice adaptation of one to the other. They think
they have observed a class of phenomena which prove
that mind can exist separately from body ; that spirits
and souls have new faculties adapted to their new
*
sphere of action, without having any idea, however, of
how such faculties are formed. The mental faculties
with which we are acquainted are a nice adaptation of'
internal to external requirements—necessitating certain
movements—which have taken ages to form. But the
Spiritualists, by a sort of hocus-pocus or thimble-rigging
with the words body, mind, soul, have created a sys
tem which, in my opinion, falls to pieces immediately
we know definitely what is meant by such terms.
I think we have sufficient knowledge now to show
definitely what there is that really corresponds to these
words.
We have seen what a perfect piece of mechanism the
body is, “fearfully and wonderfully made
the ques
tion is, what is the power that works it ? It is pre
cisely the same as works the steam-engine, and it re* Body and Mind, p. 102.
Dr Maudsley.
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Illusion and Delusion.
quires stoking very much in the same way, and if it is
not stoked or fed regularly it will not go. The source
of this power, as at present traced by us, is the sun;
sun-power divorces the carbon.from the oxygen in
plants, and when the carbon and oxygen come to
gether again this power is restored, whether in the fire
of a steam-engine or in the slower combustion of the
human body. The force of heat is generated, known
to us by its mode of motion. This heat, this peculiar
mode of motion, is correlated or transformed in its
passage through the body into various other modes of
motion, and which we call the functions of different
organs, until it causes the molecular motion of the
brain, on which it resumes consciousness or becomes
sensibility. A function is a force indicating a specific
mode of action. Force seems to intensify as it passes
through the body, one equivalent of chemical force
corresponding to several equivalents of heat or inferior
force, and brain or mental force is the most concen
trated of all. Mind is the highest development of Force.
But what is Force ? We know that it is persistent,
or that it cannot be made to cease to exist, and therefore ■
it is an entity. This admitted, and it cannot now be
disputed, and we have the gist of the whole matter.
It explains numberless difficulties both in psychology
and physics, and here will be found, in my opinion, the
explanation of the phenomena which now so perplex
sincere Spiritualists. Force is not a function of matter,
although it must be the force of something—of some
entity; matter only conditions it, that is, changes its
modes of manifestation ; it is not motion, but the
cause of motion. It is known to us only in its modes
of motion, and hitherto it has been confounded with
motion, and hereby we have lost the secret of much
that has appeared mysterious. Force, as it has been
known to us only by its manifestations, is what we
have been accustomed to call a spiritual entity. If I
turn the handle of a grindstone, force passes from me
�Illusion and Delusion.
*5
into the grindstone, and does its work; as soon as that
force has passed’ out, causing motion elsewhere, the
motion I caused in the grindstone ceases. If I wind
np a watch, force passes from me into the watch com
pressing the spring ; as it passes out, setting the whole
machine in regulated motion, it tells the time. Force
is the active principle in nature, causing motion every
where ; this motion acts in a certain order for a given
purpose, that is, it acts intelligently, and if you add in
telligence to force we have what we call mind or will.
Mind acts both consciously and unconsciously, or what
is called automatically, and what we call physical force
is probably automatic mind.
Now, what happens in the creation of what we call
mind ? The force we take in with the food, after un
dergoing various transformations in the body, is worked
up °into sensibility or consciousness, by . inducing a
peculiar motion in the brain, which we call its molecular
action, so that, as Dr Huxley tells us, “ Consciousness
and molecular action are capable of being expressed by
one another, just as heat and mechanical action are
capable of being expressed in terms of one another.
Consciousness requires so much force to produce it, and
the intensity of an idea or feeling is in proportion to the
amount consumed, and that is generally in proportion to
the size of the nervous centre, or organ, or specialized part
of the brain through which it passes. Thus conscious
ness, like heat, has also its mechanical equivalents.. The
brain, already in motion, is acted upon from without
through the medium of the senses, and the union of
the specific force within with the specific force without
produces an idea which we call a perception. We
have seen how our perception of colour is produced,
and the extraordinary complicated action that is re
quired. If any link in this long chain of outward
sequences is wanting, the idea is not produced ; and if
the food, or internal force is not supplied, or the mole
cular action of the brain is interfered with, by pressure
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Illusion and Delusion.
upon it, there is no consciousness—no ideas or feelings
—and millions of millions of ether wave motions with
out are required to give a simple perception of colour.
Other ideas are formed in the same way, by the union
of force within with force without. We have ideas of
form, size, weight, which together give us our ideas of
extension and solidity, and which are no more solid
and extended than music and colour are. The popular
notion of these things is a belief in that which in fact
does not exist. Forces act upon us from without and
give us what we call perceptions, these are taken up by
other parts of the brain, by what we call our faculties
of relative perception, comparison, causality, &c., and
in this way the external world is created. But it is
only our idea of an external world, which must vary as
the specific structure of the brain varies upon which
that idea depends. But although the world, as we
conceive of it, exists only in our ideas, something exists,
which is real independent of our thoughts, something
that we call force, or a system of forces. Light and
sound, the mental states, might cease to exist, but their
vibratory causes without us would not, and they might
affect other beings'differently organized in quite a dif
ferent way; that which produced light m us might pro
duce sound, or other sensations or ideas, in them, and
vice versa. Perception is the direct action of force
without; Conception is the internal action of the brain
only, producing the same ideas but less vivid; Memory
is a repetition of this action in a given form; Imagina
tion is the re-combination in the brain itself of these
ideas, strong in proportion to the great or less activity
of the brain; and Judgment is either a reference of a
simple perception to its external source, or, as more
generally understood, the action of one class of faculties
upon the others, inducing, among other things, what is
called self-consciousness and reason. These are not
primitive or innate faculties of mind—they have no
organs, they are only modes of action of all the faculties.
�17
Illusion and Delusion.
To be conscious and to know, or consciousness and
knowing, are to us the same things. Consciousness
and sensibility are also the same things—and sensi
bility we divide into ideas and feelings. Knowing a
thing and our idea of it are the same, and an idea
cannot be like anything but itself. We cannot in our
knowledge get beyond or even behind that idea, and it
tells us nothing of itself, still less of anything but itself.
When, then, we speak of matter and spirit, of body,
mind, and soul, as different in themselves, we speak of
what we can and do know nothing about; we speak of
only our ideas of such things, and those ideas do not
differ in themselves, but are the same. The differences
we think we see are differences in modes of action only.
Almost all the controversies on these subjects are
based upon the supposed essential differences in these
objects, of which differences, if any such exist, we
know really nothing. When we talk of the material
man, we mean our idea of him, but that idea is what
has been called spirit.
Having stated facts as they are at present known to
us, let us now give a few definitions based upon them.
Matter is the unknown cause of states of con
sciousness. It produces different sensations in us
by its different modes of motion, and Science is the
mere registration of these different modes of motion.
Men of science give fine names to these motions, and
having named them, assume that they know all about
them, when in fact they know nothing but of these
modes of motion.
‘ ‘ Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to he:
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And thou, 0 Lord, art more than they.”
—Tennyson.
The consciousness, idea, or perception of matter is
the union of the force within, prepared by the molecu
lar action of the brain, and the force without. We
B
�18
Illusion and Delusion.
have matter, motion, and force. Motion, which by
physicists is almost always confounded with its cause,
is nothing, it is a mere change of place, and is of course
inseparable from the thing moving. Force is the
active cause of all motion, and passive force, which is
what we call matter, is the cause of the peculiar and
specific direction which the force takes, its correlation
or transformation. It is force only that acts upon us,
that is upon our bodies or structures, and those struc
tures, when examined, resolve themselves into centres
of force. The more we examine the more the convic
tion is forced upon us that there is but one stuff out of
which all things are made, and that is force, or rather
the unknown of which force is the force. Huxley says,
“ Every form is force visible ; a form of rest is a bal
ance of forces; a form undergoing change is the pre
dominance of one over others.'"’ Matter and mind are
probably the same in essence ; I say probably, for we
know nothing of essences, and we do not know there
fore that there is any difference. Dr Carpenter says,
matter possesses extension, or occupies space, while
mind has no such property; but surely if individual
mind exists, and one mind exists separate and apart
from another, there must be somewhere where it exists,
and that somewhere is what we call space. But if ex
tension is only a form of thought, and there is only
force or mind, then space, like extension, is a form of
thought, or purely subjective, and the universe, with
its supposed enormous distances from star to star, must
be something very different to what we conceive
of it.
Spirit is only sublimated or etherialised matter.
Spirits and souls are, with most people, the same things.
Huxley tells us “ that the alchemists called the volatile
liquid which they obtained from wine, ‘spirits’ of
wine, and as the ‘ spiritus ’ or breath of a man was
thought to be the most refined or subtle part of him,
the intelligent essence of man was also conceived as a
�Illusion and Delusion.
19
sort of breath or spirit; and by analogy, the most re
fined essence of anything was called ‘spirit.’ And
thus it has come about that we use the same word for
soul of man and for a glass of gin.”
Mind.—Sensibility, as distinguished from insensi
bility, or consciousness, as distinguished from uncon
sciousness, is what we call mind. As protoplasm is the
physical base of life, so sensibility is the spiritual base
of mind, the specific form it takes depending on organ
isation. There is no idea or feeling but is connected
with the action of brain or nervous system. The spe
cific action of certain parts of the brain we call forms
of thought, the specific action of other parts we call
feelings, which we divide into propensities and senti
ments. We receive a number of separate impressions
from without, a form of thought gives them unity and
individuality, which unity we call matter, body, or
substance; we have a succession of separate and inde
pendent thoughts and feelings, the same faculty of
mind, or form of thought, gives unity to them also, and
we call them our mind, although it is clear that all the
unity they possess is. given them by a form of thought,
and that each separate thought and feeling is a distinct
entity. The mind is one whole, we are told—and much
is based upon the assumption—and yet it is evident
the idea of individual mind as a whole is a creation
of the mind, in the same way as colour is ; or rather it
is a whole only in the same sense as the body is, which
is composed of many parts, and is always changing
them, so the mind is composed of many ideas and feel
ings constantly changing.
The unity of mind is an illusion, there are individual
thoughts and feelings, and that is all. The unity of
any mind but the one Great Supreme, is a delusion.
Faith, hope, resignation, and all the soul’s highest
aspirations, exist only from their connection, like colour
and music, with organisation; they are feelings spe
cialised by the peculiar structure of certain nervous
�20
Illusion and Delusion.
centres, and if that organisation is not there, like colour,
they do not and cannot exist.
But there must be a substratum of consciousness, a
something that is conscious. What is that? Mind,
says one, soul, says another, brain or matter, says a third,
but none of these are right. The force within, it is,
that under brain action becomes conscious, and the
quantity of this force consumed is always proportionate
to the vividness of the idea or the amount of feeling.
Mental activity and nerve force are the same; mental
force is the strongest of all forces, and being persistent,
it passes from the state we call consciousness into all
the motions of the body, and probably into all the
extraordinary phenomena of so-called spiritual manifes
tations. We are told that “ the nerve and brain organism
is the immediate substratum which has the conscious
ness.” This is a mistake; it is the “ force” that be
comes consciousness, which the brain does not originate,
but only conditions. Again, “the nervous organism,
which is the conscious agent, reacts through the muscles
upon the external world.” Here, also, it is not the
organism, but the force that is the conscious agent, and
reacts, &c. Consciousness is said to be immaterial,
but consciousness tells us nothing of its own nature,
nothing of either material or immaterial.
The Soul.—It is this substratum of consciousness
that is usually called the soul, but in this sense it is
the active principle, conscious or unconscious, of all
things. Man, however, is supposed to have a special
soul of his own. I must confess, however, that I have
not been able to find it, or any use for it. If there is
a special soul, where does it come from? when and how
does it enter into him ? In the germ in which lie
folded up many of the mental attributes of the future
man ? or during what period of gestation, at what period
of animal evolution ? or at birth? No ; the poet says,
“ there lives and moves a soul in all things, and that
�Illusion and Delusion.
21
soul is God ■, ” arid the poet, I think, will prove to be
right.
The Self, the Ego.—Intimately connected with
this soul is the self or ego ; but this also is an illusion
and delusion. The “ ego” is a mere form of thought—
that is, self-consciousness is formed by the brain. Thus
we say “ I think,” when all we are warranted in saying
is, that “ thinking is.” The “ I” comprises both body
and mind, hut the body does not think, it only “con
ditions ” or gives the “form” to thought, therefore “I
think” is wrong. There is a succession of thoughts,
and that is all that we find in the analysis of conscious
ness. The “ I ” of consciousness is an intuition, but
intuitions are not always truths, although they are
generally accepted' as such. Intuitions or instincts
are specialised actions of the brain, hereditarily trans
mitted, to answer definite purposes. The body is con
stantly changing, and the mind is only a change of
thought corresponding; neither body nor mind are iden
tical or the same for any two seconds together, but are
part of, and in constant flux with, all the forces around ;
nevertheless, a part of the brain, whose function it is,
produces the “ ego,” or the sense of individuality, and
personal identity. This part of the brain is sometimes
diseased, and then the “I” or sense of identity is lost,
as is well known in some cases of insanity, and of
double consciousness. This ego has about the same
reality as the external world; there must be something
that produces the feeling, and that is all. It is charac
teristic of living organisms to replace the new material
precisely in the place of the old. A mark on the body
continues through life, the same on the brain, the new
material is placed round the old impressions, so that the
forms of thought and feeling turned out by it are very
nearly, if not precisely, the same. It is the trans
mitted experience of this result that has produced the
intuitional “ I,” or the feeling of identity. Memory is
the result of impressions on the brain, deep and vivid
�22
Illusion and Delusion.
in proportion to our youth and susceptibility. In old
age, when our animal vigour is exhausted, and less
force passes through the brain, and the brain itself be
comes less susceptible of impression, the old, or rather
the early impressions resume their sway, and we return
to our habits of feeling and thinking, and our early
memories. “If,” says Bishop Butler, in his “Analogy,”
“ the old man on the verge of the grave is the same as
the child within the womb, if the mutilated soldier is
conscious that no part of himself is, if to the very edge
of that change which we call death we have watched
the force of mind and soul continued in all its keen
ness, then the belief that what each man calls himself
will be destroyed when the material surroundings which
have been often changed without affecting him are dis
solved, is not justified by anything we see in the world
around us.” But material surroundings never do
change without affecting him, and close observation
show's that a change of mind always accompanies a
change of body.
The Will is generally regarded as our commander,
and free. This is another delusion. It is entirely a
servant, and necessarily obeys cither the last dictate of
the understanding or some strong impulse or feeling.
No doubt the will has a local habitation in the brain,
in a position in which it can best execute these com
mands. The intellect or feeling having determined
what to do, with a power proportioned to the size of
the organs from which the determination proceeds, the
will, like a trigger to the mind, lets off this force in the
direction of the purpose aimed at. Under the very
top of the head, where firmness lies, is the part of the
brain connected with the Ego, and again under this, in
the base of the brain, above the medulla oblongata, is
most probably the part connected wdth the will. This
specialises the control over different muscles. We say
“ I will,” and a bundle of isolated nerve-threads, com
municating with particular portions of the central
�Illusion and Delusion.
23
nervous system, can set to work any set of muscles
through the aid of the vaso-motor nerves, which close
or liberate the flow of blood to any particular part of
the central system.
Truth.—If, then, in the process of substituting
accurate conceptions for “ common sense ” ones we are
obliged to come to the conviction that the latter, or the
ordinary ideas of matter, mind, soul, the I, and the
free will are illusions and delusions, how is it that we
believe in them ? As these ideas result from the natu
ral exercise of our faculties—that is, as it is the func
tion of the brain to produce these illusions, so there is
-a part of the brain whose function it is to produce be
lief in them, or to give the sense of their reality. Each
faculty has its function, and it is natural to us to be
lieve in the result of its activity, but that may have no
relation to the real truth about any tiling. What, then,
is truth ? Truth, to us, is the record of the succession
-of our own consciousness, and of how that is affected
by the infinitely varied modes of motion without us.
But how distinguish the internal workings of our own
mind or brain, our active imaginings, from that which
takes .place without us, and which ought to be the
same to all beings similarly organised ? Observation
•and experience is the test of truth. Different and in
dependent individuals question nature, and if they
invariably get the same answer—that is, the same im
pressions,—that we call the truth. But this is merely
how we are impressed; it tells us nothing more, and
that impression can be like nothing but itself; still it
is all we can know, which is merely affirming what all
philosophers now admit, that our knowledge is only
relative, and not absolute. However it may affect our
•self-conceit, this relative knowledge is all we have, or
probably can have, and it is all that can be of any use
to us. To know what things are in themselves is pro
bably impossible to finite creatures, and how such
things affect other intelligences is of comparatively little
�24
Illusion and Delusion.
consequence to us. The object of nature does not
appear to be to give us any real knowledge, only to in
duce that kind of action in us that shall harmonise
with the things without us, and produce and perpetuate
the largest amount of enjoyment. All opinions may
be erroneous, but all are thus made salutory ; for “ it
is manifest,” as Bishop Butler observes, “ that nothing
can be of consequence to mankind, or any creature, but
happiness.” In this department alone has man any
real knowledge, all else is illusion and delusion. The
knowledge of pains and pleasures is alone absolute
knowledge, and to increase the sum of the pleasures,
the aggregate of which constitutes happiness, has this
wonderful phantasmagoria of a world been produced.
Man is “ the heir of all the ages,” and it has taken
ages to put him together in his present form. The
lowest forms of animal life appeared first, and arenecessary steps to the evolution of the highest. He
has passed through all grades, as is now illustrated in
his passage through the womb. We trace the gradual
evolution and specialisation of nerve centres from the
first appearance of nerve tissue in the lowest animals to
the complex structure of the nervous system of man.
What is rudimentary in savage man becomes more fully
developed as civilisation advances, and this “ progres
sive evolution of the human brain is a proof that wedo inherit, as a natural endowment, the laboured ac
quisitions of our ancestors. The added structure repre
sents, as it were, the embodied experience and memories
of the race..”* And this embodied experience or instinct
represents 30 per cent, of the added structure, which
is the difference in weight between the brains of savage
and civilised man. I know it is customary to speak of
the body, of the material man, in terms of depreciation
and reproach, as merely the instrument by which the
mind communicates with the world without, &c., but
* “Body and Mind,” p. 59, by Dr H. Maudsley.
�Illusion and Delusion.'
25
there is not the slightest evidence to show that mind, asknown to us-—that is, as specialised for special pur
poses here, can act separately or independently from
the body. Body and the succession of thought and
feeling which we call mind, are one and indivisible.
“ Life,” says Schelling, “ is the tendency to individua
tion.” The forces of nature are confined within definite
limits, and work towards a given object. The evolu
tion of the brain depends upon life ; and mind, as it is
specialised in human ideas and feelings, is the result of
brain action. The soul—that is, force, may exist as an
independent essence, but faith, hope, charity, and all
its other supposed attributes exist only from their con
nection, like colour, with organisation. These senti
ments, and the moral feelings generally, have been spe
cialised for a special purpose connected with the rela
tion of man to his fellows. Milton, among our great
and unprejudiced minds, and quite independent of
recent discoveries in cerebral physiology, perceived this
oneness of body and mind. He says, in his “ Treatise
on Christian Doctrine,” “ That man is a living being,
intrinsically and properly one and individual, not com
pound or separable, not, according' to the common
opinion, made up and framed of two distinct and differ
ent natures, as of soul and body—but the whole man
is soul, and the soul man; that is to say, a body, or'
substance, individual, animated, sensitive, and rational.”
This unity of body and mind is now generally ad
mitted by physiologists and scientific men generally,
and those who hold the unity only without, further
investigation into what has been called matter are
called Materialists, which is considered to be a term of
reproach. The Spiritualists think that they have dis
covered a class of phenomena which prove that man is
“ compound or separable,” and that these manifesta
tions appear at the present time as a sort of special
revelation to counteract the above materialistic tendency
�2,6
Illusion and Delusion.
of the age. The late hard-headed mathematician Au
gustus de Morgan, speaking of these phenomena, many
•of which he had himself witnessed, says, “When it
-comes to what is the cause of these phenomena, I find
I cannot adopt any explanation which has yet been
suggested. If I were bound to choose among things
that I can conceive, I should say that there is some
sort of action, of some combination of will, intellect,
and physical power, which is not that of any of the
human beings present. But thinking it very likely
that the universe may- contain a few agencies, say half
■a million, about which no man knows anything, I can
not but suspect that a-small proportion of these agen
cies, say five thousand, may be severally competent to
the production of all the phenomena, or may be quite
up to the task among them. The physical explana
tions which I have seen are easy, but miserably insuffi
cient ; the spiritual hypothesis is sufficient, but ponder. ously difficult.” In the early ages of the world, in the
prevalent ignorance of physics, spirits were the supposed
agents in all those unknown causes which we now
trace to natural law. Psychology is at the present
time where physics was in those early ages, and again
we have recourse to spirits to help us out of our diffi
culties, and supplement our ignorance. And more
than that, these spirits are called up to neutralise and
make of no avail the knowledge we have acquired.
But I would ask the Spiritualists, “Would it not be
better to pause, with Professor de Morgan, until we
■know more, rather than commit ourselves to a ‘ future
state’ so little desirable?” for, as the Professor says, ‘ if
these things be spirits, they show that pretenders, cox
combs, and liars are to Le found on the other side of
the grave as well as this,’ and all seem to have retro
graded, both in mind and feeling, since they were in
the body. Surely we had better satisfy ourselves with
nature’s course, and be content to pass on our powers
•of body and mind, in endless progress, to coming gene-
�Illusion and Delusion.
1”]
rations, than continue our own individual existence
under such conditions.
This idea of ghosts and apparitions and a future state
does not ever appear to have been a comfortable one
all the world over. Among savages, when a chief died
his wives and horses and dogs were slain at his tomb,
that he might have the use of them in the happy hunt
ing grounds where he had gone. Hindoo widows were
burnt (burnt themselves, it was said) on the funeral
pile in the same spirit, and at the present time, although
widows are not burnt, their life is one of continual
penance. A Hindoo widow obtains her husband’s pro
perty, that she may devote it to oblations and cere
monies for the good of her husband’s soul. Should
the lady marry again, the husband is supposed to have
a very bad time of it below, and the daring couple be■corne literally outcasts from all society, and all that
makes life enjoyable. In China this fear of ghosts is
the great barrier to all progress. It is not the living,
but the dead that rule. There can be no railroads, lest
in laying them down the bodies of the dead should be
disturbed, and relations should be haunted by their
-spirits. In this and other Christian countries a future
state is looked upon as a sort of necessary aid to the
policeman, and children are asked if they know where
they will “go to” if they steal or tell a lie. We are
also told by Mr Thomas Wright, the journeyman
■engineer, “ that it is well for society that the masses
have this hope and belief, or they would not endure
the present so patiently as they have done and do.”
Their belief is that the condition of rich and poor will
be reversed in another world, if they do not even rejoice
a little over the fate of Dives. But this kind of con
solation does not appear to be confined altogether to
the working classes. Thus we are told in “ Random
Recollections of the Midland Circuit,” by Robert Wal
ton, a book lately published, that “ a man of the
name of Harrington was tried at Warwick for bias-
�i8
Illusion and Delusion.
phemy. Old Clarke, Q.C., was the leading prosecuting
counsel. Clarke, in the general reply he claimed on
the part of the Crown, inveighed in no measured terms
upon the evil tendency of the man’s writing, especially
those parts which denied the existence of his Satanic
majesty and his various attributes, the doctrine of
future rewards and punishments, &c. Warming him
self as he went on, as he of course would, from the
very nature of his subject, he exclaimed, ‘ Gentlemen, if
there be any truth in what the prisoner asserts, where
are we?’ (A favourite expression of his.) ‘ If there
be no devil and no hell, what is to become of us?
Gentlemen, it is men like those who would deprive us
of all hope here and comfort hereafter.’”
Neither can a “ future state” be altogether a “ gospel
of glad tidings,” even to the orthodox Christian, who
professes to believe that “ Whosoever will be saved,
before all things, it is necessary that he hold the
Catholic Faith,” and that, without doubt, he shall
perish everlastingly,—go into everlasting fire, if he do
not. This Creed includes the belief that Christ “de
scended into Hell,” and that men shall live again with
their bodies, to give account for their own works. We
are told that “ Strait is the gate and narrow the way
that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it,” and
“ that many are called, but few are chosenand truly
this must be, so, if such faith is required. The Scotch
man’s creed, based on the Westminster Confession of
Faith, contains similar consolation. He holds that
God hath appointed the Elect only unto glory, and
that the rest of mankind he was pleased to pass by,
and to ordain them to dishonour, and wrath for their
sin, to the praise of his glorious justice / However
certain a man may be in his self-conceit and selfcomplacency of his own salvation, he must be extra
ordinarily constituted, if such a belief in a Future state
can supply him with any consolation. For myself, I
would rather, a thousand times, give up all hopes of an
�Illusion and Delusion.
29
“ individual ” hereafter, and go back to where I was
before I was born, when, if I was not happy, at least I
did not suffer, rather than that one being should be
reserved to everlasting suffering.
Continued existence does not necessarily imply Im
mortality, fortunately, as all the Spiritualists assume,
for think of the gift of Immortality being considered a
blessing, when, possibly it might be one of endless misery!
Even the poor “ wandering Jew” would rest when this
world came to an end. I cannot imagine how such
devilish conceptions ever got into people’s heads, or how,
having got them there, they can live and even be happy !
Dr Carpenter says: “ I look upon the root of this
Spiritualism to lie in that which is very natural, and in
some respects a wholesome disposition of the kind'—a
desire to connect ourselves, in thought, with those
whom we have loved, and who have gone before us.
Nothing is more admirable, more beautiful, in our
nature, than this longing for the continuance of inter
course with those whom we have loved on earth. . . .
But this manifestation of it, is one which those who
experience this feeling, in its greatest purity, and its
greatest intensity, feel to be absurd and contrary to
common sense.” How much better is the Poet’s
expression of this feeling :—
“ Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature whom I found so fair,
I trust he Ilves in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.”—Tennyson.
We who believe in God,— and not in a being
who exacts an impossible belief, or who elects a few
to glory, and passes the rest by, when he might either
have not created, or have elected all,—as regards a
Future state, hold the faith, that if it is better, all
things considered, that we should, as individuals, con
tinue to exist, we shall be sure to do so; if it is
not better we ought not, and do not, desire to do so.
Surely this is the least selfish faith. I, for one, am
�3°
Illusion and Delusion.
prepared to leave myself for the future, in infinite
confidence in God’s hands.
But are the physical explanations of these so-called
spiritual phenomena so miserably insufficient as De
Morgan represents •them ? I think not; at least they
appear to me to point unmistakeably to the direction
in which the explanation will be found. In the first
place, as we have seen, to know and to be conscious
are with us the same things, and consciousness is what
we call mental, and we know of nothing beyond—that
is, the difference between physical and mental is only
in their modes of manifestation; we know of no essen
tial difference between them. The more we know, the
more it seems probable that all is of one stuff, and that
all is mind, not matter. If so, we must confess that
we know at present but very little of its natural modes
of manifestation, that what little we do know is at pre
sent “practically interpretable only through the methods
and formulae of physics,” and through the language or
terms of physics. Thus an immense amount of what we
call physical force passes through the body, estimated
at 14 millions of foot pounds per day, which, when
subjected to the molecular action of the brain becomes
mind or consciousness, that is, thoughts and feelings.
This force, on leaving the brain again appears to lose its
consciousness, and to revert to physical force, and at
present we know very imperfectly what becomes of it,
or what its real condition is after leaving the brain.
The investigation which Sergeant Cox proposes to make
in his second Vol. of “ What ami?” into Sleep and
Dream, Insanity, Hallucination, Unconscious Cerebra
tion, Trance, Delirium, Psychic Force and Natural and
Artificial Somnambulism, will no doubt throw consider
able light on this subject, and be proportionally inter
esting. Dr C. Darwin’s book on “Expression of the
Emotions in Men and Animals,” is a valuable contribu
tion in this direction ; so also is “ Mysteries of the
Vital Element,” by Dr Eobt. Collyer. Mr Herbert
�Illusion and Delusion.
31
Spencer insists on the general law, that feeling passing
a certain pitch, habitually vents itself in bodily action,
and that an overplus of nervous forces, undirected by
any motive, will manifestly take first- the most
habitual routes ; and if these do not suffice, will next
overflow into the less habitual ones. But Mr Spencer,,
although an able exponent of the persistence of Force,,
has not yet attempted to trace nervous force, beyond
the body, in its action upon other organizations,
neither, as far as I know, does he believe in it. My
own personal experience has been very slight. I have
seen will force acting beyond the body, that is, without
the aid of the muscles, and producing various effects,
both in contact and without, both near and at some
distance. I have witnessed many cures from what
appeared to be the action of the nervous force of one
body upon another, and also one mind as completely
under the control of another, as if they were one, in
what is called Electro-biology. I have satisfied myself
beyond a doubt, that thought reading is a possibility,
having on one occasion seen a mesmerised child tell
the number of three watches, consecutively, each
number consisting of five figures each. These figures
could only have been known to the mesmeriser, who,,
with some difficulty, madti them out by the aid of a
strong light. I have also satisfied myself of the truthof phreno-mesmerism, and that it is not necessarily
connected with thought reading. I have also seen, in
Spiritualist circles, a great deal of humbug and pious
fraud, as well as self-deception.
I have, however, seen quite enough to satisfy me that
the senses, the ordinary inlets to the mind, are not the
only means by which the brain is acted upon from
without. The brain faculties specialize the action of
-mind for special purposes, and the senses direct the
action and limit the quantity of force from without
but these barriers to the more general and universal
action of mind can be partially removed. We are part
�32
Illusion and Delusion.
of all the forces around, and in direct and immediate
connection with them, and but partially individualized.
As star can act on star, at immeasurable distances, so can
one mind upon another within more limited bounds,
when such minds are en-rapport. In thought-reading
we have probably synchronism of vibration between
patient and mesmeriser. We can charge a table with
brain or nervous force, and our volition can act or pro
duce motion through that medium without the aid of
the motor-nerves and muscular contact. In electro
biology the same thing takes place, one brain becomes
charged with nervous force from another, and the whole
of this force is under the direction of one will. We
are surrounded by an atmosphere, the result of cerebra
tion, its character depending upon the nervous centres
or mental faculties from which it emanates. We all
have felt the effect, more or less, of coming into each
other’s atmospheres. There are mental attractions and
repulsions, likes and antipathies among individuals,
varying as they do in chemistry. The amount of force
that goes to the brain may -be artificially increased by
Alcohol, Opium, Haschisch, etc., not only inducing
greatly increased mental activity, but many extra
ordinary phenomena besides. We have nerve force
from mental energy, and mental energy from nerve
force in constant correlation. In trance we have the
same thing, the force being withdrawn from the vital
functions, gives us mind under new conditions, with
increased and additional and abnormal powers. As
force from the sun impinging upon body, produces 699
millions of millions of waves in ether (probably the raw
material of mind) inducing in us the sensation we call
violet colour, so brain force may be carried through the
same ether inducing consciousness, and carrying ideas
in all sorts of ways, at present unknown to us. At
any rate we should hesitate before we call in the aid of
the Spirits, the infallible resort, from the beginning of
time, of ignorance. We ought to be modest and
�Illusion and Delusion.
33
cautious when we reflect that we know only our own
consciousness, and everything else only as it is reflected
there, and that it tells us nothing of its own nature, or
of the nature of anything without its boundaries.
I have to apologize for this digression upon Spirit
ualism, which originally formed no part of my subject,
and .which shortens the space at my command, which
before was too little.
The Moral World.
If the physical world has been created by our forms of
thought connected with the intellect, so has the moral
world been created within us by our feelings ; as a few
simple perceptions have been worked up by the mental
faculties to form the world without, so our simple
pains and pleasures have been worked up by our moral
faculties to make our moral world. To suppose that
there is anything outside ourselves corresponding is as
pure an illusion and delusion in one case as the other.
We are said to be responsible for freedom of will, that is,
we are supposed to’be a sort of first cause in a small way
capable of spontaneous action ; an exception to every
thing else in the universe, to be capable of originating
motion; but this is a contradiction to the now estab
lished doctrine of the persistence of force.
This
doctrine of the conservation of energy furnishes the
modern proof of the truth of what has been hitherto
called Philosophical Necessity. Thus as Oerstead says,
“ everything that exists depends upon the past, prepares
the future, and is related to the whole.” This is the
principle of evolution : “ each manifestation of force
can be interpreted only as the affect of some antecedent
force, no matter whether it be an inorganic action, an
animal movement, a thought or feeling.”* “ Con
sequently, as I have said elsewhere (Manual of
* Herbert Spencer.
c
�34
Illusion and Delusion.
Anthropology, p. 309) “ all actions being equally
necessary—all equally the effect of some antecedent
force, there can be no intrinsic difference between them,
the only difference being one of arrangement. Good
and evil are purely subjective, that is dependent upon
the way in which our sensibility is affected by things
■without. Where we have pleasure it is called good ;
where we have pain evil. Pleasurable sensation
attends the legitimate action of all our faculties, whereas
pain or suffering is not the legitimate object of any
, part of our organization. Praise and blame, reward and
punishment are not a recognition of any intrinsic
difference in actions themselves, but of our wish to
produce one class of actions rather than another as more
agreeable to ourselves. They are intended merely as
motives to action.
Responsibility consists in our
having to bear the natural and necessary consequences
of our actions. The supposition that our responsibility
• consists in our liability to so much suffering for so much
sin or error, if not in this world then in another—that
jut, 'ice requires that if we sin we must suffer—however
ancient, is an altogether groundless notion. The object
of pain or suffering is reformation, and any pain or
punishment that has not that object, any suffering in
excess of that, would be objectless and mere revenge.
Every sin contains its own atonement in the pain or
penalty attached to the natural consequences that
follow it. . . . That retribution would not be just which
included more punishment than was sufficient to correct
the offence and was therefore good for the offender.”
“ If,” as Quetelet says, “ society prepares crime, and the
guilty are only the instruments by which it is executed,”
the strict demands of justice would require that the
sinner, not the saint, should be made happy in another
world, because the sinner having been made to dis
honour in this world, has been the most unhappy here,
and requires compensation.” We hear much of the
“ self-determining will of man, on which his moral
�Illusion and Delusion.
35
responsibility essentially depends.” But what does this
mean but that he may be moved by motives and his
liability to suffer the consequences if he does not ?
'Conscience tells him he must do right, and not do what
is wrong, and it is these consequences that tell him
what is right and wrong. A sense of pain and pleasure,
is the revelation God has given to all mankind, not to be
disregarded or misinterpreted. And what does self
determining mean but that a man must necessarily act
in accordance with the laws of his own nature? A
selfish man acts selfishly and takes the consequences,
and he could not do otherwise in either case, whether
his actions were free or necessary. Fire burns and
water drowns whether we get into them voluntarily or
by accident. Self-determining in this sense applies to
everything organic or inorganic,—everything acts in
.accordance with the laws of its own nature, from an
atom to a monad, and from a monad to God. It is the
power to do this without external constraint that con
stitutes freedom, and it is this experience, organized in
the long ages, that is the source of the instinct or intui
tion that is generally stronger than reason, even in the
best informed. I know that my will is free ; I feel that
I can do as I please, that is the language of intuition but
it is not the less an illusion and delusion. What we
please to do depends upon persistent force passing through
•our organization, the strongest force or feeling always
prevailing, or governing the will. It is our conscious
ness that deceives us in this case, as in so many others,
from it insufficiency ; the fact being that this governing
power or force, does not appear in consciousness, but
only‘its correlation. “Human liberty, of which all
boast,” says Spinoza, “ consists solely in this, that man
is conscious of his will, and unconscious of the causes by
which it is determined.” “ Arrest one of the viscera,
■ and the vital actions quickly cease; prevent a limb
from moving, and the ability to meet surrounding
circumstances is seriously interfered with; destroy a
�36
Illusion and Delusion.
sense organ, paralyze a perceptive power, derange the
reason, and there comes more or less failure in that
adjustment of conduct to circumstances by which life
is preserved.” * It is of such kind of impediments to
free action only of which man is conscious, and it is this
power of adjustment of conduct to circumstances that
constitutes his freedom, and this is a freedom that can
be exercised only in accordance with natural law.
There can be no mental science or social science, or
indeed “ science ” at all where these principles are not
admitted; and the sooner this dire chimera of man’s
freedom of will, which has caused and still causes so
much suffering, is banished the better. The science of
man must be placed on the same foundation as all the
other sciences, and not left to chance as this freedom
implies ; on the contrary we shall take care that the
will is never free but always under the governance of
the cultivated intellect and highest feeling. We shall
then begin to discover that the laws which regulate
men’s birth are quite as important as those by which we
improve our horses, short-horns, sheep, and dogs ; and
our inquiries will be directed, not so much as to where
he is going to, as to where he comes from. Our .gaols
will undergo the change, that, with much labour, we
have effected in our Lunatic Asylums^ and we shall
learn that civilization does not consist in the increase of
wealth, but in the increase of brain, upon which all
thought and feeling depend. When Morality becomes
a Science we shall cultivate brain, as its special organ
ization and harmonious development are essential to
warmth of sentiment, to the sense of the beautiful, and
to religious emotion ; and education in the future will
consist in the developing and perfecting of all the
faculties which make a complete man. Tf the organ-ization is deficient or defective, we can no more feel the
higher emotions than wre can see without eyes. To*•
*• Principles of Psychology, vol. 2, p. 627, by Herbert Spencer-
�Illusion and Delusion.
37
-ensure this development of a healthy and well-formed
brain, “ preaching ” goes but a very little way ; it must
be placed in conditions favourable to its healthy growth.
The increase of wealth is essential, as we cannot engraft
virtue on physical misery, and we must be happy
ourselves to wish to make others happy. As I have
said elsewhere (Education of the Feelings'), 11 To grow
the organization upon which moral action habitually
depends is the work of time, and we must be content
' to wait.”
We may pause here for a brief summary before we
enter a field of thought into which scientific men may
not feel equally disposed to follow me, and which,
with our limited knowledge, necessarily partakes of
much speculation.
Matter is known to us only from its capacity of
creating within us certain sensations which we call
ideas and feelings. “ The conception we have of matter,”
says Herbert Spencer, “ is one which unites independ
ence, permanence, and force.”
Mind is the aggregate of these ideas and feelings,
their character or speciality depending upon the brain.
The World, therefore, is created within us, and
although there is something without us, the world, as
we conceive of it, exists only in our conception. But
although the world is the world of our ideas, and exists
only in thought, it is not the less worthy or wonderful
on that account. It is our wmrld.
The Soul is the force or active power which causes
these ideas, or creates this world ; and more, this force,
■or that which it is the force of, is the stuff out of
which this world is made.
The Will is the subject of “law” like everything
else.
Morality regulates the laws of man’s well-being,
and as it is the “ law ” of his nature to seek his well
being, the interests of morality are sufficiently assured,
whatever may be his opinions on the subject.
�38
Illusion and Delusion.
The Body consists of forces of nature individualized
and acting together for a special purpose. Their action
depends upon the nice balance established between
external and internal relations. It has taken ages tobring together and establish this relationship, and it
is the unity of these powers and their united action
that constitutes the Identity or the Ego. The forces
which compose the body are all capable of acting
separately and are indestructible, but when this unity
of body is destroyed, whether the identity is destroyed
with it, is a question I leave every one to answer for
himself, as it is usually made a question of feeling and
not of reasoning.
Thus Matter, Mind, the World, the Will, in thecommon conception, are illusions, and to many delusions.
What is the Reality underlying them? For myself,
I believe in what natural philosophers call Pre
existent and Persistent Force and its Correlates, and
which to me is the Supreme and Universal Spirit and itsmanifestations. All the phenomena in the universe
consist but in changes of form or transformation of
energy. Matter wrhen closely examined resolves itself
into centres of force, and mind is force or energy,
representing a concentration of all the forces. All
forces readily pass from one into the other, according
to the structure through which they pass. We have
a right, therefore, to infer that there is but one force.
And what is this ? As there cannot be motion without
something moved, so force or power must be the force
of something; and that something to me is the Great
Unknown, its modes of action or manifestations alone
are known to us. But as everything shows the unity
of force, and as all force or power tends to a given
purpose or design, that force must be intelligent, and,
if intelligent, conscious, and the conscious action of
power is will. All power, therefore, is will power,,
and as W. R. Grove, says, “ Causation is the will,
creation the act of God.” The will which originally
�Illusion and Delusion.
39
required a distinct conscious volition has passed, in the
ages, into the unconscious or automatic, constituting
the fixed laws and order of nature.
Here Materialism and Absolute Idealism meet.
Physical force is automatic mind, and this uncon
scious force passing through the brain and subjected
to its molecular action resumes its consciousness consti
tuting that succession of “forms of thought ” and feeling
which man calls his mind. Thus our bodies :—
‘ ‘ Are but organic harps diversely framed,
That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps,
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the soul of each, and God of all.”
Coleridge.
Giordano Bruno taught that “Nature is but a
shadow, a phantom, the mirror in which the Infinite
images himself. The basis of all things is mind, not
matter. It is mind that pervades all. We ourselves
are mind, and what we meet in creation is a corre
sponding mind. Creation does not present mere
traces or footprints of the Deity, but the Deity him
self in his own presence.” For this belief in the 13th
century he was burnt. The world is wiser now, for
there are many who believe with St. Paul “ that God is
all in all,—that of him and through him, and unto him
are all things.” That God is the universe, and the
universe is God; and that, in no poetical, but in a
truly literal sense, “ In him we live and move and
have our being.” “ It is true there are diversities of
operation, but the same God worketh all in all.”
“ God is everything or nothing.” * “ But nature,
which is the time-vesture of God, and reveals him to
the wise, hides him from the foolish.”^
It is as difficult for most people to accept this conclu
sion as it is to believe that the world does not exist
outside of them as it appears to them to do. God the
Victor Cousin.
t T. Carlyle.
�40
Illusion and Delusion.
author of all things is accepted only in theory and in
a very limited and secondary sense, for what then
becomes of sin and evil if it were so, is he the author
of them? The answer is, good and evil are purely
subjective—relative pains and pleasures, the creation
of our own minds; beyond is only good. What we
call the soul’s highest and sweetest emotions are parts
only of the great whole that equally includes the
little, the low, the poor and the helpless, and what to
us are the worthless and the bad.
This Pantheism is as old as the world, the highest
minds in very early ages have attained to it. “ The
earliest known origin,” says E. W. Newman, “ of
Pantheism was in India; where it was taught that
the eternal infinite Being creates by self-evolution,
whereby he becomes, and is, all existence ; that he
alternately expands, and as it were, contracts himself,
reabsorbing into himself the things created. Thus the
universe, matter, and its laws, are all modes of divine
existence. Each living thing is a part of God, each
soul is a drop out of the divine ocean; and, as Virgil
has it, the soul of a bee is a ‘ divinse particula aura?.’ ”
The question is, has modern thought or science added
any thing that helps to make the conception clearer?
I think it has, in the knowledge we now have of the
existence of persistent intelligent force and its unity.
But as we cannot know things in themselves, we can
only judge by analogy, or show how one thing resem
bles another. The human body is a perfect cosmos,
an epitome of the action of the forces of the whole
world. Every action of the body—the heart, the
liver, the lungs, &c.,—that is now performed uncon
sciously or automatically were originally performed vol
untarily ; the spinal cord, on its first appearance, in the
lower animal scale, governed the body consciously and
intelligently, as the brain does at present; it now
governs the body intelligently, Dt not consciously,
u
*
and it does its work quite as well. This is a most
�Illusion and Delusion,
4i
important distinction, as it seems to be universal.
Mind itself may perhaps be truly said to be inseparable
from consciousness, but it acts equally well uncon
sciously, and we have the action of “unconscious
intelligence.” We can only know things through
their manifestations, and this appears to be the nature
of mind. A conscious mental act frequently volun
tarily performed, passes with such frequent repetition
into the involuntary or automatic state, where the
same action is performed equally well unconsciously.
This it appears to do by the aid of structure (whatever
that is in itself) and as far as we know, mind is never
separated from structure or body. That
“ All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul,”
is probably as true as it is poetical. “Thought and
extension,” says Spinoza, “are the internal and external
elements of Being.” In speaking of mind, therefore, we
must regard it, in its modes of manifestation at least,
as both conscious and automatic. Continuing then the
analogy between ourselves and the universe; as many of
the functions of the body are now performed, uncon
sciously but intelligently, and as many of our originally
voluntary acts during our lifetime, such as walking,
talking, &c., have passed into the automatic, so in the
world without the Laws of Nature appear to act
intelligently but unconsciously. All power is Will
power, but the will which originally required a distinct
conscious volition has passed, in the ages, into the
unconscious or automatic, thus constituting the
fixed laws and order of nature. If this view be
accepted the bridge over the gap between nerve
elements and consciousness has been discovered; the
gulf hitherto supposed to exist between matter and
mind is filled up, and such questions as,—Can mere
matter think ? How can mere physical force pass into
consciousness? In the world is mind developed first
�42
Illusion and Delusion.
or last? &c., are answered, and all we have to explain
are the conditions under which automatic mind or
unconscious intelligence resumes its consciousness.
Again, as our body has a centre of volition and intelli
gence so may the universe have. Our earth moves
round the sun, and all power comes to us from thence ;
but the sun moves round some other centre, and that
probably round another, until we approach the great
centre of all, where possibly God’s power may be more
directly exercised, and he may consciously govern all;
here, in the extremities, much of it seems to have passed
into the automatic. And here, as regards this centre,
we have another analogy most important. As the
world to us is the world only of our ideas, so the
universe may exist only in the mind of God. We
know nothing but consciousness, space is a mere mode
or form of thought, and if there is nothing but mind,,
things without ourselves must be very different indeed
As Bishop
to what we intuitively regard them.
Berkeley says, “All permanent existence is in the
Divine Mind,” and, as Hegel considers he has demon
strated, the essence of the world and all things in it is
thought, and Schopenhauer also holds that Will alone
is the dinge an sich, the essence of the world.
What then are we ? Schelling, like Spinoza and our
greatest thinkers, allow only a phenomenal existence
to the object and subject, admitting only one reality,
the Absolute. The individual ego is phenomenal, the
universal ego only is noumenal. This may be made
intelligible by the kaleidoscope : with each turn we
have a different form, this form is the phenomenon, and
passes away, that of which it was composed is the
noumenon, and is persistent. The world is a great
kaleidoscope, 'it is ever on the turn, producing its
infinitely varied forms in ever-increasing brilliancy and
beauty, and ever-increasing pleasurable sensibility.
That which persists or exists is not these forms but
that which is the nexus, or which underlies these ever
�Illusion and Delusion.
43
varying appearances. Thus “There is no death in the
concrete, what passes away passes away into its own self,
only the passing away passes away.”* We continue for
ever to exist as part of the Great Whole, in never-ending
changes of form. The sun sets in all his splendour, it is
equally beautiful on the following day, although the
splendour is not the same; the song of the lark each
returning spring is quite as sweet, although no one asks
or cares if it is the same lark; the night comes to us,
and a new day rises to some new comer, with no loss
of enjoyment, but only increased freshness. Is this for
us an ignoble position ?
Are we so perfect, any
of us, that we would for ever remain as we are?
Is the recollection of our present grub state so
very desirable? We are immortal, for we are part
of God himself, do we wish always to remain in
the childhood of our present individual existence ? To
be thus for ever fellow-workers with God is surely
honourable, by whatever names we may be called.
Through the countless ages, one universal plan prevails
for the elaboration and organisation of a nervous system,
by which unconscious mind shall again become conscious
in all the varied forms of animal life. Each creature has
its own world created in its own head, specially fitting
it to take its appointed place at the common feast.
And here we have the last and most striking analogy
of the human body to the great cosmos. As each of
the countless cells in the human body has a separate
life, and yet constituting the fife of the whole, making
one body, so the aggregate of individual creatures
makes one great nervous system, every beat or change
in which produces intense enjoyment, so great, indeed,
that the necessary pain which we call evil disappearsand is lost.
* Hegel.
TURNBULL AND SUIJARS, I'RtNTKKS, EDINBURGH
�
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Illusion and delusion; or, modern pantheism versus spiritualism
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Bray, Charles
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 43 p. ; ill. ; 18 cm.
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Thomas Scott
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[1873]
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Spiritualism
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Conway Tracts
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Spiritualism
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Text
ON THE RELATIONS
OF
THEISM TO PANTHEISM,
AND
ON THE GALLA RELIGION.
W. NEWMAN.
Professor F.
PUBLISHED BY
THOMAS
MOUNT PLEASANT,
RAMSGATE.
1872.
Price Sixpence.
SCOTT,
�i—nMM
�ON
THE RELATIONS
OF
THEISM TO PANTHEISM.
-------------- ♦--------------
HANKS be to God, religious thought is not
stagnant. His spirit is in men’s hearts : under
his constant pressure our intellects struggle forward
into .more knowledge, more wisdom. We are ad
vancing. Of this the test is, that the more active
and higher minds in opposite schools tend toward
agreement, though they have not reached unity.
. One condition of advancement is, that we should
discern our own errors, and unlearn them. This, to
a superficial eye, may suggest that our creed is melt
ing away, and that believers in God are becoming
unbelievers; but it is not so. Our notions of God
from age to age have undergone vast enlargement;
hence of necessity we drop from time to time -many
crude opinions concerning him, which opinions were
of old fought for by Theists and opposed by Atheists
or doubters. But simultaneously we attain greater
richness and nobleness of conception, and towards
our brethren who are in opposition a tenderer and
wiser sentiment, in so far as their opposition is from
diversity of intellect, not from perversity of morals.
T
�4
On the Relations of
Without attempting anything so arduous as a history
of opinion on these great subjects, a few broad out
lines shall be essayed which may have interest.
In antiquity the only school of thought known
to us which understood the real magnitude of the
universe was practically atheistic ; that of Democritus
and Epicurus: and with Epicurus this magnitude,
having nothing moral in it, could scarcely be called
grandeur. A universal storm or curdling of atoms
in tens of thousands of worlds, was all that he could
see. With the poets of Greece and the vulgar, the
gods were not the creators of worlds, but themselves
first creations from the mighty power of blind nature ;
a notion which to us may seem to differ little from
atheism. The first gods thus brought into existence
were Titans, . beings of gigantic powers, but pre
valently deficient in intellect. They were conquered
and superseded by Jupiter, who, though in the earliest
poets represented as a selfish despot, yet disapproved
and chastised human wickedness. Hence with the
progress of generations, the notion of Jupiter in the
purest minds of Greece became little different from
that of the chief god with the highest sages of
Palestine or Persia.
Meanwhile, Grecian astronomy arose, and in about
four centuries attained its fullest perfection in
Alexandria. It stopped short in the solar system, of
which the earth was made centre. To accommodate
t e forced geometry thus induced, numerous crystal
orbs were imagined, and the stars were compared to
brass-headed nails fastened into a far vaster solid
vault. This agreed exceedingly well with the old
Hebrew conception of a firmament, or, as the prophets
ca it, a sea of glass or crystal. By excluding the
idea that the stars are suns, the view of God’s universe
w ich midnight opens to us was perverted into a
mere show of fireworks; moreover, men were con
firmed in the puerile error, that this earth is the
�lheism to Pantheism.
5
divine centre, and sole or main object of divine
interest. Learned men among the Hebrews, who
received Alexandrian cultivation, enlarged their notion
of Jehovah as the God of all nations, and easily har
monized with Greek Neo-Platonism.
Where to place Heaven, the special seat of God,
was a difficulty with those who clung to the idea of
some such sacred locality. The Greeks appear to
have solved it in a most unsatisfactory way, by revert
ing to the old poetical idea which identified Heaven
and God, and interpreting Heaven to be the outer
most vault in which the stars are fixed. This, I
believe, was prevalent with the Stoics, and it is put
by Cicero into the mouth of Africanus, when he means
to set forth the most advanced religious notions of his
day. “ By nine circles, or rather spheres, all thingy
are knit together; of which one which comprises aSfl
others, is heavenly and outmost, the Supreme God,
hvn^elf, constraining and containing the rest; in
whonj^are fixed those ever-revolving courses of stars ;
and in lower region the seven [planets].” Nothing
anorded more derision to the Epicureans than this
notion of a visible, round, ever-rolling, and blazing
God; which certainly lowered the Greek Theism of
that age.
The point on which the West and the East were
prevalently divided, was on the relation of God to
Nature or Matter. The authorities esteemed sacred
by the Hebrews were in no apparent collision with
the philosophic Greeks ; for Jehovah was represented
as the ever active force in all nature, not only creat
ing’ originally, but sustaining all action in the ele
ments, in brutes, and in the human mind; in short,
to use the modern epithet, he was immanent in his
own creations. No antagonism was imagined between
God and Matter. Miracles were not regarded as a
suspension of the laws of Nature, because no sharp
idea of Law had been attained; only in a miracle the
�6
On the Relations of
God. who is always at work in matter displayed his
ordinary action with more than usual distinctness,
that is, in such a way as to manifest his moral judg
ment. An obvious and vulgar illustration is, when
some elementary disturbance is interpreted as a divine
interposition. A man is struck dead by lightning, or
a high tower is smitten; it must have been because
the man had offended God by impiety, or the tower
by aspiring to too proud a height. An earthquake
or an inundation must have been elicited by the pecu
liar wickedness of the nation whom it afflicted. A
God, who thus dispensed elementary inflictions as
moral punishments, was not suspending his own laws,
but administering them, if he sent down fire from
heaven at the prayer of a prophet, or otherwise
wrought through some favoured servant what is
called a religious miracle. There is harmony in such
a view.. But a breach of harmony began, when it
was taught that the men on whom the tower of
Siloam fell were not therefore to be judged guiltier
than others; that we must not interpret external
calamity as a mark of God’s anger ; that whom the
Lord loveth, he chasteneth; that it is folly to run
hither and thither, and look about with the natural
eye for marks of God’s moral judgments, or expect
signs from heaven; but that the kingdom of God is
within us. The results of this doctrine were really
antagonistic to miracle; but that, for long ages,
Hebrew and Christian, was not discerned. God was
regarded as not only immanent in Nature, but as
obeyed systematically by Nature; who displayed,
alike in her broad laws and in her apparently excep
tional operations, the moral judgments of her supreme
animater. The religious Greek philosophers, how
ever little apt to believe in miraculous interpositions,
entirely agreed with the Hebrew prophets as to the
harmouy of Nature with God who was the cause of
all movement, all production, all mental action.
�Theism to Pantheism.
7
But the Eastern speculators, in Persia and perhaps
beyond, prevalently accounted for Evil in the world
by the incurable stubbornness of Matter, which could
not be brought into obedience to the divine will.
Hence with them God and Nature were eternal
antagonists; and Matter played the part which Chris
tendom has assigned to Satan, the evil Spirit who is
supposed, really and eternally, to defeat God’s efforts
for the benefit of his creatures. Some say that it was
through Augustine, in his youth a Manichee, that
these notions were established as the fixed creed of
Christians. Be that as it may, we cannot overlook
the similarity of the Mediaeval creed concernin2“ the
cause of Evil to that of the East, which indeecT was
far less offensive to enlightened sentiment.
The higher Greek intellect seldom took a course in
harmony with Hebrew piety;—perhaps scarcely be
yond one very limited school, the Neo-Platonists.
Those who had no sympathy with Epicurus or with
Atheism, vacillated between two systems; that of
Stoicism, which tried to interpret the popular mytho
logy into consonance with sober reason, and the doc
trine which we call Pantheism, to which indeed many
Stoics strongly inclined. The earliest known origin of
this was in India; where it was taught that the eternal
infinite Being creates by self-evolution, whereby he
becomes and is all Existence ; that he alternately
expands and as it were contracts himself, re-absorb
ing into himself the things created. Thus the Uni
verse, Matter and its Laws, are all modes of divine
existence. Each living thing is a part of God, each
soul is a drop out of the divine ocean; and as Virgil
has it, the soul of a bee is “ divinse particula aurse.”
Some Greek speculators, developing this thought
rather coarsely, treated the visible and palpable world
as the material body, of which God was the invisible
soul. I have read of one, who carried out the ana
logy so far between the world and a huge animal, as
�8
'
On the Relations of
to account for the saltness of the sea, by comparing
it to human sweat! To the same class of thought be
longs the conception of 2Eschylus and Virgil, who com
pare the fertilizing showers of spring to a marriage
of Earth and Heaven. However pure and noble this
theory may have been in the highest minds, it almost
instantly, and as it were inevitably, with the vulgar
drew after it a loss of moral character to God. To
combine with this doctrine the cardinal Hebrew idea,
that God is Holy, was eminently hard: for externally,
what see we of holiness ? Indeed such Pantheism
with great ease lapsed into the old Polytheism. Why
not call the ocean Nereus, the sea Neptune, the earth
Ceres, the sun Apollo, if they are diverse manifestations
of the deity ? And if man be himself only God in dis
guise, how can man be sinful ? God in man cannot
resist himself. Man may be responsible to man for his
conduct, but no room seemed left for that antagonism
of man to God, which Hebrews and Christians call
Sin, and regard as a cardinal fact in religion. Prac
tically it has appeared to Christians, that Pantheism
desecrates God and unnerves man; for it relaxes the
sinews of the soul, just as does that belief in Necessity
which denies the human Will, and represents us as
bubbles carried on the wave with no power of self
guidance,—the sport of desire.
The collision of opinion between Pantheism and
Christian thought seems to have attained its maxi
mum, when Protestant Europe re-organized its creed
concerning God and Creation, under the influences
of the Newtonian astronomy. The prevalent belief,
which from Christians passed to those soon after
called Deists, was, that at a definite point of past
time not very distant, God created Matter,—that is,
caused it to exist; before which time (some will
infer) he must have existed from all eternity in soli
tude without a world. Upon Matter he imposed
certain laws and certain initial motions; and then
�Theism to Pantheism.
9
withdrew from further influencing it,—resting, as the
Hebrews said, after six days’ work. So he created
trees, shrubs, and animals endued with definite
powers, and having thus started them in life, left
them to themselves and to the elements. Here a
very sharp separation is made between God and
Nature, though no antagonism is imagined. The
Creator constructs a machine, winds up the spring,
and then leaves the machine to act of itself. He is
wholly external to his own world, not immanent and
active in it. The grand material laws or forces
which we call Gravitation, Affinity, Cohesion, Re
pulsion, Electricity, Heat, and so on, are regarded as
qualities of Matter,—qualities, no doubt, with which
God, at a distant moment of time, endowed Matter;
but these are in no proper sense divine forces. In
this view, a miracle became an exceptional interpo
sition of God, an interference with the laws of
matter, for the sake of a moral purpose. Such a
theory seemed excellently to maintain, as well the
moral character of the Creator, as the moral inde
pendence and responsibility of man. In England of
the eighteenth century, it held almost entire domi
nion over those Christians who studied the new
material sciences, and over Deists who rejected
Christian authority.
A few speculators among us, of whom I believe
Cudworth was the chief, struggled in favour of a
more comprehensive view, which should embrace all
that is noblest in Pantheism, and incorporate it with
the Jewish and Christian conceptions of God’s Holi
ness. To do this wisely seems to me the real problem
still before us, towards which we have already made
very important advances. If to any it seem astonish
ing that thoughtful men could imagine a God living
in solitude for a past eternity, and then suddenly
creating a world, a sufficient reply, and probably the
true reply, is, that Past Eternity (make what we will
�io
On the Relations of
of the words) is an inextricable puzzle to the human
mind. Those who said, that at a certain time God
created Matter and of it formed a world, pretended
no knowledge of what had preceded, and ought not
to have anything at all charged on them concerning
Past Eternity; a topic which speculators of every
school ought to confess to be involved, not in dark
ness only, but in such perplexity that we may well
suspect some fundamental error in our notions. The
Schoolmen who said that God knew nothing of Time,
but that with him Eternity was “ a standing point,”
expressed in their own way their sense that this
mystery is inscrutable.
Eut the progress of science has led men to inquire,
What is Matter ? and some, like Faraday, tell us,
that it is nothing but force. Atoms, he said, were
centres of force,—that is all. Few can be satisfied
with this naked definition, which seems not only to
explode Inertia altogether, but also to be open to
Aristotle s objection against Plato’s Ideas; which
objection (in our phraseology) may run thus : that
we are required to believe in the existence of an
adjective which has no substantive,—in an attribute
which inheres in nothing. Nevertheless, it is clear
that the Forces at work in the Universe have become
more and more prominent in our conception than
mere inert Matter. Geology teaches to the men of
the nineteenth century, that the formation of this
globe was no mere spirt of primitive creation, but
the gradual product of vast ages; and since it is
apparent that in different stages of its development
it was peopled by different species of animals, and
ttiat too, long before man stood on its surface,—it has
become necessary to admit, either that Creation was
continued through long ages, or even that creation
is mere evolution. La Place’s theory of the genera
tion of the solar system has almost taken the place
of established science, and strains the imagination as
�Theism to Pantheism.
ii
to the ages requisite for such evolution. Finally in
the stellar system various celebrated nebulae appear
to show worlds in an initial state, which will be
developed after countless ages in the future. Out of
all this the modern conviction has arisen, that God
creates now, and will always create ; that his creative
action is normal and incessant, and that the notion of
a definite era at which he brought the world into
being, is as puerile and gratuitous as that of a thea
trical “day” of judgment, with God seated on a
throne. Hence, whatever “Matter” may be, it
seems to follow that it is co-eternal with God; and
the thought inevitably presses itself in, that the great
forces of the Universe,—Gravitation, Electricity, and
such like,—are the means by which Creation and
other divine action are carried on. In fact, they
seem to be strictly inseparable from the Divine
existence. And if what we call Nature is for ever
inextricably interwoven with God, we have to make
fundamental changes on the Deistical theory of the
last century.
Thus, in the course of perhaps eighty years, the
pendulum of Theistic thought has oscillated very
decidedly towards Pantheism; and there is good
reason why the Theists of to-day should be unwilling
to accept the name Deist, which confounds their
doctrine with that which prevailed in the eighteenth
century. How then are we to avoid the characteristic
dangers of Pantheism ? As I apprehend, by holding
fast to the very simple axiom, that the truth nearest to
us and first known must ever be our fixed standing place.
The knowledge of man begins from man, and must
not be sacrificed for any after-developments of mate
rial science or any speculations about God, con
cerning whom we have only later and derivative
knowledge. The very first certainty which we
receive, is, that which the Germans call acquaintance
with the Ego and the outer world. The two are
�12
On the Relations of
learned simultaneously. A sense of resistance to his
efforts teaches the infant that there is an outer world,
his consciousness of the effort which is resisted teaches
him that he has a Will of his own. He finds that he
can originate action; in this consists his Will, his
personality. One who duly considers that this primi
tive contrast is the basis of all other knowledge
whatsoever, ought to discern the absurdity of trying
to obliterate this contrast by after-inference. With
ingenious but stupid pertinacity Necessarians try to
convince us, that, inasmuch as regions of the material
universe in which Chance or Will was once supposed
to be dominant, have been found to be subjected to
Necessity, therefore the same ought to be inferred of
the human Will. This reasoning is as vain, as an
attempt to explode the Axioms of geometry by
deduction from its remote theorems. The whole
fabric then falls in a mass. ' As well tell us that all
life is a dream, as that our primary convictions (the
basis of all knowledge) are illusive. Every human
language abounds with words of praise and blame,
words of moral colour, all of which are illusive, if
man moves like a planet in a wholly constrained
orbit. Thus we have the testimony of collective
Mankind to Free Will. It is not pretended by us
that the will, any more than other force, is of infinite
strength; its limit is soon reached: its originating
power acts within bounds : but unless man have some
originating power, all morality is annihilated; to
speak of a wicked or virtuous man becomes as absurd
as to call a planet wicked or virtuous. Thus when
we have learned that the outward universe has its
fixed laws, we must with Pope admit the sharp con
trast,
(God) binding Nature fast in Fate,
Left free the human Will.
As the unshrinking maintenance of this is abso
lutely essential to the foundations of Morality, so too
�Theism to Pantheism.
13
in it lies the reconciliation of Theism and Pantheism.
Unless we have a positive ineradicable belief in the
human Will,—if we allow ourselves for a moment to
admit that this may be illusive,—we lose all reason
able ground for ascribing Will to the Creator, who is
presently confounded with blind Fate. A gentleman,
my contemporary, who has written and preached in
London as an avowed Pantheist, has printed that God
creates, not with any design, but because it is his
impulse! which will come to this,—“because he
cannot help it, and hardly knows what he is doing.”
Such is the proclivity of Pantheism. But if we start
with a belief in the human Will as our first principle,
and in Morality as essential to the nature of Man, in
contrast to the collective brutes, we instantly find it
inevitable to ascribe Will to the superhuman Power in
whose actions we see Design, and to ascribe every
mental perfection to him, from whom our minds and
souls are only derivative. Conscious of the independ
ence of the human will, we cannot believe that we
are absorbed in God, or are mere machines moved by
him ; but we are, in the true and noble sense, children
of God. Finally, while recognising him as not only
a Creator of distant worlds, at a distant time, but as
the present Spirit who every moment maintains our
life and inspires our energies, we glory in sounding
to him the utterance, “ Thou only art Holy.”
Modern Theists have probably a much more abruptaversion to the idea of miracle, than had our early
Deists. This, as I believe, has arisen from the vast
accumulation, in a century and a half, of experience
as to the deceitfulness of the imagined evidence for
miracles: but students of material science whose
Theism is somewhat obscure, often appear to Chris
tians to object to miracles from ground almost
Atheistic. The Christian complaint was powerfully
expressed by Lacordaire in the following words : “ It
is impossible, say the natural philosophers, for God
�■WWWMHII—
14
On the Relations of
to manifest himself by the single act which publicly
and instantaneously announces his presence,—by the
act of sovereignty. Whilst the lowest in the scale of
being has the right to appear in the bosom of nature
by the exercise of its proper force; whilst the grain
of sand, called into the crucible of the chemist,
answers to his interrogations by characteristic signs
which range it in the registers of Science; to Gocl
alone it is. denied to manifest his force in the personal
measure that distinguishes him, and makes him a
separate being. . . . Not only, say they, must
God not have manifested himself, but it must be for
ever impossible for him to manifest himself, in virtue
even of the order of which he is the Creator. Banished
to the profound depths of his silent and obscure eter
nity, if we question him, if we supplicate him, if we
cry to him, he can only say to us (supposing, how
ever, that he is able to answer us), ‘ What would you
have ? I have made laws ! Ask of the sun and the
stars: ask of the sea and the sand upon its shores.
As for me, my condition is fixed : I am nothing but
repose, and the contemplative servant of the works of
my own hands.’ ”
On this it may be remarked, first, that Lacordaire’s
argument is addressed to the Deist of the eighteenth,
not to the Theist of the nineteenth century. We do
not maintain that God is nothing but repose. Few will
dare to say (certainly not I) that God is unable to
manifest himself in forms wholly unlike anything
which we. have seen. But if I admit to an old Greek
01 Egyptian that God is able to take the form of a
bull or a swan, is that a reason for believing, as fact,
somebody s tale that he was actually incarnate in a
bull. Again, without denying that he might be
incarnate a thousand times in the form of man, as
the Hindoos say, or once, as Christians say, surely
this is far enough from admitting the fact. We must
have proof ; and when it is attempted to assign proof,
�Theism to Pantheism.
i 5
the idea itself vanishes as contemptible. We have to
learn outward truths by experience, and among these
is the question, By what means God is pleased to
reveal his action and his mind ? Experience replies,
“ Solely in the laws of the Universe, and in our inner
consciousness.” Our minds are a mirror for appre
hending his mind, and an aid to interpret his action.
What indeed would Lacordaire have ? If his demands
are just, we may claim a God who will talk with us
and teach .us, as a human preceptor.
While I strenuously maintain, that incredulity con
cerning miracles can be based logically only on ex
perience of human credulity, and that the propel’
ground for rejecting the pretended miracles of the
Gospels and Acts is the abundant proof of credulity
in the writers,'with the total absence of evidence that
they saw what they presume to tell so confidently
(nay, the certainty in most cases that they were
repeating mere distant hearsay;) yet, in the present
development of Theism, another grave reason against
belief in miracles seems to me to become prominent;
viz., that if the laws of Nature are inseparable from
Deity, they must be esteemed as a part of the Divine
existence, with which it is unimaginable that he should
tamper. Where we see nothing but immutability,
are we to be scolded as limiting God and denying
power to him, because we glorify that immutability,
as essential to his perfection ? Without miracles he
has given us all things needful to life and godliness.
We will not dictate to him how he shall be pleased to
reveal himself, but are contented to take what we
find.
Finally, there is a thought which I wish to drop,
as a reverential conjecture only, that others may pon
der over it, and give it whatever weight it deserves.
That forces which I recognise as Divine, should act
by fixed laws which display nothing moral, seems to
me at first very paradoxical. I inquire, whether the
�16
The Relations of Theism to Pantheism.
analogy be merely fanciful, or is possibly true, which
compares the divine being and the human in this
further respeot: namely, as Man has in him vegetative
force which is wholly unmoral, besides his mind or
soul which is moral but invisible; so God, whose
moral part is wholly invisible, has, as another part of
his being, the material and unmoral laws of the
Universe, which are in some sense visible and palpable.
But all such analogies admit diversity as well as
likeness in the things compared. Man is unconscious
of his vegetative action, especially when it is most
healthful: I suggest no such unconsciousness in the
case of the Divine action. Indeed, so timidly do I
write, that nothing but the urgent remonstrance has
withheld me from striking out this paragraph.
But I have no timidity as to our duty of borrowing
from hostile schools whatever we can honestly bor
row . I firmly believe, that our only way to exterminate
Pantheism and Atheism, is, by learning all of truth
which Pantheists or Atheists hold, and incorporating
it with our Theism.
�ON
THE GALLA RELIGION.
->
|HE Gallas are a people who live to the south of
a
Abyssinia, in a very low state of civilization.
The facts concerning their religion here adduced are
drawn from the writings of Lorenz Tutschek,—
“ Dictionary and Grammar of the Galla Language,
Munich, 1844-45.” Probably more has been learned
concerning them in these twenty-five years past,
either by new intercourse, or by studying the
numerous MSS. of Karl Tutschek, who died prema
turely. His brother, Lorenz, who has edited the
Grammar and Dictionary, was drawn into African
philology by nothing but the death of Karl; and
professes (in 1844) his inability to use to advan
tage the large materials left in his hands. A sketch
is here given of the very interesting account, in order
to give the reader confidence that the documents here
laid before him, however fragmentary, are authentic.
Duke Maximilian of Bavaria redeemed four young
negroes at an African slave mart, and brought them
to Germany for education, supposing them to be three
Nubians and one Abyssinian. He secured for their
tutor a young jurist, Karl Tutschek, who had been
distinguished in linguistic study, and was acquainted
with Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Arabic. After about
�18
On the Galla Religion.
ten weeks, Tutschek at length discovered that they
were neither Nubian nor Abyssinian ; that three of
them had only been a year away from home, and were
of excellent capacity. The youngest had forgotten
most of his language and of his people, and was
depressed in mind by the circumstance. They
belonged to the four nations, Galla, Umale, Darfur,
and Denka, and communicated with one another, very
imperfectly, in vulgar Arabic. After a while, he
excited in them the desire to impart to him all that
they could tell of their homes and countries, sometimes
in reply to direct questions, sometimes in connected
narrative suggested by him or originated by them
selves. The Tutscheks do not hesitate to ascribe to
some of these compositions, which were wholly oral,
“great solidity and elegance, as to style, contexts,
and arrangement,” notwithstanding the youth of the
narrators. Lorenz accounts for this by reminding us
that the art of relating is cultivated by oriental
people [by illiterate people ?], and that those children
of nature are from earliest childhood eminently
observant of external things, and closely acquainted
with the circumstances of their villages and tribes.
Karl Tutschek directed his chief study first to the
Galla language, spoken by Akafade, which appeared
to be best vocalised and easiest; but Lorenz applies to
the Yumale negro (Jalo Jordan Are) the epithet
highly gifted. Three volumes of his dictations were in
Lorenz’s hands when he wrote. He adds that they
“ deserve the praises that have been bestowed on
their sterling worth as to form and contents, and
bear the impression of mature judgment and critical
truth.” They are divided into such as are the repro
duction of the excellent memory of Jalo, and such as
are his own free compositions. Jalo declared himself
to be nephew of Wofter Mat, hereditary king of the
Yumales. But the Gallas alone here concern us.
On January 2nd, 1841, in a sitting of the philoso
�On the Galla Religion.
T9
phical class at Munich, Karl Tutschek read a report
of his investigations, and laid before it a tolerably
complete dictionary of the Galla Language, a sketch
of the Grammar, and many dictations, prayers, and
songs. He had received from M. Jomard of Paris a
treatise on the Galla language, extracted from the
bulletin of the Geographical Society, August, 1839,
which in many ways confirmed his own results. He
even found in it prayers of the Gallas, nearly agreeing
with those dictated by Akafede. What was better
still, he gained two months’ intercourse with a second
Galla, named Otshu Aga, who had been delivered
from slavery by Mr Pell. By him not only all that
he had learned was confirmed, but materials were
given for comparing two dialects of Galla, and the
number of dictations, prayers, and songs was increased.
Otshu and Akafede presently became warm friends,
and at Tutschek’s suggestion, entered into corre
spondence. Hereby he got fourteen letters, valuable
alike for philology and for exhibiting the mind and
soul of the correspondents. Further, through Otshu,
an African girl by name Bililo was introduced to
Tutschek. She had been supposed Abyssinian, but
was really from the Galla country Guma, and had
taught Otshu Aga many of her songs, which Tutschek
noted down. A fourth native Galla, Aman Gonda,
who had been brought to Europe by Duke Paul of
Wirtemberg,, was visited by Tutschek. He had been
a magistrate under the service of his prince, had been
better educated, and appeared to speak his own lan
guage correctly. For these reasons, Tutschek set
much value on his communications.
The chief occupations of the Gallas are agriculture
and cattle-tending ; but subordinate to these, in their
villages, are weavers, tanners, potters, leather cutters,
and workers in metal, who furnish warlike imple
ments. The form of government is royalty ; but, as
separate tribes have different kings, the king seems
�20
On the Galla Religion.
to be not much above the Arab chieftain. The royalty
is generally hereditary, but is occasionally changed by
election. Their religion is a monotheism, penetrating
deep into all practical life, but obscured (says Lorenz
Tutschek) by many superstitions. This is only to be
expected; but no superstition appears in his speci
mens of their prayers, which with a few verbal
changes of mere English dialect, are the following :
Morning Prayer.
0 God, thou hast brought me through the night in
peace; bring thou me through the day in peace I
Wherever I may go, upon my way which thou madest
peaceable for me, 0 God, lead thou my steps ! When
I have spoken, keep off calumny [falsehood ?] from
me. When I am hungry, keep me from murmuring.
When I am full, keep me from pride. Calling upon
thee I pass the day, 0 Lord who hast no Lord.
Evening Prayer.
0 God, thou hast brought me through the day in
peace ; bring thou me through the night in peace ! O
Lord who hast no Lord, there is no strength but in
thee. Thou only hast no obligation. Under thy
hand I pass the day ; under thy hand I pass the night.
Thou art my Mother; thou my Father.
LITURGY
After the Sufferings of a Bloody Invasion.
Good God of the earth, my Lord! thou art above
me, I am below thee.
When misfortune comes to us; then, as trees keep off
the sun, so mayest thou keep off misfortune.
My Lord ! be thou my screen.
�On the Galla Religion.
21
Calling upon thee I pass the day, calling upon thee 1
pass the night.
When this moon rises, forsake me not. When I rise,
I forsake not thee. Let the danger pass me by.
God my Lord ! thou Sun with thirty rays ! when the
enemy comes, let not thy worm be killed upon
the earth, but keep him off, as we, seeing a worm
upon the earth, crush him, if we like, or spare
him, if we like. As we tread upon and kill a
worm on the earth, so thou, if it please thee,
crushest us on the earth.
God, thou goest, holding the bad and the good in thy
hand. My Lord ! let us not be killed. We, thy
worms, are praying to thee.
A man who knows not evil and good, may not anger
thee. But if once he knew it, and was not
willing to know it, this is wicked. Treat him as
it pleases thee.
If he formerly did not learn, do thou, God my Lord !
teach him. If he hear not the language of men,
yet will he learn thy language.
God ! thou hast made all the animals and men that
live upon the earth. The corn also upon the
earth, on which we are to live, thou hast made.
We have not made it. Thou hast given us
strength. Thou hast given us cattle and corn.
We worked with them and the seed grew up
for us.
With the corn which thou hadst raised for us, men
were satisfied. But the corn in the house hath
been burnt up. Who hath burnt the corn in
the house F Thou knowest.
If I know one or two men, I know them by seeing
them with my eye : but thou, even if thou didst
not see them with the eye, knowest them by thy
heart.
A single bad man has chased away all our people
from their houses. The children and their
�22
On the Galla Religion.
mother hath he scattered, like a flock of turkeys,
hither and thither.
The murderous enemy took the curly-headed child
out of his mother’s hand and killed him. Thou
hast permitted all this to be done. But why so F
Thou knowest.
The corn which thou raisest, thou showest to our
eyes. To it the hungry man looketh and is
comforted. Yet when the corn bloometh, thou
sendest into it butterflies and locusts and doves.
All this comes from thy hand. Thou hast caused
it. But why so F Thou knowest.
My Lord ! spare those who pray to thee. As a thief
stealing another’s corn is bound by the owner of
the corn, not so bind thou us, 0 Lord! But
thou, binding the beloved one, settest him free
by love.
If I am beloved by thee, so set me free, I entreat
thee from my heart. If I do not pray to thee
with my heart, thou hearest me not. But if I
pray to thee with my heart, thou knowest it,
and art gracious unto me.
The inquiry suggests itself, How old is this religion
of the Gallas F It contains no trace of Mohammedan,
nor yet of Christian influence. God is, in their
belief, as Lorenz Tutschek observes, the One Supreme,
almighty, all-knowing, all-wise, and all-good. No
prophet, no angel appears. If the religion were an
independent reform originated in modern times,
Theism superseding Polytheism, one might expect
some prophet’s name to be connected with it. Prima
facie, the probability seems rather to be, that it is con
temporaneous with Hebrew Theism and akin with the
old Abyssinian religion ; perhaps, also, with that of
Sheba, which was the S.E. corner of Arabia.
In a paper read before the Philological Society of
London in 1847, I tried to show the relation of the
Galla Verb and Pronouns to those of other known
�On the Galla Religion.
23
tongues ; and claimed for the language a place in the
class which Prichard has styled Hebrseo-African.
This class, besides the group related closely to Arabic
and Hebrew, comprises the Abyssinian language,
those of Mount Atlas and the Great Western Desert
(of which the Zouave is now the best known), and
perhaps even the ancient Egyptian.
We know that the old Abyssinian language, called
the Gheez, differed little from Hebrew, and that there
was an ancient sympathy between the Hebrews and
Sheba (where Jewish princes ruled, in the time of
the Maccabees), also between Judsea and Abyssinia.
It may be thrown out for further inquiry, whether
possibly a common Theism was maintained, a thou
sand years before the Christian era, in these three
countries, and also in that of the Gallas.
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On the relations of theism to pantheism and on the Galla religion
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Caldecott, Alfred
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Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 23, [1] p. ; 18 cm
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 4. Publisher's list on unnumbered back page. The Galla are a people widespread in the modern state of Ethiopia, speaking a language belonging to the Eastern (or Low) Kushitic group which includes Afar-Saho and Somali.
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Thomas Scott
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Theism
Pantheism
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Galla Peoples
Morris Tracts
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Theism
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PANTHEISM AND COSMIC EMOTION
A DISCOURSE GIVEN BEFORE THE
SOUTH PLACE SOCIETY
JULY io, 1881,
BY
FREDERIC HARRISON, M.A.
LONDON :
II,
SOUTH PLACE, FINSBURY.
PRICE TWOPENCE,
�FREDERICK G. HICKSON & Co.
257, High Holbom
London, W.C.
�PANTHEISM, AND COSMIC EMOTION.
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FREDERIC HARRISON, M.A.
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ZAUTSIDJS the borders of the orthodox theologies
—indeed to some extent within them—three
great ideas seem to hold men’s thoughts: the
modernised idea of a single and simple Godhead,
the metaphysical idea of Divine Majesty in the
Universe, the historical idea of human dignity and
progress—Theism—Pantheism—Humanity.
I do not come to speak of the first or the last of
these. I do not come to criticise the general con
ception of Theism; nor to enlarge on the general
conception of Humanity. My purpose is simply to
examine on general grounds of religion and morality,
the claims of Pantheism to be an adequate basis of
our lives, the final issue of the mighty Assize of
religions, which this generation and the next are
destined to try out.
The claims of Pantheism are not small. It is a
vague termits field is indefinite j its formulas
curiously elastic. It is the faith of idealists every
where : of the poets, of the metaphysicians, of the
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enthusiasts.
It has so many forms, and so few
formulas, that it gathers round it sympathies every
where ; and seems to illustrate everything, even when
it explains nothing. A generation ago, it could be
assigned only to a poet, or a philosopher here and
there. Pantheism would seem to have no hold
on the public at all.
But then, a generation
ago, the fountains of the great deep of orthodoxy
had only begun to break.
It is otherwise now.
Now, the problems of orthodoxy; of Theism; the
very bases of Creation, Providence, and Judgment,
are being debated in the market-places and the
street; the great dilemma of Infinite goodness with
Omnipotent power, making and ruling the world we
know and see to-day, is exercising the thoughts of
men, and women, even of children, and the answers
are very various, and sometimes obscure. And thus,
Pantheism, in the widest sense, is become the great
halting-place between the devotion to God and the
devotion to humanity.
Not Pantheism in any precise form ; not as a philo
sophical doctrine, not as a creed that can be stated,
often not consciously held at all. We may include
under the somewhat technical term Pantheism all
those types of thought, and conscious or unconscious
tendencies of thought, which have this common sign
—that they find the ultimate and dominant idea in
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some divine Mystery of the Universe, in the sense
of Beauty and Power of Nature, in the immensity
of the sum of Life and Matter, it may be in a pious
trust in the general good of all things, be the things
human and moral, or be they physical and un
conscious.
Now Pantheism in this sense is a very wide-spread
frame of thought.
Many a subtle intelligence,
shrinking from the logical difficulties of an Omni
potent Providence, seeks in the sum of all things
that type of Beauty and universality which it can
no longer gather from the Bible. Many a sympathetic
heart that w’ould feel pain in frankly rejecting the
possibility of religious hopes, and yet finds the
religious hope of Humanity too definite, earthly, and
prosaic for its ideal, falls back on some half-uttered
vision of Beauty, Goodness, Mystery—a vision which
admits nothing so formal as a Person, and nothing
logical enough to make a proposition. Some of the
best brains and hearts float in this dream; impatient
of Theism; indifferent to Humanity : cherishing in
their souls this transcendental possibility of a some
thing beyond, that is neither some one nor any actual
thing at all: merely a promise of Good, or Fair.
There are all kinds of degrees and modes in this
tendency we call Pantheism, from the artist’s thirst
for nature, to the thinker’s rest in the Unity of Law,
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and so on to the practical man’s respect for external
force, and the mystical theologian’s habit of seeing
God in everything and everything in God. These
are, no doubt, very different types of mind; but they
agree in this :—they all find not only a religious
value to the human spirit in the mystery and majesty
of the World without; but the Supreme Power and
Truth. The physical beauty of a sunset touches
some; the range of physical law touches others;
these are the happy natures of constitutional
optimism; those are the mystics to whom the definite
is the vulgar and the logical is the misleading. All
are alike in this, that they yearn to pass far beyond
the range and realm of Man; and yet they will not
face the Person of a living God.
We are all familiar with that fine temper—man’s
love for the unfathomable glories of the scene around
him. How many a sensitive nature has gazed deeper
and deeper into the firmament of stars, till the
imagination seemed, like the watchman on the halls of
Agamemnon at Mycenae, to see new lights burst out
as if worlds were being born unto worlds in myriads.
Then the exhausted spirit feels almost on the thres
hold of immensity; and half believes that each
instant the heavens are about to break open to their
highest, and these human eyes are about to behold
the reality of the Unseen. We have all known that.
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moment; but the veil has never been parted, and we
have lain down with aching eyes and a delicious void
in our hearts : feeling that there is something, we
■know not what in Space; but that we are as far off
from it as ever. And the next morning we go to
work and the Universe fades away in the noontide
light, and the clear voice of our children, and the
-emergencies of our daily anxieties, the care of our
.fortunes, or our public duties, move us with ten times
the force and reality of the Milky Way.
Heaven, Earth, Sea—we feel the power of them
all, and of all that is within them; the sun-rising and
the sun-setting, the cloud battles with their serried
ranks and marshalled battalions.; flowers, trees, and
streams ; and the roll of the Atlantic on a western
headland of ironstone, and the snowy solitude of an
Alpine peak, and all that makes the English poetry of
the nineteenth century inexhaustibly rich in its insight
into nature. We all know the power of these things
over the human heart and mind. Who denies it;
• who doubts it; who would weaken it ? It is in one
sense a peculiar possession of our race and of our age.
Words fail me when I seek to state it. I doubt to
which of our great poets of Nature to turn for help—
to Shelley, the true poet of Pantheism, or to
Wordsworth, the poet of Nature as related to Man ?
'Turn to Shelley, who said —
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The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats tho’ unseen amongst us; visiting
This various world with an inconstant wing,
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower ;
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,.
It visits with inconstant glance
Some human heart and countenance ;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,
Like memory of music fled,
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
I know no passage which better expresses thereligious
value of Nature than these words of the Recluse :—
*
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts : a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains ; and of all that we behold
From this green earth ; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear ; both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
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This is poetry. Is it religion ? It is exquisitely
touching and inspiring to the spirit. Is it enough to
guide lives, to curb passions, to give light to despair,
unconquering force to societies, nations, races ? Can
it do what the law of Moses did, or the law of
Christ ? because, if it cannot do this, it is not
religion.
Certainly it is poetry, and more than poetry; it is
fresh and vital truth, in the form of immortal art. No
one of us would willingly let die a hope of it, or lose
a verse from that magnificent Psalter of Nature,
which, from Homer to Walter Scott, is one of the
best gifts that genius has bestowed on Man. Why
need we lose it; why need we cease to cherish it
and extend its power?
I take that passion for
Nature, that worship of Nature, in all its forms and
range, that sympathy with all the inner teaching of
Nature, that Cosmic Emotion that Wordsworth called
in the rhapsody of joy, ‘ the soul of my moral being ’
—and I ask, is that enough ?
Poetry is one thing. Science, Action, Life, Religion,
are far other—all much wider, and more continuous.
Poetry is but one mode of Art, and Art is but one
side of one of the elements of Human Nature. Poets
are not (for all that some people say) the guides of
life; their business is to beautify life. And after all,
this Worship of Nature, this poetry of Pantheism, is
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but one side even of Poetry, and not its grandest.
No poets have surpassed in this field the greatest in
the ancient and in the modern world-: Homer the
poet of the sea, Shakespeare the poet of the air : hewho saw the floor of heaven thick inlaid with patines
of bright gold. And yet in Homer as in Shakespeare
the worship of Nature holds but a subordinate place.
To these great brains the folds of many-fountained Ida,,
the waste of hoary brine, the moonlight sleeping on the
bank, the morn walking over the dew of some high
eastern hill—these are but the frame wherein are set
their pictures of men, and women, and societies; of
passions, sufferings, character ; of hope, despair, love,
devotion.
Poetry, taken as a whole, presents us with an image
of Man, not of Nature ; the drama of real life, not a
dream of the Universe. And if the starry night isbeautiful, it may be nothing to the smile of a child.
One speech of Prometheus, or of Hamlet, or Faust,
teaches us more than ten thousand sunsets.
And this poetic idealisation of Nature is a choice
of certain facts for the sake of their beauty and their
majesty. It deliberately excludes myriads of other
facts that are not beautiful, and yet are very real and
act potently on us. Deep is our debt to the magicians,
who have shown us how to see the world radiant and
harmonious. It is an ideal, infinitely precious and
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invigorating. But it is not the real truth, or rather
not the whole truth—far from it. The world is not
all radiant and harmonious; it is often savage and
chaotic. In thought we can see only the bright, but
in hard fact we are brought face to face with the dark
side. Waste, ruin, conflict, rot, are about us every
where. If tornadoes, earthquakes, glacier epochs,
are not very frequent, there is everywhere decay,
dissolution, waste, every hour and in every pore of the
vast Cosmos. See Nature at its richest on the slopes
■of some Andes or Himalayas where a first glance shows
us one vision of delight and peace. We gaze more
steadily, we see how animal, and vegetable, and
inorganic life are at war, tearing each the other : every
leaf holds its destructive insect, every tree is a scene
of torture, combat, death, everything preys on every
thing ; animals, storms, suns, and snows waste the
flower and the herb; climate tortures to death the
living world, and the inanimate world is wasted by the
.animate, or by its own pent-up forces. We need as
little think this earth all beauty as think it all horror.
It is made up of loveliness and ghastliness; of
harmony and chaos ; of agony, joy; life, death. The
nature-worshippers are blind and deaf to the waste
.and the shrieks which meet the seeker after truth.
And if beauty and harmony are ascendant in these
spots of earth which we fill, are they in the South
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Pole, and the North Pole, and the depths of the
Atlantic and Pacific; or in the extreme icy heavens,
and in the fiery whirlwinds of the Sun, and in those
regions of Space where they tell us Suns explode
and disappear, annihilating whole solar systems at
once? The Moon of the poets is an image of peace
and tenderness; but the Moon of science makes the
imagination faint with the sense of a lifeless,
motionless, voiceless, sightless solitude.
What a
mass is there in Nature that is appalling, almost
maddening to man, if we coolly resolve to look at all
the facts, as facts I
Nay, has this wandering speck of dust, that we call
ours, one of the motes that people the sun systems^
has it always been beautiful? Parts of it now are.
But in the infinite ages of geologic time, even in the
vast glacier epochs, and the drift, and the like, or
when this island lay drenched in a monotonous ooze—
was beauty, or what man thinks beauty, the rule then ?
The flowers, the forests, the plantations, the meadows,
the uplands waving with corn and poppies, are the
work of man. The earth was a grisly wilderness till
man appeared; and it had but patches of beauty
here and there, until after man had conquered it.
Man made the country as much as he made the town ;
the one out of organic, the other out of inorganic
materials.
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And what is beauty, and harmony, and majesty in
Nature? Nothing but what Man sees in it and feels
in it. It is beautiful to us ; it has a relation to cur
lives and our nature. Absolutely, it may be a wilder
ness or a chaos. The poets indeed are the true
authors of the beauty and order of Nature ; for they
see it by the eye of genius. And they only see it.
Coldly, literally, examined, beauty and horror, order
and disorder seem to wage an equal and eternal war.
Morally, intellectually, truly, Man stands face to face
with Nature—not her inferior, not her equal, but her
superior, like the poet’s last man confronting the Sun
in death. The laws of Nature are the ideas whereby
Man has arranged the phenomena offered to his
senses; the beauty of Nature is the joy whereby he
grasps the relations of his environment to his own
being. When we think we worship Nature, we are
really worshipping Homer and Shakespeare, Words
worth and Shelley, Byron and Scott. As Comte said
in a bold but not irreverent moment—the Heavens
declare the glory of Galileo and Kepler and Newton;
for the ceaseless spectacle of mysterious movement
they present recalls to us the minds which first saw
unity and law therein.
There is, as we say, another and a far deeper spirit
of Pantheism, more subtle and more philosophical
than any Nature worship, than this love of the beauty
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and life in the world. It has forms infinite, that
cannot be numbered : the sense of immensity in the
sum of things-not-ourselves : the sense of stupen
dous Order around us, of convoluted Life around us,
or Force around us : or it may be a trust that things
are tending towards good around us: or that intoxi
cation with the fumes of Godhead reduced to vapour
which marked the metaphysical Pantheism of Spinoza.
There are some whose faith is sustained on even more
etherial food; who idealise the Universe as such, the
Good, the Beautiful, the True.
What are all these, if we take them to be quite
independent of God, and yet outside of and sovereign
over Man ? I know what is meant by the Power and
Goodness of an Almighty Creator; I know what is
meant by the genius, and patience, and sympathy of
Man. But what is the All, or the Good, or the True,
or the Beautiful ? What is the Anima Mundi, if it is
neither God nor Man, neither animate nor inanimate,
but both or neither ? And what is the Eternal that
makes for righteousness, if only Philistines can take
it to be Providence ? If God and Universe are
identical expressions, we had better drop one or other.
If the ‘Universal Mind’ is nothing so grossly anthro
pomorphic as the old idea of God, but really is the
cause of all things and is indeed all things, if being
and not being are identical and the identity of being
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consists in its being the union of two contradictories,
—let us, in the name of sense, get rid of these big
vague words, and having got rid of God as a term of
a narrow dogmatism, and Mind and Soul, as a verbal
spiritualism, let us say simply Things, and have the
courage of our opinions, and boldly profess as our
creed ‘I believe in nothing except in Things in general.’
For, what this metaphysical Pantheism gains in
breadth and philosophic subtlety over the mere poet’s
worship of Nature, it loses in distinctness, even in
meaning, till it becomes a phrase, with as little reality
in it as the ‘ Supreme ’ of the latest school of unutterables. The 1 All ’ is a very big thing, but why am I
to fall down before it ? The Good is very precious,
but good for what, to whom ? Cobras and mosquitoes
are good at biting; volcanoes. are good to look at
from a safe distance ; and bloody battle-fields are
good for the worms underground. The ‘ All ’ is not
good nor beautiful ; it is full of horror and ruin.
And Truth is simply any positive statement about the
‘ All.’ When people decline to be bound by the cords
of a formal Theology, and proclaim their devotion to
these facile abstractions, they are really escaping in a
cloud of words from giving their trust to anything; for
4 Things in general as understood by myself’ is a
roundabout phrase for that good old rule, the simple
plan viz. :—‘what I like.’
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There lies this original blot on every form of
philosophic Pantheism when tried as a basis of
Religion, or as the root idea of our lives, that it
jumbles up the moral, the immoral, the non-human
and the anti-human world : the animated, and the
inanimate; cruelty, filth, horror, waste, death; virtue
and vice; suffering and victory; sympathy and
insensibility. The dualism between moral being and
material being is as old as the conscience of man.
It is impossible to efface the antagonism between
them their disparate nature is a consequence of the
laws of thought and the fibres of the brain and the
heart.
No force can amalgamate in one idea
tornadoes, earthquakes, interstellar space, pestilences,
brotherly love, unselfish energy, patience, hope, trust,
and greed. No single conception at all can ever issue
out of such a medley; and any idea that is wide
enough to relate to the whole must be a mere film of
an idea, and one as little in contact with the workings
•of the heart or the needs of society as the undulatory
theory of Light or the Music of the Spheres.
Try any one of these sublimities in any of the crises
of life in which men and women in old days used to
turn for help to what used to be called Religion. A
human heart is wrung with pain, despair, remorse; a
parent watches the child of his old age sinking into
vice and crime; a thinker, an inventor, a worker
�breaks down with toil and unrequited hope, and sees
the labour of a life ending in failure and penury; a
widow is crushed by the loss of her husband and the
destitution of their children; the poor see their lives
ground out of them by oppressors, without mercy,
justice, or hope. Go, then, with the Gospel of Pan
theism to the fatherless and the widow, and console
them by talking of sunsets, or the universal order; tell
the heart-broken about the permutations of energy;
ask the rich tyrant to remember the sum of all things
and to listen to the teaching of the Anima Mundi;
explain to the debauchee, and the glutton, and the cheat,
the Divine essence permeating all things and causing
all things—including his particular vice, his passions,
his tastes, his greed and his lust. And when social
passions rage their blackest, and the demon of anarchy
is gnashing its fangs at the demon of despotic cruelty,
step forward with the religion of sweetness and light
and try if self-culture, so exquisitely sung by Goethe
and his followers, will not heal the social delirium.
We know what a mockery this would be. It would
be like offering roses to a famished tiger, or the
playing a sonata to a man in a fever. Io soften
grief, to rouse despair, to curb passion, to purify
manners, to allay strife, to form man and society,
everything is vain but that which strikes on the heart
and the brain of man, stirring the soul with a trumpet
�(
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tone of command, sympathy, exhortation and warning.
Men on a battle-field may be reached by the ringing
voice of their leader; but Madonnas by Raffaelle or
Sonnets by Shakespeare are not likely to touch them ;
and a man aflame with greed or revenge is as deaf as
a crocodile to the general fitness of things. In agony,
struggle, rage of passion, and interest, the suffering
look of a child, the sympathetic voice of a friend, the
remonstrance of a teacher, the loving touch of a wife,
is stronger than the Force of the solar system, more
beautiful and soothing than a sunset on the pinnacles,
of Apennines or Alps.
We all know how uncertain is the effect even of themost powerful human sympathy; but nothing has a
chance of effect in the terrible crises but that which
speaks to human feeling and is akin to the human
heart. The Universal Good, the Beauty of Nature,
Force, or Harmony are abstractions, ideas, possible in
the more thoughtful natures, at the sweeter and
calmer moments of life, but lifeless phrases to the
mass in the fiercer hours of life, out of all relation
with action, and effort, work, and the play of passion.
A Power which is to comfort us, control us, unite us~
and a Power that is to have any religious effect on us
must comfort, control, unite—must be a Power that
•we conceive as akin to our human souls, a moral
Power, not a physical Power; a sympathetic, acting,.
�living Power, not a group of phenomena, or a law of
matter. The Theisms in all their forms had this
human quality; the gods of the Greeks and the
Romans were the glorified beings- residing in things;
the God of Paul and Mahomet, Augustine and Calvin,
was the living Maker of all things and ruler of all
things. He was always a person, and a being more
or less close to the human heart and the human will.
And so every form of faith in which morality, or
humanity, or the progress of mankind, or the spirit of
civilisation, or anything human, moral, sympathetic,
stands for the highest object and ideal of life—all of
these speak to man as man in a like moral, social, or
emotional atmosphere.
We know how imperfectly even these act, how little
men and women are affected by the love of an all
perfect Creator, and the agony of atonement by a.
mediating God, or by the Judgment Day, by the
hopes of Heaven and the terrors of Hell, when once
they have begun to doubt the authenticity of these
promises and these warnings, or to find them out of
place in the busy work of earth. Where the wrath of
God and the love of Christ, and the Passion and Fall
and Redemption have ceased to control, and soothe,
and unite, it is an affectation to pretend that the
pleasure in the world’s beauty or the mystery of
existence is to take the vacant place. Here and
�(
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there are found natures of a meditative cast, and of
native refinement of spirit, in whom these ideas and
subtleties supply real moral and mental food. But
for the mass the result is impossible, and can only
deepen the anarchy and stimulate the passion and the
selfishness. These sublimities of the universe are in
essence vague; and what is vague lends itself easily
to what is vicious and self-seeking. The energies and
passions of men are of force infinitely more massive
and keen than are their tastes, their reveries, and
their meditations. The deepest of the moral impres
sions is often not enough to anchor the soul tossed
and buffeted in a storm of passion. The mere
analogies of the intellect would prove as feeble as
packthread.
Let us ask ourselves what the thing is that has to
be done; who the people are that have to be changed;
what is the change that has to be wrought before
Religion can be said to be doing its work. Religion
is not a thing for the halting places and the resting
hours of life, for a quiet Sunday afternoon, for the
moments of contentment and gentle repose in thought.
The strain of religion comes like that of the pilot in a
gale, or the captain on the battle-field, of the heroic
spirit in agony, doubt, temptation, loneliness. Where
pain is, and cruelty is, and struggle is; where the
flesh is tempted, and the brain reels with ambition ;
�(
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where human justice, and tenderness, and purity are
outraged; where rich and poor hate and war; where
nations trample on the weak; where classes rage after
gain; where folly, and self-indulgence, and gross,
appetites for base things and base aims settle down
on a people like an epidemic; where in crowded fetid
alleys, want, and exhaustion, and disease stagger un
pitied to their grave, and a heavy voice rises up,
c How long, how long! ’ from women pale with
stitching, and children weary of wheels and bobbins—
and no man listens—there Religion has to be in themidst—or rather ought to be in the midst. And is .
Religion to come, if it come at all, chanting a hymn
to the sunrise, or with a formula about the correlations*
of the universe ?
The main, daily business of Religion is to improve
daily life, not to answer certain intellectual puzzles ;
to raise the actual condition of the great toiling mass
to transform society by making its activity more
healthy, and its aim nobler and purer. It has to deal
with the sins of great cities and the wants of great
classes, the monotony, the uncertainty, the cruelty, of
the industrial system. The weak side of the official
Christianity, after all, is not so much its alienation
from science, its mystical creed, or its conventionalformulas, as the palpable fact that nearly nineteen
hundred years have passed since the birth of Christ,
�(
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)
-■and the Gospel has been preached by millions of
-priests, and yet, in spite of it, the practical order of
•society is so cruelly hard on such great proportions of
men, that it is still so far a world for the strong, and
the selfish, and the unscrupulous. How is the stir of
pleasure we feel in a starry night, or recognition of the
subtle homologies which connect Life and Matter—
Low is the faint sense of these intellectual luxuries to
■change the fierce, hurried, confused battle of life and
labour? And if it cannot act here, it will never be
religion.
What, in a word, do we really mean by Religion ?
It is not enough to say that it is the answer to the
questions, ‘ What is the relation of man to the infinite ?’
or 1 What is the origin of the universe ?5 or ‘ What is
the ultimate law, or fact, or power in the universe ? ’
Religion, no doubt, must have something real and
•definite to say on each and all of these problems.
But it means something far bigger, more complex, and
practical than this. Religion cannot possibly be sub
limated into an answer to any cosmical or logical pro
blem whatever. Suppose it proved that the origin of
the universe was found in evolution or differentiation,
that gravitation or atomic force was the ultimate law
of the universe, protoplasm being the first term of the
: series, and frozen immutability—the ‘ cold obstruction ’
of the poet—-the last term in the myriad links of the
�chain we call Life; suppose that the relation of man
to the infinite is the relation of the I to the Not-I, of’
the subject to the object, or again that it is the relation
of a blood-corpuscle, or a cell, to a living animal, or
any answer of the kind. Suppose any of these. Well!
it is plain that neither evolution, nor differentiation,
nor gravitation could be ipso facto any man’s religion.
It would be as absurd as to tell us that spectrum
analysis was religion, or the persistence of energy, the
binomial theorem, or the nebular hypothesis.
Now all these grand generalisations which pass by
the general description of Pantheism are at most ulti
mate ideas of this kind,//^ the impression of mystery
and power with which we contemplate them—cosmic
emotion, in fact. But then how are we to pass from
these remote ultimate generalisations, even when
lighted up by the glow of admiration and delight^,
sentiment and poetry-—how are these to pass to daily
life, to suffering, to sin, to duty ?
If the beginning and groundwork of Religion is to
answer this question, i What is this world around to
me, what am I, this conscious speck, to the world
around ? ’—if this is the groundwork of all Religion, it
is but the groundwork. The substance and crown of
Religion is to answer the question, £ What is my duty
in the world, my duty to my fellow-beings, my duty tothe world and all that is in it or of it 1 ’ Duty, moral
�(
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)
wind rent the mountains and break in pieces the
rocks—but the Lord was not in the wind.
And after the wind an earthquake. But the Lord
was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake
a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire. And after
the fire, a still small voice. And the still small voice
spake to him.
So now in these latter days, the spirit of Elijah
still speaks to us. For that which can touch the
heart with a religious awe and meaning is not the
wind, not the earthquake, not the fire, nothing in the
physical world outside of man. It is the still small
voice of a human heart.
We may use the arguments of theologians without
arguing on the side of theology. If there be a real
defensive energy in the older orthodoxies as against
so much that is vague and unstable in the modern
scepticism, it is not at all wonderful. The faith of
Christ, and Paul, and Augustine and Luther would
not have done all that it has done for eighteen hundred
years if it did not touch the deepest chords of the
human heart. Religion, in a simple human form,
will have more sympathy with Theism than with
Atheism ; more respect for the Athanasian creed
itself than for Pantheism ; and a firm conviction that
Christianity, whatever its destiny may be, will long
outlive as religion all forms of cosmic emotion.
�(
27
)
Cosmic Emotion, I say, can yield us no scheme of
duty, and hence no creed, no Religion at all. God isan idea on which Duty can be founded; Humanity isan idea on which duty can be founded—as I think
far more really and truly. But it is no part of my
present purpose to contrast the two conceptions of
God and of Humanity.
There are two grand questions which this concep
tion of God has to fight out, so as to satisfy the future.
The first is—How it can solve the difficulties of
science, and bring itself to square with the facts of
life. The second is^whether the conception of a
transcendental, eternal, perfect existence in Heaven
can really be made a basis for social duty in this
practical life on earth.
It is obvious that the conception of Humanity hasnone of these difficulties to face, neither of those
questions to solve. Humanity can have no misunder
standing with science ; because science is simply the
rational observations of Humanity. Nor, again, can
Humanity be ever liable to the charge that it
substitutes a celestial (and unreal) duty for a terrestrial
and positive duty. For Humanity knows nothing'of
Heaven, but as a visible object of wonder and beauty
It allows it to quicken and deepen the religious spirit.
It will not suffer it to become the field of the religious
spirit, the goal of the religious life.
�(
28
)
Has, then, the wonder and the beauty died out of
.Heaven like the setting of a sun that shall rise no
more ? The things that we have seen, can we now
see no more ? Hath there passed away a glory from
the earth ? Not so ! The worship of nature, the love
■and wonder at the world, our sense of all the universal
harmonies—cosmic emotion so to call it—is neither
crushed, nor dead, nor dying.
It is as rich and
radiant a part of our soul’s food as ever in the days of
Homer, or Hesiod, or Omar Khayyam, or Correggio,
■or Goethe, or Shelley. Cosmic emotion is not only
a very real part of our culture, but it is an imperish
able element in religion. Only it is not religion, it is
only a small part of it, or rather only the foundation
arid prelude of religion.
A rational philosophy must include an adequate
account of this external world, and its relations to
man and the homologies of the physical world without
and the spiritual world within. And as rational
religion must stand on, or rather must incorporate and
be (in part) rational philosophy, rational religion must
recognise and contain this cosmic emotion.
One
common error as it vitiated all the old theologies, so
it now vitiates all the modern forms of materialism,
pantheism, and even transcendentalism, whether in its
metaphysical form or in its scientific form. No single
explanation will cover the whole of the physical
�(
29
)
phenomena and the whole of the moral and intellectual
phenomena, for the excellent reason that there is no
single principle running through all, and no logical
means of bringing them into one category of thought.
Monism cannot cover the field of thought and action,
whether it be the monism of evolution or force, or the
monism of God or Spirit. The Cosmos in its im
mensity cannot be stated in terms of God, nor in
terms of spirit, soul, or consciousness. Humanity
and morality, on the other hand, cannot be reduced
to terms of physics, either of force, or of evolution,
or of order. There always stand everywhere, and in
the last analysis—matter and mind : we cannot con
ceive the absence of either; we cannot identify them ;
we cannot state one in terms of the other. Hence
the eternal dualism of all real philosophy, and thereby
of all true religion; the eternal Cosmos, as the field
.and envelope of the moral life, and that moral life
itself—the environment and the Life : Man and the
Universe or better, Humanity and the World.
Our love of this rich and potent earth, our awe at
this mysterious system which peoples space with a
marshalled host of worlds, our sense of the profound
unities and harmonies of the mighty whole, are now
iransfused with all the insight of the poets from Job, and
David, and Sappho and Theocritus, to Shakespeare,
.and Shelley, and Wordsworth, and Blake, and Turner,
�(
3°
)
together with all the thoughts of the philosophers
from Pythagoras and Plato to Hegel and Fichte ; to
Helmholtz and Darwin. Our sense of nature never
was so rich and deep as it is now; and it gains in
richness and depth immensely, when we are not asked
to worship it, or to cast man’s history and man’s con
science and duty into its language (in short to make
it a religion), or, on the other hand, to see in the mere
mode of life of an absolute, perfect, and almighty
will.
Rational religion stands with a firm front between
these two extremes, refusing to believe on the one
hand that Nature in its good and its evil, its beauty
and horror alike, is God, or the expression of God, or
the visible manifestation of God and his will, refusing
to believe on the other hand that Nature is the
measure of man, or any kind of divinity to man, or
the highest term of a series of which man is the unit.
It is not so 1 There lies in the heart of the poorest
and meanest child a force that cannot be even stated
in terms of the deepest philosophy of the physical
universe. Let us imagine this physical world convulsed
or smitten by some mighty cataclysm. Let us imagine
the human race withered off it, till all that was human
had almost ceased to be. Then, whilst one mother
struggling to save one child were left on this mere
fleck of dust in the countless procession of the suns,
�(
3i
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Ithe devotion of that poor creature to her offspring,
'lithe veneration of that poor babe for her protecting
‘ parent, have a deeper religious meaning than all the
ifmusic of the spheres, or the mystery of the cosmic
I forces. There, where these two are cowering together
in trust, and love, there are still life for others, labour
for others, endurance for the sake of something not
our own, a sense of reverence and gratitude for pro
tection, conquering pain and leaping over death.
t
s
*
c
i
And if we are to seek the sources of religion, the
ideal of religion in the rushing firmament of suns, or
in the withering waifs and strays of humanity who are
yielding up their last breath in mutual trust and love,
we shall have to look for it in them, for we can find it
only in humanity, and in the world around us as the
sphere and instrument of humanity.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Pantheism and cosmic emotion: a discourse given before the South Place Society July 10, 1881
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Harrison, Frederic
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 31, [1] p. ; 15 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 2. List of books available in the South Place Chapel Library on back page.
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Pantheism
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Morris Tracts
Pantheism
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ORTHODOXY AND PANTHEISM
A SERMON,
PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
DECEMBER 29th, 1872, by the
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY.
On Sunday {Dec. 29tli) at St. George’s Hall, the Rev. C. Voyscy
took his text from the 2 Corinthians, iv. 13 v., “ We also believe,
and therefore speak.”
He said—In a splendid oration before the scholars of Liverpool
College, the Right Honourable William Ewart Gladstone made an
appeal to his young hearers on behalf of the Christian religion,
warning them against the Pantheism which Dr. Strauss has
recently put forth, with all frankness and courage, in a book
entitled, “ The Old Belief and the New.”
We cannot but sympathise with the pious intention of this
warning, nor can we fail to admire the high and generous tone
which the speaker' adopted in reference to the great critic whose
opinions he deplored and denounced. The temper of the speech
was as perfect as its eloquence, and, although we may find grave
fault with some of the positions he assumed, we feel quite assured
that the speaker was honestly doing his very best for the moral
and religious interests of the youths before him, and that he was
only uttering forth the most cherished convictions of his own
heart.
In the interests of that very religion of the soul, which Mr.
Gladstone would defend with all the great powers of his mind and
tongue, we must, however reluctantly, bring to light some of the
mistakes into which he has fallen, and place the relations of
Orthodoxy and Pantheism in a new light.
I say, in the interests of time religion, we must do this; for
whether Orthodoxy be true or false, there are thousands of Orthodox
people who are truly religious, who are living lives of earnest
faith and. love towards the highest God they can conceive, and
while they thus live (kept back by some cause or other, not of
�their own fault, from rising into a higher conception) they are
truly religious; and God above, whom the best and wisest of us
know so imperfectly, will surely say of them all “ They have done
what they could, it is not their fault if they have done no more.”
So far as the words we are considering were spoken by a truly
religious man, we must sympathise with him in his repudiation of
Dr. Strauss’ Pantheism. The learned critic declares his Pantheism
with a plainness of speech which commands our gratitude. He
says, “There is no personal God; there is no future state;. all
religious worship ought to be abolished. The very name of Divine
service is an indignity to manInstead of God he offers to us
what he calls the All or Universum., This All or Universum has
neither consciousness nor reason. But it has order and law. Now
Dr. Strauss might be right or wrong. We are not now discussing
the question, we only contrast this Pantheism with the devout
language of our own hearts ; and it is no stretch of enthusiasm to
say the contrast is as between darkness and light—Heaven and
Hell. We who utterly believe in a God who has both reason and
consciousness, in One who knows all about the past, present, and
future of every one of us; in One who really love us each and all
with a fatherly and motherly affection, and who has . taught ms to
look up to Him, and love and trust Him, and seek to do His will,
foi’ the sole satisfaction of doing it; we to whom good and illfortune, health and disease, life and death, are all ministers of His
Divine will to work only for our good; we, who thus believe, should
be plunged into the outer darkness of despair if Dr. Strauss’
Pantheism were true. You may put out a man’s eyes and sentence
bim to livelong night, but in the dreary gloom there come sweet
voices of loving friends, gentle hands to make sure the companionsliip, and to guide the steps, and beams of Heavenly sunshine to
warm the chill blood in his veins, and tell him that the glorious
light still shines on. But if you put out the eyes of a man’s soul,
who across that nethermost abyss can reach him with a word of
hope, or melt the frozen fog in which his spirit is imprisoned ? The
darkness of night is as clear as noon-day compared with the
blackness of despair when the light of the soul has been put out.
But to feel this horror, in all its intensity, you must once have
known what it is to see God, and to live joyously in his presence.
To be born blind is not to suffer l,OOOth part so much as to have
ones had eyesight and lost it. The Pantheist or Atheist is almost
�always one who never was truly religious, who never did really
believe in God at all. Now and then you find exceptions of those
who have lived in the blaze of Heavenly sunshine, and then
suffered a total eclipse of faith, and as far as my experience goes
such sufferers have nearly lost their reason, and some have put an
end to their torture by suicide.
I do not wonder, then, at the earnestness with which Mr. Glad
stone pleaded with those young people not to go too near that
awful precipice. I think that passionate fear for their safety
justified him in warning them of their peril.
If we have nothing but unconscious unreasoning Universum,
we have no God. Its boasted order and law are cruel and inex
orable. Nay, rather they can have no moral significance to the
moral beings who are tortured by their caprice. Without the
heart of man to reflect the heart of God, the order and laws
manifested in the phenomena around us chiefly tell of reckless
disregard of human feeling and utter negligence of cieature happi
ness. What is it to me to be told that the greatest number are
happy, when I may be one of the wretched few whose life is a
torment ? Take away God, and the whole creation is cursed—not
a single solution left of all its malignant riddles, not a grain of
hope left at the bottom of nature’s infernal gifts. Its very joys
mock us; it sweetest pleasures grind to ashes as we taste them.
But oh! with just one gleam from Heaven, refracted from the poor
dull broken mirror of the heart of man; what light and joy
spring forth ; how all the woes of earth are relieved, how its most
suffering victims are pillowed on a mother’s breast, how its worst
despair is conquered by the feeblest hope! If we only believe in
One just a little better than ourselves, a Heavenly voice goes through
the world cheering the drooping souls on its way with the celestial
song, “ Glory to God in the Highest, on Earth there shall yet be
peace, for all is goodwill to man.” And they hear a voice
behind them saying, “ Fear not, for I am with thee. Be not
dismayed, for I am thy God. I will help thee. Yea, I will
strengthen thee, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my
righteousness.”
I must pause for a moment to explain what we mean by a
“personal” God. We use this term only in contrast to Pantheism,
It is commonly taken to imply a God in some form or other, possibly
hunian. But of course that is not the sense in which we use it,
�4
We mean by it only the individual self-conscious existence of God,
which enables him to say Ego et non-Ego—T and the Universe, [
and you. However mysterious and subtle the connexion may be
between God and matter, yet we believe God is able to say “I and
matter,” that he is able to think, and to will, and to love. This is
why we speak of a “ personal ” God, even while we have not the
remotest anthropomorphic conception of the mode of His existence,
or of the nature of His substance or essence.
To return to Mr. Gladstone’s speech. The safeguard against
Pantheism or Atheism which he proposes, is to hold fast “the
faith once delivered to the Saints,” viz., “Belief in the Deity and
Incarnation of our Lord.” These he describes as “ the cardinal
and central truths of our religion,” “confessed by many more than
ninety-nine in every hundred Christians.”
With quite as deep a horror of Atheism as he has, we neverthe
less demur altogether to his antidote, and we will give our reasons
for it.
First, in passing, we may well question whether the Deity and
Incarnation of Jesus was the faith once delivered to the Saints, or
the belief of the Apostles rhemselves. But as it is a matter of
no consequence whatever, except to the critics, we pass on at once
to give our reasons for demurring to the efficacy of the safeguard
proposed.
1st. Mr. Gladstone seems to us to make his first mistake in
identifying a belief in the Deity and Incarnation of Jesus with
religion. You will, perhaps, remember in my recent sermons on
“ Faith: Intellectual and Emotional” how I endeavoured to shew
that Intellectual Faith was not only not essential to religion, but,
for the most part, calculated to weaken and destroy religious
emotion. I will not go over this ground again, but I can quite
understand Mr Gladstone identifying the two things which are
radically distinct, because all his own religious emotion has been
derived, in the first instance, from impressions connected with the
Christian doctrines, and they are now practically bound up
together. That is, the historical Jesus, of whom his Church and
his Testament speak, has become to him a God in Heaven, and the
personal solace of his own soul. He cannot enter into the
feelings of the Jew who, while looking upon Christ as only one of
his countrymen and a mere man, lifts up his soul to Jehovah in
the words of the Old Psalmist, “ Whom have I in Heaven but
�3
Thee, and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of
Thee.” To a votary of Mary or of Jesus, the religious man of
another creed is an inscrutable enigma, he is an object of pity ;
considered to be only a poor lame or blind traveller in a wrong
road, who shall be dealt with mercifully, if at all mercifully,
because he was ignorant; and so the real religious element which
is to be found in men and women of all creeds is thought, by all
in turn, to be peculiar to their own creed.
Mr. Gladstone’s creed may be true or false. Whether it be one
or the other, true religion is to be found connected with all creeds.
But we demur to this safeguard on another ground, viz., that it
is a belief resting solely on external authority, and not on the
reason, conscience, and love of the human soul. Any religion
coming to us on such terms, claiming belief in external authority,
must expect to have its claims challenged, its witnesses crossexamined, its authority sifted.
Now-a-days we cannot expect men and women to believe the
Deity of Christ because Mr. Gladstone believes it, or because
others before him, not a bit more entitled to credit on such a
subject, believed it. The appeal to antiquity is vain, for it proves
too much; it proves Brahminism, Judaism, Buddhism, and ever
so many things, false as well as true. Dr. Strauss himself, the
master of modern criticism, has examined these historical claims
for Christianity, and found them wanting. He began, no doubt
as many begin, by thinking that the only God in Heaven was the
God revealed in the Bible, and when he found that the Bible told
falsehoods, and that the image of God, in some places therein
described, was a foul image, to be hated and not loved by man, he
ceased to believe in God at all. He cannot have had any religion,
as we understand it, apart from his intellectual conceptions of the
Divine Being, as drawn from the Old and New Testaments,
interpreted by the Church, or else his belief in God would have
survived the shock of his discovery. But having no idea of God,
apart from what he had been taught, he came to the only logical
conclusion—that there was no God at all. Dr. Strauss will pardon
me if I have misread his experience; but it is that of thousands
and thousands. It is not merely natural, it is inevitable.
The same process is going on around us in all the religious
bodies of this country. So far as men and women have been
taught that their Bibles and Churches are the only means of
�G
knowing anything about God, so far, when they discover, as they
inevitably must, the falsehoods and errors, and impieties of their
Bibles and creeds, will they become Atheists, or Positivists, or
believers in Dr. Strauss’ unconscious Universum. Put a Bible
into a man’s hand and say to him “ This is God’s Holy Word. It
is all true, and right, and good.” If he have no religion indepen
dent of what he gets out of that book, resting on its authority
alone, then as soon as its authority is shaken, or his eyes open to
see its falseness and immorality, he loses his religion entirely, and
has no alternative at first but to make a frantic effort to swallow
it all down without another moment’s reflection, or to turn his
back on it for ever, and perhaps to sink down into the torpor and
misery of Atheism.
f
It is, therefore, not only the Christian creeds, but the Christian
method of imposing them on the acceptance of men which is to
blame for Pantheism and Atheism. You churches have done it;
You Christian Evidence champions, in your mistaken zeal; You
sticklers for dogma; You believers in moral and physical monstrosi
ties ; You slave-bound idolaters of the traditions of antiquity. It is
you that have slain these poor souls, or shut them up in the dun
geons of despair. It is on your heads that the blood of these
victims will fall, and it cries up out of the ground for vengeance
at the hands of the living God. No, not for such vengeance as
your Bible teaches, 11 a fearful looking-for, ©f fiery indignation, to
consume the adversaries ”—not that; but for the plucking up, and
tearing down, and ruthless burning of your false creeds, which are
only cruel when they are not childish and silly. All these thou
sands and thousands of stray souls, driven out by your curses from
green pastures into a waste howling wilderness—these bear witness
against you, that when they asked you for bread you gave them
only a stone; when they sought the Lord God who made them,
you set before them a fierce and burning savage, more awful than
Moloch, and then tried—but vainly—to shade his hideous image
by the Cross of Calvary; when they wanted the eternal, you gave
them only the temporal; whenthey panted for the living God, you
gave them only a dying man. Oh ! shame on your cowardice,
your childish fears, which bind you to these old wives’ fables, and
make you an incubus on the face of God’s fair earth. You make a
darkness where all ought to be light, and would be light too, but
for your crypts and cells. You make desolation where joy and beauty
�f
ought to flourish, and the songs of the happy fill the spacious air.
Is there no revelation of God in men’s own hearts, that you must
needs read solemnly your ancient tales of magic and Incarnation,
and tell them this is God’s only visit to earth, his one only con
descension to the children of men ? Does not my heart, from its
lowest depths, scorn a boon so rarely, so grudgingly, so partially
given, when I have my God with me, and about my
path and about my bed by night and by day, healing
all mine infirmities, saving my innermost life from destruction,
and crowning me with mercy and loving kindness ? What
Incarnation or Deified prophet can bring God so near to me
as he is now, has ever been, and always will be ? To make
me believe your old story would be to darken all my soul, and
drive me, as it has driven thousands, to blank despair. But
what if, besides this story of the Incarnation, your gospels and
creeds drive me to believe in the damnation of unbelievers, and
in the eternal wrath of your crucified God ? Can you expect
me to keep my reason, not to say my religion, in the presence
of such a nightmare as that? Oh, if you would really save
your young men and maidens from that horrible despair of
hcpeless Atheism, in the name of God I charge you to take from
them their Bibles and Cathechisms, and tear out those horrible
leaves which tell such awful and blasphemous falsehoods to the
dishonour of God, and the discredit of Christ. If you would have
them grow up to be religious, keep far from them the sight and sound
of those very things which you prize most dearly as “ the cardinal
and central truths ” of your religion. The new world, taught by
science, and it is to be hoped by a standard of morality not
lower than the present, will laugh at your story of the miraculous
birth, will grow impatient at the blindness of any who will
think the Incarnation a great act of God’s love and condescension,
and will become indignantly deaf to the enchantments of any
one who dares to follow up your antiquated legends with threats
of hell-fire everlasting, if they do not believe them. Take it home
to your heart while you are still earnest to serve God, that you
are doing his cause and his children infinite wrong by persisting
in enforcing your absurd creed upon an age which has well-sifted
its pretensions, and thus driving all restless souls from one extreme
of a paralysing superstition to the other extreme of a blank and
hopeless infidelity.
�But there is yet hope for men and women in this world if the
croning churches will but hold their peace. In the hearts of the
young are strains of Heavenly music, which will lure them on into
paths of holiness and peace, if the sounds be not overwhelmed by
the threats of the creeds. “ My son give me thine heart ” is no
pretty fiction of fabulist or poet; but a great multitude, whom no
man can number, have heard that celestial entreaty and have cast
themselves into the Father’s everlasting arms, Tell them far and
wide, over the whole earth, “ God is Love.” “ God is Just.”
“God is Holy.” Use what terms you will to express all that is
noblest and highest—only, “ Speak good of his name.” Dishonour
it not by your old fables. Blaspheme it not by your Bible
curses. “ Speak good of His name.” “ 0, let your songs be
of Him, and praise Him.” “Let your talking be of all His won
drous works.” “ Be telling of His righteousness and salvation
from day to day.” And then surely you will find even the young
ones more ready to embrace the holy joy, more willing to learn
more about so great and good a God; and then the poor Atheists,
too, whom your false creeds have blighted, will perchance come
back, as many have done already, under the genial rays of such a
gospel, and begin to believe in very earnest what their hearts had
so long told them was “ too good to be true.” Let it never be
forgotten that there is a third alternative between Orthodoxy and
Pantheism, a true religion of love and trust towards God, and of
love and duty towards men, without Bible, or dogma, or church ;
without Christ, or Paul, or John. And as it is most certainly true
that Orthodoxy must fall when you take away from its foundations
the bottomless pit of hell fire, so it is true that, so long as man is
man, his faith will survive the ruin of the churches, and the
burning of creeds and Bibles; and as the ages roll on, he will
wondei- not that he can walk so well without these long disused
props and crutches, but that he could ever have borne at all
such frightful and dangerous impediments to his communion with
God.
If I have spoken too fiercely, I must say “ my zeal hath even
consumed me.” I may be reproached for “pride and perverseness,”
but I am not ashamed of being proud to bear witness for the
noblest conception of God ever held by mortal man, noi’ ashamed
of a perverseness which refuses to be made the slave of foolish
ness, or the accomplice of Atheism.
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Orthodoxy and pantheism. A sermon preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, December 29th, 1872
Creator
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Voysey, Charles [1828-1912]
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Tracts 6.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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[1872]
Identifier
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G3399
Subject
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Pantheism
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Orthodoxy and pantheism. A sermon preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, December 29th, 1872), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Morris Tracts
Orthodoxy
Pantheism