1 10 13 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/62d3528316601b71d06dead15744cfee.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=dgJPF1LFKJmSKhQ6wiHSVU6D64Nri13HCVxBBTvQ0y1nDf0IAZlgeWeRry22X90pEaeQGssgriNi3xbcIqUYWmlLjvLXmO3suBQ1NNXuJzEbUPqqCMk7JO4A7k0DHrYbN1AH%7EjADCwEuXp1FNUT1Q%7EL8X2bhDiFcw0MLn9t0X9oBrf-dXu-Kro-TzwH9hxdvuzaKi5CNGvvSTR0%7EYBuvbBE7aQ8Hpj-zF7Lx5dMKmVpmfx1LbRAuO6RsOwJlmkb5xOC6mxni0QJEfb5e1MNRSA0S1ghtoY6Y-bSH-Kzc7vMFqAm88Q7J1g6J913Lc2hJgwmqtgmxExWdbO%7EakM6Reg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 27cd7d425e8712431a4470e175273041 PDF Text Text AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIAN THEISM I Which is the More Reasonable ? « By CHARLES WATTS. CONTENTS: (1) What is Agnosticism? (2) Its Relation to the Universe and Christian Theism ; (3) Is it sufficient to satisfy man’s intellectual requirements? The Natural and the Supernatural. Price Ten Cents. SECULAR THOUGHT OFFICE, Toronto, Ont. �omhmm �AGNOSTICISM & CHRISTIAN THEISM : WHICH IS THE MORE REASONABLE ? I. WHAT IS AGNOSTICISM ? This is pre-eminently a critical age, when the right to examine teach­ ings submitted for our acceptance is more than ever recognized. In the light of modern thought, no subject is too sacred for honest criti­ cism, and no opinion too ancient for reasonable investigation. Rea-on is now rapidly taking the place of blind belief, and serfdom to authority issyielding to the influence of mental freedom. Christian Theism as taught by the Churches has been so long regarded by its adherents as being the embodiment of absolute truth, that to in any way question its pretensions has been condemned as almost an unpar­ donable sin. Every new philosophy that has challenged the positive claims of Theism has been avoided and misrepresented apart from its -pertinency and value. This has been the case particularly with the philosophy of Agnosticism. It will, therefore, be interesting to in­ quire, What is this Agnostic phase of thought ? In answering this question, the reply will be classified under three divisions—(1) What is Agnosticism ? (2) Its relation to the Universe and Christian Theism; and (3) Is it sufficient' to satisfy man’s intellectual require­ ments 1 What is Agnosticism ? The word is one that has become tolerably familiar to a large section of society in sound, if not in its strictest philosophical signification. It has come into use within the last few years, and has achieved a great popularity. Friends arid foes alike employ it—the former to approve it and the latter to condemn it, and both to describe a certain phase of thought which is recognised as being very extensive. Like most technical phrases, the term is derived from the Greek, and signifies “ not knowing.” An Agnostic, therefore, is one who confesses that he has no knowledge upon those subjects to which his Agnosticism is applicable. �4 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIAN THEISM : Although the word Agnostic is comparatively new, that which it represents is as old as humanity. Men are not now for the first time discovering that there are questions which lie altogether beyond their gnosis or knowledge. That discovery was made at the dawn of human thought. A knowledge of his own ignorance was one of the qualities which Socrates boasted that he possessed, and which distinguished him. in such a marked manner from his wily antagonists, the Sophists ; and at Athens, two thousand years ago, St. Paul is said to have found an altar, the remaining one of many, dedicated to an “ Unknown God.”' The limits of human knowledge have been recognized by the foremost, men of the race in all lands and in every age. Before the mighty mysteries of the universe the greatest thinkers have stood awe-stricken,, aghast and dumb. The intellect has again and again been paralyzed in its ineffectual attempts to read the riddles of existence, before which those of the Sphinx are lost in their insignificance ; and no GEdipus hasyet been found competent to the task of furnishing the solution. “ Alli things,” said the schoolmen, “ run into the inscrutable,”—a thought equivalent to one to be found in Professor Tyndall’s “ Belfast Address.”' Therein that eminent scientist says : “ All we see around and all wefeel within us....... have their unsearchable roots in a cosmical life....... an infinitesimal span of which is offered to the investigation of man.”' Thus it will be seen that Agnosticism is an old friend with a new name,, and perhaps a few additional qualities. We meet with it under certain, forms in the pages of the history of every age. The profoundest intel­ lects have been familiar with its character, and have not felt themselves ashamed to confess to the attitude of mind which it represents. It should be distinctly understood that Agnosticism is not to be in any way confounded with ignorance as that phrase is used in every-day life. Herein consists ©ne of the errors into which our orthodox op­ ponents are continually falling. They use the words Agnosticism and general ignorance as if they were synonymous, which is misleading, to say ^the least of it—that is, unless the latter term be employed as the direct /antithesis of omniscience. No one pretends to know everything, and the knowledge of many persons is considerably less than they in their own opinion imagine. It is stated that an admirer of Dr. Johnson began on one occasion to praise him for the great extent of his know­ ledge. “Pooh,” said Johnson, “you would say I had great knowledge even though you did not think so.” “ And,” rejoined the admirer, “ you would think so even though I did not say it.” The fault of �WHICH IS THE MORE REASONABLE ? 5 'Over-estimating our own knowledge is very common, and frequently begets an egotism of a very dangerous nature. Invariably, the less a man knows the more dogmatic he becomes, and the weaker the evidence upon which his convictions are based the more positively will he assert them to be true. It should require no extensive self-examination to convince the careful thinker that, even if he knew all that can be known upon every subject within the range of human gnosis, still then the domain into which his knowledge does not extend would be infinitely large compared with that small sphere which his information has covered. In that larger province he is an Agnostic, and it would be very unfair to designate him an ignorant person on that account. Therefore, although Agnosticism means “ not knowing,” it is in no way the equivalent of general ignorance. The word Agnostic, however, in its philosophical sense, has a still broader meaning. An Agnostic is not simply a person who is profossedly ignorant concerning many subjects upon which other persons pretend to have an extensive knowledge ; but he maintains that there are problems the solution of which by man is impossible at the present stage of his mental development. Further, an Agnostic is one who limits the human mind by the measure of its capacity. That the finite can never become infinite is probably a matter about which there can be no difference of opinion, inasmuch as such a statement is a self-evident truth, or as axiomatic as a proposition of Euclid. On the other hand, a mind which is less than infinite cannot possess all knowledge. The ■consequence is, that there must always remain a wide field beyond the range of the human faculties. In relation to that field every man must be Agnostic, for the simple reason that his knowledge cannot penetrate therein. Even the most orthodox believer proclaims his Agnosticism, in a sense—that is, he admits that there are subjects which he not only does not know, but which, from their very nature, he can never know, since they relate to that which lies outside the sphere of thought. As Herbert Spencer observes : “ At the utmost reach of discovery there arises, and must ever arise, the question, What lies beyond ? ” (“First Principles.”) And that beyond does not diminish, but rather widens, •as knowledge increases ; for, the more we know, the more we discover we have to learn. “ The power which the universe manifests to us,” remarks the same writer, “ is utterly inscrutable.” Why should there be any hesitation in admitting this truth ? No one looks upon it as derogatory to human nature to admit that his power is limited, and �6 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIAN THEISM : that there are things which he cannot do. Why, therefore, should it beconsidered humiliating to confess that man’s knowledge, is limited, and that there are topics which he does not and cannot know ? Not simply that he has not advanced sufficiently in intellectual research to grapple with them, but that they lie completely outside his sphere of thought. In nature we can never know more than phenomena; and yet thesevery phenomena involve the necessity of the existence of something which is their ground and support—that something being to us un­ knowable. The unknown is postulated in the very terms we are com­ pelled to use when speaking of the unknown. “ The senses,” as Lewes observes, “perceive only phenomena; never noumena” (“History of Philosophy ”). This opinion is not of modern origin, since Anaxagoras maintained it, and Plato gave it his support. Thus it will be seen that Agnosticism is not only not synonymous with what is generally termed ignorance, but that it is compatible with the very highest and most profound knowledge of which the human mind is capable. Agnosticism being a philosophical, or certainly a quasi-philosophical, question, must be judged of in the same manner as any other subject of philosophy. Dogmatism is out of place in regard to it, and those who accept its teachings must be content to practise humility and to lay aside all arrogant assumptions of their great superiority to other men whose views may not be identical with their own. As the ancient philosopher observed : “We are never more in danger of being sub­ dued than when we think ourselves invincible.” The object of the whole Agnostic system is to learn, as far as possible, the limits of the human mind in reference to the acquisition of knowledge, and, having, done this, to use every effort to effect improvement wherever it is possible, and to leave the useless and impracticable labour of sowing the wind to those who seek to know the unknowable and to perform the impossible. Wesley, in one of his hymns referring to the death of Christ, says : “ Impassive he suffers, immortal he dies ”■—that is, in­ capable of suffering, he did suffer; incapable of dying, he did die. Now, is not this the very height of absurdity ? And yet, in reality, it is not a whit more absurd than much that is put forth by those who claim a knowledge of matters which lie beyond the sphere of human reason. Agnostics, refusing to profess a knowledge they cannot com­ mand, aim to differentiate the knowable from the unknowable, and then devote their time and energies to widening the sphere of that within human gnosis. Whatever else is possible, it is certain that we �WHICH IS THE MORE REASONABLE? 7 can never extend the domain of the known into the unknown by in­ dulging in wild flights of the imagination respecting the unknowable, A® Socrates wisely observes : “ Having searched into all kinds of science, we discover the folly of neglecting those which concern human life and involving ourselves in difficulties about questions which are but mere notions. We should confine ourselves to nature and reason. Fancies beyond the reach of understanding, and which have yet been made the objects of belief—these have been the source of all the dis­ putes, errors and superstitions which have prevailed in the world. Such notional mysteries cannot be made subservient to the right use of humanity.” “ Fear not to scan The deep obscure or radiant light. Heed not the man Who draws old creeds to keep thee tight. Examine all creeds, old and new : Test all with reason through and through.” II. THE RELATION OF AGNOSTICISM TO THE UNIVERSE AND TO THEISM. Agnosticism maintains that the teachings of theology relative to the origin and nature of the universe, the existence of God, and immor­ tality are simply questions of speculation, and that reason, science and general knowledge do not support their dogmatic claims. Tne theologian, on the other hand, contends that sufficient is known upon these teachings to entitle them to our credence. In the face of these two contentions, it will be profitable to ascertain as far as possible which is the correct one. When the truth upon the matter is made manifest, the wisdom of confining ourselves to the known and knowable of existence yill probably be more readily recognized. What, then, are those subjects which are dogmatized upon by the theologian, and to which our attitude is purely Agnostic ? THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE. This is a question which, to us, is involved in absolute mystery. Not only can it not be fathomed by the human mind, but no approach can be made towards the solution of the'problem by the mightiest efforts of the human intellect. We may go back millions of years in imagination, �8 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIAN THEISM : but even then we are no nearer to a beginning than we were before. Indeed, the possibility of such a beginning at all cannot be thought— in other words, is not thinkable. As Mr. Mansel observes, “ Creation is, to the human mind, inconceivable.” Precisely the same with the other alternative, of an external existence, whether of matter or spirit. It presents no idea that we can deal with intellectually, because it ^sembles nothing of which we have had, or can have, the smallest possible experience. Something must have existed from all eternity ; that is a necessary truth, from which there is no escape. And yet the how of that eternal existence lies utterly beyond the sphere of human thought. To waste time in trying to comprehend it, to say nothing of making it the subject of discussion, much less of dogmatism, is the supremest folly. Nor can we have the slightest idea as to what was, or is, the eternal existence. The dogmatic Theist ascribes it to God, and the positive Atheist declares it to be matter • but what in reality either the one or the other means, in the strictest sense, by the terms used, neither of them knows. For what is God, and what is matter < Are they the same, or are they two different existences ? The Mate­ rialist, of course, denies the existence of spirit, and hence by matter he means something other than spiritj-but what ? Matter is simply a name given to that which originates in us sensations. But all that is known of this is phenomenal, and phenomena, as before pointed out, cannot exist by themselves, but must be supported by something which underlies them. What that something is, however, no one knows, since it lies completely outside the sphere of sensation. Besides, modern science has clearly shown that the existence of which alone we can be said to have any knowledge is not matter, but force. But, then, force can only make itself manifest by motion, and where there is motion something must be moved. Say that this moving body is matter, as it probably is, and then comes the question, Which was the eternal existence, force or matter, or both ? If force, how could it exist as motion when there was nothing to be moved ? And, if matter, how could theje be motion —and we have no conception of matter without motion—in the ab­ sence of force, which is the cause of motion ? If it be contended that both—matter and force—were eternal, then have we not two absolute and infinite existences, which is a contradiction ? The Theist postulates spirit; but that only adds a fresh difficulty, as will be seen presently. Here Agnosticism at once declares the whole subject to be outside of our gnosis, and, therefore, one which does not concern us, and of which �WHICH IS THE MORE REASONABLE? nothing is known, or can be known. Mr. Herbert Spencer remarks that, on the origin of the universe, three hypotheses only are possible: —1. That it is self-existent (Atheism). 2. That it is self-created (Pan­ theism). 3. That it is created by an external agency (Theism). Mr. Spencer has, at very considerable length, examined each of these theories, and shown them all to be unthinkable. His position is, that a self-existent universe, which is a universe existing without a begin­ ning, is inconceivable. We cannot even think clearly of “ existence without beginning.” And, if we could, it would afford no kind of explanation of the universe itself. The first theory, therefore, is un­ tenable. But no less so is the second—that of a created universe. To hold this, it is necessary, in Mr. Herbert Spencer’s words, to “ conceive potential existence passing into actual existence.” Is it possible, how­ ever, to form a conception of potential existence except as something which is, in fact, actual existence—the very thing which it is not I It cannot be supposed as “nothing,” for that involves two absurdities— (1) That nothing can be represented in thought; (2) That some one nothing is so far separated from other nothings as to be capable of passing into something, Again, existence passing from one state to another without some external agency implies a “ change without a cause—a thing of which no one idea is possible.” A self-created uni­ verse is, consequently, inconceivable. There is still left the third theory —that the universe was created by some external agency. But here a difficulty arises in the attempt to think of “ the production of matter out of nothing.” Moreover, there is still greater difficulty if we suppose the creation of space. If space were created, then there was a time when it was non-existent, which is also utterly inconceivable. But suppose all these difficulties overcome, there is yet another, the greatest of all. What is the external agency referred to ? And how came it into being ? These are questions to which no satisfactory answers have been or can be given. Thus the origin of the universe belongs to a regior into which no human mind can enter, and therefore Agnosticism is the only possible attitude of thought we can consistently take with regard to the matter. THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE. In connection with this question we encounter speculations in abundance ; but demonstrative facts are nowhere to be discovered. Herbert Spencer has shown that every sensation we experience com­ pels us, whether wo will or not, to infer a cause, and this- �10 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIAN THEISM : idea of causation drives us irresistibly to a First Cause. And yet the moment we have reached it we are landed in all kinds of contradictions and absurdities. For instance, is this First Cause infinite or finite ? If infinite, it is beyond our comprehension, outside the sphere of our knowledge; and if finite, then there must be something beyond its bounds, and it is no longer the First Cause. The Duke of Argyle, in his “ Reign of Law,” observes :— “We cannot reach final causes any more than final purposes ; for every cause which we can detect there is another cause which lies be­ hind ; and for every purpose which we can see, there are other purposes which lie beyond.” By holding that the Universe is infinite, to use the words of Spencer himself, “ we tacitly abandon the hypothesis of causation altogether.” The First Cause must also be either independent or dependent. But if independent, we can have no idea of it at all, because everything we know and think of is dependent. If, however, the First Cause be dependent, then it must, being dependent, depend on something else, and that something else becomes the First Cause, to which the same argument will apply. In a similar manner, this cause must be absolute, and yet, as Mansel has shown, “ A cause cannot, as such, be absolute ; the absolute, as such, cannot be a cause.” The reason of this is very obvious; the cause, as a cause, exists only in relation to the effect. But the absolute must be out of all relation, or it would cease to be absolute. But, in truth, we cannot conceive of the absolute at all. It lies beyond the reach of finite faculties to grapple with; hence, we are compelled to relegate the entire matter to the domain of the unknowable. The power which manifests itself in the universe is utterly inscrutable, and therefore we are driven to Agnos­ ticism to find in it a solid resting-place in reference to the origin and nature of the universe. THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. This is another question which, as already demonstrated, lies beyond z the reach of finite powers. Let us glance at some of the various methods that have been pursued—indeed, are still resorted to—to prove the existence of God. The object in doing this, be it observed, is not to attempt the foolish impossibility of proving the non-existence of God. That would not be Agnosticism ; but the desire here is to indicate that the question of the existence of God is a subject upon which man, to be logical, must, from the very nature of the case be Agnostic. Demonstration of the existence of God will hardly �WHICH IS THE MORE REASONABLE ? II be contended for, except perhaps by the advocates of the a priori method, and that need not be noticed here, since few representative Theists resort to it, and fewer still have any idea what it really means. The kinds of proof that are conceivable to be relied upon in this mat­ ter are as follows :— (a) The Senses.—These, however, can never furnish an argument to prove the existence of God, inasmuch as our organs of sense have no power to perceive anything that does not belong to the mere pheno­ menal part of matter, and, hence, can never show us the noumenon underlying appearances, much less an existence which is said to be in no 5^ay material. If God has given a revelation, such revelation may be seen or heard; but this, of itself, can only prove the revelation, not God. Suppose we heard a voice, in tones of thunder which shook the earth and reached every human ear, declare “ There is a God,” it would prove nothing but the voice—not the God proclaimed. The senses would perceive a sound, to which a very definite meaning might be attached ; but the sound would not be God. It will not be denied by any intelligent Theist that God can never become an object of sense, and, therefore, that method of proof may be dismissed as totally unavailing in the case. (b) Scientific Research.—“ Canst thou by searching find out God 1” is a question that was asked some thousands of years ago, and only one answer has ever been, or probably ever can be, given, and that is a negative one. Science, mighty and potent as it is for good, much as it has done to ameliorate the condition of mankind, and great as its triumphs are likely to be in the future, can never transcend sense knowledge. All its processes are of a material character ; its instru­ ments, together with the subjects which they explore, are material, the phenomena with which it deals are material, and all its discoveries are reported to the bodily organs of sense. Beyond the physical domain of appearances no scientific investigations can ever go ; no telescope or microscope can show us a trace of spirit; nor, in fact, of that, whatever it may be, which underlies phenomena. Scientific facts may lead up to philosophical generalizations ; but such generalizations are reached by ratiocination (process of reasoning), and are no longer exclusively scientific—in fact, are in a sense altogether independent of science. A scientific fact and the interpretation of the fact are totally different things. We may use science as a means for reading the riddles of nature ; the reading, however, is not science, but philosophy; and �19 v. AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIAN THEISM : science has but helped us to the facts which process that is not scientific has to explain. The Theist tells us, with Newton, that science leads up to God ; but it will be seen that the upward road has ceased to be withm the domain of science long before its termination is reached. Logveal Reasoning.—Here, of course, it will be argued by the heist that we start on firm and solid ground. A moment’s reflection, however, will show that this is by no means the case. Our starting point and the conclusion at which we seek to arrive lie so far apart that by no process of logic can we pass from one to the other. There is, in truth, a great gulf between them, and we do not and cannot possess the means of bridging it over. Xu all mathematical reasoning we start from some axiom or necessary truth, which we find in our minds, and which, by a law of our mentation, cannot be got rid of. This we make the basis of all our reasoning and the foundation of the entire super­ structure that we desire to erect. In geometry, in arithmetic, and in logic this is equally the case. Now, all these starting points, whether they be axioms relating to space, notions regarding quantity, or mental conceptions, lie in our own minds, and are only known to us by the fact that we find them there. From these we may reason, form­ ing a long chain of logical links, until, at the end, we reach some truth of a marvellous and startling character, which is as easy of demonstra. tion as the concept or axiom with which we started. In this way Theists endeavour to reason up to God. But it requires no very profound thought to show that the process must break down before it reaches that point. For instance, there is the fact that the conclusion must be of the same quality as the starting point. If the primary truth with which we commenced be internal to our minds, so must the conclusion be at which we arrive. Beginning with ourselves, we must continue and end with ourselves, and by no possibility can we reach anything that is exterior to us. If, therefore, we reason up to a concept to which the name of God is given, we shall be as far as ever from a demonstration of his actual being. We. shall still be dealing with an idea which exists simply in our own minds, and may or may not__for here demonstration ceases and the logical argument breaks down_ be a measure of some real existence. But there is another reason why this logical process must fail. The attributes ascribed to God are of that character about which we cannot reason. However exalted the conception at which we arrive, it must be finite, relative, and condi- �\ WHICH IS THE MORE REASONABLE? 13 tioned, while God is said to be infinite, absolute, and unconditioned. It is, therefore, impossible that God can be the last term of a logical induction. Of course, this does not furnish conclusive proof that the absolute and unconditioned has no existence; it does, how■ever, prove that we cannot know everything of it, since it transcends all our powers and faculties. It belongs to a sphere to which we have no access. Hence, in all our research, investigation, and thought, we bait when we approach the domain of the unknowable, bow our heads and unfurl the banner of Agnosticism. For a person to assert positively that he knows that a God exists, who is an infinite personal being, is, in the face of the present limita­ tion of human knowledge, to betray an utter disregard of accuracy of expression. With the majority of orthodox believers, the term God is a phrase used to cover a lack of information. Persons behold certain phenomena ; the why and wherefore they cannot explain • and because to them such events are mysterious, they pause at the threshold of inquiry, and to avoid what appear to be inscrutable difficulties, allege that such phenomena are caused by God. Dr. Young, the Christian Theist, in his “Provinceof Reason,” says :— “ That concerning which I have no idea at all, is to me nothing, in -every sense nothing.............To believe in that respecting which I can form no notion is to believe in nothing; it is not to believe at all.’r This represents t-he position of Christian Theism. Although a person may picture an object in his mind from an analogous subject, it has yet to be shown how an idea can be formed of that upon which no knowledge exists, either analogous or otherwise. All notions that have been entertained of Gods have been but reflexes of human weaknesses, human desires, and human passions, and therefore do not represent an infinite personal Being. Xenophanes is reported to have said, that “ If horses and lions had hands, and should make their deities, they would respectively make a horse and a lion.” Luther, too, remarked : “ God is a blank sheet, upon which nothing is found but what you yourselves have written.” Schiller also stated : “ Man depicts himself in his Gods.” The history of the alleged God-ideas justifies the truth of those statements ; hence, we find that in different nations, at various times, the most opposite objects have been adored as deities. The sun, -moon, and stars, wood, and stone, and rivers, cows, cats, hawks, bats, /monkeys, and rattlesnakes, all have had their worshippers. Even now the professed ideas of God in Christendom are most discrepant. The �14 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIAN THEISM : God acknowledged by “ Advanced Theists ” is not the same Being in many respects as the one depicted by Talmage and his school. Neither does the object worshipped by the Deist correspond with the “Supreme Power of the Pantheist. Then, if we go to the Bible, we discover very different notions of God therein recorded. He is there described as material, and then as immaterial j first as all-wise, and then again as betraying a lack of wisdom j in one place as being all-powerful, and in another as being exceedingly weak ; at one time as being loving, merci­ ful, and unchangeable, at another as being revengeful, cruel and fickle in the extreme. Surely, to rely on such absurd and contradictory descriptions of a Being as these is more unreasonable than to frankly admit that, if God exist, he is and must be unknown to us. This is not a denial, but an honest confession that mentally no more than physically can we perform the impossible. It is alleged that the “God idea” is firmly rooted in the human mind. What folly ! What is meant in this instance by an idea ? A mental picture of something external to the individual. But where is that“ something ” corresponding with the many and varied representations of a God ? The truth is, this supposed “ idea ” is no reality whatever, but simply a vague “ idea ” of an “ idea,” of which, in fact, no idea exists. Besides, the term “ Infinite Personal Being ” is a contradiction. Personality is that which constitutes an individual a distinct being. This definition implies three requisites : First, that the person shall be a personage ; second, that he shall be distinct from other things • and thirdly, that he shall be bounded, that is, limited. But a bounded, limited being is a finite being, and, therefore, cannot be an infinite personal being. Is the assumed personality of God differentm fro mine 1 If so, where is the difference ? Furthermore, is my personality a part of God’s personality ? If it is, my personality is “ divine ; ” if it is not, then there are two personalities, neither of which can possibly be infinite, for where there are two each must be finite. Furthermore,. personality is only known to us as a part of a material organization. If, therefore, God is material, he is part of the universe. If he be a part, he cannot be infinite, inasmuch as the part cannot be equal to the whole. Personality involves intelligence, and intelligence implies ; 1. Acquirement of knowledge, which indicates that the time was when, the person who gained additional information lacked certain wisdom. 2. Memory, which is the power of recalling past events ; but with the • �WHICH IS THE MORE REASONABLE 1 15 "infinite there can be no past. 3. Hope, which is based on limited per­ ception, and which shows the uncertain condition of the mind wherein the aspiration is found. Now, if God possesses these imperfect, faculties he is finite; while, on the other hand, if they do not belong to him, he is not an intelligent being. Neither does the Theistic definition of God, as being infinite, har­ monize with our reasoning faculties. Reason is based upon experience, but an Infinite Being must be outside the domain of experience , reason implies reflection, but we cannot reflect upon infinity, because it is unthinkable ; reason implies comparison, but the Infinite Being cannot be compared, for there is nothing with which to compare him; reason implies judgment, but the finite is totally incompetent to judge of the infinite ; reason is bounded by the capacity of the mind in which it resides, but the mind to conceive the infinite must be unbounded; reason follows perception, but we have no faculties for perceiving or recognizing the infinite. Therefore, is not the Agnostic position of silence as to the unknown the more reasonable ? If it be urged that it is no part of Agnostic philosophy to consider these Theistic assump­ tions, the answer is, that if such notions are well founded on demon­ strated facts, there is no reason for the Agnostic attitude towards them. It is the proving that Theistic allegations are unsupported by observed truths which renders Agnosticism logical and justifiable. Let it be distinctly understood that it is not against the existence and nature of a God, per se, that exception is here taken—of that we know nothing, but against the positive claims urged in reference to these subjects. To these our indictment is directed. The Orthodox notion of the “ innate consciousness of God’s exist­ ence ” does not strengthen the position of the Christian Theist, for the reason that it is groundless in fact. No doubt the error upon this point has arisen with many persons through their regarding consciousness as a separate faculty of the mind, whereas James Mill, Locke, Brown and Buckle have shown it to be a condition of the mind produced by ■early training and surrounding associations. George Grote, in his Review of J. S. Mill’s Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Phi­ losophy,” aptly remarks : “ Each new-born child finds its religious creed ready prepared for him. In his earliest days of unconscious in­ fancy, the stamp of the national, gentle, phratric God, or Gods, is imprinted upon him by his elders.” Thus it happens that what are too frequently but the consequences of youthful impressions and subsequent �AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIAN THEISM : tuition are regarded as veritable realities. If this “ God idea” were innate, is it not reasonable to suppose that all persons would have it ? But there are thousands of persons who are ready to acknowledge that ey have it not; and those who profess to have it are unable to ex­ plain what it is. Probably, if a child never heard of God in the morn­ ing of life, it would have no fancies concerning him in its mature age. t is to be feared that these Theistic pretensions arise from an inade­ quate acquaintance with the now admitted natural forces. There is however, this hope, that as knowledge still more advances, dogmatism will proportionately disappear, priestcraft will yield to mental freedom, and work in controlling Nature and reliance on her prolific resources will more than ever take the place of supplicating for, and dependence on, alleged supernatural help. The once favourite argument drawn from design in the Universe affords no justification for the positive allegations of Theism. As Pro­ fessor Taylor Lewis admits :— “ Nature alone cannot prove the existence of a Deity possessed of moral attributes.” Has it ever occurred to Theists that at the very most the God of the design argument can only be a finite being, for nowhere amongst what are supposed to be the marks of design in Nature is an infinite designer indicated ? Now, a God that is finite isneither omniscient, omnipotent, nor eternal. The design argument, moreover, points to no unity in God. According to natural theology, there may be one God or hundreds of Gods. The Rev. S. Faber fairly observes : “ The Deist never did, and he never can, prove without the aid of Revelation that the Universe was designed by a single­ designer,” Paley’s well-known comparison of the eye and the telescopeproves the very opposite of that for which it was used. It should beremembered that, but for the imperfection of the eye, the telescope had not been required. Plainly, the argument may be stated thus :_ Designer of the telescope, man; designer of the eye, God ; telescope imperfect, hence its designer w^s imperfect; the eye more imperfect, since the telescope was invented to improve its power • ergo, God, the designer of eyes, was still less perfect than man, the designer of telescopes. Dr. Vaughan, in his work “The Age and Christianity,” declares : “ No attempt of any philosopher to harmonize our ideal notions as to the sort of world which it became a Being of infinite perfection to create, with the world existing around us, can ever be pronounced sue- �WHICH IS THE MORE REASONABLE? 17 -cessful. The facts of the moral and physical world seem to justify inferences of an opposite de-cription from the benevolent.” The Rev. George Gilfillan, in his “Grand Discovery of the Fatherhood,” noticing the horrors and the evils that exist around us, asks : “ Is this the spot chosen by the Father for the education of his children, or is it a den of banisment or torture for his foes ? Is it a nursery, or is it a hell ? there is nb discovery of the Father in man, in his science, philosophy, history, art, or in any of his relations.” If nothing else rebuked the dogmatic assumption of the Christian Theist, the existence of so much misery, evil, and inequality in the world, should do so. What man or woman having the power, would hesitate to use it to alleviate the affliction, to cure the wrong, and to destroy the injustice which cast such a gloom over so large a portion of society ? Let the many records of the world’s benevolence, devotion, and kindness give the reply. To lessen the pain of the afflicted, to assist the needy, to help the oppressed, are characteristics of human nature which its noblest sons and daughters have ever felt proud to manifest in their deeds of heroic self-denial. Contemplating the suc­ cess of crime, the triumph of despotism, the prevalence of want, the struggles on the part of many to obtain the mere means of existence, the appalling sights of physical deformity—beholding all these wrongs this sadness and despair, who shall dogmatically exclaim, “ All Nature proclaims a Fatherhood of of ^df?The question of immortality scarcely belongs to the same class of subjects as the others which have here been discussed; nevertheless, even upon this subject, the Agnostic position appears to me to be the correct one. Personally, I refuse to dogmatise either one way or the other; and the question, after all, is but of little consequence. Our business, for the present at all events, is with this world; and the, affairs of the next may be left until we land upon its shores, if such shores there be. To ignore the teachings said to refer to another life is not necessarily to deny the existence of that life. One thing is cer­ tain, and that is our present existence. Furthermore, experience teaches us that time is too short, duties too imperative, and consequences too important to justify us in wasting our resources and displaying a ‘disturbing anxiety about, to us, an unknown future. “ Life’s span forbids us to extend our cares, And stretch our hopes beyond our years.” �18 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIAN THEISM : DOES AGNOSTICISM SATISFY MAN’S INTELLECTUAL REQUIREMENTS 1 There are two objections frequently urged against the Agnostic posi­ tion which with some people have considerable force. The first is, that Agnosticism robs man of the great consolation and incentive imparted by the belief in the certainty of the existence of a “ Heavenly Father” and a future life. In the second place, it is contended that Agnosticism fails to satisfy the demands of the human intellect. Let us exa.m in e these objections, with a view of ascertaining whether or not they pos­ sess any weight bearing upon the present question. The first objection supposes that without Theism and its teachings there is no adequate comfort and peace for the human race ; that this life of itself is but little more than “ a vale of tears,” alike destitute of the sunshine of joy and the power of imparting happiness in every­ day life. Persons who entertain these gloomy ideas regard existence as being necessarily full of trouble, aud think that mankind are incapable with mere natural resources of enjoying a high state of felicity, and that true bliss is only to be secured by believing in God and entertaining the hope of pleasure in another world. Such morbid notions are born of a dismal faith, and find no sanction in the real healthy view of life’s mission. Existence is not a mere blank ; its condition depends largely upon the use mankind make of it. To some the world may be as a garden adorned with the choicest of flowers, and to others as a wilder­ ness covered with worthless weeds. Life of itself is not destitute of beauty, glory, solace and love. True, it is sometimes darkened with clouds, but it is also enlivened with sunshine ; it is degraded by serf­ dom, and elevated by freedom ; it is shaded by isolation, and illumin­ ated by fellowship ; it is chilled by misery and persecution, and warmed by kindness and affection ; it is blasted by poverty and want, and in­ vigorated by wealth and comfort; it is marred by shams and inequalities, and glorified by realities and equity ; it is humiliated by unequal and exce sive toil, and dignified by fair and honest labour; it has its punishments through wrong and neglect, but it has its rewards in right and correct action. The lesson of experience teaches us unmistakably that life is worth having even if Theism and the teachings in reference to a future existence be nothing more than emotional speculations. In the language of the Rev. Minot J. Savage, in his work, “ The Morals of Evolution,” “ I believe there is not a healthy man, woman, or child �WHICH IS THE MORE REASONABLE? 19' on earth who will not join me in saying that life is worth living simply for its own sake, to-day, whether there ever was a yesterday or there ever will be a to-morrow. Have you ever stood, as I have, on a moun­ tain summit, with the broad ocean spread out at your feet on the one side, a magnificent lake or bay on the other, the valley dotted with towns, with growing fields of greenness, or turning brown with har­ vest ? Have you ever looked up at the sky at night, thick with its stars, glorious with the moon walking in her brightness ? Have you listened to the bird-song some summer morning ? Have you stood by the sea, and felt the breeze fan your weary brow, and watched the breakers curling and tumbling in upon the shore ? Have you looked into the faces of little children, seen the joy and delight they experi­ ence simply in breathing and living, beheld the love-light in their eyes,, heard their daily prattle, their laughter, their shouts of joy and play i Have you, in fact, ever tasted what life means 1 Have you realized that, with a healthy body, in the midst of this universe you are an instrument finely attuned, on which all the million fingers of the uni­ verse do play, every nerve a chord to be touched, every sense thrilling with ecstacy and joy ? No matter where I came from, no matter where I am going to, I live an eternity in this instant of time. Is it not a mistake, in the face of facts like these, to say that life is not worth, living unless it is supplemented by a heaven ? ” “ Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream.” As to the second objection, it is said that man is born to inquire ; his whole nature is bent in the direction of discovery ; curiosity to pry into the secrets of nature and being forms one of his leading character­ istics ; therefore, Agnosticism, which places a barrier to his further investigation, must be objectionable, because it fixes the limits beyond which he may not’ go. This allegation, if worth anything, must be urged, not against Agnosticism, but against the limit of human powers. To tell man that there are subjects which he can never master, not for lack of time to look into them, but because they lie in a domain to which, by the very nature of the case, he can gain no access, should certainly not be calculated to stop his inquiry with regard to matters upon which knowledge is to be obtained. The Theist believes that he can never fully comprehend God; but does that prevent him from �20 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIAN THEISM. endeavouring to learn what he can? Agnosticism has not placed limits to the human mind, but only defined them; it has not erected the barrier beyond which the human intellect cannot pass, but only described it j it has not invented the line which has separated the knowable from the unknowable, but only indicated its position. The mind of man is, therefore, free to inquire to the utmost extent of its powers, and the complaint that it cannot do more is foolish in the extreme. Agnosticism is sufficient for all the purposes of life, and more than that cannot surely be needed. There is no human duty that it is not compatible with, no human feeling that it does not allow full play to, and no intellectual effort that it would attempt to place restrictions upon. It leaves man in possession of all his mental force, seeking only to direct that force into a legitimate channel where it may find full scope for its use. In a beautiful passage in his Belfast address, Pro­ fessor Tyndall remarks : “ Given the masses of the planets and their distances asunder, and we can infer the perturbations consequent upon their mutual attrac. tions. Given the nature of disturbance in water, or ether, or air, and from the physical properties of the medium we canlinfer how its parti­ cles will be affected. The mind runs along the line of thought which connects the phenomena, and from beginning to end finds no break in the chain. But when we endeavour to pass, by a similar process, from the physics of the brain to the phenomena of consciousness, we meet a problem which transcends any conceivable expansion of the powers we now possess. We may think over the subject again and again, it eludes all intellectual presentation.” These words present a great truth, indicating, as they do, the proper scope of man’s intellectual activity. The Agnostic does not fail to carry on his investigations into Nature to the utmost extent of his ability. He seeks to wring from her secrets hidden through all the ages of the past; he pushes his inquiries from point to point, and learns all that can be known of the marvellous processes of life and mind, and only stops when he confronts the unknowable, beyond whose barrier he cannot pass. His are the fields, the groves, the woods, the sea, and all the earth contains ; the starry sky, too, is his domain to explore All nature, with its majestic varieties, lies before him, presenting sub­ jects of the keenest interest. In these he revels with delight; but the �NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 21 incomprehensible he seeks not to comprehend, the unknowable he does not make the idle attempt to know. In a word, he is a man, and he aims not at the impossible task of becoming a God. Is not this course more courageous, more dignified, and more candid than that adopted by the dogmatic theologian, who, yearning for a knowledge of the absolute, and yet failing to discover it, lacks the courage to avow his inability to achieve the impossible ? “ Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.” NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL. There have been a large number of books written on this subject, some of them by men of eminence in their respective departments of thought. It has been dealt with from very different standpoints, and therefore exceedingly conflicting arguments have been brought to bear upon it. Two able American writers, Dr. Bushnell and Dr. McCosh, have discussed it with considerable learning ; but one has to put down their works with a great degree of dissatisfaction, since nothing like clear definition is to be found in their pages. In England the subject has been made the theme of several large works, of hundreds of magazine articles, and of thousands of pulpit discourses, an<J yet the whole subject is enveloped in the densest darkness. There must be some cause for this, and the cause, I think, is not far to seek. The natural we know f but the supernatural, what is that ? Of course, as its name implies, it is something higher than nature—something above nature. But, if there is a sphere higher than nature, and yet often breaking through nature, nature itself must be limited by something, and the question that at once arises is, By what is such limitation fixed, and what is the boundary line which marks it off and separates it from the supernatural ? And this is just what no two writers seem to be agreed upon. But, further supposing such a line to be discovered, and to be well known, so that no difficulty could arise in pointing it out, a still more difficult problem presents itself for solution—namely, how man, who is a part of nature, �-22 NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL. and able only to come into contact with nature, can push his knowledge into that other sphere which, being non-natural, cannot be at all ac­ cessible to a natural being ? If the supernatural region be synonymous with the unknowable, it cannot clearly concern us, simply because we have no faculties with which to cognize it, and no powers capable of penetrating into its profound depths. In this case, as far as we are concerned, there is practically no supernatural, for none can operate on that sphere in which man lives and moves and displays his varied and in some respects very marvellous powers. According to many writers, the physical is the supernatural, because dt is not under the control of natural law. But why ? If man be partly a spiritual being, why should not natural law extend into the ■ sphere of his spiritual nature ? Indeed, an able writer on the Christian ■ side,-whose work has been enthusiastically received by all religious denominations—Professor Drummond—has maintained this position, the very title of his book stating the whole case : “ Natural Law in the Spiritual World.” The great German philosopher, Kant, calls nature the realm of sensible phenomena, conditioned by space, and speaks of another sphere as a world above space, depleted of sense, and free from natural law, and therefore supersensible and supernatural. But this is to make the supernatural spaceless and timeless—in fact, a mere negation of everything, and therefore nothing. Now, the only light in which we can look at this subject, with a view to obtain anything like clear and correct views, is that of modern science. By her the boundary of our knowledge has been greatly enlarged, and through her discoveries we have been enabled to obtain more sound information regarding the laws of the universe than it was possible for our fathers, with the limited means at their disposal, to possess. If there be a sphere where the supernatural plays a part and exer­ cises any control, it must clearly be in some remote region, of which we have, and can have, no positive knowledge; and the forces in v operation must be other than those with which we are conversant upon this earth. Science cannot recognize the supernatural, because she has no instruments which she can bring to bear upon, and no means at her disposal for, its investigation. She leaves to the theologian all useless . speculations regarding such a region, contenting herself with reminding him that he is. in all such discussions, travelling outside the domain of facts into a province which should be left to poets and dreamers, and �NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 23 which belongs solely to the imagination. All law is and must be natural law, from a scientific standpoint, because we can have access to nature, and to nature only. It is impossible to get beyond her domain, even in imagination. The supernatural, if it exist, must reveal itself through nature, for in no other way can it reach us so as to produce any impression upon the human mind. But, if it come through nature, then how can it be distinguished from the phenomena of nature ? It will be quite impos. sible to differentiate between them. We are quite precluded from saying, Nature could not do this, and is unable to do that. No man can fix a limit to the possibilities of power in nature. She has already done a thousand things which our forefathers would have declared im­ possible, and she will doubtless in the future, under further discoveries and advances in science, do much more which would look impossible to us. Whatever, therefore, comes through nature must be natural, for the very reason that it comes to us in that way. And the business of science is to interpret in the light of natural law. Even if she should prove herself incompetent to the task, it would only show that some phenomena had been witnessed which had for a time baffled explana­ tions, not that anything supernatural had occurred. And the business of science would be to at once direct itself to the new class of facts, with a view to finding the key with which to open and disclose the secret of the power by which they were produced. But what is nature ? Of course every man knows what is meant by nature, in part at all events ; and the only difference in opinion or de­ finition that can arise will be as to its totality. There are a thousand facts lying all around us, and a thousand phenomena of which we are every day eye-witnesses, that all will agree to call nature. The ques­ tion, however,, does not concern these, but others, real or imaginary, which differ somewhat from them, and which are supposed, therefore, to be incapable of being classed under the same head. Those who de­ sire to obtain a clear and accurate idea of nature cannot do better than read carefully Mr. John Stuart Mill’s excellent essay on the subject, published after his death. He gives two definitions, or rather two senses, in which we use the word in ordinary, every-day language. The first is that in which we mean the totality of all existence, and the other that in which we use the term as contradistinguished from art— nature improved by man. But it must be borne in mind that this is �24 NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL. still . nature. Nature improved by man is only one part of nature modified by another; for man is as much a portion of nature as the earth on which he treads, or the stars which glow in the midnight sky over his head. Nature, therefore, as I understand it, and as Mill de­ fines it m his first sense, is everything that exists, or that can possibly come into existence in the hereafter—that is, all the possibilities of existence, whether past, present, or future. If I am asked on what ground I include in my definition that which to-day does not exist, but may come into existence hereafter, I reply : Because that which will be must be, potentially at least, even now. No new entity can come into being; all that can occur is the commencement of some new form of existence, which has ever had a being potentially anyhow. No new force can appear, some new form of force may. But, then, that, when it comes, will be as much a part of nature as the rest—is indeed even now a part of nature, since it is latent somewhere in the universe. Man’s beginnings were in nature ; his every act is natural, his thoughts are natural, and in the end the great universe will fold him in its embrace, close his eyes in death, and furnish in her own bosom his last and final resting-place. Beyond her he cannot go. She was his cradle, and will be his grave ; while between the two she furnishes the stage on which he plays his every part. And more, she has made him, the actor, to play the part. Nature is one and indivisible. She had no beginning, and can have no end. She is the All-in-all. Com­ bined in her are the One and the Many which so perplexed the philo­ sophers of ancient times. Charles Watts. ��DATE DUE Z7 JU L 2012 I Demco, Inc. 38-293 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. 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Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Agnosticism and Christian Theism: which is the more reasonable? Description An account of the resource Place of publication: Toronto Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Watts, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [n.d.] Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [s.n.] Subject The topic of the resource Agnosticism Theism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Agnosticism and Christian Theism: which is the more reasonable?), 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> Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RA1651 RA1853 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Agnosticism Theism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/4747bb0af644265bfddc249a329bcad7.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=FudvcV1RAJiSg%7E3eK2I0%7EeDsqscruKXx4Xp5i7HzwD8kxQdpnHV3CGe3njP8G%7Ez1FNSV%7ElD4jqbKhtDtZ-B6IvVPLRckrlKgRUSCLnF8T-eAwegmfjql4mKQefy1CyBtUeOyAUUG4VXIkHIcITPGyxsGi17ikPqpYQbZxBtf4j30I7QZ0zVppO0Jq9PCkDkqnpnAZOeokxjRP7eykfo6BOA8zp2hmGZl7EZbZfjWkoU9c7UhARVVzo-CA68Rw54fuxRxRgpxjMlpLhX2gUXmqQw%7EyFdhEgo67ARfmbqBmthnMoGbRKekgnVyl76yU3tUf3RngWMVf-pCf2JtHaw6bA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM e01a613ec81df290ba58dfeec505e29e PDF Text 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. �The following Pamphlets and Papers may be had on addressing a letter enclosing the price in postage stamps to Mr Thomas Scott, Mount Pleasant, Pamsgate. The Doctrine of Immortality in its Bearing on Education. By “Pres­ byter Anglicanus.” Price 6d. The Judgment of the Committee of Council in the Case of Mr Voysey. Some remarks by J. D. La Touche, Vicar of Stokesay, Salop. Price 3d. A Challenge to the Members of the Christian Evidence Society. By Thos. Scott. The Dean of Canterbury on Science and Revelation. A Letter, by M.P. Price 6d. 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On the Relations of Theism to Pantheism ; and On the Galla Religion. By Professor F. W. Newman. Price 6d. Christianity and Education in India. A Lecture delivered at St George’s Hall, London, Nov. 12,1871. By A. Jyram Row, of Mysore. Price 6d. Friends to the cause of “ Free Inquiry and Free Expression ” are earnestly requested to give aid in the wide dissemination of these pamphlets. PRINTED BY C. W. BEYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, IIAYMARKET. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. 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Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource On the relations of theism to pantheism and on the Galla religion Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Caldecott, Alfred Description An account of the resource 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Thomas Scott Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1872 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G4847 Subject The topic of the resource Theism Pantheism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (On the relations of theism to pantheism and on the Galla religion), identified by Humanist Library and Archives, is free of known copyright restrictions. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Galla Peoples Morris Tracts Pantheism Theism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/5f1946631e43751ef1e8dd10955ce8b9.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=Rzg7-iACesj1G9dMiAhElQrzuYaAJwV%7EVEL8pKjzzhlkWy7uZJ7ypkPEo4BM%7EvUeWSE6jxSl52o35O3ck8EvN63s3BFfqs9YJ90yqGFnDn90Qh4hBoA9KH-M%7EFJaUA3ejUvLgPAYu1v4bsFY6NzNvQuvpPcVqcLS9Dy6YfWJT9AU2mcbgNf4F3Wf1WMpI6LcSE04lBXjmnC%7EpXcPAE0JTXq9gVFkUflVenp9a2XMfPpXjN87zcWtPA-h2lWy1YWURg-I-uUpx12jnZavAxIBSN3tpu-GzCsju3GaBAaXtwljp3kSZeO%7Ej4TrVC8ZxSZNpLGdJ2zoc5Ug9Ey%7E38DCOQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 4f05d66c7904fd31b18947820a5f3caf PDF Text Text THE Existence of God; OR, QUESTIONS FOR THEISTS. BY CHARLES WATTS ( Vice-President of the National Secular Society). Price Twopence. LONDON: WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C. 1894. �1 11 �THE EXISTENCE OF GOD; OR, QUESTIONS FOR THEISTS. Theists of marked intellectual ability persistently avoid any attempt to defend the Christian’s notion of their God as he is delineated in the Bible. The reason, no doubt, of this is that the character given to the deity by the “ inspired writers ” is so contradictory and repulsive that no amount of reasoning will harmonise it with modern ideas of justice, purity, and morality. Now is it not inconsistent upon the part of Christians to preach to credulous congregations about the virtues of God, while they dare not endeavor to defend, in public discussion, the same Being before a critical audience ? Surely orthodox exponents, to be consistent, should, when they undertake to prove the “ existence of God,” confine their attention to the God of the Old and New Testaments. If they feel that they cannot do this, it is their duty to say so; and further, to be honest, they should inform their followers that the character of the “ Heavenly Father,” as depicted in the Bible, cannot be defended by reason and ethical science. Is it not a sham and a delusion to profess to believe in a being whose nature and conduct are in­ defensible ? Feeling their utter inability to argue in favor of the Christian deity, Theists shelter themselves behind some metaphysical creation of their own, which they call “ An Infinite, All-powerful, and Intelligent Being distinct from the material universe.” Now, supposing there is such a being, where is the proof of his existence ? Do not the varied and contradictory conceptions that are alleged to obtain as to his nature and attributes show that no idea of such a being really exists ? It occurs to us that, if there be a God who is all-powerful and infinite in intelligence, he must know �4 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD; that the human race have no knowledge of him. More­ over, if he wishes us to have this knowledge, he, being allpowerful, could impart it. But he has not imparted it; therefore are we not justified in believing one of two things—namely, either that this supposed Being lacks the knowledge of our ignorance of him, or that he has not the power to make himself known ? In either case he could not be a God of infinite power and wisdom. What is called “Advanced Theism ” is but a metaphysical abstraction. It has been said that from metaphysics almost anything can be apparently proved. We are told that metaphysics treat of the “inner secret, or logic of thought,” and as persons differ in their thoughts as to what lies hidden in the “ inner secret,” most of what persons say upon the matter is but little more than individual specu­ lation. . Metaphysics have always appeared to us to cover a certain amount of intellectual jugglery. Karl Pearson, in his Grammar of Science, writes : “Now one of the idiosyncrasies of metaphysicians lies in this : that each metaphysician has his own system, which, to a large extent, excludes that of his predecessors and colleagues. Hence, we must conclude that metaphysics are either built on air or on quicksands—either they start from no foundation in fact at all, or the superstructure has been raised before a basis has been found in the accurate classification of facts. .... The metaphysician is a poet, often a very great one, but, unfortunately, he is not known to be a poet, because he clothes his poetry in the language of apparent reason, and hence it follows that he is liable to be a dangerous member of the community.” Avoiding, as much as possible, this disguised poetry, let us take a practical view of the difficulties surrounding the allegation : “That there exists an Infinite, All-powerful and Intelligent Being distinct from the material universe.” Before this alle­ gation is proved certain evidence must be produced, and important questions must be satisfactorily answered. Now, there are three kinds of evidence : that which is derived from the senses; that which is relied upon from testimony; and that which we obtain from the deductions of reason. While assumption is sometimes permissible, bare assumption cannot justify the Theist’s affirmation. The term, “an intelligent Being,” implies a form of exist­ �OR, QUESTIONS FOR THEISTS. 5 ence that manifests the knowing faculty. “A Being,” as Mill, in his Logic, observes, is one who excites feelings and possesses attributes. By the “ material universe ” we understand the totality of existence, with all its attributes, properties, and forces. All the evidence in reference to the said intelligent Being and to the universe should be drawn from one or more of the three kinds of evidence above mentioned. Further, every formulated thought, every true cognition, should possess three characteristics— namely, relation, likeness, and difference. Any analysis of thought that reveals the absence of any one of these three characteristics indicates that we have no certain conception of what may be expressed in words. For instance, the terms “creation,” “annihilation,” and “the infinite,” as used by theologians, convey to us no definite and logical meaning. Putting aside the theory that divides existence into spiritual and material, for which we fail to see, as Professor Huxley does, any justification in nature, what is affirmed by eminent writers to-day ? We are told of the persistence of force, the continuity of motion, and the indestructibility of matter; that law prevails throughout all nature, and that the materials of which different bodies are composed can be identified by their similarity. Again, we regard every thought as being conditioned ; to think, as Hamilton puts it, is to limit. Therefore, apart from physical causes, we are unable to think, to lay down a boundary beyond which we can say nothing is. Every conclusion implies that there is something beyond. To affirm that there is an “infinite, intelligent Being apart from the universe” is to distinguish it from the universe, and to contend for two existences. Before, however, this can be done successfully it has to be proved that nature is limited. To ussuw a limit to the universe is not evidence, because no proof has been given of its limitations. To postulate an “infinite, intelligent Being” distinct from the universe vitiates the law of thought to which we have referred, inasmuch as the definition does not express likeness, and it negates relation. Of course, we do not assert there is no such intelligent Being, but only that we have no evidence of his existence. Our position is that nature is ; that, so far as we can ascertain, it is destructible only in its various forms. Is it �6 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD; not, therefore, possible that this nature is the “ something ” of which endless existence may be affirmed ? An endless “intelli­ gent Being is that which does not possess a likeness to any known existence. All intelligent beings, as we know them, must begin and end, or they cannot be thought of. The senses or testimony fail to afford us evidence of the existence of such a being as the Theists contend for. We are, therefore, unable to see how, from reason, any evidence can be adduced to prove that of which we can form no conception. It is clear, that, if there is such a being, he is limited in the extent of his power, for this reason—as a “ Being ” his power must be limited, and as he exists apart from something else, he is not the whole of existence. _ Everything to be thought of must exist in some place and in some relation to other existences, and there­ fore to speak of one being apart from all else is the annihilation in thought of that one. Besides, how can a Being who is distinct from the universe manifest his power in the universe ? While distinct he is non-related, and cannot affect it. If he does influence nature, it is only when he becomes a part thereof, and then he is no longer distinct from it. If God is infinite, in the sense of being everywhere, he is in the universe. If he is not in the universe, his sphere is limited and finite. In that case, where does his superior power, to that possessed by nature, commence, and where is it made visible to us ? How are we to distinguish between natural power and God power ? Further, if he be distinct from nature, where is he ? And what exists between his dwelling-place and nature ? That is, are the two—nature and God’s abode—connected ? If yes, by what ? If by nothing, what is that ? Before the Theist can make good his assertion, that there exists “an infinite, all-powerful, and intelligent Being distinct from the universe,” he should be able to satis­ factorily answer the following questions : (1) Can the universe be limited by human thought? (2) Can we conceive of a time when the universe was not ? (3) How is it possible for God, if he be distinct from nature, to con­ trol and regulate it ? (4) Have we any proof that the power of nature is acquired and limited ? (5) Where is the evidence that God’s intelligence is different from, and superior to, that of man ? (6) Supposing God exists, has �OR, QUESTIONS FOR THEISTS. 7 his intelligence always been used for the benefit of the human family ? (7) Is the world governed upon the principles of justice, goodness, and mercy ? It occurs to us that, before the Theist should positively allege that he knows a God exists, a reasonable reply should be given to these queries. If it is admitted that no logical answer can be given to them, is not that very admission a proof that Theism is a belief without adequate evidence ? Remembering the difficulties that these questions sug­ gest, it is not surprising that Dr. Knight, in his recent work, Aspects of Theism, should write thus: “The God of the logical understanding, whose existence is supposed to be attested by the necessary laws of mind, is the mere pro­ jected shadow of self. It has, therefore, no more than an ideal significance. The same may be said, with some abatements, of the Being whose existence is inferred from the phenomena of design. The ontologist and the teleologist unconsciously draw their own portrait; and, by an effort of thought, project it outward on the canvas of infinity.” In reference to design, an able American writer puts the following pertinent question : “ Did God design the universe 1 If so, his plans must be eternal—without beginning, and therefore uncaused. If God’s plans are not eternal; if from time to time new plans originate in his mind, there must be an addition to his knowledge ; and, if his knowledge admits of addition, it must be finite. But if his plans had no beginning; if, like himself, they are eternal, they must, like him, be independent of design. Now, the plan of a thing is as much evidence of design as the object which embodies the plan. Since the plans of deity are no proof of design that produced them (for they are supposed to be eternal), the plan of this universe, of course, was no evidence of a designing intelligence that produced it. But since the plan of the universe is as much evidence of design as the universe itself, and since the former is no evidence of design, it follows that design cannot be inferred from the existence of the universe.” Again, if it be contended that an intelligent power can and does control matter and force from outside the universe, it should be shown how this outside power can be separated in thought from matter and force, and yet, at the same time, be a perceptible existence. At the most this can only �THE EXISTENCE OE GOD be inferred. Matter being infinite (that is, unlimited) in extension and duration, the “non-matter ” cannot exist apart from it. Neither can it be ascertained how far (if there be any relation) the one is independent of the other, or how the presence of “ non-matter ” can be even inferred, except by its influence on matter. Is it possible to con­ ceive of the universality of both matter and non-matter I The Theists speak of an “intelligent Being” who rules the universe and regulates the destiny of man. But intellect implies a power capable of exercising reason and judgment. We have no evidence of intellect existing by itself. Perception is a function of an organism; all intellect, as we know it, is attended by living organised matter, and the one is always related to the other, not apart from it. We fail to see how the human mind can conceive an idea of an “ intelligent Being ” apart from, or independent of, matter, for the same reason that we are incapable of forming an idea that motion can exist separately from matter. In order to establish the existence of a Being distinct from matter, it is necessary to assume that matter is limited in extent and in time, and that it is destitute of all the properties that we claim it now possesses, except that of mere existence. But even then we should require evidence that any mind could have produced everything out of nothing, and have endowed it, under certain forms, with powers to live, feel, and think. If it is assumed that all physical forces that are manifested in nature, which exhibit skill, will, intention, and purpose, are qualities of mind, and not of matter, then the question arises, By what mode of action does an “ intelligent Being apart from them” exercise will, intention, and purpose, through such forces ? If we do not know, why should we assume that we do 1 But if all unverified assumptions are accepted, or are assumed, as necessary to explain phenomena, the evidence of them can be found only in the very nature that they are supposed to explain. Moreover, the assumption of an “ intelligent Being ” existing outside of nature can only be a deduction from manifestations inside of nature, where it is admitted that he is not present. This is a con­ tradiction, for it implies that action is caused by a power �OR, QUESTIONS FOR THEISTS. 9 that is not there to act. We can only assume nature and its properties as being capable of partial explanation, or even cognition ; and, although we cannot fully account for them, we do but multiply impossibilities of thought by attempts to explain their ultimate nature, origin, and purpose. Is it not self-evident that—(1) Every part of existence, the All, must be related to every other part ? (2) That the whole of existence can have no relation to anv other whole ? (3) That only the one whole contains selfknowledge, self-will, and self-intention ? (4) If the universe, which to us is the whole, had intelligence imparted to it from without, when, where, and how was it imparted ? (5.) How could an intelligent person manifest intelligence, without the conditions being present which we know to be necessary for its manifestations ? Every intelligent being, whatever attributes he may be endowed, with, must be a person having identity ; he must also be distinguishable, from every other intelligent being. The material, world is full of such distinct intelligent beings, and therefore they must stand in some relation to any other being who may exist. We repeat, that a being, to be thought of at all, must be characterised by relation, likeness,, and difference, which cannot be affirmed of an abstraction apart from the universe or separate from the All. Now, it may be fairly alleged that the very thought of personality is inconsistent with infinity. Experience teaches us that a being who feels, thinks, and reasons is limited by an organism that is acted upon, and that responds to the movements of an external world. From experience we also learn that no intelligent being can exercise his intellectual powers without food and air. We do not mean that thought is the direct product simply of food and air, any more than are muscular action and animal heat; but we do mean that we have no know­ ledge of living beings in which these three manifestations ape Jiot dependent upon food and air. Now, the question tor Theists to endeavor to answer is, If the sources of these energies are not in the universe, where are they 1 Why should we attempt to rob nature, of whose power we know something, of that potency which is displayed on every hand, and ascribe it to a source of which nothing is known, whatever is believed upon the subject ? �10 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD ; Further, to logically affirm the existence of an “ intelli­ gent Being ” apart from the universe, not only must the universe be deprived of many of its properties, but it must .be assumed that this supposed “intelligent Being,” who is said to exist distinct from the universe, could operate from without, and at the same time be within the universe. Now, here is a difficulty. How could a person operate where he was not ? If he is distinct from the universe, he is not in it; and if he is not there, how could he control and regulate that with which he is not con­ nected ? . If it is said God is infinite, then in that case he is in the universe, and not apart from it. This may not be the perplexing metaphysical view of the matter, but we regard it as being the more reasonable and practical one. We have had quite enough of mysticism associated with this question. Hence, Agnosticism upon this subject appears to us to be the more reasonable position to take. Agnostics, refusing to profess a knowledge they cannot command, aim to differentiate the knowable from the unknowable, and then devote their time and energies to widening the sphere of that within human gnosis. What­ ever else is possible, it is certain that we can never extend the domain of the known by indulging in wild flights of the imagination respecting the unknown, and to us the unknowable. As Socrates observes : “ Fancies beyond the reach of understanding, and which have yet been made the objects of belief—these have been the source of all the disputes, errors, and superstitions which have prevailed in the world. Such national mysteries cannot be made subservient to the right use of humanity.” There is another consideration in reference to this subject, which appears to us to be important. Upon the hypothesis that an intelligent Being exists distinct from the universe, the following queries may be submitted : Did he form the rocks for the builders ? Animals and plants for breeders and horticulturists to experiment upon and produce varieties ? Did he arrange mountains and valleys, seas, and rivers for geographical and navigating purposes ? The Theist will doubtless answer that he did produce all these things, and for the objects named. But, before such a position is proved, it must be shown that there was a time when these things were not, which, except in the case �OR, QUESTIONS FOR THEISTS. 11 of animals, it would be very difficult to do; and, further, it must be demonstrated that this “Being” really did produce all that now exists. What, however, does this assume ? Why this: that there was a place where there was no place. But then the question would arise, How could a “ Being ” be nowhere, and produce rocks, animals, plants, etc., out of nothing ? These things could not possibly have been an emanation from the Being himself, inasmuch as he is alleged to be distinct from all of them. If it were possible to prove this Theistic assumption, then the discoveries in the various sciences of energies, causes, and sequences of recognised natural forces would be nothing more nor less than fictions of the human brain. “ Thus,” as Dr. Toulmin, in his Eternity of the Universe, exclaims, “must it most evidently appear that every step we advance beyond the universe is relinquishing a sublime, an infinite, and certain existence in search of an existence removed from the evidences of our senses. . . . For again let me observe that the uncaused existences which could produce the universe, itself infinitely splendid, superb, and intelligent, must—were it possible—be still more wonderful and superb than the universe or Nature, which they are said to have produced; and consequently there is greater difficulty in conceiving them self-existent than in conceiving the unbounded universe self-existent.” The Theist’s position further assumes that the universe and man are incapable of producing that which we know to exist, and that the present “ order of things ” could not be the result of certain molecular movements of the elements in nature. Therefore, it is argued that a belief in a “powerful and intelligent Being distinct from the material universe ” is necessary to account for things as they are. Now, this assumption is based upon a still further assumption—namely, that we are acquainted with the extent of nature’s power. But who has been enabled to fathom such a mystery ? Where is the man who has either penetrated into the depths of the earth below, or soared into the regions above, and there sufficiently grasped the extent of natural force to justify him saying “this or that event is beyond the power of nature to produce ”? Before we can, with reason, dogmatise upon what nature cannot do, we must know all that she can do, and that �12 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD; is a knowledge that we have yet to learn that any one possesses. No man can fix a limit to the possibilities of the potency in nature. Why, then, should the power of the universe be limited by man, when he has never known that power to be exhausted ? Do diseases or epidemics afflict and desolate society ? Nature affords the advantages of science to alleviate the one, and to get rid of the other. If political wrongs curse a nation, and despotism strives to crush the freedom of its people, the heroism in man is at once stimulated, and his love for liberty aroused, so that he nobly and persistently toils to remedy the former, and to maintain the latter. If social inequalities keep men in a false and unfair position in life, the natural yearning which all men have more or less for the improvement of their position in the world stimulates them to try to break down the barriers to social equity and mutual enjoyment. The inspiration to these useful actions springs from natural impulses, and not from any imaginary supernatural agency. Nature has already done a thousand things which our forefathers would have declared to be impossible, and she will doubtless, in the future, under further discoveries and advances in science, do much more which, to us, appears impossible to be accomplished. Whatever, therefore, comes through nature must be natural, for the very reason that it comes to us in that manner. Therefore, upon nature we rely, believing her to be the fountain from which all that is has been derived. We have faith in her capabilities, for we feel assured that “ Nature never did deceive the heart that loved her.” But does the Theist, in any way, settle the question by supposing the existence of an “ intelligent Being distinct from the universe ”? We think not. Taking things and events with which we are familiar, we ask, Are they such as may be ascribed to such a Being ? There are thousands of creatures born into this world, of whom only few survive, while others appear under such conditions that they prema­ turely perish; there are thousands also of organisms who live in and upon each other. One half of all animal life consists of parasites—that is, animals that fasten themselves to the bodies of other animals, and live by sucking their blood. Those which prey upon man are mentioned by Herbert �OR, QUESTIONS FOR THEISTS. 13 Spencer in his work upon The Principles of Biology. These parasites are adapted to their peculiar mode of life, and are the cause of great pain and suffering to the organisms upon which they feed. Besides this, throughout all past time there has been a constant preying of superior animals upon inferior ones—a perpetual devouring of the weak by the strong; and the earth has been a scene of universal carnage. Now, this supposed intelligent Being either did, or did not, provide that these things should take place as they have done. If he did so arrange, his intelligence, to say the very least, was not put to a good purpose; if, on the other hand, he did not arrange these things, then, in that case, there was a power in the universe that acted in despite of him. If all that is, and all that happens, are not such as an intelligent man would devise, we cannot reasonably ascribe such work to any other intelligent Being, particularly if he be superior to man. Contemplating the cruelty and the injustice by which we are surrounded—the success of crime, the triumph of despot­ ism, the prevalence of starvation, the struggles for many to get the means of mere existence, the appalling sights of deformity in children who are born into the world so diseased, so decrepit, that the sunshine of happiness seldom, if ever, gladdens their lives ; remembering the existence of these evils and woes, we cannot believe that a good God dwells “ on high,” who could, and yet would not, remedy this most lamentable state of things. As Dr. Vaughan, in his work, The Age ancl Christianity, declares: “No attempt of any philosopher to harmonise our ideal notions as to the sort of world which it became a Being of infinite perfection to create, with the world existing around us, can ever be pronounced successful. The facts of the moral and physical world seem to justify inferences of an opposite description from benevolent.” Again, if this alleged power distinct from nature is responsible for some events, why is he not responsible for all ? If he control the universe, then he is responsible for earthquakes that swallow up entire villages, destroying the lives of thousands of helpless creatures; for the lightning that kills people, sometimes even when they are at prayers; for storms at sea, which cause good and bad to find a watery grave ; for individual organisms that are im­ �14 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD; perfect and. blighted by monstrosities, and for the existence of ferocious wild beasts and poisonous plants. What is the answer of Theists to this grave indictment against their supposed God of infinite goodness ? We fail to see any reason for attributing these blots on nature to any intelligence that is superior to man’s; for if any intelli­ gence but that which is associated with natural organisms exist and cause these evils, it must be inferior to ours, inasmuch as human intelligence, if it had the power, would prevent such catastrophes. Finally, as our knowledge is only of phenomena, the laws of which can be directly perceived as operating in nature, we cannot conceive of such phenomena in the absence of matter and force. It is no answer to say “ we do not know what matter is.” Rightly or wrongly, we hold that what are termed matter and law are co-extensive with knowledge, and that knowledge includes thought, feeling, and action. We cannot imagine a shadow of a man without the man, and other causes that contribute to its appearance. Neither is it possible for us to conceive intelligence without the causes which we know are necessary for its production and maintenance. True, we are confronted with mysteries on every hand; but so long as they are mysteries we refuse to dogmatise upon them ourselves, or to accept what others say concerning them as being more than mere conjecture. As we regard Secularism as the true philosophy of life, it is desirable that its attitude towards Theism should not be misunderstood. Personally, we have always considered that in the present state of dogmatic theology what is termed destructive work is a necessary part of Secular advo­ cacy. But we never fail to urge the important fact that in attacking the errors of our opponents we should be digni­ fied, and deal only with principles and opinions, not with men and personal character. Still, we must not submit to wrong, inasmuch as, unlike Christ, we do not counsel people to “resist not evil.” On the contrary, we urge that to quietly submit to wrong of any kind is to offer a premium to despotism, and to sacrifice the independence of our nature. We may be compelled to listen, sometimes, to false arguments and daring assertions ; but bad temper, vituperation, and imputation of inferiority should always �OR, QUESTIONS FOR THEISTS. 15 be firmly resented. We must claim equality, and do our best to vindicate tbe right to hold and to express our opinions as freely as our opponents do. While paying due respect to the feelings and views of others, we claim the same justice and consideration for our own. This should be the attitude of all Secularists in their intellectual com­ bats, whether in defending Secular principles or in attack­ ing the assumptions of theology. We ask Theists, and all orthodox believers, to consider if this is not the correct course to pursue in this age of freedom of thought and mental discrimination ? Perhaps the most marked difference in modern times, between the exponents of Freethought and the advocates of theology, is that the former desire open and fair discussion upon all subjects of public interest, while the latter frequently condemn the debating of religious questions. To us, nothing appears more fruitful in eliciting truth, and better calculated to promote a healthy state of mind, than the practice of listening to a rational statement of both sides of a question. It was through ignoring this serviceable element in public advocacy that many of our religious predecessors repudiated the claims of all new truths, and denounced their discovery as being inimical to the welfare of mankind. On most subjects the only conclusions deserving of our serious attention are those arrived at after free and calm discussion. In fact, it does not appear to us possible to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion otherwise. It would be a different matter if all questions that are submitted to us were as clear as the sun is at noonday; but they are not, and particularly the perplexed question of the existence of God; and, therefore, it is an evidence of weakness to shrink from debate, and to urge that it disturbs the serenity of the philosophic mind. In most cases we have to rely upon probable truth, and the best way to learn upon which side the probability lies is by a thorough examination of the pros and cons of any given subject. It, therefore, seems clear to us that Secularists ought to continue to question the pretensions of theologians, and to expose the errors of existing faiths, for the reason that many theological claims delude the unwary and hinder the recognition of truth. Our desire is that the proper attitude of Secularists �16 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. towards theology should be perceptible to the general public, in order that it may be known what our real position is. Too long have we been misunderstood and misrepre­ sented, and consequently denounced, not upon our merits or demerits, but upon a false presentation of our principles and methods as set forth by those who never gave them­ selves the trouble to ascertain what our objects and aims really are. For instance, take the subject of what is called Supernaturalism. Secular philosophy is not concerned with what lies behind phenomena, and, therefore, it neither affirms nor denies the existence of God. And the fact that even those who profess to believe in something beyond the natural cannot make up their minds as to what that something is justifies our attitude upon the subject. Equally undecisive are God believers as to their reasons for their belief. Revelation, Design, and Intuition are all advanced by different classes of Theists to prove their claims ■. but the particular method relied upon by one class of Theists is entirely repudiated by the others. Surely, then, when we find that Theists themselves are not agreed’ either as to what their God is or the kind of evidence that is necessary to justify a belief in his existence, it is more reasonable and useful to confine our attention to what is known and knowable, and to devote our energies to what we are all agreed upon—namely, the mundane improvement of the human race, than to waste our time in dogmatising upon what can be only mere speculation. The attitude of Secularism towards Theism, then, is this: Refusing to dogmatise about the existence of a Being of whom we are, and must necessarily remain, quite ignorant, Secularists confine their attention to the known and knowable facts of life. They regard all forms of Theism only as theological conjectures and vain attempts to solve problems that, with our present limited knowledge, appear to be incapable of solution. Secularists prefer endeavoring to make the most of what can be recognised by our senses, upon which reason can exercise its pre­ rogative, and to which experience can lend its valuable aid. At the same time, Secular teachings do not preclude Theists from exercising their fullest rights in advocating their claims. With us, as Secularists, the utmost freedom of thought is welcomed. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The existence of God, or : questions for theists Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Watts, Charles [1836-1906] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 16 p. ; 19 cm. Notes: Part of NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Watts & Co. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1894 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RA1583 N668 RA411 Subject The topic of the resource Theism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (The existence of God, or : questions for theists), identified by <a href="www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a>, is free of known copyright restrictions. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English NSS Theism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/28972e27d591285fe8c40c74b0daf119.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=BsMr8j7AoxuZzLbTfBcNTLSEf9-YGkqZiDv0-JKRafuQmOlMMCHuSpAr4UydWtnUvPaUdBZW5oUpCctp23zy%7E2q4kmBtVCPmwp-PFrS6Hmkan-4CRGs8lmPkKWduqRbZ25n13ly5goKjyfJEOP4jZ-0pRE1kDfp8wt8Ukg7yIcrlOtuDea4%7EBKimqO3iJxJBiypPA2Z0MM73VrgTcIrK0ns%7E4XxOAjzf6TvpARGs5txkqygTAT0aYtOFJUTBrPzUPnNJuek7k7oIfGdGmdXGUn0XrqFxn9N8Tfn1NeV7it1WZETSPegMzYC-H7KR8FF6AX2ozQZZGQC2hIp%7E1NVhLA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM d4d97a6a7f1e1d50f9fd42fe59f2dd8f PDF Text Text THE No. 25.] LANGHAM HALL PULPIT. [june30,i878 (tljmm lU'itljx'i’ ism. Smmdmni, nnr ■ —: aWFW/L JL -v ■ i * /w> SZEZRGXZEOIT PREACHED AT THE LANGHAM HALL, JUNE 23rd, 1878, BY REV. CHARLES VOYSEYV 1 Cor. xiv. 8.—“ If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himselffor the battle ? ” A Conference was held at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, on the 13 th and 14th inst. convened by means of the following circular. a, Pt.ACJ CHAPEL, * 11 South Place, Finsbury, London, E.C. The Minister and Committee of the Religious Society meeting at South Place solicit your attendance at a General Conference of Liberal Thinkers, to be held here on June 13th and 14th, 1878, from 12 to 5 p.m. each day, for the discussion of matters pertaining to the religious needs of our time, and the methods of meeting them. In assuming the initiative in this matter, our Society has no disposition to commit anyone who may accept this invitation to any opinions held by its minister or members. It is actuated by a desire to promote the unsectarian and liberal religion of the age, now too much impeded by isolation and by misunderstandings among those really devoted to common aims, and to utilise its building and organiza­ tion for that purpose. At the proposed Conference it is hoped that persons may be gathered who, though working in connection with particular organizations, yet acknowledge no authority above Truth, and are interested in the tendency to that universal religion which would break down all partition walls raised by dogma and superstition between race and race, man and man. It is believed that light and strength may be gained for each and all by earnest and frank consultation concerning such subjects as the relation of liberal thinkers S0UTI1 Rev. C. Voysey’s sermons are to be obtained at Langham Hall, 43 Great Portland Street, every Sunday Morning, orfrom the Author (by post), Camden House, Dulwich, S.H. Price one penny. �2 to the sectarian divisions of the world; their duties of negation and affirmation, and the practical methods of advancing their principles. The proposed meeting will he informal in its constitution, no regular represen­ tation being at present in view, the assembly being thus left free to adopt any prac­ tical course for the future that shall appear desirable. A careful report of the proceedings will be printed. Your reply, whieh it is hoped will be favourable, together with the names and addresses of such persons as you believe would be interested in the proposed Con­ ference, may be sent to Mr. MONCURE D. CONWAY, Hamlet House, Hammer­ smith, London, W. I will ask any candid religious person what possible objection he could make to the terms of this circular. Indeed, I will go further, and say, that it reflects great credit on those who drew it up, and that, had the programme but been adhered to, few conferences could have been more timely or more useful. The wonder is that there was not a rush of earnest religious men from every Church and Sect in the kingdom to bear their part in discussing the religious needs of our time, and the methods of meeting them. The archbishops and bishops in their palaces, the deans and dignitaries of the Church, clergy of all shades of opinion, ministers of religion among the Noncon­ formists, active influential laymen, peers of the realm, mem­ bers of Council and Legislature, philanthropists of every school—in short, all men and women who are above frivolity, and whose lives are occupied in useful work, might well have been expected to be drawn together by such an invitation, by such an admirable project. The object was exalted, it was set forth in plain terms, free office; and, lest any should be deterred by a knowledge of the traditions or present charac­ teristics of the place of assembly, the promoters wisely and laudably stated in their circular that they had no desire to commit any of the attendants of the Conference to their own particular views. Speaking for myself, it disarmed all opposition, and I was ready at once to throw myself into the scheme, and to con­ tribute, to the best of my power, to the deliberations of the assembly. Looking round at the various schools of religious thought, I could not but feel that the proposed object of the Conference belonged even more to us than to any other asso­ ciation. Our work was inaugurated, and has been manfully maintained for no other purpose in the world than to study the religious needs of our time, and to endeavour to meet them. The very defects of our work are in one sense its merits. We have aimed at providing a path easy and pleasant for those who were weary and footsore in their search after reasonable religion. We have tried to make the transition from old to new as gentle and safe as was consistent with strict integrity. �We have thrown away nothing that we could conscientiously retain; we have retained nothing that we could not conscien­ tiously use. We have added nothing that did not give promise of being a grateful substitute for cast-off forms. It is not perfect; it is purposely left open to correction and improve­ ment, to suit our spiritual growth and the new needs of a coming time. But from first to last it is an effort to recog­ nize the religious needs actually before our eyes, and to meet them with a reasonable satisfaction. A Conference professing to be an interchange of thought on such a theme between really religious people could not fail to be an attraction for us; and again I say the proposal deserved our high appreciation and our genuine thanks. But the promise so fair, so fascinating, was only made to be broken. The expectations raised by it were doomed to disap­ pointment. Compared with the terms of the circular by which the Conference was summoned the meeting was a signal failure. In the first place we heard little or nothing of the “ religious needs of our time,” and a great deal of downright, and some vulgar, Atheism; one of the speakers going so far as to wish to expunge the very name of religion from the face of the earth. Allusions were also made to recent prosecutions for illegal publications and were designated as “tyrannous.” Women’s rights [which in one place and on some lips is a term signifying all that is just and good and pure, and in another place and on otherIip£^plies just the opposite] were imported into the discussion; and when we Remember what this phrase is associated with in America, we cannot but fear that the reference to it in connexion with these prosecution s was as dangerous to morals as to religion. Speeches of this tendency were not checked, but greeted with vociferous ap­ plause. Very soon it became manifest that the main object of the Conference as stated in the circular was ignored or forgotten, and superseded by an entirely new one. This was the formation of an association of all “Liberal thinkers ” for their protection against the social and other consequences of Their free thought. It was proposed to swamp all differences between Atheists and Theists, and to unite for political and social aims. In short the Conference wished to drop religion altogether out of its programme, or to treat Faith in God as a matter of perfect indifference or of curiosity, and only to be tolerated in any members of the Association, so long as they kept it out of sight and did not obtrude it upon the notice of the body corporate. �4 Considering the position I occupy, and the work which by your faithful exertions I have been enabled to carry on for so many years, I could not but think that such an assembly was the very last place in which I ought to be seen. I formally withdrew from it on the ground of my objection to certain speeches, and the evident favour with which they were received. If Liberal thinkers, as they call themselves, hold, to any appreciable extent, atheism in religion, radicalism in politics and socialism in morals, they are of course at liberty to make any alliance they please, and for any object that may take their fancy; but it is monstrous to expect to be joined by those to whom atheism is a distressing and dangerous evil, to whom radicalism is utterly distasteful, and to whom socialism is revol ting. * To unite such wholly discordant elements for any purpose would be a foolish enterprise; but when it is pro­ fessed that they should coalesce in order to prosecute some end which is called “ religious,” the absurdity is too palpable to require exposure. No doubt every man who has devoutly thought for himself in matters of religion is more or less averse from the orthodox dogmas; and in this one point alone could there ever be found a meeting-place or common ground for the Theist and Atheist. It was thought by some speakers at the Conference that this would be sufficiently wide to^admit nf organised co-operation between the two; but I venture to think that it could not be made available without the entire submission and suppression of religious belief, and the consequent dominance of Atheism. There is a vast number of Theists, who, like myself, feel that notwithstanding all our repugnance to orthodoxy and our de­ sire to sweep it away, we are nearer in our sympathies to the Orthodox than we are to the Athejst—at least such types as were heard at the Conference. If in fact it were deemed de­ sirable to organise a league to destroy any objectionable form of thought, it would be more natural, and I think more wise, for TheistB to join with the orthodox against Atheism than • The term radicalism, I think, is somewhat ambiguous. Some may call them­ selves “ radicals,” who do not hold what I here mean by radicalism. It is the extreme of opposition to the constitution and aristocratic institutions of the country. It seeks revolution, and only waits its opportunity to overthrow existing authority. It avails itself of every chance to vilify and endeavour to bring into contempt es­ tablished law, and desires nothing so much as a commune. But in objecting to it, I do not forget that this kind of radicalism is not confined to socialist agitators and low prints, but is exhibited in one of its aspects by that section of the clergy who band together to set the law of England at defiance, and to pour contempt on our Highest Courts of Justice, �5 for Theists to join with the Atheists to put down orthodoxy. But I question the advantage of such organizations at all. I believe that the determined resistance offered by the power­ ful, the influential and the lovers of order in our middle classes, to the very beginning of free thought in religion, is due entirely to the dread as to where it may lead. In religion, they say, it may land us in utter Atheism; in politics it may end in radicalism and revolution; in social morals to their corruption and decay.—The dread of these evils has not only kept back many excellent and generous-minded persons from daring to think at all independently on religion ; but is now keeping away from our side many who are quite convinced of the superiority of our beliefs over those of orthodoxy, and who would not scruple to come forward and help us boldly, if they were quite sure that there was no danger of any of those evils, and that they would run no risk of being mixed up with that class of “ Liberal thinkers.” If such an alliance as was proposed at the Conference were to be entered into between Theists and such Atheists, it would entirely frustrate the end in view, viz., the dissolution of or­ thodoxy. . In my opinion, even if our feeling and taste permitted it, such an alliance would have the effect of making orthodoxy stronger than ever, of consolidating its loose and crumbling walls, and of firing its defenders with a fresh enthusiasm in its defence. / Jhey would feel not only that their religion was in danger, but their social and moral peace was threatened too; and the struggle which would then be really undertaken on behalf of the common welfare of society would give new security and new life to the dogmas which had been attacked. Not by elements such as made themselves manifest at South Place will orthodoxy ever be dethroned. Free thought in religion was not the only or the chief object sought by some of the promoters of this alliance. Free thought means on their lips much more than that; and it is this arriere pensee which lovers of order really dislike even more than they dread Atheism. The Conference will have done good, however, if it should prove to have led to a better and more accurate discernment of our own work and objects; if it should lead to the correc­ tion of those misunderstandings and misrepresentations where­ by we suffer from undeserved suspicions and lose the help of those#whose sympathies we have already gained. We let it be known then, once for all, that our sole purpose is a religious one; that our quarrel with orthodoxy is not that it is too reli­ �6 gious, but not religious enough ; that we want to elevate and strengthen faith in the Living God and not to knock it down and trample on it; that we aim at the preservation of social order and of all domestic virtues, to deepen the respect of man to man and not to sow the seeds of class-hatred and party­ strife ; to seek after all new truth wherever it may be found; but always to regard our treasure as a precious trust for the benefit of mankind. The Atheistical party at South Place, were apt to wind up their speeches by some brilliant appeal on behalf of humanity. Let them not forget that our belief in God adds to the sentiment the highest sanction and man­ date of conscience, and that we are not one whit behind them in desiring and seeking to release mankind from its burdens. Let them and ourselves also remember that the best and highest of philanthropists are still religious men, orthodox Christians or orthodox Jews, and believers in God, and that it is really an affectation on their part or on ours, if they or we pretend to be setting up an altogether fresh standard of human brotherly love. No doubt orthodox people need deli­ verance from some bondage—such as we call superstition, sacerdotalism, and spiritual fear. But do we not also need deliverance from our own class of prejudices, bigotry and intolerance, and much irrepressible conceit of which Atheism is the most prolific mother ? If we wish to uproot the errors of orthodox people we must show them some better and higher truths in their place. If we wish to give them better spiritual food, we must provide a real banquet for their hungering and thirsting souls, and not make them sit down before empty tables. It is hard enough for the most joyous and enlightened believer to gain a hearing for his higher truth about God and human destiny from orthodox people; how then can they be expected to listen to those who not only deny God’s existence altogether, but trample on His holy name in jubilant blasphemy ? We must, however, record our deep regret that that kind of Atheism or Agnosticism (which is so often forced upon the wearied and baffled mind rather than sought by the rebellious and proud spirit) should be exposed to social disabilities. Too often, men cannot help their convictions, especially in matters of religion. No honest convictions should ever be visited with punishment, not even with disrespect. On this ground I would never have raised my voice against unbelievers, of whom I have always spoken respectfully. But it is quite another matter when an alliance is offered for our acceptance, by which our �7 whole position and work would be compromised. Then is the time when a protest may fairly be made; and the line drawn in conspicuous colour between that party and ourselves; so that no one may have the shadow of an excuse for suspecting us of sympathies from which we utterly revolt. It is the common right of all to make known our own individual posi­ tions, our beliefs, our denials, our aims, social, or political or religious; and therefore I felt bound to repudiate, with what emphasis I could summon, all complicity with the opinions, sympathies, and purposes expressed by the majority at the South Place Conference of Liberal Thinkers. I feel it also my duty to express profound regret that the word “ religion ” has found a place in the list of the Rules of the Association. It will mislead thousands, it has misled some already. If the new Association care for what is generally understood by religion, by all means let them adopt the right name for it; but if in one breath they vilify and ridicule religion, or give definitions of it, carefully excluding not only the name but all idea of God, and then say that the promotion of religion is one of their chief objects, then I deliberately accuse them of making a fraudulent use of words—for what purpose I do not assign—but nevertheless a wilful perversion of a word which to 99 out of every 100 persons has a meaning diametrically opposed to the meaning it has on the lips of the Association. r' ' I bear them no ill-will. I can but regret that men are so divided as we are and must be in our present state of partial knowledge. I am sorry that I have had to protest against their proceedings, and to decline an alliance with them. But I should have been far more full of regret and even of shame had I left it uncertain whether I approved of their scheme or not; had I left a single loop-hole for the accusation that my sympathies were enlisted on their side. �•••',»/ o IT ♦Taai.irtw■ > • d ?h - z T ' t, .•. .T . ' . * f !1!f iBil -Olh. <> Ot fc. k ■ f fl fr i -f t»:,» ■ * - #ft T H ? 1i ©'' > ;■ r<t;k» he,i Tiuff „S r ■ ffft fapi♦y.’h’tJS O’-r JMflij v ■■» ': tf 'tflKYIl C T .' 1 f It; ’ M * i 1 ) ‘Of i> ar ii .Ho/if <y?ja tikrtl hwhi rbffif i» irxrii Xj ’.i 1 IflO iad f 4 ■ tnw- uj (jl s, LONDON. Printed by UPFIELTWrREEN, Tenter Street, Moorgate Street, E.C. ■\Sj| ' ■ nn as’ii-i 'i � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Theism neither radicalism, socialism, nor atheism: a sermon preached at the Langham Hall, June 23rd, 1878 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Voysey, Charles Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 7 p. ; 23 cm. Series: Langham Hall Pulpit Series No.: 25 Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. The Langham Hall Pulpit, June 30, 1878. Printed by Upfield Green, Moorgate Street, E.C. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [s.n.] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1878 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5588 Subject The topic of the resource Theism Atheism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Theism neither radicalism, socialism, nor atheism: a sermon preached at the Langham Hall, June 23rd, 1878), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Atheism Conway Tracts Radicalism Theism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/2ed871e98fc3d9de9654837131a52fef.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=NL69Ll9ZUw7IWsA8vFPPwhy9x2sE-m%7EtMucwFqwFFa4L3Kh7Yn6rtYTb5YvY8wnwVXSDHLIV27kYP-7bd6SXpEkhp1bwGI9vq5myruvucGFb0sTH-5ug9ocw17av91NP4PSa04b-OLNZaIP1T614mvl1X2pgVCLcATznssfJsxx99mCwid9Fs5C6WE%7EF8bQLEF%7EOJJ5xfl7d2KYNc5qTAQihIU8fgDZ3a3%7E%7EZ12k5gjlFdR8pWp0JTkrF8zoty3w1h-sMBvk39g4ciKAjiyTviQz-jGlxH--So7ZdBC1sC8gf07sD6m4BywAfdOEXQLC2YQ3zfxLOhmVKGU2QZwEdw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 0dc29e5dc4d5bac06ded6ae3b5178fbc PDF Text Text CT10? THE TWO THEISMS. BY PROFESSOR F. W. NEWMAN. PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCO.TT, NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E. Price Threepence. ��THE TWO THEISMS. HOSE who are contending for free thought in a and Tarereligion are contending for thatnoble prize,withheld temporarily united, while prize is from the public by a powerful adversary. But the moment they commence to use their freedom, the same thing happens, and must happen, now as always here­ tofore. Human infirmity clings to all. Each is finite, and sees but partially ; hence their judgments are often in opposition. The contrasts of opinion in Greek philosophy, when there was no organized priesthood to forbid or to cripple freedom of thought, were as ex­ treme as now. Some imagine that, because the schools of material science work on in harmony, and the conflicts of opinion rather assist progress, being but partial and temporary, so will it be in religion, as soon as we resolve to cultivate religious thought scientifically. This might be the case, if materialism were the basis, or if we had foundations recognized by all. But in metaphysics, and in mental science generally, the great discouragement of study has lain in the irreconcilable and fundamental variance of the professors. Material­ ism and Spiritualism fight together for possession of the schools of morals and of psychology; so also of necessity will they in religion. Those who wish to be scientific are not agreed as to the bases and procedure of the new (religious) science, for which they are hoping in common. Every science has to work out its own �4 The Two Theisms. problems in. its own way. Strong analogies and har­ monies are detected between the several sciences after they arise and live; nevertheless each is born inde­ pendently, and acts independently; nor can any endure dictation from without, though hints and suggestions may be welcome and profitable. Thus, after we have agreed that free thought is necessary in religion, and that a scientific religion is the thing to be desired, we may easily remain as far apart in religious opinion and belief as were Stoics and Epicureans ; or if our difference be less extreme, it may be rather from holding more negations in common than from agreement in affirma­ tion. Nor, when people profess to believe in God and call themselves Theists, does this go far to indicate real agreement. The question recurs, What do we mean by God 1 If vre may not give a reply, the word is un­ meaning to us, and we deceive ourselves in thinking that we have any belief at all. But as soon as we give a reply,—not as believing that it can exhaust the whole reality, but merely that it may explain our thought,—some one arises to reprove us for presumption in sup­ posing that we can limit the illimitable, and define the incomprehensible. Men who by general suffrage are eminent in some physical science, think forthwith that their physical attainments justify their laying down the law in religion; and we who have broken loose from the dogmatism of the churches find that we have to encounter a new fight for our freedom against the dog­ matism of this or that “ man of science,” who perhaps graciously allows us the field of “ the Unknowable” or religion, or not even that; for it is well if the new dogmatist will let us have any belief in a Superior Spirit at all. Nothing is commoner than a shriek of derision against a “ personal God.” Under the ground­ less pretence that personality means limitation, or means Anthropomorphy, we are forbidden to believe in a God who has purposes and sentiments. A God wzUAowi �The Two Theisms. 5 either purposes or sentiments is a God in whom we cannot recognize mind at all, and is therefore a blind force or a blind fate. A recent writer of great literaryeminence, while fancying that he is about to deliver religion from sacerdotal metaphysics, emphatically de­ nies, not the personality only, but even the unity of God ; thus presenting us with nothing but a plurality of either forces or abstractions, and plunging us into an abyss of metaphysics still deeper—-onp also out of which no practical religion has ever yet emerged. Setting aside avowed Atheism and avowed Pantheism (a very equivocal term), even in the apparently more limited form of belief denoted as Theism, there are at least two broadly distinguished schools of thought, between which, if we remain Theists, it is necessary to choose; and the more fully the two can be described and contrasted, the greater will be the aid to students of Free Religion. Indeed one might mark out a third school, the Deism of the eighteenth century. This pourtrayed the Creator as external to his creation, which they supposed him to have endowed with selfacting forces. Matter, in this theory, was either created or endowed with gravitation at a definite time, which may be called the crisis or era of creation; so that the action of God upon matter was convulsive and momen­ tary ", and the great forces of the universe, which he then bestowed on it, were regarded as no part of the divine essence, but as the properties of matter. To every planet he gave an 11 initial impulse,” which pre­ vents its falling into the sun; and then left the system to itself. Thus he may be said to have made a clock, wound up the spring, and pushed the pendulum into activity. Such apparently was the belief of the great Sir Isaac Newton. But in the nineteenth century this doctrine is almost universally disowned. The smallest acquaintance with the great science of geology convinces every one that the idea of creation as limited to a single crisis of time has no plausibility whatever; that crea-. �6 The Two Theisms. tion is undoubtedly the work of continuous ages, enor­ mous in duration, whatever its mode and progress; moreover, that if God is to be recognized at all in the universe, the great forces which are therein detected by the mental eye are strictly divine forces, and that any distinction between initial impulses as divine and continued forces as not divine is groundless. This is the incipient reconciliation of Pantheism and Theism. Nevertheless, our Theism divides itself into two schools, broadly separated, and for convenience it may be allowed to entitle them Greek Theism and Hebrew Theism. Of the former, the great Aristotle was pro­ bably a worthy representative ; and it commends itself to a great majority of those who are forward to identify their faith with science. The cardinal point of this is that it supposes God to have nothing, in him or of him, but general Law. He may be described as Force acting everywhere according to Law, under the guidance of Mind. He is supposed to be so absorbed in general action as to remain quite inobservant of the detailed results, or at least unconcerned about them. Thus he intends this earth to have day and night, to have vegetation and various animals on it, moreover to have a human population. These generalities he is not too great to design and devise. But it is said, we cannot suppose him to pay attention to any particular man, without supposing him to attend to every sparrow, to every oyster, to every stalk of sea-weed, and this (it is thought) would be absurd. He wishes the human race, as a whole, to attain its own perfec­ tion, but it is thought puerile to suppose him to attend to each individual; and, as favouritism would be a human weakness, he has no love and no care for any one of us. Conversely then, it would be gratuitous, unseemly, perhaps impossible, for any of us to love him. In accordance with this, Aristotle makes a passing remark—“ for it would be ridiculous for any one to say that he loves Jupiter;” not, I apprehend, �The Two Theisms. 7 from his investing Jupiter with the colours of Greek mythology, hut from his supposing no moral relations to exist between the Supreme God and us. Of course it will follow from that view that human injustice and vice, great as are their mischiefs, are offences against man or ourselves, not against God ; hence the idea of “ sin against God ” cannot exist. God is not sup­ posed to be concerned with the sin of an individual; to confess it to him would be an impertinence which Aristotle never seems to imagine possible. Indeed, the same great philosopher esteems intellectual virtue as higher than moral virtue, on the express ground that God cannot possess moral virtue, which belongs only to the natures which have passions to restrain and direct wisely ; nor indeed is it intelligible to ascribe moral virtue to a Being who is wholly solitary, and has neither temptations to resist, nor duties to fulfil. But probably the modern Theists of this class will admit, that, when a Superior Being gives sensitive life to other objects, he creates for himself relations to them and duty to them, especially the duty of justice not to create them for mere misery, or deal inequitably with them ; and that two lines of imaginable conduct at once open, according to one of which God would show himself good, and according to the other evil. Hence the epithet good attached to God is not idle and un­ meaning, but has a real sense. I do not know, but I hope, that those whom I entitle Greek Theists in the present day regard it as rightful and becoming to believe that God is good, even while contemplating either that violence of the elements which causes destruction and pain to myriads of his creatures, or the preying of one class of animals on another. That pain and death are strictly necessary, I suppose all thought­ ful persons to understand. But here a caution is needed, concerning the de­ scription of omnipotence, — a word which is often gravely misunderstood ; insomuch that one may doubt �8 The Two Theisms. whether it is wise to use it at all. If the word be strictly pressed, omnipotence makes wisdom needless, and leaves to it no functions. We cannot ascribe wis­ dom, without implying difficult problems to be solved ; but to omnipotence there can be no difficulty at all, and no problem ; a “ fiat ” suffices. Hence in calling God Wise, or All-Wise, we virtually assume that there are limits to his power, even if we know not exactly what. A second consideration shows that cases of apparent impotence in God may be mere inventions of human absurdity. It is a celebrated Greek saying that “ the only thing which God cannot achieve is, to undo the past.” This does but assert that divine power is out of place in solving the absurd problem of making contradictions simultaneously true ; such as, “ Alexander conquered Darius,” a past fact, and, “ Alexander did not conquer Darius,” the past fact undone. Verbal contradictions belong to the puzzle of human thought, and are no problem for power. One who disputes this does not know what he is saying. Even dull minds will find themselves constrained to deny that God can create a God like to himself. To create the uncreated, is a contradiction. This distinc­ tion between the uncreated and the created is irrever­ sible. We may advance from this to geometrical con­ siderations. Archimedes discovered that a sphere is exactly two-thirds of its circumscribing cylinder. To bring about, by a divine fiat, that the ratio should be three-quarters would be to establish a contradiction. To deny that this falls within the sphere of power can­ not shock piety. As well might one be shocked at the denial that a geometrical shape can be made simul­ taneously round and square. Further: mathematicians easily imagine a force of gravitation which shall obey a different law from that of Newton, and in following out the inferences find no self-contradiction. Yet it is more than possible that the Newtonian law is a rigid necessity of the physical system, and that to change it �The Two Theisms. 9 belongs not at all to the sphere of power, any more than to reverse geometrical or verbal truths. JNevertheless, it may justly be feared that some minds, who have credit for “ philosophy,” ill understand thoughts apparently so simple and obvious ; since the late eminent John Stuart Mill committed himself to the declaration that in some other world than this, for aught he knew, two and two might make five; and that he knew “ the Whole to be greater than the Part” by expe­ rience only :—though it is evidently a verbal truth. But as soon as we understand that the great geome­ trical and physical laws of the universe are a condition under which Creating Power acts, we find abundant room for the profoundest wisdom. When we ascribe Almightiness, it is only a short phrase for saying that “ we cannot know the limits of God’s power in any of the problems in which power is applicable ; and in dealing with them, we assume that there are no limits.” But this belongs to our ignorance, not to our knowledge. The Homeric epithet Much-miglity may be preferred by a rigid philosophy to Almighty, in speaking of that which transcends knowledge. The Theism which teaches that there is no definite moral relation between an individual man and his Divine Author, but only between the collective human race and its source; and that the relation is limited to this, that God by creating bound himself to be just to the race collectively,—such Theism does not encourage the individual to any acts of worship, and scarcely to the sentiment of gratitude. Compare the case of a land-owner who likes to have pheasants in his copses. Perhaps he takes some pains to keeps away the animals which are destructive to them, and in so far causes the pheasants to increase and enjoy life. But if he does not care for any one of them, neither does he wish any of them to care for him. A Greek Theist was beset by uncertainty whether, if he paid thanks and worship to Jupiter, the god listened to him, or in any sense �IO The Two Theisms. accepted his addresses ; hence, with but few exceptions, we find no mark of moral contact between the Greek soul and the soul of the universe. The prevalent tendency of Greek philosophy to that which Christians esteem to be pride and self-right­ eousness, is perhaps to be ascribed to this cause. Man stood erect in the presence of man, with whom alone he recognised moral relations, and was not awed and abashed by contrasting his own moral imperfection with the essential holiness of God. Mr F. E. Abbot probably extols this position of the Greek mind as manliness ; for in his Impeachment of Christianity, he has attacked the modern religion vehemently on this ground. He says: “ It strikes a deadly blow at the dignity of human nature, and smites men with the leprosy of self-contempt.” But the phenomenon was older than Christianity. I turn to the Hebrew Theism. It recognises all in God which I have described as Greek Theism, but adds something more, and that of prime importance. It does not suppose that he is absorbed, and as it were exhausted, in general action, but believes that he takes cognizance of individuals also. When Euripides denies that Jupiter attends to the sins of individual men, he argues, as Epicurus after him, that it would give the god too much trouble. [Melanippe Desmotis.] “ If Jupiter were to write down the sins of mortals, the whole heaven would not suffice, nor would he himself suffice, to look into each case and send its penalty.” Thus the reluctance of the opposite school to admit that the Most High attends to details, really turns upon an ascription of feebleness to him. The Hebrew Theist maintains that the universal agency of the Divine Spirit is a fact j and that the division of his innumerable acts into two classes, those which we can refer to a definable law and those in which no general law is discernible by us, is a division made to aid our finite minds. Again, no one regards it as �The Two Theisms. 11 partiality and “ favoritism ” in the rays of the sun, that they act differently on chemical material differently prepared ; nor does it imply “ mutability ” in God (as objectors tell us), if he act differently on different human souls, according to their state. Hence there is no just a priori objection to hinder and reprove that instinct of the heart which casts itself on God in spiritual prayer ; nor is it superstitious to believe that he will strengthen our virtue when we flee to him for aid. To the Hebrew Theist, God is emphatically “ a God who searches the heart.” He is regarded as dwelling in its recesses, and having (what can only be called) a joint-consciousness with the individual man. The wor­ ship is prevalently internal and unspoken, however pleasant the sympathetic enthusiasm of common wor­ ship when hearts are in unison. In creatures so im­ perfect as we, and especially in the noviciate of heart­ religion, no small part oi secret prayer will be, either petition for more strength to fulfil duty, or expression of grief for failures. An axiom of the religion is that God desires from us inward and outward goodness, holiness, and righteousness ; hence any wilful neglect, any choice of the baser part instead of the better, is accounted not merely to be unjust or vicious, but also to be sin against God. I am aware that in the present day men calling themselves Christians have pronounced “ sin against God ” to be an absurd idea, and allege that one who asks “ forgiveness ” supposes God to nourish 11 unseemly resentment.” Such objectors think themselves Christians and are not; nor is the objection just. The longer any one has cultivated religion as an inward life,-—the more frequent and more solemn has been his self-dedication before the Divine Spirit to all that is holiest and best,—so much the more certain is he to feel that any wilful deviation is an offence, not only against his own soul or (it may be) against a fellow mortal, but also against God. If �12 The Two Theisms. the worshipper on any day have a bad conscience, a cloud seems to hide the serene and glorious presence. If then a keen grief seize him, what matters it whether he use this phrase or that phrase, in seeking to recover his lost ground ? A child conscious of wrong asks “pardon” of his father, and does not hereby impute “un­ seemly resentment; but he knows he is disapproved, and he desires to remove disapprobation, which is to happen through a change in himself, of course, but he is not just then at leisure to study words accurately, and, it may be, he blames himself extravagantly. “ We know not what we should ask for as we ought, but he that searcheth hearts knoweth what is the mind of the spirit,” says Paul excellently. Such strivings are not ineffectual, but eminently conduce to moral culture and vital power, however much they may be reproved or disdained by the unsympathising logician, who perhaps has no personal experience in the matter. Alike pointless is the sarcasm that it is hoped by prayer to “ alter the purposes and modify the action ” of God ; and that prayer “ asks him to work a miracle.” What­ ever the weight of this against prayer for things external, it has no application at all to that prayer which concerns the heart of the worshipper only. There is no reason why we should not hope that God will act differently on souls that pray and on souls that do not pray ; and wide experience reports that he does so. Thus also a definite moral relation is recognized between the Divine Spirit and the soul which seeks his intimate influence; and (however it may be regretted or reproved as sectarianism) the sense inevitably springs up that there is in the human race an interior circle of saints or “ people of God insomuch that without being able strictly to justify every phrase, still this ancient out­ pouring of desire sounds as melody to the heart: “ Blessed are they that keep judgment, and he that doeth righteousness at all times. Remember me, 0 Lord with the favour that thou bearest unto thy �The Two Theisms. *3 people. 0 visit me with thy salvation ; that I may see the good of thy chosen, and rejoice with thine inheritance." As two seeds, in aspect alike, grow up into different trees, so the fundamental difference of Hebrew from Greek Theism, on a superficial view small, entails vast moral results. With the Hebrew Theist religion is a signal aid to morality; with the Greek Theist it is no aid at all. Duty is everywhere easier to know than to practise. It is an old complaint, “I see and approve the better, but I follow the worse.” A Greek Theist may be an eminently good man, but no thanks to his religion; for when he encounters temptation, it adds no strength to him. He does not believe that God looks on and approves or disapproves his conduct. But the Hebrew Theist, if he live in the spirit of his religion, lives under the thought, “Thou, God, seest me;” and it is harder to go wrong under the eye of a virtuous friend, though it were but a man. His religion is emotional, and adds a vital force to morality. Again: if anyone believe God to love his creatures, no impediment exists in the inequality of natures to loving him in return. I know that modern “Greek Theists” echo Aristotle’s incredulity, and call “love for Jupiter” a delusion. Yet undoubtedly we love, for their essential goodness, persons whom we have never seen, though they may not know of our exist­ ence; certainly then, if we believe that God knows us, and loves us, and every way deserves love, it ought not to be treated as beyond nature to love him. A prominent and applicable test of love is pleasure in anyone’s company-—that is, pleasure in a sense of his presence. Though we judge God to be alway with us, yet human society or needful absorption of mind in business and duty very largely pre-occupies us; but if at every vacant interval the heart springs back with delight to the remembrance that God is present, such a heart may surely be said to love God. Joy in a sense �14 The Two Theisms. of his nearness is attested by a long series of votaries in the Hebrew school, which has propagated itself into Christendom and Islam. Well-known Hebrew Psalms, to which countless hearts have thrilled and echoed, pro­ claim the blessedness of “ seeing God’s face ” (a strong metaphor) and living under the light of his countenance. As the hart pants for the water-brooks, so pants the “saint” for a sense of his presence, whose loving kind­ ness is better than life, whose approval brings fulness °f j°yThus while Greek Theism is to the individual a mere theory of the intellect, and possibly a science, Hebrew Theism must be something else beside science, namely, a life, dwelling in head and heart alike. It attributes to God perfect goodness, perfect holiness— words varying in sense with different minds, yet in all suggesting something high above what the individual has attained. Hence, in spite of dull imagination, low morals, and a necessarily mutilated appreciation of what God really is, the votary in this religion holds up to his heart for worship an object far nobler and purer than himself. If I refer to the poetical tale of Job, who, on getting a mental sigh! of God, cried out: “Behold, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes,” I may justly be told that this is mythological. How­ ever, the prophet called Isaiah in our Bibles said in his own name, “ We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness is but filthy rags ”—words strangely treated as a doctrine special to Christians, and tending to undervalue practical righteousness ! On the con­ trary, they are the vehement aspiration of the heart for a higher goodness than its own—a heart utterly dis­ paraging its own attainment in comparison to that which it sees above it, and longs for. But I suppose it will be added, “If such self-contempt is real, it is debasing; it saps the dignity of man.” Yet it is not visible that Luther, or John Knox, or Oliver Crom­ well were deficient in manliness, if even they “ crawled �The Two theisms. x5 on the ground” under a sense of their own vileness, contrasted to God’s purity. I fully admit to objectors that the inward religion common to Jew and Christian may become morbid, namely, by assuming an intensity of grief which (in a weak nature) endangers moral despair. The ups and downs of a much-tempted, much-sinning man, often bitterly repenting, often jubilant with delight—whose sins perhaps (like those of the poet Cowper) are unknown to all but himself and hardly believed by others—may entail a mental malady like Cowper’s; or, in a more robust and carnal nature, may drive a man into hardened courses. I wish objectors to understand that I see this danger. Nevertheless, as fire may burn us, and could not be the great aid to us that it is if this were impossible, so judge I of that mental contact between the impure soul and its far purer object of worship. The humiliation thus induced forbids a man to despise even the most sinful and polluted of his race, makes him tender­ hearted and forgiving, preparing him to believe that there is a fertile seed of goodness in those who have plenty of visible imperfection. I strongly deny that such humiliation tends to unmanliness, or lessens human dignity. The vehemence of passion uses strong language—as in love, so in devotion. The “self-abhorrence,” which is reproved as debasing, is felt only in the contrast of our darkness to God’s purity, and has nothing to do with the comparison of man with man. To “crawl” before man is a loss of dignity, but before God we have no dignity to claim. Surely humility towards God must make us more amiable to man. “To do justly and love mercy” are in sweet concord with “ walking humbly with God.”’ If there is any truth in what I have here laid out, a not unimportant inference seems to follow. A Hebrew Theist (such as I have described), though he believe neither in Moses nor in Jesus, finds true co-religionists in pious Jews and pious Christians; and not in those �16 The Two Theisms. only who recognize him as “one of their invisible church,” but in many who shun him and shudder at him— many whose religion is disfigured by puerile or pernicious error. On the other hand, he may regard a Greek Theist as a good man, a noble man, a man to be esteemed; but he does not find in him a co-religionist; nay, rather regards him as “unregenerate” and needing “conversion.” So too the Greek Theist evidently finds nothing in a respectable Atheist, however hard and scornful, to repel him. The difference between the two is one of intellectual speculation, and does not at all touch the heart. Thus, I incline to believe, the chasm which separates Theists who do not pray and Theists who pray is the broadest of all dividing lines. Those on this side are co-religionists with Jews, Brahmoes, Christians, and Mussulmans; those on the other side, are co-religionists with Pantheists (?) and Atheists. When those nurtured in the old national religions unlearn dogmatic authority, all human nature may be united in a common belief of Hebrew Theism, as conscious children of One God. But if we disbelieve our personal relation to God, Religion has lost alike its restraining and its uniting power. A Theism which is a mere speculation of the intellect may indifferently be asserted or denied. Atheism is morally on a par with such Theism. Of course this is not adduced as any disproof, but only as indicating the practical importance of the controversy. TURNBULL AND SPEAKS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The two theisms Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Newman, Francis William [1805-1897] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 16 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway and part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 4. Date of publication from British Library catalogue. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. Publisher's list on numbered pages at the end. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Thomas Scott Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1874] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CT108 G4852 Subject The topic of the resource Theism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The two theisms), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conway Tracts Morris Tracts Theism Theology https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/1a3379a67456ce799ec3a5d34cef88d0.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=pI4R1is-iyYdUPbTZyD5b7MW2LT7AAkZ40kx6Nw%7E7Q8D9RVWh9fMiuVZmzW4RQI2DyOda-nqALp2zjjcjefIemIyCLfW8kPrJKjnV69tTEqoWn0EYBf8go-2M-S-yHLPbjWtnU1dHAAyRSFcWZrCqq4hXyY4v3%7EGXDNcNhOPO5V11G0FXjPWSTGRgjLgYNoDujSYinxCo7v5r%7EBTKN7HtoxO2mwQ0pmUeNOphEVXwUBsa0vrGRnT8vM%7EbSl2Ogy3thVG-aXZiOQ1fKQ5guNlXPXc0oVj6KoOrt6n6yb8Mccy2UAYmf5aOecsla1HRIhQSyNJruAxYOlAO45eLE8Cyg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM ff6705ead4bf8c3486057cbc76cb34c9 PDF Text Text 252,1 ATHEISM A SPECTRE. WITH READING FROM MAX MULLER'S SIXTH HIBBERT LECTURE. SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL, JUNE 23, 1878. BY MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A. PRICE TWOPENCE, �LONDON 5 PRINTED BY WATERLOW AND SONS LIMITED LONDON WALL. �READING. (From Max Müller's Sixth Hibbert Lecture?) In the bright sky they (the ancient Aryans) perceived an Illumi­ nator ; in the all-encircling firmament an Embracer ; in the roar of thunder and in the violence of the storm they felt the pre­ sence of a Shouter and ®f furious Strikers, and out of rain they created an Indra, or giver of rain. With this last step, however, came also the first re-action, the first doubt So long as the thoughts of the ancient Aryan worshippers had something mani­ fest or tangible to rest on, they might, no doubt, in their religious aspirations, far exceed the limits of actual observation ; still no one could ever question the existence of what they chose to call their Devas or their gods. The mountains and rivers were always there to speak for themselves, and if the praises bestowed upon them seemed to be excessive, they might be toned down, without calling in question the existence of these gods. The same applied to the sky, the sun, and'the dawn. They also were always there, and though they might be called mere visions and appearances, yet the human mind is so made that it admits of no appearance without admitting at the same time something that appears, some reality or substance. But when we come to the third class of gods, not only intangible, but invisible, the case is different. Indra, as the giver of rain, Rudra, as the thunderer, were com­ pletely creations of the human mind. All that was given was ' the rain, and the thunder ; but there was nothing in nature that �4 could be called an appearance of the god himself, who thundered or who sent the rain. Man saw their work, but that was all: no one could point to the sky or the sun or the dawn or anything else visible, to attest the existence of Indra and Rudra. We saw before that Indra, for the very reason that there was nothing in nature to which he cluDg, nothing visible that could arrest his growth, developed more than all the other gods into a personal, dramatic, and mythological being. More battles are recorded, more stories are told of Indra than of any other Vedic god, and this helps us to understand how it was that he seemed even to the ancient poets to have ousted Dyaus, the Indian Zeus, from his supremacy. But a Nemesis was to come. The very god who seemed for a time to have thrown all the others into the shade, whom many would call, if not the supreme, at least the most popular deity of the Veda, was the first god whose very exist­ ence was called in question. . . Thus we read, “Offer praise to Indra if you desire booty, true praise, if he truly exists. Some one says : There is no Indra ! Who has seen him ? Whom shall we praise ? ” In this hymn the poet turns round, and, intro­ ducing Indra himself, makes him say : “ Here I am O worship­ per ! Behold me here ! In might I overcome all creatures.” But we read again in another hymn : ‘ ‘ The terrible one of whom they ask where he is, and of whom they say that he is not: he takes away the riches of his enemies like the stakes at a game ; Believe in him, ye men, for he is indeed Indra.” When we thus see the old god Dyaus antiquated by Indra, Indra himself denied, and Prajapati falling to pieces, and when another poet declares in so many words that all the gods are but names, we might imagine that the stream of religious thought, which sprang from a trust in mountains and rivers, then proceeded to an adoration of the sky and the sun, then grew into a worship of invisible gods, such as the sender of thunderstorms and the giver of rain had well nigh �5 finished its course. We might expect in India the same catas­ trophe which in Iceland the poets of the Edda always predicted, the Twilight of the gods, preceding the destruction of the world. We seem to have reached the stage when Henotheism, after try­ ing in vain to grow into polytheism on the one side, or mono­ theism on the other, would by necessity end in Atheism, or a denial of all the gods or Devas. So it did. Yet Atheism is not the last word of Indian reli­ gion, though it seemed to be so for a time in the triumph of Buddhism. The word itself—Atheism—is out of place as applied to the religion of India. The ancient Hindus had neither the 0eos of the Homeric singers, nor the of the Eclectic philo­ sophers. Their Atheism, such as it was, would more correctly be called Adevism, or a denial of the old Devas. Such a denial, however, of what was once believed, but could be believed no longer, so far from being the destruction, is in reality the vital principle of all religion. The ancient Aryans felt from the beginning—aye, it may be more in the beginning than afterwards —the presence of a Beyond, of an Infinite, of a Divine, or what­ ever else we may call it now ; and they tried to grasp and com­ prehend it, as we all do, by giving it name after name. They thought they had found it in the Mountains or Rivers, in the Dawn, in the Sun, in the Sky, in the Heaven, and the Heaven-Father. But after every name there came the No! What they looked for was like the Mountains, like the Rivers, like the Dawn, like the Sky, like theFather : but it was not the Mountains, «¿/the Rivers» not the Dawn, not the Sky, it was not the Father. It was some­ thing of all that, but it was also more, it was beyond all that. Even such general names as Asura or Deva could no longer satisfy them. There may be Devas and Asuras, they said, but we want more, we want a higher word, a purer thought. They denied the bright Devas, not because they believed or desired �6 less, but because they believed and desired more than the bright Devas. There was a conception working in their mind: and the cries of despair were but the harbingers of a new birth. So it has been, so it always will be. There is an Atheism which is unto death, there is another Atheism which is the very life­ blood of all true faith. It is the power of giving up what in our best, our most honest moments, we know to be no longer true; it is the readiness to replace the less perfect, however dear it may have been to us, by the more perfect, however much it may be detested, as yet, by others. It is the true self­ surrender, the true self-sacrifice, the truest trust in truth, the truest faith. Without that Atheism no new religion, no reform, no reformation, no resuscitation, would ever have been possible; without that Atheism no new life is possible for any one of us. In the eyes of the Brahmans, Buddha was an Atheist; in the eyes of the Athenian Judges, Socrates was an Atheist; in the eyes of the Pharisees, St. Paul was an Atheist; in the eyes of Swiss Judges, Servetus was an Atheist; and why? Because every one of them was yearning for a higher and purer conception of God than what he had learnt as a child. Let no one touch religion, be he clergyman or layman, who is afraid of being called an Infidel or an Atheist—aye, who is afraid of asking himself, Do I believe in a God, or do I not ? Let me quote the words of a great divine, lately deceased, whose honesty and piety have never been questioned: “God,” he says,'“is a great word. He who feels and understands that will judge more mildly and more justly of those who confess that they dare not say that they believe in God.” Now, I know perfectly well that what I have said just now will be misunderstood, will possibly be misinterpreted. I know I shall be accused of having defended and glorified Atheism, and of having represented it as the last and highest point which man can reach in an evolution of �7 fc! t2 9 < , •. religious thought. Let it be so. If there are but a few here present who understand what I mean by honest Atheism, and who know how it differs from vulgar Atheism, I shall feel satisfied, for I know that to understand this distinction will often help us in the hour of our sorest need. It will teach us that, while the old leaves, the leaves of a bright and happy spring, are falling, and all seems wintry, frozen and dead within and around us, there is and there must be a new spring in store for every warm and honest heart. It will teach us that honest doubt is the deepest spring of honest faith; and that he only who has lost can find. �I �ATHEISM. The boldness of Max Muller’s defence of a faith ful Atheism which I have read you, does not consist in its thought so much as in the word he adopts. The thought is that which sad experience has revealed to many a reverential thinker in the past as well as the present. William Penn, the Quaker, said that he who speaks worthily of God is very like to be called an Atheist. We owe high honour to the man who has courage to proclaim in Westminster Abbey the truth which hitherto has been uttered by the despised and rejected. But it remains doubtful whether even the independence and fidelity of the Hibbert lecturer, and his learning, will be able to recover a word so fraught with misunderstandings as the word “Atheism.” If mankind used such words etymologically, “Atheism ” might be restored ; but they do not; and it is to be feared that as the name of Jesus could not save “Jesuitism,” and the name of Christ cannot save “Christian,” so in another direction the fact that “ Atheist ” means one who denies the gods of common �IO belief, and is without any theory of God, cannot out­ weigh the popular meaning of the word. To the masses Atheist means a godless man, and a godless man means a bad man. Because of that acquired accent of immorality Theologians seem fond of using the word. It is, therefore, a bit of debased currency, and, as I think, will one day drop out of use. Yet many excellent people, like Max Müller, see that while theologically the word carries a vulgar mean­ ing, morally it represents the right of man to grow. In this sense it represents the freedom of man to deny any and every god which others set up. If that right had not been exercised we should still be worshipping Siva or Odin, or the Virgin Mary. The same authority which w’ould to day silence the Atheist before Jehovah, would have silenced Paul before Diana of Ephesus. “ Atheism ” is a flag that means unlimited right of denial, and that involves the right of progress and the pursuit of truth. Many liberal thinkers accept the epithet, not as dogma—not as antitheism—but because they mean to stand by their freedom, and will not cower before popular clamour. Trelawney asked the poet Shelley why, with his high pantheism, he called himself “ Atheist.” Shelley replied that he did not choose it. That name was the gauntlet they threw down, and he picked it up. In that heroic spirit, some still call �themselvesil Atheists,” even at risk of being misunder­ stood. And it must be acknowledged that the epithet will carry with it a certain accent of moral honesty and courage, so long as intellectual liberty is met with menace. When that lingering struggle is over and past, and the victory of free thought is completely won, as won it must be, it will no longer be any sur­ render of their colours if such brave men and women consult with their allies to find whether there may not be a broader, a more universal, banner to represent our common liberty than that marked “Atheism.” But, before that time can arrive, earnest and thinking people must give up their horror of “ Atheism.” That name now means to most people what devil meant to our ancestors, and it is equally mythical, unreal, fantastic. Even many so-called liberal people have not sufficiently thrown off their theological training to be released from terror of this latest phantom. Stat nominis umbra. It is the shadow of a name. That I propose to prove to you. The laws of nature have been sufficiently explored to turn the devil into a grotesque superstition; the laws of mental and moral nature are sufficiently known to lay this spectre of “ Atheism ” which has followed him. The so-called “Atheist” is no more outside psychological laws than he is bodily outside physical laws. Moral and mental facts hold him as much as gravitation holds him. �12 Those facts he may name one way and you another, but where the reality is the same shall we be tricked by names ? There are cases in which the reality is not the same. A man may believe in a three-headed deity, in a tri-personal deity, in Jove, Jupiter, Adonai, or some other celestial thunderer; such belief is not of thought but authority, it does not pretend to rest upon fact and evidence, but on tradition or revelation. We must at present leave all that out of the question. What we are now concerned with is the difference between those who, exercising the same reason, in the same method, upon the same facts, in them and outside them, state their conclusions differently. One calls himself 11 Theist,” the other calls himself “ Atheist.” These words are opposite. But are the realities under them opposite ? To find out that we must ask what is in the con­ sciousness of each when he so names his conclusion— assuming that conclusion to be divested of all tradition in the one case, and of all mere pluck in the other in each case a genuine product of reason resting on evidence. What then is in the mind of the intentionally rational Theist when he says: “ I believe there is a God ” ? There is in his consciousness a concept of law and order in the universe; there is a recognition �i3 of facts in himself, reason, love, the sense of right, the ideal, the beautiful; he reasons that because these things are in him they must be in nature, for he is in nature, and of nature ; and combining these inward realities with the law and order of the universe, and with the tendency of the world to his ideals, the Theist generalises them all in the word “ God.” But here many a Theist would break in and say: “Your statement is incomplete. I believe much more than that. I believe that God is a personal Being; I believe that He created the universe; I believe that He hears and answers prayer.” To which I reply: “ No doubt you believe these other things ; but the question is not what you believe, but what you think, what is purely the product of your reason acting on evidence. A Catholic believes in his Madonna as strongly as any Theist in the personality of God. But what evidence does either give us for such belief? None at all. What facts show that the world ever was created? Nobody pretends any. What evidence that God hears and answers prayer? Absolutely none.” But then this believing Theist answers : “ It is true I cannot actually prove the truth of my belief in these particulars. It may be sentiment, but must sentiment count for nothing ? What would life be if everything depended on cold logic ? I feel that I have a Heavenly Father with whom I can hold communion.” �14 Very well; but now comes along our man who has not that feeling at all. He says he feels sure that the world was never created; that if there were a God who answered prayer the world would know less misery; and that he can imagine no personality of God that would not make him a huge man. “ Then you are an Atheist! ” cries our believing Theist. “ If to disbelieve your private god be Atheism, I am.” 11 Then I will have nothing to do with you,” the Theist may say. “ I am much obliged to you,” the Atheist may reply. “ In old times they used to have a good deal to do with us ; it is something to be let alone.” But now let us cross-examine this Atheist, in his turn. li Do you believe in the laws of nature ? ” “I do.” 11 Do you believe in reason? ” “ I do.” “ Do you possess the sense of right, acknowledge the sacredness of love, reverence your ideal of truth, goodness, and beauty ? ” “ These make my moral and intellectual nature; I can not help believing in them.” “ Do you believe in the progress of mankind ? ” “ My life is devoted to it.” Now, another question—“ Taking all these things together, what do they sum up in your mind ? ” “A universe, or nature.” �15 “Would you mind calling it God?” “Yes; I object.” “ And why ? ” “ Because most persons when they say ‘ God ’ mean something very different, and they would understand me as believing what I do not believe, and what cannot be proved true. In India they would understand me as believing in Vishnu on his Serpent; in Turkey they would think I meant Allah of the Koran; here some would think I meant Jehovah, others that I believed in the Trinity, and yet others that I believed in an omnipotent sovereign Man reigning over the world.” “ Then what our Theist calls your ‘ Atheism ’ means only that you disbelieve all those particular personifi­ cations which men have imagined reigning over the universe, while you do accept all the facts they can show for their theories ? ” “ That is what it amounts to. I travel harmoniously with the Theist so long as he speaks of reason, love, truth, law, conscience, for these things I know. I still journey with him when he talks of the vast realm of the unknown, and of truths and realities that may be there beyond my grasp ; but when he sets up his own theory about what is in that unknown, and de­ mands that I shall believe that all the same as if it were proved fact, I am compelled to say I am not convinced. Then he calls me an Atheist and leaves me—probably hates me.” �i6 Now, it is perfectly certain that there is no actuality in the mind of one of these men that is not in that of the other. As their eyes see by the same sunshine, and their lungs breathe the same air, their reason and rectitude are the same. Yet are they widely sundered— separated as by an abyss—so that we have the anomaly of an army of former comrades winning their common liberty only to use it in fighting each other. Assuredly there is a serious fault here, perhaps more faults than one. One is the slowness with which liberal thinkers raise their hearts to the standard of their intelligence. In asserting the liberty of reason it would appear that many of them did not mean to be taken at their word. That was much the way with some of the Fathers of the Reformation. Luther affirmed the right of private judgment, but was aghast when he found people carrying it a line farther than himself, and said human nature was like a drunken man on a horse who, when set up straight on one side, toppled over on the other. John Calvin too asserted the right of private judgment. His idea seems to have been that men -were perfectly free to think as they pleased, and he was perfectly free to burn them if their opinions did not please him. After what happened to Servetus thinkers became prudent; they followed Erasmus who compared himself to Peter following his Lord afar oft. But at last the cock crew. Thinkers took up their cross. �i7 After many martyrdoms of the best men our laws have largely, though not fully, proclaimed the freedom of reason and conscience. But Orthodoxy has never conceded it. Dogma has been reluctantly compelled to transfer the faggot and stake by which free opinion was punished from this world to the next; and in this world still treats disbelievers as people who ought to be burned, and will be burned. But those who call themselves liberal—liberal Chris­ tians and Theists—are persons who have avowed the conditions of freedom in good faith, and if they now recoil from the inevitable results of those conditions it is but natural that freethinkers should say they have not the courage of their principles. I do not think that explains the whole case ; but it is natural that it should be so said, and that the anta­ gonism of freethinkers should be thereby intensified. The reserve or hostility of Unitarians and Theists towards Atheists, so called, is not altogether result of timidity. They themselves have a severe conflict with the orthodox, one largely involving their social rela­ tions, and they do not wish to be compromised by being supposed to hold views they do not hold. They know that men are apt to be judged by the company they keep, and so they keep aloof from those whose opinions seem to them extreme and untrue. Yet are they wrong in this. They are throwing �i8 their weight in favour of the discredited method of intolerance, and against the high principle they have espoused—intellectual liberty. They cannot serve two masters. They cannot claim freedom for them­ selves against the orthodox, then turn and deny it as against the Atheists. And it is a denial of freedom when we concede it verbally but treat it when exercised with aversion or contempt. The moderate liberal should beware lest in his care not to compromise himself he does compromise that great and wide prin­ ciple of freedom on which he and the Atheist alike depend. Let him know too that his god is debased when set against mental independence ; and so long as any Theism excommunicates any honest thinker it not only renders Atheism necessary, but lowers itself beneath that Atheism. For surely that god is only an idol not yet mouldered, who is supposed to care more for recognition of his personal existence than for charity and the independence of the human mind. Fundamentally, all alienations in the ranks of liberal people result from the survival in half of them of the ancient error, that some moral character inheres in mere opinion. There is a sense in which a man is responsible for his opinions; he is responsible for the pains he takes to find the truth, and responsible for honest utterance of the thing he holds true. But it is a great and grievous error to suppose that a man can �19 be morally bound to accept any belief whether he has reason to believe it or not. For example, to tell a man he ought to believe in God is like telling a woman she ought to love her husband. If she has a husband, and if that husband is worthy of love, and wins her love, the exhortation to love him is superflu­ ous; if otherwise, all the exhortation in the world cannot enable here to love one who is unloveable. Or, we may say, to tell a man it is his duty to believe in God is like lecturing oxygen on its duty to combine with hydrogen at the moment when galvanism has decomposed the two. The liberty of reason being introduced among the old creeds its effects must be accepted. It can no more be scolded than any other force in nature. The thinker must follow his thought, the reasoner must believe what he finds reason to believe, as the lover must love what he or she is impelled to love. If the thinking Theist would convince the thinking Atheist of a personalised Deity, he must introduce a force adapted to combine his proposition with the mind to be convinced. It must be a rational force if it is to affect the reason. Contempt is not a rational force —rather it is a confession that there is no rational force. It is falling back on the old dogmatic and coercive principle which, if it prevailed, would suppress all liberty and restore the faggot and the Inquisition. �20 The unity which I believe possible among the sons of freedom lies in the spirit of freedom and the spirit of truth. The position of the simple Theist is not even yet so popular as to require no sacrifices to maintain it shall he not respect the still greater sacrifices made by the man who is denounced as Atheist ? He may not like the word Atheist; I do not; for I believe that wherever there is such self-sacrifice, such fidelity rising above selfishness, there is a spirit essentially divine. But shall men be blinded by a name—a word ? Can they not see beyond all phrases that the spirit in which a man, even an Atheist, earnestly seeks truth, and bravely stands by what he believes truth— the spirit which for right, for freedom and justice, casts away all interests and all ease, toiling, living, suffering for his ideal right—O can they not see that such bear in their bleeding hands the very stigmata of Truth’s own martyrs ? Can we not all see how far above our doctrines and definitions rises this fidelity of our time, though it be called infidelity now as it was called im­ morality in Socrates and Beelzebub in (Jhrist—while it was then, is now, the spirit which in all history has been leading mankind from thraldom to liberty, from dark­ ness to light ? If our Theism does not see that spirit, if our Theism cannot clasp to its heart all hearts animated by that spirit, be sure it is a mere relic of the past— some fragment not yet crumbled of ancient supersti­ �tion; be sure that the only true God is the God of the living—and they are the living whose lives are con­ secrated to truth and right, however they may be named, or be they nameless. Theistic friend, your special theory will pass away. The highest mind of the past was not able to frame a god which you can worship unmodified, and you cannot frame—none living can conceive—an image which will not be fossil in a few centuries. Nay, your Theos may be even fortunate if it can be quietly dismissed before higher light without being degraded by its efforts to resist that light, sounding war-cries against earnest thinkers, and gradually taking on the base insignia of the many Idols, once Ideals, that kept not their first estate. I was lately examining a devil carved on Notre Dame—a hideous creature crushing human beings beneath his feet. I thought, how hast thou fallen, O Lucifer, son of the morning ! Thou too wert once a light-bringer and a god ! But even so must fall all personifications which try to crush and menace the reason and nature of man. Just upon the head of this horrid Notre Dame devil—exactly between his horns—a little bird has built its nest, and laid its eggs, with the sky’s soft blue upon them : and as I write it is probably gathering its young under its wing, and feeding them, and on the head of that personified �22 wrath of a god, fearless and free goes on the work of nature, the divine mystery of life and love. The Theos of the Theist may wear a halo to-day, but it depends on his worshippers what that halo shall be when the personification passes away before another, or before the eternal Love which vaults above all per­ sonifications. That halo may become an immortal ideal if it mean love to all • but such haloes have generally turned to horns, and the god of the Theist to-day need only denounce reason and hate freethinkers to become quite as grotesque a figure as that Notre Dame and take the place of that Atheism which now makes a devil for so many. But above all such tyrannous forms on their heads, between their finally powerless horns—the ancient mystery and beauty of Life will go on. Love will still gather its young under its wings. Mothers will feed their babes with tenderer thoughts and purer ideals. Reason will work on; men and women will think and aspire, will save and be saved from actual hells regardless of fictitious ones; the unnamed, uncomprehended, eternal spirit of nature and the heart will suffer no decay—but ascend for­ evermore. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Atheism : a spectre : with a reading from Max Muller's sixth Hibbert Lecture, South Place Chapel, June 23, 1878 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [London] Collation: 22 p. ; 15 cm. Notes: Printed by Waterlow and Sons, London Wall. Part of Morris Misc. Tracts 1. With a reading from F. Max Muller's sixth Hibbert Lecture 'On henotheism, polytheism, monotheism and atheism' given at Westminster Abbey in June 1878. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [South Place Chapel] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1878] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G3339 Subject The topic of the resource Atheism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Atheism : a spectre : with a reading from Max Muller's sixth Hibbert Lecture, South Place Chapel, June 23, 1878), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Atheism Belief and Doubt Free Thought Morris Tracts Reason Theism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/f0588452304781cebddb0dce8e1387a0.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=sXdoUMfHAFOHQnCPYDxw1uRxYSGG20GmF3XfLg0x-RQKKmGLyWmG2RexMtqesKjkqoWYqNArk41lKcZYeWfCyefomISte4BuuTdGwS4NDWZbO-oueBkk0I-nlsn4BqAG-WqOPBuvrZtm68-4U8U8qGTKH5GlgDpdqlk9ly20RmUuethwt3MqAz36K%7E3OH5ccr65eWgeVaRT-N2M%7E4B6GSzIMMIU7eQhmAyAwx4kYuVsYMviMbfEpz7X8YV-GmEkKS9KR-u6M1kEQ8ajogAtlJpYUHcXZ4hy%7EM1Ljv%7ExF6ooNF0oNAtX8dpkWQ%7EzG4j7z%7E0UJXrYloHRuINvs5Jq3NA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 44a41f48a87b7f8c7d3bca3987e44bbd PDF Text Text JOHN STUART MH (photographed, by permission, from the statue on bankmenT) W 17, JOHNSON" £.C. �THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION [Founded 1899.] (Limited). Chairman—GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE. Honorary Associates: M. Berthelot Paul Carus, Ph.D. Edward Clodd Stanton Coit, Ph.D. W. C. Coupland, D.Sc., M.A. F. J. Furnivall, M.A., Ph.D., D.Litt. F. J. Gould Prof. Ernst Haeckel / Leonard Huxley Prof. W. C. van Manen Eden Phillpotts J. M. Robertson W. R. Washington Sullivan Prof. Ed. A. Westermarck Thomas Whittaker Bankers: The London City and Midland Bank, Ltd., Blackfriars Branch, London, S.E. A tiditors: Messrs. Woodburn Kirby, Page, & Co., Chartered Accountants, I, Laurence Pountney Hill, London, E.C. Secretary and Registered Offices: Charles E. Hooper, 5 and 6, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London, E.C. All who approve of the publication, in a cheap and popular form, of works such as the present Reprint can help to produce them, and can join in a systematic propaganda for encouraging free inquiry and sober reflection, and repudiating irrational authority. These are the objects of the R. P. A. (The Rationalist Press Association, Ltd.). The Members of this Association have banded themselves \ together, not with any view to commercial gain, but solely to promote sound masoning and the growth of reasoned truth, as essential to the welfare and •ess of humanity. Should these aims commend themselves to your judgment, quid apply at once for full particulars to The Secretary, R. P. A., Ltd., 5 and 6, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London, E.C. �gV>58 bJMS NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY NATURE THE UTILITY OF RELIGION AND THEISM BY JOHN STUART MILL [issued for the rationalist press association, limited] WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C. 1904 ��INTRODUCTORY NOTICE The three following Essays on Religion were written at considerable intervals of time, without any intention of forming a consecutive series, and must not there­ fore be regarded as a connected body of thought, excepting in so far as they exhibit the Author’s deliberate and ex­ haustive treatment of the topics under consideration. The two first of these three Essays were written between the years 1850 and 1858, during the period which intervened between the publication of the Princi­ ples of Political Economy and that of the work on Liberty; during which interval three other Essays—on Justice, on Utility, and on Liberty—were also composed. Of the five Essays written at that time, three have already been given to the public by the Author. That on Liberty was expanded into the now well-known work bearing the same title. Those on Justice and Utility were afterwards incorporated, with some altera­ tions and additions, into one, and pub­ lished under the name of Utilitarianism. The remaining two—on Nature and on the Utility of Religion—are now given to the public, with the addition of a third —on Theism—which was produced at a much later period. In these two first Essays indications may easily be found I of the date at which they were composed; among which indications may be noted the absence of any mention of the works of Mr. Darwin and Sir Henry Maine in passages where there is coincidence of thought with those writers, or where subjects are treated which they have since discussed in a manner to which the Author of these Essays would cer­ tainly have referred had their works been published before these were written. The last Essay in the present volume belongs to a different epoch; it was written between the years 1868 and 1870, but it was not designed as a sequel to the two Essays which now appear along with it, nor were they intended to appear all together. On the other hand, it is certain that the Author considered the opinions expressed in these different Essays as fundamentally consistent. The evidence of this lies in the fact that in the year 1873, after he had completed his Essay on Theism, it was his intention to have published the Essay on Nature at once, with only such slight revision as might be judged necessary in preparing it for the press, but substantially in its present form. From this it is apparent that his manner of thinking had under­ gone no substantial change. Whatever discrepancies, therefore, may seem to �4 INTRODUCTORY NOTICE remain, after a really careful comparison between different passages, may be set down either to the fact that the last Essay had not undergone the many revisions which it was the Author’s habit to make peculiarly searching and thorough ; or to that difference of tone, and of apparent estimate of the relative weight of different considerations, which results from taking a wider view, and including a larger number of considera­ tions in the estimate of the subject as a whole, than in dealing with parts of it only. The fact that the Author intended to publish the Essay on Nature in 1873 is sufficient evidence, if any is needed, that the volume now given to the public was not withheld by him on account of reluctance to encounter whatever odium might result from the free expression of his opinions on religion. That he did not purpose to publish the other two Essays at the same time was in accord with the Author’s habit in regard to the public utterance of his religious opinions. For at the same time that he was pecu­ liarly deliberate and slow in forming opinions, he had a special dislike to the utterance of half-formed opinions. He declined altogether to be hurried into premature decision on any point to which he did not think he had given sufficient time and labour to have exhausted it to the utmost limit of his own thinking powers. And, in the same way, even after he had arrived at definite conclu­ sions, he refused to allow the curiosity of others to force him to the expression of them before he had bestowed all the elaboration in his power upon their adequate expression, and before, there­ fore, he had subjected to the test of time, not only the conclusions them­ selves, but also the form into which he had thrown them. The same reasons, therefore, that made him cautious in the spoken utterance of his opinion in pro­ portion as it was necessary to be at once precise and comprehensive in order to be properly understood, which in his judgment was pre-eminently the case in religious speculation, were the reasons that made him abstain from publishing his Essay on Nature for upwards of fifteen years, and might have led him still to withhold the others which now appear in the same volume. From this point of view it will be seen that the Essay on Theism has both greater value and less than any other of the Author’s works. The last consider­ able work which he completed, it shows the latest state of the Author’s mind, the carefully balanced result of the delibera­ tions of a lifetime. On the other hand, there had not been time for it to undergo the revision to which from time to time he subjected most of his writings before making them public. Not only there­ fore is the style less polished than that of any other of his published works, but even the matter itself, at least in the exact shape it here assumes, has never undergone the repeated examination which it certainly would have passed through before he would himself have given it to the world. Helen Taylor. �CONTENTS PAGE - - - • • 7 UTILITY OF RELIGION - - • • - 34 THEISM - - - • - 57 • - • - - • 5« 61 - - 62 NATURE - - - - PART I. 57 INTRODUCTION THEISM THE EVIDENCES OF THEISM - • ARGUMENT FOR A FIRST CAUSE - - - 67 70 THE ARGUMENT FROM MARKS OF DESIGN IN NATURE - 72 ARGUMENT FROM THE GENERAL CONSENT OF MANKIND THE ARGUMENT FROM CONSCIOUSNESS - - PART II. ATTRIBUTES - - - - ■ • • 75 • • - 83 - • • 9° PART III. IMMORTALITY - - ■ PART IV. REVELATION - - - PART V. GENERAL RESULT 102 ��NATURE “Nature,” “natural,” and the group of words derived from them, or allied to them in etymology, have at all times filled a great place in the thoughts and taken a strong hold on the feelings of mankind. That they should have done so is not sur­ prising when we consider what the words, in their primitive and most obvious signification, represent; but it is unfor­ tunate that a set of terms which play so great a part in moral and metaphysical speculation should have acquired many meanings different from the primary one, yet sufficiently allied to it to admit of confusion. The words have thus become entangled in so many foreign associations, mostly of a very powerful and tenacious character, that they have come to excite, and to be the symbols of, feelings which their original meaning will by no means justify, and which have made them one of the most copious sources of false taste, false philosophy, false morality, and even bad law. The most important application of the Socratic Elenchus, as exhibited and im­ proved by Plato, consists in dissecting large abstractions of this description; fixing down to a precise definition the meaning which as popularly used they merely shadow forth, and questioning and testing the common maxims and opinions in which they bear a part. It is to be regretted that among the instructive specimens of this kind of investigation which Plato has left, and to which subsequent times have been so much indebted for whatever intellectural clearness they have attained, he has not enriched posterity with a dia­ logue irepi <f>v(r€(D<s. If the idea denoted by the word had been subjected to his searching analysis, and the popular commonplaces in which it figures had been submitted to the ordeal of his powerful dialectics, his successors pro­ bably would not have rushed, as they speedily did, into modes of thinking and reasoning of which the fallacious use of that word formed the cornerstone; a kind of fallacy from which he was him­ self singularly free. According to the Platonic method, which is still the best type of such in­ vestigations, the first thing to be done with so vague a term is to ascertain precisely what it means. It is also a rule of the same method that the mean­ ing of an abstraction is best sought for in the concrete—of an universal in the particular. Adopting this course with the word “ nature,” the first question must be, what is meant by the “ nature ” of a particular object, as of fire, of water, or of some individual plant or animal? Evidently the ensemble or aggregate of its powers or properties : the modes in which it acts on other things (counting among those things the senses of the observer), and the modes in which other things act upon it; to which, in the case of a sentient being, �8 NATURE must be added its own capacities of feeling, or being conscious. The nature of the thing means all this; means its entire capacity of exhibiting phenomena. And since the phenomena which a thing exhibits, however much they vary in different circumstances, are always the same in the same circumstances, they admit of being described in general forms of words, which are called the laws of the thing’s nature. Thus it is a law of the nature of water that, under the mean pressure of the atmosphere at the level of the sea, it boils at 2120 Fahrenheit. As the nature of any given thing is the aggregate of its powers and pro­ perties, so Nature in the abstract is the aggregage of the powers and properties of all things. Nature means the sum of all phenomena, together with the causes which produce them; including not only all that happens, but all that is capable of happening; the unused capabilities of causes being as much a part of the idea of Nature as those which take effect. Since all phenomena which have been sufficiently examined are found to take place with regularity, each having certain fixed conditions, positive and negative, on the occurrence of which it invariably happens, mankind have been able to ascertain, either by direct observation or by reasoning processes grounded on it, the conditions of the occurrence of many phenomena; and the progress of science mainly consists in ascertaining those conditions. When discovered they can be expressed in general propositions, which are called laws of the particular phenomenon, and also, more generally, Laws of Nature. Thus the truth, that all material objects tend towards one another with a force directly as their masses and inversely as the square of their distance, is a law of nature. The proposition, that air and food are necessary to animal life, if it be, as we have good reason to believe, true without exception, is also a law of nature, though the phenomenon of which it is the law is special, and not, like gravitation, universal. Nature, then, in this, its simplest, acceptation, is a collective name for all facts, actual and possible; or (to speak more accurately) a name for the mode, partly known to us and partly unknown, in which all things take place. For the word suggests, not so much the multi­ tudinous detail of the phenomena, as the conception which might be formed of their manner of existence as a mental whole, by a mind possessing a complete knowledge of them : to which concep­ tion it is the aim of science to raise itself, by successive steps of generalisa­ tion from experience. Such, then, is a correct definition of the word “ nature.” But this definition corresponds only to one of the senses of that ambiguous term. It is evidently inapplicable to some of the modes in which the word is familiarly employed. For example, it entirely conflicts with the common form of speech by which Nature is opposed to Art, and natural to artificial. For, in the sense of the word “nature” which has just been defined, and which is the true scientific sense, Art is as much Nature as any­ thing else; and everything which is artificial is natural—Art has no inde­ pendent powers of its own : Art is but the employment of the powers of Nature for an end. Phenomena produced by human agency, no less than those which as far as we are concerned are spon­ taneous, depend on the properties of the elementary forces, or of the elementary �NATURE substances and their compounds. The united powers of the whole human race could not create a new property of matter in general, or of any one of its species. We can only take advantage for our purposes of the properties which we find. A ship floats by the same laws of specific gravity and equilibrium as a tree uprooted by the wind and blown into the water. The corn which men raise for food grows and produces its grain by the same laws of vegetation by which the wild rose and the mountain strawberry bring forth their flowers and fruit. A house stands and holds to­ gether by the natural properties, the weight and cohesion of the materials which compose it: a steam engine works by the natural expansive force of steam, exerting a pressure upon one part of a system of arrangements, which pressure, by the mechanical properties of the lever, is transferred from that to another part where it raises the weight or removes the obstacle brought into connection with it. In these and all other artificial opera­ tions the office of man is, as has often been remarked, a very limited one : it consists in moving things into certain places. We move objects, and, by doing this, bring some things into contact which were separate, or separate others which were in contact; and, by this simple change of place, natural forces previously dormant are called into action, and produce the desired effect. Even the volition which designs, the intelli­ gence which contrives, and the muscular force which executes these movements, are themselves powers of Nature. It thus appears that we must recognise at least two principal meanings in the word “ nature.” In one sense, it means all the powers existing in either the outer or the inner world and everything which 9 takes place by means of those powers. In another sense, it means, not everything which happens, but only what takes place without the agency, or without the voluntary and intentional agency, of man. This distinction is far from exhausting the ambiguities of the word ; but it is the key to most of those on which im­ portant consequences depend. Such, then, being the two principal senses of the word “nature,” in which of these is it taken, or is it taken in either, when the word and its derivatives are used to convey ideas of commendation, approval, and even moral obligation ? It has conveyed such ideas in all ages. Naturum sequi was the funda­ mental principle of morals in many of the most admired schools of philosophy. Among the ancients, especially in the declining period of ancient intellect and thought, it was the test to which all ethical doctrines were brought. The Stoics and the Epicureans, however irre­ concilable in the rest of their systems, agreed in holding themselves bound to prove that their respective maxims of conduct were the dictates of nature. Under their influence the Roman jurists, when attempting to systematise jurispru­ dence, placed in the front of their expo­ sition a certain Jus Naturale, “quod natura,” as Justinian declares in the Institutes, “ omnia animalia docuit and as the modern systematic writers, not only on law but on moral philosophy, have generally taken the Roman jurists for their models, treatises on the so-called Law of Nature have abounded; and references to this Law as a supreme rule and ultimate standard have pervaded literature. The writers on International Law have done more than any others to give currency to this style of ethical speculation; inasmuch as, having no �io NATURE positive law to write about, and yet being anxious to invest the most ap­ proved opinions respecting international morality with as much as they could of the authority of law, they endeavoured to find such an authority in Nature’s imaginary code. The Christian theology during the period of its greatest ascen­ dancy opposed some, though not a com­ plete, hindrance to the modes of thought which erected Nature into the criterion of morals, inasmuch as, according to the creed of most denominations of Chris­ tians (though assuredly not of Christ), man is by nature wicked. But this very doctrine, by the reaction which it pro­ voked, has made the deistical moralists almost unanimous in proclaiming the divinity of Nature, and setting up its fancied dictates as an authoritative rule of action. A reference to that supposed standard is the predominant ingredient in the vein of thought and feeling which was opened by Rousseau, and which has infiltrated itself most widely into the modern mind, not excepting that portion of it which calls itself Christian. The doctrines of Christianity have in every age been largely accommodated to the philosophy which happened to be pre­ valent, and the Christianity of our day has borrowed a considerable part of its colour and flavour from sentimental deism. At the present time it cannot be said that Nature, or any other standard, is applied as it was wont to be, to deduce rules of action with juridical precision, and with an attempt to make its application co-extensive with all human agency. The people of this generation do not commonly apply prin­ ciples with any such studious exactness, nor own such binding allegiance to any standard, but live in a kind of confusion of many standards ; a condition not pro­ pitious to the formation of steady moral convictions, but convenient enough to those whose moral opinions sit lightly on them, since it gives them a much wider range of arguments for defending the doctrine of the moment. But though perhaps no one could now be found who, like the institutional writers of former times, adopts the so-called Law of Nature as the foundation of ethics, and endeavours consistently to reason from it, the word and its cognates must still be counted among those which carry great weight in moral argumentation. That any mode of thinking, feeling, or acting, is “ according to nature ” isusually accepted as a strong argument for its goodness. If it can be said witb any plausibility that “ nature enjoins ” anything, the propriety of obeying the injunction is by most people considered to be made out; • and, conversely, the imputation of being contrary to nature is thought to bar the door against any pretension, on the part of the thing so* designated, to be tolerated or excused; and the word “ unnatural ” has not ceased to be one of the most vituperative epithets in the language. Those whodeal in these expressions may avoid making themselves responsible for any fundamental theorem respecting the standard of moral obligation, but they do not the less imply such a theorem, and one which must be the same in sub­ stance with that on which the more logical thinkers of a more laborious age grounded their systematic treatises on Natural Law. Is it necessary to recognise in these forms of speech another distinct mean­ ing of the word “nature”? Or can they be connected, by any rational bond of union, with either of the two meanings already treated of? At first it may �NATURE seem that we have no option but to admit another ambiguity in the term. All inquiries are either into what is or into what ought to be: science and history belonging to the first division ; art, morals, and politics to the second. But the two senses of the word “ nature ” first pointed out agree in referring only to what is. In the first meaning, Nature is a collective name for everything which is. In the second, it is a name for everything which is of itself, without voluntary human intervention. But the employment of the word “nature ” as a term of ethics seems to disclose a third meaning, in which Nature does not stand for what is, but for what ought to be, or for the rule or standard of what ought to be. A little consideration, how­ ever, will show that this is not a case of ambiguity; there is not here a third sense of the word. Those who set up Nature as a standard of action do not intend a merely verbal proposition; they do not mean that the standard, whatever it be should be called Nature; they think they are giving some informa­ tion as to what the standard of action really is. Those who say that we ought to act according to Nature do not mean the mere identical proposition that we ought to do what we ought to do. They think that the word “nature” affords some external criterion of what we should do; and if they lay down as a rule for what ought to be, a word which in its proper signification denotes what is, they do so because they have a notion, either clearly or confusedly, that what is constitutes the rule and standard of what ought to be. The examination of this notion is the object of the present Essay. It is pro­ posed to inquire into the truth of the doctrines which make Nature a test of 11 right and wrong, good and evil, or which in any mode or degree attach merit or approval to following, imitating, or obey­ ing Nature. To this inquiry the fore­ going discussion respecting the meaning of terms was an indispensable introduc­ tion. Language is, as it were, the atmosphere of philosophical investiga­ tion, which must be made transparent before anything can be seen through it in the true figure and position. In the present case it is necessary to guard against a further ambiguity, which, though abundantly obvious, has sometimes mis­ led even sagacious minds, and of which it is well to take distinct note before pro­ ceeding further. No word is more commonly associated with the word “nature” than “law”; and this last word has distinctly two meanings, in one of which it denotes some definite portion of what is, in the other of what ought to be. We speak of the law of gravitation, the three laws of motion, the law of definite proportions in chemical combi­ nation, the vital laws of organised beings. All these are portions of what is. We also speak of the criminal law, the civil law, the law of honour, the law of veracity, the law of justice ; all of which are portions of what ought to be, or of somebody’s suppositions, feelings, or commands respecting what ought to be. The first kind of laws, such as the laws of motion and of gravitation, are neither more nor less than the observed uni­ formities in the occurrence of pheno­ mena ; partly uniformities of antecedence and sequence, partly of concomitance. These are what, in science, and even in ordinary parlance, are meant by laws of nature. Laws in the other sense are the laws of the land, the law of nations, or moral laws ; among which, as already noticed, is dragged in, by jurists and �12 NATURE publicists, something which they think ■ modes of acting are so in exactly the proper to call the Law of Nature. Of , same degree. Every action is the the liability of these two meanings of i exertion of some natural power, and its the word to be confounded there can be : effects of all sorts are so many pheno­ no better example than the first chapter mena of nature, produced by the powers of Montesquieu, where he remarks that and properties of some of the objects of the material world has its laws, the nature, in exact obedience to some law inferior animals have their laws, and or laws of nature. When I voluntarily man has his laws; and calls attention to use my organs to take in food, the act, the much greater strictness with which and its consequences, take place accord­ the first two sets of laws are observed ing to laws of nature : if instead of food than the last; as if it were an inconsis­ I swallow poison, the case is exactly the tency, and a paradox, that things always same. To bid people conform to the are what they are, but men not always laws of nature when they have no power what they ought to be. A similar con­ but what the laws of nature give them— fusion of ideas pervades the writings of when it is a physical impossibility for Mr. George Combe, from whence it has them to do the smallest thing otherwise overflowed into a large region of popular than through some law of nature, is an literature, and we are now continually absurdity. The thing they need to be reading injunctions to obey the physical told is what particular law of nature they laws of the universe, as being obligatory should make use of in a particular case. in the same sense and manner as the When, for example, a person is crossing moral. The conception which the a river by a narrow bridge to which there ethical use of the word “nature ” implies, is no parapet, he will do well to regulate of a close relation if not absolute iden­ his proceedings by the laws of equilib­ tity between what is and what ought to rium in moving bodies, instead of con­ be, certainly derives part of its hold on forming only to the law of gravitation the mind from the custom of designat­ and falling into the river. ing what is by the expression “ laws of Yet, idle as it is to exhort people to nature,”while the same word “law” is also do what they cannot avoid doing, and used, and even more familiarly and em­ absurd as it is to prescribe as a rule of phatically, to express what ought to be. right conduct what agrees exactly as When it is asserted, or implied, that well with wrong, nevertheless a rational Nature, or the laws of Nature, should be rule of conduct may be constructed out conformed to, is the Nature which is of the relation which it ought to bear meant Nature in the first sense of the to the laws of nature in this widest term, meaning all which is—the powers acceptation of the term. Man neces­ and properties of all things? But in sarily obeys the laws of nature, or in this signification there is no need of a other words the properties of things ; but recommendation to act according to he does not necessarily guide himself by nature, since it is what nobody can them. Though all conduct is in con­ possibly help doing, and equally whether formity to laws of nature, all conduct is he acts well or ill. There is no mode not grounded on knowledge of them, of acting which is not conformable to and intelligently directed to the attain Nature in this sense of the term, and all ment of purposes by means of them. �Though we cannot emancipate ourselves from the laws of nature as a whole, we can escape from any particular law of nature, if we are able to withdraw our­ selves from the circumstances in which it acts. Though we can do nothing except through laws of nature, we can use one law to counteract another. According to Bacon’s maxim, we can obey nature in such a manner as to command it. Every alteration of cir­ cumstances alters more or less the laws of nature under which we act; and by every choice which we make either of ends or of means we place ourselves to a greater or less extent under one set of laws of nature instead of another. If, therefore, the useless precept to follow nature were changed into a precept to study nature; to know and take heed of the properties of the things we have to deal with, so far as these properties are capable of forwarding or obstructing any given purpose; we should have arrived at the first principle of all intelli­ gent action, or rather at the definition of intelligent action itself. And a confused notion of this true principle is, I doubt not, in the minds of many of those who set up the unmeaning doctrine which superficially resembles it. They per­ ceive that the essential difference between wise and foolish conduct con­ sists in attending, or not attending, to the particular laws of nature on which some important result depends. And they think that a person who attends to a law of nature in order to shape his conduct by it may be said to obey it, while a person who practically dis­ regards it, and acts as if no such law existed, may be said to disobey it: the circumstance being overlooked, that what is thus called disobedience to a law of nature is obedience to some other, or perhaps to the very law itself, example, a person who goes into powder-magazine either not knowing, or carelessly omitting to think of, the ex­ plosive force of gunpowder, is likely to do some act which will cause him to be blown to atoms in obedience to the very law which he has disregarded. But, however much of its authority the “ Naturam sequi ” doctrine may owe to its being confounded with the rational pre­ cept “Naturum observare,” its favourers and promoters unquestionably intend much more by it than that precept. To acquire knowledge of the properties of things, and make use of the knowledge for guidance, is a rule of prudence, for the adaptation of means to ends ; for giving effect to our wishes and intentions, whatever they may be. But the maxim of obedience to Nature, or conformity to Nature, is held up not as a simply pruden­ tial but as an ethical maxim; and by those who talk of jus natura, even as a law, fit to be administered by tribunals and enforced by sanctions. Right action must mean something more and other than merely intelligent action; yet no precept beyond this last can be con­ nected with the word “ nature ” in the wider and more philosophical of its acceptations. We must try it, therefore, in the other sense, that in which Nature stands distinguished from Art, and de­ notes, not the whole course of the pheno­ mena which come under our observation, but only their spontaneous course. Let us, then, consider whether we can attach any meaning to the supposed practical maxim of following Nature, in this second sense of the word, in which Nature stands for that which takes place without human intervention. In Nature as thus understood is the spontaneous course of things, when left to themselves, �14 NA TURE the rule to be followed in endeavouring to adapt things to our use ? But it is evident at once that the maxim, taken in this sense, is not merely, as it is in the other sense, superfluous and unmeaning, but palpably absurd and self-contradic­ tory. For while human action cannot help conforming to Nature in the one meaning of the term, the very aim and object of action is to alter and improve Nature in the other meaning. If the natural course of things were perfectly right and satisfactory, to act at all would be a gratuitous meddling, which, as it could not make things better, must make them worse. Or if action at all could be justified, it would only be when in direct obedience to instincts, since these might perhaps be accounted part of the spon­ taneous order of Nature; but to do any­ thing with forethought and purpose would be a violation of that perfect order. If the artificial is not better than the natural, to what end are all the arts of life? To dig, to plough, to build, to wear clothes, are direct infringements of the injunction to follow nature. Accordingly it would be said by every one, even of those most under the in­ fluence of the feelings which prompt the injunction, that to apply it to such cases as those just spoken of would be to push it too far. Everybody professes to approve and admire many great triumphs of Art over Nature: the junction by bridges of shores which Nature had made separate, the draining of Nature’s marshes, the excavation of her wells, the dragging to light of what she has buried at immense depths in the earth; the turning away of her thunderbolts by lightning rods, of her inundations by embankments, of her ocean by break­ waters. But to commend these and similar feats is to acknowledge that the ways of Nature are to be conquered, not obeyed; that her powers are often towards man in the position of enemies, from whom he must wrest, by force and ingenuity, what little he can for his own use, and deserves to be applauded when that little is rather more than might be expected from his physical weakness in comparison to those gigantic powers. All piaise of Civilisation, or Art, or Con­ trivance, is so much dispraise of Nature ; an admission of imperfection which it is man’s business and merit to be always endeavouring to correct or mitigate. The consciousness that whatever man does to improve his condition is in so much a censure and a thwarting of the spontaneous order of Nature, has in all ages caused new and unprecedented attempts at improvement to be generally at first under a shade of religious sus­ picion ; as being in any case uncompli­ mentary, and very probably offensive to the powerful beings (or, when polytheism gave place to monotheism, to the allpowerful Being) supposed to govern the various phenomena of the universe, and of whose will the course of nature was conceived to be the expression. Any attempt to mould natural phenomena to the convenience of mankind might easily appear an interference with the govern­ ment of those superior beings; and though life could not have been main­ tained, much less made pleasant, without perpetual interferences of the kind, each new one was doubtless made with fear and trembling, until experience had shown that it could be ventured on with­ out drawing down the vengeance of the Gods. The sagacity of priests showed them a way to reconcile the impunity of particular infringements with the main­ tenance of the general dread of encroach­ ing on the divine administration. This �NATURE was effected by representing each of the principal human inventions as the gift and favour of some god. The old reli­ gions also afforded many resources for consulting the Gods, and obtaining their express permission for what would other­ wise have appeared a breach of their prerogative. When oracles had ceased, any religion which recognised a revela­ tion afforded expedients for the same purpose. The Catholic religion had the resource of an infallible Church, autho­ rised to declare what exertions of human spontaneity were permitted or forbidden ; and in default of this the case was always open to argument from the Bible whether any particular practice had expressly or by implication been sanctioned. The notion remained that this liberty to con­ trol Nature was conceded to man only by special indulgence, and as far as required by his necessities; and there was always a tendency, though a dimin­ ishing one, to regard any attempt to exercise power over nature beyond a certain degree and a certain admitted range as an impious effort to usurp divine power and dare more than was permitted to man. The lines of Horace in which the familiar arts of shipbuilding and navigation are reprobated as vetitum nefas indicate even in that sceptical age a still unexhausted vein of the old senti­ ment. The intensity of the correspond­ ing feeling in the Middle Ages is not a precise parallel, on account of the super­ stition about dealing with evil spirits with which it was complicated; but the im­ putation of prying into the secrets of the Almighty long remained a powerful weapon of attack against unpopular inquirers into nature ; and the charge of presumptuously attempting to defeat the designs of Providence still retains enough of its original force to be thrown in as a 15 make-weight along with other objections when there is a desire to find fault with any new exertion of human forethought and contrivance. No one, indeed, asserts it to be the intention of the Creator that the spontaneous order of the creation should not be altered, or even that it should not be altered in any new way. But there still exists a vague notion that, though it is very proper to control this or the other natural phenomenon, the general scheme of nature is a model for us to imitate; that with more or less liberty in details, we should on the whole be guided by the spirit and general con­ ception of nature’s own ways ; that they are God’s work, and as such perfect; that man cannot rival their unapproachable excellence, and can best show his skill and joiety by attempting, in however imperfect a way, to reproduce their like­ ness ; and that, if not the whole, yet some particular parts of the spontaneous order of nature, selected according to the speakers predilections, are in a peculiar sense manifestations of the Creator’s will—a sort of finger-posts pointing out the direction which things in general, and therefore our voluntary actions, are intended to take. Feelings of this sort, though repressed on ordinary occasions by the contrary current of life, are ready to break out whenever custom is silent, and the native promptings of the mind have nothing opposed to them but reason; and appeals are continually made to them by rhetoricians, with the effect, if not of convincing opponents, at least of making those who already hold the opinion which the rhetorician desires to recommend, better satisfied with it. For in the present day it pro­ bably seldom happens that anyone is per­ suaded to approve any course of action because it appears to him to bear an �i6 NA TURE analogy to the divine government of the world, though the argument tells on him with great force, and is felt by him to be a great support, in behalf of anything which he is already inclined to approve. If this notion of imitating the ways of Providence as manifested in Nature is seldom expressed plainly and downrightly as a matter of general applica­ tion, it also is seldom directly contra­ dicted. Those who find it on their path prefer to turn the obstacle rather than to attack it, being often themselves not free from the feeling, and in any case afraid of incurring the charge of impiety by saying anything which might be held to disparage the works of the Creator’s power. They, therefore, for the most part, rather endeavour to show that they have as much right to the religious argu­ ment as their opponents, and that, if the course they recommend seems to conflict with some part of the ways of Providence, there is some other part with which it agrees better than what is contended for on the other side. In this mode of dealing with the great a priori fallacies, the progress of improvement clears away particular errors while the causes of errors are still left standing, and very little weakened by each conflict; yet by a long series of such partial victories precedents are accumulated, to which an appeal may be made against these powerful prepossessions, and which afford a growing hope that the misplaced feeling, after having so often learnt to recede, may some day be compelled to an unconditional surrender. For, how­ ever offensive the proposition may appear to many religious persons, they should be willing to look in the face the unde­ niable fact that the order of nature, in so far as unmodified by man, is such as no being, whose attributes are justice and benevolence, would have made with the intention that his rational creatures should follow it as an example. If made wholly by such a Being, and not partly by beings of very different qualities, it could only be as a designedly imperfect work, which man, in his limited sphere, is to exercise justice and benevolence in amending. The best persons have always held it to be the essence of religion that the paramount duty of man upon earth is to amend himself; but all except monkish quietists have annexed to this in their inmost minds (though seldom willing to enunciate the obligation with the same clearness) the additional reli­ gious duty of amending the world, and not solely the human part of it, but the material—the order of physical nature. In considering this subject it is neces­ sary to divest ourselves of certain pre­ conceptions which may justly be called natural prejudices, being grounded on feelings which, in themselves natural and inevitable, intrude into matters with which they ought to have no concern. One of these feelings is the astonishment, rising into awe, which is inspired (even independently of all religious sentiment) by any of the greater natural phenomena. A hurricane; a mountain precipice; the desert; the ocean, either agitated or at rest; the solar system, and the great cosmic forces which hold it together; the boundless firmament, and to an edu­ cated mind any single star—excite feel­ ings which make all human enterprises and powers appear so insignificant that, to a mind thus occupied, it seems in­ sufferable presumption in so puny a creature as man to look critically on things so far above him, or dare to measure' himself against the grandeur of the universe. But a little interrogation of our own consciousness will suffice to �NATURE convince us that what makes these phenomena so impressive is simply their vastness. The enormous extension in space and time, or the enormous power they exemplify, constitutes their sub­ limity ; a feeling in all cases, more allied to terror than to any moral emotion. And though the vast scale of these phenomena may well excite wonder, and sets at defiance all idea of rivalry, the feeling it inspires is of a totally different character from admiration of excellence. Those in whom awe produces admiration may be aesthetically developed, but they are morally uncultivated. It is one of the endowments of the imaginative part of our mental nature that conceptions of greatness and power, vividly realised, produce a feeling which, though in its higher degrees closely bordering on pain, we prefer to most of what are accounted pleasures. But we are quite equally capable of experiencing this feeling towards maleficent power; and we never experience it so strongly towards most of the powers of the universe as when we have most present to our consciousness a vivid sense of their capacity of inflict­ ing evil. Because these natural powers have what we cannot imitate, enormous might, and overawe us by that one attri­ bute, it would be a great error to infer that their other attributes are such as we ought to emulate, or that we should be justified in using our small powers after the example which Nature sets us with her vast forces. For how stands the fact? That, next to the greatness of these cosmic forces, the quality which most forcibly strikes every one who does not avert his eyes from it is their perfect and absolute recklessness. They go straight to their end, without regarding what or whom they crush on the road. Optimists, in their attempts to prove 17 that “whatever is, is right,” are obliged to maintain, not that Nature ever turns one step from her path to avoid tramp­ ling us into destruction, but that it would be very unreasonable in us to expect that she should. Pope’s “ Shall gravita­ tion cease when you go by ? ” may be a just rebuke to any one who should be so silly as to expect common human morality from nature. But if the ques­ tion were between two men, instead of between a man and a natural phenome­ non, that triumphant apostrophe would be thought a rare piece of impudence. A man who should persist in hurling stones or firing cannon when another man “ goes by,” and having killed him should urge a similar plea in exculpation, would very deservedly be found guilty of murder. In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another are nature’s every-day performances. Killing, the most criminal act recognised by human laws, Nature does once to every being that lives ; and, in a large proportion of cases, after protracted tortures sUch as only the greatest monsters whom we read of ever purposely inflicted on their living fellow-creatures. If, by an arbi­ trary reservation, we refuse to account anything murder but what abridges a certain term supposed to be allotted to human life, nature also does this to all but a small percentage of lives, and does it in all the modes, violent or insidious, in which the worst human beings take the lives of one another. Nature impales men, breaks them as if on the wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild beasts, burns them to death, crushes them with stones like the first Christian martyr, starves them with hunger, freezes them with cold, poisons them by the c �iS NATURE quick or slow venom of her exhalations, and has hundreds of other hideous deaths in reserve, such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed. All this Nature does with the most supercilious disregard both of mercy and of justice, emptying her shafts upon the best and noblest indif­ ferently with the meanest and worst; upon those who are engaged in the highest and worthiest enterprises, and often as the direct consequence of the noblest acts; and it might almost be imagined as a punishment for them. She mows down those on whose exist­ ence hangs the well-being of a whole people, perhaps the prospect of the human race for generations to come, with as little compunction as those whose death is a relief to themselves, or a blessing to those under their noxious influence. Such are Nature’s dealings with life. Even when she does not intend to kill, she inflicts the same tortures in apparent wantonness. In the clumsy provision which she has made for that perpetual renewal of animal life, rendered necessary by the prompt termi­ nation she puts to it in every individual instance, no human being ever comes into the world but another human being is literally stretched on the rack for hours or days, not unfrequently issuing in death. Next to taking life (equal to it according to a high authority) is taking the means by which we live ; and Nature does this too on the largest scale and with the most callous indifference. A single hurricane destroys the hopes of a season ; a flight of locusts, or an inun­ dation, desolates a district; a trifling I chemical change in an edible root starves a million of people. The waves of the sea, like banditti, seize and appro­ priate the wealth of the rich and the little all of the poor with the same accompani­ ments of stripping, wounding, and killing as their human antitypes. Everything, in short, which the worst men commit either against life or property is perpe­ trated on a larger scale by natural agents. Nature has Noyades more fatal than those of Carrier; her explosions of fire­ damp are as destructive as human artillery; her plague and cholera far surpass the poison-cups of the Borgias. Even the love of “ order,” which is thought to be a following of the ways of Nature, is in fact a contradiction of them. All which people are accustomed to deprecate as “disorder” and its conse­ quences is precisely a counterpart of Nature’s ways. Anarchy and the Reign of Terror are overmatched in injustice, ruin, and death by a hurricane and a pestilence. But, it is said, all these things are for wise and good ends. On this I must first remark that whether they are so or not is altogether beside the point. Sup­ posing it true that, contrary to appear­ ances, these horrors, when perpetrated by Nature, promote good ends, still, as no one believes that good ends would be promoted by our following the example, the course of Nature cannot be a proper model for us to imitate. Either it is right that we should kill because nature kills; torture because nature tortures ; ruin and devastate because nature does the like; or we ought not to consider at all what nature does, but what it is good to do. If there is such a thing as a reductio adabsurdum, this surely amounts to one. If it is a sufficient reason for doing one thing, that nature does it, why not another thing ? If not all things, why anything ? The physical govern­ ment of the world being full of the things which when done by men are deemed �NATURE the greatest enormities, it cannot be religious or moral in us to guide our actions by the analogy of the course of nature. This proposition remains true, whatever occult quality of producing good may reside in those facts of nature which to our perceptions are most noxious, and which no one considers it other than a crime to produce artifici­ ally. But, in reality, no one consistently believes in any such occult quality. The phrases which ascribe perfection to the course of nature can only be considered as the exaggerations of poetic or devo­ tional feeling, not intended to stand the test of a sober examination. No one, either religious or irreligious, believes that the hurtful agencies of nature, con­ sidered as a whole, promote good pur­ poses, in any other way than by inciting human rational creatures to rise up and struggle against them. If we believed that those agencies were appointed by a benevolent Providence as the means of accomplishing wise purposes which could not be compassed if they did not exist, then everything done by mankind which tends to chain up these natural agencies or to restrict their mischievous operation, from draining a pestilential marsh down to curing the toothache, or putting up an umbrella, ought to be accounted im­ pious ; which assuredly nobody does account them, notwithstanding an under­ current of sentiment setting in that direction which is occasionally percep­ tible. On the contrary, the improve­ ments on which the civilised part of man­ kind most pride themselves consist in more successfully warding off those natural calamities which, if we really believed what most people profess to believe, we should cherish as medicines provided for our earthly state by infinite 19 wisdom. Inasmuch, too, as each genera­ tion greatly surpasses its predecessors in the amount of natural evil which it succeeds in averting, our condition, if the theory were true, ought by this time to have become a terrible manifestation of some tremendous calamity, against which the physical evils we have learnt to overmaster had previously operated as a preservative. Any one, however, who acted as if he supposed this to be the case would be more likely, I think, to be confined as a lunatic than rever­ enced as a saint. It is undoubtedly a very common fact that good comes out of evil, and when it does occur it is far too agreeable not tofind people eager to dilate on it. But, in the first place, it is quite as often true of human crimes as of natural calamities. The fire of London, which is believed to have had so salutary an effect on the healthiness of the city, would have pro­ duced that effect just as much if it had been really the work of the furor papisticus ” so long commemorated on the Monument. The deaths of those whom tyrants or persecutors have made martyrs in any noble cause have done a service to mankind which would not have been obtained if they had died by accident or disease. Yet, whatever inci­ dental and unexpected benefits may result from crimes, they are crimes, nevertheless. In the second place, if good frequently comes out of evil, the converse fact, evil coming out of good, is equally common. Every event, public or private, which, regretted on its occur­ rence, was declared providential at a later period on account of some unfore­ seen good consequence, might be matched by some other event, deemed fortunate at the time, but which proved calamitous or fatal to those whom it �20 IVA TURE appeared to benefit. Such conflicts between the beginning and the end, or between the event and the expectation, are not only as frequent, but as often held up to notice, in the painful cases as in the agreeable; but there is not the same inclination to generalise on them ; or at all events they are not regarded by the moderns (though they were by the ancients) as similarly an indication of the divine purposes : men satisfy them­ selves with moralising on the imperfect nature of our foresight, the uncertainty of events, and the vanity of human ex­ pectations. The simple fact is, human interests are so complicated, and the effects of any incident whatever so multi­ tudinous, that, if it touches mankind at all, its influence on them is, in the great majority of cases, both good and bad. If the greater number of personal mis­ fortunes have their good side, hardly any ..good fortune ever befel any one which ■did not give either to the same or to some other person something to regret : and unhappily there are many misfor­ tunes so overwhelming that their favour­ able side, if it exist, is entirely over­ shadowed and made insignificant; while the corresponding statement can seldom be made concerning blessings. The .effects, too, of every cause depend so much on the circumstances which acci­ dentally accompany it that many cases are sure to occur in which even the total result is markedly opposed to the pre­ dominant tendency: and thus not only evil has its good and good its evil side, but good often produces an overbalance of evil and evil an overbalance of good. This, however, is by no means the general tendency of either phenomenon. On the contrary, both good and evil naturally tend to fructify, each in its own kind, good producing good, and evil, evil. It is one of Nature’s general rules, and part of her habitual injustice, that “ to him that hath shall be given, but from him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath.” The ordinary and predominant tendency of good is towards more good. Health, strength, wealth, knowledge, virtue, are not only good in themselves, but facilitate and promote the acquisition of good, both of the same and of other kinds. The person who can learn easily is he who already knows much : it is the strong and not the sickly person who can do everything which most conduces to health ; those who find it easy to gain money are not the poor, but the rich; while health, strength, knowledge, talents, are all means of acquiring riches, and riches are often an indispensable means of acquiring these. Again, e conveyso, what­ ever may be said of evil turning into good, the general tendency of evil is towards further evil. Bodily illness renders the body more susceptible of disease; it produces incapacity of exer­ tion, sometimes debility of mind, and often the loss of means of subsistence. All severe pain, either bodily or mental, tends to increase the susceptibilities of pain for ever after. Poverty is the parent of a thousand mental and moral evils. What is still worse, to be injured or oppressed, when habitual, -lowers the whole tone of the character. One bad action leads to others, both in the agent himself, in the bystanders, and in the sufferers. All bad qualities are strengthened by habit, and all vices and follies tend to spread. Intellectual defects generate moral, and moral, intel­ lectual ; and every intellectual or moral defect generates others, and so on with­ out end. That much applauded class of authors, �NA TURE the writers on natural theology, have, I venture to think, entirely lost their way, and missed the sole line of argument which could have made their speculations acceptable to any one who can perceive when two propositions contradict one another. They have exhausted the resources of sophistry to make it appear that all the suffering in the world exists to prevent greater—that misery exists, for fear lest there should be misery : a thesis which, if ever so well maintained, could only avail to explain and justify the works of limited beings, compelled to labour under conditions independent of their own will; but can have no application to a Creator assumed to be omnipotent, who, if he bends to a sup­ posed necessity, himself makes the necessity which he bends to. If the maker of the world can all that he will, he wills misery, and there is no escape from the conclusion. The more consis­ tent of those who have deemed them­ selves qualified to “ vindicate the ways of God to man ” have endeavoured to avoid the alternative by hardening their hearts, and denying that misery is an evil. The goodness of God, they say, does not consist in willing the happiness of his creatures, but their virtue; and the uni­ verse, if not a happy, is a just, universe. But, waving the objections to this scheme of ethics, it does not at all get rid of the difficulty. If the Creator of mankind willed that they should all be virtuous, his designs are as completely baffled as if he had willed that they should all be happy : and the order of nature is con­ structed with even less regard to the requirements of justice than to those of benevolence. If the law of all creation were justice and the Creator omnipotent, then, in whatever amount suffering and happiness might be dispensed to the 2r world, each person’s share of them would be exactly proportioned to that person’s good or evil deeds ; no human being would have a worse lot than another, without worse deserts ; accident or favouritism would have no part in such a world, but every human life would be the playing out of a drama constructed like a perfect moral tale. No one is able to blind himself to the fact that the world we live in is totally different from this ; insomuch that the necessity of re­ dressing the balance has been deemed one of the strongest arguments for another life after death, which amounts to an admission that the order of things in this life is often an example of injus­ tice, not justice. If it be said that God does not take sufficient account of pleasure and pain to make them the reward or punishment of the good or the wicked, but that virtue is itself the greatest good and vice the greatest evil, then these at least ought to be dispensed to all according to what they have done to deserve them; instead of which, every kind of moral depravity is entailed upon multitudes by the fatality of their birth ; through the fault of their parents, of society, or of uncontrollable circum­ stances, certainly through no fault of their own. Not even on the most dis­ torted and contrasted theory of good which ever was framed by religious or philosophical fanaticism can the govern­ ment of Nature be made to resemble the work of a being at once good and omni­ potent. The only admissible moral theory of Creation is that the Principle of Good cinnot at once and altogether subdue the powers of evil, either physical or moral; could not place mankind in a world free from the necessity of an incessant struggle with the maleficent powers, or make �22 NATURE them always victorious in that struggle, but could and did make them capable of carrying on the fight with vigour and with progressively increasing success. Of all the religious explanations of the order of nature, this alone is neither contradictory to itself nor to the facts for which it attempts to account. Accord­ ing to it, man’s duty would consist, not in simply taking care of his own interests by obeying irresistible power, but in standing forward a not ineffectual auxi­ liary to a Being of perfect beneficence ; a faith which seems much better adapted for nerving him to exertion than a vague and inconsistent reliance on an Author of Good who is supposed to be also the author of evil. And I venture to assert that such has really been, though often unconsciously, the faith of all who have drawn strength and support of any worthy kind from trust in a superintending Providence. There is no subject on which men’s practical belief is more incorrectly indicated by the words they use to express it than religion. Many have derived a base confidence from imagining themselves to be favourites of an omnipotent but capricious and despotic Deity. But those who have been strengthened in goodness by rely­ ing on the sympathising support of a powerful and good Governor of the world have, I am satisfied, never really believed that Governor to be, in the strict sense of the term, omnipotent. They have always saved his goodness at the expense of his power. They have believed, perhaps, that he could, if he willed, remove all the thorns from their individual path, but not without causing greater harm to some one else, or frus­ trating some purpose of greater importance to the general well-being. They have believed that he could do any one thing, but not any combination of things; that his government, like human government, was a system of adjustments and com­ promises ; that the world is inevitably imperfect, contrary to his intention.1 And since the exertion of all his power to make it as little imperfect as possible leaves it no better than it is, they cannot but regard that power, though vastly beyond human estimate, yet as in itself not merely finite, but extremely limited. They are bound, for example, to suppose that the best he could do for his human creatures was to make an immense majority of all who have yet existed be born (without any fault of their own) Patagonians, or Esquimaux, or something nearly as brutal and degraded, but to give them capacities which, by being cultivated for very many centuries in toil and suffering, and after many of the best specimens of the race have sacrificed their lives for the purpose, have at last enabled some chosen portions of the species to grow into something better, capable of being improved in centuries more into 1 This irresistible conviction conies out in the writings of religious philosophers, in exact pro­ portion to the general clearness of their under­ standing. It nowhere shines forth so distinctly as in Leibnitz’s famous Theodicee, so strangely mistaken for a system of optimism, and, as such, satirised by Voltaire on grounds which do not even touch the author’s argument. Leibnitz does not maintain that this world is the best of all imaginable, but only of all possible, worlds ; which, he argues, it cannot but be, inasmuch as God, who is absolute goodness, has chosen it and not another. In every page of the work be tacitly assumes an abstract possibility and impos­ sibility, independent of the divine power ; and, though his pious feelings make him continue to designate that power by the word “Omnipotence, ’ he so explains that term as to make it mean power extending to all that is within the limits of that abstract possibility. �NA TURE something really good, of which hitherto there are only to be foun 1 individual instances. It may be possible to believe with Plato that perfect goodness, limited and thwarted in every direction by the intractableness of the material, has done this because it could do no better. But that the same perfectly wise and good Being had absolute power over the material, and made it, by voluntary choice, what it is; to admit this might have been supposed impossible to any one who has the simplest notions of moral good and evil. Nor can any such person, whatever kind of religious phrases he may use, fail to believe that if Nature and man are both the works of a Being of perfect goodness, that Being intended Nature as a scheme to be amended, not imitated, by man. But even though unable to believe that Nature, as a whole, is a realisation of the designs of perfect wisdom and benevolence, men do not willingly re­ nounce the idea that some part of Nature, at least, must be intended as an exemplar, or type; that on some portion or other of the Creator’s works the image of the moral qualities which they are accustomed to ascribe to him must be impressed ; that if not all which is, yet something which is, must not only be a faultless model of what ought to be, but must be intended to be our guide and standard in rectifying the rest. It does not suffice them to believe that what tends to good'is to be imitated and per­ fected, and what tends to evil is to be corrected: they are anxious for some more definite indication of the Creator’s designs; and, being persuaded that this must somewhere be met with in his works, undertake the dangerous respon­ sibility of picking and choosing among them in quest of it. A choice which, except so far as directed by the general maxim that he intends all the good and none of the evil, must of necessity be perfectly arbitrary; and if it leads to any conclusions other than such as can be deduced from that maxim, must be, exactly in that proportion, pernicious. It has never been settled by any accredited doctrine what particular de­ partments of the order of nature shall be reputed to be designed for our moral instruction and guidance ; and accord­ ingly each person’s individual predilec­ tions, or momentary convenience, have decided to what parts of the divine government the practical conclusions that he was desirous of establishing should be recommended to approval as being analogous. One such recommen­ dation must be as fallacious as another, for it is impossible to decide that cer­ tain of the Creator’s works are more truly expressions of his character than the rest; and the only selection which does not lead to immoral results is the selection of those which most conduce to the general good—in other words, of those which point to an end which, if the entire scheme is the expression of a single omnipotent and consistent will, is evidently not the end intended by it. There is, however, one particular element in the construction of the world which, to minds on the look-out for special indications of the Creator’s will, has appeared, not without plausibility, peculiarly fitted to afford them ; viz., the active impulses of human and other animated beings. One can imagine such persons arguing that, when the Author of Nature only made circumstances, he may not have meant to indicate the manner in which his rational creatures were to adjust themselves to those circumstances; but that when he implanted positive �24 AU TURE stimuli in the creatures themselves, stirring them up to a particular kind of action, it is impossible to doubt that he intended that sort of action to be prac­ tised by them. This reasoning, followed out consistently, would lead to the con­ clusion that the Deity intended, and approves, whatever human beings do; since all that they do being the conse­ quence of some of the impulses with which their Creator must have endowed them, all must equally be considered as done in obedience to his will. As this practical conclusion wras shrunk from, it was necessary to draw a distinction, and to pronounce that not the whole, but only parts, of the active nature of man­ kind point to a special intention of the Creator in respect to their tonduct. These parts, it seemed natural to suppose, must be those in which the Creator’s hand is manifested rather than the man’s own; and hence the frequent antithesis between man as God made him and man as he has made himself. Since what is done with deliberation seems more the man’s own act, and he is held more completely responsible for it than for what he does from sudden impulse, the considerate part of human conduct is apt to be set down as man’s share in the business, and the inconsiderate as God’s. The result is the vein of senti­ ment so common in the modern world (though unknown to the philosophic ancients) which exalts instinct at the expense of reason ; an aberration ren­ dered still more mischievous by the opinion commonly held in conjunction with it, that every, or almost every, feel­ ing or impulse which acts promptly with­ out waiting to ask questions is an instinct. Thus almost every variety of unreflecting and uncalculating impulse receives a kind of consecration, except those which, though unreflecting at the moment, owe their origin to previous habits of reflec­ tion : these, being evidently not instinc­ tive, do not meet with the favour accorded to the rest; so that all unreflecting impulses are invested with authority over reason, except the only ones which are most probably right. I do not mean, of course, that this mode of judgment is even pretended to be consistently carried out : life could not go on if it were not admitted that impulses must be con­ trolled, and that reason ought to govern our actions. The pretension is not to drive Reason from the helm, but rather to bind her by articles to steer only in a particular way. Instinct is not to govern, but reason is to practise some vague and unassignable amount of deference to Instinct. Though the impression in favour of instinct as being a peculiar manifestation of the divine purposes has not been cast into the form of a con­ sistent general theory, it remains a stand­ ing prejudice, capable of being stirred up into hostility to reason in any case in which the dictate of the rational faculty has not acquired the authority of pre­ scription. I shall not here enter into the difficult psychological question, what are or are not instincts : the subject would require a volume to itself. Without touching upon any disputed theoretical points, it is possible to judge how little worthy is the instinctive part of human nature to be held up as its chief excellence—as the part in which the hand of infinite good­ ness and wisdom is peculiarly visible. Allowing everything to be an instinct which anybody has ever asserted to be one, it remains true that nearly every respectable attribute of humanity is the result not of instinct, but of a victory over instinct; and that there is hardly �NA TURE anything valuable in the natural man except capacities—a whole world of pos­ sibilities, all of them dependent upon eminently artificial discipline for being realised. It is only in a highly artificialised con­ dition of human nature that the notion grew up, or, I believe, ever could have grown up, that goodness was natural : because only after a long course of arti­ ficial education did good sentiments become so habitual, and so predominant over bad, as to arise unprompted when occasion called for them. In the times when mankind were nearer to their natural state, cultivated observers re­ garded the natural man as a sort of wild animal, distinguished chiefly by being craftier than the other beasts of the field; and all worth of character was deemed the result of a sort of taming ; a phrase often applied by the ancient philosophers to the appropriate discipline of human beings. The truth is that there is hardly a single point of excellence belonging to human character which is not decidedly repugnant to the untutored feelings of human nature. If there be a virtue which more than any other we expect to find, and really do find, in an uncivilised state, it is the virtue of courage. Yet this is from first to last a victory achieved over one of the most powerful emotions of human nature. If there is any one feeling or attribute more natural than all others to human beings, it is fear ; and no greater proof can be given of the power of artificial discipline than the conquest which it has at all times and places shown itself capable of achieving over so mighty and so universal a sentiment. The widest difference no doubt exists between one human being and another in the facility or difficulty with which they acquire this 25 virtue. There is hardly any department of human excellence in which difference of original temperament goes so far. But it may fairly be questioned if any human being is naturally courageous. Many are naturally pugnacious, or irascible, or enthusiastic, and these passions when strongly excited may render them insensible to fear. But take away the conflicting emotion, and fear reasserts its dominion : consistent courage is always the effect of cultiva­ tion. The courage which is occasionally, though by no means generally, found among tribes of savages is as much the result of education as that of the Spartans or Romans. In all such tribe? there is a most emphatic direction of the public sentiment into every channel of expression through which honour can be paid to courage and cowardice held up to contempt and derision. It will perhaps be said that, as the expression of a senti­ ment implies the sentiment itself, the training of the young to courage pre­ supposes an originally courageous people. It presupposes only what all good customs presuppose—that there must have been individuals better than the rest who set the customs going. Some individuals, who like other people had fears to conquer, must have had strength of mind and will to conquer them for themselves. These would obtain the influence belonging to heroes, for that which is at once astonishing and obviously useful never fails to be ad­ mired : and partly through this admira­ tion, partly through the fear they them­ selves excite, they would obtain the power of legislators, and could establish whatever customs they pleased. Let us next consider a quality which forms the most visible and one of the most radical of the moral distinctions �26 NA TURE between human beings and most of the lower animals ; that of which the absence, more than of anything else, renders men bestial—the quality of cleanliness. Can anything be more entirely artificial ? Children, and the lower classes of most countries, seem to be actually fond of dirt: the vast majority of the human race are indifferent to it : whole nations of otherwise civilised and cultivated human beings tolerate it in some of its worst forms, and only a very small minority are consistently offended by it. Indeed, the universal law of the subject appears to be that uncleanliness offends only those to whom it is unfamiliar, so that those who have lived in so artificial a state as to be unused to it in any form are the sole persons whom it disgusts in all forms. Of all virtues this is the most evidently not instinctive, but a triumph over instinct. Assuredly neither cleanli­ ness nor the love of cleanliness is natural to man, but only the capacity of acquir­ ing a love of cleanliness. Our examples have thus far been taken from the personal, or, as they are called by Bentham, the self-regarding virtues, because these, if any, might be supposed to be congenial even to the uncultivated mind. Of the social virtues it is almost superfluous to speak, so completely is it the verdict of all experience that selfishness is natural. By this I do not in any wise mean to deny that sympathy is natural also ; I believe, on the contrary, that on that important fact rests the pos­ sibility of any cultivation of goodness and nobleness, and the hope of their ultimate entire ascendancy. But sym­ pathetic characters, left uncultivated and given up to their sympathetic instincts, are as selfish as others. The difference is in the kind of selfishness : theirs is not solitary but sympathetic selfishness; rego'isme a deux, a trois, or a quatre; and they may be very amiable and delightful to those with whom they sympathise, and grossly unjust and unfeeling to the rest of the world. Indeed, the finer nervous organisations which are most capable of and most require sympathy have, from their fineness, so much stronger impulses of all sorts that they often furnish the most striking examples of selfishness, though of a less repulsive kind than that of colder natures. Whether there ever was a person in whom, apart from all teaching of instructors, friends or books, and from all intentional self-modelling according to an ideal, natural benevolence was a more powerful attribute than selfishness in any of its forms, may remain undecided. That such cases are extremely rare every one must admit, and this is enough for the argument. But (to speak no further of self-control for the benefit of others) the commonest self-control for one’s own benefit—that power of sacrificing a present desire to a distant object or a general purpose which is indispensable for making the actions of the individual accord with his own notions of his individual good; even this is most unnatural to the undisciplined human being: as may be seen by the long apprenticeship which children serve to it; the very imperfect manner in which it is acquired by persons born to power, whose will is seldom resisted, and by all who have been early and much indulged; and the marked absence of the quality in savages, in soldiers and sailors, and in a somewhat less degree in nearly the whole of the poorer classes in this and many other countries. The prin­ cipal difference, on the point under con­ sideration, between this virtue and others, is that although, like them, it requires a course of teaching, it is more susceptible �NA TURE than most of them of being self-taught. The axiom is trite that self-control is only learnt by experience ; and this endow­ ment is only thus much nearer to being natural than the others we have spoken of, inasmuch as personal experience, without external inculcation, has a certain tendency to engender it. Nature does not of herself bestow this, any more than other virtues; but nature often ad­ ministers the rewards and punishments which cultivate it, and which in other cases have to be created artificially for the express purpose. Veracity might seem, of all virtues, to have the most plausible claim to being natural, since, in the absence, of motives to the contrary, speech usually conforms to, or at least does not intentionally deviate from, fact. Accordingly, this is the virtue with which writers like Rousseau delight in decorating savage life, and setting it in advantageous con­ trast with the treachery and trickery of civilisation. Unfortunately this is a mere fancy picture, contradicted by all the realities of savage life. Savages are always liars. They have not the faintest notion of truth as a virtue. They have a notion of not betraying to their hurt, as of not hurting in any other way, persons to whom they are bound by some special tie of obligation; their chief, their guest, perhaps, or their friend: these feelings of obligation being the taught morality of the savage state, growing out of its characteristic circum­ stances. But of any point of honour respecting truth for truth’s sake they have not the remotest idea; no more than the whole East and the greater part of Europe ; and in the few countries which are sufficiently improved to have such a point of honour it is confined to a small minority, who alone, under any 27 circumstances of real temptation, prac­ tise it. From the general use of the expression “natural justice,” it must be presumed that justice is a virtue generally thought to be directly implanted by Nature. I believe, however, that the sentiment of justice is entirely of artificial origin; the idea of natural justice not preceding but following that of conventional justice. The farther we look back into the early modes of thinking of the human race, whether we consider ancient times (including those of the Old Testament) or the portions of mankind who are still in no more advanced a condition than that of ancient times, the more com­ pletely do we find men’s notions of justice defined and bounded by the express appointment of law. A man’s just rights meant the rights which the law gave him : a just man was he who never infringed, nor sought to infringe, the legal property or other legal rights of others. The notion of a higher justice, to which laws themselves are amenable, and by which the conscience is bound without a positive prescription of law, is a later extension of the idea, suggested by, and following the analogy of, legal justice, to which it maintains a parallel direction through all the shades and varieties of the sentiment, and from which it borrows nearly the whole of its phraseology. The very words justus and justilia are derived from jus, law. Courts of justice, administration of justice, always mean the tribunals. If it be said that there must be the germs of all these virtues in human nature, otherwise mankind would be incapable of acquiring them, I am ready, with a certain amount of explanation, to admit the fact. But the weeds that dis­ pute the ground with these beneficent �28 NATURE germs are themselves not germs, but rankly luxuriant growths, and would, in all but some one case in a thousand, entirely stifle and destroy the former, were it not so strongly the interest of mankind to cherish the good germs in one another, that they always do so, in as far as their degree of intelligence (in this as in other respects still very imperfect) allows. It is through such fostering, commenced early, and not counteracted by unfavourable influences, that, in some happily circumstanced specimens of the human race, the most elevated sentiments of which humanity is capable become a second nature, stronger than the first, and not so much subduing the original nature as merging it into itself. Even those gifted organisa­ tions which have attained the like excel­ lence by self-culture owe it essentially to the same cause; for what self-culture would be possible without aid from the general sentiment of mankind delivered through books, and from the contempla­ tion of exalted characters, real or ideal ? This artificially created, or at least artifi­ cially perfected, nature of the best and noblest human beings is the only nature which it is ever commendable to follow. It is almost superfluous to say that even this cannot be erected into a standard of conduct, since it is itself the fruit of a training and culture the choice of which, if rational and not accidental, must have been determined by a standard already chosen. This brief survey is amply sufficient to prove that the duty of man is the same in respect to his own nature as in respect to the nature of all other things—namely, not to follow but to amend it. Some people, however, who do not attempt to deny that instinct ought to be subordi­ nate to reason, pay deference to Nature so far as to maintain that every natural inclination must have some sphere of action granted to it, some opening left for its gratification. All natural wishes, they say, must have been implanted for a purpose: and this argument is carried so far that we often hear it maintained that every wish which it is supposed to be natural to entertain must have a corresponding provision in the order of the universe for its gratification; inso­ much (for instance) that the desire of an indefinite prolongation of existence is believed by many to be in itself a sufficient proof of the reality of a future life. I conceive that there is a radical absurdity in all these attempts to dis­ cover, in detail, what are the designs of Providence, in order, when they are dis­ covered, to help Providence in bringing them about. Those who argue, from particular indications, that Providence intends this or that, either believe that the Creator can do all that he will or that he cannot. If the first supposition is adopted—if Providence is omnipotent, Providence intends whatever happens, and the fact of its happening proves that Providence intended it. If so, every­ thing which a human being can do is predestined by Providence and is a fulfil­ ment of its designs. But if, as is the more religious theory, Providence intends not all which happens, but only what is good, then indeed man has it in his power, by his voluntary actions, to aid the intentions of Providence; but he can only learn those intentions by con­ sidering what tends to promote the general good, and not what man has a natural inclination to; for, limited as, on this showing, the divine power must be, by inscrutable but insurmountable obstacles, who knows that nun could. �NATURE have been created without desires which never are to be, and even which never ought to be, fulfilled ? The inclinations with which man has been endowed, as well as any of the other contrivances which we observe in Nature, may be the expression not of the divine will, but of the fetters which impede its free action; and to take hints from these for the guidance of our own conduct may be falling into a trap laid by the enemy. The assumption that everything which infinite goodness can desire actually comes to pass in this universe, or at least that we must never say or suppose that it does not, is worthy only of those whose slavish fears make them offer the homage of lies to a Being who, they profess to think, is incapable of being deceived and holds all falsehood in abomination. With regard to this particular hypo­ thesis, that all natural impulses, all propensities sufficiently universal and sufficiently spontaneous to be capable of passing for instincts, must exist for good ends, and ought to be only regulated, not repressed; this is of course true of the majority of them, for the species could not have continued to exist unless most of its inclinations had been directed to things needful or useful for its pre­ servation. But unless the instincts can be reduced to a very small number indeed, it must be allowed that we have also bad instincts which it should be the aim of education not simply to regulate, but to extirpate, or rather (what can be done even to an instinct) to starve by disuse. Those who are inclined to multiply the number of instincts, usually include among them one which they call destructiveness: an instinct to destroy for destruction’s sake. I can conceive no good reason for preserving this, any 29 more than another propensity which, if notan instinct, is very like one—what has been called the instinct of domination ; a delight in exercising despotism, in holding other beings in subjection to our will. The man who takes pleasure in the mere exertion of authority, apart from the purpose for which it is to be employed, is the last person in whose hands one would willingly entrust it. Again, there are persons who are cruel by character, or, as the phrase is, naturally cruel; who have a real pleasure in inflicting, or seeing the infliction of pain. This kind of cruelty is not mere hardheartedness, absence of pity or re­ morse; it is a positive thing; a par­ ticular kind of voluptuous excitement. The East and Southern Europe have afforded, and probably still afford, abundant examples of this hateful pro­ pensity. I suppose it will be granted that this is not one of the natural in­ clinations which it would be wrong to suppress. The only question would be, whether it is not a duty to suppress the man himself along with it. But even if it were true that every one of the elementary impulses of human nature has its good side, and may by a sufficient amount of artificial training be made more useful than hurtful; how little would this amount to, when it must in any case be admitted that without such training all of them, even those which are necessary to our preservation, would fill the world with misery, making human life an exaggerated likeness of the odious scene of violence and tyranny which is exhibited by the rest of the animal kingdom, except in so far as tamed and disciplined by man. There, indeed, those who flatter themselves with the notion of reading the purposes of the Creator in his works ought in �3° NATURE consistency to have seen grounds for inferences from which they have shrunk. If there are any marks at all of special design in creation, one of the things most evidently designed is that a large proportion of all animals should pass their existence in tormenting and de­ vouring other animals. They have been lavishly fitted out with the instru­ ments necessary for that purpose; their strongest instincts impel them to it, and many of them seem to have been con­ structed incapable of supporting them­ selves by any other food. If a tenth part of the pains which have been ex­ pended in finding benevolent adaptations in all nature had been employed in collecting evidence to blacken the character of the Creator, what scope for comment would not have been found in the entire existence of the lower animals, divided, with scarcely an exception, into devourers and devoured, and a prey to a thousand ills from which they are denied the faculties necessary for protecting themselves ! If we are not obliged to believe the animal creation to be the work of a demon, it is because we need not suppose it to have been made by a Being of infinite power. But if imitation of the Creator’s will as revealed in nature were applied as a rule of action in this case, the most atrocious enormities of the worst men would be more than justified by the apparent intention of Providence ■that throughout all animated nature the strong should prey upon the weak. The preceding observations are far from having exhausted the almost infinite variety of modes and occasions in which the idea of conformity to nature is intro­ duced as an element into the ethical appreciation of actions and dispositions. I he same favourable prejudgment follows the word “nature” through the numerous acceptations in which it is employed as a distinctive term for certain parts of the constitution of humanity as contrasted with other parts. We have hitherto con­ fined ourselves to one of these accepta­ tions, in which it stands as a general designation for those parts of our mental and moral constitution which are sup­ posed to be innate, in contradistinction to those which are acquired; as when nature is contrasted with education; or when a savage state, without laws, arts, or knowledge, is called a state of nature; or when the question is asked whether benevolence, or the moral sentiment, is natural or acquired; or whether some persons are poets or orators by nature and others not. But, in another and a more lax sense, any manifestations by human beings are often termed natural when it is merely intended to say that they are not studied or designedly assumed in the particular case; as when a person is said to move or speak with natural grace; or when it is said that a person’s natural manner or character is so and so; meaning that it is so when he does not attempt to control or disguise it. In a still looser acceptation, a person is said to be naturally that which he was until some special cause had acted upon him, or which it is supposed he would be if some such cause were withdrawn. Thus a person is said to be naturally dull, but to have made himself intel­ ligent by study and perseverance; to be naturally cheerful, but soured by misfor­ tune; naturally ambitious, but kept down by want of opportunity. Finally, the word “natural,” applied to feelings or conduct, often seems to mean no more than that they are such as are ordinarily found in human beings ; as when it is said that a person acted, on some particular occasion, as it was �NA TURE natural to do; or that to be affected in a particular way by some sight, or sound, or thought, or incident in life, is perfectly natural. In all these senses of the term, the quality called natural is very often con­ fessedly a worse quality than the one contrasted with it; but whenever its being so is not too obvious to be questioned, the idea seems to be enter­ tained that by describing it as natural something has been said amounting to a considerable presumption in its favour. For my part, I can perceive only one sense in which nature, or naturalness, in a human being, is really a term of praise ; and then the praise is only negative— namely, when used to denote the absence of affectation. Affectation may be de­ fined,the effort to appear what one is not, when the motive or the occasion is not such as either to excuse the attempt or to stamp it with the more odious name of hypocrisy. It must be added that the deception is often attempted to be practised on the deceiver himself as well as on others ; he imitates the external signs of qualities which he would like to have, in hopes to persuade himself that he has them. Whether in the form of deception or of self-deception, or of something hovering between the two, affectation is very rightly accounted a re­ proach, and naturalness, understood as the reverse of affectation, a merit. But a more proper term by which to express this estimable quality would be sincerity : a term which has fallen from its original elevated meaning, and popularly denotes only a subordinate branch of the cardinal virtue it once designated as a whole. Sometimes also, in cases wheretheterm “ affectation ” would be inappropriate, since the conduct or demeanour spoken of is really praiseworthy, people say, in disparagement of the person concerned, that such conduct or demeanour is not natural to him; and make uncompli­ mentary comparisons between him and some other person, to whom it is natural: meaning that what in the one seemed excellent was the effect of temporary excitement, or of a great victory over himself, while in the other it is the result to be expected from the habitu il character. This mode of speech is not open to censure, since nature is here simply a term for the person’s ordinary disposition, and if he is praised it is not for being natural, but for being naturally good. Conformity to nature has no con­ nection whatever with right and wrong. The idea can never be fitly introduced into ethical discussions at all, except, occasionally and partially, into the question of degrees of culpability. To illustrate this point, let us consider the phrase by which the greatest intensity of condemnatory feeling is conveyed in connection with the idea of nature—the word “ unnatural.” That a thing is un­ natural, in any precise meaning which can be attached to the word, is no argument for its being blamable ; since the most criminal actions are to a being like man not more unnatural than most of the virtues. The acquisition of virtue has in all ages been accounted a work of labour and difficulty, while the descensus Averni, on the contrary, is of proverbial facility; and it assuredly requires in most persons a greater conquest over a greater number of natural inclinations to become eminently virtuous than tran­ scendently vicious. But if an action, or an inclination, has been decided on other grounds to be blamable, it may be a circumstance in aggravation that it is unnatural—that is, repugnant to some �32 NA TURE strong feeling usually found in human beings ; since the bad propensity, what­ ever it be, has afforded evidence of being both strong and deeply rooted, by having overcome that repugnance. This pre­ sumption, of course, fails if the individual never had the repugnance; and the argument, therefore, is not fit to be urged unless the feeling which is violated by the act is not only justifiable and reasonable, but is one which it is blamable to be without. The corresponding plea in extenuation of a culpable act because it was natural, or because it was prompted by a natural feeling, never, I think, ought to be admitted. There is hardly a bad action ever perpetrated which is not perfectly natural, and the motives to which are not perfectly natural feelings. In the eye of reason, therefore, this is no excuse, but it is quite “natural” that it should be so in the eyes of the multi­ tude ; because the meaning of the ex­ pression is, that they have a fellow feeling with the offender. When they say that something which they cannot help admitting to be blamable is never­ theless natural, they mean that they can imagine the possibility of their being themselves tempted to commit it. Most people have a considerable amount of in­ dulgence towards all acts of which they feel a possible source within themselves, reserving their rigour for those which, though perhaps really less bad, they can­ not in any way understand how it is possible to commit. If an action con­ vinces them (which it often does on very inadequate grounds) that the person who does it must be a being totally unlike themselves, they are seldom particular in examining the precise degree of blame due to it, or even if blame is properly due to it at all. They measure the degree of guilt by the strength of their antipathy; and hence differences of opinion, and even differences of taste, have been objects of as intense moral abhorrence as the most atrocious crimes. It will be useful to sum up in a few words the leading conclusions of this Essay. The word “ nature ” has two principal meanings : it either denotes the entire system of things, with the aggregate of all their properties, or it denotes things as they would be, apart from human intervention. In the first of these senses, the doctrine that man ought to follow nature is unmeaning; since man has no power to do anything else than follow nature ; all his actions are done through, and in obedience to, some one or many of nature’s physical or mental laws. In the other sense of the term, the doctrine that man ought to follow nature, or, in other words, ought to make the spontaneous course of things the model of his voluntary actions, is equally irrational and immoral. Irrational, because all human action whatever consists in altering, and all useful action in improving, the spon­ taneous course of nature. Immoral, because the course of natural phenomena being replete with every­ thing which when committed by human beings is most worthy of abhorrence, any one who endeavoured in his actions to imitate the natural course of things would be universally seen and acknow­ ledged to be the wickedest of men. The scheme of Nature, regarded in its whole extent, cannot have had, for its sole or even principal object, the good of human or other sentient beings. What good it brings to them is mostly the result of their own exertions. What­ �NA TURE soever, in nature, gives indication of beneficent design proves this benefi­ cence to be armed only with limited power; and the duty of man is to co­ operate with the beneficent powers, not by imitating, but by perpetually striving 33 to amend, the course of nature—and bringing that part of it over which we can exercise control more nearly into con­ formity with a high standard of justice and goodness. D �UTILITY OF RELIGION It has sometimes been remarked how much has been written, both by friends and enemies, concerning the truth of religion, and how little, at least in the way of discussion or controversy, con­ cerning its usefulness. This, however, might have been expected; for the truth, in matters which so deeply affect us, is our first concernment. If religion, or any particular form of it, is true, its usefulness follows without other proof. If to know authentically in what order of things, under what government of the universe, it is our destiny to live were not useful, it is difficult to imagine what could be considered so. Whether a person is in a pleasant or in an un­ pleasant place, a palace or a prison, it cannot be otherwise than useful to him to know where he is. So long, therefore, as men accepted the teachings of their religion as positive facts, no more a matter of doubt than their own existence or the existence of the objects around them, to ask the use of believing it could not possibly occur to them. The utility of religion did not need to be asserted until the arguments for its truth had in a great measure ceased to con­ vince. People must either have ceased to believe, or have ceased to rely on the belief of others, before they could take that inferior ground of defence without a consciousness of lowering what they were endeavouring to raise. An argument for the utility of religion is an appeal to unbelievers, to induce them to prac­ tise a well-meant hypocrisy; or to semi­ believers, to make them avert their eyes from what might possibly shake their unstable belief; or finally to persons in general, to abstain from expressing any doubts they may feel, since a fabric of immense importance to mankind is so insecure at its foundations that men must hold their breath in its neighbour­ hood for fear of blowing it down. In the present period of history, how­ ever, we seem to have arrived at a time when, among the arguments for and against religion, those which relate to its usefulness assume an important place. We are in an age of weak beliefs, and in which such belief as men have is much more determined by their wish to be­ lieve than by any mental appreciation of evidence. The wish to believe does not arise only from selfish, but often from the most disinterested, feelings; and, though it cannot produce the unwaver­ ing and perfect reliance which once existed, it fences round all that remains of the impressions of early education; it often causes direct misgivings to fade away by disuse; and, above all, it induces people to continue laying out their lives, according to doctrines which have lost part of their hold on the mind, and to maintain towards the world the same, or a rather more demonstrative, attitude �UTILITY OF RELIGION of belief than they thought it necessary to exhibit when their personal conviction was more complete. If religious belief be indeed so neces­ sary to mankind as we are continually assured that it is, there is great reason to lament that the intellectual grounds of it should require to be backed by moral bribery or subornation of the understanding. Such a state of things is most uncomfortable, even for those who may, without actual insincerity, describe themselves as believers; and still worse as regards those who, having consciously ceased to find the evidences of religion convincing, are withheld from saying so lest they should aid in doing an irreparable injury to mankind. It is a most painful position, to a conscien­ tious and cultivated mind, to be drawn in contrary directions by the two noblest of all objects of pursuit—truth and the general good. Such a conflict must inevitably produce a growing indiffer­ ence to one or other of these objects, most probably to both. Many who could render giant’s service both to truth and to mankind, if they believed that they could serve the one without loss to the other, are either totally para­ lysed, or led to confine their exertions to matters of minor detail, by the apprehen­ sion that any real freedom of speculation, or any considerable strengthening or enlargement of the thinking faculties of mankind at large, might, by making them unbelievers, be the surest way to render them vicious and miserable. Many, again, having observed in others or experienced in themselves elevated feelings which they imagine incapable of emanating from any other source than religion, have an honest aversion to any­ thing tending, as they think, to dry up the fountain of such feelings. They, 35 therefore, either dislike and disparage all philosophy, or addict themselves with intolerant zeal to those forms of it in which intuition usurps the place of evidence, and internal feeling is made the test of objective truth. The whole of the prevalent metaphysics of the present century is one tissue of suborned evidence in favour of religion; often of Deism only, but in any case involving a misapplication of noble impulses and speculative capacities, among the most deplorable of those wretched wastes of human faculties which make us wonder that enough is left to keep mankind progressive, at however slow a pace. It is time to consider, more impartially and therefore more deliberately than is usually done, whether all this training to prop up beliefs which require so great an expense of intellectual toil and in­ genuity to keep them standing, yields any sufficient return in human well­ being ; and whether that end would not be better served by a frank recognition that certain subjects are inaccessible to our faculties, and by the application of the same mental powers to the strength­ ening and enlargement of those other sources of virtue and happiness which stand in no need of the support or sanction of supernatural beliefs and in­ ducements. Neither, on the other hand, can the difficulties of the question be so promptly disposed of as sceptical philosophers are sometimes inclined to believe. It is not enough to aver, in general terms, that there never can be any conflict between truth and utility; that, if religion be false, nothing but good can be the conse­ quence of rejecting it. For, though the knowledge of every positive truth is an useful acquisition, this doctrine cannot without reservation be applied to negative �UTILITY OF RELIGION truth. When the only truth ascertain­ able is that nothing can be known, we do not, by this knowledge, gain any new fact by which to guide ourselves; we are, at best, only disabused of our trust in some former guide-mark, which, though itself fallacious, may have pointed in the same direction with the best indi­ cations we have, and if it happens to be more conspicuous and legible, may have kept us right when they might have been overlooked. It is, in short, perfectly conceivable that religion may be morally useful without being intellectually sus­ tainable ; and it would be a proof of great prejudice in any unbeliever to deny that there have been ages, and that there are still both nations and individuals, with regard to whom this is actually the case. Whether it is the case generally, and with reference to the future, it is the object of this paper to examine. We propose to inquire whether the belief in religion, considered as a mere persuasion, apart from the question of its truth, is really indispensable to the temporal wel­ fare of mankind; whether the usefulness of the belief is intrinsic and universal, or local, temporary, and, in some sense, accidental; and whether the benefits which it yields might not be obtained otherwise, without the very large alloy of evil, by which, even in the best form of the belief, those benefits are qualified. With the arguments on one side of the question we are all familiar : religious writers have not neglected to celebrate to the utmost the advantages both of religion in general and of their own religious faith in particular. But those who have held the contrary opinion have generally contented themselves with in­ sisting on the more obvious and flagrant of the positive evils which have been en­ gendered by past and present forms of I religious belief. And, in truth, mankind have been so unremittingly occupied in doing evil to one another in the name of religion, from the sacrifice of Iphigenia to the Dragonnades of Louis XIV. (not to descend lower), that for any immediate purpose there was little need to seek arguments further off. These odious consequences, however, do not belong to religion in itself, but to particular forms of it, and afford no argument against the usefulness of any religions except those by which such enormities are encouraged. Moreover, the worst of these evils are already in a great measure extirpated from the more improved forms of religion; and as mankind advance in ideas and in feelings, this process of extirpation continually goes on: the immoral or otherwise mischievous con­ sequences which have been drawn from religion are, one by one, abandoned, and, after having been long fought for as of its very essence, are discovered to be easily separable from it. These mis­ chiefs, indeed, after they are past, though no longer arguments against religion, remain valid as large abatements from its beneficial influence, by showing that some of the greatest improvements ever made in the moral sentiments of man­ kind have taken place without it and in spite of it, and that what we are taught to regard as the chief of all improving in­ fluences has in practice fallen so far short of such a character that one of the hardest burdens laid upon the other good influences of human nature has been that of improving religion itself. The improvement, however, has taken place; it is still proceeding, and for the sake of fairness it should be assumed to be com­ plete. We ought to suppose religion to have accepted the best human morality which reason and goodness can work out, �UTILITY OF RELIGION 37 The first question is interesting to everybody; the latter only to the best; but to them it is, if there be any differ­ ence, the more important of the two. We shall begin with the former, as being that which best admits of being easily brought to a precise issue. To speak first, then, of religious belief as an instrument of social good. We must commence by drawing a distinction most commonly overlooked. It is usual to credit religion as such with the whole of the power inherent in any system of moral duties inculcated by education and enforced by opinion. Undoubtedly mankind would be in a deplorable state if no principles or precepts of justice, veracity, beneficence, were taught publicly or privately, and if these virtues were not encouraged, and the opposite vices repressed, by the praise and blame, the favourable and unfavourable, senti­ ments of mankind. And since nearly everything of this sort which does take place takes place in the name of religion ; since almost all who are taught any morality whatever have it taught to them as religion, and inculcated on them through life principally in that character; the effect which the teaching produces as teaching, it is supposed to produce as religious teaching, and religion receives the credit of all the influence in human affairs which belongs to any generally accepted system of rules for the guidance and government of human life. Few persons have sufficiently con­ sidered how great an influence this is ; what vast efficacy belongs naturally to 1 Analysis of the Influence ofNatural Religion any doctrine received with tolerable on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind. By unanimity as true, and impressed on the Philip Beauchamp. See Autobiography, pp. 69- mind from the earliest childhood as duty. 71. This work, I believe, is really by George A little reflection will, I think, lead us to Grote, the Historian of Greece, and friend and the conclusion that it is this which is the fellow-student of Mill. He read and analysed great moral power in human affairs, and it in the MS. so early as 1822.—II.T. from philosophical, Christian, or any other elements. When it has thus freed itself from the pernicious consequences which result from its identification with any bad moral doctrine, the ground is clear for considering whether its useful properties are exclusively inherent in it, or their benefits can be obtained without it. This essential portion of the inquiry into the temporal usefulness of religion is the subject of the present Essay. It is a part which has been little treated of by sceptical writers. The only direct discussion of it with which I am acquainted is in a short treatise, under­ stood to have been partly compiled from manuscripts of Mr. Bentham,1 and abounding in just and profound views; but which, as it appears to me, presses many parts of the argument too hard. This treatise, and the incidental remarks scattered through the writings of M. Comte, are the only sources known to me from which anything very pertinent to the subject can be made available for the sceptical side of the argument. I shall use both of them freely in the sequel of the present discourse. The inquiry divides itself into two parts, corresponding to the double aspect of the subject; its social, and its in­ dividual aspect. What does religion do for society, and what for the individual ? What amount of benefit to social interests, in the ordinary sense of the phrase, arises from religious belief? And what influence has it in improving and ennobling individual human nature ? �UTILITY OF RELIGION that religion only seems so powerful be­ cause this mighty power has been under its command. Consider first the enormous influence of authority on the human mind. I am now speaking of involuntary influence; effect on men’s convictions, on their per­ suasion, on their involuntary sentiments. Authority is the evidence on which the mass of mankind believe everything which they are said to know, except facts of which their own senses have taken cognisance. It is the evidence on which even the wisest receive all those truths of science, or facts in history or in life, of which they have not personally examined the proofs. Over the immense majority of human beings the general concurrence of mankind, in any matter of opinion, is all-powerful. Whatever is thus certified to them they believe with a fulness of assurance which they do not accord even to the evidence of their senses when the general opinion of mankind stands in opposition to it. When, therefore, any rule of life and duty, whether grounded or not on religion, has conspicuously re­ ceived the general assent, it obtains a hold on the belief of every individual, stronger than it would have even if he had arrived at it by the inherent force of his own understanding. If Novalis could say, not without a real meaning, 4‘ My belief has gained infinitely to me from the moment when one other human being has begun to believe the same,” how much more when it is not one other person, but all the human beings whom one knows of. Some may urge it as an objection, that no scheme of morality has this universal assent, and that none, therefore, can be indebted to this source for whatever power it possesses over the mind. So far as relates to the present age, the assertion is true, and strengthens the argument which it might at first seem to controvert; for exactly in proportion as the received systems of belief have been contested, and it has become known that they have many dissentients, their hold on the general belief has been loosened, and their practical influence on conduct has declined; and since this has happened to them, notwithstanding the religious sanction which attached to them, there can be no stronger evidence that they were powerful not as religion, but as beliefs generally accepted by man­ kind. To find people who believe their religion as a person believes that fire will burn his hand when thrust into it, we must seek them in those Oriental countries where Europeans do not yet predominate, or in the European world when it was still universally Catholic. Men often disobeyed their religion in those times, because their human passions and appetites were too strong for it, or because the religion itself afforded means of indulgence to breaches of its obligations; but, though they dis­ obeyed, they, for the most part, did not doubt. There was in those days an absolute and unquestioning complete­ ness of belief, never since general in Europe. Such being the empire exercised over mankind by simple authority, the mere belief and testimony of their fellow­ creatures; consider next how tremendous is the power of education; how unspeak­ able is the effect of bringing people up from infancy in a belief, and in habits founded on it. Consider also that in all countries, and from the earliest ages down to the present, not merely those who are called, in a restricted sense of the term, the educated, but all, or nearly all, who have been brought up by parents, or by any one interested in them, have �UTILITY OF RELIGION been taught from their earliest years some kind of religious belief, and some precepts as the commands of the heavenly powers to them and to man­ kind. And as it cannot be imagined that the commands of God are to young children anything more than the com­ mands of their parents, it is reasonable to think that any system of social duty which mankind might adopt, even though divorced from religion, would have the same advantage of being inculcated from childhood, and would have it hereafter much more perfectly than any doctrine has at present, society being far more disposed than formerly to take pains for the moral tuition of those numerous classes whose education it has hitherto left very much to chance. Now, it is especially characteristic of the impres­ sions of early education that they possess what it.is so much more difficult for later convictions to obtain—command over the feelings. We see daily how powerful a hold these first impressions retain over the feelings even of those who have given up the opinions which they were early taught. While, on the other hand, it is only persons of a much higher degree of natural sensibility and intellect combined than it is at all common to meet with, whose feelings entwine them­ selves with anything like the same force round opinions which they have adopted from their own investigations later in life; and even when they do, we may say with truth that it is because the strong sense of moral duty, the sincerity, courage, and self-devotion which enabled them to do so, were themselves the fruits of early impressions. The power of education is almost boundless : there is not one natural in­ clination which it is not strong enough to coerce, and, if needful, to destroy by 39 disuse. In the greatest recorded victory which education has ever achieved over a whole host of natural inclinations in an entire people—the maintenance through centuries of the institutions of Lycurgus—it was very little, if even at all, indebted to religion : for the Gods of the Spartans were the same as those of other Greek States; and though, no doubt, every State of Greece believed that its particular polity had at its first establishment some sort of divine sanc­ tion (mostly that of the Delphian oracle), there was seldom any difficulty in obtain­ ing the same or an equally powerful sanction for a change. It was not religion which formed the strength of the Spartan institutions : the root of the system was devotion to Sparta, to the ideal of the country or State; which, transformed into ideal devotion to a greater country, the world, would be equal to that and far nobler achieve­ ments. Among the Greeks generally social morality was extremely indepen­ dent of religion. The inverse relation was rather that which existed between them; the worship of the gods was inculcated chiefly as a social duty, inas­ much as, if they were neglected or insulted, it was believed that their dis­ pleasure would fall not more upon the offending individual than upon the State or community which bred and tolerated him. Such moral teaching as existed in Greece had very little to do with religion. The gods were not supposed to concern themselves much with men’s conduct to one another, except when men had con­ trived to make the gods themselves an interested party, by placing an assertion or an engagement under the sanction of a solemn appeal to them, by oath or vow. I grant that the sophists and philoso­ phers, and even popular orators, did �40 UTILITY OF RELIGION their best to press religion into the service of their special objects, and to make it be thought that the sentiments of whatever kind, which they were engaged in inculcating, were particularly acceptable to the gods; but this never seems the primary consideration in any case save those of direct offence to the dignity of the gods themselves. For the enforcement of human moralities secular inducements were almost exclu­ sively relied on. The case of Greece is, I believe, the only one in which any teaching, other than religious, has had the unspeakable advantage of forming the basis of education; and though much may be said against the quality of some part of the teaching, very little can be said against its effectiveness. The most memorable example of the power of education over conduct is afforded (as I have just remarked) by this excep­ tional case; constituting a strong pre­ sumption that in .other cases early religious teaching has owed its power over mankind rather to its being early than to its being religious. We have now considered two powers, that of authority and that of early educa­ tion, which operate through men’s in­ voluntary beliefs, feelings, and desires, and which religion has hitherto held as its almost exclusive appanage. Let us now consider a third power which operates directly on their actions, whether their involuntary sentiments are carried with it or not. This is the power of public opinion; of the praise and blame, the favour and disfavour, of their fellow­ creatures; and is a source of strength inherent in any system of moral belief which is generally adopted, whether con­ nected with religion or not. Men are so much accustomed to give to the motives that decide their actions more flattering names than justly belong to them that they are generally quite un­ conscious how much those parts of their conduct which they most pride them­ selves on (as well as some which they are ashamed of) are determined by the motive of public opinion. Of course, public opinion for the most part enjoins the same things which are enjoined by the received social morality; that morality being, in truth, the summary of the conduct which each one of the multitude, whether he himself observes it with any strictness or not, desires that others should observe towards him. People are therefore easily able to flatter themselves that they are acting from the motive of conscience when they are doing in obedience to the inferior motive things which their conscience approves. We continually see how great is the power of opinion in opposition to con­ science; how men “follow a multitude to do evil ”; how often opinion induces them to do what their conscience dis­ approves, and still oftener prevents them from doing what it commands. But when the motive of public opinion acts in the same direction with conscience, which, since it has usually itself made the conscience in the first instance, it for the most part naturally does; it is then, of all motives which operate on the bulk of mankind, the most overpowering. The names of all the strongest passions (except the merely animal ones) mani­ fested by human nature are each of them a name for some one part only of the motive derived from what I here call public opinion. The love of glory ; the love of praise; the love of admiration ; the love of respect and deference ; even the love of sympathy, are portions of its attractive power. Vanity is a vituperative name for its attractive influence generally, �UTILITY OF RELIGION when considered excessive in degree. The fear of shame, the dread of ill repute or of being disliked or hated, are the direct and simple forms of its deterring power. But the deterring force of the unfavourable sentiments of mankind does not consist solely in the painfulness of knowing oneself to be the object of those sentiments; it includes all the penalties which they can inflict: ex­ clusion from social intercourse and from the innumerable good offices which human beings require from one another; the forfeiture of all that is called success in life; often the great diminution or total loss of means of subsistence; positive ill offices of various kinds, sufficient to render life miserable, and reaching in some states of society as far as actual persecution to death. And again the attractive or impelling influ­ ence of public opinion includes the whole range of what is commonly meant by ambition ; for, except in times of law­ less military violence, the objects of social ambition can be attained only by means of the good opinion and favour­ able disposition of our fellow-creatures; now, in nine cases out of ten, would those objects be even desired were it not for the power they confer over the senti­ ments of mankind. Even the pleasure of self-approbation, in the great majority, is mainly dependent on the opinion of others. Such is the involuntary influence of authority on ordinary minds that per­ sons must be of a better than ordinary mould to be capable of a full assurance that they are in the right, when the world —that is, when their world—thinks them wrong ; nor is there, to most men, any proof so demonstrative of their own virtue or talent as that people in general seem to believe in it. Through all depart­ ments of human affairs regard for the 4’ sentiments of our fellow-creatures is in one shape or other, in nearly all characters, the pervading motive. And we ought to note that this motive is naturally strongest in the most sensitive natures, which are the most promising material for the formation of great virtues. How far its power reaches is known by too familiar experience to require either proof or illustration here. When once the means of living have been obtained, the far greater part of the remaining labour and effort which takes place on the earth has for its object to acquire the respect or the favourable regard of mankind; to be looked up to, or at all events not to be looked down upon, by them. The industrial and commercial activity which advances civilisation, the frivolity, prodigality, and selfish thirst of aggrandisement which retard it, flow equally from that source. While, as an instance of the power exercised by the terrors derived from public opinion, we know how many murders have been committed merely to remove a witness who knew and was likely to disclose some secret that would bring disgrace upon his murderer. Any one who fairly and impartially considers the subject will see reason to believe that those great effects on human conduct which are commonly ascribed to motives derived directly from religion have mostly for their proximate cause the influence of human opinion. Religion has been powerful not by its intrinsic force, but because it has wielded that additional and more mighty power. The effect of religion has been immense in giving a direction to public opinion ; which has, in many most important respects, been wholly determined by it. But without the sanctions superadded by public opinion its own proper sanctions �42 UTILITY OF RELIGION have never, save in exceptional charac­ ters, or in peculiar moods of mind, exercised a very potent influence, after the times had gone by, in which divine agency was supposed habitually to employ temporal rewards and punish­ ments. When a man firmly believed that, if he violated the sacredness of a particular sanctuary, he would be struck dead on the spot, or smitten suddenly with a mortal disease, he doubtless took care not to incur the penalty ; but when any one had had the courage to defy the danger, and escaped with impunity, the spell was broken. If ever any people were taught that they were under a divine government, and that unfaithful­ ness to their religion and law would be visited from above with temporal chastisements, the Jews were so. Yet their history was a mere succession of lapses into Paganism. Their prophets and historians, who held fast to the ancient beliefs (though they gave them so liberal an interpretation as to think it a sufficient manifestation of God’s dis­ pleasure towards a king if any evil happened to his great grandson), never ceased to complain that their countrymen turned a deaf ear to their vaticinations ; and hence, with the faith they held in a divine government operating by temporal penalties, they could not fail to anticipate (as Mirabeau’s father, without such prompting, was able to do on the eve of the French Revolution) laculbutegenerate; an expectation which, luckily for the credit of their, prophetic powers, was fulfilled; unlike that of the Apostle John, who, in the only intelligible prophecy in the Revelations, foretold to the city of the seven hills a fate like that of Nineveh and Babylon; which prediction remains to this hour unaccomplished. Unques­ tionably the conviction which experience in time forced on all but the very ignorant, that divine punishments were not to be confidently expected in a tem­ poral form, contributed much to the downfall of the old religions, and the general adoption of one which, without absolutely excluding providential inter­ ferences in this life for the punishment of guilt or the reward of merit, removed the principal scene of divine retribution to a world after death. But rewards and punishments postponed to that distance of time, and never seen by the eye, are not calculated, even when infinite and eternal, to have, on ordinary minds, a very powerful effect in opposition to strong temptation. Their remoteness alone is a prodigious deduction from their efficacy on such minds as those which most require the restraint of punishment. A still greater abatement is their uncertainty, which belongs to them from the very nature of the case : for rewards and punishments adminis­ tered after death must be awarded not definitely to particular actions, but on a general survey of the person’s whole life, and he easily persuades himself that, whatever may have been his peccadilloes, there will be a balance in his favour at the last. All positive religions aid this self-delusion. Bad religions teach that divine vengeance may be bought off by offerings or personal abasement; the better religions, not to drive sinners to despair, dwell so much on the divine mercy that hardly any one is compelled to think himself irrevocably condemned. The sole quality in these punishments which might seem calculated to make them efficacious, their overpowering mag­ nitude, is itself a reason why nobody (except a hypochondriac here and there) ever really believes that he is in any very serious danger of incurring them. Even �UTILITY OF RELIGION the worst malefactor is hardly able to think that any crime he lias had it in his power to commit, any evil he can have inflicted in this short space of existence, can have deserved torture extending through an eternity. Accordingly, re­ ligious writers and preachers are never tired of complaining how little effect religious motives have on men’s lives and conduct, notwithstanding the tremendous penalties denounced. Mr. Bentham, whom I have already mentioned as one of the few authors who have written anything to the purpose on the efficacy of the religious sanction, adduces several cases to prove that religious obligation, when not enforced by public opinion, produces scarcely any effect on conduct. His first example is that of oaths. The oaths taken in courts of justice, and any others which, from the manifest importance to society of their being kept, public opinion rigidly enforces, are felt as real and binding obligations. But university oaths and custom-house oaths, though in a religious point of view equally obligatory, are in practice utterly disregarded even by men in other respects honourable. The uni­ versity oath to obey the statutes has been for centuries, with universal acquies­ cence, set at nought; and utterly false statements are (or used to be) daily and unblushingly sworn to at the Custom­ house by persons as attentive as other people to all the ordinary obligations of life—the explanation being that veracity in these cases was not enforced by public opinion. The second case which Bentham cites is duelling; a practice now in this country obsolete, but in full vigour in several other Christian coun­ tries ; deemed and admitted to be a sin by almost all who, nevertheless, in obedi­ ence to opinion, and to escape from 43 personal humiliation, are guilty of it. The third case is that of illicit sexual intercourse, which in both sexes stands in the very highest rank of religious sins, yet, not being severely censured by opinion in the male sex, they have in general very little scruple in committing it; while in the case of women, though the religious obligation is not stronger, yet, being backed in real earnest by public opinion, it is commonly effectual. Some objection may doubtless be taken to Bentham’s instances, considered as crucial experiments on the power of the religious sanction; for (it may be said) people do not really believe that in these cases they shall be punished by God, any more than by man. And this is certainly true in the case of those university and other oaths, which are habitually taken without any intention of keeping them. The oath, in these cases, is regarded as a mere formality, destitute of any serious meaning in the sight of the Deity; and the most scrupu­ lous person, even if he does reproach himself for having taken an oath which nobody deems fit to be kept, does not in his conscience tax himself with the guilt of perjury, but only with the profanation of a ceremony. This, therefore, is not a good example of the weakness of the religious motive when divorced from that of human opinion. The point which it illustrates is rather the tendency of the one motive to come and go with the other, so that, where the penalties of public opinion cease, the religious motive ceases also. The same criticism, how­ ever, is not equally applicable to Ben­ tham’s other examples—duelling and sexual irregularities. Those who do these acts—the first by the command of public opinion, the latter with its indul­ gence—really do, in most cases, believe �44 UTILITY OF RELIGION that they are offending God. Doubtless, they do not think that they are offending him in such a degree as very seriously to endanger their salvation. Their reliance on his mercy prevails over their dread of his resentment: affording an exemplifica­ tion of the remark already made, that the unavoidable uncertainty of religious penalties makes them feeble as a deterring motive. They are so, even in the case of acts which human opinion condemns ; much more with those to which it is indulgent. What mankind think venial, it is hardly ever supposed that God looks upon in a serious light; at least by those who feel in themselves any inclination to practise it. I do not for a moment think of deny­ ing that there are states of mind in which the idea of religious punishment acts with the most overwhelming force. In hypochondriacal disease, and in those with whom, from great disappointments or other moral causes, the thoughts and imagination have assumed an habitually melancholy complexion, that topic, falling in with the pre-existing tendency of the mind, supplies images well fitted to drive the unfortunate sufferer even to madness. Often, during a temporary state of depression, these ideas take such a hold of the mind as to give a per­ manent turn to the character ; being the most common case of what, in sectarian phraseology, is called conversion. But if the depressed state ceases after the conversion, as it commonly does, and the convert does not relapse, but per­ severes in his new course of life, the principal difference between it and the old is usually found to be that the man now guides his life by the public opinion of his religious associates, as he before guided it by that of the profane world. At all events, there is one clear proof how little the generality of mankind, either religious or worldly, really dread eternal punishments, when we see how, even at the approach of death, when the remote­ ness which took so much from their effect has been exchanged for the closest proximity, almost all persons who have not been guilty of some enormous crime (and many who have) are quite free from uneasiness as to their prospects in another world, and never for a moment seem to think themselves in any real danger of eternal punishment. With regard to the cruel deaths and bodily tortures which confessors and martyrs have so often undergone for the sake of religion, I would not depreciate them by attributing any part of this admirable courage and constancy to the influence of human opinion. Human opinion, indeed, has shown itself quite equal to the production of similar firm­ ness in persons not otherwise distin­ guished by moral excellence ; such as the North American Indian at the stake. But if it was not the thought of glory in the eyes of their fellow-religionists which upheld these heroic sufferers in their agony, as little do I believe that it was, generally speaking, that of the pleasures of heaven or the pains of hell. Their impulse was a divine enthusiasm—a self­ forgetting devotion to an idea : a state of exalted feeling, by no means peculiar to religion, but which it is the privilege of every great cause to inspire; a phenomenon belonging to the critical moments of existence, not to the ordi­ nary play of human motives, and from which nothing can be inferred as to the efficacy of the ideas which it sprung from, whether religious or any other, in overcoming ordinary temptations and regulating the course of daily life. We may now have done with this �UTILITY OF RELIGION branch of the subject, which is, after all, the vulgarest part of it. The value of religion as a supplement to human laws, a more cunning sort of police, an auxiliary to the thief-catcher and the hangman, is not that part of its claims which the more high-minded of its votaries are fondest of insisting on ; and they would probably be as ready as any one to admit that, if the nobler offices of religion in the soul could be dispensed with, a substitute might be found for so coarse and selfish a social instrument as the fear of hell. In their view of the matter, the best of mankind absolutely require religion for the perfection of their own character, even though the coercion of the worst might possibly be accom­ plished without its aid. Even in the social point of view, how­ ever, under its most elevated aspect, these nobler spirits generally assert the necessity of religion, as a teacher, if not as an enforcer, of social morality. They say that religion alone can teach us what morality is; that all the high morality ever recognised by mankind was learnt from religion; that the greatest unin­ spired philosophers in their sublimest flights stopped far short of the Christian morality, and, whatever inferior morality they may have attained to (by the assist­ ance, as many think, of dim traditions derived from the Hebrew books, or from a primaeval revelation), they never could induce the common mass of their fellow­ citizens to accept it from them. That only when a morality is understood to come from the gods do men in general adopt it, rally round it, and lend their human sanctions for its enforcement. That, granting the sufficiency of human motives to make the rule obeyed, were it not for the religious idea we should not have had the rule itself. 45 There is truth in much of this, con­ sidered as matter of history. Ancient peoples have generally, if not always, received their morals, their laws, their intellectual beliefs, and even their prac­ tical arts of life, all in short which tended either to guide or to discipline them, as revelations from the superior powers, and in any other way could not easily have been induced to accept them. This was partly the effect of their hopes and fears from those powers, which were of much greater and more universal potency in early times, when the agency of the gods was seen in the daily events of life, experience not having yet disclosed the fixed laws according to which physical phenomena succeed one another. In­ dependently, too, of personal hopes and fears, the involuntary deference felt by these rude minds for power superior to their own, and the tendency to suppose that beings of superhuman power must also be of superhuman knowledge and wisdom, made them disinterestedly desire to conform their conduct to the pre­ sumed preferences of these powerful beings, and to adopt no new practice without their authorisation either spon­ taneously given, or solicited and ob­ tained. But because, when men were still savages, they would not have received either moral or scientific truths unless they had supposed them to be supernaturally imparted, does it follow that they would now give up moral truths any­ more than scientific because they be­ lieved them to have no higher origin than wise and noble human hearts ? Are not moral truths strong enough in their own evidence, at all events to retain the belief of mankind when once they have acquired it ? I grant that some of the precepts of Christ as exhibited in the �46 UTILITY OF RELIGION Gospels—rising far above the Paulism which is the foundation of ordinary Christianity—carry some kinds of moral goodness to a greater height than had ever been attained before, though much even of what is supposed to be peculiar to them is equalled in the meditations of Marcus Antoninus, which we have no ground for believing to have been in any way indebted to Christianity. But this benefit, whatever it amounts to, has been gained. Mankind have entered into the possession of it. It has become the property of humanity, and cannot now be lost by anything short of a return to primaeval barbarism. The “ new com­ mandment to love one another”/ the recognition that the greatest are those who serve, not who are served by, others; the reverence for the weak and humble, which is the foundation of chivalry, they and not the strong being pointed out as having the first place in God’s regard, and the first claim on their fellow-men; the lesson of the parable of the Good Samaritan; that of “he that is without sin let him throw the first stone”; the precept of doing as we would be done by; and such other noble moralities as are to be found, mixed with some poetical exaggerations, and some maxims of which it is difficult to ascertain the precise object; in the authentic sayings of Jesus of Nazareth : these are surely in sufficient harmony with the intellect and feelings of every good man or woman to be in no danger of being let go, after having been once acknowledged as the creed of the best 1 Not, however, a new commandment. In justice to the great Hebrew lawgiver, it should always be remembered that the precept, to love thy neighbour as thyself, already existed in the Pentateuch ; and very surprising it is to find it there. (See John xiii. 34, Levit. xix. 18.) and foremost portion of our species. There will be, as there have been, short­ comings enough for a long time to come in acting on them ; but that they should be forgotten, or cease to be operative on the human conscience, while human beings remain cultivated or civilised, may be pronounced, once for all, im­ possible. On the other hand, there is a very real evil consequent on ascribing a super­ natural origin to the received maxims of morality. That origin consecrates the whole of them, and protects them from being discussed or criticised. So that if, among the moral doctrines received as a part of religion, there be any which are imperfect—which were either erroneous from the first, or not properly limited and guarded in the expression, or which, un­ exceptionable once, are no longer suited to the changes that have taken place in human relations (and it is my firm belief that in so-called Christian morality instances of all these kinds are to be found), these doctrines are considered equally binding on the conscience with the noblest, most permanent, and most universal precepts of Christ. Wherever morality is supposed to be of supernatural origin, morality is stereotyped; as law is, for the same reason, among believers in the Koran. Belief, then, in the supernatural, great as are the services which it rendered in the early stages of human development, cannot be considered to be any longer required, either for enabling us to know what is right and wrong, in social morality, or for supplying us with motives to do right and to abstain from wrong. Such belief, therefore, is not necessary for social purposes, at least in the coarse way in which these can be considered apart from the character of the individual �UTILITY OF RELIGION human being. That more elevated branch of the subject now remains to be considered. If supernatural beliefs are indeed necessary to the perfection of the individual character, they are necessary also to the highest excellence in social conduct: necessary in a far higher sense than that vulgar one which constitutes it the great support of morality in common eyes. Let us, then, consider what it is in human nature which causes it to require a religion; what wants of the human mind religion supplies, and what qualities it developes. When we have understood this, we shall be better able to judge how far these wants can be otherwise supplied, and those qualities, or qualities equivalent to them, unfolded and brought to perfection by other means. The old saying, Primus in orbe Deos fecit timor, I hold to be untrue, or to con­ tain, at most, only a small amount of truth. Belief in gods had, I conceive, even in the rudest minds, a more honourable origin. Its universality has been very rationally explained from the spon­ taneous tendency of the mind to attribute life and volition, similar to what it feels in itself, to all natural objects and phenomena which appear to be self­ moving. This was a plausible fancy, and no better theory could be formed at first. It was naturally persisted in so long as the motions and operations of these objects seemed to be arbitrary, and in­ capable of being accounted for but by the free choice of the Power itself. At first, no doubt, the objects themselves were supposed to be alive; and this belief still subsists among African fetish­ worshippers. But as it must soon have appeared absurd that things which could do so much more than man, could not or would not do what man does, as for 47 example to speak, the transition was made to supposing that the object pre­ sent to the senses was inanimate, but was the creature and instrument of an invisible being with a form and organs similar to the human. These beings having first been be­ lieved in, fear of them necessarily followed ; since they were thought able to inflict at pleasure on human beings great evils, which the sufferers neither knew how to avert nor to foresee, but were left dependent, for their chances of doing either, upon solicitations addressed to the deities themselves. It is true, therefore, that fear had much to do with religion; but belief in the gods evidently preceded, and did not arise from, fear: though the fear, when established, was a strong support to the belief, nothing being conceived to be so great an offence to the divinities as any doubt of their existence. It is unnecessary to prosecute further the natural history of religion, as we have not here to account for its origin in rude minds, but for its persistency in the cultivated. A sufficient explanation of this will, I conceive, be found in the small limits of man’s certain knowledge and the boundlessness of his desire to know. Human existence is girt round with mystery: the narrow region of our experience is a small island in the midst of a boundless sea, which at once awes our feelings and stimulates our imagina­ tion by its vastness and its obscurity. To add to the mystery, the domain of our earthly existence is not only an island in infinite space, but also in infinite time. The past and the future are alike shrouded from us : we neither know the origin of anything which is nor its final destination. If we feel deeply interested in knowing that there are �4S UTILITY OF RELIGION myriads of worlds at an immeasurable, and to our faculties inconceivable, dis­ tance from us in space; if we are eager to discover what little we can about these worlds, and when we cannot know what they are, can never satiate our­ selves with speculating on what they may be; is it not a matter of far deeper inte­ rest to us to learn, or even to conjecture, from whence came this nearer world which we inhabit—what cause or agency made it what it is, and on what powers depends its future fate ? Who would not desire this more ardently than any other conceivable knowledge, so long as there appeared the slightest hope of attaining it ? What would not one give for any credible tidings from that mysterious region, any glimpse into it which might enable us to see the smallest light through its darkness, especially any theory of it which we could believe, and which represented it as tenanted by a benignant and not a hostile influence? But since we are able to penetrate into that region with the imagination only, assisted by specious but inconclusive analogies derived from human agency and design, imagination is free to fill up the vacancy with the imagery most con­ genial to itself; sublime and elevating if it be a lofty imagination, low and mean if it be a grovelling one. Religion and poetry address them­ selves, at least in one of their aspects, to the same part of the human constitution: they both supply the same want, that of ideal conceptions grander and more beautiful than we see realised in the prose of human life. Religion, as dis­ tinguished from poetry, is the product of the craving to know whether these imaginative conceptions have realities answering to them in some other world than ours. The mind, in this stage, eagerly catches at any rumours respect­ ing other worlds, especially when de­ livered by persons whom it deems wiser than itself. To the poetry of the super­ natural comes to be thus added a positive belief and expectation, which unpoetical minds can share with the poetical. Belief in a god or gods, and in a life after death, becomes the canvas which every mind, according to its capacity, covers with such ideal pictures as it can either invent or copy. In that other life each hopes to find the good which he has failed to find on earth, or the better which is suggested to him by the good which on earth he has partially seen and known. More especially, this belief supplies the finer minds with material for conceptions of beings more awful than they can have known on earth, and more excellent than they probably have known. So long as human life is insufficient to satisfy human aspira­ tions, so long there will be a craving for higher things, which finds its most obvious satisfaction in religion. So long as earthly life is full of sufferings, so long there will be need of consolations, which the hope of heaven affords to the selfish, the love of God to the tender and grateful. The value, therefore, of religion to the individual, both in the past and present, as a source of personal satisfaction and of elevated feelings, is not to be dis­ puted. But it has still to be considered whether, in order to obtain this good, it is necessary to travel beyond the boun­ daries of the world which we inhabit; or whether the idealisation of our earthly life, the cultivation of a high conception of what it may be made, is not capable of supplying a poetry, and, in the best sense of the word, a religion, equally fitted to exalt the feelings, and (with the �UTILITY OF RELIGION same aid from education) still better calculated to ennoble the conduct, than any belief respecting the unseen powers. At the bare suggestion of such a possi­ bility, many will exclaim that the short duration, the smallness and insignificance of life, if there is no prolongation of it beyond what we see, makes it impossible that great and elevated feelings can con­ nect themselves with anything laid out on so small a scale : that such a concep­ tion of life can match with nothing higher than Epicurean feelings, and the Epicurean doctrine, “ Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” Unquestionably, within certain limits, the maxim of the Epicureans is sound, and applicable to much higher things than eating and drinking. To make the most of the present for all good purposes, those of enjoyment among the rest; to keep under control those mental dispositions which lead to undue sacri­ fice of present good for a future which may never arrive; to cultivate the habit of deriving pleasure from things within our reach, rather than from the too eager pursuit of objects at a distance; to think all time wasted which is not spent either in personal pleasure or in doing things useful to oneself or others: these are wise maxims, and the “carpe diem” doc­ trine, carried thus far, is a rational and legitimate corollary from the shortness of life. But that because life is short we should care for nothing beyond it, is not a legitimate conclusion; and the supposi­ tion, that human beings in general are not capable of feeling deep, and even the deepest, interest in things which they will never live to see, is a view of human nature as false as it is abject. Let it be remembered that, if individual life is short, the life of the human species is not short; its indefinite duration is 49 practically equivalent to endlessness; and, being combined with indefinite capability of improvement, it offers to the imagina­ tion and sympathies a large enough object to satisfy any reasonable demand for grandeur of aspiration. If such an object appears small to a mind accus­ tomed to dream of infinite and eternal beatitudes, it will expand into far other dimensions when those baseless fancies shall have receded into the past. Nor let it be thought that only the more eminent of our species, in mind and heart, are capable of identifying their feelings with the entire life of the human race. This noble capability implies, in­ deed, a certain cultivation, but not superior to that which might be, and certainly will be if human improvement continues, the lot of all. Objects far smaller than this, and equally confined within the limits of the earth (though not within those of a single human life), have been found sufficient to inspire large masses and long successions of mankind with an enthusiasm capable of ruling the conduct and colouring the whole life. Rome was to the entire Roman people for many generations as much a religion as Jehovah was to the Jews; nay, much more, for they never fell off from their worship as the Jews did from theirs. And the Romans, otherwise a selfish people, with no very remarkable faculties of any kind except the purely practical, derived, nevertheless, from this one idea a certain greatness of soul, which manifests itself in all their history where that idea is concerned and nowhere else, and has earned for them the large share of admiration, in other respects not at all deserved, which has been felt for them by most noble-minded persons from that time to this. When we consider how ardent a E �5° UTILITY OF RELIGION sentiment, in favourable circumstances of education, the love of country has become, we cannot judge it impossible that the love of that larger country, the world, may be nursed into similar strength, both as a source of elevated emotion and as a principle of duty. He who needs any other lesson on this sub­ ject than the whole course of ancient history affords, let him read Cicero de Officiis. It cannot be said that the standard of morals laid down in that celebrated treatise is a high standard. To our notions it is on many points un­ duly lax, and admits capitulations of conscience. But on the subject of duty to our country there is no compromise. That any man with the smallest pre­ tensions to virtue could hesitate to sacri­ fice life, reputation, family, everything valuable to him, to the love of country is a supposition which this eminent inter­ preter of Greek and Roman morality cannot entertain for a moment. If, then, persons could be trained, as we see they were, not only to believe in theory that the good of their country was an object to which all others ought to yield, but to feel this practically as the grand duty of life, so also may they be made to feel the same absolute obligation towards the universal good. A morality grounded on large and wise views of the good of the whole, neither sacrificing the in­ dividual to the aggregate nor the aggregate to the individual, but giving to duty on the one hand and to freedom and spontaneity on the other their proper province, would derive its power in the superior natures from sympathy and benevolence and the passion for ideal excellence: in the inferior, from the same feelings cultivated up to the measure of their capacity, with the super­ added force of shame. This exalted morality would not depend for its ascendancy on any hope of reward ; but the reward which might be looked for, and the thought of which would be a consolation in suffering, and a support in moments of weakness, would not be a problematical future existence, but the approbation, in this, of those whom we respect, and ideally of all those, dead or living, whom we admire or venerate. For the thought that our dead parents or friends would have approved our con­ duct is a scarcely less powerful motive than the knowledge that our living ones do approve it; and the idea that Socrates, or Howard, or Washington, or Antoninus, or Christ, would have sympa­ thised with us, or that we are attempting to do our part in the spirit in which they did theirs, has operated on the very best minds, as a strong incentive to act up to their highest feelings and convictions. To call these sentiments by the name morality, exclusively of any other title, is claiming too little for them. They are a real religion; of which, as of other religions, outward good works (the ut­ most meaning usually suggested by the word “morality”) are only a part, and are indeed rather the fruits of the religion than the religion itself. The essence of religion is the strong and earnest direction of the emotions and desires towards an ideal object, recognised as of the highest excellence, and as rightfully paramount over all selfish objects of desire. This condition is fulfilled by the Religion of Humanity in as eminent a degree, and in as high a sense, as by the supernatural religions even in their best manifesta­ tions, and far more so than in any of their others. Much more might be added on this topic; but enough has been said to con­ vince any one, who can distinguish �UTILITY OF RELIGION between the intrinsic capacities of human nature and the forms in which those capacities happen to have been histori­ cally developed, that the sense of unity with mankind, and a deep feeling for the general good, may be cultivated into a sentiment and a principle capable of ful­ filling every important function of religion and itself justly entitled to the name. I will now further maintain that it is not only capable of fulfilling these functions, but would fulfil them better than any form whatever of supernaturalism. It is not only entitled to be called a religion : it is a better religion than any of those which are ordinarily called by that title. For, in the first place, it is dis­ interested. It carries the thoughts and feelings out of self, and fixes them on an unselfish object, loved and pursued as an end for its own sake. The religions which deal in promises and threats regarding a future life do exactly the contrary : they fasten down the thoughts to the person’s own posthumous interests; they tempt him to regard the perfor­ mance of his duties to others mainly as a means to his own personal salvation; and are one of the most serious obstacles to the great purpose of moral culture, the strengthening of the unselfish and weakening of the selfish element in our nature; since they hold out to the imagination selfish good and evil of such tremendous magnitude that it is difficult for any one who fully believes in their reality to have feeling or interest to spare for any other distant and ideal object. It is true, many of the most unselfish of mankind have been believers in super­ naturalism, because their minds have not dwelt on the threats and promises of their religion, but chiefly on the idea of a Being to whom they looked up with a confiding love, and in whose hands they 5i willingly left all that related especially to themselves. Butin its effect on common minds, what now goes by the name of religion operates mainly through the feelings of self-interest. Even the Christ of the Gospel holds out the direct promise of reward from heaven as a primary inducement to the noble and beautiful beneficence towards our fellow­ creatures which he so impressively incul­ cates. This is a radical inferiority of the best supernatural religions, compared with the Religion of Humanity, since the greatest thing which moral influences can do for the amelioration of human nature is to cultivate the unselfish feel­ ings in the only mode in which any active principle in human nature can be effectually cultivated—namely, by habitual exercise; but the habit of expecting to be rewarded in another life for our con­ duct in this makes even virtue itself no longer an exercise of the unselfish feelings. Secondly, it is an immense abate­ ment from the worth of the old religions as means of elevating and improving human character, that it is nearly, if not quite, impossible for them to produce their best moral effects, unless we sup­ pose a certain torpidity, if not positive twist, in the intellectual faculties. For it is impossible that any one who habitually thinks, and who is unable to blunt his inquiring intellect by sophistry, should be able without misgiving to go on ascribing absolute perfection to the author and ruler of so clumsily made and capriciously governed a creation as this planet and the life of its inhabitants. 1 he adoration of such a being cannot be with the whole heart, unless the heart is first considerably sophisticated. The worship must either be greatly over­ clouded by doubt, and occasionally quite �52 UTILITY OF RELIGION darkened by it, or the moral sentiments must sink to the low level of the ordi­ nances of Nature : the worshipper must learn to think blind partiality, atrocious cruelty, and reckless injustice, not blemishes in an object of worship, since all these abound to excess in the com­ monest phenomena of Nature. It is true, the God who is worshipped is not, generally speaking, the God of Nature only, but also the God of some revela­ tion ; and the character of the revelation will greatly modify and, it may be, improve the moral influences of the religion. This is emphatically true of Christianity; since the Author of the Sermon on the Mount is assuredly a far more benignant Being than the Author of Nature. But, unfortunately, the be­ liever in the Christian revelation is obliged to believe that the same Being is the author of both. This, unless he resolutely averts his mind from the subject, or practises the act of quieting his conscience by sophistry, involves him in moral perplexities without end; since the ways of his Deity in Nature are on many occasions totally at variance with the precepts, as he believes, of the same Deity in the Gospel. He who comes out with least moral damage from this embarrassment is probably the one who never attempts to reconcile the two standards with one another, but con­ fesses to himself that the purposes of Providence are mysterious, that its ways are not our ways, that its justice and goodness are not the justice and good­ ness which we can conceive and which it befits us to practise. When, however, this is the feeling of the believer, the worship of the Deity ceases to be the adoration of abstract moral perfection. It becomes the bowing down to a gigantic image of something not fit for us to imitate. It is the worship of power only. I say nothing of the moral difficulties and perversions involved in revelation itself; though even in the Christianity of the Gospels, at least in its ordinary interpretation, there are some of so flagrant a character as almost to out­ weigh all the beauty and benignity and moral greatness which so eminently dis­ tinguish the sayings and character of Christ. The recognition, for example, of the object of highest worship in a being who could make a hell, and who could create countless generations of human beings with the certain fore­ knowledge that he was creating them for this fate. Is there any moral enormity which might not be justified by imita­ tion of such a Deity ? And is it possible to adore such a one without a frightful distortion of the standard of right and wrong ? Any other of the outrages to the most ordinary justice and humanity involved in the common Christian con­ ception of the moral character of God sinks into insignificance beside this dreadful idealisation of wickedness. Most of them, too, are happily not so unequivocally deducible from the very words of Christ as to be indisputably a part of Christian doctrine. It may be doubted, for instance, whether Chris­ tianity is really responsible for atone­ ment and redemption, original sin and vicarious punishment: and the same may be said respecting the doctrine which makes belief in the divine mission of Christ a necessary condition of salvation. It is nowhere represented that Christ himself made this statement, except in the huddled-up account of the Resurrec­ tion contained in the concluding verses of St. Mark, which some critics (I believe the best) consider to be an interpolation. �UTILITY OF RELIGION Again, the proposition that “ the powers that be are ordained of God,” and the whole series of corollaries deduced from it in the Epistles, belong to St. Paul, and must stand or fall with Paulism, not with Christianity. But there is one moral contradiction insepar­ able from every form of Christianity, which no ingenuity ca.i resolve, and no sophistry explain away. It is, that so precious a gift, bestowed on a few, should have been withheld from the many; that countless millions of human beings should have been allowed to live and die, to sin and suffer, without the one thing needful^ the divine remedy for sin and suffering, which it would have cost the Divine Giver as little to have vouchsafed to all as to have bestowed by special grace upon a favoured minority. Add to this that the divine message, assuming it to be such, has been authenticated by credentials so in­ sufficient that they fail to convince a large proportion of the strongest and cultivated minds, and the tendency to disbelieve them appears to grow with the growth of scientific knowledge and critical discrimination. He who can be­ lieve these to be the intentional short­ comings of a perfectly good Being must impose silence on every prompting of the sense of goodness and justice as received among men. It is, no doubt, possible (and there are many instances of it) to worship with the intensest devotion either Deity, that of Nature or of the Gospel, without any perversion of the moral sentiments ; but this must be by fixing the attention exclusively on what is beautiful and beneficent in the precepts and spirit of the Gospel and in the dispensations of Nature, and putting all tjiat is the reverse as entirely aside as if it did not exist. 53 Accordingly, this simple and innocent faith can only, as I have said, co-exist with a torpid and inactive state of the speculative faculties. For a person of exercised intellect there is no way of attaining anything equivalent to it, save by sophistication and perversion, either of the understanding or of the con­ science. It may almost always be said both of sects and of individuals, who derive their morality from religion, that the better logicians they are, the worse moralists. One only form of belief in the super­ natural—one only theory respecting the origin and government of the universe—■ stands wholly clear both of intellectual contradiction and of moral obliquity. It is that which, resigning irrevocably the idea of an omnipotent creator, regards Nature and Life not as the expression throughout of the moral character and purpose of the Deity, but as the product of a struggle between contriving good­ ness and an intractable material, as was believed by Plato, or a Principle of Evil, as was the doctrine of the Manicheans. A creed like this, which I have known to be devoutly held by at least one culti­ vated and conscientious person of our own day, allows it to be believed that all the mass of evil which exists was un­ designed by, and exists not by the appointment of, but in spite of, the Being whom we are called upon to worship. A virtuous human being assumes in this theory the exalted character of a fellow­ labourer with the Highest, a fellow­ combatant in the great strife; con­ tributing his little, which by the aggrega­ tion of many like himself becomes much, towards that progressive ascendancy, and ultimately complete triumph of good over evil, which history points to, and which this doctrine teaches us to regard �54 UTILITY OF RELIGION as planned by the Being to whom we owe all the benevolent contrivance we behold in Nature. Against the moral tendency of this creed no possible objection can lie : it can produce on whoever can succeed in believing it no other than an ennobling effect. The evidence for it, indeed, if evidence it can be called, is too shadowy and unsub­ stantial, and the promises it holds out too distant and uncertain, to admit of its being a permanent substitute for the religion of humanity; but the two may be held in conjunction : and he to whom ideal good, and the progress of the world towards it, are already a religion, even though that other creed may seem to him a belief not grounded on evidence, is at liberty to indulge the pleasing and encouraging thought that its truth is possible. Apart from all dogmatic belief, there is for those who need it an ample domain in the region of the imagination which may be planted with possibilities, with hypotheses which cannot be known to be false; and when there is anything in the appearances of nature to favour them, as in this case there is (for, what­ ever force we attach to the analogies of nature with the effects of human con­ trivance, there is no disputing the remark of Paley, that what is good in nature exhibits those analogies much oftener than what is evil), the contemplation of these possibilities is a legitimate indul­ gence, capable of bearing its part, with other influences, in feeding and animat­ ing the tendency of the feelings and impulses towards good. One advantage, such as it is, the supernatural religions must always possess over the Religion of Humanity : the prospect they hold out to the indi­ vidual of a life after death. For, though the scepticism of the understanding does not necessarily exclude the Theism of the imagination and feelings, and this, again, gives opportunity for a hope that the power which has done so much for us may be able and willing to do this also, such vague possibility must ever stop far short of a conviction. It remains then to estimate the value of this element—the prospect of a world to come—as a constituent of earthly happi­ ness. I cannot but think that as the condition of mankind becomes improved, as they grow happier in their lives, and more capable of deriving happiness from unselfish sources, they will care less and less for this flattering expectation. It is not, naturally or generally, the happy who are the most anxious either for a prolongation of the present life, or for a life hereafter : it is those who never have been happy. They who have had their happiness can bear to part with existence; but it is hard to die without ever having lived. When mankind cease to need a future existence as a consolation for the sufferings of the present, it will have lost its chief value to them, for themselves. I am now speaking of the unselfish. Those who are so wrapped up in self that they are unable to identify their feelings with anything w’hich will survive them, or to feel their life prolonged in their younger cotemporaries and in all who help to carry on the progressive movement of human affairs, require the notion of another selfish life beyond the grave, to enable them to keep up any in­ terest in existence, since the present life, as its termination approaches, dwindles into something too insignificant to be worth caring about. But if the Religion of Humanity were as sedulously culti­ vated as the supernatural religions are (and there is no difficulty in conceiving that it might be much more so), all who �UTILITY OF RELIGION had received the customary amount of moral cultivation would, up to the hour of death, live ideally in the life of those who are to follow them; and though, doubtless, they would often willingly sur­ vive as individuals for a much longer period than the present duration of life, it appears to me probable that, after a length of time different in different per­ sons, they would have had enough of existence, and would gladly lie down and take their eternal rest. Meanwhile, and without looking so far forward, we may remark that those who believe the immortality of the soul generally quit life with fully as much, if not more, reluctance as those who have no such expectation. The mere cessation of ex­ istence is no evil to any one : the idea is only formidable through the illusion of imagination which makes one conceive oneself as if one were alive and feeling oneself dead. What is odious in death is not death itself, but the act of dying and its lugubrious accompaniments : all of which must be equally undergone by the believer in immortality. Nor can I perceive that the sceptic loses by his scepticism any real and valuable consola­ tion except one—the hope of reunion with those dear to him who have ended their earthly life before him. That loss, indeed, is neither to be denied nor ex­ tenuated. In many cases it is beyond the reach of comparison or estimate; and will always suffice to keep alive, in the more sensitive natures, the imagina­ tive hope of a futurity which, if there is nothing to prove, there is as little in our knowledge and experience to contradict. History, so far as we know it, bears out the opinion that mankind can per­ fectly well do without the belief in a heaven. The Greeks had anything but a tempting idea of a future state. Their 55 Elysian fields held out very little attrac­ tion to their feelings and imagination. Achilles in the Odyssey expressed a very natural, and no doubt a very common sentiment, when he said that he would rather be on earth the serf of a needy master than reign over the whole king­ dom of the dead. And the pensive character so striking in the address of the dying emperor Hadrian to his soul gives evidence that the popular conception had not undergone much variation during that long interval. Yet we neither find that the Greeks enjoyed life less nor feared death more than other people. The Buddhist religion counts probably at this day a greater number of votaries than either the Christian or the Moham­ medan. The Buddhist creed recognises many modes of punishment in a future life, or rather lives, by the transmigration of the soul into new bodies of men or animals. But the blessing from heaven which it proposes as a reward, to be earned by perseverance in the highest order of virtuous life, is annihilation; the cessation, at least, of all conscious or separate existence. It is impossible to mistake in this religion the work of legislators and moralists endeavouring to supply supernatural motives for the con­ duct which they were anxious to en­ courage; and they could find nothing more transcendent to hold out as the capital prize to be won by the mightiest efforts of labour and self-denial than what we are so often told is the terrible idea of annihilation. Surely this is a proof that the idea is not really or naturally terrible; that not philosophers only, but the common order of mankind, can easily reconcile themselves to it, and even consider it as a good; and that it is no unnatural part of the idea of a happy life, that life itself be laid down, after the �56 UTILITY OF RELIGION best that it can give has been fully en­ joyed through a long lapse of time; when all its pleasures, even those of benevo­ lence, are familiar, and nothing untasted and unknown is left to stimulate curiosity and keep up the desire of prolonged existence. It seems to me not only possible, but probable, that in a higher, and above all a happier, condition of human life, not annihilation but immor­ tality may be the burdensome idea ; and that human nature, though pleased with the present, and by no means impatient to quit it, would find comfort and not sadness in the thought that it is not chained through eternity to a conscious existence which it cannot be assured that it will always wish to preserve. �THEISM Part I.—INTRODUCTION The contest which subsists from of old between believers and unbelievers in natural and revealed religion has, like other permanent contests, varied materi­ ally in its character from age to age; and the present generation, at least in the higher regions of controversy, shows, as compared with the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, a marked alteration in the aspect of the dispute. One feature of this change is so apparent as to be generally acknow­ ledged : the more softened temper in which the debate is conducted on the part of unbelievers. The reactionary violence, provoked by the intolerance of the other side, has in a great measure exhausted itself. Experience has abated the ardent hopes once entertained of the regeneration of the human race by merely negative doctrine—by the destruc­ tion of superstition. The philosophical study of history, one of the most im­ portant creations of recent times, has rendered possible an impartial estimate of the doctrines and institutions of the past, from a relative instead of an abso­ lute point of view—as incidents of human development at which it is use­ less to grumble, and which may deserve admiration and gratitude for their effects in the past, even though they may be thought incapable of rendering similar services to the future. And the position assigned to Christianity or Theism by the more instructed of those who reject the supernatural is that of things once of great value, but which can now be done without, rather than, as formerly, of things misleading and noxious ab initio. Along with this change in the moral attitude of thoughtful unbelievers to­ wards the religious ideas of man­ kind, a corresponding difference has manifested itself in their intellectual attitude. The war against religious beliefs in the last century was carried on principally on the ground of common sense or of logic; in the present age, on the ground of science. The progress of the physical science is con­ sidered to have established, by conclu­ sive evidence, matters of fact with which the religious traditions of mankind are not reconcilable; while the science of human nature and history is considered to show that the creeds of the past are natural growths of the human mind, in particular stages of its career, destined to dis­ appear and give place to other convic­ tions in a more advanced stage. In the progress of discussion this last class of considerations seems even to be super­ seding those which address themselves directly to the question of truth. Re­ ligions tend to be discussed, at least by �58 THEISM those who reject them, less as intrinsi­ cally true or false than as products thrown up by certain states of civilisa­ tion, and which, like the animal and vegetable productions of a geological period, perish in those which succeed it from the cessation of the conditions necessary to their continued existence. This tendency of recent speculation to look upon human opinions pre­ eminently from an historical point of view, as facts obeying laws of their own, and requiring, like other observed facts, an historical or a scientific explanation (a tendency not confined to religious subjects), is by no means to be blamed, but to be applauded; not solely as drawing attention to an important .and previously neglected aspect of human opinions, but because it has a real, though indirect, bearing upon the ques­ tion of their truth. For whatever opinion a person may adopt on any subject that admits of controversy, his assurance, if he be a cautious thinker, cannot be complete unless he is able to account for the existence of the opposite opinion. To ascribe it to the weakness of the human understanding is an explanation which cannot be sufficient for such a thinker, for he will be slow to assume that he has himself a less share of that infirmity than the rest of mankind, and that error is more likely to be on the other side than on his own. In his examination of evidence the persuasion of others, perhaps of mankind in general, is one of the data of the case—one of the phenomena to be accounted for. As the human intellect, though weak, is not essentially perverted, there is a certain presumption of the truth of any opinion held by many human minds, requiring to be rebutted by assigning some other real or possible cause for its prevalence. And this consideration has a special relevancy to the inquiry concerning the foundations of Theism, inasmuch as no argument for the truth of Theism is more commonly invoked or more confidently relied on than the general assent of mankind. But while giving its full value to this historical treatment of the religious ques­ tion, we ought not, therefore, to let it supersede the dogmatic. The most im­ portant quality of an opinion on any momentous subject is its truth or falsity, which to us resolves itself into the sufficiency of the evidence on which it rests. It is indispensable that the subject of religion should from time to time be reviewed as a strictly scientific question, and that its evidences should be tested by the same scientific methods and on the same principles as those of the speculative conclusions drawn by physical science. It being granted, then, that the legitimate conclusions of science are entitled to prevail over all opinions, however widely held, which conflict with them, and that the canons of scientific evidence which the successes and failures of two thousand years have established are applicable to all subjects on which knowledge is attainable, let us proceed to consider what place there is for religious beliefs on the platform of science; what evidences they can appeal to such as science can recognise, and what foundation there is for the doc­ trines of religion, considered as scientific theorems. In this inquiry we, of course, begin with Natural Religion, the doctrine of the existence and attributes of God. THEISM. Though I have defined the problem of Natural Theology to be that of the �THEISM existence of God or of a god, rather than of gods, there is the amplest historical evidence that the belief in gods is immeasurably more natural to the human mind than the belief in one author and ruler of nature; and that this more elevated belief is, compared with the former, an artificial product, requiring (except when impressed by early educa­ tion) a considerable amount of intellectual culture before it can be reached. For a long time the supposition appeared forced and unnatural that the diversity we see in the operations of nature can all be the work of a single will. To the untaught mind", and to all minds in prescientific times, the phenomena of nature seem to be the result of forces altogether heterogeneous, each taking its course quite independently of the others; and though to attribute them to conscious wills is eminently natural, the natural tendency is to suppose as many such independent wills as there are distin­ guishable forces of sufficient importance and interest to have been remarked and named. There is no tendency in Poly­ theism as such to transform itself spon­ taneously into Monotheism. It is true that in polytheistic systems generally the Deity, whose special attributes inspire the greatest degree of awe, is usually supposed to have a power of controlling the other deities; and even in the most degraded, perhaps, of all such systems, the Hindoo, adulation heaps upon the divinity who is the immediate object of adoration epithets like those habitual to believers in a single god. But there is no real acknowledgment of one governor. Every god normally rules his particular department, though there may be a still stronger god, whose power when he chooses to exert it can frustrate the purposes of the inferior divinity. There 59 could be no real belief in one Creator and one Governor until mankind had begun to see in the apparently confused phenomena which surrounded them a system capable of being viewed as the possible working out of a single plan. This conception of the world was perhaps anticipated (though less frequently than is often supposed) by individuals of ex­ ceptional genius, but it could only become common after a rather long cultivation of scientific thought. The special mode in which scientific study operates to instil Monotheism in place of the more natural Polytheism is in no way mysterious. The specific effect of science is to show by accumula­ ting evidence that every event in nature is connected by laws with some fact or facts which preceded it, or, in other words, depends for its existence on some antecedent; but yet not so strictly on one as not to be liable to frustration or modification from others; for these dis­ tinct chains of causation are so entangled with one another; the action of each cause is so interfered with by other causes, though each acts according to its own fixed law; that every effect is truly the result rather of the aggregate of all causes in existence than of any one only; and nothing takes place in the world of our experience without spreading a per­ ceptible influence of some sort through a greater or less portion of nature, and making perhaps every portion of it slightly different from what it would have been if that event had not taken place. Now, when once the double conviction has found entry into the mind—that every event depends on antecedents; and at the same time that to bring it about many antecedents must concur, perhaps all the antecedents in nature, insomuch that a slight difference in any one of �6o THEISM them might have prevented the phenomenon, or materially altered its character—the conviction follows that no one event, certainly no one kind of events, can be absolutely preordained or governed by any Being but one who holds in his hand the reins of all Nature, and not of some department only. At least, if a plurality be supposed, it is necessary to assume so complete a con­ cert of action and unity of will among them that the difference is for most pur­ poses immaterial between such a theory and that of the absolute unity of the Godhead. The reason, then, why Monotheism may be accepted as the representative of Theism in the abstract is not so much because it is the Theism of all the more improved portions of the human race, as because it is the only Theism which can claim for itself any footing on scientific ground. Every other theory of the government of the universe by super­ natural beings is inconsistent, either with the carrying on of that government through a continual series of natural antecedents according to fixed laws, or with the interdependence of each of these series upon all the rest, which are the two most general results of science. Setting out, therefore, from the scientific view of nature as one connected system, or united whole—united not like a web composed of separate threads in passive juxtaposition with one another, but rather like the human or animal frame, an apparatus kept going by perpetual action and reaction among all its parts —it must be acknowledged that the question, to which Theism is an answer, is at least a very natural one, and issues from an obvious want of the human mind. Accustomed as we are to find, in proportion to our means of observation, a definite beginning to each individual fact; and since, wherever there is a be­ ginning, we find that there was an ante­ cedent fact (called by us a cause), a fact but for which the phenomenon which thus commences would not have been, it was impossible that the human mind should not ask itself whether the whole, of which these particular phenomena are a part, had not also a beginning, and, if so, whether that beginning was not an origin; whether there was not something antecedent to the whole series of causes and effects that we term Nature, and but for which Nature itself would not have been. From the first recorded specula­ tion this question has never remained without an hypothetical answer. The only answer which has long continued to afford satisfaction is Theism. Looking at the problem, as it is our business to do, merely as a scientific in­ quiry, it resolves itself into two questions. First: Is the theory which refers the origin of all the phenomena of nature to the will of a Creator consistent or not with the ascertained results of science ? Secondly, assuming it to be consistent, will its proofs bear to be tested by the principles of evidence and canons of belief by which our long experience of scientific inquiry has proved the necessity of being guided ? First, then : there is one conception of Theism which is consistent, another which is radically inconsistent, with the most general truths that have been made known to us by scientific investigation. The one which is inconsistent is the conception of a God governing the world by acts of variable will. The one which is consistent is the conception of a God governing the world by invariable laws. The primitive, and even in our own �THE EVIDENCES OF THEISM day the vulgar, conception of the divine rule is that the one God, like the many gods of antiquity, carries on the govern­ ment of the world by special decrees, made pro hac vice. Although supposed to be omniscient as well as omnipotent, he is thought not to make up his mind until the moment of action; or at least not so conclusively, but that his in­ tentions may be altered up to the very last moment by appropriate solicitation. Without entering into the difficulties of reconciling this view of the divine govern­ ment with the prescience and the per­ fect wisdom ascribed to the Deity, we may content ourselves with the fact that it contradicts what experience has taught us of the manner in which things actually take place. The phenomena of nature do take place according to general laws. They do originate from definite natural antecedents. Therefore, if their ultimate origin is derived from a will, that will must have established the general laws and willed the antecedents. If there be a Creator, his intention must have been that events should depend upon ante­ cedents and be produced according to fixed laws. But this being conceded, there is nothing in scientific experience inconsistent with the belief that those laws and sequences are themselves due to a divine will. Neither are we obliged to suppose that the divine will exerted itself once for all, and, after putting a power into the system which enabled it to go on of itself, has ever since let it alone. Science contains nothing repug­ nant to the supposition that every event which takes place results from a specific volition of the presiding Power, provided that this Power adheres in its particular volitions to general laws laid down by itself. The common opinion is that this hypothesis tends more to the glory of the 61 Deity than the supposition that the universe was made so that it could go on of itself. There have been thinkers, however—of no ordinary eminence (of whom Leibnitz was one)—who thought the last the only supposition worthy of the Deity, and protested against likening God to a clockmaker whose clock will not go unless he puts his hand to the machinery and keeps it going. With such considerations we have no concern in this place. We are looking at the subject not from the point of view of reference, but from that of science ; and with science both these suppositions as to the mode of the divine action are equally consistent. We must now, however, pass to the next question. There is nothing to dis­ prove the creation and government of Nature by a sovereign will; but is there anything to prove it ? Of what nature are its evidences; and, weighed in the scientific balance, what is their value ? THE EVIDENCES OF THEISM. The evidences of a Creator are not only of several distinct kinds, but of such diverse characters that they are adapted to minds of very different descriptions, and it is hardly possible for any mind to be equally impressed by them all. The familiar classification of them into proofs a priori and a posteriori marks that, when looked at in a purely scientific view, they belong to different schools of thought. Accordingly, though the unthoughtful believer whose creed really rests on authority gives an equal welcome to all plausible arguments in support of the belief in which he has been brought up, philosophers who have had to make a choice between the a priori and the a posteriori methods in general science seldom fail, while insisting on one of �62 THEISM these modes of support for religion, to speak with more or less of disparage­ ment of the other. It is our duty in the present inquiry to maintain complete im­ partiality and to give a fair examination to both. At the same time, I entertain a strong conviction that one of the two modes of argument is in its nature scien­ tific, the other not only unscientific, but condemned by science. The scientific argument is that which reasons from the facts and analogies of human experience, as a geologist does when he infers the past states of our terrestrial globe, or an astronomical observer when he draws conclusions respecting the physical com­ position of the heavenly bodies. This is the cl posteriori method, the principal application of which to Theism is the argument (as it is called) of design. The mode qf reasoning which I call unscien­ tific, though in the opinion of some thinkers it is also a legitimate mode of scientific procedure, is that which infers external objective facts from ideas or convictions of our minds. I say this independently of any opinion of my own respecting the origin of our ideas or con­ victions ; for even if we were unable to point out any manner in which the idea of God, for example, can have grown up from the impressions of experience, still the idea can only prove the idea, and not the objective fact, unless, in­ deed, the fact is supposed (agreeably to the book of Genesis) to have been handed down by tradition from a time when there was direct personal inter­ course with the Divine Being; in which case the argument is no longer a priori. The supposition that an idea, or a wish, or a need, even if native to the mind, proves the reality of a corresponding object, derives all the plausibility from the belief already in our minds that we were made by a benignant Being who would not have implanted in us a ground­ less belief, or a want which he did not afford us the means of satisfying; and is therefore a palpable petitio principii if adduced as an argument to support the very belief which it pre-supposes. At the same time, it must be admitted that all a priori systems, whether in philosophy or religion, do in some sense profess to be founded on experience, since, though they affirm the possibility of arriving at truths which transcend experience, they yet make the facts of experience their starting-point (as what other starting-point is possible ?). They are entitled to consideration in so far as it can be shown that experience gives any countenance either to them or to their method of inquiry. Professedly a priori arguments are not unfrequently of a mixed nature, partaking in some degree of the a posteriori character, and may often be said to be a posteriori arguments in disguise; the d priori considerations acting chiefly in the way of making some particular a posteriori argument tell for more than its worth. This is emphati­ cally true of the argument for Theism which I shall first examine—the necessity of a First Cause. For this has in truth a wide basis of experience in the univer­ sality of the relation of cause and effect among the phenomena of nature ; while, at the same time, theological philoso­ phers have not been content to let it rest upon this basis, but have affirmed causation as a truth of reason appre­ hended intuitively by its own light. ARGUMENT FOR A FIRST CAUSE. The argument for a First Cause admits of being, and is, presented as a conclusion from the whole of human �ARGUMENT FOR A FIRST CAUSE experience. Everything that we know (it is argued) had a cause, and owed its existence to that cause. How, then, can it be but that the world, which is but a name for the aggregate of all that we know, has a cause to which it is indebted for its existence ? The fact of experience, however, when correctly expressed, turns out to be, not that everything which we know derives its existence from a cause, but only every event or change. There is in nature a permanent element, and also a changeable : the changes are always the effects of previous changes; the perma­ nent existences, so far as we know, are not effects at all. It is true we are accustomed to say, not only of events, but of objects, that they are produced by causes, as water by the union of hydrogen and oxygen. But by this we only mean that, when they begin to exist, their beginning is the effect of a cause. But their beginning to exist is not an object; it is an event. If it be objected that the cause of a thing’s beginning to exist may be said with propriety to be the cause of the thing itself, I shall not quarrel with the expression. But thatwhich in an object begins to exist is that in it which belongs to the changeable element in nature ; the outward form and the properties depending on mechanical or chemical combinations of its compo­ nent parts. There is in every object another and a permanent element—viz., the specific elementary substance or sub­ stances of which it consists and their inherent properties. These are not known to us as beginning to exist: within the range of human knowledge they had no beginning, consequently no cause; though they themselves are causes or con-causes of everything that takes place. Experience, therefore, affords no evi­ 63 dences, not even analogies, to justify our extending to the apparently immutable a generalisation grounded only on our observation of the changeable. As a fact of experience, then, causation cannot legitimately be extended to the material universe itself, but only to its changeable phenomena; of these, indeed, causes may be affirmed without any exception. But what causes ? The cause of every change is a prior change ; and such it cannot but be; for, if there were no new antecedent, there would not be a new consequent. If the state of facts which brings the phenomenon into existence had existed always or for an indefinite duration, the effect also would have existed always or been produced an indefinite time ago. It is thus a necessary part of the fact of causation, within the sphere of our experience, that the causes as well as the effects had a beginning in time, and were themselves caused. It would seem, therefore, that our experience, instead of furnishing an argument for a First Cause, is repugnant to it; and that the very essence of causation, as it exists within the limits of our knowledge, is incompatible with a First Cause. But it is necessary to look more par­ ticularly into the matter, and analyse more closely the nature of the causes of which mankind have experience. For if it should turn out that, though all causes have a beginning, there is in all of them a permanent element which had no beginning, this permanent element may with some justice be termed a first or universal cause, inas­ much as, though not sufficient of itself to cause anything, it enters as a con-cause into all causation. Now, it ‘ happens that the last result of physical inquiry, derived from the converging evidences �64 THEISM of all branches of physical science, does, from it, inasmuch as mind is the only if it holds good, land us, so far as the thing which is capable of originating material world is concerned, in a result change. This is said to be the lesson of of this sort. Whenever a physical phe­ human experience. In the phenomena nomenon is traced to its cause, that of inanimate nature the force which cause when analysed is found to be works is always a pre-existing force, not a certain quantum of force, combined originated, but transferred. One physical with certain collocations. And the last object moves another by giving out to it great generalisation of science, the con­ the force by which it has first been itself servation of force, teaches us that vhe moved. The wind communicates to variety in the effects depends partly the waves, or to a windmill, or a ship, upon the amount of the force and partly part of the motion which has been given upon the diversity of the collocations. to itself by some other agent. In volun­ The force itself is essentially one and tary action alone we see a commence­ the same; and there exists of it in ment, an origination of motion ; since all nature a fixed quantity, which (if the other causes appear incapable of this theory be true) is never increased or origination, experience is in favour of the diminished. Here, then, we find, even conclusion that all the motion in exist­ in the changes of material nature, a per­ ence owed its beginning to this one manent element,-to all appearance the cause, voluntary agency, if not that of very one of which we were in quest. This man, then of a more powerful Being. it is apparently to which, if to anything, This argument is a very old one. It we must assign the character of First is to be found in Plato; not, as might Cause, the cause of the material universe. have been expected, in the Phadon, For all effects may be traced up to it, where the arguments are not such as while it cannot be traced up by our would now be deemed of any weight, but experience to anything beyond : its trans­ in his latest production, the Leges. LnA formations alone can be so traced, and of it is still one of the most telling arguthem the cause always includes the force • ments with the more metaphysical class itself; the same quantity of force in of defenders of Natural Theology. some previous form. It would seem, Now, in the first place, if there be then, that in the only sense in which truth in the doctrine of the conservation experience supports in any shape the of force—in other words, the constancy doctrine of a First Cause—viz., as the of the total amount of force in existence— primaeval and universal element in all this doctrine does not change from true causes—the First Cause can be no other to false when it reaches the field of than Force. voluntary agency. The will does not, We are, however, by no means at the any more than other causes, create force : end of the question. On the contrary, granting that it originates motion, it has the greatest stress of the argument is no means of doing so but by converting exactly at the point which we have now into that particular manifestation a por­ reached. For it is maintained that mind tion of force which already existed in is the only possible cause of force; or other forms. It is known that the source rather, perhaps, that mind is a force, from which this portion of force is and that all other force must be derived derived is chiefly, or entirely, the force �ARGUMENT FOR A FIRST CAUSE evolved in the processes of chemical com­ position and decomposition which con­ stitute the body of nutrition; the force so liberated becomes a fund upon which every muscular, and even every merely nervous action, as of the brain in thought, is a draft. It is in this sense only that, according to the best lights of science, volition is an originating cause. Volition, therefore, does not answer to the idea of a First Cause; since force must in every instance be assumed as prior to it; and there is not the slightest colour, de­ rived from experience, for supposing force itself to have been created by a volition. As far as anything can be con­ cluded from human experience, force has all the attributes of a thing eternal and uncreated. This, however, does not close the dis­ cussion. For though whatever verdict experience can give in the case is against the possibility that will ever originates force, yet, if we can be assured that neither does force originate will, will must be held to be an agency, if not prior to force, yet coeternal with it; and if it be true that will can originate, not indeed force, but the transformation of force from some other of its mani­ festations into that of mechanical motion, and that there is within human experience no other agency capable of doing so, the argument for a will as the originator, though not of the universe, yet of the kosmos, or order of the universe, remains unanswered. But the case thus stated is not con­ formable to fact. Whatever volition can do in the way of creating motion out of other forms of force, and generally of evolving force from a latent into a visible state, can be done by many other causes. Chemical action, for instance; electricity ; heat; the mere presence of a gravitating 65 body : all these are causes of mechanical motion on a far larger scale than any volitions which experience presents to us ; and in most of the effects thus produced the motion given by one body to another is not, as in the ordinary cases of mechanical action, motion that has first been given to that other by some third body. The phenomenon is not a mere passing on of mechanical motion, but a creation of it out of a force previously latent or manifesting itself in some other form. Volition, therefore, regarded as an agent in the material universe, has no exclusive privilege of origination : all that it can originate is also originated by other transforming agents. If it be said that those other agents must have had the force they give out put into them from elsewhere, I answer that this is no less true of the force which volition disposes of. We know that this force comes from an external source—the chemical action of the food and air. The force by which the phenomena of the material world are produced circulates through all physical agencies in a never-ending though some­ times intermitting stream. I am, of course, speaking of volition only in its action on the material world. We have nothing to do here with the freedom of the will itself as a mental phenomenon— with the vex ata questio whether volition is self-determining or determined by causes. To the question now in hand it is only the effects of volition that are relevant, not its origin. The assertion is that physical nature must have been pro­ duced by a will, because nothing but will is known to us as having the power of originating the production of phenomena. We have seen that, on the contrary, all the power that will possesses over phenomena is shared, as far as we have the means of judging, by other and much F �66 THEISM more powerful agents, and that in the only sense in which those agents do not originate, neither does will originate. No prerogative, therefore, can, on the ground of experience, be assigned to volition above other natural agents, as a pro­ ducing cause of phenomena. All that can be affirmed by the strongest assertor of the freedom of the will is that voli­ tions are themselves uncaused, and are therefore alone fit to be the First or Universal Cause. But, even assuming volitions to be uncaused, the properties of matter, so far as experience discloses, are uncaused also, and have the advan­ tage over any particular volition, in being, so far as experience can show, eternal. Theism, therefore, in so far as it rests on the necessity of a First Cause, has no support from experience. To those who, in default of experience, consider the necessity of a First Cause as matter of intuition, I would say that it is needless, in this discussion, to contest their premises; since admitting that there is and must be a First Cause, it has now been shown that several other agencies than will can lay equal claim to that character. One thing only may be said which requires notice here. Among the facts of the universe to be accounted for, it may be said, is mind; and it is selfevident that nothing can have produced mind but mind. The special indications that mind is deemed to give, pointing to intelligent contrivance, belong to a different portion of this inquiry. But if the mere exist­ ence of mind is supposed to require, as a necessary antecedent, another mind greater and more powerful, the difficulty is not removed by going one step back : the creating mind stands as much in need of another mind to be the source of its existence as the created mind. Be it remembered that we have no direct knowledge (at least apart from revela­ tion) of a mind which is even apparently eternal, as force and matter are: an eternal mind is, as far as the present argument is concerned, a simple hypothesis to account for the minds which we know to exist. Now, it is essential to an hypothesis that, if ad­ mitted, it should at least remove the difficulty and account for the facts. But it does not account for mind to refer one mind to a prior mind for its origin. The problem remains unsolved, the difficulty undiminished—nay, rather increased. To this it may be objected that the causation of every human mind is matter of fact, since we know that it had a beginning in time. We even know, or have the strongest grounds for believing, that the human species itself had a beginning in time. For there is a vast amount of evidence that the state of our planet was once such as to be incom­ patible with animal life, and that human life is of a very much more modern origin than animal life. In any case, therefore, the fact must be faced that there must have been a Cause which called the first human mind—nay, the very first germ of organic life—into exist­ ence. No such difficulty exists in the supposition of an eternal mind. If we did not know that mind on our earth began to exist, we might suppose it to be uncaused; and we may still suppose this of the mind to which we ascribe its existence. To take this ground is to return into the field of human experience, and to become subject to its canons, and we are then entitled to ask where is the proof that nothing can have caused a mind except another mind. From what, except from experience, can we know �ARGUMENT FROM THE GENERAL CONSENT OF MANKIND 67 what can produce what—what causes reason to expect, from the mere occur­ are adequate to what effects ? That rence of changes, that, if we could trace nothing can consciously produce mind back the series far enough, we should but mind is self-evident., being involved arrive at a primaeval volition. The world in the meaning of the words ; but that does not, by its mere existence, bear there cannot be unconscious production witness to a God; if it gives indications must not be assumed, for it is the very of one, these must be given by the point to be proved. Apart from experi­ special nature of the phenomena, by ence, and arguing on what is called what they present that resembles adapta­ reason—that is, on supposed self-evidence tion to an end : of which hereafter. If, —the notion seems to be that no causes in default of evidence from experience, can give rise to products of a more the evidence of intuition is relied upon, precious or elevated kind than them­ it may be answered that if mind, as selves. But this is at variance with the mind, presents intuitive evidence of known analogies of nature. How vastly having been created, the creative mind nobler and more precious, for instance, must do the same, and we are no nearer are the higher vegetables and animals to the First Cause than before. But if than the soil and manure out of which, there be nothing in the nature of mind and by the properties of which, they are which in itself implies a Creator, the raised up. The tendency of all recent minds which have a beginning in time, as speculation is towards the opinion that all minds have which are known to our ex­ the development of inferior orders of perience, must, indeed, have been caused, existence into superior, the substitution but it is not necessary that their cause of greater elaboration and higher organi­ should have been a prior intelligence. sation for lower, is the general rule of ARGUMENT FROM THE Nature. Whether it is so or not, there GENERAL CONSENT OF MAN­ are at least in nature a multitude of facts KIND. bearing that character, and this is sufficient for the argument. Before proceeding to the argument Here, then, this part of the discussion from Marks of Design, which, as it may stop. The result it leads to is that seems to me, must always be the main the First Cause argument is in itself of no strength of Natural Theism, we may value for the establishment of Theism : dispose briefly of some other arguments because no cause is needed for the exist­ which are of little scientific weight, but ence of that which has no beginning; which have greater influence on the and both matter and force (whatever human mind than much better argu­ metaphysical theory we may give of the ments, because they are appeals to one or the other) have had, so far as authority, and it is by authority that the our experiences can teach us, no begin­ opinions of the bulk of mankind are ning—which cannot be said of mind. principally, and not unnaturally, governed. The phenomena or changes in the The authority invoked is that of mankind universe have, indeed, each of them a generally, and specially of some of its beginning and a cause, but their cause wisest men; particularly such as were in is always a prior change; nor do the other respects conspicuous examples of analogies of experience give us any ' breaking loose from received prejudices. �68 THEISM Socrates and Plato, Bacon, Locke, and Newton, Descartes and Leibnitz, are common examples. It may, doubtless, be good advice to persons who in point of knowledge and cultivation are not entitled to think themselves competent judges of difficult questions, to bid them content them­ selves with holding that true which mankind generally believe, and so long as they believe it; or that which has been believed by those who pass for the most eminent among the minds of the past. But to a thinker the argument from other people’s opinion has little weight. It is but second-hand evidence; and merely admonishes us to look out for and weigh the reasons on which this conviction of mankind or of wise men was founded. Accordingly, those who make any claim to philosophic treat­ ment of the subject employ this general consent chiefly as evidence that there is in the mind of man an intuitive percep­ tion, or an instinctive sense, of Deity. From the generality of the belief they infer that it is inherent in our constitu­ tion ; from which they draw the con­ clusion, a precarious one indeed, but conformable to the general mode of proceeding of the intuitive philosophy, that the belief must be true; though as applied to Theism this argument begs the question, since it has itself nothing to rest upon but the belief that the human mind was made by a God, who would not deceive his creatures. But, indeed, what ground does the general prevalence of the belief in Deity afford us for inferring that this belief is native to the human mind, and indepen­ dent of evidence ? Is it, then, so very devoid of evidence, even apparent ? Lias it so little semblance of foundation in fact that it can only be accounted for by the supposition of its being innate ? We should not expect to find Theists believing that the appearances in nature of a contriving intelligence are not only insufficient, but are not even plausible, and cannot be supposed to have carried conviction either to the general or to the wiser mind. If there are external evidences of Theism, even if not perfectly conclusive, why need we suppose that the belief of its truth was the result of anything else ? The superior minds to whom an appeal is made, from Socrates downwards, when they professed to give the grounds of their opinion, did not say that they found the belief in them­ selves without knowing from whence it came, but ascribed it, if not to revelation, either to some metaphysical argument or to those very external evidences which are the basis of the argument from design. If it be said that the belief in Deity is universal among barbarous tribes, and among the ignorant portion of civilised populations, who cannot be supposed to have been impressed by the marvellous adaptations of Nature, most of which are unknown to them ; I answer, that the ignorant in civilised countries take their opinions from the educated, and that in the case of savages, if the evidence is in­ sufficient, so is the belief. The religious belief of savages is not belief in the God of natural theology, but a mere modifica­ tion of the crude generalisation which ascribes life, consciousness, and will to all natural powers of which they cannot per­ ceive the source or control the operation. And the divinities believed in are as numerous as those powers. Each river, fountain, or tree has a divinity of its own. To see in this blunder of primitive ignorance the hand of the Supreme Being implanting in his creatures an �ARGUMENT FROM THE GENERAL CONSENT OF MANKIND instinctive knowledge of his existence is a poor compliment to the Deity. The religion of savages is fetichism of the grossest kind, ascribing animation and will to individual objects, and seeking to propitiate them by prayer and sacrifice. That this should be the case is the less surprising when we remember that there is not a definite boundary line, broadly separating the conscious human being from inanimate objects. Between these and man there is an intermediate class of objects, sometimes much more power­ ful than man, which do possess life and will—viz., the brute animals, which in an early stage of existence play a very great part in human life; making it the less surprising that the line should not at first be quite distinguishable between the animate and the inanimate part of nature. As observation advances, it is perceived that the majority of outward objects have all their important qualities in common with entire classes or groups of objects which comport themselves exactly alike in the same circumstances, and in these cases the worship of visible objects is ex­ changed for that of an invisible Being supposed to preside over the whole class. This step in generalisation is slowly made, with hesitation and even terror; as we still see in the case of ignorant populations with what difficulty experi­ ence disabuses them of belief in the supernatural powers and terrible resent­ ment of a particular idol. Chiefly by these terrors the religious impressions of barbarians are kept alive, with only slight modifications, until the Theism of cultivated minds is ready to take their place. And the Theism of culti­ vated minds, if we take their own word for it, is always a conclusion either from arguments called rational or from the appearances in nature. 69 It is needless here to dwell upon the difficulty of the hypothesis of a natural belief not common to all human beings, an instinct not universal. It is con­ ceivable, doubtless, that some men might be born without a particular natural faculty, as some are born without a particular sense. But when this is the case, we ought to be much more particular as to the proof that it really is a natural faculty. If it were not a matter of observation, but of speculation, that men can see ; if they had no apparent organ of sight, and no perceptions or knowledge but such as they might conceivably have acquired by some circuitous process through their other senses, the fact that men exist who do not even suppose themselves to see would be a consider­ able argument against the theory of a visual sense. But it would carry us too far to press, for the purposes of this dis­ cussion, an argument which applies so largely to the whole of the intuitional philosophy. The strongest Intuitionist will not maintain that a belief should be held for instinctive when evidence (real or apparent), sufficient to engender it, is universally admitted to exist. To the force of the evidence must be, in this case, added all the emotional or moral causes which incline men to the belief; the satisfaction which it gives to the obstinate questionings with which men torment themselves respecting the past; the hopes which it opens for the future ; the fears also, since fear as well as hope predisposes to belief; and to these in the case of the more active spirits must always have been added a perception of the power which belief in the supernatural affords for governing mankind, either for their own good or for the selfish pur­ poses of the governors. The general consent of mankind does �70 THEISM not, therefore, afford ground for ad­ mitting, even as an hypothesis, the origin, in an inherent law of the human mind, of a fact otherwise so more than suffici­ ently, so amply, accounted for. THE ARGUMENT FROM CON­ SCIOUSNESS. There have been numerous arguments, indeed almost every religious meta­ physician has one of his own, to prove the existence and attributes of God from what are called truth of reason, sup­ posed to be independent of experience. Descartes, who is the real founder of the intuitional metaphysics, draws the con­ clusion immediately from the first premise of his philosophy, the celebrated assumption that whatever he could very clearly and distinctly apprehend must be true. The idea of a God, perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness, is’ a clear and distinct idea, and must therefore, on this principle, correspond to a real object. This bold generalisation, however, that a conception of the human mind proves its own objective reality, Descartes is obliged to limit by the qualification— “ if the idea includes existence.” Now, the idea of God implying the union of all perfections, and existence being a perfection, the idea of God proves his existence. This very simple argument, which denies to man one of his most familiar and most precious attributes, that of idealising as it is called—of con­ structing from the materials of experience a conception more perfect than experi­ ence itself affords—is not likely to satisfy any one in the present day. More elaborate, though scarcely more success­ ful efforts, have been made by many of Descartes’ successors, to derive know­ ledge of the Deity from an inward light; to make it a truth not dependent on ex­ ternal evidence, a fact of direct per­ ception, or, as they are accustomed to call it, of consciousness. The philo­ sophical world is familiar with the attempt of Cousin to make out that, whenever we perceive a particular object, we perceive along with it, or are conscious of, God; and also with the celebrated refutation of this doctrine by Sir William Hamilton. It would be waste of time to examine any of these theories in detail. While each has its own particular logical fallacies, they labour under the common infirmity that one man cannot, by pro­ claiming with ever so much confidence that he perceives an object, convince other people that they see it too. If, in­ deed, he laid claim to a divine faculty of vision, vouchsafed to him alone, and making him cognisant of things which men not thus assisted have not the capacity to see, the case might be different. Men have been able to get such claims admitted; and other people can only require of them to show their credentials. But when no claim is set up to any peculiar gift, but we are told that all of us are as capable as the prophet of seeing what he sees, feeling what he feels —nay, that we actually do so—and when the utmost effort of which we are capable fails to make us aware of what we are told we perceive, this supposed universal faculty of intuition is but “ The dark lantern of the Spirit Which none see by but those who bear it and the bearers may fairly be asked to consider whether it is not more likely that they are mistaken as to the origin of an impression in their minds than that others are ignorant of the very existence of an impression in theirs. The inconclusiveness, in a speculative point of view, of all arguments from the subjective notion of Deity to its objective �THE ARGUMENT FROM CONSCIOUSNESS reality was well seen by Kant, the most discriminating of the a prion meta­ physicians, who always kept the two questions, the origin and composition of our ideas and the reality of the corresponding objects, perfectly distinct. According to Kant, the idea of the Deity is native to the mind, in the sense that it is constructed by the mind’s own laws, and not derived from without; but this idea of speculative reason cannot be shown by any logical process, or per­ ceived by direct apprehension, to have a corresponding reality outside the human mind. To Kant, God is neither an object of direct consciousness nor a con­ clusion of reasoning, but a Necessary Assumption—necessary, not by a logical but a practical necessity, imposed by the reality of the Moral Law. Duty is a fact of consciousness : “Thou shalt ” is a command issuing from the recesses of our being, and not to be accounted for by any impressions derived from experi­ ence ; and this command requires a commander, though it is not perfectly clear whether Kant’s meaning is that conviction of a law includes conviction of a lawgiver, or only that a being of whose will the law is an expression is eminently desirable. If the former be intended, the argument is founded on a double meaning of the word “ law.” A rule to which we feel it a duty to con­ form has, in common with laws commonly so-called, the fact of claiming our obedi­ ence ; but it does not follow that the rule must originate, like the laws of the land, in the will of a legislator or legis­ lators external to the mind. We may even say that a feeling of obligation which is merely the result of a command is not what is meant by moral obligation, which, on the contrary, supposes some­ thing that the internal conscience bears 7i witness to as binding in its own nature; and which God, in superadding his command, conforms to, and perhaps declares, but does not create. Conced­ ing, then, for the sake of the argument, that the moral sentiment is as purely of the mind’s own growth, the obligation of duty as entirely independent of experi­ ence and acquired impressions, as Kant or any other metaphysician ever con­ tended, it may yet be maintained that this feeling of obligation rather excludes than compels the belief in a Divine legislator merely as the source of the obligation; and, as a matter of fact, the obligation of duty is both theoretically acknowledged and practically felt in the fullest manner by many who have no positive belief in God, though seldom, probably, without habitual and familiar reference to him as an ideal conception. But if the existence of God as a wise and just lawgiver is not a necessary part of the feelings of morality, it may still be maintained that those feelings make his existence eminently desirable. No doubt they do, and that is the great reason why we find that good men and women cling to the belief, and are pained by its being questioned. But surely it is not legiti­ mate to assume that in the order of the universe whatever is desirable is true. Optimism, even when a God is already believed in, is a thorny doctrine to maintain, and had to be taken by Leibnitz in the limited sense that the universe, being made by a good being, is the best universe possible, not the best absolutely; that the Divine power, in short, was not equal to making it more free from imperfections than it is. But optimism, prior to belief in a God, and as the ground of that belief, seems one of the oddest of all speculative delusions. [ Nothing, however, I believe, contributes �72 THEISM more to keep up the belief in the general mind of humanity than this feeling of its desirableness, which, when clothed, as it very often is, in the forms of an argu­ ment, is a naif expression of the ten­ dency of the human mind to believe what is agreeable to it. Positive value the argument, of course, has none. Without dwelling further on these or on any other of the a priori arguments for Theism, we will no longer delay passing to the far more important argu­ ment of the appearances of contrivance in nature. THE ARGUMENT FROM MARKS OF DESIGN IN NATURE. We now at last reach an argument of a really scientific character, which does not shrink from scientific tests, but claims to be judged by the established canons of Induction. The design argu­ ment is wholly grounded on experience. Certain qualities, it is alleged, are found to be characteristic of such things as are made by an intelligent mind for a purpose. The order of Nature, or some considerable parts of it, exhibit these qualities in a remarkable degree. We are entitled from this great similarity in the effects to infer similarity in the cause, and to believe that things which it is beyond the power of man to make, but which resemble the works of man in all but power, must also have been made by intelligence, armed with a power greater than human. I have stated this argument in its fullest strength, as it is stated by its most thoroughgoing assertors. A very little consideration, however, suffices to show that, though it has some force, its force is very generally overrated. Paley’s illustration of a watch puts the case much too strongly. If I found a watch on an apparently desolate island, I should, indeed, infer that it had been left there by a human being; but the inference would not be from marks of design, but because I already knew by direct experience that watches are made by men. I should draw the infer­ ence no less confidently from a footprint, or from any relic, however insignificant, which experience has taught me to attri­ bute to man : as geologists infer the past existence of animals from coprolites, though no one sees marks of design in a coprolite. The evidence of design in creation can never reach the height of direct induction; it amounts only to the inferior kind of inductive evidence called analogy. Analogy agrees with induction in this, that they both argue that a thing known to resemble another in certain circumstances (call those circumstances A and B) will resemble it in another circumstance (call it C). But the differ­ ence is that in induction A and B are known, by a previous comparison of many instances, to be the very circum­ stances on which C depends, or with which it is in some way connected. When this has not been ascertained, the argument amounts only to this, that since it is not known with which of the circumstances existing in the known case C is connected, they may as well be A and B as any others ; and therefore there is a greater probability of C in cases where we know that A and B exist than in cases of which we know nothing at all. This argument is of a weight very difficult to estimate at all, and impossible to estimate precisely. It may be very strong, when the known points of agreement, A and B, etc., are numerous and the known points of difference few; or very weak when the reverse is the case; but it can never be equal in �THE ARGUMENT FROM MARKS OF DESIGN IN NATURE validity to a real induction. The resem­ blances between some of the arrange­ ments in nature and some of those made by man are considerable, and even as mere resemblances afford a certain pre­ sumption of similarity of cause; but how great that presumption is it is hard to say. All that can be said with certainty is that these likenesses make creation by intelligence considerably more probable than if the likenesses had been less, or than if there had been no likenesses at all. This mode, however, of stating the case does not do full justice to the evidence of Theism. The design argu­ ment is not drawn from mere resem­ blances in Nature to the works of human intelligence, but from the special charac­ ter of those resemblances. The circum­ stances in which it is alleged that the world resembles the works of man are not circumstances taken at random, but are particular instances of a circumstance which experience shows to have a real connection with an intelligent origin, the fact of conspiring to an end. The argument, therefore, is not one of mere analogy. As mere analogy it has its weight, but it is more than analogy. It surpasses analogy exactly as induction surpasses it. It is an inductive argu­ ment. This, I think, is undeniable, and it remains to test the argument by the logical principles applicable to induction. For this purpose it will be convenient to handle, not the argument as a whole, but some one of the most impressive cases of it, such as the structure of the eye or of the ear. It is maintained that the structure of the eye proves a designing mind. To what class of inductive argu­ ments does this belong ? and what is its degree of force ? 73 The species of inductive arguments are four in number, corresponding to the four inductive methods—the methods of agreement, of difference, of residues, and of concomitant variations. The argu­ ment under consideration falls within the first of these divisions—the method of agreement. This is, for reasons known to inductive logicians, the weakest of the four; but the particular argument is a strong one of the kind. It may be logically analysed as follows :— The parts of which the eye is com­ posed, and the collocations which con­ stitute the arrangement of those parts, resemble one another in this very remarkable property, that they all con­ duce to enabling the animal to see. These things being as they are, the animal sees; if any one of them were different from what it is, the animal, for the most part, would either not see, or would not see equally well. And this is the only marked resemblance that we can trace among the different parts of this structure, beyond the general likeness of composition and organisation which exists among all other parts of the animal. Now, the particular combination of organic elements called an eye had, in every instance, a beginning in time, and must, therefore, have been brought together by a cause or causes. The number of instances is immeasurably greater than is, by the principles of in­ ductive logic, required for the exclusion of a random concurrence of independent causes, or, speaking technically, for the elimination of chance. We are, there­ fore, warranted by the canons of in­ duction in concluding that what brought all these elements together was some cause common to them all; and inasmuch as the elements agree in the single circumstance of conspiring to produce �74 THEISM sight, there must be some connection by way of causation between the cause which brought those elements together and the fact of sight. This I conceive to be a legitimate in­ ductive inference, and the sum and sub­ stance of what induction can do for Theism. The natural sequel of the argu­ ment would be this. Sight, being a fact not precedent but subsequent to the putting together of the organic structure of the eye, can only be connected with the production of that structure in the character of a final, not an efficient, cause; that is, it is not sight itself, but an ante­ cedent idea of it, that must be the efficient cause. But this at once marks the origin as proceeding from an in­ telligent will. I regret to say, however, that this latter half of the argument is not so in­ expugnable as the former half. Creative forethought is not absolutely the only link by which the origin of the wonderful mechanism of the eye may be connected with the fact of sight. There is another connecting-link on which attention has been greatly fixed by recent speculations, and the reality of which cannot be called in question, though its adequacy to account for such truly admirable com­ binations as some of those in Nature is still, and will probably long remain, problematical. This is the principle of “ the survival of the fittest.” This principle does not pretend to account for the commencement of sensation or of animal or vegetable life. But assuming the existence of some one or more very low forms of organic life, in which there are no complex adaptations nor any marked appearances of con­ trivance, and supposing, as experience warrants us in doing, that many small variations from those simple types would be thrown out in all directions, which would be transmissible by inheritance, and of which some would be advan­ tageous to the creature in its struggle for existence and others disadvantageous, the forms which are advantageous would always tend to survive, and those which are disadvantageous to perish. And thus there would be a constant though slow general improvement of the type as it branched out into many different varieties, adapting it to different media and modes of existence, until it might possibly, in countless ages, attain to the most advanced examples which now exist. It must be acknowledged that there is something very startling, and prima facie improbable, in this hypothetical history of Nature. It would require us, for example, to suppose that the primaeval animal, of whatever nature it may have been, could not see, and had at most such slight preparation for seeing as might be constituted by some chemical action of light upon its cellular structure. One of the accidental variations which are liable to take place in all organic beings would at some time or other pro­ duce a variety that could see, in some imperfect manner, and this peculiarity being transmitted by inheritance, while other variations continued to take place in other directions, a number of races would be produced who, by the power of even imperfect sight, would have a great advantage over all other creatures which could not see, and would in time ex­ tirpate them from all places, except, perhaps, a few very peculiar situations underground. Fresh variations super­ vening would give rise to races with better and better seeing powers, until we might at last reach as extraordinary a combination of structures and functions �ATTRIBUTES as are seen in the eye of man and of the more important animals. Of this theory, when pushed to this extreme point, all that can now be said is that it is not so absurd as it looks, and that the analogies which have been discovered in experi­ ence, favourable to its possibility, far exceed what any one could have sup­ posed beforehand. Whether it will ever be possible to say more than this is at present uncertain. The theory, if admitted, would be in no way whatever inconsistent with creation. But it must be acknowledged that it would greatly attenuate the evidence for it. Leaving this remarkable speculation to whatever fate the progress of discovery may have in store for it, I think it must be allowed that, in the present state of our knowledge, the adaptations in Nature afford a large balance of probability in favour of creation by intelligence. It is equally certain that this is no more than Part 75 a probability ; and that the various other arguments of natural theology which we have considered add nothing to its force. Whatever ground there is, revelation apart, to believe in an author of nature is derived from the appearances in the universe. Their mere resemblance to the works of man, or to what man could do if he had the same power over the materials of organised bodies which he has over the materials of a watch, is of some value as an argument of analogy; but the argument is greatly strengthened by the properly inductive considerations which establish that there is some con­ nection through causation between the origin of the arrangements of nature and the ends they fulfil; an argument which is in many cases slight, but in others, and chiefly in the nice and intricate combinations of vegetable and animal life, is of considerable strength. II.—ATTRIBUTES The question of the existence of a Deity, in its purely scientific aspect, standing as is shown in the First Part, it is next to be considered, given the indications of a Deity, what sort of a Deity do they point to? What attributes are we warranted, by the evidence which Nature affords of a creative mind, in assigning to that mind? It needs no showing that the power, if not the intelligence, must be so far superior to that of man as to surpass all human estimate. But from this to omnipotence and omniscience there is a wide interval. And the distinction is of immense practical importance. It is not too much to say that every indication of Design in the Kosmos is so much evidence against the omnipotence of the designer. For what is meant by design? Contrivance : the adaptation of means to an end. But the necessity for contrivance—the need of employing means—is a consequence of the limita­ tion of power. Who would have re­ course to means if to attain his end his mere word was sufficient? The very idea of means implies that the means have an �7& THEISM efficacy which the direct action of the being who employs them has not. Otherwise they are not means, but an encumbrance. A man does not use machinery to move his arms. If he did, it could only be when paralysis had deprived him of the power of moving them by volition. But if the employ­ ment of contrivance is in itself a sign of limited power, how much more so is the careful and skilful choice of con­ trivances? Can any wisdom be shown in the selection of means when the means have no efficacy but what is given them by the will of him who employs them, and when his will could have bestowed the same efficacy on any other means ? Wisdom and contrivance are shown in overcoming difficulties, and there is no room for them in a being for whom no difficulties exist. The evi­ dences, therefore, of Natural Theology distinctly imply that the Author of the Kosmos worked under limitations; that he was obliged to adapt himself to conditions independent of his will, and to attain his ends by such arrangements as those conditions admitted of. And this hypothesis agrees with what we have seen to be the tendency of the evidences in another respect. We foundthat the appearances in nature point, indeed, to an origin of the Kosmos, or order in nature, and indicate that origin to be design, but do not point to any commencement, still less creation, of the two great elements of the universe—the passive element and the active element, matter and force. There is in nature no reason whatever to suppose that either matter or force, or any of their properties, were made by the being who was the author of the collocations by which the world is adapted to what we consider as its purposes; or that he has power to alter any of those properties" It is only when we consent to entertain this negative supposition that there arises a need for wisdom and con­ trivance in the order of the universe. The Deity had on this hypothesis to work out his ends by combining materials of a given nature and properties. Out of these materials he had to construct a world in which his designs should be carried into effect through given proper­ ties of matter and force, working to­ gether and fitting into one another. This did require skill and contrivance, and the means by which it is effected are often such as justly excite our wonder and admiration; but exactly be­ cause it requires wisdom, it implies limitation of power, or rather the two phrases express different sides of the same fact. If it be said that an Omnipotent Creator, though under no necessity of employing contrivances such as man must use, thought fit to do so in order to leave traces by which man might recognise his creative hand, the answer is that this equally supposes a limit to his omnipotence. For if it was his will that men should know that they them­ selves and the world are his work, he, being omnipotent, had only to will that they should be aware of it. Ingenious men have sought for reasons why God might choose to leave his existence so far a matter of doubt that men should not be under an absolute necessity of knowing it, as they are of knowing that three and two make five. These imagined reasons are very unfortunate specimens of casuistry; but even did we admit their validity, they are of no avail on the supposition of omnipotence, since, if it did not please God to implant in man a complete conviction of his existence, �ATTRIBUTES nothing hindered him from making the conviction fall short of completeness by any margin he chose to leave. It is usual to dispose of arguments of this descrip­ tion by the easy answer—that we do not know what wise reasons the Omniscient may have had for leaving undone things which he had the power to do. It is not perceived that this plea itself implies a limit to omnipotence. When a thing is obviously good and obviously in accor­ dance with what all the evidences of creation imply to have been the Creator’s design, and we say we do not know what good reason he may have had for not doing it, we mean that we do not know to what other, still better object— to what object still more completely in the line of his purposes, he may have seen fit to postpone it. But the neces­ sity of postponing one thing to another belongs only to limited power. Omni­ potence could have made the objects compatible. Omnipotence does not need to weigh one consideration against another. If the Creator, like a human ruler, had to adapt himself to a set of conditions which he did not make, it is as unphilosophical as presumptuous in Us to call him to account for any imperfections in his work; to complain that he left anything in it contrary to what, if the indications of design prove anything, he must have intended. He must at least know more than we know, and we cannot judge what greater good would have had to be sacrificed, or what greater evil incurred, if he had decided to remove this particular blot. Not so if he be omnipotent. If he be that, he must himself have willed that the two desirable objects should be incompatible; he must himself have willed that the obstacle to his supposed design should be insuperable. It cannot, therefore, be 77 his design. It will not do to say that it was, but that he had other designs which interfered with it; for no one purpose imposes necessary limitations on another in the case of a being not restricted by conditions of possibility. Omnipotence, therefore, cannot be predicated of the Creator on grounds of natural theology. The fundamental principles of natural religion, as deduced from the facts of the universe, negative his omnipotence. They do not, in the same manner, exclude omniscience: if we suppose limitation of power, there is nothing to contradict the supposition of perfect knowledge and absolute wisdom. But neither is there anything to prove it. The knowledge of the powers and properties of things necessary for planning and executing the arrange­ ments of the Kosmos is, no doubt, as much in excess of human knowledge as the power implied in creation is in excess of human power. And the skill, the subtlety of contrivance, the ingenuity as it would be called in the case of a human work, is often marvellous. But nothing obliges us to suppose that either the knowledge or the skill is infinite. We are not even compelled to suppose that the contrivances were always the best possible. If we venture to judge them as we judge the works of human artificers, we find abundant defects. The human body, for example, is one of the most striking instances of artful and ingenious contrivance which nature offers, but we may well ask whether so complicated a machine could not have been made to last longer, and not to get so easily and frequently out of order. We may ask why the human race should have been so constituted as to grovel in wretched­ ness and degradation for countless ages before a small portion of it was enabled �78 THEISM to lift itself into the very imperfect state of intelligence, goodness, and happiness which we enjoy. The divine power may not have been equal to doing more ; the obstacles to a better arrangement of things may have been insuperable. But it is also possible that they were not. The skill of the Demiourgos was suffi­ cient to produce what we see; but we cannot tell that this skill reached the extreme limit of perfection compatible with the material it employed and the forces it had to work with. I know not how we can even satisfy ourselves, on grounds of natural theology, that the Creator foresees all the future; that he foreknows all the effects that will issue from his own contrivances. There may be great wisdom without the power of foreseeing and calculating everything; and human workmanship teaches us the possibility that the workman’s knowledge of the properties of the things he works on may enable him to make arrange­ ments admirably fitted to produce a given result, while he may have very little power of foreseeing the agencies of another kind which may modify or counteract the operation of the machinery he has made. Perhaps a knowledge of the laws of nature on which organic life depends, not much more perfect than the knowledge which man even now possesses of .some other natural laws, would enable man, if he had the same power over the materials and the forces concerned which he has over some of those of inanimate nature, to create organised beings not less wonderful nor less adapted to their conditions of exist­ ence than those in nature. Assuming, then, that while we confine ourselves to Natural Religion we must rest content with a Creator less than Almighty, the question presents itself, Of what nature is the limitation of his power ? Does the obstacle at which the power of the Creator stops, which says to it, Thus far shalt thou go and no further, lie in the power of other Intelli­ gent Beings; or in the insufficiency and refractoriness of the materials of the universe ; or must we resign ourselves to admitting the hypothesis that the author of the Kosmos, though wise and know­ ing, was not all-wise and all-knowing, and may not always have done the best that was possible under the conditions of the problem ? The first of these suppositions has until a very recent period been, and in many quarters still is, the prevalent theory even of Christianity. Though attributing, and in a certain sense sincerely, omnipotence to the Creator, the received religion represents him as for some inscrutable reason tolerating the perpetual counteraction of his pur­ poses by the will of another Being of opposite character and of great though inferior power, the Devil. The only difference on this matter between popular Christianity and the religion of Ormuzd and Ahriman is that the former pays its good Creator the bad compliment of having been the maker of the Devil, and of being at all times able to crush and annihilate him and his evil deeds and counsels, which, nevertheless, 'he does not do. But, as I have already remarked, all forms of polytheism, and this among the rest, are with difficulty reconcileable with an universe governed by general laws. Obedience to law. is the note of a settled government, and not of a conflict always going on. When powers are at war with one another for the rule of the world, the boundary between them is not fixed, but constantly fluctuating. This may seem to be the �ATTRIBUTES case on our planet as between the powers of good and evil when we look only at the results; but when we con­ sider the inner springs we find that both the good and the evil take place in the common course of nature, by'virtue of the same general laws originally im­ pressed—the same machinery turning out now good, now evil things, and oftener still the two combined. The division of power is only apparently variable, but really so regular that, were we speaking of human potentates, we should declare without hesitation that the share of each must have been fixed by previous consent. Upon that suppo­ sition, indeed, the result of the combina­ tion of antagonist forces might be much the same as on that of a single creator with divided purposes. But when we come to consider, not what hypothesis may be conceived, and possibly reconciled with known facts, but what supposition is pointed to by the evidences of natural religion, the case is different. The indications of design point strongly in one direction—the preservation of the creatures in whose structure the indications are found. Along with the preserving agencies there are destroying agencies, which we might be tempted to ascribe to the will of a different Creator; but there are rarely appearances of the recondite contrivance of means of destruction, except when the destruction of one creature is the means of preservation to others. Nor can it be supposed that the preserving agencies are wielded by one Being, the destroying agencies by another. The destroying agencies are a necessary part of the pre­ serving agencies : the chemical com­ positions by which life is carried on could not take place without a parallel series of decompositions. The great J 79 agent of decay in both organic and in­ organic substances is oxidation, and it is only by oxidation that life is continued for even the length of a minute. The imperfections in the attainment of the purposes which the appearances indicate have not the air of having been designed. They are like the unintended results of accidents insufficiently guarded against, or of a little excess or deficiency in the quantity of some of the agencies by which the good purpose is carried on, or else they are consequences of the wearing out of a machinery not made to last for ever: they point either to shortcomings in the workmanship as regards its in­ tended purpose, or to external forces not under the control of the workman, but which forces bear no mark of being wielded and aimed by any other and rival Intelligence. We may conclude, then, that there is no ground in Natural Theology for attri­ buting intelligence or personality to the obstacles which partially thwart what seem the purposes of the Creator. The limitation of his power more -probably results either from the qualities of the material—the substances and forces of which the universe is composed not admitting of any arrangements by which his purposes could be more completely fulfilled; or else, the purposes might have been more fully attained, but the Creator did not know how to do it; creative skill, wonderful as it is, was not suffi­ ciently perfect to accomplish his purposes more thoroughly. We now pass to the moral attributes of the Deity, so far as indicated in the Creation ; or (stating the problem in the broadest manner) to the question, what indications Nature gives of the purposes of its author. This question bears a very different aspect to us from what it bears �8o THEISM to those teachers of Natural Theology who are encumbered with the necessity of ad­ mitting the omnipotence of the Creator. We have not to attempt the impossible problem of reconciling infinite benevo­ lence and justice with infinite power in the Creator of such a world as this. The attempt to do so not only involves abso­ lute contradiction in an intellectual point of view, but exhibits to excess the revolt­ ing spectacle of a Jesuitical defence of moral enormities. On this topic I need not add to the illustrations given of this portion of the subject in my essay on Nature. At the stage which our argument has reached there is none of this moral perplexity. Grant that creative power was limited by conditions the nature and extent of which are wholly unknown to us, and the good­ ness and justice of the Creator may be all that the most pious believe; and all in the work that conflicts with those moral attributes may be the fault of the con­ ditions which left to the Creator only a choice of evils. It is, however, one question whether any given conclusion is consistent with known facts, and another whether there is evidence to prove it; and if we have no means for judging of the design but from the work actually produced, it is a somewhat hazardous speculation to sup­ pose that the work designed was of a different quality from the result realised. Still, though the ground is unsafe, we may, with due caution, journey a certain distance on it. Some parts of the order of nature give much more indication of contrivance than others; many, it is not too much to say, give no sign of it at all. The signs of contrivance are most con­ spicuous in the structure and processes of vegetable and animal life. But for these, it is probable that the appearances in nature would never have seemed to the thinking part of mankind to afford any proofs of a God. But when a God had been inferred from the organisation of living beings, other parts of nature, such as the structure of the solar system, seemed to afford evidences more or less strong in confirmation of the belief: granting, then, a design in Nature, we can best hope to be enlightened as to what that design was by examining it in the parts of nature in which its traces are the most conspicuous. To what purpose, then, do the ex­ pedients in the construction of animals and vegetables, which excite the admira­ tion of naturalists, appear to tend ? There is no blinking the fact that they tend principally to no more exalted object than to make the structure remain in life and in working order for a certain time; the individual for a few years, the species or race for a longer but still a limited period. And the similar though less conspicuous marks of creation which are recognised in inorganic nature are generally of the same character. The adaptations, for instance, which appear in the solar system consist in placing it under con­ ditions which enable the mutual action of its parts to maintain instead of destroying its stability, and even that only for a time, vast,.indeed, if measured against our short span of animated existence, but which can be per­ ceived even by us to be limited; for even the feeble means which we possess of exploring the past are believed by those who have examined the subject by the most recent lights to yield evidence that the solar system was once a vast sphere of nebula or vapour, and is going through a process which in the course of ages will reduce it to a �ATTRIBUTES single and not very large mass of solid ' matter frozen up with more than arctic cold. If the machinery of the system is adapted to keep itself at work only for a time, still less perfect is the adaptation of it for the abode of living beings, since it is only adapted to them during the relatively short portion of its total dura­ tion which intervenes between the time when each planet was too hot and the time when it became, or will become, too cold to admit of life under the only conditions in which we have experience of its possibility. Or we should, per­ haps, reverse the statement, and say that organisation and life are only adapted to the conditions of the solar system during a relatively short portion of the system’s existence. The greater part, therefore, of the design of which there is indication in nature, however wonderful its mechanism, is no evidence of any moral attributes, because the end to which it is directed, and its adaptation to which end is the evidence of its being directed to an end at all, is not a moral end; it is not the good of any sentient creature; it is but the qualified permanence for a limited period of the work itself, whether animate or inanimate. The only inference that can be drawn from most of it respecting the character of the Creator is that he does not wish his works to perish as soon as created; he wills them to have a certain ^duration. From this alone nothing can be justly inferred as to the ' manner in which he is affected towards his animate or rational creatures. After deduction of the great number of adaptations which have no apparent object but to keep the machine going, there remain a certain number of pro­ visions for giving pleasure to living beings, and a certain number of provi- sions for giving them pain. There is no positive certainty that the whole of these ought not to take their place among the contrivances for keeping the creature or its species in existence, for both the pleasures and the pains have a con­ servative tendency—the pleasures being generally so disposed as to attract to the things which maintain individual or collective existence; the pains, so as to deter from such as would destroy it. When all these things are considered, it is evident that a vast deduction must be made from the evidences of a Creator before they can be counted as evidences of a benevolent purpose; so vast, indeed, that some may doubt whether, after such a deduction, there remains any balance. Yet, endeavouring to look at the question without partiality or prejudice, and with­ out allowing wishes to have any influence over judgment, it does appear that, granting the existence of design, there is a preponderance of evidence that the Creator desired the pleasure of his creatures. This is indicated by the fact that pleasure of one description or another is afforded by almost everything, the mere play of the faculties, physical and mental, being a never-ending source of pleasure, and even painful things giving pleasure by the satisfaction of curiosity and the agreeable sense of acquiring knowledge; and also that pleasure, when experienced, seems to result from the normal working of the machinery, while pain usually arises from some external interference with it, and resembles in each particular case the result of an accident. Even in cases when pain results, like pleasure, from the machinery itself, the appearances do not indicate that contrivance was brought into play purposely to produce pain : what is indicated is rather a clumsiness G �82 THEISM in the contrivance employed for some other purposes. The author of the machinery is no doubt accountable for having made it susceptible of pain ; but this may have been a necessary condition of its susceptibility to pleasure; a suppo­ sition which avails nothing on the theory of an omnipotent Creator, but is an extremely probable one in the case of a Contriver working under the limitation of inexorable laws and indestructible properties of matter. The susceptibility being conceded as a thing which did enter into design, the pain itself usually seems like a thing undesigned ; a casual result of the collision of the organism with some outward force to which it was not intended to be exposed, and which in many cases provision is even made to hinder it from being exposed to. There is, therefore, much appearance that pleasure is agreeable to the Creator, while there is very little, if any, appear­ ance that pain is so; and there is a certain amount of justification for infer­ ring, on grounds of Natural Theology alone, that benevolence is one of the attributes of the Creator. But to jump from this to the inference that his sole or chief purposes are those of benevo­ lence, and that the single end and aim of Creation was the happiness of his creatures, is not only not justified by any evidence, but is a conclusion in opposition to such evidence as we have. If the motive of the Deity for creating sentient beings was the happiness of the beings he created, his purpose, in our corner of the universe at least, must be pro­ nounced, taking past ages and all countries and races into account, to have been thus far an ignominious failure; and if God had no purpose but our happiness and that of other living creatures, it is not credible that he would have called them into existence with the prospect of being so completely baffled. If man had not the power by the exercise of his own energies for the improvement both of himself and of his outward circumstances to do for himself and other creatures vastly more than God had in the first instance done, the Being who called him into existence would deserve something very different from thanks at his hands. Of course, it may be said that this very capacity of improv­ ing himself and the world was given to him by God, and that the change which he will be thereby enabled ultimately to effect in human existence will be worth purchasing by the sufferings and wasted lives of entire geological periods. This may be so; but to suppose that God could not have given him these blessings at a less frightful cost is to make a very strange supposition concerning the Deity. It is to suppose that God could not, in the first instance, create anything better than a Bosjesman or an Andaman islander, or something still lower; and yet was able to endow the Bosjesman or the Andaman islander with the power of raising himself into a Newton or a Fenelon. We certainly do not know the nature of the barriers which limit the divine omnipotence; but it is a very odd notion of them that they enable the Deity to confer on an almost bestial creature the power of producing by a succession of efforts what God himself had no other means of creating. Such are the indications of Natural Religion in respect to the divine benevo­ lence. If we look for any other of the moral attributes which a certain class of philosophers are accustomed to distin­ guish from benevolence, as, for example, Justice, we find a total blank. There is no evidence whatever in nature for �IMMORTALITY divine justice, whatever standard of justice our ethical opinions may lead us to recognise. There is no shadow of justice in the general arrangements of nature; and what imperfect realisation it obtains in any human society (a most imperfect realisation as yet) is the work of man himself, struggling upwards against immense natural difficulties into civilisa­ tion, and making to himself a second nature, far better and more unselfish than he was created with. But on this point enough has been said in another essay, already referred to, on Nature. These, then, are the net results of Natural Theology on the question of the divine attributes. A Being of great but limited power, how or by what limited Part 83 we cannot even conjecture; of great, and perhaps unlimited intelligence, but perhaps, also, more narrowly limited than his power; who desires, and pays some regard to, the happiness of his creatures, but who seems to have other motives of action which he cares more for, and who can hardly be supposed to have created the universe for that purpose alone. Such is the Deity whom Natural Re­ ligion points to; and any idea of God more captivating than this comes only from human wishes, or from the teaching of either real or imaginary Revelation. We shall next examine whether the light of nature gives any indications con­ cerning the immortality of the soul and a future life. III.—IMMORTALITY The indications of immortality may be considered in two divisions—those which are independent of any theory respecting the Creator and his intentions, and those which depend upon an antecedent belief on that subject. Of the former class of arguments speculative men have in different ages put forward a considerable variety, of which those in the Phcedon of Plato are an example; but they are for the most part such as have no adherents, and need not be seriously refuted, now. They are generally founded upon pre­ conceived theories as to the nature of the thinking principle in man, considered as distinct and separable from the body, and on other preconceived theories re­ specting death. As, for example, that death, or dissolution, is always a separa­ tion of parts ; and the soul being without parts, being simple and indivisible, is not susceptible of this separation. Curiously enough, one of the interlo­ cutors in the Phcedon anticipates the answer by which an objector of the present day would meet this argument— namely, that thought and consciousness, though mentally distinguishable from the body, may not be a substance separable from it, but a result of it, standing in relation to it (the illustration is Plato’s) like that of a tune to the musical instrument on which it is played; and that the arguments used to prove that the soul does not die with the body would equally prove that the tune does not die with the instrument, �84 THEISM but survives its destruction and con­ tinues to exist apart. In fact, those moderns who dispute the evidences of the immortality of the soul do not, in general, believe the soul to be a sub­ stance per se, but regard it as the name of a bundle of attributes, the attributes of feeling, thinking, reasoning, believing, willing, etc.; and these attributes they regard as a consequence of the bodily organisation, which, therefore, they argue, it is as unreasonable to suppose surviving when that organisation is dispersed as to suppose the colour or odour of a rose surviving when the rose itself has perished. Those, therefore, who would deduce the immortality of the soul from its own nature have first to prove that the attributes in question are not attri­ butes of the body, but of a separate substance. Now, what is the verdict of science on this point ? It is not per­ fectly conclusive either way. In the first place, it does not prove, experi­ mentally, that any mode of organisation has the power of producing feeling or thought. To make that proof good it would be necessary that we should be able to produce an organism, and try whether it would feel—which we cannot do; organisms cannot by any human means be produced, they can only be developed out of a previous organism. On the other hand, the evidence is wellnigh complete that all thought and feel­ ing has some action of the bodily organism for its immediate antecedent or accompaniment; that the specific variations, and especially the different degrees of complication of the nervous and cerebral organisation, correspond to differences in the development of the mental faculties; and though we have no evidence, except negative, that the mental consciousness ceases for ever when the functions of the brain are at an end, we do know that diseases of the brain disturb the mental functions, and that decay or weakness of the brain enfeebles them. We have, therefore, sufficient evidence that cerebral action is, if not the cause, at least, in our present state of existence, a condition sine qua non of mental operations; and that, assuming the mind to be a distinct substance, its separation from the body would not be, as some have vainly flattered themselves, a liberation from trammels and restoration to freedom, but would simply put a stop to its functions and remand it to unconscious­ ness, unless and until some other set of conditions supervenes, capable of re­ calling it into activity, but of the exist­ ence of which experience does not give us the smallest indication. At the same time, it is of importance to remark that these considerations only amount to defect of evidence; they afford no positive argument against immortality. We must beware of giving a priori validity to the conclusions of an a posteriori philosophy. The root of all a priori thinking is the tendency to transfer to outward things a strong asso­ ciation between the corresponding ideas in our own minds; and the thinkers who most sincerely attempt to limit their beliefs by experience, and honestly believe that they do so, are not always sufficiently on their guard against this mistake. There are thinkers who regard it as a truth of reason that miracles are impossible; and in like manner there are others who, because the phenomena of life and consciousness are associated in their minds by undeviating experi­ ence with the action of material organs, think it an absurdity per se to imagine it possible that those phenomena can exist �IMMORTALITY under any other conditions. But they should remember that the uniform co­ existence of one fact with another does not make the one fact a part of the other, or the same with it. The relation of thought to a material brain is no metaphysical necessity, but simply a constant co existence within the limits of observation. And when analysed to the bottom on the principles of the Associative Psychology, the brain, just as much as the mental functions, is, like matter itself, merely a set of human sensations either actual or inferred as possible—namely, those which the anato­ mist has when he opens the skull, and the impressions which we suppose we should receive of molecular or some other movements when the cerebral action was going on, if there were no bony envelope and our senses or our instruments were sufficiently delicate. Experience furnishes us with no example of any series of states of consciousness without this group of contingent sensa­ tions attached to it; but it is as easy to imagine such a series of states without as with this accompaniment, and we know of no reason in the nature of things against the possibility of its being thus disjoined. We may suppose that the same thoughts, emotions, volitions, and even sensations which we have here, may persist or recommence some­ where else under other conditions, just as we may suppose that other thoughts and sensations may exist under other conditions in other parts of the universe. And in entertaining this supposition we need not be embarrassed by any meta­ physical difficulties about a thinking substance. Substance is but a general name for the perdurability of attributes ; wherever there is a series of thoughts con­ nected together by memories, that consti­ 85 tutes a thinking substance. This absolute distinction in thought and separability in representation of our states of con­ sciousness from the set of conditions with which they are united only by con­ stancy of concomitance is equivalent in a practical point of view to the old distinction of the two substances, Matter and Mind. There is, therefore, in science no evidence against the immortality of the soul but that negative evidence, which consists in the absence of evidence in its favour. And even the negative evi­ dence is not so strong as negative evidence often is. In the case of witch­ craft, for instance, the fact that there is no proof which will stand examination of its having ever existed is as conclu­ sive as the most positive evidence of its non-existence would be ; for it exists, if it does exist, on this earth, where, if it had existed, the evidence of fact would certainly have been available to prove it. But it is not so as to the soul’s existence after death. That it does not remain on earth and go about visibly or interfere in the events of life is proved by the same weight of evidence which disproves witchcraft. But that it does not exist elsewhere there is absolutely no proof. A very faint, if any, presump­ tion is all that is afforded by its dis­ appearance from the surface of this planet. Some may think that there is an additional and very strong presumption against the immortality of the thinking and conscious principle, from the analysis of all the other objects of Nature. All things in Nature perish, the most beau­ tiful and perfect being, as philosophers and poets alike complain, the most perishable. A flower of the most ex­ quisite form and colouring grows up �86 THEISM from a root, comes to perfection in weeks or months, and lasts only a few hours or days. Why should it be other­ wise with man? Why, indeed. But why, also, should it not be otherwise ? Feeling and thought are not merely different from what we call inanimate matter, but are at the opposite pole of existence, and analogical inference has little or no validity from the one to the other. Feeling and thought are much more real than anything else; they are the only things which we directly know to be real, all things else being merely the unknown conditions on which these, in our present state of existence, or in some other, depend. All matter apart from the feelings of sentient beings has but an hypothetical and unsubstantial -existence; it is a mere assumption to account for our sensations ; itself we do not perceive, we are not conscious of it, but only of the sensations which we are said to receive from it; in reality it is a mere name for our expectation of sensations, or for our belief that we can have certain sensations when certain other sensations give indication of them. Because these contingent possibilities of sensation sooner or later come to an end and give place to others, is it implied in this that the series of our feelings must itself be broken off? This would not be to reason from one kind of substantive reality to another, but to draw from something which has no reality except in reference to something else, conclusions applicable to that which is the only substantive reality. Mind (or whatever name we give to what is implied in consciousness of a continued series of feelings) is, in a philosophical point of view, the only reality of which we have any evidence; and no analogy can be recognised or comparison made between it and other realities, because there are no other known realities to compare it with. That is quite consistent with its being perishable; but the question whether it is so or not is res integra, untouched by any of the results of human knowledge and experience. The case is one of those very rare cases in which there is really a total absence of evidence on either side, and in which the absence of evidence for the affirmative does not, as in so many cases it does, create a strong presumption in favour of the negative. The belief, however, in human immor­ tality in the minds of mankind generally is probably not grounded on any scien­ tific arguments either physical or meta­ physical, but on foundations with most minds much stronger—namely, on one hand the disagreeableness of giving up existence (to those at least to whom it has hitherto been pleasant), and on the other the general traditions of mankind. The natural tendency of belief to follow these two inducements, our own wishes and the general assent of other people, has been in this instance reinforced by the utmost exertion of the power of public and private teaching; rulers and instructors having at all times, with the view of giving greater effect to their mandates, whether from selfish or from public motives, encouraged to the utmost of their power the belief that there is a life after death, in which pleasures and suffer­ ings far greater than on earth depend on our doing or leaving undone while alive what we are commanded to do in the name of the unseen powers. As causes of belief these various circum­ stances are most powerful. As rational grounds of it they carry no weight at all. That what is called the consoling nature of an opinion—that is, the pleasure �IMMORTALITY we should have in believing it to be true— can be a ground for believing it is a doctrine irrational in itself, and which would sanction half the mischievous illusions recorded in history or which mislead individual life. It is sometimes, in the case now under consideration, wrapped up in a quasi-scientific language. We are told that the desire of immor­ tality is one of our instincts, and that there is no instinct which has not corre­ sponding to it a real object fitted to satisfy it. Where there is hunger there is somewhere food, where there is sexual feeling there is somewhere sex, where there is love there is somewhere some­ thing to be loved, and so forth : in like manner, since there is the instinctive desire of eternal life, eternal life there must be. The answer to this is patent on the very surface of the subject. It is unnecessary to go into any recondite considerations concerning instincts, or to discuss whether the desire in question is an instinct or not. Granting that wherever there is an instinct there exists something such as that instinct demands, can it be affirmed that this something exists in boundless quantity, or sufficient to satisfy the infinite craving of human desires ? What is called the desire of eternal life is simply the desire of life; and does there not exist that which this desire calls for? Is there not life? And is not the instinct, if it be an instinct, gratified by the possession and preservation of life? To suppose that the desire of life guarantees to us personally the reality of life through all eternity is like supposing that the desire of food assures us that we shall always have as much as we can eat through our whole lives, and as much longer as we can conceive our lives to be pro­ tracted to. The argument from tradition or the general belief of the human race, if we accept it as a guide to our own belief, must be accepted entire : if so, we are bound to believe that the souls of human beings not only survive after death, but show themselves as ghosts to the living; for we find no people who have had the "one belief without the other. Indeed, it is probable that the former belief originated in the latter, and that primitive men would never have supposed that the soul did not die with the body if they had not fancied that it visited them after death. Nothing could be more natural than such a fancy ; it is, in appearance, completely realised in dreams, which in Homer, and in all ages like Homer’s, are supposed to be real apparitions. To dreams we have to add not merely waking hallucinations, but the delusions, however baseless, of sight and hearing, or, rather, the misinterpreta­ tions of those senses, sight or hearing supplying mere hints from which imagi­ nation paints a complete picture and invests it with reality. These delusions are not to be judged of by a modern standard: in early times the line be­ tween imagination and perception was by no means clearly defined; there was little or none of the knowledge we now possess of the actual course of nature, which makes us distrust or disbelieve any appearance which is at variance with known laws. In the ignorance of men as to what were the limits of nature, and what was or was not compatible with it, no one thing seemed, as far as physical considerations went, to be much more improbable than another. In rejecting, therefore, as we do, and as we have the best reason to do, the tales and legends of the actual appearance of disembodied spirits, we take from under �88 THEISM the general belief in mankind in a life after death, what in all probability was its chief ground and support, and deprive it of even the very little value which the opinion of rude ages can ever have as evidence of truth. If it be said that this belief has maintained itself in ages which have ceased to be rude, and which reject the superstitions with which it once was accompanied, the same may be said of many other opinions of rude ages, and especially on the most im­ portant and interesting subjects, because it is on those subjects that the reigning opinion, whatever it may be, is the most sedulously inculcated upon all who are born into the world. This particular opinion, moreover, if it has on the whole kept its ground, has done so with a constantly increasing number of dis­ sentients, and those especially among cultivated minds. Finally, those culti­ vated minds which adhere to the belief ground it, we may reasonably suppose, not on the belief of others, but on arguments and evidences; and those arguments and evidences, therefore, are what it concerns us to estimate and judge. 'Fhe preceding are a sufficient sample of the arguments for a future life which do not suppose an antecedent belief in the existence, or any theory respecting the attributes, of the Godhead. It re­ mains to consider what arguments are supplied by such lights, or such grounds of conjecture, as Natural Theology affords on those great questions. We have seen that these lights are but faint; that of the existence of a Creator they afford no more than a preponder­ ance of probability; of his benevolence, a considerably less preponderance ; that there is, however, some reason to think that he cares for the pleasures of his creatures, but by no means that this is his sole care, or that other purposes do not often take precedence of it. His intelligence must be adequate to the contrivances apparent in the universe, but need not be more than adequate to them, and his power is not only not proved to be infinite, but the only real evidences in Natural Theology tend to show that it is limited, contrivance being a mode of overcoming difficulties, and always supposing difficulties to be over­ come. We have now to consider what infer­ ence can legitimately be drawn from these premises, in favour of a future life. It seems to me, apart from express revelation, none at all. The common arguments are, the good­ ness of God; the improbability that he would ordain the annihilation of his noblest and richest work, after the greater part of its few years of life had been spent in the acquisition of faculties which time has not allowed him to turn to fruit; and the special improbability that he would have implanted in us an instinctive desire of eternal life, and doomed that desire to complete dis­ appointment. These might be arguments in a world the constitution of which made it pos­ sible without contradiction to hold it for the work of a Being at once omnipotent and benevolent. But they are not argu­ ments in a world like that in which we live. The benevolence of the divine Being may be perfect, but, his power being subject to unknown limitations, we know not that he could have given us what we so confidently assert that he must have given ; could (that is) without sacrificing something more important. Even his benevolence, however justly inferred, is by no means indicated as the �IMMORTALITY interpretation of his whole purpose; and since we cannot tell how far other pur­ poses may have interfered with the exercise of his benevolence, we know not that he would, even if he could, have granted us eternal life. With regard to the supposed improbability of his having given the wish without its gratification, the same answer may be made: the scheme which either limitation of power, or conflict of purposes, compelled him to adopt may have required that we should have the wish, although it were not destined to be gratified. One thing, however, is quite certain in respect to God’s government of the world : that he either could not, or would not, grant to us everything we wish. We wish for life, and he has granted some life; that we wish (or some of us wish) for a boundless extent of life, and that it is not granted, is no exception to the ordinary modes of his government. Many a man would like to be a Croesus or an Augustus Caesar, but has his wishes gratified only to the moderate extent of a pound a week or the secretaryship of his Trade Union. There is, therefore, no assurance whatever of a life after death, on grounds of natural religion. But to any one who feels it conducive either to his satisfaction or to his usefulness to hope for a future state as a possibility, there is no hindrance to his indulging that hope. Appearances point to the existence of a Being who has great power over us—all the power implied in the creation of the Kosmos, or of its organised beings at least—and of whose goodness we have evidence, though not of its being his predominant attribute; and as we do not know the limits either of his power or of his goodness, there is room to hope that both the one and the other may extend to granting us this gift, provided that it would really be beneficial to us. The same ground which permits the hope warrants us in expecting that, if there be a future life, it will be at least as good as the present, and will not be wanting in the best feature of the present life—improvability by our own efforts. Nothing can be more opposed to every estimate we can form of probability than the common idea of the future life as a state of rewards and punishments in any other sense than that the consequences of our actions upon our own character and sus­ ceptibilities will follow us in the future as they have done in the past and present. Whatever be the probabilities of a future life, all the probabilities in case of a future life are that such as we have been made or have made ourselves before the change, such we shall enter into the life hereafter; and that the fact of death will make no sudden break in our spiritual life, nor influence our character any otherwise than as any important change in our mode of existence may always be expected to modify it. Our thinking principle has its laws, which in this life are invariable, and any analogies drawn from this life must assume that the same laws will continue. To imagine that a miracle will be wrought at death by the act of God making perfect every one whom it is his will to include among his elect, might be justified by an express revelation duly authenticated, but is utterly opposed to every presumption that can be deduced from the light of Nature. �THEISM 90 Part IV.—REVELATION The discussion in the preceding pages respecting the evidences of Theism has been strictly confined to those which are derived from the light of Nature. It is a different question what addition has been made to those evidences, and to what extent the conclusions obtainable from them have been amplified or modi­ fied, by the establishment of a direct communication with the Supreme Being. It would be beyond the purpose of this essay to take into consideration the positive evidences of the Christian or any other belief which claims to be a revelation from Heaven. But such general considerations as are applicable, not to a particular system, but to Revelation generally, may properly find a place here, and are, indeed, necessary to give a sufficiently practical bearing to the results of the preceding investi­ gation. In the first place, then, the indications of a Creator and of his attributes which we have been able to find in Nature, though so much slighter and less con­ clusive even as to his existence than the pious mind would wish to consider them, and still more unsatisfactory in the information they afford as to his attributes, are yet sufficient to give to the supposition of a Revelation a standing­ point which it would not otherwise have had. The alleged Revelation is not obliged to build up its case from the foundation; it has not to prove the very existence of the Being from whom it professes to come. It claims to be a message from a Being whose existence, whose power, and to a certain extent whose wisdom and goodness, are, if not proved, at least indicated with more or less of probability by the phenomena of Nature. The sender of the alleged message is not a sheer invention; there are grounds independent of the message itself for belief in his reality; grounds which, though insufficient for proof, are sufficient to take away all antecedent improbability from the supposition that a message may really have been received from him. It is, moreover, much to the purpose to take notice that the very imperfection of the evidences which Natural Theology can produce of the Divine attributes removes some of the chief stumbling blocks to the belief of a Revelation; since the objections grounded on imperfections in the Reve­ lation itself, however conclusive against it, if it is considered as a record of the acts or an expression of the wisdom of a Being of infinite power combined with infinite wisdom and goodness, are no reason whatever against its having come from a Being such as the course of nature points to, whose wisdom is pos­ sibly, his power certainly, limited, and whose goodness, though real, is not likely to have been the only motive which actuated him in the work of Creation. The argument of Butler’s Analogy is, from its own point of view, conclusive : the Christian religion is open to no objections, either moral or intel­ lectual, which do not apply, at least, equally to the common theory of Deism; the morality of the Gospels is far higher and better than that which shows itself in the order of Nature; and what is �REVELATION morally objectionable in the Christian theory of the world is objectionable only when taken in conjunction with the doctrine of an omnipotent God; and (at least as understood by the most enlightened Christians) by no means im­ ports any moral obliquity in a Being whose power is supposed to be restricted by real though unknown obstacles, which prevented him from fully carrying out his design. The grave error of Butler was that he shrank from admit­ ting the hypothesis of limited powers ; and his appeal consequently amounts to this : The belief of Christians is neither more absurd nor more immoral than the belief of Deists who acknow­ ledge an Omnipotent Creator; let us, therefore, in spite of the absurdity and immorality, believe both. He ought to have said : Let us cut down our belief of either to what does not involve absurdity or immorality; to what is neither intellectually self-contradictory nor morally perverted. To return, however, to the main sub­ ject : on the hypothesis of a God, who made the world, and in making it had regard, however that regard may have been limited by other considerations, to the happiness of his sentient creatures, there is no antecedent improbability in the supposition that his concern for their good would continue, and that he might once, or oftener, give proof of it by communicating to them some know­ ledge of himself beyond what they were able to make out by their unassisted faculties, and some knowledge or pre­ cepts useful for guiding them through the difficulties of life. Neither on the only tenable hypothesis, that of limited power, is it open to us to object that these helps ought to have been greater, or in any way other than they are. The 91 only question to be entertained, and which we cannot dispense ourselves from entertaining, is that of evidence. Can any evidence suffice to prove a Divine Revelation ? And of what nature, and what amount, must that evidence be ? Whether the special evidences of Christianity, or of any other alleged revelation, do or do not come up to the mark, is a different question, into which I do not propose directly to enter. The question I intend to consider is, what evidence is required; what general con­ ditions it ought to satisfy; and whether they are such as, according to the known constitution of things, can be satisfied. The evidences of Revelation are com­ monly distinguished as external or in­ ternal. External evidences are the testi­ mony of the senses or of witnesses. By the internal evidences are meant the indications which the Revelation itself is thought to furnish of its divine origin ; indications supposed to consist chiefly in the excellence of its precepts, and its general suitability to the circumstances and needs of human nature. The consideration of these internal evidences is very important, but their importance is principally negative : they may be conclusive grounds for rejecting a Revelation, but cannot of themselves warrant the acceptance of it as divine. If the moral character of the doctrines of an alleged Revelation is bad and perverting, we ought to reject it from whomsoever it comes, for it cannot come from a good and wise Being. But the excellence of their morality can never entitle us to ascribe to them a super­ natural origin; for we cannot have con­ clusive reason for believing that the human faculties were incompetent to find out moral doctrines of which the human faculties can perceive and recognise the �92 THEISM excellence. A Revelation, therefore, cannot be proved divine unless by ex­ ternal evidence—that is, by the exhibi­ tion of supernatural facts. And we have to consider whether it is possible to prove supernatural facts, and, if it is, what evidence is required to prove them. This question has only, so far as I know, been seriously raised on the sceptical side by Hume. It is the ques­ tion involved in his famous argument against miracles—an argument which goes down to the depths of the subject, but the exact scope and effect of which (perhaps not conceived with per­ fect correctness by that great thinker himself) have in general been utterly misconceived by those who have at­ tempted to answer him. Dr. Campbell, for example, one of the acutest of his antagonists, has thought himself obliged, in order to support the credibility of miracles, to lay down doctrines which virtually go the length of maintaining that antecedent improbability is never a sufficient ground for refusing credence to a statement, if it is well attested. Dr. Campbell’s fallacy lay in overlooking a double meaning of the word “impro­ bability”; as I have pointed out in my Logic, and, still earlier, in an editorial note to Bentham’s treatise on Evidence. Taking the question from the very beginning, it is evidently impossible to maintain that, if a supernatural fact really occurs, proof of its occurrence cannot be accessible to the human faculties. The evidence of our senses could prove this as it can prove other things. To put the most extreme case : Suppose that I actually saw and heard a Being, either of the human form or of some form previously unknown to me, commanding a world to exist,, and a new world actually starting into existence and com­ mencing a movement through space, at his command. There can be no doubt that this evidence would convert the creation of worlds from a speculation into a fact of experience. It may be said I could not know that so singular an appearance was anything more than a hallucination of my senses. True, but the same doubt exists at first re^ specting every unsuspected and surpris­ ing fact which comes to light in our physical researches. That our senses have been deceived is a possibility which has to be met and dealt with, and we do deal with it by several means. If we repeat the experiment, and again with the same result; if at the time of the observation the impressions of our senses are in all other respects the same as usual, rendering the supposition of their being morbidly affected in this one par­ ticular extremely improbable; above all, if other people’s senses confirm the testi­ mony of our own; we conclude, with reason, that we may trust our senses. Indeed, our senses are all that we have to trust to. We depend on them for the ultimate premises even of our reason­ ings. There is no other appeal against their decision than an appeal from the senses without precautions to the senses with all due precautions. When the evidence on which an opinion rests is equal to that upon which the whole con­ duct and safety of our lives is founded, we need ask no further. Objections which apply equally to all evidence are valid against none. They only prove abstract fallibility. But the evidence of miracles, at least to Protestant Christians, is not, in our own day, of this cogent description. It is not the evidence of our senses, but of witnesses, and even this not at first �REVELATION hand, but resting on the attestation of books and traditions. And even in the case of the original eye-witnesses, the supernatural facts asserted on their alleged testimony are not of the trans­ cendent character supposed in our ex­ ample, about the nature of which, or the impossibility of their having had a natural origin, there could be little room for doubt. On the contrary, the recorded miracles are, in the first place, generally such as it would have been extremely difficult to verify as matters of fact, and, in the next place, are hardly ever beyond the possibility of having been brought about by human means or by the spontaneous agencies of nature. It is to cases of this kind that Hume’s argument against the credibility of miracles was meant to apply. His argument is: The evidence of miracles consists of testimony. The ground of our reliance on testimony is our experience that, certain conditions being supposed, testimony is generally veracious. But the same experience tells us that, even under the best condi­ tions, testimony is frequently either inten­ tionally or unintentionally false. When, therefore, the fact to which testimony is produced is one the happening of which would be more at variance with experi­ ence than the falsehood of testimony, we ought not to believe it. And this rule all prudent persons observe in the conduct of life. Those who do not are sure to suffer for their credulity. Now, a miracle (the argument goes on to say) is, in the highest possible degree, contradictory to experience; for if it were not contradictory to experience it would not be a miracle. The very reason for its being . regarded as a miracle is that it is a breach of a law of nature—that is, of an otherwise invari­ 93 able and inviolable uniformity in the succession of natural events. There is, therefore, the very strongest reason for disbelieving it that experience can give for disbelieving anything. But the men­ dacity or error of witnesses, even though numerous and of fair character, is quite within the bounds of even common experience. That supposition, therefore, ought to be preferred. There are two apparently weak points in this argument. One is, that the evi­ dence of experience to which its appeal is made is only negative evidence, which is not so conclusive as positive, since facts of which there had been no pre­ vious experience are often discovered, and proved by positive experience to be true. The other seemingly vulner­ able point is this. The argument has the appearance of assuming that the testimony of experience against miracles is undeviating and indubitable, as it would be if the whole question was about the probability of future miracles, none having taken place in the past; whereas the very thing asserted on the other side is that there have been miracles, and that the testimony of experience is not wholly on the negative side. All the evidence alleged in favour of any miracle ought to be reckoned as counter-evidence in refutation of the ground on which it is asserted that miracles ought to be disbelieved. The question can only be stated fairly as de­ pending on a balance of evidence: a certain amount of positive evidence in favour of miracles, and a negative pre­ sumption from the general course of human experience against them. In order to support the argument under this double correction, it has to be shown that the negative presumption against a miracle is very much stronger �94 THEISM than that against a merely new and sur­ prising fact. This, however, is evidently the case. A new physical discovery, even if it consists in the defeating of a well-established law of nature, is but the discovery of another law previously un­ known. There is nothing in this but what is familiar to our experience; we were aware that we did not know all the laws of nature, and we were aware that one such law is liable to be counteracted by others. The new phenomenon, when brought to light, is found still to depend on law; it is always exactly reproduced when the same circumstances are re­ peated. Its occurrence, therefore, is within the limits of variation in experi­ ence, which experience itself discloses. But a miracle, in the very fact of being a miracle, declares itself to be a supersession, not of one natural law by another, but of the law which includes all others, which experience shows to be universal for all phenomena—viz., that they depend on some law ; that they are always the same when there are the same phenomenal antecedents, and neither take place in the absence of their phenomenal causes, nor ever fail to take place when the phenomenal condi­ tions are all present. It is evident that this argument against belief in miracles had very little to rest upon until a comparatively modern stage in the progress of science. A few generations ago the universal depen­ dence of phenomena on invariable laws was not only not recognised by mankind in general, but could not be regarded by the instructed as a scientifically estab­ lished truth. There were many pheno­ mena which seemed quite irregular in their course, without dependence on any known antecedents ; and though, no doubt, a certain regularity in the occur­ rence of the most familiar phenomena must always have been recognised, yet even in these the exceptions which were constantly occurring had not yet, by an investigation and generalisation of the circumstances of their occurrence, been reconciled with the general rule. The heavenly bodies were from of old the most conspicuous types of regular and unvarying order; yet even among them comets were a phenomenon apparently originating without any law, and eclipses, one which seemed to take place in violation of law. Accordingly, both comets and eclipses long continued to be regarded as of a miraculous nature, intended as signs and omens of human fortunes. It would have been impossible in those days to prove to anyone that this supposition was antecedently im­ probable. It seemed more conformable to appearances than the hypothesis of an unknown law. Now, however, when, in the progress of science, all phenomena have been shown by indisputable evidence to be amenable to law, and even in the cases in which those laws have not yet been exactly ascertained, delay in ascertaining them is fully accounted for by the special difficulties of the subject; the defenders of miracles have adapted their argument to this altered state of things by main­ taining that a miracle need not neces­ sarily be a violation of law. It may, they say, take place in fulfilment of a more recondite law, to us unknown. If by this it be only meant that the Divine Being, in the exercise of his power of interfering with and suspending his own laws, guides himself by some general principle or rule of action, this, of course, cannot be disproved, and is in itself the most probable supposition. But if the argument means that a �RE VELA TION 95 It will perhaps be said that a miracle miracle may be the fulfilment of a law in the same sense in which the ordinary <does not necessarily exclude the inter­ events of Nature are fulfilments of laws, it vention of second causes. If it were the seems to indicate an imperfect concep­ will of God to raise a thunderstorm by tion of what is meant by a law, and of miracle, he might do it by means of winds and clouds. Undoubtedly; but what constitutes a miracle. When we say that an ordinary physical the winds and clouds were either suffi­ fact always takes place according to cient when produced to excite the some invariable law, we mean that it is thunderstorm without other divine assist­ connected by uniform sequence or co­ ance, or they were not. If they were existence with some definite set of not, the storm is not a fulfilment of law, physical antecedents; that whenever that but a violation of it. If they were suffi­ set is exactly reproduced the same pheno­ cient, there is a miracle, but it is not the menon will take place, unless counter­ storm ; it is the production of the winds acted by the similar laws of some other and clouds, or whatever link in the chain physical antecedents; and that, when­ of causation it was at which the influence ever it does take place, it would always of physical antecedents was dispensed be found that its special set of antece­ with. If that influence was never dis­ dents (or one of its sets if it has more pensed with, but the event called mira­ than one) has pre-existed. Now, an culous was produced by natural means, event which takes place in this manner and those again by others, and so on is not a miracle. To make it a miracle from the beginning of things; if the it must be produced by a direct volition, event is no otherwise the act of God without the use of means; or, at least, than in having been foreseen and of any means which, if simply repeated, ordained by him as the consequence of would produce it. To constitute a the forces put in action at the Creation ; miracle a phenomenon must take place then there is no miracle at all, nor without having been preceded by any anything different from the ordinary antecedent phenomenal conditions suffi­ working of God’s providence. For another example : a person pro­ cient again to reproduce it; or a pheno­ fessing to be divinely commissioned menon for the production of which the antecedent conditions existed must cures a sick person by some apparently be arrested or prevented without the in­ insignificant external application. Would tervention of any phenomenal antece­ this application, administered by a person dents which would arrest or prevent it not specially commissioned from above, in a future case. The test of a miracle have effected the cure? If so, there is is: Were there present in the case such no miracle; if not, there is a miracle, external conditions, such second causes but there is a violation of law. It will be said, however, that, if these we may call them, that whenever these be violations of law, then law is violated conditions or causes reappear the event will be reproduced? If there were, it is every time that any outward effect is not a miracle; if there were not, it is a produced by a voluntary act of a human miracle, but it is not according to law; being. Human volition is constantly it is an event produced, without, or in modifying natural phenomena, not by violating their laws, but by using their spite of, law. �96 THEISM laws. Why may not divine volition do combination of physical antecedents and the same ? The power of volitions over a physical consequent. But this, whether phenomena is itself a law, and one of the true or not, does not really affect the earliest known and acknowledged laws argument; for the interference of human of nature. It is true the human will will with the course of Nature is only not exercises power over objects in general an exception to law when we include indirectly, through the direct power among laws the relation of motive to which it possesses only over the human volition; and by the same rule interfer­ muscles. God, however, has direct ence by the Divine will would not be an power, not merely over one thing, but exception either, since we cannot but over all the objects which he has made. suppose the Deity in every one of his There is, therefore, no more a supposi­ acts to be determined by motives. tion of violation of law in supposing that The alleged analogy, therefore, holds events are produced, prevented, or modi­ good; but what it proves is only what I fied by God’s action, than in the suppo­ have from the first maintained—that sition of their being produced, pre­ divine interference with nature could be vented, or modified by man’s action. proved if we had the same sort of Both are equally in the course of Nature, evidence for it which we have for both equally consistent with what we know human interferences. The question of of the government of all things by law. antecedent improbability only arises be­ Those who thus argue are mostly be­ cause divine interposition is not certified lievers in Free Will, and maintain that by the direct evidence of perception, every human volition originates a new but is always matter of inference, and, chain of causation, of which it is itself more or less, of speculative inference. the commencing link, not connected by And a little consideration will show that invariable sequence with any anterior in these circumstances the antecedent fact. Even, therefore, if a divine inter­ presumption against the truth of the position did constitute a breaking-in inference is extremely strong. upon the connected chain of events, by When the human will interferes to the introduction of a new originating produce any physical phenomenon, ex­ cause without root in the past, this would cept the movements of the human body, be no reason for discrediting it, since it does so by the employment of means, every human act of volition does pre­ and is obliged to employ such means as cisely the same. If the one is a breach are by their own physical properties of law, so are the others. In fact, the sufficient to bring about the effect. reign of law does not extend to the Divine interference by hypothesis pro­ origination of volition. ceeds in a different manner from this : it Those who dispute the Free Will produces its effect without means, or with theory, and regard volition as no excep­ such as are in themselves insufficient. tion to the universal law of Cause and In the first case, all the physical phe­ Effect, may answer, that volitions do not nomena, except the first bodily move­ interrupt the chain of causation, but ment, are produced in strict conformity carry it on, the connection of cause and to physical causation; while that first effect being of just the same nature movement is traced by positive observa­ between motive and act as between a tion to the cause (the volition) which �REVELATION produced it. In the other case the event is supposed not to have been pro­ duced at all through physical causation, while there is no direct evidence to con­ nect it with any volition. The ground on which it is ascribed to a volition is only negative, because there is no other apparent way of accounting for its exist­ ence. But in this merely speculative explana­ tion there is always another hypothesis possible—viz., that the event may have been produced by physical causes in a manner not apparent. It may either be due to a law of physical nature not yet known, or to the unknown presence of the conditions necessary for producing it according to some known law. Sup­ posing even that the event, supposed to be miraculous, does not reach us through the uncertain medium of human testi­ mony, but rests on the direct evidence of our own senses; even then, so long as there is no direct evidence of its produc­ tion by a divine volition, like that we have for the production of bodily move­ ments by human volitions—so long, therefore, as the miraculous character of the event is but an inference from the supposed inadequacy of the laws of physical nature to account for it—so long will the hypothesis of a natural origin for the phenomenon be entitled to preference over that of a supernatural one. The commonest principles of sound judgment forbid us to suppose for any effect a cause of which we have absolutely no experience, unless all those of which we have experience are ascertained to be absent. Now, there are few things of which we have more frequent experience than of physical facts which our knowledge does not enable us to account for, because they depend either on laws which observation, 97 aided by science, has not yet brought to light, or on facts the presence of which in the particular case is unsuspected by us. Accordingly, when we hear of a prodigy, we always in these modern times believe that, if it really occurred, it was neither the work of God nor of a demon, but the consequence of some unknown natural law or of some hidden fact. Nor is either of these suppositions precluded when, as in the case of a miracle properly so called, the wonderful event seemed to depend upon the will of a human being. It is always possible that there may be at work some undetected law of nature which the wonder-worker may have acquired, consciously or un­ consciously, the power of calling into action; or that the wonder may have been wrought (as in the truly extraordi­ nary feats of jugglers) by the employ­ ment, unperceived by us, of ordinary laws, which also need not necessarily be a case of voluntary deception ; or, lastly, the event may have had no connection with the volition at all, but the coinci­ dence between them may be the effect of craft or accident, the miracle-worker having seemed or effected to produce by his will that which was already about to take place, as if one were to command an eclipse of the sun at the moment when one knew by astronomy that an eclipse was on the point of taking place. In a case of this description the miracle might be tested by a challenge to repeat it; but it is worthy of remark that re­ corded miracles were seldom or never put to this test. No miracle-work er seems ever to have made a practice of raising the dead; that and the other most signal of the miraculous operations are reported to have been performed only in one or a few isolated cases, which may have been either cunningly h �98 THEISM selected cases or accidental coincidences. There is, in short, nothing to exclude the supposition that every alleged miracle was due to natural causes; and as long as that supposition remains possible no scientific observer, and no man of ordi­ nary practical judgment, would assume by conjecture a cause which no reason existed for supposing to be real, save the necessity of accounting for something which is sufficiently accounted for with­ out it. Were we to stop here, the case against miracles might seem to be complete. But, on further inspection, it will be seen that we cannot, from the above considerations, conclude absolutely that the miraculous' theory of the production of a phenomenon ought to be at once rejected. We can conclude only that no extraordinary powers which have ever been alleged to be exercised by any human being over nature can be evidence of miraculous gifts to any one to whom the existence of a Supernatural Being and his interference in human affairs is not already a vera causa. The existence of God cannot possibly be proved by miracles, for, unless a God is already recognised, the apparent miracle can always be accounted for on a more probable hypothesis than that of the interference of a Being of whose very existence it is supposed to be the sole evidence. Thus far Hume’s argument is conclusive. But it is far from being equally so when the existence of a Being who created the present order of Nature, and, therefore, may well be thought to have power to modify it, is accepted as a fact, or even as a probability resting on independent evidence. Once admit a God, and the production by his direct volition of an effect, which in any case owed its origin to his creative will, is no longer a purely arbitrary hypothesis to account for the fact, but must be reckoned with as a serious possibility. The question then changes its character, and the decision of it must now rest upon what is known or reasonably sur­ mised as to the manner of God’s govern­ ment of the universe; whether this knowledge or surmise makes it the more probable supposition that the event was brought about by the agencies by which his government is ordinarily carried on, or that it is the result of a special and extraordinary interposition of his will in supersession of those ordinary agencies. In the first place, then, assuming as a fact the existence and providence of God, the whole of our observation of Nature proves to us by incontrovertible evidence that the rule of his government is by means of second causes; that all facts, or at least all physical facts, follow uniformly upon given physical condi­ tions, and never occur but when the appropriate collection of physical condi­ tions is realised. I limit the assertion to physical facts, in order to leave the case of human volition an open question; though, indeed, I need not do so, for, if the human will is free, it has been left free by the Creator, and is not controlled by him either through second causes or directly, so that, not being governed, it is not a specimen of his mode of govern­ ment. Whatever he does govern, he governs by second causes. This was not obvious in the infancy of science ; it was more and more recognised as the processes of nature were more carefully and accurately examined, until there now remains no class of phenomena of which it is not positively known, save some cases which from their obscurity and complication our scientific pro­ cesses have not yet been able completely �REVELATION to clear up and disentangle, and in which, therefore, the proof that they also are governed by natural laws could not, in i’ne present state of science, be more complete. The evidence, though merely negative, which these circum­ stances afford that government by second causes is universal, is admitted for all except directly religious purposes to be conclusive. When either a man of science for scientific, or a man of the world for practical, purposes inquires into an event, he asks himself, What is its cause ? and not, Has it any natural cause? A man would be laughed at who set down as one of the alternative suppositions that there is no other cause for it than the will of God. Against this weight of negative evi­ dence we have to set such positive evidence as is produced in attestation of exceptions; in other words, the positive evidences of miracles. And I have al­ ready admitted that this evidence might conceivably have been such as to make the exception equally certain with the rule. If we had the direct testimony of our senses to a supernatural fact, it might be as completely authenticated and made certain as any natural one. But we never have. The supernatural cha­ racter of the fact is always, as I have said, matter of inference and specula­ tion ; and the mystery always admits the possibility of a solution not supernatural. To those who already believe in super­ natural power the supernatural hypo­ thesis may appear more probable than the natural one; but only if it accords with what we know or reasonably surmise respecting the ways of the supernatural agent. Now, all that we know from the evidence of nature concerning his ways is in harmony with the natural theory and repugnant to the supernatural. There 99 is, therefore, a vast preponderance of probability against a miracle, to counter­ balance which would require a very extraordinary and indisputable congruity in the supposed miracle and its circum­ stances with something which we con­ ceive ourselves to know, or to have grounds for believing, with regard to the divine attributes. This extraordinary congruity is sup­ posed to exist when the purpose of the miracle is extremely beneficial to man­ kind, as when it serves to accredit some highly important belief. The goodness of God, it is supposed, affords a high degree of antecedent probability that he would make an exception to his general rule of government for so excellent a purpose. For reasons, however, which have already been entered into, any inference drawn by us from the good­ ness of God to what he has or has not actually done, is to the last degree pre­ carious. If we reason directly from God’s goodness to positive facts, no misery, nor vice, nor crime ought to exist in the world. We can see no reason in God’s goodness why, if he deviated once from the ordinary system of his government in order to do good to man, he should not have done so on a hundred other occasions ; nor why, if the benefit aimed at by some given deviation, such as the revelation of Christianity, was transcen­ dent and unique, that precious gift should only have been vouchsafed after the lapse of many ages; or why, when it was at last given, the evidence of it should have been left open to so much doubt and difficulty. Let it be remem­ bered also that the goodness of God affords no presumption in favour of a deviation from his general system of government unless the good purpose could not have been attained without �IOO THEISM deviation. If God intended that man­ of the wonderful stories, such multitudes kind should receive Christianity or any of which were current among the early other gift, it would have agreed better Christians; but when they do, excep­ with all that we know of his government tionally, name any of the persons who to have made provision in the scheme of were the subjects or spectators of the creation for its arising at the appointed miracle, they doubtless draw from tradi­ time by natural development; which, let tion, and mention those names with it be added, all the knowledge we now which the story was in the popular mind possess concerning the history of the (perhaps accidentally) connected; for human mind tends to the conclusion whoever has observed the way in which that it actually did. even now a story grows up from some To all these considerations ought to small foundation, taking on additional be added the extremely imperfect nature details at every step, knows well how, of the testimony itself which we possess from being at first anonymous, it gets for the miracles, real or supposed, which names attached to it; the name of some accompanied the foundation of Chris­ one by whom, perhaps, the story has tianity and of every other revealed re­ been told being brought into the story ligion. Take it at the best, it is the itself first as a witness, and still later uncross-examined testimony of extremely as a party concerned. ignorant people, credulous as such It is also noticeable, and is a very im­ usually are, honourably credulous when portant consideration, that stories of the excellence of the doctrine or just miracles only grow up among the igno­ reverence for the teacher makes them rant, and are adopted, if ever, by the eager to believe; unaccustomed to draw educated when they have already be­ the line between the perceptions of come the belief of multitudes. Those sense and what is superinduced upon which are believed by Protestants all them by the suggestions of a lively ■originate in ages and nations in which imagination; unversed in the difficult there was hardly any canon of proba­ art of deciding between appearance and bility, and miracles were thought to be > reality, and between the natural and the ;among the commonest of all phenomena. supernatural; in times, moreover, when 'The Catholic Church, indeed, holds as no one thought it worth while to con- £an article of faith that miracles have tradict any alleged miracle, because it inever ceased, and new ones continue to was the belief of the age that miracles in Ibe now and then brought forth and themselves proved nothing, since they I believed, even in the present incredulous could be worked by a lying spirit as well e —yet if in an incredulous generation age as by the spirit of God. Such were the c certainly not among the incredulous witnesses; and even of them we do not portion of it, but always among people f possess the direct testimony; the docu- v who, in addition to the most childish ments of date long subsequent, even on i; ignorance, have grown up (as all do who the orthodox theory, which contain the a are educated by the Catholic clergy) only history of these events, very often t trained in the persuasion that it is a duty do not even name the supposed eye- ti believe and a sin to doubt; that it is to witnesses. They put down (it is but d dangerous to be sceptical about anything just to admit) the best and least absurd v which is tendered for belief in the name �RE VELA TION of the true religion; and that nothing is so contrary to piety as incredulity. But these miracles which no one but a Roman Catholic, and by no means every Roman Catholic, believes, rest frequently upon an amount of testimony greatly surpassing that which we possess for any of the early miracles; and superior, espe­ cially in one of the most essential points —that in many cases the alleged eye­ witnesses are known, and we have their story at first hand. Thus, then, stands the balance of evidence in respect to the reality of miracles, assuming the existence and government of God to be proved by other evidence. On the one side, the great negative presumption arising from the whole of what the course of nature discloses to us of the divine government, as carried on through second causes and by invariable sequences of physical effects upon constant antecedents. On the other side, a few exceptional in­ stances, attested by evidence not of a character to warrant belief in any facts in the smallest degree unusual or impro­ bable ; the eye-witnesses in most cases unknown, in none competent by charac­ ter or education to scrutinise the real nature of the appearances which they may have seen,1 and moved, moreover, by a union of the strongest motives which can inspire human beings to per­ suade, first themselves, and then others, that what they had seen was a miracle. The facts, too, even if faithfully reported, are never incompatible w’ith the sup­ 1 St. Paul, the only known exception to the ignorance and want of education of the first generation of Christians, attests no miracle but that of his own conversion, which of all the miracles of the New Testament is the one which admits of the easiest explanation from natural causes. IOI position that they were either mere co­ incidences, or were produced by natural means, even when no specific conjecture can be made as to those means, which in general it can. The conclusion I draw is that miracles have no claim whatever to the character of historical facts, and are wholly invalid as evidences of any revelation. What can be said with truth on the side of miracles amounts only to this: Considering that the order of nature affords some evidence of the reality of a Creator, and of his bearing goodwill to his creatures, though not of its being the sole prompter of his conduct towards them: considering, again, that all the evidence of his existence is evidence also that he is not all-powerful, and consider­ ing that in our ignorance of the limits of his power we cannot positively decide that he was able to provide for us by the original plan of Creation all the good which it entered into his intentions to bestow upon us, or even to bestow any part of it at any earlier period than that at which we actually received it—con­ sidering these things, when we consider further that a gift, extremely precious, came to us which, though facilitated, was not apparently necessitated by what had gone before, but was due, as far as appearances go, to the peculiar mental and moral endowments of one man, and that man openly proclaimed that it did not come from himself, but from God through him, then we are entitled to say that there is nothing so inherently im­ possible or absolutely incredible in this supposition as to preclude any one from hoping that it may perhaps be true. I say from hoping; I go no further; for I cannot attach any evidentiary value to the testimony even of Christ on such a subject, since he is never said to have �102 THEISM declared any evidence of his mission (unless his own interpretations of the Prophecies be so considered) except in­ ternal conviction; and everybody knows that in pre-scientific times men always supposed that any unusual faculties which came to them, they knew not how, were an inspiration from God; the best men always being the readiest to ascribe any honourable peculiarity in themselves to that higher source rather than to their own merits. pART V.—GENERAL RESULT Brom the result of the preceding exami­ nation ol the evidences of Theism, and (Theism being pre-supposed) of the evi­ dences of any Revelation, it follows that the rational attitude of a thinking mind towards the supernatural, whether in natural or in revealed religion, is that of scepticism as distinguished from belief on the one hand, and from Atheism on the other; including in the present case under Atheism the negative as well as the positive form of disbelief in a God— viz., not only the dogmatic denial of his existence, but the denial that there is any evidence on either side, which, for most practical purposes, amounts to the same thing as if the existence of a God had been disproved. If we are right in the conclusions to which we have been led by the preceding inquiry, there is evidence, but insufficient for proof, and amounting only to one of the lower degrees of probability. The indication given by such evidence as there is points to the creation, not, indeed, of the universe, but of the present order of it, by an Intelligent Mind, whose power over the materials was not absolute, whose love for his creatures was not his sole actuating inducement, but who, never­ theless, desired their good. The notion of a providential government by an Omnipotent Being for the good of his creatures must be entirely dismissed. Even of the continued existence of the Creator we have no other guarantee than that he cannot be subject to the law of death which affects terrestrial beings, since the conditions that produce this liability wherever it is known to exist are of his creating. That this Being, not being omnipotent, may have produced a machinery falling short of his intentions, and which may require the occasional interposition of the Maker’s hand, is a supposition not in itself absurd nor impossible, though in none of the cases in which such interposition is believed to have occurred is the evidence such as could possibly prove it; it remains a simple possibility, which those may dwell on to whom it yields comfort to suppose that blessings which ordinary human power is inadequate to attain may come not from extraordinary human power, but from the bounty of an intelli­ gence beyond the human, and which continuously cares for man. The possi­ bility of a life after death rests on the same footing—of a boon which this powerful Being who wishes well to man may have the power to grant, and which, �GENERAL RESULT if the message alleged to have been sent by him was really sent, he has actually promised. The whole domain of the supernatural is thus removed from the region of Belief into that of simple Hope; and in that, for anything we can see, it is likely always to remain; for we can hardly anticipate either that any positive evidence will be acquired of the direct agency of Divine Benevolence in human destiny, or that any reason will be discovered for considering the realisa­ tion of human hopes on that subject as beyond the pale of possibility. It is now to be considered whether the indulgence of hope, in the region of imagination merely, in which there is no prospect that any probable grounds of expectation will ever be obtained, is irrational, and ought to be discouraged as a departure from the rational principle of regulating our feelings as well as opinions strictly by evidence. This is a point which different thinkers are likely, for a long time at least, to decide differently, according to their individual temperament. The principles which ought to govern the cultivation and the regulation of the imagination— with a view on the one hand of prevent­ ing it from disturbing the rectitude of the intellect and the right direction of the actions and will, and on the other hand of employing it as a power for in­ creasing the happiness of life and giving elevation to the character—are a subject which has never yet engaged the serious consideration of philosophers, though some opinion on it is implied in almost all modes of thinking on human character and education. And I expect that this will hereafter be regarded as a very im­ portant branch of study for practical purposes, and the more in proportion as the weakening of positive beliefs respect­ 103 ing states of existence superior to the human leaves the imagination of higher things less provided with material from the domain of supposed reality. To me it seems that human life, small and con­ fined as it is, and as, considered merely in the present, it is likely to remain even when the progress of material and moral improvement may have freed it from the greater part of its present calamities, stands greatly in need of any wider range and greater height of aspiration for itself and its destination, which the exercise of imagination can yield to it without running counter to the evidence of fact; and that it is a part of wisdom to make the most of any, even small, probabilities on this subject, which furnish imagination with any footing to support itself upon. And I am satisfied that the cultivation of such a tendency in the imagination, provided it goes on pari passu with the cultivation of severe reason, has no necessary tendency to pervert the judgment; but that it is possible to form a perfectly sober estimate of the evidences on both sides of a question and yet to let the imagination dwell by prefer­ ence on those possibilities which are at once the most comforting and the most improving without in the least degree overrating the solidity of the grounds for expecting that these rather than any others will be the possibilities actually realised. Though this is not in the number of the practical maxims handed down by tradition and recognised as rules for the conduct of life, a great part of the hap­ piness of life depends upon the tacit observance of it. What, for instance, is the meaning of that which is always accounted one of the chief blessings of life—a cheerful disposition? What but the tendency, either from constitution or �104 THEISM habit, to dwell chiefly on the brighter side both of the present and of the future ? If every aspect, whether agree­ able or odious of everything, ought to occupy exactly the same place in our imagination which it fills in fact, and therefore ought to fill in our deliberate reason, what we call a cheerful disposi­ tion would be but one of the forms of folly, on a par except in agreeableness with the opposite disposition in which the gloomy and painful view of all things is habitually predominant. But it is not found in practice that those who take life cheerfully are less alive to rational prospects of evil or danger and more careless of making due provision against them than other people. The tendency is rather the other way, for a hopeful disposition gives a spur to the faculties and keeps all the active energies in good working order. When imagination and reason receive each its appropriate culture they do not succeed in usurping each other’s prerogatives. It is not necessary for keeping up our conviction that we must die, that we should be always brooding over death. It is far better that we should think no further about what we cannot possibly avert, than is required for observing the rules of prudence in regard to our own life and that of others, and fulfilling whatever duties devolve upon us in contemplation of the inevitable event. The way to secure this is not to think perpetually of death, but to think perpetually of our duties, and of the rule of life. The true rule of practical wisdom is not that of making all the aspects of things equally prominent in our habitual contempla­ tions, but of giving the greatest promi­ nence to those of their aspects which depend on, or can be modified by, our own conduct. In things which do not depend on us, it is not solely for the sake of a more enjoyable life that the habit is desirable of looking at things and at mankind by preference on their pleasant side; it is also in order that we may be able to love them better and work with more heart for their improvement. To what purpose, indeed, should we feed our imagination with the unlovely aspect of persons and things ? All unnecessary dwelling upon the evils of life is at best a useless expenditure of nervous force: and when I say unnecessary, I mean all that is not necessary either in the sense of being unavoidable, or in that of being needed for the performance of our duties and for preventing our sense of the reality of those evils from becoming speculative and dim. But if it is often waste of strength to dwell on the evils of life, it is worse than waste to dwell habitually on its meannesses and base­ nesses. It is necessary to be aware of them; but to live in their contemplation makes it scarcely possible to keep up in oneself a high tone of mind. The imagination and feelings become tuned to a lower pitch ; degrading instead of elevating associations become connected with the daily objects and incidents of life, and give their colour to the thoughts, just as associations of sensuality do in those who indulge freely in that sort of contemplations. Men have often felt what it is to have had their imaginations corrupted by one class of ideas, and I think they must have felt with the same kind of pain how the poetry is taken out of the things fullest of it, by mean asso­ ciations, as when a beautiful air that had been associated with highly poetical words is heard sung with trivial and vulgar ones. All these things are said in mere illustration of the principle that in the regulation of the imagination literal �GENERAL RESULT truth of facts is not the only thing to be considered. Truth is the province of reason, and it is by the cultivation of the rational faculty that provision is made for its being known always, and thought of as often as is required by duty and the circumstances of human life. But when the reason is strongly cultivated, the imagination may safely follow its own end, and do its best to make life pleasant and lovely inside the castle, in reliance on the fortifications raised and maintained by Reason round the outward bounds. On these principles it appears to me that the indulgence of hope with regard to the government of the universe and the destiny of man after death, while we recognise as a clear truth that we have no ground for more than a hope, is legitimate and philosophically defensible. The beneficial effect of such a hope is far from trifling. It makes life and human nature a far greater thing to the feelings, and gives greater strength as well as greater solemnity to all the senti­ ments which are awakened in us by our fellow-creatures, and by mankind at large. It allays the sense of that irony of Nature which is so painfully felt when we see the exertions and sacrifices of a life culminating in the formation of a wise and noble mind, only to disappear from the world when the time has just arrived at which the world seems about to begin reaping the benefit of it. The truth that life is short and art is long is from of old one of the most discourag­ ing parts of our condition ; this hope admits the possibility that the art em­ ployed in improving and beautifying the soul itself may avail for good in some other life, even when seemingly useless for this. But the benefit consists less in the presence of any specific hope than in 105 the enlargement of the general scale of the feelings; the loftier aspirations being no longer in the same degree checked and kept down by a sense of the insignifi­ cance of human life—by the disastrous feeling of “ not worth while.” The gain obtained in the increased inducement to cultivate the improvement of character up to the end of life is obvious without being specified. There is another and a most impor­ tant exercise of imagination which, in the past and present, has been kept up principally by means of religious belief, and which is infinitely precious to man­ kind, so much so that human excellence greatly depends upon the sufficiency of the provision made for it. This con­ sists of the familiarity of the imagination with the conception of a morally perfect Being, and the habit of taking the approbation of such a Being as the norma or standard to which to refer and by which to regulate our own characters and lives. This idealisation of our standard of excellence in a Person is quite possible, even when that Person is conceived as merely imaginary. But religion, since the birth of Christianity, has inculcated the belief that our highest conceptions of combined wisdom and goodness exist in the concrete in a living Being who has his eyes on us and cares for our good. Through the darkest and most corrupt periods Christianity has raised this torch on high—has kept this object of veneration and imitation before the eyes of man. True, the image of perfection has been a most imperfect, and, in many respects, a perverting and corrupting one, not only from the low moral ideas of the times, but from the mass of moral contradictions which the deluded worshipper was compelled to swallow by the supposed necessity of �io6 THEISM complimenting the Good Principle with the possession of infinite power. But it is one of the most universal, as well as of the most surprising, characteristics of human nature, and one of the most speaking proofs of the low stage to which the reason of mankind at large has ever yet advanced, that they are capable of overlooking any amount of either moral or intellectual contradic­ tions and receiving into their minds propositions utterly inconsistent with one another, not only without being shocked by the contradiction, but with­ out preventing both the contradictory beliefs from producing a part at least of their natural consequences in the mind. Pious men and women have gone on ascribing to God particular acts and a general course of will and conduct in­ compatible with even the most ordinary and limited conception of moral good­ ness, and have had their own ideas of morality, in many important particulars, totally warped and distorted, and not­ withstanding this have continued to con­ ceive their God as clothed with all the attributes of the highest ideal goodness which their state of mind enabled them to conceive, and have had their aspira­ tions towards goodness stimulated and encouraged by that conception. And it cannot be questioned that the undoubt­ ing belief of the real existence of a Being who realises our own best ideas of per­ fection, and of our being in the hands of that Being as the ruler of the universe, gives an increase of force to these feel­ ings beyond what they can receive from reference to a merely ideal conception. This particular advantage it is not possible for those to enjoy who take a rational view of the nature and amount of the evidence for the existence and attributes of the Creator. On the other hand, they are not encumbered with the moral contradictions which beset every form of religion which aims at justifying in a moral point of view the whole government of the world. They are, therefore, enabled to form a far truer and more consistent conception of Ideal Goodness than is possible to anyone who thinks it necessary to find ideal good­ ness in an omnipotent ruler of the world. The power of the Creator once recog­ nised as limited, there is nothing to dis­ prove the supposition that his goodness is complete, and that the ideally perfect character in whose likeness we should wish to form ourselves, and to whose supposed approbation we refer our actions, may have a real existence in a Being to whom we owe all such good as we enjoy. Above all, the most valuable part of the effect on the character which Chris­ tianity has produced by holding up in a Divine Person a standard of excellence and a model for imitation is available even to the absolute unbeliever, and can never more be lost to humanity. For it is Christ, rather than God, whom Chris­ tianity has held up to believers as the pattern of perfection for humanity. It is the God incarnate, more than the God of the Jews or of Nature, who, being idealised, has taken so great and salutary a hold on the modern mind. And what­ ever else may be taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left; a unique figure, not more unlike all his precursors than all his followers, even those who had the direct benefit of his personal teaching. It is of no use to say that Christ as exhibited in the Gospels is not historical, and that we know not how much of what is admir­ able has been superadded by the tradi­ tion of his followers. The tradition of �GENERAL RESULT followers suffices to insert any number of marvels, and may have inserted all the miracles which he is reputed to have wrought. But who among his disciples or among their proselytes was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels? Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee; as certainly not St. Paul, whose character and idiosyncrasies were of a totally different sort; still less the early Christian writers, in whom nothing is more evident than that the good which was in them was all derived, as they always professed that it was derived, from the higher source. What could be added and interpolated by a disciple we may see in the mystical parts of the Gospel of St. John, matter imported from Philo and the Alexandrian Platonists and put into the mouth of the Saviour in long speeches about himself such as the other Gospels contain not the slightest vestige of, though pretended to have been delivered on occasions of the deepest interest and when his principal followers were all present; most promi­ nently at the last supper. The East was full of men who could have stolen any quantity of this poor stuff, as the multi­ tudinous Oriental sects of Gnostics after­ wards • did. But about the life and sayings of Jesus there is a stamp of personal originality combined with pro­ fundity of insight which, if we abandon the idle expectation of finding scientific precision where something very different was aimed at, must place the Prophet of Nazareth, even in the estimation of those who have no belief in his inspiration, in the very first rank of the men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast. When this pre-eminent genius is com­ bined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer, and martyr to 107 that mission, who ever existed upon earth, religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on this man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity; nor, even now, would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete than to endeavour so to live that Christ would approve our life. When to this we add that, to the conception of the rational sceptic, it remains a possibility that Christ actually was what he sup­ posed himself to be—not God, for he never made the smallest pretension to that character, and would probably have thought such a pretension as blasphe­ mous as it seemed to the men who con­ demned him—but a man charged with a special, express, and unique commis­ sion from God to lead mankind to truth and virtue; we may well conclude that the influences of religion on the character which will remain after rational criticism has done its utmost against the evidences of religion are well worth preserving, and that what they lack in direct strength as compared with those of a firmer belief is more than compensated by the greater truth and rectitude of the morality they sanction. Impressions such as these, though not in themselves amounting to what can properly be called a religion, seem to me excellently fitted to aid and fortify that real, though- purely human, religion, which sometimes calls itself the Religion of Humanity and sometimes that of Duty. To the other inducements for cultivating a religious devotion to the welfare of our fellow-crtatures as an obligatory limit to every selfish aim, and an end for the direct promotion of which no sacrifice can be too great, it superadds the feeling that, in making this the rule �10S THEISM of our life, we may be co-operating with the unseen Being to whom we owe all that is enjoyable in life. One elevated feeling this form of religious idea admits of, which is not open to those who believe in the omnipotence of the good principle in the universe, the feeling of helping God—of requiting the good he has given by a voluntary co-operation which he, not being omnipotent, really needs, and by which a somewhat nearer approach may be made to the fulfilment of his purposes. The conditions of human existence are highly favourable to the growth of such a feeling, inasmuch as a battle is constantly going on, in which the humblest human creature is not incapable of taking some part, between the powers of good and those of evil, and in which every, even the smallest, help to the right side has its value in promoting the very slow and I often almost insensible progress by which good is gradually gaining ground from evil, yet gaining it so visibly at consider­ able intervals as to promise the very distant, but not uncertain, final victory of God. To do something during life, on even the humblest scale if nothing more is within reach, towards bringing this consummation ever so little nearer, is the most animating and invigorating thought which can inspire a human creature; and that it is destined, with or without supernatural sanctions, to be the Religion of the Future I cannot entertain a doubt. But it appears to me that supernatural hopes, in the degree and kind in which what I have called rational scepticism does not refuse to sanction them, may still contribute not a little to give to this religion its due ascendancy over the human mind. The next R. P. A. Cheap Reprint will be W. R. Greg’s CREED OF CHRIS­ TENDOM, carefully revised by Dr. W. R. Washington Sullivan, who will also contribute an Introduction to the work. �AD VERTISEMENTS 109 SOME PUBLICATIONS OF THE R.P.A. ♦ ANONYMOUS. Mr. Balfour’s Apologetics Critically Examined. 232 pp.; cloth, 3s. 6d. net, by post 3s. iod. 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Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1904 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G756 RA1634 N485 Subject The topic of the resource Religion Nature Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Nature, the utility of religion, and theism), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Nature NSS Religion Religion-Philosophy Theism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/ebe893fb8503ebae451044a21622a0c8.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=hrZ%7EcoO9Ql7yZUCuW3O7w4F8FwP4pe2RJSL9D3cFsikHE2PZIgrBZDH0-n7g2-NOCUGZsn7EZeocA9IAFQqHnq%7EBt3gDvQrHpJ2tdUahN7%7EzoPObYJBMS3l%7EWdCpTKUFyNgQ4%7EUwJKvHxE1RFkoRS-McoTMSGkxqcX48hfDE6g7Kv-3CyCNZFmCVSG14o5N6lZWMHDYSNPHgq71KuF9qge4vBXAJXqnWQ9B5WqDxPYt%7EgJWaVNkpRD4XX6x9a95JjzGPcyxXL0q20ulFWOynR1WAp-ifeJlPTeOXY9-pTn9i24fkf87askdjihRbMDSQtDC00AM9-XUSEDpUZA9kvQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 00866b7d9d82d7a4be606497a48ab661 PDF Text Text Cl 2^ Ph ases of Atheism, DESCRIBED, EXAMINED, AND ANSWERED. BY SOPHIA DOBSON COLLET. “ An Atheist by choice is a phenomenon yet to be discovered, among thousands who are Atheists by conviction.”—The Reasoner, July 31, 1859. “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless till it resteth in Thee.”—St. Augustine’s Confessions, Book I., s. 1. I860. �LONDON : JOHN WATTS, PRINTER, 147, FLEET STREET, E.C. �PREFACE. The following Essay is reprinted, with revisions and additions, from the American Christian Examiner for November, 1859. Its original form as a magazine article will explain its limitation to the writings of a few authors only. My object has been to show—first, that the purely Secular view which, regarding religion as a mere intellectual uncertainty, endeavours to avoid that uncertainty by virtually eliminating the spiritual element from daily life, misses the richest and highest influences that life can receive, and cramps the full and natural development of the human soul. Secondly, that the more ideal Atheism which escapes this error, does so only to fall into another equally serious. Preserving the religious sentiment, and alive to all the intuitions of ideality and devotion, yet unable to link them with any source of personal trust beyond the reach of human frailty, “ Religious Atheism” struggles at every step under the impos­ sible attempt to make the finite human conscience and the frail earth-bound affections meet the infinite claims made upon both by the tasking realities of life; and under the perpetual, haunting sense of grief and failure thence resulting, is driven to question —and most justly so—whether the absence of a Divine Helper from the world of moral conflict, does not virtually amount to the Supremacy of Evil. Those who have the happiness to believe in the God of Con­ science as the Life of their life, ever leading them on through tempest and calm, humiliation and conquest, to a deeper sym­ pathy and a completer self-surrender to His infinite goodness, are surely bound to do all that in them lies to lift aside the obstacles which cast these shadows of Atheism on the minds and lives of their fellow-creatures. No one can be more sensible than myself to how small a share in such a work this brief Essay can pretend. But if only a few of the suggestions here made should lead any of my Atheist readers but a single step nearer to the God whom, under the names of “ Truth ” and “Duty,” they may already have unconsciously sought and served, these pages will not have been written in vain. London, January, 1860. S. D. C. �■ _______ ■- H �PHASES OF ATHEISM. 1. The Life and Character of Richard Carlile. By George Jacob Holyoake. 1849. 2. The Last Trial by Jury for Atheism in England; a Fragment of Autobiography. By George Jacob Holyoake. 1851. 3. The Case of Thomas Pooley. By G. J. Holyoake. 1857. 4. The Trial of Theism. By G. J. Holyoake. 1858. 5. Shadows of the Past. By Lionel H. Holdreth. 1856. 6. The Affirmations of Secularism ; in Seven Letters to G. J. Holyoahe. By L. H. Holdreth. Published in the Reasoner for 1857. 7. Conscience and Consequence. A Tale for the Times. By Lionel H. Holdreth. Published in the Reasoner for 1858. London : Holyoake and Co. Among the many signs of the times which demand the study of religious thinkers, few are so little known in proportion to their importance as the recent developments which Atheism has assumed among the working-classes of England. These developments are in many respects widely different from those which were current about thirty or forty years ago. There is no less a chasm between the Deism of Thomas Paine and the “ Natural Religion ” of Theodore Parker, than between the crude “ infidelity ” of Richard Carlile and the devout Stoicism of Lionel Holdreth. We do not thoroughly appreciate any form of religion till we know what are the classes of minds that reject it, and what sort of principles they accept in pre­ ference. And when the rejection of religion is itself tinged with a religious spirit, we may safely predict, not only that the current creed is too narrow for the age, but that a wider and deeper faith is already striking its roots in the hearts of men. The popularization of Atheism in the working-class mind of Eng­ land owes its first impulse to the labours of Richard Carlile, the editor of “ The Republican.” Untutored, antagonistic, and coarse, but brave, devoted, and sincere, he initiated and sustained a twenty years’ struggle for the free publication of the extremest heresies in politics and religion, at the expense of nine years’ imprisonment (at different times, ranging from 1817 to 1835) to himself, and frequent incar­ cerations of his wife, sister, and shopmen. This movement, though vigorous to the point of fanaticism, was not widely supported, and it virtually died out, as a sort of drawn game between the government and the heretics. A somewhat milder revival of it took place in 1840-1843, when “ The Oracle of Reason” was set on foot by a few energetic young Atheists, and several prosecutions took place. It B �2 PHASES OF ATHEISM. was this movement which first introduced to the public the name of George Jacob Holyoake, who, having served his apprenticeship to propagandism by a six months’ imprisonment, rose in a few years to be the acknowledged leader of the sect. Under his influence, it has not only increased immensely in numbers, but has passed into a far higher stage of character, both moral and intellectual. This is strikingly illustrated in the case of Thomas Pooley, a poor, half­ crazed Cornish labourer, who was in 1857 sentenced to a long im­ prisonment for “ blasphemy.” Fifteen years previously, Mr. Holyoake’s own imprisonment excited but little notice beyond a small circle, and not one petition was presented to Parliament for his release. But by the time that Pooley’s case occurred, the Freethinking movement was strong enough to reach the sympathies of liberal men in all sects, and thus to effect the reversal of an iniquitous * sentence. This event also illustrates the progress of Freethought in another direction. The coarse language for which the poor labourer was indicted—language only too frequent in the pre-IIolyoake era—found no defenders among the Secularists who petitioned for his release, but was unanimously objected to, as degrading to Freethought. And this double change, bringing both parties one step nearer to each other, is, there can be no doubt, mainly owing to the good sense, rectitude, and devotedness of George Jacob Holyoake. But Mr. Holyoake’s influence is not the only one observable in the Atheist party. Like many others, that party now possesses its right, left, and centre. For the improvement which took its rise from the establishment of the Reasoner, in 1846, has gradually come to tell upon the mixed elements of the Freethinking party ; and in 1855 a sort of reactionary “split” took place, and the ultra-Atheistic Secu­ larists set up a rival journal, the Znveó'tig,ator,f for the avowed pur­ pose of returning to the old traditions of hatred and ridicule, in opposi­ tion to Mr. Holyoake’s more catholic and fraternal policy. The utterly shameless spirit in which the Investigator habitually treats of the human side of religion is quite sufficient to stamp its incapacity for touching what pertains to the Divine; and its malignant and calumnious enmity towards Mr. Holyoake is a sufficient indication of the divergence between his advocacy and that of “ Old Infidelity,” as it is expressively termed. Counting this reactionary party as the lowest development of English Atheism, we next come to the party of the centre, namely, that party which is represented by Mr. Holy­ oake. This is much the largest of the three. Its idea may be stated in Mr. Holyoake’s words,—“ that the light of duty may be * Pooley was sentenced to twenty-one months’ imprisonment. He was par­ doned at the end of five months, most of which was spent in the county lunatic asylum, to which it soon became necessary to remove him. He was so judi­ ciously treated there, however, that on the receipt of his pardon he was restored to his family. t Delunct in August, 1859. �PHASES OF ATHEISM. 3 seen, that a life of usefulness may be led, and the highest desert may be won, though the origin of all things be hidden from us, and the revelations of every religious sect be rejected ;”* in short, that Life, Nature, and Morals are self-sufficient, and independent of religion. Beyond this aspect of Atheism is yet another, numbering at present no definitely attached adherents besides its enthusiastic propounder, but evidently received with pleasure by many listeners during the last three years. This new Gospel owns to the paradoxical title of Religious Atheism, and is put forth by Mr. Lionel Holdreth, the most cultivated and coherent thinker of whom the Atheist party can boast. He does not, in fact, belong to the working-classes either by birth or educa­ tion, although his sympathies with them are of the warmest. A little volume of poems, entitled “ Shadows of the Past,” is the only separate volume he has published; and all his other communications to the Freethinking public have been made through the columns of the Reasoner. The reactionary “ infidels ” hate religion: Mr. Holyoake wishes to be neutral to it: Mr. Holdreth desires to re-incarnate it in another form. Such are the three phases of the Atheistic party in England,—the central body shading off into the two others at either extremity. Passing by the first section, as presenting mere hollow word-controversy, untinged by any real passion for Truth, we pro­ pose to examine the second and third sections at some length. The disintegrated state of Theology in the present, day has given rise to the necessity for preaching the Gospel of Free Utterance, wholly distinct from any decision as to what is to be uttered. To preach this Gospel has been, in the main, Mr. Holyoake’s vocation. But now that the right to speak has been so largely won, the question arises, “ What have you to say ?” and the metaphysical and spiritual bearings of the subject come into prominence. To this question Mr. Holyoake has endeavoured to give some coherent reply in his recent work, “ The Trial of Theism,” in which he has reprinted and revised the chief papers on theological subjects which he had written during the previous ten years, with other matter here first published. It is a singular book; utterly destitute of anything like systematic thought, and scarcely less deficient in any arrangement of its materials ; pain­ fully unequal, both in substance and tone. Frequently we come upon noble, earnest, manly writing, which indicates real intellectual power, aud fine perception; then comes some passage so puerile, so weak, so indiscriminating, as to cause quite a revulsion of feeling in the reader’s mind. What makes this frequently-recurring contrast more singular is, that those chapters which are reprints of former papers are mostly revised with minute care, the alterations often indi­ cating delicate discrimination and real expansion of mind. (Chapter 27, which is a reprint of “ The Logic of Death,” is an instance of this.) Yet the entirely new matter is often of quite inferior quality, both in Cowper Street Discussion, p. 221. �4 PHASES OF ATHEISM. thought and expression. It would seem inexplicable how a writer who could give us the better portions of this book could endure to put forth some other parts of it, were not this inequality a pheno­ menon of such frequent recurrence in literature as to be one of its standing anomalies. Intellectual harmony is almost as rare as moral consistency, and men of even the finest genius too often cultivate one side of their nature to the positive neglect of others. The prominent side of Mr. Holyoake’s nature is the moral and practical. He belongs to the concrete world of men, rather than to the abstract World of ideas. The best parts of his book are the delineations of character, some of which are very felicitous. Chapter 14, on Mr. Francis New­ man, and Chapter 29, on “Unitarian Theism,” give the high-water mark of his religious character-sketches. A man who could thus appreciate the leading ideas of his opponents might (one would think) do great things in theological reform. But note the limiting condi­ tion of his power ;—he can appreciate these ideas when incarnated in another human mind, but it is mainly through his human sympathies that he does so. Neither the religious instincts nor the speculative intuitions are sufficiently magnetic and passionate in his own nature to force their way to an independent creative existence. Whenever he turns to the region of abstract thought, his power seems to depart from him. And this book, which deals almost exclusively with speculative themes, is a marked illustration of it. It manifests all the weaknesses, and but very little of the best strength, of his mind. Thus it affords no clue to the real benefits which, in spite of grave errors, his movement has produced for many among the working classes; while it shows plainly the barriers which must ever limit any move­ ment, however sincere, which excludes religion from the field of human life. We ought not, however, to quit this point without quoting the author’s apology for some of the imperfections of his work:— “ If anything written on the following pages give any Theist the impression that his views, devoutly held, are treated with dogmatism or contempt, the writer retracts the offending phrases. Theological opinion is now so diversified, that he has long insisted on the propriety of classifying, in controversy, the schools of thought, and identifying the particular type of each person, so that any remarks applied to him alone shall not be found ‘ at large ’ reflecting upon those to whom they were never intended to apply. If just cause of offence is found in this book, it will be through some inadvertent neglect of this rule. “ The doctrine is quite just, that crude or incomplete works ought to be withheld from publication ; and the author reluctantly prints so much as is here presented. If this book be regarded, as it might with some truth, as a species of despatch from the field of battle, the reader will tolerate the absence of art and arrangement in it. The plan contemplated—that of taking the authors on the side of Theism �PHASES OF ATHEISM. 5 who represented chronological phases of thought—required more time than the writer could command. From these pages, as they stand, some unfamiliar with the present state of Theistical discussion uiay obtain partial direction in untrodden paths. Hope ot leisure in which to complete anything systematic has long delayed the appearance of this book, after the writer had seen that many might be served even by so slender a performance. At length he confesses, in a literary sense (if he may so use words which bear a spiritual meaning), — ‘ Time was he shrank from what was right, From fear of what was wrong: He would not brave the sacred fight, Because the foe was strong. ‘ But now he casts that finer sense And sorer shame aside ; Such dread of sin was indolence, Such aim at Heaven was pride.’—Lyra Apostólica." * In seeking for the central pivot of the movement which Mr. Holyoake represents, we find it in the Independence and Self-sufficiency of Ethics,—their independence of Theology, their sufficiency in them­ selves to the needs of man. This doctrine is a compound of several elements, some of which are doubtless valuable truths, while others are serious errors. To disentangle these from each other is now our task. The following passages sufficiently sketch Mr. Holyoakes position. The first is from an early number of the Reasoner, the second will be found in the “ Trial of Theism — “Anti-religious controversy, which was originally, and ever should be, but a means of rescuing morality from the dominion of future world * speculation, became an end,—noisy, wordy, vexed, capricious, angry, imputative, recriminative, and interminable. “ To reduce this chaos of aims to some plan, to discriminate objects, to proportion attention to them, to make controversy just as well as earnest, and, above all, to rescue morality from the ruins of theological arguments, were the intentions of the Reasoner. It began by announ­ cing itself ‘ Utilitarian in Morals,’ and resting upon utility as a basis. In all reforms it took unequivocal interest, and only assailed Theology when Theology assailed Utility. The Reasoner aimed, not so much to create a party, as to establish a purpose. It threw aside the name of ‘ Infidel,’ because it was chiefly borne by men who were disbelievers in secret, but who had seldom the honour to avow it openly. It threw aside the term ‘ Sceptic’ as a noun, as the name of a party, because it wished to put an end to a vain and cavilling race, who had made the negation of Theology a profession, and took advantage of their dis­ belief in the Church to disbelieve in honour and truth.’’f “ Let any one look below the mere surface of pulpit declamation, * Preface to “ The Trial of Theism.” t “ Reasoner,” No. 57. �6 PHASES OF ATHEISM. and ask himself two questions : What has even Atheism, on the whole, meant ? What has it, on the whole, sought, even in its negative and least favourable aspect ? It has, in modern times, disbelieved all ac­ counts of the origin of nature by an act of creation, and of the govern­ ment of nature by a Supreme Being distinct from nature. It has felt these accounts to be unintelligible and misleading, and has suggested that human dependence and morals, in their w’idest sense, should be founded on a basis independent of Scriptural authority; and it has done this under the conviction, expressed or unexpressed, that greater sim­ plicity, unanimity, and earnestness of moral effort would be the result. This is what it has meant, and this is what it has sought. The main popular force of speculative argument has been to show that morals ought to stand on ground independent of the uncertain and ever-con­ tested dogmas of the churches.”f Now this desire to sever life and ethics from “ the dominion of future-world speculation,” is not without its true side. When the • great synthetic conceptions of life which arose out of deep religious impulses are breaking up through the imperfections of the doctrinal forms in which they are incarnated, it is necessary to deal with each element separately, before the general mind can reach the point at which it becomes possible to recast the whole. And in these periods of transition, we often see special teachers whose vocation seems to be the preaching of those supplementary truths which are needed to bridge the chasms—to detach moral realities from the crude doctrinal form in which they were no longer credible, and so to prepare us for a completer view, in which they shall hold a truer position. The connection of Morals with Theology has hitherto been frequently taught on an incomplete basis—namely, that the ground of duty was only to be found in God’s command. Thus whatever was held to be God’s command was exacted from men as duty; and any criticism of the supposed command, as violating conscience or reason, was at once condemned as rebellion—God’s will being represented as the only criterion of right. In early and unreflective stages of development, the errors of this doctrine were mostly latent; but when the moral and intellectual elements in spiritual life arrive at a distinct and separate existence, a fuller and more discriminating estimate of the truth becomes imperative. That Moral Obligation is inherently sacred, and that the sense of this obligation does not necessarily imply belief in a Person who claims our obedience, is true; and it is a truth which needs to be clearly recognised, and which is recognised by many of the most religious thinkers of the day. It is also true that a common possession of moral truth forms a positive ground of union for its votaries ; and this, too, is important in an age when so much differ­ ence exists between good men on religious subjects. So far as Mr. Holyoake has preached the independent foundation and positive nature f “ Trial of Theism,” p. 135. �PHASES OF ATHEISM. 7 of Ethics, he has been working on solid ground, and his work has been productive of useful results, which may long outlive their polemic environment. But when he proceeds to erect these doctrines into a basis of neutrality to religion, he enters new ground. He does not actually say that Ethical Truth is the only supersensible reality attainable by man; but he implies that it is so to himself, and he evidently believes it to be so for an increasing majority of mankind. That his Atheism is suspensive rather than dogmatic, is indubitable from many touching passages scattered throughout his writings ; but * the fact remains, that he deems this suspensive position capable of being incorporated as a permanent element in the philosophy of life, not only for himself, but for human creatures in general—that he studiously cultivates neutrality to religion as a principle of action. Baffled by the difficulties which obstruct his intellectual comprehension of the universe, he has no spiritual apprehension of its fundamental realities sufficiently vivid to fall back upon ; and although “ in hours of meditation he confronts with awe the great Mystery,” his “ baffled speculation returns again to the Secular sphere,”f and he deems it possible and desirable to divide the secular from the spiritual with a sharpness that can entitle the former to support a whole philosophy of life. Now such a philosophy is quite conceivable on the supposi­ tion that the spiritual does not and cannot exist; and for thoroughly materialised Atheists such a philosophy is consistent and right. This is the ground taken by the reactionary “ Infidels.” But Mr Holyoake evidently means something different from this : he means that a man may pass through life as satisfactorily as man can, without being thoroughly convinced of the truth of either Theism or Atheism; that the chief part of human life is independent of religion; that to the Secularist’s aspirations “ the idea of God is not essential, nor the * “ I see the influence men can exert on society, and that life is a calculable process. But why is it so ? There my curiosity is baffled, and my knowledge ends. In vain I look back, hoping to unravel that mysterious destiny with which we are all so darkly bound. That is the channel through which all my con­ sciousness seems to pass out into a sea of wonder; and if ever the orient light of Deity breaks in on me, it will, I think, come in that direction. The presence of law in mind is to me the greatest fact in nature.”—“ Trial of Theism,” p. 69. “ When pure Theists, as Mazzini and Piofessor Newman, explain their fine conception of God as the Deity of duty, or of moral aspiration, the imagination, borne on the golden wings of a reverence untinged by tenor, soars into the radiant light of a possible God. But the Possible is not the Actual. Hope is not proof. . . . “ Had I been taught to conceive of Deity as either of tbe writers just named conceive of Him, I think it likely that I should never have ceased to hold Theism as true: and if it were not misleading to one’s self to covet opinion, I could even wish to be able to share their convictions. But having once well parted from my early belief, I am free to inquire and resolute to know,And I seek for evidence which will not only satisfy my present judgment, but evidence with which I can defy the judgment of others. He who can supply me with this can command me.” —Ibid., pp. 115, 113. f Ibid., p. 115. �8 PHASES OF ATHEISM. denial of the idea necessary.”* “ What help has the Theist which the Atheist has not also he asks, evidently unaware how the per­ ception of religious reality modifies the whole of life, altering its pro­ portions, and often even reversing its purposes. Take, for instance, the subject of death. How widely different are the feelings with which we must regard the vicissitudes and problems of life, on the supposition that our career is not ended by death, from those feelings which are forced upon us by the supposition that it is so terminated! This is a case in which the reality must lie either with the one alternative or the other : either we shall, or we shall not, survive our present existence; and except in those cases where excessive misery or mental torpor has produced a state of abnormal indifference to life altogether, a neutral feeling on the subject is scarcely possible. Our affections, hopes, pursuits—the whole conduct and tone of our lives —must inevitably be influenced to an incalculable extent by the con­ clusion which we adopt. It is quite true that Duty is equally binding on us, whether our term of life be mortal or immortal. But the absence of a futurity must alter the line of our duty in an infinity of directions, and it is unavoidable that we act from one hypothesis or the other. Even suspensive Atheism, though not shutting out the chance of a futurity, is obliged to act on the other theory. Mr. Holyoake, though far more open to spiritual influences than his party generally, is obliged to base his world on the Secular alone. His superiority on these points is purely individual, and is constantly overborne in party and polemic life by the inevitable tendency of his principles. There is an instinctive feeling in men’s minds that religion is either a great reality or a great mistake, but that it cannot be a matter of indifference. And this perception is beginning to show itself in the Secularist party. They are dividing more and more visibly into positive and negative sections,—the one repudiating religion, the other reapproaching it more or less distinctly.^ For human nature is so constituted that men cannot for ever rest at the parting of the ways. Individuals there have always been, to whom a peculiar combination of temperament and culture renders a decision on the great problems of life less easy to the intellect, and perhaps less imperative to the character, than to the generality of mankind ; but, whatever other services to human welfare such minds may render, they cannot aid in the development of those primary spiritual intui­ tions which have formed the deepest basis of human life in all ages. But Mr. Holyoake may plead that it is quite legitimate to prefer one of two influences without absolutely pronouncing against the other, if the one be certain and the other uncertain,—the one close at hand and the other .afar off. And this is his view of the Secular as contrasted with the Spiritual. He does not presume to say that God * “ Trial of Theism,” p. 175. f Ibid., p. 121. J See Appendix A. �PHASES OP ATHEISM. 9 does not exist ; but he holds that, whether God is or is not, the * course of human affairs is left to humanity alone,—that human effort is the only practical agency which it is of any use to invoke. Take the following passages, for instance, from “The Two Providences.” “ It is said we are without God in the world ; but remember, if it be so, that it is not our fault. We would rather that the old theories were true, and that light could be had in darkness, and help in the hour of danger. It better comports with human feebleness and harsh destiny that it should be so. But if the doctrine be not true, surely it is better that we know it. Could the doctrine of Divine aid be reduced to intelligible conditions, religion would be reinstated in its ancient influence. For a reasonable certainty and an unfailing trust, men would fulfil any conditions possible to humanity. Faith no longer supplies implicit confidence, and the practical tone of our day is impatient of that teaching which keeps the word of promise to the ear, and breaks it to the hope. “ Could we keep before us the first sad view of life which breaks in upon the working man, whether he be a white slave or a black one, we should be able to see self-trust from a more advantageous point. We should learn at once sternness and moderation. Do we not find ourselves at once in an armed world where Might is God and Poverty is fettered? Every stick and stone, every blade of grass, every bird and flower, every penniless man, woman, and child, has an owner in this England of ours no less than in New Orleans. The bayonet or baton bristles round every altar, at the corner of every lane and every street. Effort, in its moral and energetic sense, is the only study worth a moment’s attention by the workman or the slave..................... “Now it is not needful to contend that prayer never had any efficacy,—it may have been the source of material advantage once ; but the question is, Will it bring material aid now ? It is in vain that the miner descends into the earth with a prayer on his lips, unless he carries a Davy lamp in his hand. A ship-load of clergymen would be in danger of perishing, if you suffer the Amazon once to take fire. During the prevalence of a pestilence an hospital is of more value than a college of theologians. When the cholera visitation is near, the physician, and not the priest, is our best dependence, and those whom medical aid cannot save must inevitably die. Is it not, therefore, merciful to say that science is the Providence of life ? . . . Science represents the available source of help to man, ever augment­ ing in proportion to his perspicacity, study, courage, and industry. We do not confound science with nature. Nature is the storehouse of riches, but when its spontaneous treasures are exhausted, science enables us to renew them and to augment them. It is the well* “ Does the most absolute Atheism do more than declare the secret of nature to be unrevealed ? ”—“ Trial of Theism,” p. 143. �10 PHASES OF ATHEISM. devised method of using nature. It is in this sense that Science is the Providence of Man. It is not pretended that Science is a perfect dependence; on the contrary, it is admitted to be narrow, and but partially developed; but though it should be represented as a limited dependence, we must not overlook the fact that it is the only special dependence that man has; and however infantine now, it is an evergrowing power.” * But in what respect is it needful that the study of Nature, and the methodising of its agencies for the material benefit of man, should be regarded as invalidating the existence of a Divine purpose in Nature ? Surely nothing can be more congruous with Theism than that Nature and Man should be found in harmony with each other. In exploring our relation to the home in which we are placed, and in utilizing every material within our reach, we are in no sense turning away from the Author and Animator of Nature, but rather acquainting ourselves with His infinite resources of power and beauty. The real question between the Theist and the Atheist lies far deeper down ; it is, whether we have any means of reaching the Power displayed in the Universe beyond that which we gain from the study of Nature,— whether that power is a Conscious Soul, with which we can com­ mune, and whence we can derive help and guidance when the visible world ceases to afford us aid,—whether, when “Nature”is dumb, He will speak,—whether, when all “materialadvantage” shall have been reaped by material science, the affections and the conscience must yet be left entirely to themselves, possessing no power of contact with any Personal Reality beyond that of erring fellow-mortals. Yet, if such contact be possible, it must affect our moral lite to an incalcu­ lable extent; and the moral life of those who do not cherish any relation to that Personal Reality must miss one of its most important elements. In contrast, therefore, to the Secularist theory, on the one hand, which holds that Ethics as a whole, both in theory and prac­ tice, is attainable without Religion,—and to the orthodox theory, on the other hand, which maintains that the unassisted human mind can neither know nor do anything in Morals without the conscious recog­ nition of Religion,—we hold that Conscience and Faith are, each of them, primary sentiments in man; that each may arise independ­ ently of the other, and may grow up separately, to a certain point of development,—a point varying relatively to the temperament and culture of each individual,—but that beyond that point each tends to call forth a need of the other, and deteriorates if that need be not supplied. He in whose glowing heart spiritual love precedes the strong sense of duty becomes a bigot or a dreamer, if his idea of God long fails to suggest a free and reasonable standard of conscience. And he who finds his purely human conscience really all-sufficient to his needs, can scarcely have much fulness of moral life requiring to * “Trial of Theism,” Chap. XXII. �PHASES OF ATHEISM. 11 be guided. And here it is to the point to remark, that the absence of any reliance on such higher Personality has a visibly cramping effect on the minds of Ethical Atheists. There are innumerable cases in life where human sympathy and reciprocation must fail ; nay, where the very fact of virtue implies the renunciation of sympathy. In such cases it may too often be seen that the Atheist is thrown back upon himself, in a way which tempts him either to yield the point for the sake of sympathy, or to hold by the point in a way which is apt to overstrain his sense of duty done. In Atheistic defences we frequently see a recapitulation of facts brought forward to de­ monstrate the rectitude of the party, or of its champions, which even generous minds cannot save from a tone of “ self-righteousness,” while to commonplace speakers the danger is not even perceptible. Now it is fatal to the healthiness of virtue to look back in this way at its own achievements. The love of Goodness is kept safe and sound by being constantly directed to that which is before, and not behind it. Otherwise, it is apt to sink into ?elf-complacency with having been virtuous, and rather to test its aspirations by its perform­ ances, than to feel that the only good of its performances is derived from the aspirations which they but imperfectly realise. Broadly speaking, there is a certain climate of tendency observable in dif­ ferent communions—a gravitation of influences towards certain levels, —which determines the tone of average minds, and which the higher thinkers only escape by lying open to other inlets of thought and feeling. The Secularistic idealisation of human duty as the only source of moral life, must ever give rise to the tendency to glory in “merits.” It is inevitable that this temptation should come to minds vividly conscious of honest and faithful purpose, and anxious to defend that purpose against coarse and base aspersions, but not con­ scious of receiving, from an Infinite Source above them, far more than the most devoted of human lives can ever re-express, and whose human fatigues and disappointments are thus unrefreshed by that repose and re-invigoration which are essential to the elasticity of the highest human endeavour. Now this strain on the nobler faculties which results from the absence of Divine sympathy, must necessarily vary greatly according to the need of sympathy in different minds. Many upright, unimpulsive men, in whom conscience scarcely rises into affection, do not feel it at all. Others, of generous and affectionate natures, are yet so far free from the disturbing influences of passion as to be able to live habitually from a sense of duty alone. To observers at a little distance, the benumbing effect of a merely Secular faith may be visible in such natures, confirming their constitutional defects, and cutting them off from rousing influences; yet the Secularist’s own mind may not be distinctly conscious of the want. But now and then comes a passionate soul, that feels the need of the Divine with a keenness that cannot be suppressed. The mind may be entirely per­ �12 PHASES OF ATHEISM. suaded of the untenability of Theism; but the intellectual convic­ tion in such cases is at war with the whole bent of the soul. To such a nature, the needs of the affections must be recognised dis­ tinctly, whether for satisfaction or abnegation : they are primary reali­ ties which cannot be passed by in any accepted theory of human life. And here does Ethical Atheism culminate in the religious sentiment, not only virtually, but avowedly, as we shall find by passing on to the latest development of Atheism, as propounded by Mr. Lionel Holdreth. With Mr. Holdreth the relation of Ethics to Theology takes an altogether different aspect from that which it assumes in Mr. Holyoake’s system. Mr. Iloldreth utterly eschews all neutrality; his Atheism is far more decisive than that of his friend. Ilis Secularism is confessedly based on the rejection of Spiritualism, and he is fully aware of their essential incompatibility. But, on the other hand, his natural feelings toward religion are of a very different nature from those manifested by Mr. Holyoake. The latter can respect the reli­ * gious sentiment, but he does not appear to have ever been deeply conscious of it in himself, since the unreflecting period of his boy­ hood ; all the realities of life which take hold of him most strongly, bring no irrepressible longing for anything beyond humanity. But with Mr. Iloldreth the religious sentiment is woven into his very nature, and the intensity of his Atheism makes this only the more apparent. The first specimens we shall present of his writings are two passages which, taken together, strike the key-note of his whole conception of life and faith. “ In advocating the claim of Secularism to rank among religions, and in asserting its inherent superiority to all other forms of reli­ gion in point of truth, purity, and directness, I had in view, not merely the assertion of a fact, but the attainment for Secularism of a position, without which I do not conceive it possible that it can maintain its ground. I wish to render it stable by defining and con­ solidating its principles ; I wish to weaken the enemy by depriving them of the monopoly of that principle—the religious—which always must exercise a paramount influence over the minds of men. Human nature is not a mere bundle of faculties, under the direction of a supreme and infallible intellect; if it were, then we might rely solely upon the intellect, not merely to teach men what is right, but to compel them to follow its teaching. But as things are constituted it is only the first of these points which the intellect can achieve; we have to look for some other motive influence which shall induce men to do what they know to be right. This can only be found in their emotions or affections. It is on these that the religious senti­ ment has its hold, and therefore, apart from the religious sentiment, _• He calls Mr. Newman’s work on “The Soul” “a book conceived in the highest genius of proselytism, which must command respect for the religious sentiment wherever it is read.”—“ Trial of Theism,” p. 60. �PHASES OF ATHEISM. 13 you can rarely hope to find steady and thoroughgoing virtue in any life; never, except in minds peculiarly well balanced by nature, and well disciplined by the education of life and action, of teachers and of circumstances. Here and there, it is true, you may find a man or woman who docs right by habit or by impulse ; but these are motives which can hardly be relied upon to resist the pressure of strong temptation. For the strength here needed we must look to a prin­ ciple which can exercise complete control over the affections, and wield their whole power in such a struggle ; a commander-in-chief of the faculties of our moral nature. Such a principle is that of Reli­ gion, and such is no other. This principle is embodied in the faith of the Christian and the Deist, of Socrates and of Paul, of Isaiah and of Mazzini, of Plato, ay, and of Paine. None of these were or are Atheists; they write and speak of a God in tones of reverence and adoration ; and it is in this religious sentiment which is embodied in their creed that they find consolation in sorrow, and strength in the hour of conflict. Such a strength and such a consolation must be found in any faith which is ever to attain an empire over the hearts of men; such a principle of power must there be in a creed, call it philosophical or religious, on which our morality is to be based, and by which our life is to be directed, or we shall be sure to find it fail us in our hour of need. And I maintain that, as a fact, Secularism, as taught by Mr. Holyoake, and as accepted by myself, does contain such a principle, in its religious sense of duty; a duty derived from natural principles, and referable to natural laws; a duty binding on men as fractions of mankind, and on mankind as a portion of the cosmic whole.”* “ I believe in no true, honourable, virtuous life but in this reli­ gion ; and in proportion as the supernatural creeds have contained this essential religious element, have they been useful and saving faiths. Christianity had far more of it than Paganism, Theism than Christianity; but pure Secularism is the pure religion—faith in a grand principle its sole guide of life, its sole source of strength, unalloyed by timid dependence on a Father’s arm, unpolluted by selfish thoughts of a reward hereafter. To this Religion of Duty— the One True Faith, the one true principle giving life and spirit to the bodies of false doctrine wherein it hath been incorporated—do I look for all strength for each of us, all guidance for all men, all progress for mankind.’’^ In this remarkable declaration there are three main propositions :— First. That “ any faith which is to attain an empire over the hearts of men” must contain “a principle which can exercise complete con­ trol over the affections, and wield their whole power in the struggle." No truer ideal of faith could be laid down than this. Second. “That Secularism does contain such a principle, in its religious sense of duty.” * “ Reasoner,” No. 600. t “ Reasoner,” No. 579. �14 PHASES OF ATHEISM. Third. That Secularism is “superior to all other forms of religion in truth, purity, and directness,” because it holds this sense of duty unalloyed by any dependence on a Father, or any hope of a hereafter. Now that “ Secularism, as taught by Mr. Holyoake, and accepted by Mr. Holdreth, does contain a religious sense of duty,” may be readily granted. Mr. Holdreth elsewhere says, that “ Sacrifice for the sake of others, not in the hope of future reward, is a principle which, though glimpses of it were occasionally visible through the mists of the future to Prophets and Apostles, waited for its full recognition until a faith arose which knew nothing of an eternal retribution.”* And there is a truth in this which should not be forgotten. The absence of any settled hope of futurity does throw into keener relief the absolute disinterestedness of virtue; and although there have been Theists, as well as Atheists, who leave the question of immortality as an insoluble problem, yet it is the noblest characteristic of Ethical Atheism to have preached, deliberately and fearlessly, that virtue is a present rectitude, utterly irrespective of pleasant “ consequences,” whether in this world or in any other. The popularization of this truth is one of the most valuable contri­ butions that Secularism has made to the moral education of Free Thought. But it is one thing to assert that Moral Obligation is a primary element of our nature, “ derived from natural principles, and referable to natural laws and it is quite another thing to main­ tain that no extra-human Personality exists, of whose parental rela­ tion to us, those natural laws are but an outward visible expression.! It is one thing to assert that the idea of virtue excludes, per se, the very notion of reward; and it is quite another thing to maintain that our sentient existence cannot extend beyond our life in this visible plar.et. The connection between ethical truth and cosmical fact is one that cannot be thus assumed a priori. Moreover, although the ethical truth on which Mr. Holdreth bases his whole system is one which can scarcely be over estimated in its own place, it is’clearly incapable of fulfilling all the requirements of the ideal which he previously sketched as essential to a complete Faith. Is Duty, as a matter of fact, “ a principle that can exercise complete control over the affections, and wield their whole power in the struggle?” We apprehend that no mortal soul, however saintly, could ansiver “Yes.” It is true that almost any amount of self-sacrificing heroism may be gradually attained by a dutiful nature, even to a degree that would at first appear incalculably beyond the power of human nature to support. Let the capacity for “service and endurance ” be granted to the full, untainted by any notion of “ reward,” either in earth or heaven. But the province of effort, which is active and voluntary, is distinct from the province of affection, which is receptive and involun­ tary. Duty may, indeed, be taught to exercise control over the * “ Reasoner,” No. 596. t See Appendix B. �PHASES OF ATHEISM. 15 affections, in the sense of coercing them; but that is clearly not the sort of control of which Mr. Holdreth is here speaking. The con­ trolling principle that he desiderates is one that shall “ wield the whole power of the affections in the struggle." It must therefore respond to their fullest longings, and dominate them by an Objective Reality that can rightly command them. But how is this possible if the object loved be an unconscious one ? Only a person (in the sense of a conscious mind) can wield the whole power of the affec­ tions, for only a person can reciprocate them—and what affection ever comes to its full maturity until it is reciprocated ? And what person can wield that complete control over our highest and purest affections which is here sought, but One who shall be above us all— the realisation of Infinite Perfection ? The admission of the affec­ tions into the “ religious sense of duty ” naturally implies the idea of an Object on which to repose them; and the absence of any such object in Mr. Holdreth’s theory is an incongruity somewhat like that exhibited by Tycho Brahe, who admitted that the planets revolved round the sun, but maintained that the sun and the planets together revolved round the earth- In the same way, Mr. Holdreth holds that all our faculties should be under the complete control of reli­ gion, but that religion itself is only dependent upon man—that is, upon the very being who needs the control. Perhaps he would reply with the heroic but most melancholy saying of Spinoza, “ He who loves God aright must not expect that God should love him in return;” an idea which implies that the power of loving has been, in some mys­ terious way, monopolised by mortals, and is the only quality for which the Great Cosmos has no capacity. Now if the affection we receive from our fellow-creatures were in itself perfectly satisfying, and always at our command when deserved, there would be much plausibility in the theory that we have no concern with any other affection. But that such is not the case in human life, it would be superfluous to prove. Moreover, if there be one feature of Mr. Holdreth’s writings more characteristic than the rest, it is the keen­ ness and distinctness of his desire after an Infinite Object of affec­ * tion. It is therefore to the point to discover the estimate he himself takes of this desire. The fullest notice he has taken of it, as an argument for Theism, is as follows:— “ Some have urged that, since in Nature is found no want without a satisfaction, no appetite but for a purpose, it were contrary to nature to suppose man’s natural instinct of worship, and—so to speak—desire of Deity implanted only to be balked. But to this it * Many critics of his poems were misled by this characteristic to under-esti­ mate the reality of his Atheism—a very easy mistake to arise in the minds of those who see the religious instinct, and who do not see the complicated intellec­ tual difficulties which may coexist with it. We have frequently heard the remark, “Mr. Holdreth will not long remain an Atheist.” But the question remains, Why is he an Atheist now ? �16 PHASES OF ATHEISM. may be replied, that for artificial desires Nature provides not always gratifications; nor for all natural needs, except to those who have the capacity to seek their satisfaction aright. Accordingly, it is nowise to be accounted an anomaly in Nature, if she provide not a personal object of worship, such as shall satisfy the artificially excited imaginations and feelings of men and women, educated from youth to worship; or if she yield no gratification to those whose neglected intellect and uncultivated conscience can reverence naught that is not personal, and love only where they expect reward for loving. But for so much of this devotion as is natural in minds sound and healthily trained, there is a sufficient object in the Order, the Truth, the Beauty of Nature herself—in the Duty which springs from Law, and in the authority which belongs to Conscience.”* Such is Mr. Holdreth’s theoretical conviction. But what are the utterances of his natural feeling ? Scrupulously passing by all such passages as he might possibly reject or modify now, we will illustrate this point by a few quotations. The first is from the opening of a lecture delivered in 1856, entitled “Theism the Religion of Senti­ ment.” “ Stern indeed and strong must that heart be—if indeed it be not utterly callous and insensible—-that has not at times, at many times, sighed after such a comfort. The strongest spirit has its hours of weakness, the most hopeful and elastic nature its moments of deep and hopeless depression. What comfort is theirs who in these moments can cast themselves on the ever-present arm of an Eternal Father, in calm reliance on his unfailing power and inexhaustible kindness! In the hours of loneliness and melancholy, when the heart feels itself as it were alone amid a deserted universe, how enviable is their state who feel that they are not alone—that with them and around them is a Friend who sticketh closer than a brother —a very present help in time of trouble. To the labourer whose twelve hours’ toil can barely suffice to earn bread for his suffering wife and his sickly children ; to the slave who sees before him no rest, no mercy, no escape but in the grave ; to the lonely student on his solitary couch of sickness ; to the starving and sorely tempted seam­ stress in her fireless and foodless garret; to the martyr of conscience in his dismal prison, or yet more dismal liberty ; to the patriot exile, inclined almost to despair of the cause for which he has given all that was dear in life—what happiness to turn from the harshness and the misery of earth to the Father which is in heaven ! “ And, on the other hand, how hard seems their fate who have no such hope and no such comfort—who must endure through life the hardships of poverty, the sorrows of obscurity, the misery of unbe­ friended loneliness, and must at last pass to their graves with the bitter thought, that they have lived in vain for others, and worsc* “Reasoner,” No. 629. �PHASES or ATHEISM. 17 than in vain for themselves. Truly, it is no light, no easy matter to be, much more to become, an Atheist.”* (How much, by the way, is implied in that parenthesis,—“much more to become an Atheist.”) The next passage we quote appeared considerably later, and occurred in a review of the “ Eclipse of Faith.” After quoting the only passage in that book which can be said to contain “ any indication of an insight into the real feelings and posi­ tion of a true Sceptic,” Mr. Holdreth remarks on it thus :— “ I presume that there is no thoughtful mind, which has ever been truthful and honest enough to enter earnestly upon the quest of truth, that has not very early in its career passed through the Slough of Despond that is here described. But this is assuredly not the language of a matured and deliberate scepticism; it is that of a mind which has floundered about in the quicksands into which it first plunged on quitting the barren rocks of Christianity, and which has never succeeded in reaching the shore beyond. Those who have gone through this state do not speak in this tone. They are satisfied either that there is no God, or that there is, or that we cannot tell whether there be or no. At any rate, they remain satisfied: if there be no God, the crying after him is childish and unmanly; if we cannot know him, it is futile and absurd; in either case experience soon teaches us that what we cannot in course of nature expect to have can be naturally dispensed with. It is only during the first stage of mental progress, while still enfeebled by the habit of dependence, still unaccustomed to love Truth as Truth, to pursue Duty as Duty, to repose confidence in Law as Law, independently of a God and a Lawgiver, that we hear these echoes of the bitter cry, 1 My God, my God ! why hast thou forsaken me ?’ ”f ' Thus it is evidently felt by the writer, that the crying after God would not necessarily be childish and unmanly if He did exist; and that it is only because we cannot have Divine sympathy, that we must learn to do without it. Still further, our Atheist acknowledges that it is only after a painful process that the heart weans itself from this affection, and learns to cease “ sighing after such a comfort.” This is resignation, but not satisfaction; it is the manly endurance of a harsh necessity, but it is not a faith “ which can exercise complete control over the affections, and wield their whole power in the struggle." How such a theory as Mr. Holdreth’s would work in actual life, is a question which naturally suggests itself; and towards this we have a partial approximation in his novelette of “ Conscience and Conse­ quence,” designedly written to show what life would be to a genuine Atheist. Our author has here endeavoured to realize his faith in duty and his disbelief in God, side by side, in all their bearings, and the result is so unique as to demand special analysis. * “ Reasoner,” No. 535. c f Ibid., No. 603. �18 PHASES OF ATHEISM. The plot of the story is a bold interpolation into the history of religious opinion in England. The hero, Ernest Clifford, is expelled from Cambridge for Atheism; his father disinherits him in con­ sequence, and he joins an Atheist propaganda in London, the leader of which, Francis Sterne, is the model Atheist of the tale, and the life and soul of a movement which would certainly not have been forgotten if it had ever existed. The date of the story is about the period of the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Bill (1829). At that time the Carlile agitation was going on, and it certainly contained many such adherents as the Hatherley and Carter whose coarse but genuine earnestness Mr. Holdreth has here depicted; but the Freethinking newspapers of that day could boast of no such editor as “ Arthur Clayton, the Melancthon of Atheism,” nor did they possess among their contributors any such men as Francis Sterne or Ernest Clifford. The whole tale is an arabesque, in which all the combina­ tions of circumstance are nearly impossible. As the author must be perfectly aware of this, we attribute to him the intention of aiming at coherence merely in ideal respects. Conceding to him this liberty, however, we see, by the elements of which he builds his world, which are the points in the relation of theology to life that have most importance for him, either in feeling or observation. In the first place, it should be remarked that, although the romance has great faults as a work of art, it displays one characteristic which many works of greater finish do not possess. It is a genuine attempt to paint from life, rather than to construct from mere fancy or theory. Although the dialogue is very defective in easy, natural flow, the conception and description of character indicate close observation and delicate perception. Especially does the writer’s attention seem to have been given to the varying styles of character among Free­ thinkers. Nearly all the dramatis personae are Atheists, yet all differ from each other as people do in real life; they are not sketched from their creed, inwards, but from their character, outwards. Perhaps Sterne is an exception to this rule; but Ernest, Clayton, Seaton, Louis, Arnott, and the rest, are clearly drawn from observation, and not from theory,—and this is no small merit in a tale written to exemplify a theory. It is a merit, too, in a deeper sense than at first appears. For this endeavour to paint men as they are, under the creed of Atheism, has thrown a light upon the effects of that creed which no Atheist ever gave us before. The author has laid bare the weak points of his own faith with the candour of one who has no purpose to serve but the perfect truth. We have not space to illustrate this as fully as we could wish, and must confine ourselves to the more salient points alone. The first “ consequence ” which the “ conscience ” of the Atheist entails upon him is, of course, the external loss of friends and position; but this is plainly subordinate in the author’s view to the internal consequences resulting from the change. It is not only the �PHASES OF ATHEISM. 19 human affections that Ernest is called upon to renounce,—he has to part with hopes that had outsoared death, and to forsake the peace with which “ the heavenly house he trod, And lay upon the breast of God.” “ He regretted keenly the old hymns of the Church, in which he could never join again, as formerly, with simple, heart-felt faith. He regretted the Incarnate God, dear for Ilis human love, and still dearer for His human sorrow, who had gradually dwindled before his eyes into a man, of the common stature of men, or at least less than the greatest. He regretted the Bible he had trusted so implicitly, but could never take up now without lighting on some page defiled by blood or blotted with error and ignorance. He regretted the atoning martyr, whose dying pardon to his enemies, and dying promise to the penitent thief, had been the delight of his early meditations. He re­ gretted the Heaven which his friend had resolved into its cloud­ elements ; that beautiful Fata Morgana of Christianity,—or more truly of Spiritualism,—where it is promised us that we shall meet hereafter the loved and lost on earth. Above all, he regretted the God who was vanishing into thin air before the opened eyes of his reason; God, the avenger of human suffering, the Redressor of human wrong, the Consoler of human sorrow; God, whose wisdom can never err, and whose love shall never fail.................................... We must not blame Ernest Clifford too severely, therefore, if, in the first bitterness of this disappointment, when finding the most cherished visions of his heart fade from the clear light of reason, he was hardly conscious that there was aught left behind to make life worth living.’'* Nor does the author give us to understand that this grief was merely the dark transition-period leading to a happier, fuller, and richer faith. The only growth of character which he depicts as resulting from Atheism is a development of the power of endurance. In his view, the allegiance to Truth not only entails many painful consequences in its progress to a nobler life, but it is the inlet to a whole world of suffering, unrelieved by any gleams of sunlight; it excites the active impulses, but tortures the receptive side of our nature with cruel starvation.^ We must give some illustration of this from Ernest’s history. Expelled from his home, he is forced to part from his sister, without any hope of a future meeting. * “ Reasoner,” No. 632. The italics here and elsewhere are our own. + Those who know Keats’s Life and Letters may be here reminded of his beautiful parable of human life (Vol. 1. p. 140), where the keen vision of the world’s misery first assails the young soul,—“ whereby this Chamber of MaidenThought becomes gradually darkened, and at the same time on all sides of it many doors are set open,—but all dark,—all leading to dark passages. We see not the balance of good and evil; we are in a mist, we are in that state, we feel the ‘ Burden of the Mystery.’ . . . Now if we live, and go on thinking, we too shall explore these dark passages,” �20 PHASES OP ATHEISM. “A heavy weight lay on Ernest’s heart, which all the courage given by a clear conscience, all the resolution of martyrdom, all the strength of despair, barely sufficed to endure. He could say but little to his darling sister; but the child knew the mood, and was content to lie on his arms, dreaming not of the most terrible trouble she had known, which was to come from those lips that had never breathed anything but tenderness and peace to her.................... ‘ And now, dear Alice, farewell. May you be happy, my darling, my treasure, my first and last hope in life!’ “ How one misses, on such an occasion, the old Saxon ‘ God Hess you P which consigns the loved one to a higher and stronger care, yet one as tender as our own! He strained the child to his breast for one long embrace. Then he unclasped her little arms from his neck, kissed her once more, and was gone........................... ‘ Farewell!’ he re­ peated, bitterly. ‘ And all this misery comes of doing my duty. Certainly, then, there ¿s no God !’ ”* “ But if Duty lead to destruction, what matters it ? Soldiers sworn into allegiance to that sacred name, whither she commands, thither are we bound to march ; ay, to Hell, if need should be. ‘ Ours not to make reply ; Ours not to reason why ; Ours but to do or die.’ There is more of martyrdom still in this world than the world dreams of. Every step in advance that mankind makes, is made not only over the bodies of fallen defenders of the ancient Evil. The road is paved with the noblest, the truest, the bravest hearts that have struggled or suffered in the good cause: and it is by trampling on our wounded brethren that we advance to victory. It is the law; who shall gainsay it ? Ask of the Almighty God, if there be one, why he constructed the world so clumsily. Remember that Nature, working ever by fixed rules, and with imperfect instruments, can only attain the final happiness of the Many by constant sacrifices of the Few. And will the Few complain of this sacrifice? If they do, it will be neither wisely nor justly. Pre-eminent sorrow is the price of pre­ eminence ; ■ ■ . the finest, noblest, loftiest minds of every age have it as their assigned destiny—as the finest bull or ram was slain before the gods of olden time—to be sacrificed at the altar of Progress. The hemlock of Socrates, the cross of Jesus, the scaffold of More, are not strange and unnatural accidents in the career of benefactors of mankind, but only extreme and marked examples of the natural fate of those whose moral and intellectual pre-eminence renders them prominent marks for the hostility of the ‘powers of darkness.’ ‘ Serve and enjoy,’ is Nature’s commandment to mankind; those whom she deigns to honour with a special mandate are charged to serve and endure.”f * “ Reasoner,” No. 639. f “ Reasoner,” No. 635. �PHASES OF ATHEISM. 21 This is the first mention in Mr. Holdreth’s writings of “ the powers of darkness,”—but it is not the last. In the following chapter of “Conscience and Consequence,” we hear that Superstition is “the worst and most terrible of all the emanations of the Evil Principle ; the spirit on whom alone no holy name seems to have power, whom no exorcism can cast out, and with whom no spiritual strength can grapple.”* And at length we come to the following plain state­ ment of the terrible alternative. Ernest is speaking to a Sicilian patriot, who has been expressing his fervent faith in God. “ But may we not ask, Signor, if there be a God, why are you here, and Francis the poltroon on the throne of the Two Sicilies ? Is this God’s world, or the Devil’s? Must we not rather say—when-we look to the men who fill the thrones of Europe on the one side, and to those who crowd her dungeons on the other—when we think of the darkness that broods over the souls and minds of her millions of inhabitants, and remember that here we have the best and highest forms of human life—whether or no there be a Devil, assuredly there is no God /”f Thus our author’s keen sense of Moral Evil leads him to regard its wide-spread existence as invalidating the reality of a Divine Purpose in the world. That this bitter “ fountain of tears ” is the central source of his Atheism, is evident from the whole tenor of his writings. It will, however, be useful here to quote the exact form in which he has summed up his view of the subject as a whole. We quote from a letter of Sterne’s to Ernest. “ Let me point out to you our arguments as against God’s existence. “ First: evil exists. God, being omnipotent, could crush evil with­ out diminishing good—that is, without causing any moral deteriora­ tion on our part for want of something to contend against, or the like. God, being utterly good, would do so. But it is not done ; evil is al­ lowed to exist; therefore God either does not exist, or is deficient either in power or goodness. If in the former, we cannot trust Him, since we know not the limits of His power; and if in the latter, we decline to worship an imperfect Being. “ Second: God’s foreknowledge, being absolute, is incompatible with Man’s free will. “ But the Atheist’s grand argument is that the Theist has none. There is no credible evidence whatsoever that God exists, and the burden of proof rests with those who affirm that He does.”| Every phase of disbelief must be viewed in relation to that belief which it negatives. We see here what is the sort of Theism to which Mr. Holdreth enters so decided an opposition. It is the faith * “ Reasoner,” No. 637. This is said, not by any person in the story, but by the narrator himself. We have carefully avoided quoting any passages as illustrative of the author’s views, which are not clearly meant to be so understood. f Ibid., No. 648. X Ibid., No. 626. �22 PHASES OP ATHEISM. in an Autocratic Power, who is capable of creating good and evil by an arbitrary fiat of volition,—a Power whose absolute and all-pervading personality excludes all free and self-modifying existence in all His creatures. No wonder that such a faith should strain and break down under the pressure of life’s realities. This sort of Theism is a com­ pound of two elements,—the Despot-God of Calvinistic Orthodoxy, and the Law-God of physical science. The essentially immoral and unphilosophical nature of the former conception renders superfluous any argument against it on our part; but the latter idea contains a partial truth. Inorganic nature indubitably bears the impress of Cosmic Law. The stars in their orbits, the plants in their growth, ex­ press rather than obey the changeless rules of Nature. Unconscious of pain, undisturbed by temptation, their beautiful life is the incarna­ tion of an Orderly Force, whose movements we can (within small, but yet widening limits) calculate beforehand. Fascinated by this great and apparently benevolent Power, philosophers have worshipped the God of Nature as the Supreme. But when this conception of Deity is carried into the regions of the human will, it is utterly inadequate to interpret the most important of phenomena; it is dumb concerning all those moral problems which are specially characteristic of human life, and distinguish it from the inorganic or irrational departments of nature. Some thinkers, like Mr. Buckle, fall back on the notion that the fluctuations of good and evil in the history of individual man are of small importance, and that the only permanent interests of humanity consist in what can be generalised and classified. Not so Mr. Holdreth: he stands fast by the moral realities of individual life, as being far more important to us than mere general laws, and he has the courage to maintain that, although, to him, all sight of a Divine Purpose has vanished from the world,—though the Ordinances of Nature ruthlessly crush the weak, and wrong the innocent,—yet still, virtue and sin in man are now, as ever, infinitely opposed; and that, even under the half-diabolic Shadow which saddens an im­ perfect Universe, we should fight to the death for the sacredness of * Good. But now, starting from the point of Man’s Free Will, in which Mr. Holdreth vehemently believes,f why should this exclude the possible existence of a God ? Is no other conception of Him possible than the mere Law-God of Science, or the Arbitrary Despot of Orthodoxy? * Nor is it only an external warfare that he urges ; he speaks of moral conflict as one who knows the meaning of temptation, and who has recognised the need felt by every sensitive conscience of coercing internal as well as external foes. And it is from this point that his ideal of a faith is conceived, as may he seen in the first extract we have given from his writings. + “The doctrine of Necessity is contradictory to instinct, to reason, to ex­ perience. It is a renunciation of morality, a blasphemy against duty, an Atheism to Nature. . . . My instinct revolts against such degradation. I feel that I am free, as I feel that I think, that I move, that I exist,” etc.—“ Theism the Religion of Sentiment,” “ Reasoner,” No. 537. �PHASES OF ATHEISM. 23 To merely speculative intellects, who care only to hold “views” of theology, no satisfying insight into the truth is attainable. But to those in whose minds, as in Mr. Iloldreth’s, moral action forms an essen­ tial part of that life of which speculative thought is but the exponent, there is a vision possible, which we will attempt (however imperfectly) to indicate. 1. We believe that God, by giving us Free Will to use or misuse our faculties, has put into our hands a large amount of independent power, which precludes His possession of that absolute foreknowledge of our individual course which many popular theories attribute to Him. But by confining our capacities to a certain range in relation to the other forces of the universe, lie has insured that our individual aberrations shall never pass beyond a preordained limit, after which the compensations of nature restore the general equilibrium. With respect to our capacity, therefore, we are governed by the necessity of God’s ordinances; with respect to the use we make of our capacity, He leaves our individuality in our own hands. What He seeks from us, there, is not the mechanical acquiescence of a plant or a bird, that must obey the laws of its nature; but the free service of the Eternal Right, the unconstrained love of the Infinite Goodness. Now such freedom cannot be given without the power to choose wrongly. What is virtue ? Not the mere absence of Evil, but the preference of Good, —the devotion to Good as Good. Were there no distinctive differences between right actions and wrong ones, no perception of excellence could exist. Were there not in man a capacity for choosing and following evil, no struggle of the will could arise at all: the very existence of the idea of Duty—the Ought—implies that there is a course which we ought not to follow. Some thinkers maintain that this doctrine implies the subjection of God to an extraneous Fate; but surely such thipkers overlook the true state of the case. Can we conceive of God as creating a square circle, or as causing rain to fall and not to fall at the same time and place ? These are self-contra­ dictory requirements in physics, and the inability to combine them does not imply any want of power. And is it not our greater inex­ perience in Morals which alone renders it possible to us to conceive of them as not amenable to fixed consistencies, and capable of being moulded at pleasure by the caprice of an arbitrary Will? “If Wisdom and Holiness are historical births from His volition, they are not inherent attributes of His being.”* To resolve the conception of God into the single attribute of volition, is to lose the substance of Deity for an impossible phase of Omnipotence. For if we imagine Him to be without a consistent manner of existence, we lose all that makes Him the Object of our reverence and trust. “ Let Him precede good and ill, and His Eternal Spirit is exempt alike from the one and from the other, and recedes from our aspirations into perfect moral indifierence.”j’ 2. God has established a limit to the “ powers of darkness.” Beyond * “ Prospective Review,” November, 1815. Review of Whewell’s “ Elements of Morality.” f “ Prospective Review,” ut supra. �24 PHASES OF ATHEISM. a certain point, crime leads to the destruction of its agents; the con­ tact with nature and reality is fatal to evil in the long run. Death and Birth perpetually tend to restore the balance of things, by re­ moving the incurably corrupt, and filling the world with new life, capable of healthier development. Thus much God grants to us as “general law more complete salvation we cannot have without our own individual exertions. Now, that mankind have in many direc­ tions gone very near the limit of human capacity to do evil, there can be no doubt. The state of the Roman Empire for several centuries, the horrors of religious persecution in all ages, the present state of American slavery, are all testimonies to the awful capacity in man for deliberate and consummate wickedness. But however wide may be the shadow which human guilt can cast, it can never exceed the measure of those faculties which occasion it, and consequently it must always be possible for the right exercise of those faculties to attain an equally wide development. It may be replied, that to do wroDg is easier than to do right; or, in other terms, that our powers of action and enjoyment tend to an over-selfish degree of gratification. That they have such a tendency is most true ; but we have another tendency, of an opposite nature. “ It is not more true that the flesh lusteth against the spirit, than that the spirit lusteth against the flesh.”* And it is this power of choice between the lower and the higher ten­ dency, that makes us moral beings. The perennial alternative is, whether we will cultivate our faculties for the sake of self alone, or whether we will train them to be ministers in the service of that Pure Goodness which can alone set our hearts free. And that there is an impulse in man which seeks the pure, unselfish service of Goodness and Right, and that this impulse ought to be the ruling authority of man’s heart, is no secret to the best Atheists; indeed, it forms the acknowledged groundwork of Mr. Holdreth’s faith. What is required for the salva­ tion of mankind is this,—that the souls of men should love the Right above all else, and promote it personally and publicly, with all their strength and mind and heart. Of individual heroism and holiness the experience of the race already affords many bright examples; but these qualities have yet to be developed in social forms. Something of this has been approached when a great moral enthusiasm has com­ municated itself to a large body of men, animating them with one common sentiment, burning up their littlenesses, and developing them into a new life. Partial and incomplete as such results have been, they have sufficiently manifested the fact that mankind are capable of a social conscience, in the development of which individual excellence may attain its ripest fulness. And “ if” (as Mr. Iloldreth says) “ we were all now to begin to do our duty,”—if every single individual who is troubled by the shadow of moral evil were to exert himself to the utmost to assail it,—the combined efforts of so many workers would assuredly, before the lapse of many generations, visibly diminish the * Francis W. Newman, “ The Soul,” Chap. II I. “ The Sense of Sin.’ �PHASES OF ATHEISM. 25 extent of that shadow. It is Action that we want,—moral devoted­ ness to realise what moral and intellectual study have shown to be the true needs of man. 3. Now comes the question, what light would such combined social action throw upon the problem of the Universe? We believe it would reveal much. For, although discouragements abound, from the stubbornness of sin and the waywardness of passion, yet there is an under-current of hope which persistent and faithful souls can scarcely miss. There is, underneath the accumulated refuse of past errors, a real thirst in human nature for right, and truth, and good­ ness, which gradually becomes visible to genuine explorers, and which is capable of infinite expansion. For we are so constituted that, how­ ever long we may wander in darkness and falsehood, we can only thrive in light and reality. The world is based on truth. Good and Evil are not coequal powers, but Goodness, because it is Goodness, is the mightier of the two when once fairly fledged. Evil may indefinitely delay the advent of Good in the rebellious human heart; but directly we turn to clasp and serve the Good in real earnest, we gain some of its own power in addition to our own—a power which, if we are faithful, will increase in us ever more and more, freeing us from the bondage of selfish desires, and inspiring us with strength, peace, and blessedness. 4. But, asks Mr. Holdreth, why should the consequences of guilt be allowed to fall upon the guiltless ? “ We that have sinned may justly rue, Sin grows to pain in order due— Why do the sinless suffer too ?”* Without assuming to fathom the whole depth of the difficulty, we would reply, that there is one obvious reason for this ordinance. The tie of a common sensibility is the necessary postulate of social life, which could not even exist, if the pains and pleasures of separate individuals did not extend beyond themselves. If our actions affected ourselves alone, what would become of all the relations of family, friendship, country, and race ? We might as well be dwelling in solitary and separate worlds. And it is not, in the nature of things, possible that we should receive joy from our human sympathies, without being also capable of receiving sorrow from them. The same constitution which makes us open to improvement from the influences of virtue, renders us liable to contagion from the contact of vice. Is this an immoral doctrine ? Far from it. By testifying to the great­ ness of social influences, it indirectly suggests how widely they may minister to human improvement. Like all other extensions of our sensibility and capacity, its consequences for good only demand our co­ operation to outweigh infinitely its consequences for evil. One of the first incitements that can move a sympathetic nature to self-discipline, is the perception that his failures in virtue cazmoOnjure himself alone, but must inevitably bring mischief and misery upon others also. To * “ Shadows of the Past,” p. 36. �26 PHASES OF ATHEISM. see the untamed evil in their own hearts reflected back upon them in the marred lives of the innocents whom they love, is a punishment ■which may recall many self-willed natures, who, in the recklessness of passion, care but little for such consequences as only affect them­ selves. Even the best of us continually need to see the right and wrong of our actions illuminated by the well-being or injury of the human creatures around us, in order to realise the full responsibility imposed by that just and awful law, “Whatsoever thou sowest, that also shalt thou reap.” And when guilt seems to have passed beyond the human chances of redemption, when long courses of evil-doing have hardened vice and crime into “ established institutions,” then is it not our pity for the victims that moves us to seek redress ? Probably the tyrants of power, in all cases, are more fearfully injured by sin, than their victims by suffering. Yet, clearly as we may perceive the degrada­ tion caused by slavery and tyranny to the oppressing races or rulers, human nature is not so constituted that this perception can act as a sufficient motive-power on the general heart of man to induce the reformation of the offenders. It is our pity for the innocent that moves us to overthrow the oppressor. True, the arresting his career is the best service we can do lor him ; but it is not for his sake that we do it. He has, by wilful persistence in evil, put himself beyond the pale of direct human service; it is only indirectly that we can benefit him, by destroying his power to do evil. That indirect service, however, shows that the tie of human brotherhood still remains, and the blow which breaks the chain of the sufferer restores the balance of the world, and gives another chance even to the oppressor. The “ Innocents ” were said to be the earliest of Christian martyrs, and their place is yet sacred in the roll of the world’s benefactors. When, therefore, we see that the power to distinguish and choose between Good and Evil is essential to the perception and service of Good, both in the life of individuals and in the wider sensibilities of social existence; when we see that, however terribly our choice of Evil may injure ourselves and others, we have, all of us, chance upon chance of redemption offered, and natural limits placed to our capacity for evil-doing; when we see that the service of Good is capable of being made as wide as the service of Evil has too often been, and moreover that the inherent vitality of Good excels that of Evil, in being capable of an infinite expansion and development in harmony with nature, instead of in discord with it—surely, however much is still hidden from us on this subject, we see enough to reassure us that the Great Mystery is not a maleficent one. * * Probably it requires Infinite Perfection to formulate the whole truth concern­ ing Good and Evil. The humblest efforts of conscience enable us to see clearer in morals than the most acute intellect can ever penetrate without them; and it may well be, that, as moral insight increases with moral worth, it can only be complete where Goodness and Intellect are both entire and coequal, in the mind of the Only Perfect One.—See Appendix C. �PHASES OP ATHEISM. 27 Here it is necessary to take up Mr. Holdreth’s conception of “Nature” from another point, and to examine his reason for main­ taining that cosmical harmony does not imply a Personal Unity. Mr. Holdreth adopts Mr. Holyoake’s doctrine on this point, which he thus briefly re-states:— “ The Atheist looks to the universe, under the guidance of the divine; and the divine points to the traces of law, and cries, ‘ There you behold the finger of God.’ The pupil asks why this is known to be a finger-mark of Deity; and the reply is, when reduced to a logical form, ‘ Fitness proves design, design an intelligent author—and this author we name God.’ Objects his auditor, ‘ Then the fitness of God proves an author of God ?’ ‘ Not so.’ ‘ Then how came you to say that the universe must have an author ?’ ‘ How else comes it to exist ?’ says the theologian. ‘ How comes God to exist ?’ is the natural retort. ‘ An eternal universe is as easy of conception as an eternal God.’ ”* In this argument there is a mixture of truth and error which requires to be carefully disentangled. The Theist does not, or at any rate should not, affirm that the mere fitness or perfection of any object indicates its design from another hand. What he maintains is this : that when we see the exercise of Force in the direction of a urpose, we, by an inevitable inference, attribute the phenomenon to some conscious agent. You may call this an assumption, if you will, but it is the necessary postulate of all our conceptions of consciousness. What other test of consciousness can we imagine but this ? And how can we dissever the perception from the inference? Now when the purpose attained by any existence is clearly not resultant from forces consciously exerted by it—as in the motions of the stars, the growth of plants from their seeds, the propagation and support of animal life from the exercise of blind instincts, etc.—we say that such results must have been intended by some Intelligence extraneous to the objects themselves. And when we see such exercise of purposeful force pervading the Universe with a coherent harmony which implies an unmistakable Cosmical Unity, we cannot but attribute to that force a consciousness of the results which it produces. In spite of their rejection of this inference, Atheists perpetually speak of “ Nature ” as a causal source, both of force and order. Mr. Holdreth does this most markedly, as may be seen in the following passages from his “ Affirmations of Secularism : ”— “ To be saved from perdition, moral and material, we must have faith in the laws by which Nature has provided for our deliverance, and upon that faith we must act. . . . Nature demands from us that we should believe in her, obey her; and she will not fail to enforce belief by moral penalties, and to punish disobedience by material sufferings. . . . Nature’s government is a despotism, * “ Reasoner,” No. 627. �28 PHASES OF ATHEISM. with the eternal accident heureux of a beneficent ruler. And I, for one, am glad that it is so. I, for one, have more faith in the order and harmony of Nature than in the justice or wisdom of men, and am rejoiced that it is not left to the latter to arrange the politics of the ethical world at their will.”* Mr. Holdreth is, however, far from being consistent on this point. The foregoing passage implies the attribution of a higher and firmer morality to Nature than is to be found in man ; but elsewhere our author maintains that “ the one appalling fact stands every day more and more clearly visible before the eyes of every thoughtful inquirer, that Nature is not governed on principles of moral equity; that good is only attained through evil, and that the justice which is exacted from just men is not dealt to them ; in a word, that the Author of Nature, if there be one, is not a Moral Governor, but a stern and ruthless Machinist.”f Being pressed with this discrepancy by a Theistic correspondent of the Reasoner, Mr. Holdreth gave the following explanation:— “ The Cosmist sees in Nature a machine, which works according to definite laws which it did not create, and which were not created, but which it cannot violate. . . If the machine crushes his child or maims himself, he blames but his own folly, or pities his own misfortune, but still recognises the value and beneficence of the mechanism. The Theist, believing Nature an instrument in the hands of a conscious Being, must see in her workings the designed operations of that Being, and the evidence of His character. And since those workings often operate injustice and cruelty in individual cases, he ought to suppose that Being careless of justice and benevolence, or unable to execute His own will. Seeing a disregard of morality (which the Cosmist considers the consequence, not the cause of natural law) in Nature’s operations, he is bound to believe the operator devoid of moral character.”! Thus, then, we come to this point. The general laws of Nature are “ ever active and ever beneficentbut, as we see the welfare of individuals perpetually sacrificed to that of the whole, we must “ believe the operator devoid of moral character,” unless we resort to the darker theory that the individual injustice was itself planned by a Designing Devil—an idea which certainly seems to present itself occasionally to Mr. Holdreth’s mind, though it would scarcely appear that he actually believes it. In contrast to these theories, we have endeavoured to show that the capacity for individual sin and suffering is the indispensable postulate of all our virtue and happiness—the material out of which all sensitive and active life is moulded, and through which alone we can attain the truest good of which our nature is capable. Moreover, we believe that those apparently exceptional phenomena of our lives, which to the human judgment * “ Reasoner,” No. 583. t Ibid., No. 594. Î Ibid., No. 607. �PHASES OF ATHEISM. 29 appear most inexplicable and distressing, are often the very means of leading us into nobler and richer fields of life, not otherwise attainable. If we faithfully meet the new trouble in a spirit of obedience and trust, it gradually unfolds its hidden meaning, and reveals to us beyond our bounded imaginations and imperfect efforts, the presence of One whose Reality transcends our highest ideals, and who, in His exhaustless love, is ever seeking our perfection, and pleading with us for the free devotion of our hearts to Ilis service. Among the earliest tokens of this filial relationship are our longings after an inexhaust­ ible Source of love and truth, who shall guide and respond to us where man’s help must stop short. There are some striking illustra­ tions of this tendency in Mr. Holdreth’s novelette. One of the most prominent is the depiction of the way in which the hero partially fills up the void in his heart caused by the loss of his religion, with an intense devotion to his “ Master,” Sterne, who does, in fact, take the place of a God to him. He accepts the whole responsibility of Ernest’s life, for which Ernest gives, in return, an almost childlike obedience. Thus, such comfort as he does find is gained by reposing on a higher and stronger will than his own. Any such need in Sterne’s own character is obviated by the coldly-calm temperament ascribed to him. “ Having no passionate love for any other object than his sister, having no cause to serve in whose success his soul was absorbed, and serving the cause of Atheism simply from a quiet, un­ impassioned conviction of its truth and necessity, he felt no need of any assistance or protection from without. He was sufficient to him­ self, and his conscience was sufficient to him.” Yet, with a perceptiveness which singularly contrasts with the author’s admiration for his ideal Atheist, he has painted Sterne’s inability to train his wayward sister Annie, with a verisimilitude that is only too painfully real. The need of influences beyond humanity to solve such problems of character as hers is so clearly manifested in this little episode of Atheist life, that we must extract enough to show its main features. Sterne is the guardian of his two orphan sisters. A scene of contention with the elder child has just taken place, in which Sterne has tried in vain to bring her to reason. “ The child understood ; that much, -at least, was clear. But she would not seem to feel. And Sterne bit his lip, and turned away sadly to take the hand of his favourite, as she danced into the room. .... Annie sat by the window, where she could see them depart, and notice her brother’s tenderness towards the tiny creature, who in the midst of her laughter, was even then murmuring a word of pity for ‘ poor Annie,’—more needed than Emily could know. The sullen girl bowed her head on her hands, and gave way to a passionate burst of grief and vexation. ‘ How be loves her! and I—no one loves me! Well, I won’t care ; I hate them;’—but the word was sobbed forth with an intensity of rage which belied it; and it was long ere Annie could resume her usual quiet and sullen behaviour. Pity that her �30 PHASES OF ATHEISM. brother had’not'seen those tears, and heard that bitter cry of desola­ tion, ‘ No one loves me.’ He who knows no Father in heaven is doubly bound to be tender toward the fatherless on earth. Sterne knew and felt this. He had done his duty by his sisters nobly and kindly; and Annie would have had no reason to complain, were it possible for Duty to command love, despite all the faults and unloveliness of its object. Sterne did his duty; and here his task ended. He could not love one so thoroughly unamiable.”—Chap. VI. “ She returned to her seat (after doing a kindness to Emily), not unnoticed by her brother, whose conscientious vigilance seldom missed a single trait of character in either of his wards. ‘ Thank you, Annie,’ he said, in a tone of more gentleness, and even tenderness, than it was his wont to use towards the wayward and vexatious child. What a pity that the shadow of the fireplace screened the light of the candle from Annie’s face, and forbade her brother to notice the glow of momentary pleasure which illumined it. It was but for a moment; then came the thought, ‘ If it had been his favourite, he would have said, Thank you, darling,' and all the sullenness returned to her face and her demeanour, as she resumed her old attitude and her solitary musings. It is a fearful power that the words and tones of one human being exercise over the mind of another; a power so inevitable and yet so incalculable that it is hard for him or her who wields it to have the slightest clue to its right use. Indeed, it is perhaps as well that we have in general so little ability to direct our use of this influence; for one who could calculate beforehand the effect his every word and gesture would pro­ duce might be a despot of no common kind. Yet it is grievous to think that an accidental variation of phrase or tone, which we could not possibly remember or foresee, should affect so fatally the peace or the character of another. A single word of affection then spoken might have saved years of discomfort, sorrow, and self-reproach; yet could Sterne have known that it was wanted, or would be felt, it bad certainly not been withheld.”—Chap. VIII. It would be impossible to depict more clearly the inadequacy of the bare sense of Duty to compass all the work which is given us to do. What Sterne needed was to break up the ice round his sister’s heart, by penetrating to the human feeling underneath her pride and waywardness. And what could have enabled him to do this so well as a faith in an Infinite Causal Love beyond, within, and around them both ? Failing this, all the most delicate and tender growths of affection are (as our author sees) at the mercy of the slightest physical accident, and continually liable to waste away in aimless wanderings, or to fester in morbid pride. Yet in one of the few cases where the novelist has allowed an Atheist to love happily, we see that even when affection is mutual and satisfying, it can never be relied upon by an Atheist as a permanent and integral part of his being. In the touching chapter entitled “ The Valley of the Shadow,” narrating the �PHASES OF ATHEISM. 31 death of Emily Sterne, we see the point from which the author endeavours to deal with this poignant grief of eternal separation, from the principle supplied by “ the Religion of Duty.” “ Ernest could not leave his friend in this great sorrow, and his presence was evidently a diversion to Sterne’s melancholy, and a pleasure to the dying child. For dying she certainly was,—fading away from life like a gathered rose-bud, but slowly and quietly, her­ self half conscious but fearless, sorrowful only for the misery which all her adored brother’s self-command could not conceal from her loving eyes. And she would make him sit close beside her, and clasp her little hand in his, while his thoughts were darkened by the shadow of the coming day, when he should never clasp that loving little band again. Few of us know what is the anguish of the meaning he had uttered in those bitter words, ‘ my all in life.’ She —this beautiful and innocent little one—was the object of dll his care, dll his labour, dll his hope. When she should be gone from him, what would he have left but a dreary, dark, cheerless path to a goal of utter nothingness? In those hours of torture, few could have seen further than this, even of men less capable of passionate love, filling the inmost recesses of existence; but Sterne was of a few. Men of his mould are not to be found in the every-day walks of life, though one or two such there are on earth, perhaps, if we but knew where to seek them when we want heroes to lead us and martyrs to die for us. Dark and waste and dreary indeed his after-life must be, but it might be trodden boldly and faithfully; for the darkness was not all. Even amid that long and cruel agony he remembered the work that lay before him ; and knew that he would not do it the less bravely and constantly, because he had no other love on earth, no other hope on earth or in heaven. For him Duty was God and Nature was His prophet; and though the God’s mandates were hard, and the prophet prophesied no smooth things, Sterne was not one to lose hold of his faith because of tribulation, nor to fling it aside in madly clasping at a staff which, in the utmost need of those who lean thereon, cannot but prove a broken reed................ “ ‘ What advantageth it us, if the dead rise not ? Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.’ “ Sterne sat by the side of his sleeping sister, who, lulled to rest for a short time by heavy opiates, was not to be roused by their lowtoned conversation. He was bending over her, and his face was hidden. But as his proselyte spoke these bitter words, he looked up; and the first harsh sentence Ernest had ever heard him speak was his reply. “ ‘ Ernest Clifford, look at your own life, and at mine ; look here, where all I have to love or hope in the universe is passing away from me; and remember that I, in this utter desolation, have never forgotten that I have no right to die with my work undone. It may be, when you have known what such wretchedness as this is, that you �32 PHASES OF ATHEISM. will learn a better faith than that borrowed Epicureanism of Paul, and bethink you that those who have so much to do before they die to-morrow have need to make the utmost use of to-day.’ “Ernest was somewhat abashed, yet could not but recognise the justice of the rebuke. If this man did not sink into utter despair, what right had he to murmur ?” Thus, one by one, fade the stars of love and hope from the Atheist’s sight, and he is left alone, with nothing but the work which Duty prescribes. “ He would not do it the less bravely and constantly, because he had no other love on earth, no other hope on earth or in heaven.” But if it be possible for all love and hope on earth or in heaven to be thus destroyed, what work remains possible, and what objects remain to be worked for? What is then the value of life— not merely its relative value to this or that sufferer, but its absolute value to man as man ? How can such a mutilated and benumbing conception of duty “ exercise complete control over the affections, and wield their whole power in the struggle ?" “ Nature” must be not only “devoid of moral character,”—she must be absolutely Diabolical, if she condemns her truest children to this terrible crushing of their noblest yearnings. The universal heart of man refuses to believe in such an anomalous dissonance, and, springing to the embrace of the Infinite Goodness, echoes the cry of St. Augustine,—“ Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless till it resteth in Thee1” Here we must close our remarks, although we have but touched the mere outline of the subject. Our aim has not been to furnish a short and easy guide to the mysteries of this infinite Universe, but simply to indicate a few of the clues to the great underlying Reality, which no worshipper can ever wholly comprehend, but which unfolds itself ever more and more to wise and patient hearts. That Reality must be sought by each soul singly and alone. That such a mind as Mr. Iloldreth’s cannot seek it in vain, we feel assured. It may be nearly impossible for any one to help such seekers in solving a problem w’hich so largely depends on the individual experience of life. But our task will not have been valueless if we have succeeded in showing that there is, in these recent forms of Atheism, a faith in truth and in virtue which commands the sympathy of religious thinkers, and which is in itself a hopeful sign of the times. “ When people assume that an Atheist must live without God in the world,” ■f says an able and generous writer, “ they assume what is fatal to their own Theism.” And those who recognise in all human goodness the sustaining hand of the Creator, will hold fast to the faith that no genuine truth-seeker can ever be forsaken by the tender care of Him of whom it is said that the pure in heart shall see God. �APPENDIX. THE RELATION OF SECULARISM TO THEISM. Note A,page 8. I. In illustration of this, it may be mentioned that in July, 1857, a Society of Materialists was formed, “ for a union of Freethinkers for a more definite object than appeared possible under the diffusive principles which were represented under the name of Secularism.”* In the first meeting called to consider the proposal, all the speakers in favour of the new Society lamented the admission of “ persons of spiritualistic tendencies ” into the Secular body, as a drag upon the efforts of Freethinkers. Soon afterwards, Mr. Holyoake and “ Iconoclast ” held some discussions on the position of Secularism, in which “ Iconoclast ” “ denied that there was any middle standing between Atheism and Theism,” and maintained “ that Secularism was impracticable when separated from Atheism, urging that the plan of Secularism was essentially Atheistic.”! To the same class of views belong the well-known “ Religious Confessions ” of Mr. Joseph Barker, who, from having been successively a Methodist, an Unitarian, and a Theistic Secularist, became an Atheistic Secularist, holding Secularism “ as the sole concern and business of mankind,” and blending it inex­ tricably with Atheism, which, according to him, “ occupies the position of positive science, and is a mighty reformatory principle.’’J On the other hand may be quoted the numerous articles of Mr. Holdreth, who has always maintained that “ it is both better and easier to win for Secularism a front place among religions, than to obtain respect or tolerance for irreligión :”§ and who has lately (since the first edition of this Essay was sent to the press) withdrawn himself from the public advocacy of Secu­ larism, because “ his views of it differ so widely from those which have determined the aspect it has recently assumed.”|| II. Mr. Holyoake, however, still believing in the possibility of a neutral faith, has lately published a little pamphlet, entitled “ Principles of Secularism,” in which he endeavours to define and consolidate his owr position. He there maintains the following points. 1. That Secularism is a “ synonym of Freethought,” in harmony with “ the hereditary characteristics of Freethinking” (p. 4); that “Secularism is the name given to a series of principles of Positivism, intended for the guidance of those who find Theology indefinite, or inadequate, or deem it unreliable” (p. 7). 2. That a Secularist “ concerns himself with present time and materiality, neither ignoring nor denying the future and spiritual, which are indepen­ dent questions ” (p. 6). 3. That, “ occupying, as Secularism intends to do, the ground of Nature, it may refuse to engage itself with Atheism, Theism, or Biblicism. So long as he [the Secularist] chooses to remain within the sphere of his own principles, he simply ignores all outlying sectarian systems, and is no more to be put down as opposed to any such views than the geologist is to be cried down as the enemy of music, or the chemist as the opponent of geometry, because he ignores those subjects, and confines his attention to his own. Honour those who advisedlv, and for the public good, com­ promise themselves ; only take care that associates are not affected by this conduct of others. And this will never take place so long as the simple and pure profession of common principles is kept intrinsically in­ dependent and unassailably neutral ” (p. 18). But this is precisely what the Secularists have never done. It is as a “ synonym of Freethought,” i.e., of unfettered speculative inquiry, that the very name of Secularism is put forth: and not only are five-sixths of the * “ Reasoner,” No. 582. § Ibid , No. 584. f Ibid, Nos. 584, 591. t Ibid, Nos. 646, 649 || Ibid, No. 690, August 14,1859. �34 APPENDIX. Secularists thorough-going Atheists, but by far the greatest amount of their activity as a party is given to the discrediting of religion. It is even one of Mr. Holyoake’s own definitions of Secularism, that its principles “ are intended for the guidance of those who find Theology indefinite, or in­ adequate, or deem it unreliable.” How, then, can Secularist principles be ever regarded as intrinsically independent, and unassailably neutral? How can a Secularist claim that he is no more to be put down as opposed to religion, than the geologist is to be cried down as the enemy of music, or the chemist as the opponent of geometry? The researches of the geologist in no way assail the theories of the musician, nor does the chemist discredit the principles of the geometer. But Secularism, if it does really “ neither ignore nor deny the future and the spiritual,” and claims Theistic adherents on that ground—must be in direct opposition to Atheism, by which the affirmations of religion are necessarily either ignored or denied. III. Is it, then, impossible for Theists and Atheists to combine together for purposes of practical usefulness which both may have equally at heart? God forbid. It is only impossible when a speculative theory is made the condition of union. The Association for the Promotion of Social Science may be regarded as a happy instance of a true Secular Society, in the only sense in which that term can be accepted by both parties, t.e., its stand­ point is the importance of earthly work, not the doing it from merely earthly motives. Consequently, the Association exacts from its members no defi­ nition of the relation of work to faith, nor of this world to the next, but leaves the human and the Divine to find their natural and ever-varying proportions in the mind and life of each individual. Mr. Holyoake’s Secularism, on the other hand, “ draws the line of separation between the things of time and the things of eternity;” “selects for its guidance the principle that ‘ human affairs should be regulated by considerations purely human,’” and regards the beliefs of religion as “ supplementary specula­ tions.”* Now there are stages of suspensive Atheism and of imperfect Theismf with which these declarations may consist; and it is important that such intermediate stages of belief should be clearly distinguished from dogmatic Atheism. But, nevertheless, the views held by these inter­ mediate thinkers are not those of a mature and consistent Theism. To a true Theist, the Being of God is no “ supplementary speculation,” but the underlying Reality of the Universe; and so far from seeking to regulate human affairs by considerations purely human, he regards the life of humanity as perpetually needing to be interpreted by the light of the Divine. And while the Secularist “inculcates the practical sufficiency of natural morality, apart from ” any spiritual basis, the Theist holds that that “ natural morality ” only exists by virtue of His existence who is the fountain alike of nature and of grace. But, on the other hand, a consistent Theist will never deny that a man may himself be morally estimable and reliable who does not hold this belief. For Character and Speculation are by no means co-ordinate in their development, and a man’s character is the man himself, while his speculations only give us the conscious pro­ gramme adopted by him. Frankly should we say to those Atheists who command our respect, “ We will work with you wherever we can agree, because, believing in God as the source of all human goodness and truth, we recognise every good impulse and true thought in you as coming from Him, and therefore as equally sacred with our own.” But * “ Principles of Secularism,” pp. 6, 7. t See an interesting letter, signed “ Truth-Seeker,” in “ Reasoner,” No. 588, from a correspondent who professes himself to be “ a believer (at least pro­ visionally) in the being of a God and the immortality of the soul,” and who earnestly contends that Mr. Holyoake’s Atheism does not assume any certainty of negation. See also, the criticisms of some Theistic Secularists (“ Reasoner,” Nos. 650, 651, 659, 668) on Mr. Barker’s Confessions. �APPENDIX. 35 this is essentially different from giving our adherence to a system which regards the main foundations of our faith as “ supplementary speculations,” “ indefinite, inadequate, or unreliable.” I am especially anxious to clear up this point, because it is one Hpon which there has been considerable misapprehension on both sides. Many Theists have hesitated to give full scope to their natural liberality of feel­ ing, from the fear lest they should, in some sense, be obscuring their fidelity to religion by co-operating with Atheists, even in matters involving no profession of disbelief. Surely, where such a fear exists, the true difference between Theism and Atheism cannot have been clearly dis­ criminated, still less can the true relation between Theists and Atheists have been explored in all its fulness of light and shadow. The true difference between the Theist and the Atheist (to borrow the words of one of the most spiritual of living preachers “ is not that the one has God and the other ) * has Him not, but that the one sees him and the other sees him not.” Our charge against speculative Atheism is not that it necessarily cuts men off from the teaching, still less from the tenderness, of God; but that it pre­ vents them from consciously seeking and cherishing that teaching and tender­ ness, and thus confines the voluntary range of character to that growth alone which can be self-evolved.f But we can never bring the question up to this point, which is the real heart of the matter, until we have, by word and deed, made unmistakably plain that the goodness which we seek for our­ selves is essentially one with that to which right-minded “ Freethinkers ” also aspire, and that when we decline to subscribe the creed of the Secu­ larist, it is in allegiance to a faith which can never prohibit our human fellowship with the Atheist. Note B., page 14. Upon this point, I cannot forbear from quoting the following suggestive passage from a review of Theodore Parker’s “ Theism, Atheism,” etc., which appeared in the Inquirer for Nov. 12th, 1853. “ It is a favourite maxim with physiologists and secularists, that no physical conditions of health and strength can be disregarded without causing the pain which always indicates that something is wrong. It is clear that such pain, not being self-caused, but being forced upon us by those rules of our bodily constitution which we have no power to alter, is a sign that physical tendencies within us are checked or thwarted, that constant forces are not allowed their normal play. Keep the body bound in one position, and violent pain soon ensues. Of what is that pain the sign? It indicates that physical impulses tending to motion and change of posture are disregarded and restrained—that a vital force, not under our own control, is asking for its natural liberty, and is denied it. So far the Atheist concurs. He says that so it is, but that the vital force, not under * “ I never can believe that God retires from a man who is perplexed and unable to discover Him. Is a man deserted by his God because he cannot find Him ? For my own part, I believe there is a secret grace of God in the heart of every man, and that God is there, whether he sees Him, or whether he sees Him not. The difference between a Christian and an unbeliever is not that the one has God and the other has Him not, but that the one sees Him and the other sees Him not.” Speech of the Rev. James Martineau at Stourbridge, reported in the “Inquirer” for Nov. 6, 1858. f See an earnest and able paper on Self-knowledge (entitled “ A True Prophet”) in “Reasoner,” No. 683,in which the writer maintains that “ Self-knowledge is to the Secularist what grace is to the Christian.” He does not take into account that self-knowledge is only an intellectual pre-condition of moral progress, and that its value in any case wholly depends upon the moral use to which it is put, and especially on the power of self-coercion or self-surrender to the desired ideal. Now “ grace ” not only shows us our errors and dangers, but leads us out of them by pouring into us a new life, and uniting us to an All-conquering Love. ’ �36 APPENDIX, our control, is a development of the eternal, blind, dead forces of the universe. But apply the same reasoning to our moral constitution. Let a man try to descend from his own conceptions of right to a lower moral level. What is the result?—that a moral misery, the sense of a moral resistance, not under our own control, not of ourselves, immediately results checking us in our own efforts to do wrong. Now, what is the meaning of saying that such a resisting force is part of ourselves? We have no means of getting rid of it, we cannot ignore it, we cannot cause it. It is in us, but not of us; it is a force eatmg into our nature, and yet it is a moral force, it cannot be identified with mere physical tendencies, it must be from a mind, for matter could not plead with us, and rivet our gaze to the sin we are committing. We are in actual conflict with a power, which it is mere self-contradiction to call a material power, and which yet we know to be other than our own will If it be replied that it is one part of our nature contending against the other, still here are two powers, both of them moral and spiritual, one subject to our control, and ope not so subject, of which we call the former, ourself; what, then, are we to call the other which we recognise as intruding its suggestions upon us from sources we cannot fathom? This is but the very essence of the meaning which a Theist expresses by the word ‘ God.’ ” Of course, all our ideas of duty are necessarily relative rather than abso­ lute, and it is only a comparative goodness that can be suggested, even by God Himself, to creatures of limited and progressive capacity. But were all our ideas of right merely self-evolved, without contact (more or less conscious) with a Higher Personality, we could not experience this sensa­ tion that, in wilful wrong-doing, we are resisting the pleadings of an Infinite Moral Being. (See this theme treated at length in Mr. F. W. Newman s “ Theism,” Book I., Sect. 5. “ God in Conscience.”) Note C., page 27. Since this Essay was sent to the press, Mr. Holdreth has published a short paper on “ The Existence of Evil,”* stating that “ after mature con­ sideration, he feels called upon to qualify ” his argument on that subject. “ It is (he says), logically conceivable that matter may have an independent existence and laws of its own, of which it was as impossible for the Creator to make a perfect world, as it would have been for Him to make two and two equal to five. Therefore, all that is really proved by the argument from the suffering and sin around us, is, that the world was not formed by a Creator at once perfect in power, and -perfect in beneficence it is not shown that it might not have been framed by a God of perfect goodness but limited power. ... Of course, this in no way affects the grand argument of Atheism—the total absence of evidence of Creation.” What is here.meant by ‘‘creation” is not clear, and in none of Mr. Holdreth s writings has he done more than touch the subject incidentally. I therefore confine myself to remarking that the theory which he does accept, under the name of Cosmism, appears to stop short of Theism for a moral reason only. It is because the Cosmist sees “ a disregard of morality in Nature s operations,” that “ he is bound to believe the operator devoid of moral character.” But if it be granted that, in the very nature of things, it may have been “as impossible for the Creator to make a perfect world, as it would have been for Him to make two and two equal to five,” that moral objection becomes sensibly diminished. It cannot, however, disappear entirely, until it be also granted that the moral perfection which God could not make in the human world, He can, and does enable us to approximate to more and more for ever, by the joint action of our free will in accord with His grace. THE END. * “ Reasoner,” No. 686. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Phases of atheism, described, examined, and answered Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Collet, Sophia Dobson Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 36 p. ; 19 cm. Notes: Inscription in ink on page 32 "R. H. Hulton. National Review, No. 3. "Atheism". Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. 'The relation of secularism to theism.' Printed by John Watts, Fleet Street, London. "The following Essay is reprinted, with revisions and additions, from the American Christian Examiner for November, 1859". [From Preface]. Discusses four works by Holyoake and three by Lionel H. Holdreth. Sophia Dobson Collet was a 19th-century English feminist freethinker. She wrote under the pen name Panthea in George Holyoake's Reasoner, wrote for The Spectator and was a friend of the leading feminist Frances Power Cobbe. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Holyoake & Co. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1860 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CT20 Subject The topic of the resource Atheism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Phases of atheism, described, examined, and answered), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Atheism Conway Tracts Secularism Theism Theism;Secularism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/f9dbe384d9be1581a831191fcf7235a0.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=vWgel998P98GRtC184spDCfWVlkfRPrLKNT6g-5nOLFEn6WWCaA3qS6l2F5doyKK-4e3EwSATebLFOXpa2cY7TLCrUJ8UqFKLsY8yNQRMiGRAAKhvwbG1H--VwcCjUgueZibaxK3EtsMLJ39G%7EpWl3ACOHwy09Eii2IzKIX3C2J1jk0dVnFmx9YWB-mrux8MhtlEWScuLZQniO6i%7ES%7EOL2tOMSymouzkGTc9bJLbdIb7Uc07YdDHSU3UCSbBHpjDJY00WyasRMUYtTniKfPTjyRDo3AwMTGLSU9Kc-albkiJgJXFU5eesA5AWsimjK5wx7wTUOPDhON--XIpuXfD9Q__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM ed36c38d1c45575c57f2eff0413d353c PDF Text Text THE GENERAL MEETING OF THE THEISTIC SOCIETY HELD FREEMASONS’ AT THE HALL, LONDON ON Wednesday, July 20th, 1870 AND STATEMENT OF THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED BY THE MEETING bg ©rber of Committee LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, 1870 AND CO. �LONDON : PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET �CONTENTS. PAGE Report of the General Meeting .... 1 Resolutions passed at the General Meeting 71 Statement of the Committee 72 �I •I �PROCEEDINGS OF THE GENERAL MEETING HELD AT ON WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 1870. MR. WILLIAM SHAEN IN THE CHAIR. The Chairman.—Ladies and Gentlemen, I will state, in opening the meeting, the course of business which has been proposed by the Committee. In the first place, our Honorary Secretary, Mr. E. II. Busk, will read a report from the Provisional Committee ; that report will conclude with a set of resolutions which have been prepared by the Committee. It will then be my duty, on behalf of the Committee, to move the reception of the report. If it is your pleasure, after hearing the report, to receive it, there are three or four resolutions, which have been prepared, which will be moved and seconded ; and upon those any observations can be made and any dis­ cussion can be taken. The Honorary Secretary then read the following report :— The Provisional Committee appointed at the meeting held on June 6, 1870, have communicated with persons who might be supposed willing to aid in the formation of a Theistic Society, and now submit the following report of their proceedings, and of the information so collected by them. B �Q The Committee met shortly after the meeting, at which they were appointed, and prepared a circular, in which was inserted the provisional statement of the objects and means of the Society, which they were instructed to cir­ culate with their suggestions. The following is a copy of the circular, which was pre­ ceded by a list of the Provisional Committee. 1. The objects of the Society are to unite men, notwithstanding any differences in their religious creeds, in a common effort to attain and diffuse purity of Spiritual Life by (i.) investigating religious truth ; (ii.) cultivating devotional feelings; and (iii.) furthering practical morality. 2. The Society seeks to attain these objects by the following means:— (1) By holding meetings for the reading of papers, and for conference. (2) By holding and encouraging meetings for the united worship of God. (3) By helping its members to ascertain and discharge their personal and social duties. (4) By the formation of similar Societies with the same objects in various parts of the British Empire and other countries. (5) By correspondence with those who may be supposed willing to assist in the objects of this Society. (6) By the issue of publications calculated to promote the above purposes. This Society is offered as a means of uniting all those who believe in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, in the endeavour to supplement their individual efforts towards goodness and truth by mutual sympathy; to intensify their trust in and love to God by fellowship in worship; and to aid each other in the discovery and propagation of Spiritual Truth, that thus they may attain to the more complete observance of the Divine Laws of Human Nature. A meeting will be held at the Freemasons’ Hall, Great Queen Street, on Wednesday, July 20, 1870, at 7 p.m., for the purpose of definitely constituting the Society. Your attendance at this meeting is requested. In the meantime you are invited to communicate to the Provisional Committee your opinion, and any information you can give on the following subjects :— a. The expediency of forming the proposed Society. b. The best name for the proposed Society. c. The names and addresses of persons or societies likely to be interested in such a body. �(1. The number likely to join in your neighbourhood. e. Any practical suggestions as to the formation, objects, and modes of action of the proposed Society. The Committee invited suggestions and information on various subjects, and have received, in answer to about 2,200 copies which have been circulated, upwards of 100 replies. The suggestions and information that have been received may be arranged under the four following heads :— I. The expediency or inexpediency of forming the proposed Society. II. The best name for the proposed Society. III. The number of persons likely to join in different towns and districts. IV. Practical suggestions as to the formation, objects, and modes of action of the proposed Society. I. The answers that have been received to the ques­ tion whether it is or is not expedient to form the pro­ posed Society have comprised every shade of feeling. They may be roughly classified in the following manner :— Those who think it expedient (including 5, who merely express a desire for its formation) . . . 83 Those who think it inexpedient.................................... 17 Those who think the expediency doubtful.... 7 107 These numbers do not include the members of the Pro­ visional Committee. The Provisional Committee are of opinion that these answers afford sufficient encouragement to justify the formation of the proposed Society. II. The following names have been suggested for the o oo proposed Society :— ‘ The Association for Promoting Practical Religion.’ ‘ The Association for Promoting True Religion.’ B 2 �I 4 4 The Association for the Promotion of Practical Re­ ligion.’ 4 The Society for the Discovery and Propagation of Spiritual Truth.’ 4 An Association for Developing true Christian Charity in St. Paul’s Sense.’ 4 The Brotherhood of Faith.’ 4 The Religious Brotherhood.’ 4 The Brotherhood of all Religions.’ 4 The Brethren of Progress.’ 4 The Progressive Brotherhood.’ ■ 4 The Fraternal Union.’ 4 The Society of Human Brotherhood.’ 2. 4 The Brotherhood of Love.’ 2. 4 The British Free Church.’ 4 The Church of all Religions.’ 4 The Church Reform Society.’ 4 The Open Church.’ 4 The Church of the True God.’ 4 The Church of Progress.’ 4 The Free Catholic Church.’ 4 The Universal Church.’ 4 The Church of the Future.’ 4 The Church of Religious Progress.’ 4 The Church of the Law.’ 4 The Church of all Faiths.’ 4 The Church Founded on First Principles.’ 4 The Universal Church of the Law.’ 4 The English Branch of the Bralimo Somaj.’ 4 The Friends.’ 4 The Progressive Friends.’ 4 The Moralists.’ 4 The Free Religious Union.’ 3. 4 The Free Religious Society.’ 4 The Free Religious Association.’ 2. 4 The Religious Union.’ 2. �5 4 A Practical Religions Union.’ 4 The Religions Alliance Association.’ 4 The Religious Society of all People and of all Nations.’ 4 The Religious Liberal Association.’ 4 The Society for the Promotion of Religious Liberty.’ 4 The Modern Religious Society.’ 4 The Rational Religious Society.’ 4 The Common Brotherhood Religious Society.’ 4 The Theo-Philosophical Society.’ 4 The Universalist Society.’ 4 The Universal Brotherhood.’ 2. 4 Sons and Daughters of God.’ 4 The Universal Family of God.’ 4 The Universal Family.’ 4 The Christo-Theistic Society.’ 4 The Christian Theists.’ 2. 4 The Eisotheistic Society.’ 4 The Theistic Brotherhood.’ 2. 4 The Theistic Church.’ 4 The Theistic Society.’ 3. 4 The Society of Theists.’ 4 The Theistic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.’ 4 The Theistic Theological Society.’ 4 The Free Theistic Union.’ 4 Theistic Christianity.’ 4 The Deistic Society.’ Fifteen correspondents, therefore, have proposed names in which the term Theistic occurs. On the other hand, nineteen correspondents have declared themselves op­ posed to that name, assigning various reasons for their opposition ; and many others have proposed the other names above reported, because they prefer them to the epithet Theistic, which appeared in the heading of the circular. �6 III. The Provisional Committee beg to report that they have received the following information as to the persons likely to join in the movement. The Committee have received the names of 245 persons in various parts of the United Kingdom, as likely to co­ operate, of whom ninety-eight have answered, expressing themselves favourably towards the movement. Of these persons, eighty-nine reside in the metropolis. The Provisional Committee beg to report further, that in addition to the names of individuals which are in­ cluded in the foregoing numbers, they have received an intimation, that at Edinburgh a congregation belonging to a chapel, of which Dr. Page is the minister, and com­ prising about one hundred members, will be likely to co­ operate, and that in the same city there are about twenty other persons who cordially desire such a Society. These latter people formed a Society under the leader­ ship of Mr. Cranbrook, but have become disunited in consequence of the death of that gentleman, about a year ago. Mr. Walter Rew, of Sandgate, is the president of a society, calling itself the ‘ Social Progress Association,’ and he has informed the Committee, that if the objects of their proposed Society are sufficiently practical, he will be happy to propose the amalgamation with it of his own Association. The Rev. W. J. Lake, of Leamington, is forming a society in the Midland Counties, called the ‘Brotherhood of Religious Reform,’ and has forwarded to the Com­ mittee a copy of his programme. He has informed the Committee that he will work with them, if their objects are similar. The following is a copy of his programme :— It is intended to form a Society, to be called ‘The Brotherhood of Religious Reform,’ whose object shall be to unite in a common religious fellowship, all who believe �7 in the fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of man, irrespective of all other beliefs they may hold, and by this union of spirit to put an end to religious sectarianism and to religious strife, and thus to lay a foundation for the eventual building up of the one great church of the living God, which shall be wide as the common need of humanity, and which shall own as its members all who love God, and who strive to lead a righteous and loving life. The operations of this Society will consist— 1. In the promotion of absolute religious equality ; to be effected in this country mainly by the nationalisation of the Established Church. N.B. By the nationalisation of the Established Church is meant, the abolition of the Act of Uniformity, and of all compulsory belief or teaching. Also the establish­ ment of a parishioner suffrage, by which the residents in each parish shall be at liberty to select, from properly educated and qualified candidates, their own minister, and to determine the form and character of their worship. 2. It will be the business of this Society to investigate the popular and accredited forms of religious belief, so that, through the scholarly and scientific methods which are now able to be employed, the absolute religious truth may as nearly as possible be attained. 3. It will undertake the formation of public opinion in accordance with these ascertained results, by the de­ livery of lectures, and the promotion of controversy, the issue of publications calculated to spread information on these subjects among the people, and by all other likely and appropriate methods. 4. It will undertake the immediate establishment of a church or churches for the worship of God, in accord­ ance with the fundamental elements of religious belief before stated, and the maintenance of these by voluntary effort, till such time as the national church shall be set �8 free from the compulsory profession of sectarian dogmas and mediæval creeds, and shall be thrown open, when the majority of parishioners shall desire it, to the teach­ ing and worship which sum up all the essential truth and duty of religion in the simple requirements of love to God as our father, and love to man as our brother. IV. Among the suggestions that the Committee have received in reply to their request for suggestions as to the formation, objects, and modes of action of the pro­ posed Society, are the following :— As to the formation of the Society : That there shall be, independently of the Society or Societies established in London, a central Committee, which shall have for its object the formation and encouragement of independent branch Societies elsewhere, and shall serve as a means of communication between such Societies, so as to preserve union without compulsory uniformity of thought or action. That admission to any of the affiliated Societies shall be as wide as humanity itself, and with this view, that there shall be no compulsory entrance fee or subscription. The following suggestion has also been received, as many persons cannot attend the meeting on July 20, 1870,—that the resolutions then passed shall be printed, and votes taken from all the country correspondents who have advocated the movement, before such resolutions are finally adopted. The following suggestions have been received as to the objects of the proposed Society : — Several correspondents approve of the statement of objects contained in the circular. One has suggested that the first object shall be ex­ tended, so as to include the investigation of scientific as well as religious truth. It has been suggested that the Society ought to have in view the two additional objects of :— �9 I. Furthering education ; and, II. Helping liberal churchmen. Several correspondents have approved of the statement contained in the circular of the modes of action proposed for the Society. One correspondent considers them too abstract and indefinite ; on the other hand, another correspondent recommends the adoption of as few rules as possible, and seems to fear that these paragraphs will be found re­ strictive. None of the correspondents have objected to means No. 1 (the holding of meetings for the reading of papers and for conference), while several have written in favour of it. There has been much correspondence and difference of opinion with reference to means No. 2 (the holding and encouragement of meetings for the united worship of God), the numbers for and against its adoption being almost equally balanced. There is a good deal of opposition to means No. 3 (the helping of its members to ascertain and discharge their personal and social duties), many persons believing that it cannot be adopted as a mode of action without in­ terfering with the individual conscience. It would appear, therefore, that some of this opposition was occasioned by a misapprehension of the aim of this paragraph. No correspondent has expressed himself as opposed to means No. 4 (the formation of similar Societies, with the same objects, in various parts of the British Empire and other countries) ; several, on the other hand, have advo­ cated its adoption. It has been suggested that the action of the central Committee in London should be supple­ mented by the action of influential and energetic mem­ bers, who should visit different provincial towns, and stimulate to action those who feel the want of such a Society as it is proposed to establish. �10 Much has been written in favour of means No. 6 (the issue of publications calculated to promote the above purposes). One or two think that the action of the Society in this respect should be restricted to reprinting already existing works or articles in periodicals which expound the prin­ ciples of the Society. Several suggest that a periodical or periodicals, monthly or weekly, should be established for the diffusion of the principles of the Society, for correspondence, and for the information of country members. In addition to the six modes of action proposed by the circular, the three following modes of action have been suggested, viz. :— 7. That lists of the members should be prepared and circulated from time to time. 8. That the Society should assist in the formation of libraries in various towns. 9. That there should be lectures given at fixed times and places, accompanied by classical music, sacred or otherwise. The Committee have also received a pamphlet, con­ taining very valuable practical suggestions, from Mr. S. Prout Newcombe, of Croydon. The variety of suggestions contained in the corre­ spondence, of which the foregoing statement is an analysis, as to the organisation of the proposed Society, makes it desirable, in the opinion of the Committee, that this subject should be further considered. They will, therefore, invite the meeting to appoint a Committee, by whom a scheme for the organisation of the Society may be elaborated, and who shall report the result of their labours to a meeting to be held early in the ensuing year ; and they will request this meeting to confine itself at present to resolutions by which the �11 Society shall be constituted and its name determined, in accordance with the general character proposed to be given to it by the circular which has led to this meeting. On the question of name, the Committee wish to report that, although a majority has agreed upon a name which will be proposed to the meeting, yet they have not arrived at any unanimous conclusion. This result was one that might be expected, having regard to the number of different names suggested by their correspondents. The Committee have found in this matter (as will doubtless be found in many other cases) an occasion for exercising that mutual deference of each for the opinion of others which the proposed Society especially seeks to cultivate, and without which it cannot exist. The Chairman.—Ladies and gentlemen, I should have hesitated to accept the responsible post of chairman of this meeting if it had been intended to be anything in the nature of a public manifestation; but we are met here simply to have a friendly conference upon the very im­ portant subjects which have been touched upon in the printed circular which all of you have received, and which have also been referred to in the report. I trust, before the end of the meeting, we shall not only have had a profitable and friendly conference, but really shall have performed some practical business. Beyond that I do not think it would be wise for us to attempt anything at present. The facts which have been stated in the report show what we have done to elicit opinions, and what a large amount of sympathy with our views has been expressed from all parts of England, and that there is also, as might have been expected, a very wide diversity of opinion expressed by our correspondents. I think it is clear that, as we may, on the one hand, draw the con­ clusion that a sufficient number of persons feel there is a good work to be done by a society based on the �12 principles which we have put forth to justify our proposing to you that such a Society should now be founded, so, on the other hand, it would be very unwise at the present stage of proceedings to put the Society into a fixed and crystallised condition. We must feel our way, gradually establishing that which we feel ought to be established, and leaving, as far as possible, the Society, when formed, in an elastic state, to assume such a shape and adopt such modes of action as it may from time to time find best fitted to attain its objects. Probably many of those who are here present may not be aware of the steps which have led to the present meeting, and it may be well for me, therefore, to refer shortly to them. This movement, then, owes its origin to the arrival in this country of a gentleman whom we already rejoice to call our friend— Mr. Kesliub Chunder Sen. Since he came here, all of us, I think I may say, who heard him speak at the meeting held to receive him at the Hanover Square Rooms, or who have from time to time since that meeting heard him preach, have felt that in all its essentials the religion of Mr. Sen was our religion ; and yet, on the other hand, it is a remarkable fact that he did not find existing in this country any religious organisation in which he could simply feel himself to be at home. The feeling on the part of his friends that there was something wrong in this state of things led to a series of extremely interesting private meetings, which were held at his house ; and in the course of those meetings, the whole of which I had the pleasure of attending, we found, as was to be expected, that very similar thoughts had been excited in many different minds, not only by his visit, but also by many other circumstances which have occurred of late years. Everybody seemed to be agreed that, somehow or other, the religious organisations existing in England have for the most part failed in their professed object—that reli­ gion is, after all, nothing unless it is a uniting principle ; �13 and yet, while everybody agrees in that opinion, some­ how or other the actual religion professed in England succeeds chiefly in keeping people apart, in marking them off into separate bodies, and, when they are so marked off, keeping them entirely asunder. Then, looking at the subject from another point of view, we all of us also felt that while, according to the principles of our religion which we all accept, we ought to consider ourselves one large human family, yet that, if we looked into what was passing around us in our great cities, throughout our country, and throughout the world, we seemed to be acting in a very curious way when the matter was considered from a family point of view. The extraordinary contrast between the professed principles of the religious organisations of civilised Europe, and the actual practice of the most highly civilised nations, never, perhaps, has received a more striking and melancholy illustration than that which has taken place, even since this meeting was summoned, in the terrible war which now has actually commenced, and which, if we are a human family, is, as all wars must be, a fratricidal war. In trying to find out what was the cause of the two facts to which I have alluded, we were pretty well agreed so far as principle is concerned. With regard to the question of religious organisations, it seemed to all of us, I believe, that if we want to let religion do its proper work amongst us, we must strip off the weeds and briars of multiplied and complicated dogma which have encumbered and choked the good seed of central religious truth. We must get back, if we can, to that which is the foundation of all religions, and in which we are all agreed. In this attempt we find very little difficulty in accepting, as a statement of that upon which we can all agree, the decla­ ration that universal religion finds its sufficient foundation in the two great truths of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Again, looking at the question �14 from a practical point of view, it seemed also clear that if we could, instead of wasting our time in barren con­ troversies, apply ourselves to deduce from those two central truths practical laws for the conduct of human life, and make the entire round of human life impli­ citly obedient to the laws which those central truths teach, we should then not only succeed in giving, within the range of our own people, the proper work to religious organisations so founded, but we should also have esta­ blished a society in which no friendly stranger, like Mr. Sen, coming among us could ever feel himself to be a stranger. It might be very possible—in fact it would be certain—that among us there would be developed a large amount of honest and earnest difference as to detailed truths and subordinate principles of deep interest and importance. But we thought there would be a very large number who would feel that a common belief in, and a common acknowledgment of, the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man is sufficient to form the basis of a religious union, and that in that religious union all those who agreed in those two principles might comfortably, cordially, and fraternally find a place. We determined to see whether we could at once evoke a sufficient amount of sympathy with those views to justify us in attempting to found such a society. We drew up the circular which has been sent about England to the extent, as the report informs you, of about 2,200 copies. To those circulars we have received rather more than 100 replies. If we compare the number of replies with the number of circulars sent out, it certainly seems very small. On the other hand, I myself consider that it is an encouraging, and, on the whole, a satisfactory result. We had no time, and had no very good oppor­ tunity, of making a careful selection of the persons who should be sent to. We took two or three lists, which were accessible to us, of persons who had either sub­ �15 scribed to some fund or some society which seemed to us to indicate sentiments somewhat kindred to our own, and we addressed our circulars to every name appearing on those lists. It is very likely that the whole subject may have been quite strange to some of them, and a very large number of persons in England, and probably elsewhere, take a long time to answer circulars, so that it by no means follows that, even of those who have not replied, the majority do not take an interest in the subject. On the other hand, those circulars have elicited, as you have heard, from a large and widely-scattered body, a considerable amount of real sympathy. I was very glad to see that the meeting seemed to receive with a welcome the declaration in the report of the Provisional Committee, that in our opinion the amount of sympathy we had evoked is sufficient to justify us in founding the Society. It will be necessary of course to consider very carefully how far we shall go to-night, and what we shall declare to be the nature and objects and modes of action of the Society. On that point, my own belief is that we ought to proceed carefully and slowly, and that it is much more important that every step we take should be such as will excite as much sympathy as possible among all our friends, than that we should proceed in a hurry to do something which might seem to have a more complete appearance. I am afraid of being in too great a hurry to draw up rules or to do anything more than declare our general principles. It is quite clear that among the friends who have signified their sympathy with us we shall find a very large amount of difference of opinion, and, in point of fact, the foundation of that sympathy conies from two different sides. I shall be extremely sorry if we are not ultimately able to combine the sym­ pathy which has been evoked on both sides. I refer especially to what I may call the speculative side of the question—free thought; and the practical side of the �question—the religious life. A very large number of people who find themselves dissatisfied with the creeds and customs of religious organisations express themselves ready to join any society which, throwing off all shackles of that kind, simply determines to pursue truth, wherever truth may lie ; and I heartily sympathise with them, and shall heartily rejoice if we find in our future Society the means of assisting every earnest attempt at the investi­ gation of truth in the freest possible way. But, on the other hand, I take a still deeper interest in the other side of the question, the practical application of the principles we have accepted to the formation of a religious life. It seems to me that the social evils of the day may all be traced to the fact that there is such a wide divorce between the principles which we profess when we speak religiously, and the every-day practice of our lives. I think, therefore, that while, as I have said, I have the deepest sympathy with and shall always be ex­ tremely glad to join in any free investigation of specula­ tive truth, it will come more home to us as real pressing business at the present time to see what we can do in helping each other to ascertain what are the rules to which we ought to render our daily lives subject, in order that we may literally live upon this earth as a family of God’s children ought to live. Now, the wide differences which appear to exist and the various shades of opinion which are prevalent among our friends have been singularly and rather amusingly illustrated by the long list of proposed names for this Society which has been read to you by our Honorary Secretary. It may be said that it makes very little dif­ ference by what name we call ourselves, and that prac­ tically the work which we do is the all-important subject. No doubt that is so in the long run. Yet I am quite sure that the feeling of our correspondents, which has led them to lay great stress on the wise selection of a name, �17 is, on the whole, a true one. Our name will be at once the flag and the motto we display to the world, and it is really of importance that we should adopt a name which, while clearly expressing our principles, shall attract as much and repel as little as possible. There are many names which I could heartily accept, if there were not already attached to them some unfortunate association ; and I think it is important for us to avoid any name which has already associated with it thoughts and feelings and actions with which we should not wish in any way to be identified. When we discussed this question among ourselves in committee, even in a meeting of from nine to a dozen, we found that we had the most curiously varied associations with several of the names which have been read to you. Among others I may mention the term ‘Theistic.’ This term is one which, in the mind of our friend Mr. Chundcr Sen, signifies every­ thing which is most delightful and most religious and devout. For my own part I have long looked upon it as a word closely connected with all that I most value in free religious thought—thought which is free, and, at the same time, really religious; but yet I find that that is by no means the case with many of those with whom it is very important that we should be able to work in this movement. We find among our correspondents that the term is distinctly disliked and dreaded by a considerable number. I mention this because it is the term I should myself have by far preferred to any other, and yet it is one as to which 1 have come to the conclusion that it would be unwise in the Society to adopt it. You have heard that, among the resolutions to be submitted to you presently, is one for a name for the Society, and that that name was not arrived at unanimously by the Committee. In accordance with a common custom in such cases, it was understood that we should not come down as a committee and request you to accept the name proposed, c �18 . but that tlic question should be left entirely free and un­ shackled, that it should be discussed here and voted upon without any weight being given to the accident that there happened to be in the Committee a majority in favour of a particular name. Accordingly, an amend­ ment to that resolution will be moved. It is an amend­ ment to the effect that it would be wise in us, on the present occasion, to avoid pledging ourselves to any name at all, and that the name, like the further details of the Society, should be postponed to be further considered, first by the Committee, whom we shall ask you to appoint to-night, and afterwards by a meeting of the Society to whom the Committee will report. I shall say no more on that subject now, because it will have to be fully laid before you at a later period of the evening. Ladies and gentlemen, there is one point referred to in the report, upon which there has been a good deal of misapprehension among our correspondents, and on which, therefore, I would say one word. It is with regard to the third of what we have called the means which the Society proposes to adopt, and which is worded as follows : ‘ By helping its members to ascertain and dis­ charge their personal and social duties.’ For my own part, I consider, as I have already intimated, that that is perhaps the most interesting and the most important subject to which our attention can be directed, and I am, therefore, extremely anxious that it should not in any way be misunderstood. Some of our correspondents have objected to that proposal, on the ground that it would be impossible to adopt any practical measures for giving it effect without infringing the rights of individual conscience. It would be suicidal for a Society like ours, which intends, as far as it can, to be an embodiment of freedom with order, to do anything which could be open to the accusation of infringing the rights of individual conscience ; and the idea must have arisen, I think, from �19 the supposition, that, under that head, it was intended to adopt personal and social regulations which should be binding upon the members of the Society. Nothing of the kind has ever been contemplated by the Committee, and I am quite sure nothing of the kind would be accepted by the Society. One of the great rocks upon which, as I think, the existing religious organisations of the country have split, and are splitting, is what they call ‘ church discipline.’ I trust that our Society will never attempt to establish anything in the shape of church discipline. While, however, everybody is absolutely free to do that which is in accordance with his own conscience, it seems to me that we should be abdicating what is the great privilege of a religious fraternity, if we were to shrink from discussing the question of personal and social duties with those who may be willing to discuss them with us. I trust we shall find it possible in an earnest and faithful manner to assist each other in the attempt to investigate in what way the principle of the brotherhood of man ought to be applied to our daily life, in order to produce the effects which we feel ought to follow from it, but which we see around us at the present time do not follow from it. I hope, therefore, the Society will accept that as one of the most important branches of its ope­ rations, at the same time being extremely careful that nothing whatever shall be done, which can, in any way, be said to be even an attempt to infringe individual liberty. There is only one other point to which I need advert. I think it would be wise to agree not only that a consi­ derable part of the details of the working regulations of this Society should be left in a provisional state, but that we should express, in the constitution of the Society, the idea that we can never expect to arrive at perfection, and that the Society itself, therefore, is one of indefinite progress. I, with some of those who are now present, took a part in the attempt, which has come to an untimely c 2 �20 end, to found what was called the ‘ Free Christian Union.’ From the first it seemed to me there were fatal errors in the constitution of that Society, and I think the most fatal of all was the declaration that any attempt to change the programme, or the statement of the principles upon which the Society was founded, should be considered ipso facto a dissolution of the Society. In my view, no Society is worthy of permanent existence which does not embody in itself the idea of progressive development. I do not, of course, mean that we are always to be seeking change, but that we should always feel that what we hold is good only until we see something better. I should very much prefer to see in the constitution of, our Society a distinct declaration, that once in five years or once in a certain term of years, the whole constitution should be submitted to the members of the Society for the purpose of seeing whether suggestions could not be made for improvement, rather than to see there anything like a declaration, that, when we have once come to a con­ clusion, we are to bind ourselves for all future time to that conclusion, and that not only we ourselves for the rest of our lives, but also those who may come after us, are to agree with our present opinions. I will not detain you, ladies and gentlemen, any longer. I must express my great thanks for the kindness with which you have listened to what I have said, and I will now in conclusion move that the report which has been read be received. The resolution was then put to the meeting and carried unanimously. The Rev. J. E. Odgers.—Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I feel that the motion, which I have to re­ commend to the meeting, follows with peculiar fitness after the speech which has been just delivered, and is, in point of fact, but the natural consequence which will �21 suggest itself to every person who has heard you, Sir, with sympathetic feeling. The resolution which I have to propose is this—‘ That in the opinion of this meeting it is desirable to form a Society to unite men, notwithstanding any differences in their religious creeds, in a common effort to attain and diffuse purity of spiritual life, by, first, investigating religious truth ; secondly, cultivating devotional feelings; and, thirdly, furthering practical morality.’ I trust, Sir, that thus far the feeling of the meeting will support both you and myself, and that the applause which followed the statement in the report, that the Committee felt justified in the formation of this Society, is but the token of a wide and large sympathy both in this room and outside it. For myself, I am only a country minister, and I feel at present the strongest hope, from this meeting, from the words you have uttered, from the collection of opinion which has passed through the hands of the Committee, that we may have a Society which shall furnish those who labour for the principles of attaining and diffusing spiritual life with a strong motive for ac­ tion ; and by those means we shall bind those who spiritually labour into one common bond of sympathy, and give them at once that breadth of view and that as­ surance of brotherly spirit of which they oftentimes feel sorely in need. At the same time I rejoice to find that this sympathy is a sympathy of spirit, and does not ne­ cessarily involve an agreement in dogmatic propositions—that this Society proposes to take in all those who cordially have those three objects in view, notwithstanding any difference in their religious creed. While we are labour­ ing, perhaps each in our several spheres, to support the thought which is trusted to us, to cultivate and encourage the life which we most deeply approve, and are perhaps joined with some dogmatic body for the spread of the theological views which commend themselves to us, putting our hands to the plough as far as we can, and �22 striving by association to make the truth, dear to us, per­ fectly common to all mankind,—I feel that there is a need, not only beyond that, but rendered necessary by those associations, that we should go somewhere where a larger and wider field would be open to us, where we should escape at once from the doctrines which do attend sincere individual labour in the search after, and propagation of truth, and also which, in a double measure, attend the religious associations of those who dogmatically agree. Therefore, I look forward with the greatest pleasure to joining and supporting, as far as in me lies, an association where those, who theologically and religiously differ, may come, and, taking their stand upon the first article of any religious creed, however dogmatic, namely, 41 believe in one God, the Father Almighty,’ may there get glimpses of sides of religious life which have hitherto been closed to them ; may find further views of religious truth shining in on their minds as to those who are, generally speaking, in time and place separated from them, and return to their individual work of ascertaining and maintaining the truth, and spreading, by teaching and example, practical morality, with their minds refreshed by heartfelt com­ munion with others, who bid them God speed across the barriers of divergent theological theory, and, at the same time, gaining that outlook into ultimate truth which the naturally prophetic tendency of the mind does gain for itself after having every opportunity of hearing the sincere enunciation of opinion, which is at the present time broken and varied as the truth reflects itself through the souls of individuals. I therefore submit most heartily, and with the strongest individual feeling, this resolution to the meeting, and I trust that what I have said will not be thought unprac­ tical in itself, or as warring against the practical aims and objects of the Society. If I, looking at it from my own point of view, put the speculative side—the subjective �23 side—first, I do not wish in the least to depreciate any enumeration of practical ends, however various they may be. The letters which I have received from my own correspondents when I have sent them the circulars of this Society mention very many practical aims, all of which are in themselves most desirable, and may well call for religious co-operation; but, at the same time, I feel that these are early days to speak of the practical aim of the Society. The great thing is to feel that we are individually working only for those particular aims which are dear to us who have communion, in the highest and deepest sense, with others who are far off, who are working for the same objects that we all pledge ourselves to work for, and I feel at the same time that ends will present themselves—they must follow out of such communion of thought as I trust will be charac­ teristic of this Society, and that we shall gain from this Society ardour and heartiness of spirit, that we shall re­ turn not pledged to any kind of mechanism or organisa­ tion which is to hide the fact, that whatever good we do must come from the determination and aspiration of the soul, and will, therefore, be strengthened both for thought and for work by the Association, the formation of which I most heartily commend to this meeting. Therefore I beg to propose to the meeting the resolution which I have already read. The Chairman.—Ladies and gentlemen, I have the greatest possible pleasure in saying that this resolution will be seconded by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell. I must be allowed to say that, not only because Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell is a valued personal friend of my own, but because her taking part in this meeting I look upon as a practical illustration of a great principle. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell.—Ladies and gentlemen, I second this resolution. Its object is union—the union of all those who heartily love God. It is union for a �24 practical purpose, viz., the attainment and diffusion of pure spiritual life; a life which will express itself by earnestly striving to carry out God’s Will in every action. There is great necessity for such union. God has given us enough glorious truth—moral, religious, and scientific —to regenerate the world, if we would but put that truth into practice; but we do not know how to shape into deeds the teaching we get from pulpit, lecture-room, and book ; this is not taught us. We allow ourselves to float down the current of evil customs, shutting our eyes to some, growing indifferent to others, because alone we do not know how to avoid doing what everybody else does. We thus become partakers in all the evils that exist around us, and drunkenness, immorality, destitution, dis­ honesty, crime, all have their roots in our own daily life. There is no escaping from this terrible but grand brother­ hood which binds us all together. Single-handed we cannot resist the overwhelming force of social evils, but united we may. With the strength of union we may insist upon a truer education for our children; wTe may teach prac­ tically habits of simplicity and industry to youth ; we may carry out business honesty ; wTe may create a purer social atmosphere around us. Such effort to regenerate practical daily life, it appears to me, is the common meeting-ground of all religious persons. We, with an earnest Christian faith, can here joyfully meet all those who love God and seek to obey his laws ; and in this united effort to realise God’s laws we shall found the Universal Church. I have great pleasure, therefore, in seconding this resolution. The Chairman.—I would now invite any lady or gentle­ man to express any opinion on this matter. I hope it will not be considered necessary, in order that an opinion may be expressed, that it should be different from those which we have already heard, for we should be just as glad to hear additional reasons on our side of the ques­ �25 tion, as wo should be ready to hear any opinion not agreeing with ours. We should be very glad if those friends from a distance, especially, would say what they think on the matter. Mr. F. Wilson.—Sir, I should just like to ask a ques­ tion of the gentleman who proposed this resolution, and it is this—how can people who differ in theological matters agree to assemble under the proposition he suggested ? We must have an individual and responsible idea common to all the members of the Society, or else the thing cannot work. We must have a centre, and then you may widen the circumference to any extent you please, but this centre must be universally recog­ nised as a substantial starting-point. The Chairman.—I don’t know whether Mr. Odgcrs would wish to answer that question himself, but I must say I myself consider that it is impossible for men to unite for any good purpose, unless they also unite in some common definite belief. On the other hand, I am certain, from practical experience, that it is very possible to unite people who combine with that common belief quite an indefinite amount of theological difference. I think, therefore, there is no reason at all why we should despair of uniting in our Society people who, agreeing in the two principles which we have adopted, namely, the Fatherhood of God and Brotherhood of Man, yet add to those principles a very indefinite amount, and possibly a wide amount, of divergent belief on other points. Cer­ tainly we should wish that the question whether they could or could not unite with ns should be determined by each individual for himself or herself. Mr. Wade.—Sir, you were good enough to send to me a circular stating to me the objects of the proposed Society. I must say I was much puzzled to give an answer to the questions which were asked, and I came here to-night to hear some further elucidation from you. �26 But I am puzzled now to know in which direction any superfluous energies one might have can be thrown, which might not be given to any existing free Chris­ tian Church. I had hoped, sincerely hoped, since I gathered from the Chairman that the old Free Christian Union is dead, or must die, that we might probably strike out some new course which, in consequence of the desire for union among the various churches, and among those outside the churches, might have drawn together numbers of persons who, religiously speaking, have no homes. The Chairman said we need not be agreed as to a name to-night, but that is to be left open, and then the following speaker who proposed the first resolution ignores practicalities altogether. So far as I could follow him, we might just as well be a corporation to propagate moonshine as to ignore practicalities. Will you give me, if you please, something upon which to act ? You ask me to join you. Will you give me some definite notion of what this Society is doing, or proposes to do, over and above what any other Christian church is doing and may do, such a church as that of Mr. James Martineau or such as that of Mr. Conway ? We are asked to join with some other rational beings in doing some work which those churches are not doing. Show me, if you please, in what way I can put my hand to the plough. My friend, who spoke to the resolution, invited us to lay hold of, not a real plough, but some speculative plough which he had in his mind. Will you show me a real plough, which I can lay hold of and work some great furrows, but do not let us drive off into mere generalities, for that is the rock on which many associations have split. I am a member of the Free Christian Union, and I have asked what am I to do in it. I have got no answer beyond paying my sub­ scription to the Society from year to year, and receiving a pamphlet, which of course, I am delighted to have. If there is no work to be done, what on earth is a union re­ ll �27 quired for? Ought it not to do something to put into practice that which stands as the second article of your creed, that is, love towards man ? Surely that is not a very difficult thing to do. Either you have got some­ thing to do beyond what the other churches are en­ deavouring to do or you have not. If you have, let us know it. If you have not, what good will this Society do ? If you will be so good as to enlighten my ignorance on that point I shall be glad. I believe I do not stand alone in that matter by a good many. We should be glad to hear, since the mover of the resolution said he ignored practicalities, some one who would tell us in what way we can unite to do a work which is not being done by any other Christian church in the country. The Chairman.—I think I may make one very short reply to the kindly criticism, with which we have been favoured by the gentleman who has just sat down. In the first place, I did not understand Mr. Odgers to ignore practicalities. In the printed statement which is before the meeting, there are three objects stated. The first is, investigating religious truth. The second, cultivating devotional feelings. The third, furthering practical morality; and in the last paragraph those same general objects are slightly modified and altered in their order. They are there stated as follows : that the ‘ Society is offered as a means of uniting all those who believe in the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man, in the endeavour to supplement their individual efforts towards goodness and truth by mutual sympathy;’—that corre­ sponds with that which is put third in the paragraph above, namely, ‘ furthering practical morality.’ Then, ‘ to intensify their trust in and love to God by fellowship in worship ;’ that is, in other words, the second object stated in the first paragraph, namely, ‘ cultivating devotional feelings.’ Then, ‘ to aid each other in the discovery and propagation of spiritual truth, that thus they may attain �28 to the more complete observance of the Divine laws of human nature.’ That which is there put last corresponds, I take it, to that which is put first in the first paragraph, namely, ‘ investigating religious truth.’ I think the only difference between the mover and seconder of the resolution was, that Mr. Odgers distinctly stated that he was more drawn by his sympathy for what is stated first in the first enumeration of the objects of the Society and last in the second enumeration of those objects, namely, ‘ investigating religious truth,’ and less to the practical part; whereas Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell stated that her great interest was in furthering practical morality, which is put last in the first and first in the second enu­ meration of the objects of the Society, namely to supple­ ment individual efforts towards goodness and truth, by mutual sympathy. Then, with regard to the question, whether our friend should join us or not; of course we invite everybody to join us who wishes to do so. But for my own part I do not imagine that we shall be joined by a great many of those who are in the happy position of belonging to a society which entirely satisfies them. If any member of the Portland Street congregation, or the South Place congregation feels that either of those particular churches completely satisfies all his desires for religious fellowship, let him remain and be satisfied. We do not seek to render him dissatisfied, but it is a fact which we find existing, that there is a large number who do feel dis­ satisfied, and who want something more. We offer our organisation as an attempt to find out among ourselves the causes and nature of our own dissatisfaction, and the best practical mode of getting satisfied. Whether any particular individuals, ladies or gentlemen, should join us or not is, as I said before, a question which must be left entirely for themselves to settle. For my part, I think the enumeration of means under the second head of our �29 printed circular holds out a prospect, if we can succeed in getting the Society formed, of a good deal of practical work which is not much done by any existing church that I know of. The very first is this, ‘ Holding meetings for the reading of papers and for conference.’ I am not aware of any church that attempts anything of that kind —certainly, neither of the two which have been referred to does so. Then, secondly, ‘ Holding and encouraging meetings for the united worship of God.’ That of course is done by every church. But, taken in connection with our avowed intention to endeavour to unite those who belong to the various great branches of monotheistic theology—Christians, Brahmos, Jews, Parsees, Mohamme­ dans, it offers a work that has not yet been attempted, as far as I know, by any existing church, whether orthodox or free. Then, thirdly, ‘ Helping its members to as­ certain and discharge their personal and social duties.’ No doubt the minister does something towards helping the members of his congregation to ascertain and dis­ charge their duties; but there is very little mutual fraternal help arising out of the fellowship of the scattered congregations with which I am acquainted in London. Those three objects, to say nothing of corre­ spondence and the issuing of publications, seem to me to point out a very large field of practical work. I am glad that all these questions should be asked, because the more carefully the matter is considered the better it will be for us. But we can only lay before you, as I said before, that which is in our own minds and hearts ; and if you find that you are perfectly satisfied without any­ thing we have to offer, we cannot ask you to join us. If, however, what we do place before you does seem to you to be attractive, and to hold out some hope of useful action on your part, then we ask you to join us. Mr. Edward Webster.—Sir, I wish to make a few ob­ servations with reference to what fell from the gentleman �30 at the other end of the room (Mr. Wade). I would, in the first place, ask those who are present, whether an Asso­ ciation of this description is, or is not, a necessity of the age, or rather of the intellectual religion which is so rapidly spreading throughout the country ? If it be not a necessity, then this Association will exist but a very short time, notwithstanding the ability with which I am quite sure its concerns will be conducted, from what I have already heard from the Chairman to-night. But if it be, as I for one undoubtedly think it is, a necessity of the age, then you will go on, and you will establish practically the most important religious principles that have ever yet been communicated to the world. It is impossible for any person who is at all connected with the current literature of the age—with what is going on in general society—I may say, in all ranks of society, from the highest to the lowest—not to be aware that doctrines and rules, in connection with religion, which only twenty-five years ago were received as in­ violable, arc now openly questioned—openly questioned, not for the purpose of depreciating Christianity or re­ ligion, but for the noble and exalted purpose of arriving at truth, and that truth the most important of any. What are we, and whither are we going ? what is to become of the undying soul which every one in this room pos­ sesses ? Hitherto science has not been applied to religion. Look at all the religions of the world, and you will find that science has had nothing whatever to do with them. But that wondrous intellect of man, which has given us the electric telegraph, which has enabled us as it were to fly more speedily than the dove—that intellect is now being applied to religion, and the consequence is, that there will be new revelations of the dispensations of Almighty God to man, and what hitherto have been considered penalties and punishments will be found to be constructed upon laws, spiritual, physical, and moral, absolutely perfect in �31 their conception, and which have never required, and never will require change, or amendment, or superses­ sion, but by certain operations, slow to us but sure, are effecting the ultimate social and religious civilisation of the world. Gentlemen, union is strength ; and to tell me that we are to stop because we cannot this evening fix upon a name, is absurd. We shall have a name soon enough, and such a name, I hope, as will unite very many in supporting this Society. I do not hesitate to say, and I am not a very young man, that the institution of this Society has caused me more satisfaction than the institution of any Society I ever heard of. Its importance cannot be exaggerated. There is as yet no religion intro­ duced into the world, which answers the conceptions of a highly intelligent, highly cultivated, and highly benevolent man. Therefore, Sir, I give you all the support I can, and I most heartily hope that this Society is the commencement of a thorough religious civilisation, and that it will end in establishing universally, not only the worship of God, but the brotherhood of man. Then, Sir, we shall not hear of men armed to the teeth, and applying that noble mind which God has given us, not for the purpose of insuring human happiness, but for the purpose of destroying each others’ lives. Christianity, as developed, has totally failed to regenerate mankind. Eeligion founded on man’s in­ tellect only will regenerate it, and that religion I trust you are going to inaugurate this evening. Mr. James Burns.—Mr. Chairman, and friends, I do not rise to criticise the objects stated in the programme of this Society, but rather to suggest something of a practical character. I am already connected with a body of people in this kingdom, numbering perhaps 20,000, who are already endeavouring to do what this Society contemplates. I see a number of those persons in this room, and from them we can have practical suggestions and sympathy. Now, Sir, there are several things con­ �32 nected with religion. In the first place, there is senti­ ment. We hear a great deal too much of that. In the second place, there is faith; there is a great deal too little of that. Then we have corresponding belief. Re­ ligion is full of belief, but we put action out of view. Then again, we have got dogmas or principles, but we have not got objects. We cannot get all people to believe alike, because every man will believe in accordance with his culture and organisation. But there is one thino- we can get all people to do, and that is, to move with one beneficial object, namely, human happiness—an object of all minds above idiocy. But we can never get two minds to entertain the same conception of the same thing. Even as to colours, if the organisation of vision is defec­ tive, many persons entirely differ. I have to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that this Society is the expression of that which has been going on among some people for many years past, and all the things considered in your programme are already at work in this kingdom. We have Sunday meetings, where papers are read, and where there is free conference. We have churches, where there is no toll at the door, and no card for admission on the platform. Again, we have religion in this country which may be called scientific religion. What is meant by that ? Simply, that there is no belief in a religion which is not founded on facts. A scientific religion re­ quires to be based upon man, and not upon God. What do we know about God? We know nothing about God further than what He has revealed of Himself, through human consciousness. Let us realise the great fact of human consciousness, and then I say all that we know about God or anything else we can know only by careful and intelligent investigation, and there are many things which we can never tell with any degree of certainty. To try to do so is unphilosophical, and can lead to nothing but dogmatism. Why should we have dogmatism at all, �33 where there is intelligence? Intelligence supersedes dogma. Let us never name the word again, because it is the sunken rock on which every ship has foundered which has professed to take mankind to a religious haven. What do we require to know ? We want to know what constitutes human happiness. We want to know what are the objects of human existence. Suppose it is im­ mortality. The great object of scientific religion is to liscover the fact of immortality—what becomes of men after they leave off their mortality ? In what condition lo they exist, and what is the relation of the present life so the future life ? If you can answer those questions, you know how to found a scientific religion, because you ?annot have a religion made up of mere morality; morality is not religion—morality is only the performance >f the various duties of life— The Chairman.—Allow me, Mr. Burns, to suggest to 7ou that we are rather wandering to subjects which will >ccupy a great deal of time, and I should like to ‘onfine the discussion to the resolution, which has been noved and seconded, and to know whether or not we hould adopt it. Mr. A. C. Swinton.—Mr. Chairman, ladies, and gentlelen, among the objects of the proposed Theistic Society, s stated in the prospectus issued by the Provisional ommittee, is, ‘ To unite men, notwithstanding any differnces in their religious creeds, in a common effort to ttain and diffuse purity of spiritual life.’ The question now feel it my duty to put, in the presence of this ssembly, is, Does this proposed Association mean to live ccording to the divine laws of human nature, as that reat example among men, Jesus Christ, lived? If so, of >urse it must thoroughly renounce the present un•otherly system of life, and all that pertains to it. And ch Theist, as a true child of God, and in His name, ill proclaim by every deed of his daily life the falseness D �34 and criminality of the present system—a system based on animalism, by which the millions of our actually de­ serving fellow-creatures are forced by those who are more powerful and cunning than themselves to be life­ long slaves, and are thereby persecuted in the cruellest manner, body and soul, to the present injury, and far greater sin, of both oppressor and oppressed. If, there­ fore, this proposed Theistic Society, despite its name and provisions to the contrary, does not mean to supplant this brutalising wrongdoing by the pure spiritual life its Committee proposes to practise, then I say that far more than is at present done by all the anti-Christian Churches, and people falsely called Christians, is its dishonour of God and its mockery of humanity. A few freed souls have been striving to plant on earth that spiritual life which the gentle and all-loving Nazarene, amid the greatest opposition, many centuries since, heroically proved to the world all might live, if they determined to cast aside sensual selfishness, which blinds them, and trust to the guidance of the divine soul within each one of us for happiness, ever increasing and eternal. More of these efforts may be heard of from me at the close of this meeting, if it is desired, or of the Editor of the ‘Alpha,’ 15 Southampton Row, Holborn. Mr. J. Baxter Langley.—Mr. Chairman, ladies, and gentlemen, I rise with very great hesitation, because I feel the question which I raise is one upon which there is a great difference of opinion among those who desire earnestly to co-operate in a religious movement of the kind to be inaugurated here. The word ‘devotional’ occurs in the resolution, and I am sure it will convey to many minds, as it did to mine, the idea of prayer in public worship and prayer in the sense of petitioning to the Deity. I believe that there are a very large num­ ber of persons who are animated by religious sentiment, who nevertheless believe that prayer in that sense is not �35 part of our religious duty, and that it places both man and God in a wrong position. Therefore I know that, supposing the resolution were carried with the word ‘ devotional ’ included in it, it would drive away from you many of those whom I should like to see united with you—namely, those who philosophically object to the word ‘ devotional ’ as relating to a form of prayer. I simply wish to raise the question, whether that word must be regarded as an essential part of the resolution. If so, it will exclude myself and those with whom I am accustomed to co-operate among the advanced Unitarians. The Chairman.—We have been desirous so to pre­ pare our resolutions as to cause as little difference as possible ; but I have no doubt it would be quite im­ possible to draw up any resolution, and it would be use­ less if we could succeed in doing it, which would exclude nobody. There must be a certain amount of community of feeling, as I have said already in answering a previous question. I can only say that the phrase which has been objected to expresses one of the main objects of the Society. The cultivation of devotional feeling was a sub­ ject which was well considered and very deliberately and unanimously adopted by the Provisional Committee; and on the part of that Committee, I have no hesi­ tation in saying that they intend to adhere to that phrase. With regard to what it applies to, or what it means, I have no authority to enter into that question at all; each person must judge for himself as to the phrase itself. The Committee who have called this meeting, and who have hitherto acted in this movement, heartily adhere to it. Mr. E. D. Darbisiiire.—Sir, I feel very much interest in the programme which I hold in my hand, but I have very great doubts as to the object of the proposed Society, much as we have heard of it. I have taken p 2 �much pains to form my own opinion upon those subjects mentioned in the circular. I am in doubt at this moment whether the object of the Society is to unite men or to make a common effort to attain and diffuse purity of spiritual life. If the object of the Society is to unite men, I am afraid the Committee, in their efforts to unite, will lose that precision of thought, and that resoluteness of prin­ ciple, which always disappear from attempts at compro­ mise. The object of the Society, so far as I have heard from the speakers to-night, is a common effort to attain and diffuse purity of life ; not to unite men. We do not care for the mere fact of uniting men. The mere fact of uniting men is of no use. If they are heartily unanimous in their object—if they are prepared to pledge them­ selves to join together—if they hail with the sincerest thankfulness the authority of the moral law, recognising similar devotion on the part of their members, whom they did not know before, as they themselves feel—they will gather strength from knowing that others have the same aspiration and the same longing with themselves, and they will earnestly unite for such a purpose. That is all our resolution proposes, as it seems to me—that the Society shall be formed for a common effort to attain purity of life, and not to unite men. The Chairman.—Mr. Darbishire is. undoubtedly quite correct in what he has said. The object of the Society is a common effort, and it is to unite men only so far as is necessary to carry out that common effort. Of course there can be no common effort without union. The object of the union, no doubt, is not as an end, but simply as a means — the end being the common effort. The resolution was then put to the meeting, and carried, with four dissentients. �37 Mr. Vansittart Neale.— Mr. Chairman, ladies, and gentlemen, the resolution which I have been asked to propose is, that the name of the Society be ‘The Uni­ versal Religious Association.’ Before I address myself to the resolution distinctly before you, I wish to disclaim, in my own name, any notion that I am speaking for any­ body except myself. I infer it is one of the charac­ teristics of the Society which I hope to see formed, that in it we should feel that we are not bound by the opinions of other people ; that we do not pledge our­ selves to accept the opinions of all those with whom we may be associated in this Society, or whom we may ask to join in the Society ; nor are we to ask them, or require them, to accept our opinions. But we do ask, and we hope it may be possible to show, that there should be a common basis of union, defined, distinct, and practical, so far as such union can be practical, upon which we may act, preserving to ourselves that individuality of opinion without which I myself am convinced it is perfectly im­ possible that mankind could ever arrive at a general acceptance of any religious truth as something in which they commonly agree. Now, Sir, as to the name. I have heard, what I was not aware of before, that it is intended to propose that the question of the name to be given to this proposed Society should be deferred for further consideration. I confess my own opinion is that it would be a great mistake to do so. Unless it should appear to-night that there is an irreconcilable diversity of opinion as to what the name ought to be, I think that the not adopting a name would be as much as to say we do not ourselves clearly under­ stand what we want, we have no distinct idea what the Society is to exist for, and therefore it is impossible for us to give it any title which would enable any other people to tell what it is we ask them to join in. I myself have a very distinct idea of a principle up >n which I �38 think it is possible to form the Society, and perhaps I may be allowed very shortly to fall back upon what has already been said as to the question which has been asked, because I think the conclusive answer has not yet been given—I mean the question as to what such a Society as this can do which any other free Christian Church cannot do. I say the answer to that question is this : it can unite those persons who, having a deep reli­ gious feeling, cannot join any Christian Church. That is what it can do. It can unite the gentleman wrhom I have the honour to see to-night on my left (Mr. Sen) ; it will unite the Mohammedan and the Parsee; and it will unite gentlemen like the author of ‘ The Phases of Faith ; ’ it will unite numbers of those who are now balancing between Pantheism and the acceptance of that which we have called Theism. It may unite all those who cannot and will not join any Christian Church, and in doing that you will do much to make all those who are members of Christian Churches understand what it is they ought to aim at. That is the principle on which I would support this Society. That is what I think this name, which I propose, expresses. I think it is apparent, from the list of names read to you from the report to-night, that there are at least three different views or heads of what the name for such a Society as this should be, all of which, I think, are mistaken ones. There are certain persons who think that the Society should come out with a definition of what they call absolute or universal religion, and thus place itself in a species of critical antagonism to all ex­ isting forms of faith. I think that would be a very great mistake. The object of the Society, I consider, is to bring men into that state of mind towards each other in which it may be possible for them thoroughly, fairly, and calmly to investigate and to judge of what there is which is true and what there is which is not true in different religious faiths. Until they have brought themselves into that �39 state of mind they cannot be in a state of mind to define in a satisfactory manner what are the religious truths which they themselves coincide with, and which they seek to inculcate. Again, there are certain persons who would suggest apparently that the Society should put itself under the protection of some existing religious in­ stitution, or under some form of Christianity. Here again I consider we should start upon a great mistake if we did that. I myself do accept individually that truth as to which others differ ; for I do accept, and hold, and believe in the truth of that which has been considered by many persons to be altogether contrary to reason, that which has been the foundation of what is called the Catholic faith, upon which Christianity has been historically founded. I accept it entirely, although I am not going, of course, to occupy the meeting with any discussion upon that point. But I consider that there is no religion, there is no faith, there is no religious dogma whatever, which is not influenced by the myths and legends or notions with which it has been associated. No society which could hope to bring man generally to the acceptance of a faith that should extend all over the world can exist at all if it does not leave itself open to the true, careful, calm investigation and examination of all those matters that may be contemned, or may be insufficiently founded on facts in the existing creeds. Then again there is another idea which has been prevalent to a certain extent in America—namely, that the Society is to meet and say, ‘ We hold a number of very different opinions, and we simply agree to come together and tell each other that we differ.’ I think that would be an extremely unsatis­ factory foundation on which to form the Society. I cannot imagine that the Society would attain any valuable action if it were to adopt that as its sole basis. What is it that the Society ought to stand upon ? I consider that the Society aims at doing this : it aims, or should aim, �40 according to my idea, to unite men within their different faiths by leading them to feel that all of them are, to use a Biblical phrase, the sheep of one Master, although they may be separated for the present in many different folds ; to lead them to believe that there is a spirit common to, pervading all religions, even those which we most gene­ rally condemn as false religions ; there is a spirit per­ vading them all, which is the profound spirit of religion, a part of which each one of the special creeds has more or less ambiguously given utterance to, but to which it is our object to bring them back, saying to men, ‘You remember that all your own acts, all your own dogmas, all that you, in your own particular religious creeds, may endeavour to insist upon, they are only helps, and should be regarded only as helps, to the development of a com­ mon foundation which may be said to be the manifesta­ tion of the really divine and universal religion of man.’ I consider that every religion has, more or less, been founded upon trust in God. It is perfectly true that the idea of trust has been embarrassed by a great deal of distrust; it is quite true that men are continually talking as if they were, and imagined themselves to be, in an­ tagonism to God, and God in antagonism to them, and they suppose that it is necessary to put an intervening mediator between themselves and God, in order to relieve that antagonism which they imagine exists. But this mediator and the system of mediation have been intro­ duced because they have got in their minds, in spite of all this intellectual trust, a profound feeling of distrust in the Being who is the Author of their own lives and the Author of this wonderful world, and because they wish to get rid of and relieve any element of distrust, and to give vent to the confidence in the Being on whom their lives depend. Then I say that every religion has, more or less, sought to affirm fellowship among men. There again we have �41 the same sort of error. That fellowship lias been limited to the fellowship of some particular nation, or the fellow­ ship of those belonging to some particular sect, or hold­ ing some particular set of opinions. There has been a failure in establishing a feeling of fellowship among men by having a common relation to the Great Being to whom they owe their existence. The third great element has been this : that religion is a matter of revelation ; it is not an invention of man’s imagination only, but that it is something which man, through his imagination, appre­ hends as the action of God towards him, by means of which man is brought, through the action of God, to the apprehension of those deep and spiritual truths upon which his whole life depends. Here again we have had the same sort of mixture of error with truth which we have found in other cases. Here again it is our object to eliminate that error. Men have generally supposed that the idea of a revelation was something authoritatively declared at some part of the remote past, and which for ever after was to be accepted upon certain grounds with the same evidence. There is another and grander idea of revelation, wdiich has been imputed to the Roman Catholic Church—the revelation of a con­ tinuous progress, or something going on from the begin­ ning of the world, and which will never terminate till the world itself is terminated—a continual manifestation of God to man by means of which man is brought into a more thorough appreciation of his relation towards God, and, therefore, his relation towards himself. It is the belief in this system of revelation of continual progress which I say we substitute for the idea of the authorita­ tive revelation, and it is that which completes the scheme. The third great principle which lies at the bottom of all religions, and which it is the object of this Society to call forth and bring out in its purity------ I do not wish to occupy your time much longer, but these considerations �42 appear to me very essential to bring before the Society (although I have been able to do so only in a very im­ perfect manner), in order to make you share my convic­ tion that the Society has a distinct object on which it may be formed, and which it may express by its name. I think the name suggested is one which meets all those views as well as any name that can be suggested. ‘ The Universal Religious Association ’ expresses, I think, all those convictions. It expresses by the word ‘ universal ’ a desire to take in all mankind, that we regard the pro­ cess of revelation as something carried on among all nations throughout all ages, and that we go to all of them, in order to invite all to join us, and gather from all of them those signs and features of truths which they have adopted. Again, it is to be a religious association. It is to be a union of trust in God; and it affirms the fellowship of men one with another, which is the second great principle upon which true religious faith is founded. I say, therefore, that this name seems to me to express the object of the Society, such as I conceive it to be, as fully as any name could express it; and I have, there­ fore, no hesitation in recommending to this meeting that that name should be adopted. Mr. Andrew Leighton.—Mr. Chairman, I will consult the desire of the meeting by exceeding brevity, and I will simply formally second this resolution, reserving to myself the opportunity of making any remarks at the close of the discussion if it should be necessary, but not otherwise. The Chairman.—As I know there is an amendment to be moved to this resolution, perhaps it would be con­ venient that that should be proposed before any general discussion takes place. Mr. Edward Henry Busk.—As you, Sir, have called upon me to move the amendment at once, I certainly will do so. Taking as I do so great an interest in this �43 Society, I move any amendment upon a resolution which the Provisional Committee has thought fit to bring before the meeting to-night with the greatest regret. It is from no wish to force upon the Committee, or upon the Society which this meeting has declared its desire to found, any name of my own selection. It is, perhaps, not even from any feeling that the name which the majority of the Committee desire to recommend to-night is in itself very objectionable, but it is from a great desire on my part to prevent the Society from being misconstrued unneces­ sarily by those who have not joined it. The name itself may seem a very unimportant matter; but, in fact, the name is the only thing which comes before persons who are not members of the Society. The name to them re­ presents the Society. It is a very important thing, there­ fore, that the name should represent the object of the Society, and, as far as possible, be kept free from being mis­ represented and misunderstood. At the same time, it is not at all important, in my view, that a name should be speedily fixed upon. We have already passed, almost unanimously, a resolution which states in very distinct terms the objects which it is proposed that this Society shall have in view. It cannot, therefore, be said that, in thus declining to choose a name to-night, this meeting is forming a Society without having any distinct object. It has three very distinct objects ; but at the same time the name, the short placard which will set before the external world the objects which we have in our hearts and minds, is a thing, in my judgment, requiring careful considera­ tion. It is not, of course, my place to make known to the meeting everything that has passed in committee, but I think I may inform the meeting that the list of names I have read in the report only came before the Committee last Monday, and they had then and there to select a name. Therefore I do think there was very little time for thought as to the best name to be selected. There �44 was not unanimity at our committee meeting, as you, Sir, have said ; and I feel that the subject of choosing a name is so important, as compared with the fact of being without a name for four or five months, that I do earnestly entreat the meeting to consider whether the choice of a name ought not to be deferred until we have had a longer time to consider. It is in itself a matter of detail, and, as the chairman has already informed you, it is the inten­ tion of the members of the Provisional Committee to brine»o before this meeting a resolution to the effect that it should be referred to a Committee to complete the or­ ganisation of this Society, to form rules as to member­ ship and as to the management of the Society, and various questions of that kind which cannot be gone into at a meeting of this general nature. I therefore move the amendment, ‘ That this meeting do not commit itself to the choice of a name, but that the choice of a name be re­ ferred, together with the other details of completing the organisation of the Society, to the Committee,’ which I hope this meeting will soon appoint. I will not detain the meeting one instant more. I wished merely to put before you, as shortly as possible, the extreme importance of the choice of an appropriate name, and the desirability of not taking any step which we should at any time wish to retract, and which we should regret having taken hastily and without due con­ sideration. Mr. Armstrong.—I beg leave to second the amend­ ment, not exactly in the same interest in which it has been moved by Mr. Busk, but because a name has been running in my own head which has not been mentioned, and which I cannot help thinking would recommend itself to a large number of persons; and, in order that that name may have a chance of being considered by the Provisional Committee, I rise to second Mr. Busk’s amendment. I suppose that the liuc of thought and �45 feeling which has led the gentlemen forming the Pro­ visional Committee to call us together to-night has been, at any rate, a certain dissatisfaction with the general lines of religious thought existing around us. Thought on serious matters seems at the present day to be running chiefly in two channels: the one is the ancient channel which regards certain dogmatic beliefs, whatever they may be, as essential to salvation, and insists that all men must come to one dogmatic belief in order that they may be saved; the other is the reaction on that old belief, which is beginning to overthrow all distinctively religious thought, and to teach us that man need not look to anything higher than himself for instruc­ tion and light, and that all that has been accustomed to go by the name of religion may be entirely abandoned. I apprehend the desire of the Committee would be to take a medium course; and while rejecting the notion that any special dogmatic belief, be it Ritualistic, Evan­ gelical, or otherwise, is necessary to salvation, nevertheless they would contend that some religious belief, or, at any rate, some religious life, is necessary to salvation in its highest sense—that salvation is an assimilation with the Divine Being, whom they believe to govern the universe; and the great religious work before us is to draw man nearer to that Divine Being. Whether these thoughts ran in the mind of the Committee or not I cannot tell. I can only judge from the internal evidence which I find in the prospectus. I have only endeavoured, as I sup­ pose all who received this circular have, to get out of my brain some name to express this object. I entirely agree with Mr. Busk, that our name is an exceedingly im­ portant point. By our name we shall stand or fall ; by our name we shall be judged by Saturday Reviewers and all that tribe ; and if they can find anything to ridicule in our name, we shall find it hard to contend against it. But of the names our secretary read, every one con­ �46 tained either the word ‘ Religious’ or the word ‘ Theistic.’ Objections have been urged to both those names, the objection to ‘ Theistic’ being, I presume, that, however grand and noble the word may be in itself, it may give rise to certain prejudice, and is not generally understood in its proper and primary sense. A Theist is a person who believes in a God. Nevertheless, I have spoken to many Christian persons of various Churches who were quite shocked at my notion that they were Theists. I think, therefore, it would be well if we could find some other name than ‘Theistic’ by which we could express our objects, and which there would be no objection to our adopting. On the other hand, the objection to the word ‘ Religious,’ to my mind, is that there are things professed as religious which I, for my own part, am not inclined to recognise as religious in the proper sense of the word. The Secularists and the Positivists tell us of Secular religion and Positive religion. I have no objec­ tion either to Secularists or Positivists. I believe many of them are good and earnest men, but at the same time I do not think we should find it practicable to work in a religious association with them. I do not think we should find we had a common aim and object, and I doubt whether a society such as that would be found to be practically useful. I would, therefore, suggest that the Committee do consider the word ‘ Monotheistic.’ The word is a very long one, and it may sound too learned. At the same time I think it combines all that one under­ stands by Theism, without having any accretion around it such as gathers around the word ‘Theistic.’ I sup­ pose you do not contemplate being Polytheists, and therefore I do not think, by adding the word ‘ Mono ’ to ‘ Theistic,’ that you will practically narrow your Society at all. Monotheistic may seem to be a word out of place in England; you may say that, by taking the name of Monotheistic, it is implied there is a Polytheistic Society �47 against whom we are engaged. But this Society is not an English Society; it is not even a European Society; but it is to be a world-wide Society, if the world will join us. Polytheism is not yet eradicated from the world ; it still exists in many countries in the East; and I think by adopting such a name as Mono­ theistic we should avoid all prejudice such as gathers around the word ‘ Theistic.’ We should be distinct and precise, and not misunderstood by any party ; not lay ourselves open to ridicule, but express exactly what are the objects of the majority of the members of the Pro­ visional Committee. I have great pleasure, therefore, in seconding Mr. Busk’s amendment. Mr. Owex.—Sir, I would support the amendment, and merely observe that the suggestion made by the last speaker is one I approve of, although I should like it better were the title to be ‘ Monotheistic Brotherhood.’ I was heartily pleased and delighted when I read the pro­ spectus, and I thought if a name could be selected in which both points might be embraced, that of the father­ hood of God and the brotherhood of man, it would be very desirable. I think this comes nearer to it than any name which I have yet heard. For that reason I sup­ port, or rather endorse, what the last speaker has said. I regret to find that there should be any division to-night. I believe that in spirit we all agree. I think Mr. Swinton ought to be satisfied with what this Society intends to do. It is what I have desired to see for a long time—namely, a broad platform where any man might stand upon equal terms with others. I have had much experience with different denominations, those who profess the popular Evangelical views and others, and I do not question the reality of their convictions and enjoyment, although I do not agree with them. I say there is a reality among them, and I respect them, and I want to be able to stand >n the platform side by side with them. I give them �48 credit for their sincerity, and can understand them when they say they can realise acceptance with God. I can appreciate the worthy stranger to whom I have listened with satisfaction and delight, though introducing views so different, when he took for his text, ‘ God is love,’ and when he illustrated that love by referring to the return­ ing prodigal. I thought then it was time we had a movement such as is now being inaugurated, and I hope those of my friends who have not gone cordially with the votes will reconsider it, and will not act in opposition, but in concert. There will be opportunities afforded for con­ ference and for the reading of papers, and the Society will afford them an opportunity of submitting any views which they may desire to bring before us. I have very frequently said, and I wish you to bear it in mind (and I have been labouring outside for many years in attempt­ ing such an object), that the things you are now suggest­ ing I have attempted to do. I have referred to the Catholic Church. They have one grand idea, but their mistake is that they want every one to be of one mind. But cannot we have all under one Shepherd? Cannot we have all in one fold, and be looked upon as one Church ? As things are now, a premium is paid on hypocrisy. We want each man to be true to himself. In opening associations like this there will be every scope offered for humility, as there is a bare possibility that we may be wrong. When we establish a Society like this, if any member has anything to communicate, he will be in a position to do so more than he is now, when the different sects stand at daggers’ points. Air. E. Webster.—Sir, I think it would be wise to post­ pone the final resolution of this Society with regard to the name, because I think the name in itself is very im­ portant indeed. Moreover, I should object to the name that has been mentioned, because it is too vague. ‘ The Universal Religious Society ’ would not carry to ordinary �49 minds the true nature of this Association. I presume, of course, when the Society comes to be organised it will have some system of public worship, because, unless it applies to the spiritual sentiment of human nature, it will at last merely become an institution for the circulation of papers on theological subjects. Man is, by nature, a gregarious creature, and more especially in matters con­ nected with religion, and unless you have some system of public worship I venture to predict your Society will ultimately fail. The words ‘ Religious Association ’ do not point to religious public worship at all. If you had some such name as this, 4 The Church of God for all People of all Nations,’ the word 4 Church ’ would in this Christian country carry with it an idea of public worship. I do not mean to say that that is a better name than that which is mentioned in the resolution. I should like to know very much from our Asiatic friends what the meaning of the word 4 Theistic ’ is, as understood in that part of the world, but the word throughout Christendom has a certain definite meaning. I mention that now for the purpose of showing my reasons for voting for the amendment. I think the name has never been sufficiently considered, and I am not content with the name that has been mentioned, because it is much too vague. Mr. Charles Pearce.—Mr. Chairman, brothers, and sis­ ters, I shall support the amendment, but not for the same reasons for which my friend opposite (Mr. Armstrong) supported it; and, before I make a very few remarks, I should like to clear away one or two difficulties which probably his remarks have made. He suggested a name in his own mind as one which was suitable to this Society—that is, Monotheistic, if I understood him aright, because in the world there were many gods, or rather there was worship of what are supposed to be numerous gods. Without entering into any theological discussion, E �50 I desire simply to carry your minds back some 4,000 years since, and to remind you that all the efforts of Moses were to destroy the worship of gods and to enunciate the worship of the one true God. Therefore I earnestly hope you will dismiss from your minds at once any idea of adopting such a name. We do not want to have this country and the world embroiled, as were the nations around the Children of Israel, for the purpose of putting down the worship of many gods. Our brother’s obser­ vations would not apply, for he said we have Positivists and Secularists ; and I do not think that the name pro­ posed, of ‘The Universal Religious Association,’ would be a name under which we could unite with Positivists and Secularists. I gathered from his remarks (I do not wish to do him any injustice) that he would not unite with Positivists and Secularists. Now, if he did say so, he at once condemns himself as being unfit to join this Associa­ tion. For I take it that if we believe in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, if a man be a Positivist because he has by using his intellect become a Positivist, he is still a child of God and still a brother ; and it is just the same if he be a Secularist. I say, all honour to the noble Secularist of Manchester who chal­ lenged his lordship the Bishop to meet him on some fair platform. They are men and they are brothers. Now I will state my reason for not agreeing with the name ‘ Universal Religious Association.’ My reason is simply this, that no one attempts to define religion. Mr. Vansittart Neale says, if we ask what is the meaning of the term ‘ religious,’ we must criticise all religions. Of course we must. There is only one religion, and that is very easily found if you are desirous of finding it—it is the religion of love. It was professed by Jesus Christ 1,800 years ago. It was professed by Confucius nearly 3,000 years since. It was professed by Brahma and Buddha. It was professed by all the Reformers. We �51 do not want the religion of love hampered up with doc­ trines or dogmas at all. Then we must say what is the meaning of the word ‘ religious.’ If you can apprehend thoroughly your relationship to God, or to the cen­ tral source of life, call that central source by any name you please, if you once recognise that from the central source you issue, then you are a child of the central source; and every man, woman, and child, no matter where they are, or in what condition or circumstance, are your brothers and sisters, and that is the religion of love. I only support the amendment upon the name to­ night that there may be some time to think of the name. The name proposed is a very fine name, and it is one of the most suitable you could think of, if you could only well define in your own mind what religion is. When I sent in my reply, I thought no name was so suitable as ‘ Theistic Union,’ if Theism were thoroughly exemplified. I only oppose the carrying of the resolution and support the amendment that you may think over it, and come better prepared at the next meeting to vote as to the name to be given to this Association. Now let me ask you just to consider one statement. You say you are here with the desire to associate to­ gether as brothers and sisters in forming this Association, and if you form it under the title of a ‘ Universal Religious Association,’ you accept the definition of religion that it is your duty to God, knowing your relationship to Him, and you accept the duties which devolve upon you when you meet your brothers. This is important ; and please to listen to it fairly and in the same spirit in which I offer it to you. Do you think that the Divine Being is a respecter of persons? No, you do not. Do you think the Divine Being gives one man 800,000/., and gives 800,000 men nothing a year ? Certainly not, and He never intended it. If we are going to work, and not to talk, one of our efforts will be to carry into daily life that E 2 �52 precept laid down by the Nazarene Carpenter, ‘ As you would that men should do unto you, do ye also unto them.’ Mr. Baxter Langley.—I should like to say a word or two with regard to the name to be given to the Asso­ ciation. I am still in hopes that, as the Society was itself open to discussion and consideration, it may hereafter amend the first resolution and adopt some other prin­ ciple. I submit for your consideration, and with due respect, that you will find by experience that you cannot do by the resolution what I had hoped you intended to do. I wish to say one or two words as to this Society being called ‘ The Universal Religious Association.’ I want to show you, in one or two brief sentences, that it cannot be universal if you adhere to your first resolution. As I understand, we came here together to-night to bring as large a number as possible into religious association ; and the gentleman at the bottom of the room, very early in the meeting, said with great force, as I thought, that the Society must offer something beyond that offered by other Churches. The question is whether, having adopted the platform you have to-night, and having determined to adhere to it, you are not, by calling yourselves ‘ The Uni­ versal Religious Association,’ placing the Society in an equally absurd position as if you called yourself the Catholic Church. With all respect to the gentlemen who have spoken, I hold that there are a very large number of Secularists who are tired and worried to death with discussions, disputations, and debates upon dogmatic reli­ gion who would gladly have welcomed a meeting of this kind if it had been of such a nature as to present a platform which was unobjectionable to them. I believe it was quite possible to adopt a platform which, while it would have included those connected with Christian Churches, would yet have been so adapted to the wants of the age as to have included all those men who are animated �53 by deep religious feeling and desire religious co-operation. The orthodox Churches are admitted to have failed, and a great number have admitted that many of the heterodox Churches have failed. It is a fact that I very much regret. Having been identified with the Unitarian Churches, I can say that they are comparatively desolate and deserted. They are only filled when there is some man of remarkable ability and eloquence who calls to­ gether a congregation simply by the dramatic character of his eloquence. They have all been rendered desolate by the fact that they have determined to have as a basis of worship that there should be a certain creed ; that lies at the root of the whole of this evil. If you could adopt such a platform as would be truly universal then you would bring in a very large number of people—some of those speculative persons who have been alluded to in terms hardly so respectful as ought to have been used—you would bring in a large number of earnest Secularists who desire to join in what is commonly known as Christian work and benevolent enterprise. Now, what are the two ideas which you have embodied in your programme which would prevent, I believe, the possibility of this union ? I know that many persons adhere to the idea of a personal God as being essential to true religion. I am not an atheist myself, but I claim that there is a religious spirit existing in the minds of those who differ from me and from you on that essential point. I believe there is an enormous amount of useful effort to be carried on in the world without any dogma of that kind. And it is a dogma with regard to the personal existence of the Deity. The other idea to which I have alluded is that which may be said to have been embodied in George Coombe’s ‘ Constitution of Man ’—a work written by a man of the highest ability, of great earnestness, and of deep religious feeling. His chapter on Prayer has been adopted and accepted by a large * �54 number of persons calling themselves Christians. If you are to adopt the two ideas to which I have referred, you cannot get a basis of union which will embrace persons other than those embraced in the existing Churches; the Church in South Place includes a very large number of persons who go the length to which I have referred to-night. There are other persons who go the same length among Unitarian ministers. There are very broad and liberal views preached from their churches, and I would point to Mr. Mark Wilks, of Holloway, where discourses of the most profound character are delivered from the pulpit. It is a matter of grave importance that you should not hastily take a name because it adds one more difficulty which you will throw in the way of adapting yourselves to the wants of the present age. I am convinced myself, from my knowledge of the common people (not such as those we see in this room to-night), many of whom hunger and thirst after some notion of this kind—I am quite sure you will not bring them on your platform unless you are careful to avoid the difficul­ ties attaching to other Churches, one of which I think you have thrown in your way by adopting the resolution you have to-night. I beseech you, therefore, not to throw a further difficulty in the way by adopting an un­ suitable name, because if you do it will only add one more to the difficulties already existing. The Chairman.—I think it must be quite clear that the meeting is not prepared, at any rate unanimously, to accept a name to-night. On the other hand, we are ex­ tremely anxious to get to the next resolution, to which our friend Mr. Sen will speak. Under those circum­ stances, I have the permission of the mover and the seconder of the resolution to withdraw the resolution in favour of the amendment, and if that is done we may at once dispose of this question, and shall be able to proceed with a more interesting discussion. �55 Mr. Leighton.—I desire to say one word before you withdraw the resolution. I was myself asked to second this resolution on coining into the room to-night, but have had no time for its consideration. From the general sense of the meeting, I think it would be desir­ able that further consideration should be given. I am quite willing, and am glad that the mover of the resolu­ tion is also, that it should be withdrawn. I want the meeting to give their sanction to the proposition that the name, whatever it be, shall be made as broad as possible —to include all humanity. The question I have been considering in my own mind is whether even the term Theistic, broad as that is, would not exclude some who ought to be included. The religious sentiment is a com­ mon principle; all people have it, Secularists as well as others; and some Secularists I have found to be morp intrinsically religious than many professing Christians. A name, therefore, which would include such persons should surely be the one adopted by such a society as ours. Mr. Leighton then controverted Mr. Baxter Langley’s objections to the word ‘ devotional,’ holding that the question raised was simply one of definition, which each person must settle for himself, just as each had to define for himself what was meant by religion. Mr. Cunnington.—I hope I shall not be considered to intrude if I occupy your attention for a moment, being the individual who had the honour of proposing to the Provisional Committee the name which has been so much controverted. I do not rise for the purpose of justifying the name or recommending it, seeing what the present feeling of the meeting is, but merely for the purpose of presenting what I think may be a practical inconvenience. We must have, as it seems to me, some designation in order that our friend Mr. Busk may be communicated with. If you have no name it might be temporarily the Nameless Society. You must have some name, or you �56 cannot address our friend Mr. Busk. If you cannot agree upon the name of the Society, let it be ‘The Nameless Society,’ or something that would prevent the practical inconvenience of having no title. The Chairman.—I do not think practical inconvenience would be at all felt. We came here to-night as a pro­ posed Theistic Society, and until something else is adopted you have that name upon the prospectus, which, I think, will answer all practical purposes. The resolution now before the meeting is that the subject of the name be referred to the Committee to be appointed to complete the organisation of the Society. The resolution was then put to the meeting and carried unanimously. Baboo Kesiiub Chunder Sen.—Sir, before I introduce the resolution with which I have been entrusted, I re­ quest your permission to say a few words. I have always felt strongly the importance and necessity of establishing spiritual fellowship and union among all classes and races of men. That there should be political and social differ­ ences among mankind is not at all surprising ; but that men and women should fight with each other in the name of religion and God is really painful and surprising. The true object of religion is to bind mankind together, and to bind them all to God. If we see that in the name of religion, men, instead of promoting peace on earth and goodwill among men, are trying to show their antagonism and animosity towards each other, then certainly we must stand forward with our voice of protest and say religion is defeating its own legitimate object. I have always been distressed to find in my own country how many of the Hindoo sects in India fight with each other, and how they combine to war with Mohammedans and Christians, whom they look upon and hate as their enemies. It is far more painful to see how that spirit of bitterness �57 and sectarian antipathy has been persistently manifested towards the Hindoos by many professing Christians. None preached so eloquently and so ably the doctrine of the true love of God and the love of man as Jesus Christ. It is, therefore, extremely unpleasant to us all to see those who profess to be his disciples hate the Hindoo as a heathen who has no hope of salvation, and who has not one single spark of truth in his own mind. Narrowness of heart has oftentimes its origin in narrowness of creed. Men hate each other, men con­ taminate their hearts with sectarian bitterness, because they believe that there is no truth beyond the pales of their own denominations and churches. This is a fatal mistake, and to this may be attributed all those feelings of bitterness and mutual recrimination which have con­ verted the religious world into a painful scene of war and" even bloodshed. Religion is essentially universal. If God is our common Father, His truth is our common pro­ perty. But the religious world may be likened to a vast market; every religious sect represents only a portion of truth; religion is many-sided; each individual, each nation, oftentimes adopts and represents only one side of religion. In different times and in different countries, therefore, we see not the entire religious life, but only partial religious life. The Hindoo represents religion in his peculiar way, the Christian in his. The men of the first century represented religion in their own way according to the circumstances in which they lived ; and so the men who are blessed with modern civilisation re­ present religious life in their own way. If we desire to adopt religious life in its entirety and fulness, we must not, we cannot, reject or ignore any particular nation or any branch of God’s vast family. If we embrace all nations and races from the beginning, from the creation of man down to the present moment; if we can take in all religious scriptures, all so-called sacred writings ; if we �58 are prepared to do honour to all prophets and the great men of all nations and races, then certainly, but not till then, can we do justice to universal and absolute religion such as exists in God. To prove true to Him, to prove true to humanity, we must do justice to all the departments of man’s religious life as they are manifested in different ages and in different parts of the world. The English Chris­ tian has no right to hate the Hindoo heathen, nor has the Hindoo heathen any right to treat the English Christian with sectarian antagonism and hatred. Both must em­ brace each other in the fulness of truth and in the fulness of brotherly love. I rejoice heartily to see such a thing foreshadowed in the constitution of the Society about to be organised. I feel that modern nations and races are getting their eyes opened to the catholicity of true reli­ gion, after centuries of spiritual despotism and sectarian warfare. Men are beginning to feel that, in order to be true to nature and true to God, they must cast away sectarianism and protest against spiritual tyranny and kiss freedom and peace. The object of this resolution is to bring together religious men in India, America, Ger­ many, France, and in other parts of the world, into one Monotheistic brotherhood, so that they may all recognise, love, and worship God as their common Father. The time has come when such a movement ought to be practically organised, when all nations and races should be brought together into one fold. English Christians ought to ex­ tend their right hand of fellowship to my countrymen, and my countrymen ought to extend their right hand of fellowship to all those who stand beyond the pales of Hindoo orthodoxy; so that, while they differ from each other on certain dogmatic questions of theology, they still recognise each other as brethren, and show their pre­ paredness to vindicate the unity of the human race in the face of the existing conflicting chorus of theological opinions. It is impossible to establish unanimity of �59 opinion among mankind, and those who have tried to bring about such unanimity have always failed. I hope, therefore, the friends and promoters of this movement will not commit that great mistake. Let individual liberty be recognised ; let every individual right be vin­ dicated and respected; but still at the same time, while we recognise differences of opinion, let us feel, and let us declare, that it is possible to have a common platform of action, where we can exchange our sympathies with each other as brethren. There is another mistake which I hope this Society will not commit, and that is, ever to assume an arrogant and hostile attitude towards exist­ ing sects. We should always assume a humble position. We must stand at the feet of our ancestors, all those who have gone before us, and who have left for our enjoy­ ment precious legacies of religious life and religious thought. All honour to such men. Hindoo, Christian, Chinese, Buddhist, Greek, and Roman—men of all nations and races—men of all ages—who have in any way laboured successfully to promote the religious, and moral, and social amelioration of mankind, are entitled to the undying gratitude of all succeeding ages. In forming a Society like that whose formation we contemplate at present, we feel morally constrained to honour those spiritual and moral benefactors to whom we owe “ a debt immense of endless gratitude.” At their feet we sit to-day, and to them we desire to offer our hearts’ thanks­ givings, and we desire to recognise them individually and unitedly, as those friends and brothers who have directly or indirectly brought us into that position in which we feel enabled to establish and organise a Society like this. It is on account of the light which we have received from them through succeeding generations that we are prepared to come forward to-night and stand before the world as a Theistic brotherhood. We cannot dishonour them; though they belong to different nation­ �60 alities, though they may be of different times and races, we cannot for one moment dishonour them. We cannot with pride and arrogance say we do not owe anything to the Christian Scriptures, we owe nothing to the Hindu Scriptures, we owe nothing to Confucius. We owe much to all these sources of religious revelation and inspiration. To their lives, as the lives of great men, we owe a great deal. Our attitude, therefore, must be an attitude of humility towards those who have gone before, an attitude of thankful recognition; and towards existing Churches also we must assume the same attitude. If there are friends around us who think it their duty to criticise severely our proceedings, to hold us up to public derision and contempt, they are quite welcome to do so; but let us not, as members of this Society, for one moment cherish in our hearts unbrotherly feelings against them. Our mission is a mission of love, and goodwill, and peace. We do not stand forward to fan the flame of religious animosity, but our desire is to extinguish the flame of sectarian antipathy, if it is possible for us to do so. We go forth as ministers of peace ; we shall love all sects ; Christians and Hindoos we shall look upon as brothers, as children of the same Father ; their books we shall read with profound reverence ; their priests we shall honour with thanksgivings ; and to all those around us who desire to treat us as men who have no hopes of salvation, even to them we must show charity and brotherly love. I hope, therefore, not a single member of this Society will ever think it right or honourable to manifest the bitter spirit of sectarianism towards any religious denomination. There are in England at present, I understand, nearly 300 religious sects into which the Christian Church has been divided. That such a thing should exist in the midst of Christendom is indeed painful, I may say fright­ ful. Let us do all in our power to bring together these various religious denominations. I do not see why we �61 should not exercise our influence on Christian ministers to exchange pulpits with each other. Why should not the people of one congregation visit the church of another congregation ? Why should not the various preachers of the Christian Churches try to harmonise with each other ? Christian people sometimes go the length of thinking that the whole religious life is monopolised by themselves. During my short stay in this country I have been struck with the fact that English Christian life, however grand and glorious it may be—and it certainly is in many of its aspects and features—is sadly deficient in devotional fer­ vour in the world ; deficient in feelings such as those which a deep and trustful reliance upon a personal and loving God alone can inspire, support, and sustain. Some­ thing like that is to be found in India. I do honestly believe that in India there is such a thing as spirituality. In England there is too much materialism. That is my honest conviction. If England and India were to unite and receive from each other the good things they ought to receive from each other, we should be able to form a true Church, where spiritual fervour and the activity of material life would harmonise, in order to form the unity of religious life. Whether, therefore, we come to Eng­ land, America, Germany, or France, or any other country where similar religious movements are going on, we ask them to co-operate with us; we ask the whole world to treat us as fellow-disciples, to give unto us all the good things they possess and enjoy for our benefit, that we may thus collect materials from all existing churches and religious denominations in order, in the fulness of time, to construct and uprear the future Church of the world. Friends, these are the words that I intended to say to-night, with a view to invite you all to look upon this Society as an association of love, and peace, and humility, not of hatred, mutual persecution, and sectarianism. If �G2 this Society should live long—and why should it not live if it is God’s Church and God’s society?—if this Society be spared to continue in a career of honourable useful­ ness, it will bless our hearts ; it will bless your country and my country; it will bless the whole world. I need not soar into regions of imagination and fancy in order to depict in glowing colours the future Church of the world ; but this I must say, that from the time the light of religion dawned on my mind, up to the present moment, I have always been an advocate of the glorious principle of religion which is summed up in these two great doc­ trines, the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man ; and so long as I am enabled to work, whether here or in my own country or elsewhere, it shall be my duty to speak, and feel, and labour in such a way that not only my own countrymen may, under the guidance of God’s Spirit, and with God’s help, be brought into one fold, but that all nations and races, so far as is possible with my humble resources and powers, may be influenced to feel the necessity of bringing themselves into one vast family. Oh! may that blessed day soon come when the earth, untrod by sect, or creed, or clan, shall own the two great principles — the universal father­ hood of God and the brotherhood of man ! I beg to propose this resolution to the meeting: 4 That in the opinion of this meeting it is desirable that the Society should correspond without delay with similar societies in India, America, Germany, France, and elsewhere, as­ suring them of our sympathy and fellowship.’ Mr. Cunnington.—Ladies and gentlemen, I have had the honour of being asked to second this resolution. I shall not be so presumptuous as to attempt to add anything to what Mr. Sen has said, and I shall occupy your time but a few moments. Mr. Sen has dwelt very forcibly, and very properly, on the obligations we are under to those who have preceded us in the discovery and propagation of �63 religious truth. There is a further idea which strikes me as being also important, seeing that in Ilim whom I recognise as the Deity there is neither variableness nor shadow of turning ; there is no change in His laws, and the same element, or the same disposition, exists in humanity now as in former times; and while we ap­ preciate at its proper value the truth which has been handed down to us by past generations, we do not lose sight of the importance of recognising the inspiration of the present day. I am one of those who think there cannot be any difference or clashing between the advocates of physical science or truths that relate to matter, and those who are the advocates of truths which relate to spiritual things, or to the mind. All truth must be in harmony if it is rightly understood. Both matter and mind have, according to my conception, been given to us by the same Being, who is perfect, and in whom there can be no imperfection. It is on account of our not sufficiently comprehending the laws of that Being that we see around us the lamentable and degrading state of society which exists. I take it that if the interests of society had been more practically insisted upon there would have been comparatively less difference of opinion than there is and less importance attached to the name, which there is, as it seems to me, a difficulty in accepting. When we see about us the want of common honesty, the want of truth­ fulness, the physical degradation which exists amongst so many of our fellow-creatures, whilst we are living in a land groaning, I may say, under its wealth—if the principle was recognised that property has its duties as well as its rights, it would go, I think, far towards remedying the evil which exists in society ; and whatever name we give to our Society, whatever our aims may be, unless they are brought to have a practical bearing on the ills which are patent to all of us, it will be of but little use. Our object must be to give it a practical direction; �64 we must make up our minds to act upon the simple principle, as between man and man, of doing unto others as we would be done by. I will not attempt to analyse, or to dilate upon the two grand principles which have been referred to, of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. It is because, as I think, those two principles, rightly understood, are sufficient to unite the whole of us, while we have our own individual opinions, and hold them sincerely, earnestly, and ardently, that we may be in a position to join those who may differ from us, and to give them credit for the same sincerity which we claim for ourselves. But, Sir, I am not speaking to the resolution, which is, that this Society should put itself in communication with similar societies in all parts of the world. I firmly believe, using the language of our great poet, that ‘ one touch of nature makes the whole world kin,’ and I believe that the religious element in some shape or other exists in all conscious humanity. It is believing that, that I cordially sympathise with, and second, the resolution which has been proposed. The resolution was then put to the meeting and carried unanimously. Mr. Conway.—Mr. Chairman, ladies, and gentlemen, I rise for the purpose of moving a resolution to the effect ‘ That a Committee of twelve be appointed, with power to add to their number, to complete the organisa­ tion of the Society, and for the present to manage its affairs; of this Committee, five to be a quorum ; and that this Committee report to a future general meeting, to be held as early as they can arrange.’ At this late stage of the meeting I do not feel inclined to occupy the attention of the audience very long. For myself, Sir, I would rather sit silent and see this move­ ment go on, having perfect faith in the soundness of the �Go sped which we tire engaged in planting to-night. 1 believe it to be seed falling into honest soil, and I have so many opportunities of appealing to the public, and expressing my opinions, and even of monopolising the expression of opinion, that I should be much more pleased to hear some of the rest speak. I will not, ho wever, let a movement, from which I hope great things, pass without stating that it has my entire sympathy, and I heartily approve of it, although, of course, in many details, it does not exactly express my particular ideas. I have my own peculiar views about what constitutes devotion. I do not believe in that which is called private or public prayer. I am not willing, with others, to be called a Christian in the usual accepta­ tion of the word, because I think I love and admire Jesus Christ too much for that. I have my various feelings, of course. Something fell from our chairman which looked as if he believed we were not quite satisfied with our respective local associations, and therefore came hither. I do not agree with that. I think we may be perfectly well satisfied in our local congregational arrangements, and at the same time feel there is room for a larger association with people who disagree with us and people who are far removed from our ideas ; and the presence of disagreement, and the presence of misgiving, and the variety of ways of looking at things which have been manifested in this meeting to-night are the most hopeful signs we have ; they show that we are beginning to launch out into something wider than the little associations which we have with our own sects, and, instead of heaping up sect upon sect, we shall come in contact with other ways of looking at things throughout the world. I believe, Sir, this Society will stand related to religion exactly as the British Association of Science stands with regard to science. There is a Royal Institution for teaching science, and there is a Jermyn Street School, and there F �66 is the Ethnological Society—all practical institutions for teaching science ; and also there is a great movement in this country, and in every country where there are scientific societies, devoted to the union of scientific men for great purposes, and for the prosecution of vaster dis­ coveries than any one society could accomplish by itself ; and exactly as the Social Science Association stands related to particular institutions, or the British Associa­ tion stands related to a particular scientific association, so I understand this Association to stand related to any special religious movement. I should have been glad were it openly called, what I believe it substantially is, a Religious Science Association, and that we should an­ nually have our meetings for the study of such things and furtherance of such ends, just as people meet an­ nually at Social Science or British Scientific Associations. However, Sir, I candidly endorse the idea that this meeting is practically tentative, and the object of this resolution is to further that idea. It is a seed which we arc planting, and we propose to appoint a Committee, in order that they may cultivate that seed through the tenderest part of its existence—namely, its gradual first growth, its first tender blade, before it has got the sturdiness and strength to which it can grow of itself. I think it is clear that it would be impossible to decide what shall be the practical mission of an association like this. It is manifestly impossible for us to decide on the emer­ gencies of the future, the exigencies which are to come, the great demands which are to be made on the united religious heart and free thought of this country. We cannot decide till occasions arise, for new occasions teach new duties, and there is not in this world a limb of any animal, or form of any plant, that did not come into being because there was a need which arose for the exist­ ence of such animal or plant : every limb, every tree, every leaf, every lin, in this world was created because �G7 it was wanted by the surroundings, the great practical results and emergencies of life. Our movement, then, must be considered as a small egg, and it is to be formed in this world as every other organic form has been con­ stituted in obedience to the requirements which call forth the vital germ and give it shape. As it lives, as it grows, the light which will shine upon it will give it its proper powers ; the rain which will fall will clothe it with exactly the duties it needs, and the objects it should have in view. We must trust this seed to the eternal elements of this world ; we must trust it to God ; we cannot decide at present everything it is to do, for there may arise in distant years some great question upon which it may be desirable, or even necessary, to call a special meeting and take some united action. There may be some other Oriental brother or brothers to wel­ come, and then this Society will be here to open its arms to such a brother, and not to let him wander about to be tossed hither and thither, and to be preached at at my lord’s table by his chaplain. He will not be left to be called a Pagan here and there ; and there will be a large welcome and a large hearing wherever there is a Society which regards him as a true, devout, and religious teacher. And, Sir, there may arise great questions of religious free­ dom—questions arising touching religious movements, national religious establishments, and many other things in this world, where it will be necessary for people united in some great salient points to take some practical action ; and that practical action will decide what limbs, what shape, what features, we shall have; for it is clear that, if you try to do too much by giving this Society a distinct shape beforehand, if you try to make a machine answer all your ends before you know what those ends are, if you make your machine without reference to what may happen in the future, if you do that, you will find, I think, that the machine will become very F 2 �68 tiresome, very bungling, mid, in the end, useless. I repeat, I would rather begin low down, where all things in nature begin—first of all the mere blade, and let that grow as the Eternal Tower shall decide and the course of events shall determine. That is all I have to say, and that is why it seems to me eminently proper that we should have a Committee to watch over us, to avail them­ selves of every ray of light which shall foil upon our effort, to avail themselves of all suggestions which may be made from whatever quarter, to see that we start well, to see that the first beginnings of this seedling shall be well cultured, well pruned of all that is ex­ traneous, so that we shall see that in the end it is fit for the garner. Those twelve gardeners who will con­ stitute the Committee, those twelve horticulturalists who are to tend this seed and to watch over it, should, I think, be appointed by us, and, therefore, I most cor­ dially move, with the highest hopes as to the progress of this Society in the future, that this Committee be appointed. Mr. Kisto Gobindo Gupta.—Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot speak very much. But I have much pleasure in seconding the resolution which has just been put forward as to the necessity of the proposed Association, and as to the necessity for a Committee to manage its business. Much has been already said upon the subject, and I can only add my voice to say that I have personally felt the necessity of such an association, more perhaps than any­ body else in the room. In India we have similar associ­ ations, but here some of my friends and myself do not find any distinct association where we can feel ourselves quite at home. So, if the proposed Association should be formed, it will be a welcome place to all of us. I have, therefore, much pleasun1 in seconding the reso­ lution. �69 Mr. Owen.—The last speaker said that he and his associates have not been able to feel themselves at home in any association now existing in this country. There is a class who have not felt themselves at home in any of the Churches, and hence the question was raised, Why do not the working classes go to church ? If you arc going to form a Committee, take heed to that, have regard to that; do not disregard the working classes ; do not get a highly respectable and a thoroughly English Committee. I do not think anyone has attached more importance to the visit of our distinguished Indian friend than I have; but what has been his work in India ? He has been endeavouring to deal a death-blow against caste. Have any of those associated with him said one word about the caste which exists in England? And is not that the curse of our country? And so long as that exists all that we have said simply amounts to nothing, and there can be no religious union. I want to test the matter; and if you are in earnest, I will promise you that thousands will back you in your work. I have addressed, I may say, hundreds of thousands of people in this metropolis, and I have scarcely ever opened mv lips without advocating the same principles that you have advanced to-night. I hope, therefore, you will be explicit on this one point, and don’t let us have a respectable Committee. I am sure you do not misunderstand me. I mean that the working classes have not felt them­ selves at home, because they are not what is considered the respectable class. I believe that Jack is as good as his master, and in fact a good deal better. The working classes are the industrious bees, and they are better than the drones any day. I have the greatest respect for every gentleman present; but I only ask you to be considerative, and to do something worthy of the name of Chunder Sen. He has the noblest spirit I have seen. I �70 doubt whether I ever heard a man open his lips in my life for whom I have a greater veneration. I hope, there­ fore, we shall do something worthy of such a man. After some further discussion, the resolution was put to the meeting and carried unanimously; and the Com­ mittee was subsequently named. A vote of thanks to the chairman terminated the pro­ ceedings. © �RESOLUTIONS PASSED AT A GENERAL MEETING HELD AT THE FREEMASONS’ 11ALL, LONDON, ON WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 1870. MR. WILLIAM SIIAEN IN TIIE CHAIR. 1. That, in the opinion of this meeting, it is desirable to form a Society to unite men, notwithstanding any differences in their religious creeds, in a common effort to attain and diffuse purity of spiritual life by, (1) in­ vestigating religious truth, (2) cultivating devotional feelings, and (3) furthering practical morality. 2. That the subject of the name of the Society be referred to the Committee to be appointed to complete the organisation of the Society. 3. That, in the opinion of this meeting, it is desirable that the Society should correspond without delay with similar societies in India, America, Germany, France, and elsewhere, assuring them of our sympathy and fellowship. 4. That a Committee of twelve be appointed, with power to add to their number, to complete the organisa­ tion of the Society, and for the present to manage its affairs ; of this Committee, five to form a quorum ; and that this Committee report to a future general meeting, to be held as early as they can arrange. A Committee of twelve ladies and gentlemen was then ippointed, of whom the following have consented to act : —Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, Ananda M. Bose, Edward Henry Busk, Moncure D. Conway, George Hickson, Andrew Leighton, Miss E. A. Manning, S. Prout New•ombe, William Sliaen, and Edward Webster. �72 STATEMENT OF THE COMMITTEE. — ♦---- The Committee have begun the task committed to them by the general meeting, and have agreed upon the following statement for immediate publication :— The Committee fully recognise and appreciate the innumerable efforts which have been made by eminently religious and good men for the amelioration of mankind, physically, intellectually, and morally, and acknowledge that a large debt of gratitude is due to these earnest and devoted men ; but at the same time they feel that the results of all the efforts which have been made leave abundant room for, and encourage, fresh exertions upon a basis as broad and comprehensive as possible. It is felt that a belief in the two great principles of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all men forms a sufficient basis for religious communion and united action. This Society is offered as a means of uniting all who share this feeling, in the endeavour to supplement their individual efforts towards goodness and truth by mutual sympathy; to intensify their trust in and love to God by fellowship in worship; and to aid each other in the dis­ covery and propagation of spiritual truth ; that thus they may attain to the more complete observance of the divine laws of human nature. It is. intended to seek the attainment of those objects by the following means, namely— 1. The holding of meetings for the reading of papers and for conference. 2. The holding and encouragement of meetings for the united worship of God. �73 3. The helping its members t<> ascertain and dis­ charge their personal and social duties. 4. The formation of similar societies, with the same objects, in various parts of-the British Empire and other countries. 5. Correspondence with those who may be supposed willing to assist in the objects of this Society. 6. The issue of publications calculated to promote the above purposes. The Committee now invite all persons who concur in the views thus expressed to join the Society. Any person may become a member by communicating his or her name and address in writing to the honorary secretary, in the form appended to this statement. It is not proposed to have any compulsory subscription’ but all members are invited to contribute to the funds of the Society. In the resolution, under which the Committee arc acting, the objects of the Society are declared to be, the investigation of religious truth, the cultivation of devotional feelings, and the furtherance of practical morality. With reference to the investigation of religious truth, the Committee feel that it is desirable that meetings for the reading of papers and for conference should be established as soon as possible, and intend to organise such meetings in the autumn of this year. The Society will also, with a view to the attainment of this object, aid in the study of already existing works, reprinting them when necessary, and will assist in pub­ lishing original works. Under this head will also stand the task of compiling a collection of the purely religious passages from all the different Bibles or Sacred Scriptures to which access can be obtained. The compilation of this work may be begun without delay. It is hoped that the Society may soon be in a position �74 to aid in the establishment in many towns and villages of libraries in which those books shall find a place which arc calculated to disseminate the principles of the Society, and in the publication of works specially intended for the young. As to the second of the three objects of the Society, devotional feelings may be indirectly cultivated in a variety of ways, such as by a sincere study of science, by art, or by literature. In fact, all the higher pursuits of the intellect and imagination, and all developments of pure social, and domestic affections materially tend to the increase of the feeling of devotion. These various means may be encouraged, but can hardly, at least at present, be actually employed by the Society. But the Society can hold meetings for the worship of God, and thereby give such of its members as desire to attend a means of directly aiding each other in the culti­ vation of feelings of devotion. These meetings, while strengthening and elevating the spiritual communion between each member and God, will afford opportunities of public worship to those who feel themselves excluded from meetings for worship based on dogmatic theology, and will practically demonstrate the possibility and desirability of the union for public wor­ ship of persons holding different creeds. The Committee intend, therefore, to arrange, in the autumn of the present year, meetings of the Society for united worship. Another means of furthering this object, which may be at once begun by the Society, is the collection of a book of prayer and praise, to contain passages from already known books and hymns, as well as prayers, meditations, and hymns which may from time to time be contributed by members. This book, subject to continual revision, will be valuable both as an aid in the conduct of meet­ ings for united worship and for private use by individual members. �75 The third object, namely the furthering of practical morality, naturally branches off in two directions—the personal and social. Under the first head, the aid to be afforded by the Society will consist principally of the mutual countenance and support which the members will afford each other in the endeavour to carry out into their daily life, whether in the family, society, or in their public or commercial avocations, the principles of high and pure morality. It is, perhaps, needless to remark that nothing in the nature of Church discipline is contemplated or will be established. Besides this mutual support among the members, the Society may itself aid in the realisation by them of a pure spiritual life by means of its meetings and conferences, where, by reading papers and by friendly discussion, ques­ tions relating to the conduct of life may be treated and developed. In connection with the social branch of this subject, such meetings as are last described will be most useful, and these subjects will be considered in the meetings to be organised by the Committee in the autumn of the present year. The number of problems to be dealt with under this head is enormous : and whether or no it will be found advisable for the Society, as a society, to take any active part in directly attempting to mitigate the evils which attach to our present civilisation, such as pauperism, war, intemperance, &c., or itself to attempt any philanthropic object ; yet there can be no doubt that the Society can and ought at the earliest possible moment to afford ample and frequent opportunities for the reunion of its members, whereby their individual views may be widened and defined, and their individual action may consequently be rendered more intelligent, useful, and energetic. �76 A list of the members will shortly be printed and cir­ culated among the members of the Society. The time and place, at which the proposed meetings for united worship and for friendly conference will be held, will be announced to all the members. Additional copies of the foregoing pamphlet entire, or of the concluding portion alone, containing the resolutions adopted at the general meeting and the statement of the Committee, can be obtained on application to the honorary secretary, Edward IIexry Busk, Highgate, N. LONDON: PRINTED BY STOTTISWOODK AND CO., NEW-STREET SQtTARtt AND PARLIAMENT STREET ��187 To Edward Henry Busk, Esq. Dear Sir, Please to add my name to the List of Members of the Society which was founded at the. General Meeting held at the Freemasons’ Hall, London, on July 20, 1870, for the purpose of uniting men, notwithstanding any differences in their religious creeds, in a common effort to attain and diffuse purity of spiritual life by (fY) investigating religious truth, (2) cultivating devotional feelings, and (3) furthering prac­ tical morality. L am, dear Sir, Yours truly, Name in full Address__ ____________ I ��� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Proceedings of the general meeting of the Theistic Society held at Freemasons' Hall, London on Wednesday, July 20th, 1870 and statement of the Committee appointed by the meeting Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Theistic Society Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 76, [2] p. ; 22 cm. Notes: Printed by Spottiswoode and Co., London. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Longmans, Green, and Co. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1870 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5174 Subject The topic of the resource Theism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Proceedings of the general meeting of the Theistic Society held at Freemasons' Hall, London on Wednesday, July 20th, 1870 and statement of the Committee appointed by the meeting), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conway Tracts Theism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/41ddba7f8bd061e132faa678909c65a2.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=Dx2pF90V0IqcCvaVfj3cnq8N8baSKulBzNcPcKy81KOMJnUAJMVLZm7cPeBQI87VrUXmFwpRoqj1XL4mBYoKMJZ6owlXLHXqoiuCK4UUDr9upP0Beg2u9x96BbfoUXdttwwSnxkxsTGfaLluI5sRdHLER9XQUkkqzNRrC2YfC7ASoqKAP6VavEFkcQQO-5kVLAUsEtGgK6kL1hQhNiqee1wfxGxj7xwrCpm3H1Y4sGUcvN19ILehyA-qIRgc9bIyK73cFLFvWsb826InYsWSQTCuiP8uEdEjshK0pRYKDCS3KaJA25hJJpRYO0ouSoWJ1r6tmDkshFG9Pfs4%7EZvdeQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM fc7f1688aeec4e0f2375401825e4367f PDF Text Text S'txOASié3l MORE RATIONAL? DISOtrSSION I BETWEEN 4 Mr. JOSEPH SYMES GEORGE ■ ♦ LONDON : FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY, 28, STONECUTTER STREET E.C. �H �NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY ... .IS ATHEISM OR THEISM THE MORE RATIONAL! LETTER I. From Mr. J. Symes to Mr. G. St. Clair. Some weeks ago, Mr. St. Clair delivered a discourse in Bir­ mingham on “ The Folly of Atheism.” When informed thereof, I wrote to that gentleman, respectfully inviting him to a public oral debate on the question now at the head of this letter. This he courteously declined, but suggested a written discussion instead. It now falls to my lot to furnish the first of. twelve letters,, six by each disputant, to appear alternately at intervals of not more than a fortnight. Mr. Bradlaugh deserves our best thanks for'So readily opening the columns of the National Reformer for this discussion. Without any “ beating about the bush,” I shall at once proceed to show why I regard Atheism as being more rational than Theism. Theism is belief in a God, or deus, or theos. Atheism is the absence of that belief, with the general implication, as I apprehend, that the individual destitute of that belief has done his best to weigh the merits of conflicting theories, to sift the Theistic evidence, and has logically concluded that Theism is irrational. Atheism, requires no direct evidence, nor is it susceptible of "it. It is arrived at,^n the most logical fashion, by a course of destructive criticism applied to the God-theorjt. This theory, when fairly examined, crumbles to dust, and then evaporates, leaving the investigator without a Godiiand without belief in one. As I desire this contest to be definite, earnest, and real, 1 will state my objections to Theism plainly and fairly, 'so jthat my opponent may have the best opportunity of refuting them. And let it be borne in mind that to state valid objections to Theism is to put forward equally valid reasons in favor ofAtheism. Now, as Theistic arguments usually- take two forms, the intellectual and the moral; as �4 ATHEISM OR THEISM? Theism is as much an assertion of or belief in God’s moral attributes as in his natural attributes or in his bare existence, I cannot be straying from the subject in discussing the moral aspects of the question. To show that the moral attributes of God are fictions will go very far indeed towards refuting Theism and justifying Atheism. The following questions will covey most of the ground :— I. Does there «Assist an infinitely good God ? II. Does there exist an infinite God whose goodness exceeds his evilness ? III. Does there exist an infinitely wise God ? IV. Does there exist an infinite God whose wisdom exceeds his folly ? V. Does there exist a God of absolutely unlimited power? VI. Does there exist a God whose power exceeds his weakness ? VII. Does there exist a God who is in any sense infinite? VIII. Does there exist any God at all ? I. The first question, Does there exist an inhnitelugood God? may be dismissed without any discussion ; for infinite good­ ness would render all evil for ever impossible. Infinite goodness could produce nothing less than infinite good. Evil, if existent, must limit goodness ; evil does exist; there­ fore infinite goodness does not. II. Does there exist an infinite God whose goodness exceeds his evilness ? I am sorry to have to use so uncouth a word as “ evilness,” but I have no other that will so well express my meaning. 1. It is generally held among Theists that an Infinite God created all other things. If so, what motive could have prompted the act ? That motive could not have been an ■exterior one. From the nature of the hypothesisJLit musthave been one confined solely to himself, arising from his own unrestrained, uninfluenced desires. In a word, he must ha^made the universe for his own sake, his own ends, his own pleasure. Now a being who accomplishes his own pleasure or profit by or through the pleasure or profit of others, and no ptherwise, must be pronounced just and benevolent. But he who gains his own ends irrespective of the rights, the profit, and the pleasure of others, is selfish. He who sends others, who are helplessly under his sway, on errands for his �ATHEISM OR THEISM ? 5 personal advantage alone, and knowing they must suffer excruciating pain and die in the undertaking, is a horrible ^Tr-is said that an infinite God created the universe, and peopled it with sentient beings. Those sen­ tient beings, in the nature of the case, could not be consulted beforehand: their life, organisation, circum­ stances of all kinds were decided for Hem and imposed upon them. And a being more good than evil would have felt himself in honor and justice bound to provide for the happiness of those creatures before giving them life while a being more evil than good would have consulted his own pleasure chiefly, if not entirely, and have cared little or nothing for the happiness of his creatures. The last clause seeems to me to describe, but partially only, the action of the hypothetical God who is supposed to have created the uni­ verse. For pain and misery have been the cruel lot of his creatures from the remotest epoch to which geology carries U8 back. “The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.” Want, disappoint­ ment, bitter warfare, pain, and death are the normal con­ dition of the universe as far as it is known. No natural law has been more fully ascertained than this :—Life is an endless strife; and each combatant must must kill or be killed, must eat or be eaten. Another law is, That victor and vanquished succumb to another foe and die, despite their struggle for existence. These laws hold good not merely as regards individuals: races also die out. And if there be purpose and plan in nature it can only be such purpose and plan as uses sentient beings for the pleasure of the creator, who cai®s no more for their welfare than the worst of slave­ owners does for his human chattels. . 2. Nay! more. According to the creation hypothesis, every pang endured by the creature must have been fore­ seen and provided for beforehand. The man who invents an infernal taachine, say Thomassen of Bremer Haven notoriety, must be immensely less selfish than the creator of the world. Thomassen had some want to supply,,^ome sort of excuse for his awful deed. But an infinite and eternal being is without excuse; and a being that does wrong without excuse, knowing what he is doing, must be actuated by pure malignity ; especially when, as is the case �ATHEISM OR THEISM? of all creatures of this hypothetical God, his victims are absolutely helpless:—they cannot resist him, cannot out­ manoeuvre him, and can get no sort of redress for any wrong they may suffer. It may perhaps be safely laid down, that he is extremely good, who does good according to his knowledge and power. But he “ who know^th to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” An infinite God knows everything, and his power is unlimited. Why does he not do good “ as he hath opportunity ? ” The only conceivable reason must be that he is unwilling. He must therefore be extremely evil. When to this is added the fact that he does immeasurable evil to helpless beings, we shall at once perceive that the Theistic object of worship must be totally evil; for even the seeming good he does is done merely to please himself. Even if the world contained as much good as evil, theft would not prove the creator good, for reasons I have given. But the existence of only one evil would legitimately raise the suspicion that he was evil, because a moment’s effort on his part would remove that evil and replace it by good. But when we find that evil is inseparably mixed with the universe; when we find that during all its ascertainable history, and in every direction, at least as much evil as good has prevailed, we cannot hesitate, except in deference to old prejudices, to pronounce judgment to the -effect that the world’s creator is the embodiment of selfishness and ma.bgnity, and destitute of any discoverable redeeming trait in his character. It is at present unnecessary to enlarge upon this subject. But if the goodness of the hypothetical creator cannot logically be maintained, and if the extreme contrary can be p logically'and truthfully propounded, as I contend, the next i question to be answered is, I III. Does there exist an infinitely wise God? This, too, ' must be examined and answered by the study of the facts of Nature ; and it need not delay us longer than did the ques­ tion of infinite goodness. If there were infinite wisdom^Mo such things as fools and folly would exist. These are enor­ mously plentiful; whence come they ? Wisdoniicannot produce folly; a perfectly wise being could not produce a fool. Some say the great majority of men are fools; certain it is that large numbers are such. Who made them �ATHEISM OR THEISM? 7 so ? If there be a creator, he makes the philosopher and the dolt, the mathematician and the idiot. No wise father would have an idiot son, if he foresaw its possibility and knew how to prevent it. Yet the great father, as people call their deity, produces idiots by the score and fools by the , million. Infinite wisdom, therefore, is no better than a myth, nor more accordant with known facts than the infalli­ bility of the Pope. Want of space compels me here to break off my argument abruptly, though I hope to resume it in my next. LETTER IT. From Mr. G. St. Clair to Mr. J. Symes. As I expect to find in Mr. Symes an honest and fair opponent, I shall not require a definition of all the terms he uses, but I may point out that if his definition of Atheism is correct, we shall want some other word to set forth the denial of God’s existence. Theism is belief in a God ; and, according to Mr. Symes, Atheism is simply the absence of that belief, and valid objections to Theism are equally valid-reasons in favor of Atheism. I should have thought this more accurately described Agnosticism than Theism; but as I am equally opposed to both, perhaps it will not matter. If the Deity is said by one person to be dead, and by another to be dumb, I confute them both if I prove that he speaks. It is only fair I should allow that one sentence of Mr. Symes’s seems to separate the Atheist from the Agnostic—the sentence, namely, which says that the Atheist has logically concluded Theism to be irrational. The Agnostic does not pretend to do that. At the same time the question is here begged, or else the language is a little loose, for, if I am right, no individual can logically conclude that Theism is irrational, but can only come to such a conclusion illogically. I am prepared to prove the existence of an intelligent Creator of man, and to defend his perfect goodness. I shall not attempt to defend all the positions which Mr. Symes sets out to assault. His eight questions, which he says will cover most of the ground, would no doubt do so, and lead �8 ATHEISM OR THEISM? us into oceans of talk as well. I have no desire to meddle much with the unfathomable and the incomprehensible, and must decline to be drawn into a discussion of the infinite, which I do not understand. Six questions out of Mr. Symes’s eight concern the infinite ! They were, perhaps, prompted by his idea of what I, as a believer in God, would be likely to assert; for he says, “It is generally held among Theists that an Infinite God created all other things.” When he understands that I maintain a humbler thesis, perhaps he will withdraw or modify some of these questions. I main­ tain that there is an intelligent Creator of Man, against whose perfect goodness nothing can be proved. If man has a Creator, that Creator must be called God.; and if there is a God, the evidence of whose action is to be seen in us and about us, then Atheism is irrational. It is a larger question whether God is infinite in all his attributes. It is another question whether God created all things, matter and its properties included. I am certainly not going to maintain that every attribute of God is infinite ; for the clue and the key to the mystery of evil are to be found in limitation of power. Like John Stuart Mill, I conceive a limit to Omnipotence, and that enables me to maintain God’s perfect goodness. Or rather, I define omnipotence to be the power of effecting all things which are possible, and I show that some things are impossible to any worker, because they involve mathematical or physical contradictions. When, therefore, Mr. Symes advances to show that “ the moral attributes of God are fictions,” I have an answer for him which some Theists have not. The first question of the eight is in the form, “ Does there exist an infinitely good God ? ” and in the answer to it there is a semblance of mathematical demonstration. But I venture to think that the word “ infinite ” leads to a little unconscious conjuring. I shall be satisfied to defend God’s perfect goodness against all attacks. I will not say whether the goodness is infinite, and what ought, to follow then; but I calmly assert that the bare fact that “ evil does exist” is no proof that perfect goodness does not. Mr. Symes con­ cludes his demonstration with the Q. E. D. that “ therefore infinite goodness does not.” I should be glad if he would' come out of the unfathomable and tell me what he has to show against perfect goodness. I admit that some evil exists �ATHEISM OR THEISM ? 9 but limited evil for a limited time is quite consistent with perfect goodness. It was consistent with goodness in the case of a father I knew, who submitted his child to the operation of tracheotomy in order to save its life. Limited evil for a limited time is forced upon every child who is kept to his lessons; and it argues no want of goodness in the parent, but only a certain intractableness in things, making it impossible to attain desired results except by means and methods which may sometimes be a little unpleasant. I feel myself at liberty to use these human illustrations because I have left out the word “ infinite ” and am considering the action of a Deity who creates and educates man. The Iggfiitions of all work are similar, whether the worker be human or divine. Space exists, and matter exists. Mr. Symes must allow that they can exist without having been created, because he does not believe in a Creator at all. So far I am inclined to agree with him that space and matter may always have existed. But whether matter has been created or not is of little importance in this discussion, if it be allowed that without matter and space nothing could be made and no processes could go on—that for instance there could be no world like this and no human creatures to com­ plain of its arrangements. In fact there could be no arrangements, if there were nothing to arrange and no space to arrange it in. The Creator is, we may say, bound to have matter—whether created or uncreated—if he is to accom­ plish anything at all. No blame, therefore, can attach to him on account of the mere existence of matter. All depends upon what use he will make of it. Now the mere existence of matter implies certain properties, such as extension and impenetrability. Further, nothing can be done with matter without moving it, to bring its parts and particles into new positions. But the motion of matter in space is according to the laws of motion, which cannot well be imagined to be different from what they are. Without these laws of motion and properties of matter there could be no universe and no human life, and no printing of this discussion in the pages of the National, RefdjSffier. At the same time the Worker, using these mean^and materials, does his work under conditions which preclude certain results as physically impossible, as for instance that there should be �10 ATHEISM OR THEISM? adjacent mountains without a valley ; and which sometimes involve concomitant results which may not be wished for, as when a sculptor chisels out a statue but makes a mess of chippings ¿ha dust. The end desired is achieved, and more than compensates for the temporary inconvenience. The inconvenience is no accident and no surprise, but is foreseen and deliberately accepted, on account of the good that shall follow. Seeing that I regard the matter in this way, many things which Mr. Symes has said shoot wide of my position. I am not obliged to consider what motive induced the Deity to create the universe—whether it was an exterior motive or one confined solely to himself. I maintain that he Seated man. I allow that he must have found his own end in doing it. I do not allow that he has done it regardless of the good of his creatures: else creatures so logical ought all to commit suicide at once. Mr. Symes defines the Creator’s obligations to his creatures in a way which ought to prevent most men from marrying and becoming fathers. Because sentient creatures suffer pain and misery, a good Being, he says—even a Being more good than evil— would have refrained from creating them without consulting them. The force or weakness of such an argument depends very much upon the amount of pain and misery compared with enjoyment, and very much upon the question whether pain and misery are to be temporary or permanent. On both points Mr. Symes holds a view which in my estimation is not justified by the facts. He dwells on the struggle for existence—which he describes as a law that each combatant must either kill or be killed, either eat or be eaten—he describes the strife as prevailing from the earliest geologic ages ; and he infers that the Creator cares no more for the welfare of his creatures than the worst of slave owners does for his human chattels. But here, in the first place, some illusion is produced by looking down a long vista of pain and death. When we look along a grove the trees seem to touch one another; yet in reality the open spaces are more than the trees. We may, if we choose, look down that vista of the ages and see young life and happiness, and mother’s love and joy at every stage. Nor is it the fact that there are no deaths but such as are violent. Nor is it the case that violent deaths occasion much pain and misery. Follow the �ATHEISM OR THEISM ? 11 life of an individual bird, or dog, or human being, and inquire whether misery or enjoyment preponderates : that is the fair way to judge, and not by bringing all the misery of long ages into a near focus. And then, as to the permanence of pain, misery, evil, Mr. Symes declares that “ evil is inseparably mixed with the universe.” This statement he emphasises, and gives no hint that he expects evil to work itself out. I should have thought that, as an Agnostic and an Evolutionist, he would have followed Herbert Spencer in this as well as in other things; and Spencer has a chapter to show that evil must be evanescent. By the law of evolution the human race is progressive—the purpose of nature (the Creator’s purpose, as I should say) is being worked out, stage after stage. It is therefore delusive to judge the present condition of the world as though it were intended to be final ; it is unfair to judge the past and present without taking into account the drift and tendency of things. In a manufactory we don’t judge in that way of the things which are being made, and which we chance to see “ in the rough.” If evil is evanes­ cent, and the consummation of things is to be glorious, it is not irrational to believe that present pain is like the tem­ porary evil of the sculptor’s chippings, the passing irksome­ ness of the school-boy’s discipline, and that “ the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us-ward.” And here, Mr. Editor, I must break off abruptly, like Mr. Symes, having come to the end of the space allotted. Else I could easily double the length of this letter, without departing from the text Mr. Symes has given me : for he does at least say something. LETTER III. From Mr. J. Symes to Mr. G. St. Clair. The first paragraph of Mr. St. Clair’s letter requires no remark; the second may detain us for a few minutes. The infinity of deity, it appears, is given up. That being so, Mr. St. Clair should have clearly defined the term god. The sense he attaches to the word must be exceedingly �12 ATHEISM OR THEISM ? different from that which Theists in general attach to it;, and, as I am totally at a loss to know what his god is, I can neither aecept nor attack his views until he favors me with them. I shall feel obliged if in his next he will define, as clearly as possible, “god,” “ creator,” “created,” “intel­ ligent creator.” A further favor will be conferred upon me if Mr. St. Clair will give his reasons in detail for believing that man was created by “ an intelligent creator,” and also his grounds for supposing that creator to possess “ perfect goodness.” At present he merely declares his belief ; I need his evidence. Why does my opponent call limited power Omnipotence ? Is it not equivalent to limited illimitability ? or finite infinity ? Mr. St. Clair is prepared to defend the perfect goodness of man’s creator. But how can a finite, that is, an imperfect being, be perfect in any respect? My former objections to infinite goodness press with equal force against perfect good­ ness, for perfect and infinite are here the same. Goodness, perfect or imperfect, finite or infinite, must from its very nature prevent or remove evil in the direct ratio of its power or ability. Mr. St. Clair contends that “ limited evil for a limited time is quite consistent with perfect goodness.” He may as rationally contend that “limited darkness for a limited time is consistent with perfect light.” Darkness, however limited, is incompatible with perfect light; so evil, though but for a day, and covering but an area of one square inch, would prove that perfect goodness did not exist. The illustrations used—the case of tracheotomy and the unplea­ sant processes of education—are both as wide of the mark as possible. They are not cases of perfect goodness resort­ ing to temporary evil, but of imperfect goodness and limited power choosing the less of two evils where it is impossible to shun both. “ The conditions of all work are similar, whether theworker be human or divine.” This may, for aught I know, be true, for I have no notion of a divine worker. But does Mr. St. Clair mean to say that his god is compelled to choose between two or more evils, just as we are? If so, what necessity urges him ? We are driven to labor by hunger, cold, storms, and innumerable pains and diseases. Does god, too, labor for his bread, his clothes, shelter, or �ATHEISM OR THEISM ? 13 medicine? If not, how are “ the conditions of all labor similar, whether the worker be human or divine ? ” Will Mr. St. Clair explain ? How does my worthy opponent know that evil is limited as to time ? Can he assure me that any square foot of the earth’s surface is or ever was totally free from evil ? How does he know, or why does he assume, that any square foot of the earth’s surface ever will be entirely free from evil ? That many evils will diminish in process of time, through man’s growing wisdom, I cheerfully believe. But, no thanks to deity for that. Man is improving on god’s work, and removing evils that ought never to have been in it. Here the consumer has to labor and suffer and spend all his energy rectifying the blunders of the manufacturing deity, or making improvements he never thought of, or else was too idle, or too weak, or too evil, to introduce. But does any man conceive that all evil will ever be removed ? Will the storms be hushed into eternal calm ? the earthquake heave its final throb and cease for ever ? the volcano spout no more its terrible agents of destruction? disease and death prey no longer upon animals and men ? If these are ever conquered, man must do it, for they are god’s agents for destroying men—if god there be. Can Mr. St. Clair name one evil his god ever removed ? Mr. St. Clair seems to hold the eternity of matter. Is god also eternal; and if so, how do you ascertain that ? I am not just now much concerned to inquire whether the creator found matter ready to his hand, or first made it; but I contend that he who arranges matter as we find it in Nature (not in art) is not good. The tree is known by its fruit. Matter is so arranged as to give pain, produce misery, and death universal! And if so arranged by an intelligent creator, he must therefore be more evil than good. When Mr. St. Clair speaks of the “ end desired ” in the “ chippings and dust ” of the sculptor, I can pretty well understand him; but does he know the aim and end of the creator ? If not, what is the value of his illustration ? It is of no use to say that creatures “ ought to commit suicide,” if my contention is correct—ought not to marry, &c. Has not the creator rendered that impossible for most men by passion and an invincible love of life ? And is it kind to stretch a poor wretch longer upon the rack of this �14 ATHEISM OR THEISM? rude world by so forbidding him to die, though his every breath is on® of pain ? Goodness never arranged it thus. I am not concerned with striking the balance between evil and good; I merely contend that goodness cannot originate evil, except unwittingly; that perfect goodness would render all evil impossible. I do not yet see any just cause to retract or soften a single statement in my first letter; and shall therefore proceed now to deal with my questions as far as space will permit. But Does there exist an infinite god whose wisdom exceeds his folly ? Wisdom conducts its affairs with reason, prudence, economy, and directs its energies to the attain­ ment of some definite and worthy end. Does any man know the final cause of the universe, the latest and highest end aimed at by the creator ? It seems only reasonable that the Theist should know this before he ventures to attribute wisdom to his deity. I grant that if the “ works ” of Nature exhibited evidences of wisdom as far as men can observe them, and no cases of evident folly were discoverable, the Theist would have the best of reasons for assuming that all the universe was equally well arranged and conducted. But if the known parts of Nature exhibit folly in its worst conceivable forms, then the only rational view to take is that the universe at large is a blunder, and its creator a blunderer. It is frequently assumed that a fool is reprehensible for his folly, and that if men are fools, it must be their own fault. But that cannot be the case, for no man makes him­ self. The creator must take all the responsibility. He who made men made most of them fools ; therefore he must be more foolish than wise. And man, be it remembered, is according to Theists the most important part of the creation hereabouts. Man, they say, is the crowning piece of his creator’s workmanship; and all else in the solar system is subservient to his welfare. Be it so ! But what folly to make all this and then to people the world with fools ! Such folly cannot be excelled, even by the lowest of intelligent creatures. And my objections to the wisdom or “ intelligence ” of deity are equally forceful, whether god be finite or infinite; for I contend that he is far more foolish than wise. The folly of the hypothetical creator, whatever his �ATHEISM OR THEISM ? 15 power, is seen everywhere—at least, I know of no spot free from it. Here grow beautiful grass, and herbs, and trees ; and human industry turns the region into a paradise, dotted over with towns and villages. The people increase rapidly, and their flocks, and herds, and farm produce keep pace with them. Civilisation in all its branches rises and pro­ gresses. There dawns a day when the sun shines in splendor, the breezes gently blow, birds pour out their melody, and man is contented and happy in some degree; but there comes a dismal sound, and a mysterious shaking; and ashes, and stones, and dust shower down in torrents burying all life in a burning tomb. If an “ intelligent creatoiiS makes men, why does he thus destroy them ? If they need destroying, why did he make them so ? Those creatures of his are of all ages from the youngest embryo to the oldest man. Why destroy what is scarcely begun ? Why begin what is to be so quickly destroyed ? This “ intelligent creator ” produces blossoms in spring, and then nips them by senseless frosts ; he makes the grain to grow, and then destroys it by wet or a summer storm, or parches it by drought; splendid crops of potatoes to flourish, and then turns them to corruption by the fungus known as “ the diseasethe cattle to multiply, only to die by pleuro-pneumonia or foot and mouth disease ; a whole human population to flourish for years, only to die by famine and fever. And all this is the constant, every-day conduct of man’s “ intelligent creator ! ” I am deeply interested and anxious to see how my re­ spected opponent will be able to reconcile divine “ intelli­ gence ” or goodness with the phenomena of the earth. The next question I have set down for discussion is: VI. Does there exist a God whose power exceeds his weak­ ness ? This question, to my surprise, has been answered already by Mr. St. Clair, by implication at least; for he informs us that, “Like John Stuart Mill, he conceives a limit to Omnipotence.” That conception, when rendered into plain English, can only mean that Mr. St. Clair’s god is of merely finite power ; and as finite power can bear no comparison with infinite power, we must conclude that Mr. St. Clair’s deity has infinitely greater weakness than strength. If I were contending merely with Mr. St. Clair, I could �16 ATHEISM OR THEISM ? at once pass on to the next question; but I am attacking Theism in its broadest sense ; and, with all due respect to my opponent, must decline to narrow the ground to the dimensions of his peculiar Theism, except by easy and logical stages. I hold the doctrine, that force or power can be measured only by its effects. A force may produce motion in several phases, or it may be expended in resistance, stress, etc. But in every case the effect is exactly equivalent to the cause. An infinite cause could result in nothing short of infinite effect. But infinite effect does not exist; nor can any conceivable sum of finite effects amount to one infinite effect; therefore no infinite cause or infinite power exists. Now Theists do not pretend to know their god except as a cause—unless I am mistaken. But if no infinite cause exists, their god must be finite. But that which is finite can bear no comparison with the infinite; therefore the power of a finite being, however great, must be immensely less than his weakness. I will close by asking whether it was good, or wise, or honest for a being of such limited capital, that is, power, etc., to undertake so great a work as the creation and direction of the universe ? Though he may be making his own fortune and ensuring his own pleasure, he is doing it by the most reckless expenditure of human and animal life, and by the infliction of unspeakable misery upon helpless beings. A god of honor and mercy, it seems to me, must either have stopped the machine in utter disgust, or else have committed suicide countless ages ago. LETTER IV. From Mr. G-. St. Clair to Mr. J. Symes. Space did not permit me to deal with the whole of Mr. Symes’ first letter ; and now I must let it go, because his second letter gives me text enough for a second reply. In this discussion I should be glad if a respectful tone can be observed in speaking about the Deity. It cannot serve the purpose of my opponent, nor of the Editor, that Theists who begin to read our arguments should throw down the paper �ATHEISM OR THEISM? 17 in disgust. Mr. Symes expresses himself “ totally at a loss -to know what my god Is.” I shall be grateffflF if he will •oblige me by spelling the word with a capital G, because, for one thing, my God is not the same as Mumbo Jumbo or any little imaginary divinity worshipped by an African tribe. Mr. Symes asks for definitions of “ god,” “ creator,” “ created,” “intelligent creator;” but probably a dictionary will supply his want at the present stage. In my previous letter I told him distinctly enough what I understand the tgrm God to mean: God is the intelligent Creator of man. This is sufficient for our present purpose. To believe in a .Creator of man—not a blind force, not an unguided pro­ cess wjkich has resulted in his coming into existence, but in an intcmigent being who made him—this is to be a Theist. And since the evidence of God’s operation is to be seen in man’s own frame, this theistic belief is rational, and the opposite is irrational. This is what we have to argue about, -and I should be glad if my opponent would keep to the subject. If it could be shown that the Creator of man is an evil Being, it might be reasonably maintained that he ought to be called a Devil instead of a God ; and therefore I have undertaken to rebut all attacks upon his perfect goodness. In my last letter I repelled some objections of this kind, and was enabled to do so successfully, because I did not foolishly contend that the Deity possesses infinite power, adequate to the accomplishment of all manner of impossibilities. Mr. Symes exclaims, “ The infinity of Deity, it appears, is given up.” I never maintained it, and therefore I have not given up anything. It seems to be inconvenient to my opponent that I do not maintain it. He declines, he says, “ to be narrowed to my Theism; he attacks Theism in its broadest sense.” That is to say, he is confident that he could confute other Theists, but he cannot easily confute me. I showed him that his eight propositions about the Infinite, mostly shoot wide of my position ; but he thinks it well to return to them, and persists in attacking the impos­ sible compound which he has set up as the God of those who believe in God. No doubt he can do some amount of iconoclastic work here; but what is that to me? If-he amuses himself and your readers by wasting half the space at his disposal, perhaps I ought not to complain ; but I am �18 ATHEISM OR THEISM? not bound to follow him into this region, and shall only do so when I can spare the time. I will pursue him just a little way now. He considers that a Theist ought to know the final cause of the universe before he ventures to attribute wisdom to the Deity 1 But surely I may admire the struc­ ture of the eye, and perceive it to be well adapted for seeing, without waiting to examine the heart or learn the use of the spleen. I may study and admire the human frame as a whole, and not feel obliged to be dumb concern­ ing it because I have not begun the consideration of the solar system. My opponent wants me to begin at the cir­ cumference of the universe, because it has no boundsg and he wishes to see me bewildered and floundering^ Yet immediately he himself ventures to judge of the universe as a whole, and pronounces it a blunder, and its creator a blunderer, on the strength of some exhibitions of folly (a£ he counts them) in its known parts. One exhibition of folly, he considers, is the creation of fools. Repeating a statement of his former letter, he asserts that most men are fools, and that he who created them so must himself be more foolish than wise. My reply is that, whatever the actual proportion of fools, ignorance comes before knowledge, folly before wisdom, in the natural order of things. The crude and unfashioned material must date earlier than the wrought and finished. The educated man is a production of a more advanced sort than the ignorant and uncultured man ; he is the same creature in a later stage of development. But Mr. Symes—whom nothing will satisfy save impossibilities—demands the later before the earlier. My opponent thinks that infinite goodness is incompatible with the existence of the slightest evil at any time. He imagines that infinite goodness in the creator would prevent any evil outside of him. To my mind this is not so, unless the creator, besides being infinitely good, is also omnipotent, and omnipotent in a sense which enables him to overcome physical and mathematical contradictions and accomplish impossibilities. But, to simplify the discussion, I refrain from contending for infinite goodness, and contend for per­ fect goodness. My opponent does not see the difference, but conceives that his former objections to infinite goodness press with equal force against perfect goodness. He con­ tinues his unconscious legerdemain with the word infinite. �; ■ w:./ -’ ATHEISM OR THEISM ? • w’ 19 He asks, “ How can a finite, that is, an imperfect being, be perfect in any respect ? ” Amazing! We am to suppose there is no perfect circle conceivable unless it be infinite in its dimensions, and that no man could be perfectly truthful, no child perfectly innocent, no flower perfect in its beauty. The flower must be as large as the universe, it seems, before its beauty can be perfect. The argument against the per­ fect goodness of Jesus Christ would have to run in the form that his body and soul together were not so big in cubic measure as all the worlds and spaces which make up the TCT7rai/, or grtffttall! “ Goodness will prevent or remove evil to the extent of its ability.” Yes; but since no ability whatever can be sufficient to surmount impossibilities, limited ^evil nifty exist for a limited time, and be subservient to greater good (like the inconvenience of scaffolding during the building of a house). Mr. Symes uses what he supposes to be a parallel, that limited darkness is not consistent with perfect light. But this shows some obscurity of thought. Darkness and light are opposites, and so are good and evil ; but not goodness and evil. I did not say that limited evil was consistent with perfect good, as an existing condition of things everywhere; I said it was consistent with perfect goodness as an element of character existing in the Deity. With God, in the higher plane of his operations, as with man on a lower, it may be wise and good to “ choose the less of two evils where it is impossible to shun both.” “ How do I know that evil is limited as to time ? ” How does Mr. Symes know that it is not ? Let him read Herbert Spencer’s chapter on the “ Evanescence of Evil.” Let him ask himself what prospect there is of the eternal duration of a thing which is continually diminishing in amount. He admits that evils are diminishing through man’s agency, man’s growing wisdom. So they ought some day to end. But he declines to give God the glory. Now the Creator of man is the author of man’s wisdom. He employs man as his best instrument to improve the face of the earth and weed out evils from society. To a Theist this is so, of course; the creator of man’s body is the author of his spirit and the guide of his course. But with curious blindness to the Theistic position, Mr. Symes seeks to infer that man is wiser than his maker. He reckons disease and all destructive forces as God’s agents for evil, but does not reckon physi­ �20 ATHEISM OR THEISM? cians, philanthropists and reformers as his agents for good. He fails to see that on the theistic hypothesis the evils which man remov^God removes. Mr. Symes contends that “ he who arranged matter as we find it, is not good,” because it produces pain and other evils. He would not say this of any human operator. When I saw him the other day at a public meeting, he complained of neuralgia and talked of going to a dentist. I am afraid the dentist would have to arrange matter so as to give tem­ porary pain, and yet the dentist might be good and might do good. It is not the poser which my oppontml thinks it is, to ask me whether I equally know the end and aim of fhp Creator. I’m not going to search for it among the infinities. Looking at the human jaws, and the apparatus of the teeth, in connexion with food and the digestive organs, I think I know the aim and end of the Creator in giving us teeth. It is that we may chew our victuals. And then their occa-wr sionally aching is an incidental evil, which may have some bearing on his omnipotence, but does not bear witness against his goodness. Mr. Symes’ next paragraph is curiously con­ tradictory. He considers life a torture, every breath pain, death preferable ; but does not commit suicide because lie has an invincible love of life ! I have agreed with Mr. J. S. Mill that physical “ con­ ditions ” put some limit to omnipotence as we might other­ wise conceive it. Mr. Symes pounces upon this, but does not seize it well. He says, “ Here is an admission of finite power, and since finite bears no comparison to infinite we must conclude that Mr. St. Clair’s deity has infinitely greater weakness than strength.” Does this sound conclusive ? I may correspondingly argue as follows,—My God can do something, therefore his weakness is not utter inability, not infinite weakness ; it is finite, and bears no comparison with the infinite, therefore he has infinitely greater strength than weakness. Why does not Mr. Symes give up dabbling in this ocean of the infinite, which is too deep for both of us, but where, if I choose to follow him, I can make quite as great a show as he of letting down a plumb-line ? He wants me to tell him—“ Is god eternal, and how do I ascertain it?” What I think on the subject, I’ll tell him another time : at present I assert that the human frame had a creator—it is a designed machine, and machines must have �ATHEISM OR THEISM ? 21 intelligent makers—and I challenge him to show that this, my belief, is irrational. “ Why do I call limited power omnipotence ? ” If power to do all possible things is not to be called omnipotence we must drop the term. I found the term in use and I used it: but it is not essential to my argument. If Mr. Symes can imagine the ability to do impossible things, he has powers of imagination which transcend mine. I do not expect the Deity to cause two and two to be five, and the whole to be less than one of its quarters; I do not look for him to make squares without angles, and a succession of days without intervening nights. I believe in a Deity who can do all ¿lings not Involving contradictions. Can Mr. Symes show that this belief of mine is irrational ? The kind of world which my opponent demands—brand-new and straight off— would involve impossibilities. His cry is for the moon. He wants blossoms which never suffer from frost; he asks for anjunbroken succession of good crops; he desires the absence of all liability to disease in man and beast. Can he suggest how a fleshly body, or any animal organism could be made free from all liability to disease ? His notion of the universe leaves no room for incidental evils, necessary concomitants, “ partial evil, universal good ”—in which I find the explanation of many difficulties. I have only space to assert afresh that the human frame is a machine, the human eye is an instrument; machines and instruments have to be made ; the maker of man is God; therefore Theism is true and it is rational to believe it. LETTER V. From Mr. J. Symes to Mr. G. St. Clair. I cannot say if it was my fault or the printer’s that “God” was spelt with a small g ; but I am not anxious to be read by those who would throw down the paper in disgust for such a trifle. I cannot induce Mr. St. Clair to give me a sight of his deity, and therefore do not know what it is he worships. It is not Mumbo Jumbo, nor yet an infinite god; it is “ the intelligent creator of man,” he informs me. But �22 ATHEISM OR THEISM ? no such being exists, as far as I can ascertain ; and why should I give a capital G to a myth ? My opponent is illogical in demanding honor for his god before he has proved that he has one worthy of honor, especially when all known facts are so strongly against his position. I respect Mr. St. Clair, for I know him ; I don’t know his god ; to give him capital letters might be construed to signify that I both knew and honored him. “The intelligent creator of man” is no more a description of deity than “the tree that bears oranges” is of the orange tree. I wish to know what the deity is; he merely speaks of what he does. What was he before creating man ? What is he apart from that action altogether ? I cannot believe Mr. St. Clair knows, nor do I believe he has any god at all. He can confute and confound me by a real exhibition of his deity in his next letter. My opponent rather unceremoniously sends me to “a dictionary ” for definitions of “ God,” etc. I go. “ GOD, n. [Sax., god; G., gott; D., god; Sw. and Dan., gud; Goth., goth or guth.~\ 1. The Supreme Being ; Jehovah ; the Eternal and Infinite Spirit, the Creator, and the Sove­ reign of the Universe,” etc. (Webster’s Improved Diet. ; Glasgow, W. Mackenzie.) What am I to think of Mr. St. Clair’s consistency ? In both letters he has, almost indig­ nantly and with something akin to sneering, repudiated the “ infinity ” of god ; and yet I find this attribute duly set out in the only definition of his deity which he has as yet condescended so much as to indicate ! I must now pi ess him to be candid : Is the definition to which he directed me correct? If so, why does he reject the “infinity” or decline to “maintain” it? If this definition be incorrect, why did he refer me to it ? I will next deal with a few of the fallacies and mistakes of his second letter. 1. Mr. St. Clair is mistaken in as­ suming that he “ successfully repelled ” any objections of mine to god’s goodness. The strength of my objections lies in the well-known and horrible facts of nature, which cannot be explained away. Goodness, finite or infinite, removes or prevents every evil in its power. Does Mr. St. Clair venture to assert that there is no evil now in the world which his deity could remove if he would ? If be cannot remove so much as one of them—say cancer or neuralgia— �ATHEISM OR THEISM ? 23 why call such a weakling god ? If he can and will not, where is his goodness ? I demand no “ impossibilities ” of deity, unless he is extremely weak. If he is not able to do immensely more than I require, he should retire from his post. 2. Mr. St. Clair, in not “ maintaining ” the infinity of ! I his god, “gives it up”—in the only sense I intended. I j have suffered no sort of “ inconvenience ” from this. Oh i dear, no! The only inconvenience I feel in this contest '■ lies in the fact that I have nothing but shadows and tinCertainties to contend with, phantoms, “That flit e’er you can point the place.” Would Mr. St. Clair kindly furnish me with one or two stubborn Theistic facts, if he has them ? 3. It is amusing to learn that I waste “ half my space ” in demolishing the “infinite” god, the very deity my opponent sent me to the dictionary for! I presume that must be his own ? 4. “ Ignorance comes before knowledge, folly before wisdom.” No doubt. And in many millions of cases the ignorance and the folly are never superseded by anything better. Does Mr. St. Clair hold that, “whatever is best ” ? What point has his remark else ? A perfectly good and wise god would have permitted no folly, nor have left his creatures ignorant of anything necessary to be known. I expect Mr. St. Clair to contend in his next that folly argues the wisdom, and evil the goodness, of his deity, while inability to remove evils is proof positive of his omnipotence. 5. My opponent jumbles mathematics, morality, and botany in the most edifying manner in his allusion to the circle, the child, and the flower. Geometrical conceptions are not “ beings;” they are abstractions. Innocence and beauty may be perfect in a very imperfect and extremely limited sense ; is that so with god’s goodness ? Mr. St. Clair is extremely unfortunate in his analogies. All that he has yet tried are failures. Or else his god is one of very slender means. He is a surgeon performing “ tracheo­ tomy,” a sculptor chipping stones into shape, a parent “ educating ” his children, a builder employing “ scaffolds,” etc. Before he has done, I fear he will rouse my sympathy for this god as the most unfortunate victim of circumstances �24 ATHEISM OK THEISM? that ever lived. The orthodox divinity is certainly superior to this. He never loses his power, and is self-reliant all throughout his career. But Mr. St. Clair’s deity is so com­ pletely under the control of circumstances, mostly adverse ones, that I expect my opponent to announce next that a memorial of condolence is to be despatched to him, and a subscription opened to replenish his exhausted exchequer. With the old-fashioned Christian god “ all things were possible ; ” with Mr. St. Clair’s it seems quite the reverse. No excuse could possibly be urged for any wrong done by the orthodox deity ; nothing hut excuses have yet been urged for this new one. I point out his misdeeds and show up his criminal conduct. But Mr. St. Clair is ever ready with an apology—“ Well, yes, but he couldn’t help it.” And this poor thing must have a capital G-! Well, well. He needs one! 6. Unless Mr. St. Clair knows that his god has removed one evil, it is irrational to expect him to remove all. If evil and good are compatible at all, and “ for a limited time,” why not for ever ? How long must evil last to be inconsistent with goodness ? “ Darkness and light are opposites, so are good and evil; but not goodness and evil.” Is that “ legerdemain ” or theology? It cannot be called “ confusion of thought,” for thought is absent. We were informed in Mr. St. Clair’s first that the conditions of all labor were the same. What now does he mean by in­ sinuating that man works on a “ lower plane ” than god ? How is that assumption to be reconciled with the further statement that god works by man ? God’s work is man’s work, and man’s is god’s, if that be so. I shall be delighted to be assured that all evil will be removed. But what are its laws ?—laws of origin, progress, and decay ? Will death and pain go ? Suppose they did go; the crime of their introduction or creation remains. 7. God employs man to “ improve the face of the earth and to weed out evils from society.” Assertion without evidence. If true, what must be thought of a god that creates evils and nourishes and perpetuates them for indefinite periods, and ultimately uses man as his catspaw to remove them ? How horribly they burn their fingers often in the work! What confusion of thought and of moral perception must possess a man who can count the author of all evil good, �ATHEISM OR THEISM? 25 and thank him for removing evils by the agency of human suffering. What a monument that deity would have if all the bones of his miserable agents could be collected and reared into one stupendous pyramid—the bones of the swarming millions who have perished horribly in removing divine evils, of the poor blind slaves whipped on by the crudest taskmaster that ever lived to undo the mischiefs his folly or malice created. What can be the state of mind . that supposes the “ physician ” who does his best to heal sickness to be incited thereto by the author of that sick­ ness—that the philanthropist who shelters, feeds, and clothes the orphan is inspired by the being who murders the parents ? When you “ gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles,” then may the author of evil incite to good deeds. Or must we suppose the deity to be destitute of moral qualities, and engaged in supernal legerdemain, throwing in evils with one hand and removing them by the other, using men as sentient and suffering marionettes in operating his play ? 8. A dentist would have no calling if deity had not “ scamped ” his work. If he inflict more than necessary pain, he is considered cruel. An infinite god, such as I was sent to the dictionary for, could have been under no necessity to inflict any pain. Mr. St. Clair’s god seems able enough for mischief, but almost powerless for good—a being that needs endless apologies. 9. If my opponent’s deity renders death infinitely desirable as a refuge from bis tyranny, and yet blocks the path to it by inspiring an invincible love of life, wherein lies the “ contradiction ” of my reference to it ? 10. I must leave my opponent for the present floundering in the hopeless task of proving that his deity must be infi­ nitely powerful because he can do “something.” Not I, ' but he, is the one who “ dabbles in the ocean of the infinite.” 11. Mr. St. Clair seems to hold that omnipotence is equiva­ lent to the power to do all possible things. Is that new? I never heard of its being used to signify the power to do impossible things. I thought from his former letter that “ omnipotence ” with him designated limited power ; it now returns to its old condition, and in this letter signifies what is indicated above. I wish Mr. St. Claii’ would be a little more definite. He now “ believes in a deity who can do all things �26 ATHEISM OR THEISM ? not involving contradictions.” Well, I have asked for no contradictions, the very reverse. This belief of Mr. St. Clair’s is highly irrational. You cannot possibly know how many things could be done not involving contradictions ; nor can you possibly know what power might be necessary to perform them ; nor is it possible you should have any reason for believing your deity to possess such power. If that confession of faith is not a “ dabbling in an infinite ocean,” what is it ? It is immensely amusing to see how Theists and semi-Theists talk ! Their knowledge and ex­ perience is about on a par with ours; yet they profess belief in that into which, in the very nature of the case, they can have no insight. But faith not founded on know­ ledge must be irrational. Thus I show Mr. St. Clair’s creed to be baseless and destitute of reason. 12. Perhaps my opponent will kindly show that a world such as I desire would involve “ impossibilities,” or that a God such as he believes in could not have made such a one ? I do want “ blossoms that never suffer from frost; ” who does not ? I do desire “ an unbroken succession of good crops ; ” will Mr. St. Clair say that he does not ? Else why is he pleased at the thought that all evil will ultimately cease ? To judge from my opponent’s remarks, one might suppose that it were a fault to desire good and not evil. Is it so ? I hope it is no sign of depravity to hate evil and to protest against evil-doers, even when they are deities. Does Mr. St. Clair enjoy evil ? Would he not remove it all, if he could ? He hates evil as I do ; but, like a lawyer with an utterly indefensible client, he struggles to show a case where there is none, and tries to defend an incongruous rabble of half-formed and contradictory conceptions, mostly remnants and tatters of old superstitions, loosely and unsymmetrically strung together on verbal threads, and col­ lectively called God. It is pitiable to see a man of his intellect and goodness engaged in hot conflict defending error against truth, and palliating and excusing all evil for the sake of the fancied author of it all. �ATHEISM OR THEISM ? 27 LETTER VI. From Mr. G. St. Clair to Mr. J. Symes. I regret that Mr. Symes should persist in speaking con­ temptuously of the Deity. The little matter of the little g ” in the name of God, if it was the printer’s fault, he now makes his own. He considers he is not called upon to give a capital G to a myth. No, but until he has proved God to be a myth, he must allow the possibility of his existence; and he ought to speak respectfully. In this third letter he uses language about the Deity which renders it painful for me to continue this discussion. It is a smaller matter that he should forget the courtesy due to an opponent, and insinuate a want of candour, as he does by “ now pressing me to be candid.” The question we were to discuss is set forth thus : “ Is Atheism or Theism the more rational ? ” As Mr. Symes is a professed Atheist, one would expect him to advance reasons for believing that Atheism is rational, that there is Ho God, and that the word ought to be spelt with a small g. But it would be a difficult task, and as yet he has not at­ tempted it. He would have to explain how things came to be as they are without any intelligence either originating, guiding, or controlling. His position is, that the eye was not made to see with, the teeth were not made for mastica­ tion, the human frame was not made at all. Like Topsy, he “ specks it growed !” He knows that steam-engines do Hot grow, except under the hand and mind of intelligent engineers, but he thinks that human bodies do. He is aware that telescopes and opera glasses have to be fashioned, but he imagines that that'more wonderful instrument, the human eye, is a sort of accident. Human intelligence has grown up out of the dust; and there is no other origin for a mother’s love or a martyr’s self-devotion. There is intelli­ gence in every workshop, and at the head of every successful business in the world, but none presiding over the universe. Out of the fountain head have come greater things than ever were in it. These are a few of the things which Mr. �28 ATHEISM OR THEISM ? Symes has to defend and show to be rational. No wonder that he defers the task ! He has not even fairly set about the alternative task of showing Theism to be irrational. I have let him know that I believe in an intelligent creator of man, worthy to be called God because of the greatness of his power and the goodness displayed in his operations. I have explained that by “ creator ” of man I mean former of man out of pre­ existing materials, and author of him as man. I have urged that this belief of mine is rational, because the human frame is a machine—in fact, much more, for it is a compli­ cation of machines and instruments—and all machines and instruments at all comparable to the bodily parts and organs have required intelligence to form them. Telescopes are made, and for a purpose; so must eyes have been: steam-engines are made, and for a purpose, and so is the machine of the human body. This is my rational belief. To deny these things is to deny that similar effects require similar causes to produce them, and is quite irrational. But instead of showing my Theism to be irrational my opponent sets forth a form of Theism which is irrational, and, therefore, easy to refute, and picks out some inconsistencies in that. His method may be summarised as follows:—“ Theism is belief in an infinite God, a God of infinite power can do all things, a God of infinite goodness would do all good things, but all conceivable good things have not been done, therefore, a God does not exist.” But this argument is fallacious : all that follows is that either the power or the goodness of God is less than infinite, and 1 have shown that we have no right to credit the Deity with a power of effecting impossi­ bilities. Omnipotence must be limited in that sense and to that extent, and we must not expect to see contradictions reconciled. God’s goodness I defend, and undertake to show the inconclusiveness of anything which may be urged against it. I do not contend for infinite power in the sense of power to effect impossibilities. I do not deny almightiness if properly defined; though it is not essential to my argument to contend for it, since something less than almightiness may have sufficed for the creation of man. Mr. Symes does waste ink in trying to commit me to his absurd definition of Deity. The “infinite God” whom he considers that he demolishes is only the image which he �ATHEISM OR THEISM ? 29 himself had set up and wrongly exhibited as mine. I can­ not allow it is mine any the more because he has found one something like it in “Webster’s Dictionary.” Certainly, when he demanded definitions, I said that a dictionary might serve his purpose at that stage ; but I did not say it would serve or satisfy me at all stages. Mr. Symes also amuses me by his awkward gymnastics in the ocean of the infinite. I followed him into the deep just to drive him out ; so now he tries to get to shore before me, and shouts out that it is I who am dabbling in the bottomless sea. Seeing that I am leaving the waters, he tries to entice me back again. He protests that he will now be reasonable. He will confess himself confuted and confounded if I will afford him, in my third letter, a real exhibition of my Deity! Very likely; but I really cannot allow myself to make the attempt. Regarding myself as only a creature, inferior to my Creator, I do not presume to comprehend all his great­ ness, so as to be able to give an exact description, or paint an adequate portrait. I have heard of genii being induced to go into a bottle, and I can imagine a Goliath taking a Tom Thumb in his hand; but I for my part do not profess to have th’s superiority over God. To define God would be to chalk out his limits. As I decline to contend for a Deity possessing contradictory infinities, my opponent wishes to pin me to the equally foolish alternative of a God with no infinity at all, a very limited marionette figure, such as I might comprehend all round and put forth upon the stage for Mr. Symes to laugh at. If God is not infinite in all senses, I am to describe him ! But I do not feel shut up to any such dilemma. God is the intelligent Being who consciously and deliberately gave existence to man. Mr. Symes complains that “ intelligent Creator of man ” is no description. I have not promised a description, and my argument does not require it. I judge that man had a maker, as I judge that Cologne cathedral had an architect. The architect of that cathedral is not known ; his name has not come down to us, and no description could be given that should distinguish him from others ; but the cathedral is sufficient evidence that he existed. It is more rational to believe in an architect than to disbelieve. I defend the rationality of believing in God. I am not bound to give an exact description of him. The question “ What was he �30 ATHEISM OR THEISM? before creating man ? ” I am not obliged to answer. I offer Mr. Symes the “stubborn Theistic facts” which he asks for. Human eyes are instruments superior to opera-glasses; opera-glasses are designed for a purpose, and formed only under intelligent direction; therefore nothing less than intelligence will account for the existence of human eyes. The human frame is a machine, including within itself several subordinate machines of engines and levers ; repeat " the above argument. A mother’s affection is intended for ! the good of her offspring, for the preservation of its life, for securing the succession of generations ; and yet this affection is not accounted for by saying it is of human origination ; it owes its origin to the author of life, who planned the succession of generations. These are Theistic facts, so stubborn that no Atheist can satisfactorily dispose of them, if I may judge from such attempts as I have seen As I gave my opponent two out of these three facts before, he had no ground for crying out that he has nothing but shadows to contend with. I define omnipotence to be the power of doing all things not involving contradiction and impossibility. Mr. Symes questions whether this view is new. I am not much con­ cerned about that: it is the view I hold and I challenge him to prove it irrational. He says he never heard of “ omnipotence ” being used to signify the power to do im­ possible things. If, then, my view is the only one he has ever heard of, why does he ridicule it and allude to it as semi-theistic? why does he say the orthodox divinity is superior to mine ? why does he complain that I give him no sight of the deity I worship ? But in truth my opponent himself assumes that omnipotent goodness ought to do im­ possible things—ought to give us the full-blown flower of creation before the bud, and accomplish grand results without processes involving incidental evil. He wishes me to explain to him how it is that a God, such as I believe in, cannot make such a world as is asked for. I have only to say that no God could do it, because all operations must have a beginning, a process and an end, and no conceivable power, out of Hibernia, can make the end come before the beginning. Will my opponent show me how it is to be done ? Will he state a method by which the earth and moon may be allowed to keep their present orbits, and light �ATHEISM OR THEISM ? o1 01 remain subject to its present laws, and yet eclipses be rendered impossible ? Can he devise a human body that can live and move and yet not be at all composed of flesh subject to wounds ? Does he not see that a great and good result may carry some minor undesirable concomitants along with it ? Does he think he could show that any of the evils he complains of are not of this sort ? He seems to have great difficulty in grasping the thought that all operations imply a process, take up time, and involve incidental results which are not directly bargained for. They may not be desired, yet may be foreseen and accepted, because they lie in the path by which greater good is to be attained. Mr. Symes says that he points out the misdeeds and shows up the criminal conduct of God, and that when he does so I reply, “ Yes, but he couldn’t help it.” This is my opponent’s way of admitting that when he charges the sufferings of mortals upon the Deity, as a Being who could prevent them but will not, I have a reply for him. I show that instead of limiting God’s good intent and beneficent action, it is equally a solution of the difficulty if we suppose a limitation of power. Then I show that limita­ tions actually exist, in the ever-present conditions under which operations are performed and ends wrought out. This view of mine, which I reverently maintain, the language of my opponent grossly misrepresents as equivalent to making God “ the most unfortunate victim of circumstances that ever lived.” It makes him and it leaves him almighty. The alternative would have been to maintain that the power of deity is without limits of any sort—that he can make squares without angles, or diffuse a limited quantity of material through a greater space without spreading it thinner. This might have pleased Mr. Symes, who now parades “the orthodox divinity who never loses his power, the oldfashioned Christian God with whom all things were pos­ sible.” He never heard of any view of omnipotence different from that which I maintain ; but he has heard of this oldfashioned Christian God so different from mine, and thinks such a conception of God preferable. Naturally so, because it is the conception which he feels able to demolish, as it is composed of inconsistent parts. Mr. Symes, unable to comprehend the temporary use of scaffolding, except for human builders, inquires how long �32 ATHEISM OR THEISM ? evil must last to be inconsistent with goodness ? Probably as long as the good process which necessitates it as a con­ comitant is still proceeding, and has not got beyond the stage which requires it. I am surprised it should appear1 to Mr. Symes’s intelligence that the evil which is compatible with goodness for a limited time, may as well be so for ever. A stormy voyage may be endured because of the desirability of migrating to a better country; but surely the storms must be differently regarded if it is known that they are to be perpetual and there is no port to be reached. Mr. Symes forms his impression of the storms while he is sea-sick, and refuses beforehand to find any compensation in reaching the haven of rest. Suppose the storms go, he maintains that the crime of their introduction or creation remains.” He persists in charging all evils upon the Deity as crimes, as though he knew enough of the ultimate issues of things to justify him in saying there has been the least departure from wise and good arrangements. If impossibilities could be effected we might have the fruit before the bud, and ripe apples before sour ones. If Mr. Symes is going to be reasonable he must not ask for such things. He does ask for them when he demands wisdom before ignorance and declares that a good and wise God would not have left his creatures ignorant of anything necessary to be known. And he does ask for them, in my opinion, when he complains against God on account of any evil whatever. He cannot show that whatever is is not best, in the sense of being the best possible at the present stage of the general progress. As usual I leave much unsaid for want of space. LETTER VII. From Mr. J. Symes to Mr. G. St. Clair. Mr. St. Clair’s third is no stronger in facts or arguments than his two former letters. It would, however, be unkind to grumble, as he cannot present a strong case for Theism, for the very sufficient reason that no such case exists. He complains of my “ language about the deity.” Well, in that he shows himself as unreasonable, though not so cruel, as Nebuchadnezzar when he sent the three Hebrews �ATHEISM OR THEISM ? 33 to the fiery furnace for refusing to worship his image. Mr. St. Clair thinks I should “ advance reasons for believing Atheism to be rational.” Each of my letters has teemed with such reasons, not one of which has been yet refuted. Has my opponent read what I have written ? I have also shown how irrational it is to believe in a good and omni­ potent god. The facts of nature proclaim aloud that no good god exists; and there does not exist one fact, or one aggregation of facts, to warrant the belief that an omni­ potent god lives. Therefore Mr. St. Clair’s belief is irrational. The believers in Mumbo Jumbo, the infalli­ bility of the Pope, transubstantiation, or witchcraft, are not more irrational than a Theist. They all believe, no doubt, sincerely enough, but without any adequate reason. In my last I expressed the anticipation that my opponent would in his next argue the omnipotence of his deity from his “ inability to remove evils.” Mr. St. Clair, in the penultimate paragraph of his third letter, obligingly fulfils my prediction by affirming that “ a limitation of power ” , . . “ makes and leaves god almighty.” Mr. St. Clair takes umbrage at my request that he would be “ candid.” The request arose from that reference to the dictionary and its necessary connexions. I do not yet know whether the dictionary contains a definition he approves. It seems to me—I may be in error—but it seems to me that candor would have set me at rest on that before now. At length Mr. St. Clair plunges into the Design Argu­ ment—the most fallacious and ill founded of all the argu­ ments for divine existence. 1. Adaptation argues an adapter, and an intelligent one. Does it? Water is as well adapted for drowning land animals as it is for marine animals to live in. Fire is beautifully adapted to burn men; falling stones, trees, etc., storms, floods, explosions, fevers, famines, wild beasts, earth­ quakes, and a thousand other evils are delightfully fitted to kill them. Old age, too, will do it equally well. It cannot be denied that the processes of decay and destruction show as much regularity of action and as perfect adaptation of means to ends as the processes which result in life. Perhaps Mr. St. Clair regards an earthquake, a cantier, or any other destructive agency as a “ sort of accident;” he fails to see, probably, how beautifully, cunningly, and maliciously �34 ATHEISM OR THEISM ? they are fitted for their work of destruction and misery 1 Certain skin diseases, tic-doloreux, sciatica, cramps, the stone—how beautifully they are all adapted to the work of inflicting pain ! Racks, wheels, stakes, gyves, “ boots,” thumbscrews, bastinadoes, swords, guns, etc., are all made, and argue or imply makers ; but earthquakes, plagues, frost and snow, floods, famines, wild beasts, fevers, small-pox, cancer, and what not, are immensely superior as agents of pain and death, and yet Mr. St. Clair seems to see no design in them, and fails to recognise the existence of a perfectly malignant god, who made them all for his own pleasure ! Can perversity of intellect proceed farther? My worthy opponent can readily enough perceive the design and the malice of an infernal machine, and yet fails to recognise the design and the malice of diseases and famines! He recognises the folly or the malice of warriors, murderers, and tyrants who kill or torture a few; and yet cannot admit that there must be an omnipotent god, who cunningly con­ trives and maliciously sets in motion the grand and perfect machinery of nature to destroy all living things 1 He admits the existence of folly and malice amongst mankind, and yet refuses to admit that far greater folly and malice “ preside over the universe ! ” Of course, it cannot rationally be contended that god is infinitely foolish and malicious, though he is “ perfectly” so. He cannot do “ impossibilities,” nor things involving “ con­ tradiction.” He found matter to his hand, and had to work under the “ same condition of labor ” that men work under ; and so, though the universe is not absolutely and infinitely bad, yet it is as bad as the deity could possibly make it. And, further, we are not to argue that because some scraps of good, or seeming good, really do exist, that therefore the good is eternal; for “ limited good for a limited time ” may be consistent with perfect evil, and the deity is working by various agencies to remove all good from his universe; and then nought but evil will remain for ever! There is Mr. St. Clair’s argument simply reversed. 2. But I must notice in detail the very few natural pheno­ mena my opponent condescends to mention. The eye he instances as a proof of design and beneficent divine work­ manship. He says it is superior to opera-glasses. The best eyes, no doubt, are better than opera-glasses. But our best �ATHEISM OR THEISM ? 35 telescopes and microscopes far transcend the eye as optical instruments. Its qualities are coarse and rudimentary com­ pared with theirs. Eyes ! They are beautiful and ugly, of good color and of disagreeable ; there are blear eyes, goggle eyes, squint eyes, wall eyes ; color-blindness is a defect observed in many thousands. Millions upon millions of eyes never see at all. Were they made to see with ? Had a beneficent creator made eyes, he would have ensured their good performance. Had he meant them for human advantage, he would have turned out respectable workmanship. I wonder he did not do that for his own credit. What optician could follow his example ? All over the civilised world are ophthalmic institutions, where men are constantly engaged patching up, or actually improving, the work of Mr. St. Clair’s divine manufacturer, who made eyes of water, jelly and soft fibres, whereas they should have been made of hard and tough material, so that disarrangement and destruction were next to impossible. And these eyes, good, bad, useless, are palmed off upon us by the maker, whether we like them or not. He gives no guarantee for their performance either, as a respectable jnanufacturei’ would, nor does he ever repair them when dace out of order. There is no sense of honesty, decency or shame in this deity. If he bestows eyes as a duty, they ought all to be good ; if out of charity, it is a mockery to give a poor wretch the eyes we often see ! If the eye is a divinely-manufactured article, as Mr. St. Clair says (without attempting to prove it), then the worker knew less of optics than I do, or else carelessly did his work. The eye is not achromatic, and it has too many lenses, the many surfaces of which waste light. It has the defect of astigmatism, which shows that its maker did not know much of mathematical optics. This grand instru­ ment, the crowning work of an almighty god, has two odd curves in the front—that is, in the cornea. Everyone knows that the common run of spectacles have a longer curve horizontally than perpendicularly, and so has the eye ! Our best lenses are ground to mathematical correctness, and the same curve prevails all over the same side ; but the eye is herein defective. Hence we cannot see, at the distance of clear vision, a horizontal and perpendicular line distinctly at once : one of them is in �36 ATHEISM OR THEISM ? focus when the other is out. Had there been a wise and beneficent creator, he would long since have corrected this defect, for opticians pointed it out generations ¡fince in their critiques upon the eye. The eye, therefore, if made at all, must be considered as the work of a mere amateur, and -of one who worked more for his own amusement than for human welfare. 3. The teeth! First of all, we are born without any; later we “cut” them in misery, convulsions, often at the expense of life.' The teeth thus cut are not permanent, after all; in a few years they drop out, or are pushed out by the so-called permanent teeth. And these!—in many cases they begin to decay in a very few years ; henceforth the victim of this dishonest tooth-maker is subject to tooth­ ache, neuralgia, and dyspepsia. He also has to go to the expense of new teeth, stuffing, etc., if he can afford them. And may I ask my opponent what he would think of a dentist who furnished him with teeth that ached, and and decayed, and tumbled out ? What would he say if any dentist treated him half so badly as his deity treats thousands? If eyes and teeth are really manufactured by deity, Mr. St. Clair must refute my criticisms, or admit that his deity is a clumsy or careless worker, and also very dishonest and cr^jel. These facts must be met and explained before Theism can be shown to be rational. 4. But Mr. St. Clair seems to me virtually to give up all possible right to use the Design Argument by admitting, as he does, the independent existence of matter. If there be a mystery in nature, then the existence of matter is that mystery. And, further, there must be, from the nature of the case, as much, at least, as much, if not more, design and adaptation in the very elements of matter as in any living thing. And, further still, I am not aware that anyone has yet drawn the line between living matter and non-living matter, nor have I any reason to suppose such a line possible. All matter is probably alive, and always was so, and ever will be so, though in far different degrees. I affirm, too, that the adaptation between the molecules, or atoms, or whatever the ultimate elements of matter may be called, must be more perfect than between the parts of a man. No man is perfect; nor is his best organ beyond the range of adverse criticism. No man is perfectly adapted to �ATHEISM Oli THEISM ? 37 his environment—at best his adaptation is but a makeshift, a “ roughing it,” a period of unstable equilibrium, a tight rope dance for dear life, with absolute certainty in every case of a fatal fall by way of finale. Turning from man, look at the ocean. Its waves swell and roar and break a million million times ; but its water changes not. Its atoms of hydrogen and oxygen are in perfect equilibrium, in perfect mutual adaptation. So was it when the first water flowed ; so will it be for ever. And could that adaptation, so perfect, so absolute, so time-defy­ ing, be the result of an accident, or natural result of merely natural forces, as Mr. St. Clair implies ? And will he con­ tend that the most perfect adaptations require no adapter, while asserting that the imperfect, evanescent, and miserable adaptations seen in man required for their production an almighty and intelligent god ? To do so may be prime theology, but it is not philosophy, nor science, nor reason. Mr. St. Clair now admits that he cannot define deity. I suspected as much—he has no deity to define. Then why does he contend for what he does not understand ? Like the woman of Samaria, he “ worships he knows not what.” “A mother’s affection is intended for the good of her off­ spring,” my opponent informs me. It is impossible that he can know that it is “ intended” for anything; that it does effect the good of her offspring, though not invariably, is at once conceded. What more does Mr. St. Clair know about it ? And what is a mother’s hate “ intended ” for ? And this hate “ owes its origin to the author of life.” Rabbits frequently eat their young; is that also at the instigation of deity ? Such arguments as my opponent deals in are not “ Theistic facts,” as he supposes; they are merely superstitious fictions unworthy the respect of a man like Mr. St. Clair. To talk about deity caring for a mother’s offspring is to me simply shocking. Who is it' kills children in millions by measles, whooping cough, convulsions, fever, small-pox, by earthquake, flood and famine ? If there really does exist a deity, he kills millions of children every century by famine. Has Mr. St. Clair ever reflected on that fact ? Why, if a mother’s love has any “ intention ” at all, it is to defend her child as long as possible against the murderous attacks of this very deity, �88 ATHEISM OR THEISM ? who meets us at every turn and “ seeks to kill us ” at every stage of life. Will Mr. St. Clair give me one proved Theistic fact in his next ? LETTER VIII. From Mr. Gr. St. Clair to Mr. J. Symes. Robinson Crusoe was puzzled as to his whereabouts in the great ocean, but he was able to explore his little island; and he might have made canoe voyages and gradually extended the area of his knowledge, though hopeless of including all the world. Mankind, in like manner, have mapped the solar system, and delved down to the Silurian rocks with their fossils, and they find their knowledge real and useful, though it brings them no nearer to the beginning of time or the boundaries of space. Our inability to com­ prehend the Infinite is not a reason for undervaluing the things within our reach. It is foolish to say we explain nothing, because we cannot fully understand the first origin. Things are explained, in a degree which gives the mind some satisfaction, when we trace them back to their causes. The trade winds, for instance, are accounted for by the sun’s heat and the earth’s rotation : and this explanation is not rendered inaccurate by pointing out that the cause of the earth’s rotation is not known, and that the sun’s heat itself requires accounting for. I, in my Crusoe fashion, explore, and am obliged to be content with something less than infinite knowledge. I trace some things to man’s intel­ ligent action as their cause, and am convinced that certain steam-engines, pumps, microscopes, &c., would not have existed but for his operation. I find other things which I can only explain by ascribing them to an intelligence which is not man’s. The worker is not seen, but the work is seen; and I know there must have been an architect of the human frame, as I know there must have been a designer of Cologne cathedral. The human eye would be enough evidence if I had no other. “ Was the eye constructed without skill in optics ? ” asks that great mathematician, Sir Isaac Newton—“ or the �ATHEISM OR THEISM? S9 ear without knowledge of sounds ? ” The argument is a thousand-fold stronger for regarding the human frame as a designed structure taking it as a whole ; for the eye stands to the body only as the east window to the cathedral. The teeth are a beautiful apparatus, surpassing human inven­ tions, when we consider their growth, their enamelled pro­ tective covering, their office, and their position at the entrance of the alimentary canal, in proximity to the tongue and the sources of saliva. The valves in the blood- vessels are so manifestly placed there with a view of securing the circulation of the blood that Harvey inferred the Crea­ tor’s intention, and so was guided to his discovery. It is a question which all great investigators ask—“ What is the creative intention in this arrangement ?■ ” for they find it a clue to discovery. I must not linger over the human body: let Atheists read Paley, Brougham, and Bell, and some of them will give up their Atheism and take to refuting Mr. Symes’s worn-out objections. Every creature is admirably adapted to its mode of life and to the element in which it lives. If we desired to give the body of a fish the best form for moving through the water we should have to fashion it as a solid of least resistance. “ A very difficult chain of mathematical reasoning, by means of the highest branches of algebra, leads to a knowledge of the curve which, by revolving on its axis, makes a solid of this shape .... and the curve resembles closely the face or head part of a fish.” Let the young reader, perplexed by Mr. Symes’s objections, read more of this in Lord Brougham’s “ Objects, Advantages and Pleasures of Science.” The feathers of the wings of birds are found to be placed at the best possible angle for assisting progress by their action on the air. In the Duke of Argyll’s “ Reign of Law ” there is a chapter concerning the admirable mechanism of the bird’s wing. A bird is heavier than the air in which it is sustained, and it has to make headway against a resisting atmosphere. Man’s poor attempts to make wings usually result in the disaster of Imlac in Dr. Johnson’s “ Rasselas ” ; man’s attempts to navigate the air by balloons are so poor that the Customs Officers have no fear of being eluded. If we wish to see how material laws can be so bent as to effect a designed purpose we must study the problem of a bird’s flight. Leaving birds for insects, how marvellous it is that the �40 ATHEISM OR THEISM? cabbage butterfly should always lay its eggs on the cabbage, the leaves of which are so suited for the nourishment of the young grubs, and will be so much relished! That butter­ fly has no taste for cabbage leaves itself, and it will not live to see its offspring, yet its instinct—which is not of its own creation—guides it aright. These are samples of Theistic facts, in one department. When Mr. Symes has dealt with them I can furnish more. In my Crusoe fashion, I discern an intelligence at work which is not my own, nor that of my brother man, which immensely transcends mine and his, though, with my Crusoe limitations, I have not the means of deciding the measure of its greatness. I discern a worker, whether infinite or not—a worker operating under conditions, whether the con­ ditions be self-imposed or not. He accomplishes many things which I can appreciate ; He seems to be working out greater purposes which I do but dimly grasp. As an evolutionist I discern something of a purpose running through the ages, independent of the will of kings and legislators. I perceive a gradual advance to higher platforms of life, at present culminating in man. Man did not come until the earth had been prepared for him, and stores of coal and iron laid up for his use. Apparently he could not come without lower creatures preceding him ; because he had to be born from them. As a race, we have had to go through our schooling, for in no other way could we become educated; our struggle with difficulty makes men of us, unless we neutralise it by taking the discipline sulkily. Had the Creator been perpetually at our elbow to do our lessons for us, to work for us while we slept, and to help us over all stiles, we should never have attained intel­ lectual manhood and moral strength. Man is progressing still, and therefore will be a nobler creature by and bye. His surroundings are subject to an evolution and improve­ ment, which advances pari passu with himself. He himself is the Creator’s latest-fashioned and best-adapted instru­ ment for effecting these desirable adaptations, commissioned to carry on and carry out some of the highest purposes of God. It is a great thing to be conscious of this ; and I am bold to say that thousands of good people are conscious of communion with a Higher Soul, of inspirations received from him, and of tasks assigned by him, the act omplish* 4 �ATHEISM OR THEISM? 41 meut of which is another phrase for co-operation with him and doing his will on earth. This Divine Worker seems to be limited by “the con­ ditions of all work.” rAs regards ourselves and our own work, we candlbt conceive how we could live at all in a dreamy, shifting, chance world, not subject to fixed con­ ditions. We are finite and conditioned, and cannot realise an utterly different kind of existence. It would follow from this alone that anything which the Creater may do with us or for us must be conformable to the conditions of the world we live in if it is to be comprehensible to us. Although, therefore, He be great beyond all assignable limits, he must necessarily look limited to us. Where we see him operating we see him making use of natural forces, moulding and directing them. The natural forces in themselves are neither moral nor immoral—steam, electricity, and strychnine have no conscience, and are not to be blamed or praised for their effects. They may be turned to good uses or to bad uses— strychnine to poison or to relieve, steam to work a locomo­ tive or propel a murderous bullet. We infer a worker and his moral character from the use made of natural forces. Mr. Symes does not distinguish between forces working blindly and forces working under intelligent direction, but insists on ascribing all results to God, or else none. This is not what I discern, for I perceive that some things have been contrived by some Intelligence, and of other things I do not perceive it. An enlightened evolutionist ought to know that “ Evil ” is “ Good in the making.” It has been so in the past, again and again. Perfect goodness is producing more and more good constantly (evil, as Spencer shows, is evanes­ cent) and may probably produce infinite good in the course of time. But Mr. Symes is not content to have it produced, he wants his bread before the cake is baked. Mr. Symes finishes his last by asking “Will I give him one proved Theistic fact?” Well, something depends upon what is allowed to be “ proof,” and that again depends upon whether you have to convince a man of common sense or a man of uncommon obstinacy. If folk possess eyes it is no guarantee that light will reach their minds, if they choose to live in a camera obscura. My opponent closes the shutters and then complains that things are dark. What can I do �42 ATHEISM OR THEISM? with a man who does not believe that eyes are given him to see with ? On the same principle his faculties are not given him to enable him either to reason correctly or to understand arguments. Perhaps I ought not to be surprised that my proofs are thrown away upon him. 1 have noticed in going through a cut-glass manufactory that although the workmen are skilful and the processes are ingenious by which the crude “ metal” is blown, annealed, ground on wheels of iron for the pattern, and on wheels of stone and wood for smoothing and polishing—I have noticed that accidents are liable to occur at every stage, and some few cruets, wine-glasses, decanters, etc., get broken and thrown into the waste tub. But if I want to see what is being produced, and was designed before it was manufac­ tured, I go not to the waste-tub, but to the show-room. Certainly even a fractured salt-cellar in the waste-tub would show design—a formative design accidently baulked, not a design to produce fracture and waste—but a wise man will rather go to the show-room. Mr. Symes, I imagine, would go to the waste-tub and refuse to see anything out­ side of it. He invites us to contemplate blind eyes, rotten teeth and people suffering from cancer. He assures us that had a beneficent Creator made our eyes He would have ensured their good performance. I should reply that He does so. “ Not in all cases,” says my querulous friend, “ why I find squinting eyes and blind eyes, and here are ophthalmic institutions ! ” True, man’s heart of pity leads him to heal. Man’s intelligence enables him to understand something of optics. In both respects he is growing up in the ways of his Heavenly Father. The modest Newton admired the Divine skill in optics: but Mr. Symes claims to “ know more of optics himself,” and to be able to teach the Creator his business. The eye “ought to have been made not of water, jelly, and soft fibres, but of hard and tough material.” Surely Alphonso of Castile has come back again. That monarch said that had he been of the privy council of the Deity he could have advised the formation of the solar system on a better plan ! Had he said this concerning the actual solar system instead of against the false system of Ptolemy, it would have been irreverent, not to say blasphe­ mous. I count it rather inconsistent in Mr. Symes to want any uyes at all, as he thinks they were not made to see with �ATHEISM OR THEISM ? 43 and are an endlass bother. Perhaps the hard and tough one£ which he would substitute would be faulty in their re­ fraction (for all work is conditioned by the material). Can my opponent assure me that it would not be so ? Has he got any of these eyes ready-made, and do they answer perfectly ? or is this an empty boast of his about improving upon the Creator’s work ? I doubt not that there is a good reason for employing soft humors and delicate fibres in the eye, and then I admire the care and wisdom which have provided so well for the protection of such a delicate organ, by the position given to it, in a bony socket defended by lids and lashes and ramparts. “ But the eye lacks achromatism, and has the defect of astigmatism, and follows the pattern of inferior spectacle-glasses in having two curves in the cornea.” Rather random assertions these : take for instance the first. Chromatism is color-ism; a double convex lens or magnifying glass causes objects to appear with rainbow­ colored fringes. This was a defect for a long time in telescopes, and telescopes free from the defect are called achromatic. Well, are we troubled and inconvenienced by seeing these colored fringes when we use the naked eye ? Is any reader conscious of it ? Now what is the fact ? All telescopes were defective in this particular, and Sir I. Newton had said that there could be no remedy, until it occurred to an ingenious optician that the difficulty must have been overcome by the Maker of the eye. So he examined the eye till he discovered how it was overcome, and then by imitation of the Creator’s method invented the first achromatic telescope. I would call my opponent’s attention to this, but I suppose it is of no use ; he will persist in regarding the eyes as clumsy workmanship and in complaining that they are palmed off upon us whether we like it or not. The traveller Vambery mentions that in Bokhara they punish slaves by gouging out their eyes. Mr. Symes, to be consistent, ought not to protest against the ■cruelty, since in his estimation it involves no loss, and the Chief cruelty is in having the eyes thrust upon us. But in answer to his astounding assertion that the eye is not respectable workmanship and that the best telescopes far transcend it as optical instruments, it is sufficient to say that we can see with our eyes, unaided by telescopes, whereas we cannot see with telescopes unaided by eyes. �44 ATHEISM OR THEISM ? My opponent not only damns his eyes, but curses his Jreth. First because he is born without them! On his theory this ought to be an advantage, so far as it goes. But, considering that other beautiful provision of the beneficent Creator, which supplies a fountain of milk for the infant lips to draw from, teeth are not only not required for a milk diet, but would be inconvenient to the mother. Then Mr. Symes cries out, “ We cut them in misery! ” He is always afraid of a little pain. “The first set are not permanent.” No, becau-e the child will grow, the jaws will lengthen, and there will be room enough for larger teeth, and for thirtytwo instead of twenty. Mr. Symes, as a child, had less jaw; which reminds me, however, of a pun made by John Hunter, the famous surgeon. While he was once lecturing, and pointing out that in the higher animals the jaw is shorter, while the intelligence, of course, is greater, his pupils were chattering nonsense to one another. “ Gentle­ men,” said Hunter, “let us have more intellect and less jaw!” I don’t know whether those young men had attained their wisdom-teeth. Mr. Symes is annoyed that even the second set of teeth are subject to neuralgia and decay. This he considers a great Atheistic fact. The evil appa­ ratus of the teeth is thrust upon us in the same cruel manner as our clumsily-made eyes, and we may any day have an attack of neuralgia. At length, however, the teeth decay and leave us, and then what do we do ? Why, it appears, we have to go to the expense of a new set, so essential are they, and this is made an additional subject of complaint! By the bye, I suppose I must not pass over the question put—what should I say if a dentist supplied me with teeth that ached ? I should say that he was cleverer than any other dentist I had met with, for the aching was proof that he had connected the teeth with nerves, and made them live. I should say I was glad to have living teeth in. my mouth, instead of dead ivory, and that I was satisfied the teeth were contrived for me to eat with, while their very occasional aching was only an unpleasant incident, and per­ haps brought on by my own folly. Careful people will not often catch cold in the face, and good, moral people will not so devote themselves to Venus and mercury that their teeth fall out. Let us come to adaptations. Of course I am not going. �ATHEISM OR THEISM ? 45 to be pinned to any definition which makes adaptation the same thing as design. Some adaptations may not be designed. There’s a distinction to be drawn between mere fitness to produce a result, and purposive fitness which intends to secure the result. But Mr. Symes as usual does not perceive distinctions which make all the difference. He says that water is adapted for drowning and fire for burning. Granted: but are they purposely adapted, deliberately designed and fitted ? This is the very essence of the question. When the jeweller’s boy drops a watch, gravity and “ the law of falling bodies” are adapted to smash it; but that is an accidental adaptation, not to be compared with the adaptation of part to part in the construction of the watch —not to be compared with it, but rather contrasted. Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall, and the egg thus smashed could not say that gravity was unadapted to produce the result ; but compare this with the purposive adaptation of an egg, as I will now epitomise it from Professor Owen’s lecture on “ Design.” An egg is made convex and dome­ like, to bear the weight of the sitting bird. It contains a whitish spot, which is the germ, in which the development of the chick begins. The germ is on one side of the yolk, quite near to the shell, for it is necessary that it should be brought as close as possible to the hot brooding skin of the sitting hen. Now it is a fact that though you take as many eggs as you please, and turn them about as often as you like, you will always find this opaque white spot at the middle of the uppermost surface of the yolk. Hunter com­ pared this phasnomenon to the movements of the needle to the pole. Of course there is an apparatus -which secures this result; but it is an apparatus, a piece of machinery. “ As the vital fire burns up, organic material is reduced to carbon ; a membrane, over which the blood spreads in a net-work of minute vessels, like a gill or lung, then extends from the embryo to the inner side of the shell, between it and the white; the shell is made porous to allow the air access to this temporary respiratory organ ; and the oxygen combining with the carbon, it exhales as carbonic acid. As the chick approaches the period of its extrication, it is able to breathe by its proper lungs, and in the vesica aeris, or collection of air at the great end of the egg, it finds the wherewithal to begin its feeble inspirations, and to utter the �46 ATHEISM OR THEISM ? Jow chirp which may be heard just before it chips the shell. And how does it effect this ? By means of a hard knob specially formed upon the end of the upper beak, and which, after it has done its work, disappears.” All this appears to me something very different from the adaptedness of the hard ground to break the egg if it falls; but Mr. Symes would have us believe that the adaptation is of the same sort! His words are, “ It cannot be denied that the pro­ cesses of decay and destruction show as perfect adaptation i of means to ends as processes which result in life.” He argues that if anything is designed, earthquakes, plagues, cancer, etc., are designed to cause pain, and must be regarded as proving a malignant God. But can he show that the fitness or adaptation in these agencies is purposive ? I can see design in an infernal machine ; oh yes ! but I am not convinced that earthquakes are an infernal arrangement, much less that teeth are a diabolical invention because they sometimes ache. The adaptedness of the teeth for mastication bears the appearance of a good purpose; the adaptedness of an earthquake to rock down houses is not clearly purposive at all. There are influences of destruction and of decay, I admit; but the constructive operations are what I see design in. If I don’t attribute the former to God, my opponent must not object, since he does not either. I have a word to say which must be fatal to this idea that the forces of decay and destruction are purposive, if any are, and prove a malignant deity. A malignant deity finding pleasure in destruction, would soon destroy every­ thing. But, in fact, the agencies which build up are stronger than the agencies which destroy; construction gains upon decay, good gains upon evil. For evil is evanes­ cent as Herbert Spencer shows, in a chapter which Mr. Symes will not deal with. Even if destruction had to be ascribed to a destroying deity, construction would have to be ascribed to a deity engaged in building up. Then, as the same being would hardly build up with one hand and destroy with the other, Mr. Symes would be landed in Dualism, or the old Persian belief in two Gods. The further fact that construction is gaining upon decay, good gaining upon evil, would force him to admit that the good deity was the stronger. The way out of this difficulty is only to be found �ATHEISM OR THEISM ? 47 fai Theism as I advocate it—one God, operating under con| ditions. One proof and test of this Theism consists in the fact that evil and decay do not carry purpose on the face of them, while organised adaptations do. If the reader grasps this fact he will see through my opponent’s curious attempt to turn my argument round and make it appear equally good for proving the existence of a malignant deity. He suggests such a being, “ laboring under conditions ” which prevent infinite evil from being effected at once, but “ working by various agencies to remove all good from his universe.” He does not seem to see that this implies a universe of “ good ” to begin with, and that this is another form of his irrational demand that the finished thing should exist before the crude and unwrought, the perfect v^ork before there has been time for its elabora­ tion. He wants his cake before it is baked, before the flour is kneaded, before the wheat is grown. LETTER IX. From Mr. J. Symes to Mr. G. St. Clair. Mr. St. Clair says he “ knows ” there must have been an “ architect of the human frame,” as he knows there must have been “ a designer of Cologne Cathedral.” Well, then, the human frame must be an architectural production, or building. Of what Order, of what Style is it ? I never saw it described in any book on Architecture : how is that ? So baseless is my opponent’s Theism that he confounds language in order to support it. If he will prove that man’s frame is an architectural structure, I will prove Cologne Cathedral to be a mushroom, of an edible sort, too. Mr. St. Clair having no case, no real god, no facts to support his superstition, cherishing a blind belief in an impossibility, resorts to the unconscious legerdemain of deceiving himself and his readers by the use of poetical and mythical language, in which the distinction between natural objects and human manufactures is ignored, and a potato is dubbed a building and a building designated a turnip. This is what the “Design argument” resolves itself into; and under its witchery, men, not otherwise unfair or �4 <8 ATHEISM OR THEISM? ^logical, run through fantastic mazes of bewilderment, vainly persuading themselves that they are reasoning, when they arc only floundering in “ Serbonian bogs,” following the Theistic will-o’-the-wisp, manifestly benighted and lost, and yet assuring you with the utmost gravity that they and they alone are perfectly self-possessed and well know their whereabouts, and whither they are tending. With Mr. St. Clair, teeth are yet a beautiful apparatus designed and intended for mastication. Has he never reflected that nutrition is totally independent of mastication and teeth in countless millions of beings ? The child lives without teeth, so does many an old man ; sheep and cows have no front teeth in the upper jaw; the whale, the dugong, the ornithorhynchus, ant-eaters, and all birds are destitute of teeth. If presence of teeth argues design, what does their absence argue ? If ^od gives a man teeth to eat with, I presume he means him to cease eating when he destroys them. Instead of that, my opponent and other irreverent and disobedient Theists, either misunderstanding or disregarding the divine intimation, rush away to the dentist and get other teeth wherewith to obstruct the divinf intentions ! Will he explain his conduct? Of course, I admit that nature can in some departments immensely exceed man, but that does not prove any exis­ tence ctbopc nature. The valves of the blood-vessels are manifestly placed there to secure the circulation of the blood, says my opponent. He might as well affirm that a river-bed is manifestly placed where it is to secure the flow of the river that way. Which existed first, rivers or river­ beds? Which existed first, valves or blood-circulation? There is in the animal world abundant circulation without valves or veins. The cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises, &c.) have no valves in their veins; and yet, I presume, their blood circulates as well as ours. Circulation goes on in a speck of protoplasm where there is no structure at all. Even in organisms, the heart may be very diverse, and yet serve the owner as well as we are served. In frogs, toads, &c., there is but one ventricle; in most fish there is but one auricle and one ventricle; in the lancelet there is but a single tube. But their blood circulates as well as ours. Had Mr. St. Clair’s deity felt any deep concern for human welfare, he would have placed, had it occurred to �ATHEISM OR THEISM ? 49 him, valves in the deep arteries, so that the poor wretcH who ruptures one of them should not bleed to death. I grew out of Paley, Brougham, and Bell’s theology years ago. What naturalist or physiologist to-day shows any respect to their crude Design argument ? Besides, Mr. St. Clair has no right to refer to them; his god is not theirs— theirs was almighty and infinitely wise; his a poor puny thing for whom his single high priest is ever making apologies. If every creature were adapted, !< admirably ” or not, “to the element in which it lives,” it wmuld never die. Geological strata furnish absolute proofs that no creatures, no race of creatures, were ever yet “ admirably adapted to their con­ ditions.” Whole races have died out. Will my opponent kindly explain ? Has he ever read of famines, coal-pit disasters, earthquakes? What sort of a world does he live in? Has he never passed a shambles or a cemetery ? Do the creatures of his marvellously concocted god die of excessive adaptation to their environments, or what ? The fish is of just the right shape—the solid of hast resistance fits it for its element. This looks learned and imposing. But are all inhabitants of the water of one shape? How is the solid of least resistance realized in the spermaceti whale, with its big, blunt, square-fronted head ? In the hammer-head? In the “ Portuguese man-of-war ? ” In those slow ones that fall a prey to the swift ? Mr. St. Clair reminds me of that venerable lady who could not sufficiently admi re the ■wisdom of god in making rivers run down hill and along the valleys. That, certainly, is a very strong proof of divine existence; for rivers would run the other way if there were no god, just as surely as fishes would be of divers shapes, instead of being all of one pattern as they now are, if there were not a god to make them all in his own image. The feathers of a bird’s wings are placed, I am informed, at the “ best possible angle for assisting progress,” etc. And cold is found in the best possible conditions for freezing the early buds and blossoms and for killing men and children exposed to it. Heat is well adapted to warming purposes. Had there been no god, heat would probably freeze things, and frost would roast, boil, or burn them. There is as much design in the one case as in the other. Mr. St. Clair may �50 ATHEISM OR THEISM? next tell us the design in the wings of a penguin, a moa, or an apteryx. The cabbage butterfly deposits its eggs by instinct, says my opponent. How does he know that sight or smell does not guide it ? Has he consulted the insect ? What is instinct ? And what right has Mr. St. Clair’s god to destroy my cabbages by the disgusting caterpillars which spring from those eggs ? Gardeners kill those caterpillars by myriads every year; but the real destroyer of our gardens is Mr. St. Clair’s god. Whose instinct or instigation leads the ichneumon to deposit its eggs right in the body of a caterpillar, so that its murderous brood should eat up their living host ? Whose instinct guides the tapeworm to a human body ? Whose instinct guides the locusts to lay waste a country and produce a famine ? My opponent says that butterflies and other objects men­ tioned in his second paragraph are “ samples of theisti®' facts.” So much the worse for deity and Theism, if true. I had supposed, however, that Mr. St. Clair knew the differ­ ence between Theology and Natural Science 1 Must I enlighten him ? The eye and the circulation of the blood are anatomical and physiological facts, not Theistic; birds and fishes are subjects in zoology, and insects belong to the sub-science of entomology. Cannibalism is as much, possibly more, a Theistic fact as any yet named. Though if my opponent will claim for his god the credit of creating all noxious and destructive pests, including fleas, bugs, tape­ worms, etc., I suppose an Atheist need not complain. What my opponent says of “ discerning an intelligence at work,” a “ worker .... whether infinite or not,” a “ purpose running through the ages,” etc., is no doubt borrowed from one of his discourses; and sure I am it edified all the devout who listened to it. But discussion is not a devotional exercise exactly, and I must beg him to translate those liturgical scraps into plain language, specially that about the “purpose running through the ages.” The language is good ; I wonder if the purpose is. I am in a fever-heat of anxiety to hear what it is my opponent discerns, whether anyone else may get a glimpse of it—at not too great a cost. The man that can “ discern a purpose running through the ages ” of human history must be either very much clearer sighted or immensely �ATHEISM OB THEISM ? 51 more superstitious than anyone that I know. Indeed, I must, till evidence be forthcoming, regard the boast as nothing more than a rhetorical flourish. Is Mr. St. Clair a clairvoyant, I wonder, or subject to second sight ? “Man,” we are gravely told, “did not come until the earth had been prepared for him.” Neither did the tapeworm, till man had been prepared for him. It is worthy of note, too, that pickpockets, forgers, swindlers, fortunetellers, inquisitors, aristocrats, and vermin generally “ did not come till the « earth had been prepared for them.” And, who would credit it ? there never was a chimney sweep till chimneys existed ! In that fact “ I discern ” a profound “ purpose ” of a two­ fold nature:—1st. Chimneys were intended and designed to be swept, and to this end divine Providence made coals black and sooty, else sweeps would never have had any work; 2nd. He made the sweeps in order to clear the flues of their foulness. Mr. St. Clair may close his eyes to these facts as long as he pleases ; they are Theistic facts—if any and are a most remarkable proof of design and intelligence. It was just as impossible for man to antedate his necessary epoch, or to postpone it, as for sweeps to precede chimneys. Man’s coming was the natural and inevitable Outcome or result of all the phænomena that preceded him io-flis own line of development. You have no better proof that water is a natural product than that man is such. He had nbJntelligent creator, nor was one required. Man is a natural, not supernatural, phænomenon. His so-called creator is Really his creation, a fancy, a bugbear, and nothing more. It is high time for Atheists, I think, to cease beating about the bush, and tell the Theist bluntly that his gods are figments neither useful nor ornamental, th® offspring of ignorance, fear, and slavery—to-day mere grim and curious survivals of the epochs when superstition was unchecked in its growth and sway. Mr. St. Clair at length takes refuge in inspiration and . infallibility. “ I am bold to say,” says he, “ that thousands of good people are conscious of communion with a higher soul, of inspirations received from him, and of tasks assigned by him.” Here my opponent chooses for his comrades the phrenzied prophets and priestesses of ancient superstitions ; the hysterical nuns who converse with Mary at Lourdes and where not; Johanna Southcott, Joseph Smith Edward �52 ATHEISM OR THEISM? Irving, Brigham Young, Mother Girling, et hoc genus omne, whose name is legion, whose “ inspirations ” and god­ given “ tasks ” have been “ thick as autumnal leaves in Vallombrosa,” and have included every absurdity and every crime known to history. What has god not “inspired?” What has he not imposed as a task? “I could a tale unfold,” but space forbids. Will my opponent name one syllable of truth or an original idea that either he or any other person ever derived from “inspiration” or in “communion” with this higher soul? Ah, me! This world is very wonderful. Socrat^ had a deemon, Prospero was served by Ariel, Faust had his Mephistopheles, and Mr. St. Clair has his “ higher soul,” spelt with initial capitals ! This higher soul of his—I may speak with some authority—is but himself, in dim, shadowy, and magnified outline, a very Brocken Spectre, projected on the soft clouds of his superstition. I once had the diswg^ badly, but recovered long since. Do not despair, good sir; the rising sun of common-sense and healthy Atheistic thought will soon fling his powerful beams on the very spot where your magnified and ghostly shadow now sits, and the mists which form the throne of your deity will rarify and vanish along with the occupant! But to claim inspiration is to claim infallibility. If you are sure you have communion with some one, to discuss the question of his existence, to ask if belief in it is rational, are highly improper—you have settled the matter by fact, and there is an end of it. There is no arguing with an inspired man ; nor should he himself attempt reason, it is unneces­ sary. An inspired man should merely dogmatise—as Mr. St. Clair does. He never argues, he merely states. I under­ stand him now; he is weak in logic, but invincible in faith. Men who hold communion with higher souls rarely argue well. The reason is obvious:—no man that can reason well and has a good case ever thinks of rushing into inspiration. Inspiration is the despair of logic; it is the refuge of those who are bankrupt of reason. Mr. St. Clair must no more grumble with the Pope and his infallibility ; he claims it too, and for exactly the same reasons. Had the Pope been able to prove his other claims, he would have had no excuse for claiming infallibility and “ communion with the higher souls.” Just so, if Mr. St. Clair had been �ATHEISM OR THEISM? 53 able to make out even a passable, lame, blind, and limping case in this discussion, we should have heard nothing about inspiration and “ consciousness ” of deity. Any devout worshipper can extort just as much real inspiration from old clouts and mouldy bones as my opponent derives from his god. Of course there is no arguing with this new Moses—he is up among the crags of Sinai contemplating his god, speaking to him face to face, reflecting on his feet, or viewing other “ parts ” of his splendid person. I hope he will publish his inspirations when he descends. I should not show any respect to Mr. St. Clair were I to notice some few sentences in his letter, one close to the end for example. No man not near his wit’s end could permit himself deliberately to publish that about gouging out eyes, &c. Lastly, Mr. St. Clair has written four out of his six betters, and yet no shadow of a Theistic fact. Assertions —-bold enough many of them—we have had in abundance, but no sound reasoning, no evidence of a divine existence yet. Is he reserving his arguments and facts for his last letter, and does he intend to overwhelm me then without leaving me the possibility of reply? I should like to know what his god is. Has he not yet made up his mind about him ? ____ Postscriptum.—I have now, Friday evening, seen the conclusion of Mr. St. Clair’s long letter. I understood we were to confine ourselves to two columns and a-half each letter; but here is one from my opponent of nearly five columns. If his logic were equal to the length of his epistles, I should soon be hors de combat, but the logic is in the inverse ratio of the cubes of the lengths, and so I have but little to do. The first sentence of his supplement seems very much like swearing. I do not “ damn eyes ” or “ curse teeth ; ” I point out their faults and thus damn their maker, if there be one. All I have done is to employ fair and honest criticism respecting the manufactures of this new deity manufactured by Mr. St. Clair. The really good things of Nature I no more ignore nor despise than my opponent; I merely show what sort of a god he has, if he has one. The excuses and apologies he makes for his most unfortunate deity sufficiently �54 ATHEISM OR THEISM? show that Mr. St. Clair feels what I say and cannot refute my criticisms. This is all I desire of him. He cannot deny my facts, nor can he successfully defend his poor god upon one single point, except by representing him as being weak to contempt. Why contend for such a god ? Considering how much Mr. St. Clair can write without saying anything to the point, how long are his letters, how weak his arguments, how many his words, how few his facts, and how pointless even those are which he produces, it seems to me that Hunter’s joke about the “ Jaw ” should have been reserved for his own behoof. I have nothing at all to do with the size of the jaw. If the deity made the jaw toe small for its purpose, my opponent will need to make another apology for him. I beg to ask : could Mr. St. Clair’s deity have made the jaw and teeth so that they could grow at an equal rate, or could he not? Could he have given every person a good set of teeth that would do their work without aching, or could he not ? Does he know when producing a set of teeth that they will begin to decay almost as soon as completed ? Does he intend them to do so ? Does he intend them to give pain, or not ? I ask the same about the eyes. Does this poor deity know when making a pair of blind eyes that they will never see? Does he intend them to see, or not? Mr. St. Clair will not answer these questions; his false position will not allow him. He would like a dentist who could give him an aching set of teeth! I have long suspected him of joking, now I am sure of it. If two of his new teeth pinched his gum, he would return to the dentist to have them rectified. It is only when Quixotically defending his poor god that he pretends to despise pain. It seems to me very heartless to speak of “ Venus and Mercury ” as he does when he must know that many people, children for example, who devote themselves to neither, suffer horrible pain both in connexion with teeth and eyes—ay, every organ of the body. Is human suffering a thing to be joked with? Evidently “ communion with that higher soul ” whom he supposes to have made this dreadful world, has produced its natural effects and rendered my opponent callous to the sufferings around him. Of course, it is only when the spirit of the lord is upon him and he rises in wrath to do battle for his deity that he feels no sympathy for human pain. It was �ATHEISM OR THEISM? i 1 5S converse with fancied deities that led to all the atrocit’js of the middle ages. Once believe in a god that inflicts pain, that makes people deformed, sickly, that afflicts them with all the horrible diseases that flesh is heir to, and you make , light of all pain but your own, out of sympathy for your god and in acquiescence with his supposed intentions. This, 1 I fear, is my opponent’s condition. During this discussion ' he has persevered in ignoring suffering, and has spoken of all evils as if they were flea-bites. It is, I am sure, his irrational Theism that makes him do so. The egg is descanted upon by my opponent. Well, did it never occur to him that, here, as in every other case he can mention, the creator, if such there be, must have made the necessity for his design and adaptation before meeting that necessity by contrivances? Young are produced in a great variety of ways. Was it necessary that eggs should be laid and then brooded over for weeks by the bird ? If so, whence came that necessity? And does the deity know whe# he is so carefully constructing an egg that it will never be laid ? that fowl and egg will both die and rot together? Or does he know that Mr. St. Clair will eat g it for breakfast ? What a silly deity to manufacture such countless millions of eggs, eggs of fishes, and eggs of fowls, for the purpose of developing them into animals, when he knows all the while that only a very few of them can possibly reach their destination ! If he does not know their destiny, he must be equally contemptible. Mr. St. Clair tries to establish a distinction between a mere fitness to produce a result, and purposive fitness which intends to secure the result. This is a bold flight. He won’t be “ pinned to definitions,” but he will assume ability to distinguish between accidents and purposed events in Nature. I presume his “ communion with the higher soul ” must have been exceedingly close to authorise him to speak thus. Is he the grand vizier of his deity, or who ? Does he suppose his god would overdo his adaptation? The destructive forces and processes of nature are just as much organised and arranged for the set purpose of destroy­ ing as anything that can be named. To the point: Does Mr. St. Clair argue or hold that all pain is accidental? That death is not intended, not designed ? Will he venture to give a direct answer to these questions ? Are the teeth �56 ATHEISM OR THEISM? of cats, tigers, lions, etc., less evidently adapted to their work of killing than the egg for its supposed intention ? Is an earthquake less adapted to the destruction of life than warmth and eggs are to produce or extend it ? Is a famine less adapted to destroy than a harvest to sustain ? Is the Spring more fit to produce blossoms than the frost is to nip them ? No; a malignant deity would not at once destroy every­ thing, for two reasons : 1st. He might be too weak, as Mr. St. Clair’s is ; 2nd. He would lose most of his horrible pleasure. Malignancy would do just what my opponent’s god is doing, raise up generation after generation, as long as he is able, for the gratification of torturing and destroying them. No . doubt, if Theism be at all rational, Dualism is the only ' logical form it can take. I am neither Monotheist nor Duotheist: the whole belief appears to me so irrational and absurd that I cannot think that civilised men of to-day would be swayed by it, were their minds not perverted in that direction in early life. Indeed, it vastly surprises me to find a partial sceptic, like my opponent, resuscitating the Design Argument, which the “ Bridgewater Treatises ” so long ago elaborated to death. I wish he would say a word or two on the tape­ worm, the trichina, and other pests. It is so delightfully amusing to me to hear a Theist expatiating on the goodness of deity as displayed in the evils of life 1 “Evil and decay do not carry purpose on the face of them, while organised adaptations do.” Indeed 1 What would become of all new organisms if the old were not cleared off by decay and death? Beasts, birds, and fishes of prey, are not then organised to destroy ? The wings of the hawk, the legs of the tiger, the shape and tail of the dolphin were not organised to enable them to destroy their prey ? The smut, a fungus that destroys wheat, the dry rot, barnacles that eat ships to destruction, locusts, caterpillars, phylloxera, the empusa muscoo, a fungus that kills flies, the botrytis bassiana, a fungus which attacks the silkworms, and reduced the annual production of cocoons in France between the years 1853 and 1865 from 65,000,000 to 10,000,000; thepotato disease, which caused such suffering and misery in Ireland—these fungi are not organised, Mr. St. Clair, by im­ plication, affirms! What will not Theism lead a man to say? �ATHEISM OR THEISM? 57 He quotes Professor Owen—Does he not know that Owen and other great Naturalists can tell by the examination of a tooth whether an unknown animal was a carnivore or a vegetarian, etc. ? Were the teeth, muscles, viscera, etc., of a carnivore “purposively” adapted for killing, tearing, , and digesting other animals, or not ? Yes, or no ? pray. !■ My opponent must try again—I wish to encourage him. He has not yet laid the first stone of rational Theism. No Theistic fact has he given us yet, no argument or criticism of mine has he upset so far. I don’t blame him. He has undertaken an impossible work. All material, all force, all arrangements (except those of art), all causes, all effects, all processes, are natural; the supernatural is but a dream. LETTER X. From Mr. G-. St. Clair to Mr. J. Symes. Mr. Symes, in his postscript, again tilts at somebody who believes in the supernatural. When I spoke of conscious jbommunion with a Higher Soul, and inspirations received from Him, I knew 1 was saying something the seeming refutation of- which was easy; sol prefaced it with—“I am bold to say.” No doubt all sorts of fanatics have claimed inspiration. But I do not contend for the divine­ ness of phrensies, nor argue for the special inspiration of the Hebrew prophets. I hold reasonably that all new light of knowledge and all new impulse to duty is inspiration. Tracing effects back to causes, I come at last to One Divine Fount. To Him I ascribe all life, all faculty in man, all insight into truth, and all the development, improvement and refine­ ment which are synonymous with progressive civilisation. So, when I am requested to name one syllable of truth or a single original idea derived from inspiration, I name all, for there is not one which has had any othei’ ultimate source. I may be referred to secondary or proximate sources, but that would be like referring me to the printer’s types and the compositor’s muscular exertions as an explanation of Tennyson’s poem on “ Despair ” in the November number of the Nineteenth Century. I am told that the Higher Soul of which I speak is but myself projected in magnified form �58 ATHEISM OR THEISM? on a cloud, and there is just that modicum of truth in as­ sertions of this sort which serves to lead some persons into Atheism. Mr. Symes need not address me as though I were ignorant of all that has been urged in the way of proving that “ man makes God in his own image.” I believe man has often done so, and I employ myself sometimes in destroy­ ing such images. But just as there is true astronomy, notwithstanding early and still-lingering superstitions of astrology, so there is a true theology. I have shown that there are evidences of purpose in nature—proofs of a Mind at work—and there is a mind in man which reads and understands the realised thoughts in nature and the designs in progress. Hence it is true to say there is a God, and that man, intellectually, is made after his likeness. The closing paragraph of the postscript shows again how Mr. Symes mistakes the issue. He says: “ All material, all force, all arrangements (except those of art), all causes, all effects, all processes, are natural; the supernatural is but a dream.” Is this supposed to be good against me? I might almost claim it as my own. My opponent denies the dis­ tinction between the natural and the supernatural. So do I, unless you define “ supernatural” to be the action of mind, whether human or divine. He maintains a distinction be­ tween the natural and the artificial. So do I. I perceive for myself, and I point out to him, that all “ arrangements ” made by man, and therefore called artificial, are effected by the use of “ material ” and “ forces ” and “ causes ” ; so that to judge whether they be artificial or not we have to look for evidences of mind, purpose, design. Then I point out that, judged in this way, the human eye is an artificial production ; yet not a production of man’s art, and therefore must be the work of some other Artificer. For similar reasons, I am forced to the same conclusion regarding many other things, and in a general way regarding the evolution of the human race and the progress of the world, “ I see in part That all, as in some piece of art, Is toil co-operant to an end.” I don’t call these works supernatural; but seeing that they are superhuman I reckon them as divine art. But Mr. Symes, because it is po-sible to distinguish between divine art and human, denies all resemblance; as though that �ATHEISM OR THEISM? 59 followed ! In his first paragraph, flippant and foolish, be­ cause he does not find the human frame classed with orders of architecture, he objects to my saying it has been built up. He ought to have read a little book called “ The House I live in”—a work on the human body. But he would like, if he could, to laugh my legitimate analogies out of court. Paley, Brougham, and Bell—my God is not theirs. If he means that my theology is not quite the same as theirs, I assent, for I take into account Evolution, which they, in their day, could not do. The arguments of Paley only want restating in terms of the Evolution theory. The machinery, and arrangements, and adaptations which Paley ascribed to the Creator, some Atheists now ascribe to Evo­ lution, as though Evolution were an intelligent creative entity. Mr. Symes has been slow in launching this boomerang, probably being little familiar with it, or know­ ing it to be ineffective against Theism as I defend Theism ; but now, for lack of better missiles he hurls it, though timidly, as one who fears it will come back upon himself. He disputes my argument that the valves in the blood vessels are intended to secure the circulation of the blood, OD the ground that a river makes its own channel. A few zoological facts are adduced to support the inference, I imagine, that the blood has constructed the blood-vessels and given them a gradually increasing complication as we advance from protoplasm through animals of low organisa­ tion, up to man. This is an argument from Evolution. So there is a gradual advance, is there? with increasing Complication in the apparatus, and with the noble frame of man as the result, and yet no design in any of it! Topsy ’spects it comes of itself! natural causes account for it! Topsy does not comprehend that in divine art, as well as in human, what is designed by the mind has to be accom­ plished by the aid of ‘‘natural” instruments. All that the eye can see is the instrument and the process; for the existence of the originating mind has to be mentally inferred, the guiding and governing spirit is only spiritually discerned. Alphonso suggests an improvement in the circulating apparatus ; he would “ place valves in the deep arteries, so that the poor wretch who ruptures one of them should not �60 ATHEISM OK THEISM? bleed to death.” It seems that valves in the blood-vessels' might be placed there for a purpose if Alphonso were taken into counsel! Now there are valves in the arteries, which allow the blood to flow out from the heart, through the system, and prevent its regurgitating. If this is the very thing which Alphonso considers a wise arrangement, why does he object to it when I call it wise? Or would he make them to open the reverse way ? Then certainly the heart’s blood would not pour through an accidental rupture, but neither would it flow through the system at all, and there­ fore we could not live. The arrangement suggested for the arteries is that which does prevail in the veins; and there­ fore there is much less danger from a ruptured vein than from a ruptured artery. But how could you have circula­ tion, if both sets of valves were adapted for sending blood to the heart, and neither set would allow it to come away ? Alphonso here shows himself very wise indeed. He is again asking for contradictory arrangements; he again fails to see that the Creator is working under conditions. Mr. Symes, who has not a syllable to say in the way of proving his Atheism to be rational, can only find material for his letters by drawing out his opponent—“ Could God make jaws and teeth in a certain way?” .“What isinstinct?” “Will I make plainer the purpose running through the ages ? ” etc. Though aware of the trick, I will say as much as my space allows, about Evolution. Briefly,. Evolution explains the introduction of new species on to this planet, in the following way. Taking some alreadyexisting species, the offspring inherit the parental likeness with variations ; afterwards, in their individual life, they may undergo modifications, which in turn they transmit to their offspring. The particular varieties best suited to external conditions, survive, and leave offspring equally well suited, or even better suited. Variation upon variation, in successive generations, causes the difference from the original to become great, and the creatures are then classed as a distinct species. In this way one species is born from another, as truly as an individual is born of its parents. This inheritance with modifications, is creation by birth. If external conditions change, the modification takes a direction which adapts the creature to them. If the crea­ ture changes its habits, or migrates and comes under new �ATHEISM OR THEISM? 61 conditions, the modification takes the form of increased growth in the organs and parts now especially called into use, and diminished growth of the parts disused. It is no poser for Mr. Symes to ask me the design of the wings of the penguin, the moa and the apteryx: their wingshave become reduced to remnants too small to fly with, because they changed their habits, because they found a paradise and preferred not to fly away from it. The wings of their progenitors served their purpose well; inheritance repro­ duced them as long as they were wanted; and when new conditions or changed habits demanded the greater growth of other organs, the forces of development were turned in that direction. Could any self-acting arrangement be more beautiful ? This is creation from age to age. This is part of the method by which the purpose of the ages is being elected. I am not contending for the supernatural instan­ taneous creation of elephants with tusks full grown, but for creation by natural means ; and here we see it going on. Does Mr. Symes know anything at all about Evolution ? Has he even read Darwin and Herbert Spencer? His notion of creation seems to exclude evolution, and his notion of evolution to exclude creation : but there are two things he cannot do.: (1) explain any possible process of creation without evolution, (2) explain how Evolution got itself into geai’ without a Creator—I mean into such gear as we find, when its machinery produces organised creatures of higher and higher sort, culminating in man ; yes, in man, with his marvellous frame and flesh, blood and brain, reason and conscience, heart and hopes. God created man; that is to say, the human race has been born in fulfilment of the divine purpose. The i idividual, tracing his parentage backwards, must pass beyond “Adam” to some creature who was the common progenitor of men and apes. Of course, man could no more antedate his necessary epoch and come before his time than sweeps could precede chimneys, to' use Mr. Symes’s sooty illustration. I will grant Mr. Symes that; I will grant him that man could not be born before his parents. With equal readiness I assent to the proposition that, just as with the individual infant, the human race was the necessary result of the phenomena which preceded it in its own line of development. That is to say, man is a product of natural �62 ATHEISM OR THEISM? causes, “ a natural and not a supernatural phenomenon.” But if this is supposed to exclude a creative Mind, which designed and fashioned man, I need only ask whether the statue of Priestley, in Mr. Symes’s town of Birmingham, is not at once the production of the sculptor’s design and the inevitable result of particular movements of chisels upon a /'■ block of marble. There is no human production except by the agency of natural causes ; there are no marks of inten­ tion stamped upon such productions without a mind to give 5 them origin and authorship. Mr. Symes, because I twitted him for crying so much about his toothache, wrongfully represents me as being callous to human sufferings. I think, if he had studied Evolution, he would hardly speak of “ a God that inflicts pain .... and afflicts people with all the horrible diseases that flesh is heir to.” He wishes to know, “ Do I hold that all pain is accidental ? and will I venture to give a direct answer ? ” Of course I will. As I understand this discus­ sion, Mr. Symes does hold that all pain is accidental. Topsy ’spects that all pain comes of its own self. I, for my part, have no hesitation in saying that the capacity to suffer pain is deliberately designed, is manifestly for the gcod of the individual, and a necessary factor in the evolution of the higher animals. It may seem a paradox to say that pain, when it occurs, is a good thing, and yet that it should be removed as quickly as possible. Nevertheless I say it, and can show it to be true. If you rest your hand on a heated iron plate, it will disorganise the flesh. That is un­ desirable, because it deprives you of a handy servant. The pain which tells you that you are running this risk is no evil, but a sentinel’s warning, a red-light danger signal, a telegraphic intimation to use caution. We should be badly off without the capacity for pain, while we should be want­ ing in sense not to try and get rid of it by removing its cause. Returning to “ the purpose runuing through the , ages,” it will be found that the animals with the most highly developed nervous system and greatest capacity for pain have become the higher animals in other respects, and are classed high by the naturalist. Sensibility to pain has saved theii’ progenitors from many dangers, has given them an advantage in the “ struggle for existence,” and has promoted their upward evolution in proportion to its acuteness. �ATHEISM OR THEISM? 63 Mr. Symes, who, two or three letters back, thought life not worth living, has a great objection to death. I thought so, because when I showed that he ought logically to commit suicide it was not agreeable to him. When he passes a cemetery, or reflects that whole races of creatures have died out, he is much concerned, and marvels that I can retain my Theism. As with pain, so with death, he demands to know, “ Do I hold that death is not intended or designed ? ” and how about beasts of prey—“Yes or no, pray ”? This peremptory attitude, when used on a platform, might cow a timid man, and at all events helps to produce an impression that he is shirking a difficulty. To shirk difficulties is not my custom. But when Mr. Symes adduces the earthquake as apparently designed to destroy men, I cannot accept the instance, because I cannot see that earthquakes are pur­ posely adapted to rock down cities. Having some idea of geological facts, I believe that earthquakes were before cities in the order of time, and men in their ignorance have built their cities on the earthquake lines. But the tiger’s claws and fangs I accept as being plainly designed to fit the animal for catching and tearing prey. I have before asserted-—and my opponent cannot disprove it—that every organ is for the good of its possessor. If any exceptions can be brought forward, I will show that they literally prove the rule. The tiger’s organs are for the tiger’s advantage ; so far there is design, and even beneficence. It is equally true, of course, that the tiger’s claws are a dis­ advantage to the tiger’s prey—to the individuals which fall victims. This has been a great difficulty to the minds of many good people who have not ransacked nature to find atheistic arguments. I have only space to say that the weeding-out of inferior and ill-adapted animals, with the survival of the fittest, who leave offspring “fit” as them­ selves, is a necessary part of the machinery for the evolu­ tion of the higher animals. Without this arrangement there never would have been a race of mankind. It ill becomes us to quarrel with the process which gave us birth. The death of those weak individuals is for the good of the species, and the entire arrangement adds to the sum of animal enjoyment. Death, in the form in which it comes to the lower animals, is generally unexpected and seldom painful; death, as it comes to man, is no evil if it be the �64 ATHEISM OR THEISM? portal to higher life. But Atheists, of course, are without hope. The moral difficulties of the “ struggle for life ” are dealt with in a volume which may be seen in the British Museum and in the Birmingham Free Library—a volume called “ Darwinism and Design,” written by George St. Clair. LETTER XI. From Mr. J. Symes to Mr. G. St. Clair. Mr. St. Clair entered upon this discussion with the ostensible object of showing that Theism is rational and more rational than Atheism. But either he has never seriously engaged in the work or else has wofully failed in spite of honest and earnest effort. • What a iheos, deus, or god is has yet to be learned—my opponent has no settled opinions upon the subject. If he has, why does he not straightforwardly state the proposition he intends to main­ tain, and then allege only such facts and employ only such reasoning as may tend to establish his theory ? His Theism has evidently never been thought out ; he has adopted it as he adopted the fashion of his coat, and has never investigated the one or the other critically. If he has investigated his Theism and really does understand its nature, ramifications, and bearings, he most scrupulously keeps it all secret, as Herodotus did much of what he was told about the gods in Egypt—the most secret mysteries he refused, from the most pious motives, to reveal. This is to be regretted, especially as my opponent has so much to reveal, if he could be induced to do it, being imbued with plenary inspiration. Though, like most modest men, now that I ask him to let us know what his god has told him, I find his bashfulness so overpowers him that he cannot summon up sufficient courage to give the world a single syllable of what he heard or saw on Horeb or in the third heaven. It is a pity the deity did not select a more appro­ priate prophet ; but the ways of divine providence are notoriously odd, capricious, uncertain, contradictory, and insane. Mr. St. Clair asks if I know anything of evolution. No �ATHEISM OR THEISM ? 65 doubt that is intended to be a tit for some tat of mine, I may say that I understand Darwin and the resMf the evolutionists sufficiently to know that evolution is purely Atheistic, that nature is all-sufficient for all her operations; that no god is wanted, needed, or desirable for ‘ any of her processes. I am obliged to Mr. St. Clair for calling attention to his own book on the subject, though fir the purposes of this discussion it was unnecessary ; and, if Mr. St. Clair does not understand Darwin far better than he does his poor deity, the book cannot be worth reading. A man who can write five long letters on Theism without naming one Theistic fact, or attempting a logical or rational argument in support of his position—five letters full of irrelevancies, side-issues, platitudes, uncertainties apologies for deity, misrepresentation of natural facts, pompous boasts of divine inspiration, and ability to “ discern the purpose” of god “running through the ages,” and the dis­ tinction between accidents and “purposive” events in nature—whatever knowledge such a man may have, his temper and disposition, his total want of ballast and critical acumen must unfit him entirely for writing a work on -evolution or any other philosophical subject. If nature operates her own changes, evolution is a beautiful theory ; but admit a god who works by means of evolution, and the whole aspect of the subject is changed; evolution becomes the most perfect system of red-tapism that can be conceived. If evolution results in good, all that good was as much needed millions of years back as now; but red-tape decided that whole generations must perish, that evils and abuses could not be removed, except by an interminable and bewildering and murderous process, complex beyond expression or thought—whereas an honest ■ and able god would have done the work out of hand and i shown as much respect for the first of his children as for later ones. But Mr. St. Clair’s murders generation after J generation of his family for the sake of working out some change, the evolution of a new organ, the gradual atrophy or decay of old ones, the rise of a new species or the destruction of aboriginal races. I shall not further follow up Mr. St. Clair’s remarks. They are not to the point, even approximately. He con­ founds language and mingles art and nature, and thus �66 ATHEISM OR THEISM? bewilders his unwary reader instead of informing him. Long since I should have ignored what my opponent says, only my action would have been misunderstood. To prove Theism rational one must prove that there is a god. This has not been done. Then you must connect god and nature. This has not been done; in fact, Mr. St. Clair is reduced to the necessity of admitting that his god is weak and even a part of nature—a big, stupid giant, most probably living in that region to which the celebrated Jack climbed up by a bean-stalk. Here follow some positive evidences that there is no god existing, except the mere idols and fictions of worshippers, etc.— 1. No trace of one has been observed, no footstep, copro­ lite, or what not. The only life of which mankind has any knowledge is animal life and vegetable life; and it is in­ conceivable that there should be any other. 2. The world was never made, nor any natural product in it ; and therefore a maker is impossible. 3. The universe, so far as it is known, is not conducted or governed, nor is any department of it, except those de­ partments under the influence of living beings. Nature’s processes consist in the interaction, attraction, repulsion, union and disunion of its parts and forces, and of nothing else. 4. All known substances and materials have definite and unalterable quantities and attributes or qualities. Their only changes are approximation, recession, combination, and disunion; and all the phenomena of nature are the sole re­ sults of these, one class of phenomena being no more accidental or designed than another. Design is nowhere found beyond the regions of animal action, and animal action is nothing more nor anything less than the outcome or the result, however complex, of the total forces and materials which alternately combine and segregate in all animals. An animal is what he is by virtue of his ante­ cedents, his physical combinations and disunions, and his environments. All known facts lead logically to the above conclusions, and it is naught but superstition or irrational belief that assumes or predicates the contrary. Nor is any honest result ever gained by assuming the existence of a god: it explains �ATHEISM OR THEISM ? 67 nothing, it leads to nothing but confusion. More than that, it is an attempt to explain nature’s mystery by creating a still ^eater mystery, which is unphilosophical. Further still, it is an attempt to expound nature by (1) that which is not nature, or (2) by a natural phenomenon or set of phenomena; for your god must be either natural, super1 natural, or artificial. Mr. St. Clair’s is not supernatural, but natural. Very well; if it be natural, as he says, it is an unknown phenomenon, or substance, or force ; and there­ fore cannot be utilised in any way by reason. A false philosophy or imposture may appeal to the unknown to explain difficulties ; the whole round of religion consists of nothing else than examples of it. But true philosophy never attempts to explain the known by the unknown. 5. Mr. St. Clair believes in evolution, and yet holds the dogma of a former creation. That is to play fast and loose with reason; for why do you ascribe any power to physical causes, if you refuse to regard them as sufficiently power­ ful to originate, as well as to develope the phsenomena of Nature ? Mr. St. Clair ascribes all the evils of life to second causes, all its goods to deity. That is good Theology, but the worst Philosophy. If life is physically sustained, developed, and modified, it must be physically originated. The only logical conclusion to be drawn from Theistic pre­ misses is that each event, each phenomenon, each change is the work of a separate god, or fairy, or devil—beings of whom nothing is known beyond the fact that everyone of them was created by man for the express purpose of creating and governing the world or parts of it. But the philosopher will never think of using them in any way till their real existence and action have been placed beyond a doubt. 6. If the world was really made, it was not intelligently made,, for it is chiefly a scene of confusion, strife, folly, insanity, madness, brutality, and death. No intelligent creator could endure the sight of it after making it:—be would put his foot on it and crush it, or else commit suicide in disgust. In geology the world is but a heap of ruins ; in astronomy an unfortunate planet, so placed as regards the sun that one part roasts while another freezes. 7. Men talk of the wisdom and goodness seen in God’s creation ! He made man, and left him naked and houseless, ignorant of nearly all he needed to know, a mere brute. He �68 ATHEISM OR THEISM? showed neither goodness nor wisdom here. It is only by a painful process “ running through the ages,” a prqgtes of blood, murder, starvation, and the death of millions %pon millions that our civilisation has been achieved; and what is it even now ? A civilisation of fraud, brutality slightly veiled, hypocrisy wholesale, superstitions the most costly and profound, a civilisation that houses the dead better than the living, that pauperises survivors to bestow costly tombs upon the dead, that builds splendid temples for gods and priests to sport in, and leaves men and women to rot physi­ cally, mentally and morally, in dens ! 8. But this god never interferes for human good. This governor of men never governs. He might prevent all crime ; he prevents none. What is the use of a god who could not or would not prevent the murder of Lincoln, Gar­ field, and thousands of others ? If he could, and was by, he is an accessory or worse ; if he couldn’t, he has in man a creature he cannot control, and is therefore contemptible. 9. I am aware that some Theists urge that god could not interfere, as I suggest, without violating man’s free-agency. Whether Mr. St. Clair holds that opinion I cannot just now say; but all along I have aimed at a much wider Theism than that of Mr. St. Clair, and shall therefore make a remark or two on this subject. (1.) All government interferes with free-agency. And no one complains that a government should try to prevent crime. Indeed, that is one of its main functions. And a government that does not, to its utmost knowledge and power, prevent crime, is a bad government. Well, the socalled divine government prevents none ; what is its use? Not to prevent crime is to encourage its commission. This the divine government does. (2) The free-agency plea is silly. Every murderer, every tyrant destroys the free-agency of his victim. Does god respect the free-agency of the victim less than that of the villain ? Does he scrupulously refrain from checking the latter while he inflicts wrong and death upon the former ? Human laws are professedly (many of them really) framed to protect the innocent and weak, and to restrain the strong and vicious; divine laws must have a contrary intention, if the free-agency plea is correct. Finally. I am well aware that my style of treating thia �ATHEISM OR THEISM? 69 subject must be very offensive to some. But I make no apoloev for it. I adopt it deliberately and of set purpose. I regard Theism as immensely stupid, so much so that serious argument is wasted upon it, just as it would be waste labor to try to disprove transubstantiation or to show that Laputa could not fly as Gulliver describes. Uncompromising ridicule seems to me the best weapon wherewith to attack this miserable fetishism of my opponent. I have used it unsparingly and heartily, and hope my opponent has enjoyed the discussion as much as I have. I close without a spark of ill-will towards Mr. St. Clair, and beg to express the opinion that his failure is not due to any intellectual defect in him, but to the utterly im­ possible proposition he undertook to defend. It is no disgrace to fail where success is impossible. Nor do I claim any credit to myself—Atheism is so easy to defend that I must have been totally excuseless to have failed in it. LETTER XII. Fi‘‘om Mr. G. St. Clair to Mr. J. Symes. Mr. Symes goes off the platform with a laugh, and tells the audience he has won a victory ; but he must be conscious all the time that he has not dislodged his antagonist from his entrenchments. I have been disappointed in my op­ ponent. His first letter confirmed the assurance which he had given to me privately—that this discusssion should be “ definite, earnest, real ”—but his last contains the con­ fession that he has deliberately adopted an offensive style and dealt in uncompromising ridicule, because he considers that serious argument would be wasted upon so stupid a subject as Theism. All through this discussion I have only used half the notes made on a first reading of Mr. Symes’s letters, and now, in order to find room for a general summing up, I must withhold the detailed reply which I could give to his last. It is annoying to have to leave so many fallacies unanswered ; but I think I have replied to most statements which could claim to be arguments, as far as my space allowed. �70 ATHEISM OR THEISM? Mr. Symes opened the discussion, and ought to have advanced some reasons for considering Atheism rational; but he confessed at once that he had nothing positive to urge in favor of his negative, but should confine himself to picking holes in Theistic arguments. His letters have abounded with peremptory questions, and every answer I have given has afforded material to tear to pieces or snarl at. My opponent began by asking eight questions, six of which involved a discussion of the infinite, the infinite being easy to juggle with. The definition of God which he pre­ ferred was the vulgar definition, which involves a contradic­ tion, and would therefore have given him an opportunity of dialectical victory. He wished me to say that God is a Being infinite in power and infinite in goodness, and he wanted the former part of this definition to mean that the power of Deity is adequate to accomplish things which are in their very nature impossible. Then he would have argued that infinite goodness would desire to free the world at once from all evil, pain and inconvenience; that infinite power could accomplish this ; but that it is not done, and there­ fore no God exists. I refused to define Deity in the way dictated to me, but it was all the same to my opponent— his arguments were only good against the vulgar definition, and so he attacked that. He set forth at large that there was a good deal of pain and trouble in the world, which, to his mind, must be inconsistent with the existence of an infinite God. Of course, it is not really so unless, besides possessing infinite goodness of nature, the Creator possesses unlimited power, and that in a mathematical sense. Now, I have shown that the Creator cannot possess unlimited power in this sense, and therefore my opponent’s objection to God’s existence on the ground that “ evils ” exist is not conclusive. The analogy of human labor employed in building a cathedral shows us that a fine pile may be completed in the course of time. It leads us to compare past phases of the world with the present, that we may discover the movement and tendency of things, for “We doubt not, through the ages one increasing purpose runs.” We go as deep down into the past as Evolution will enable us to do, and, beginning at the lowliest forms of life, we find a gradually ascending series. At length we come to �ATHEISM OR THEISM? 71 man, who, even as a savage, is superior to all that went be£a^. But the savage, as Gerald Massey says in his “TSe of Eternity,” is only the rough-cast clay model of the perfect statue. The savage advances into the condition of a barbarian, and the barbarian, in time, becomes civilised. But God has not yet finished the work of creating man into his own image. It is astonishing that any student of Evolu­ tion, possessing two eyes, should go to the quarry and fetch out fossils for the purpose of showing that creatures have suffered and died, and should fail to get any glimpse of “ a purpose running through the ages.” But this is the case with my opponent, to whose eye Evolution “ is purely atheistic.” He also fails to see that, on this rational view of creation, evils may be only temporary ; nay, more, that they are certainly diminishing, and tend to vanish altogether. I have invited my opponent three times over to find any flaw in the reasoning of Herbert Spencer, where he main­ tains that evil is evanescent; but it would have suited him better if he could have quoted Spencer in a contrary sense. The Creator’s power is exerted under conditions and limitations arising out of the mathematical relations of space “and time. It is, therefore, not “ in fining’ in the vulgar sense. The vulgar definition of God wants mending; and this is about all that Mr. Symes has been able to show. As I, for my part, never put forth the vulgar definition, he ought not to have given us a panorama of the evils of the world, much less have made it revolve ad nauseam. The rational Theism which I hold is not overturned by the temporary occurrence of evil. But, when Mr. Symes found this out, he took to ridiculing my God as a being who is less than infinite in the vulgar sense, and professed to find the orthodox God immensely superior. Besides exposing the fallacy of the chief objections brought against the existence of a Divine Being, I have advanced positive proofs, from the marks of design in his works. I lay stress on the fact that organs such as the eye, and organisms such as the body, are instruments and machines comparable to those designed and made by man, and which never come into existence except when contrived by intelligence. We never see the human mind going through the process of designing. We never see the mind at all. We have to look for marks of design in the work. �72 ATHEISM OR THEISM? It is the same with regard to the Divine Spirit. Objection is made to Design, on the ground that Evolution explains all things without a Creator; but I have shown that this is not the case. Mr. Symes has hunted up all the blind eyes he can find, and the perverted instincts, which do not effect their asserted purpose, and is daring enough to say that eyes are not made to see with. The difficulty is fully explained by what I have said of the analogy between divine and human work, performed under conditions, and with concomitants of evil. I have challenged our clever Alphonso to show us a pair of those superior eyes which he says he could make, but he does not do so. He had only made an empty boast. Connected with Design is Adaptation. Mr. ¡Etames is irrational enough to say that if anything is designed all things are designed, and if Adaptation is seen in anything it is seen iu all things. He sees it as much in the accidental smashing of an egg as in the wonderful formation of the egg to be the ark of safety for an embryo chick. This astounding nonsense is forced upon him by his Atheism, and must be charged to the irrational theory rather than to the man4 But in seeking to bolster it up, Mr. Symes made use of one argument which might seem to possess force un­ less I exposed its weakness, and I had no space to do that in reply to his fourth letter. He said that if there be design anywhere it must be in the elements of matter especially, where I do not seem to see it, as I bring forward organised structures, living things. He says all matter is probably alive—“ probably ! ” An instance of modesty in Mr. Symes, though immediately afterwards he becomes positive again, and says “ I affirm.” He affirms something about invisible atoms, namely, that there is adaptation between the atoms, and “ an equilibrium stable, perfect, time-defying,” far superior to the unstable adaptation of living creatures to their surroundings. My reply must be brief. An atom is that which has no parts. It cannot therefore have any organs, nor be an organism, nor possess life. Out of atoms, as out of bricks, larger things are built up, and in some of them I discern a certain architecture which speaks of Design. Whether the bricks themselves are a manufactured article does not affect my conclusion. The “ adaptation between the atoms ” which Mr. Symes discerns and affirms cannot be �ATHEISM OR THEISM ? 73 ’ in their interiors, for they are without parts. If he means an adaptation of atom to atom, as in the chemistry of water, I ne«d not deny it, though two or three bricks in combina­ tion don’t impress me like the cathedral of the human body; and as to the “ perfect, time-defying equilibrium ” of the atoms of oxygen and hydrogen which form water, electricity will unsettle it at once. Has Mr. Symes proved Atheism to be rational? He began by declaring that “ Atheism requires no direct evi­ dence,” which I must interpret to mean it has none to offer. What he now pretends to offer in his last comes late, and is not good. Has he disproved the rationality of Theism ? No, not as I present Theism to him. He said, very early, that he “ must decline to narrow the ground ” to Theism as I preset it, and, accordingly, what he has chiefly attacked has be$n the vulgar definition of Theism. Now the dictionary definition may go as far as I am concerned, but God remains. If there are some difficulties on the theory of Theism, they are only increased when we fly to Atheism. Atheism accounts for nothing. Pain and misery, which are so much complained of, are just as much facts whether there be a God or no. Atheism does nothing to explain them, to release us from them, to help us to bear them. An en­ lightened Theism shows that sensibility to pain is a gracious provision, warning us in time to escape greater evils and contributing to our upward evolution. Evil is accounted for as “ good in the making” or the necessary accompani­ ment of greater good, or the temporary inconvenience lying in the path to some glorious goal. Whatever is, is the best possible at the present stage, if only all the relations of things were known to us. Death enters into the great scheme, for, by the removal of the aged, room is made for younger life, and the total amount of enjoyment is increased. At the same time, this is no hardship to those who pass away, for the life of the individual soul is continued here­ after and carried higher. This belief brightens the whole of life and gives a very different aspect to pain and trouble and death, which might fairly cause perplexity if death were the final end. The one advantage I derive from Mr. Symes’s letters is that they seem to show me how men become Atheists. There are certain questions which cannot be answered, and �74 ATHEISM OK THEISM? they are always asking those questions. There are certain difficulties of belief, and these they cherish in preference to the stronger reasons for faith and hope. There is sunshine and shadow in the world, and they prefer to dwell in the gloom. They search out all the crudities and failures, stinks and sores, diseases and evils which the world affords, or ever has afforded, and look at them through a magnifying glass. Impressed with the magnitude of the loathsome heap, and oblivious of everything else in creation, they presume to think they could have advised something better if the Creator had only consulted them. Had there been a wise Creator he surely would have done so 1 Henceforth they shriek out that there is no God; and nevertheless, illogical as they always are, they whimper at pain instead of bearing it, and complain of evils as though therewere some God who was inflicting them. They complain that life is not worth living, and yet speak of death as though it were maliciously desigued and the greatest evil of all. They have got into a world which is “ a fatherless Hell, “ all massacre, murder and wrong,” and ought logically to commit suicide, like the couple of Secularists in Mr. Tennyson’s “ Despair!’ But, alas ! not even death will land them in any better place. 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The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Is atheism or theism more rational? A discussion between Mr. Joseph Symes and Mr. George St. Clair Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Symes, Joseph [1841-1906] Saint Clair, George Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 74 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher's list, dated January 1882, on pages at the end numbered [1]-8 and 17-22, i.e. p.9-16 are missing. Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Freethought Publishing Company Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1882 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RA1777 N631 Subject The topic of the resource Atheism Theism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Is atheism or theism more rational? A discussion between Mr. Joseph Symes and Mr. George St. Clair), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Atheism NSS Theism