"Philosophy that leaned on Heaven before Sinks to her second cause, and is no more,"
it challenges the investigation of the psychologist. The practical result of these inquiries must be allowed to be, to a large extent, negative. In many quarters, where thirty or forty years ago we should certainly have found acquiescence, honest if dull, in the received religious systems of Europe, we now discern incredulity, more or less far-reaching, about "revealed religion" altogether, and, at the best, "faint possible Theism," in the place of old-fashioned orthodoxy. And earnest men, content to bear as best they may their own burden of doubt and disappointment, do not dissemble to themselves that the immediate outlook is dark and discouraging. Like the French monarch they discern the omens of the deluge to come after them; a vast shipwreck of all faith, and all virtue, of conscience, of G.o.d; brute force, embodied in an omnipotent State, the one ark likely to escape submersion in the pitiless waters. A world from which the high sanctions of religion, hitherto the binding principle of society, are relegated to the domain of old wives" fables; a march through life with its brief dream of pleasure and long reality of thought to lie deeper than _all_ systems.
Those current abstractions, which make up all the morality and all the philosophy of most people, have been brought under suspicion. Mind and matter, duties and rights, morality and expediency, honour and interest, virtue and vice--all these words, which seemed once to express elementary and certain realities, now strike us as just the words which, thrown into the scientific crucible, might dissolve at once. It is thus not merely philosophy which is discredited, but just that homely and popular wisdom by which common life is guided. This too, it appears, instead of being the sterling product of plain experience, is the overflow of an immature philosophy, the redundance of the uncontrolled speculations of thinkers who were unacquainted with scientific method"
(p. 8). And then, moreover, there is that great political movement which has so largely and directly affected the course of events and the organization of society on the Continent of Europe, and which in less measure, and with more covert operation, has notably modified our own ways of thinking and acting in this country. Now the Revolution in its ultimate or Jacobin phase, is the very manifestation, in the public order, of the tendency which in the intellectual calls itself "scientific." It bitterly and contemptuously rejects the belief in the supernatural hitherto accepted in Europe. It wages implacable war upon the ancient theology of the world. "It delights in declaring itself atheistic"[28] (p. 37). It has "a quarrel with theology as a doctrine.
"Theology," it says, even if not exactly opposed to social improvement, is a superst.i.tion, and as such allied to ignorance and conservatism.
Granting that its precepts are good, it enforces them by legends and fict.i.tious stories which can only influence the uneducated, and therefore in order to preserve its influence it must needs oppose education. Nor are these stories a mere excrescence of theology, but theology itself. For theology is neither more nor less than a doctrine of the supernatural. It proclaims a power behind nature which occasionally interferes with natural laws. It proclaims another world quite different from this in which we live, a world into which what is called the soul is believed to pa.s.s at death. It believes, in short, in a number of things which students of Nature know nothing about, and which science puts aside either with respect or with contempt.
These supernatural doctrines are not merely a part of theology, still less separable from theology, but theology consists exclusively of them.
Take away the supernatural Person, miracles, and the spiritual world, you take away theology at the same time, and nothing is left but simple Nature and simple Science" (p. 39). Such, as the author of "Ecce h.o.m.o"
considers, is "the question between religion and science" now before the world. And his object[29] in his new work is not to inquire whether the "negative conclusions so often drawn from modern scientific discoveries are warranted," still less to refute them, but to estimate "the precise amount of destruction caused by them," admitting, for the sake of argument, that they are true. His own judgment upon their truth he expressly reserves, with the cautious remarks, that "it is not the greatest scientific authorities who are so confident in negation, but rather the inferior men who echo their opinions:"[30] that "it is not on the morrow of great discoveries that we can best judge of their negative effect upon ancient beliefs:" and that he is "disposed to agree with those who think that in the end the new views of the Universe will not gratify an extreme party quite so much as is now supposed."[31]
The argument, then, put forward in "Natural Religion," and put forward, as I understand the author, tentatively, and for what it is worth, and by no means as expressing his own a.s.sured convictions, is this:--that to banish the supernatural from the human mind is "not to destroy theology or religion or even Christianity, but in some respects to revive and purify all three:"[32] that supernaturalism is not of the essence but of the accidents of religion; that "the _unmiraculous_ part of the Christian tradition has a value which was long hidden from view by the blaze of supernaturalism," and "that so much will this unmiraculous part gain by being brought, for the first time into full light ... that faith may be disposed to think even that she is well rid of miracle, and that she would be indifferent to it, even if she could still believe it" (p.
254). That religion in some form or another is essential to the world, the author apparently no more doubts than I do: indeed he expressly warns us that "at this moment we are threatened with a general dissolution of states from the decay of religion" (p. 211). "If religion fails us," these are his concluding words, "it is only when human life itself is proved to be worthless. It may be doubtful whether life is worth living, but if religion be what it has been described in this book, the principle by which alone life is redeemed from secularity and animalism, ... can it be doubtful that if we are to live at all we must live, and civilization can only live, by religion?" And now let us proceed to see what is the hope set before us in this book: and consider whether the Natural Religion, which it unfolds, is such a religion as the world can live by, as civilization can live by.
III.
The author of "Natural Religion," it will be remembered, a.s.sumes for the purposes of his argument, that the supernatural portion of Christianity is discredited, is put aside by physical science; that, as M. Renan has somewhere tersely expressed it, "there is no such thing as the supernatural, but from the beginning of being everything in the world of phenomena was preceded by regular laws." Let us consider what this involves. It involves the elimination from our creed, not only of the miraculous incidents in the history of the Founder of Christianity, including, of course, His Resurrection--the fundamental fact, upon which, from St. Paul"s time to our own, His religion has been supposed to rest--but all the beliefs, aspirations, hopes, attaching to that religion as a system of grace. It destroys theology, because it destroys that idea of G.o.d from which theology starts, and which it professes to unfold. This being so, it might appear that religion is necessarily extinguished too. Certainly, in the ordinary sense which the word bears among us, it is. "Religio," writes St. Thomas Aquinas, "est virtus reddens debitum honorem Deo."[33] And so Cardinal Newman, somewhat more fully, "By religion I mean the knowledge of G.o.d, of His will, and of our duties towards Him;" and he goes on to say that "there are three main channels which Nature furnishes us for our acquiring this knowledge--viz., our own minds, the voice of mankind, and the course of the world, that is, of human life and human affairs."[34] But that, of course, is very far from being what the author of "Ecce h.o.m.o" means by religion, and by natural religion, in his new book. Its key-note is struck in the words of Wordsworth cited on its t.i.tle-page:--" We live by admiration."[35] Religion he understands to be an "ardent condition of the feelings," "habitual and regulated admiration" (p. 129), "worship of whatever in the known Universe appears worthy of worship" (p. 161). "To have an individuality," he teaches, "is to have an ideal, and to have an ideal is to have an object of worship: it is to have a religion" (p.
136). "Irreligion," on the other hand, is defined as "life without worship," and is said to consist in "the absence of habitual admiration, and in a state of the feelings, not ardent but cold and torpid" (p. 129). It would appear then that religion, in its new sense, is enthusiasm of well-nigh any kind, but particularly the enthusiasm of morality, which is "the religion of right," the enthusiasm of art, which is "the religion of beauty," and the enthusiasm of physical science, which is "the religion of law and of truth" (p. 125).[36] "Art and science," we read, "are not secular, and it is a fundamental error to call them so; they have the nature of religion" (p. 127). "The popular Christianity of the day, in short, is for the artist too melancholy and sedate, and for the man of science too sentimental and superficial; in short, it is too melancholy for the one, and not melancholy enough for the other. They become, therefore, dissenters from the existing religion; sympathizing too little with the popular worship, they worship by themselves and dispense with outward forms. But they protest at the same time that, in strictness, they separate from the religious bodies around them, only because they know of a purer or a happier religion"
(p. 126). It is useful to turn, from time to time, from the abstract to the concrete, in order to steady and purge our mental vision. Let us therefore, in pa.s.sing, gaze upon Theophile Gautier, the high priest of the pride of human form, whose unspeakably impure romance has been p.r.o.nounced by Mr. Swinburne to be "the holy writ of beauty;" and, on the other, upon Schopenhauer, the most thorough-going and consistent of physicists, who reduces all philosophy to a cosmology, and consider whether, the author of "Ecce h.o.m.o" himself being judge, the religion of the one can be maintained to be purer or that of the other to be happier, than the most degraded form of popular Christianity. I proceed to his declaration, which naturally follows from what has been said, that the essence of religion is not in theological dogma nor in ethical practice. The really religious man, as we are henceforth to conceive of him, is, apparently, the man of sentiment. "The substance of religion is culture," which is "a threefold devotion to Goodness, Beauty, and Truth," and "the fruit of it the higher life" (p. 145). And the higher life is "the influence which draws men"s thoughts away from their personal existence, making them intensely aware of other existences, to which it binds them by strong ties, sometimes of admiration, sometimes of awe, sometimes of duty, sometimes of love" (p. 236). And as in the individual religion is identified with culture, so, "in its public aspect" "it is identical with civilization" (p. 201), which "expresses the same threefold religion, shown on a larger scale, in the character, inst.i.tutions, and ways of life of nations" (p. 202). "The great civilized community" is "the modern city of G.o.d" (p. 204).
But what G.o.d? Clearly not that G.o.d spoken of by St. Paul--or the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, whoever he was--"the G.o.d of Peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, that Great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant;" for that G.o.d, the Creator, Witness, and Judge of men--is a.s.suredly _Deus absconditus_, a hidden G.o.d, belonging to "the supernatural;" and the hypothesis upon which the author of "Ecce h.o.m.o" proceeds in his new work is that men have "ceased to believe in anything beyond Nature" (p. 76).
The best thing for them to do, therefore, he suggests, if they must have a G.o.d, is to deify Nature. But "Nature, considered as the residuum that is left after the elimination of everything supernatural, comprehends man with all his thoughts and aspirations, not less than the forms of the material world" (p. 78). G.o.d, therefore, in the new Natural Religion, is to be conceived of as Physical "Nature, including Humanity"
(p. 69), or "the unity which all things compose in virtue of the universal presence of the same laws" (p. 87), which would seem to be no more than a Pantheistic expression, its exact value being all that exists, the totality of forces, of beings, and of forms. The author of "Natural Religion" does not seem to be sanguine that this new Deity will win the hearts of men. He antic.i.p.ates, indeed, the objection "that when you subst.i.tute Nature for G.o.d you take a thing heartless and pitiless instead of love and goodness." To this he replies, "If we abandoned our belief in the supernatural, it would not be only inanimate Nature that would be left to us; we should not give ourselves over, as is often rhetorically described, to the mercy of merciless powers--winds and waves, earthquakes, volcanoes, and fire. The G.o.d we should believe in would not be a pa.s.sionless, utterly inhuman power." "Nature, in the sense in which we are now using the word, includes humanity, and therefore, so far from being pitiless, includes all the pity that belongs to the whole human race, and all the pity that they have acc.u.mulated, and, as it were, capitalised in inst.i.tutions political, social and ecclesiastical, through countless generations" (pp. 68-9).
He, then, who would not "shock modern views of the Universe" (p. 157) must thus think of the Deity. And so Atheism acquires a new meaning. "It is," we read, "a disbelief in the _existence_ of G.o.d--that is, a disbelief in _any_ regularity in the Universe to which a man must conform himself under penalties" (p. 27); a definition which surely is a little hard upon the _libres-penseurs_, as taking the bread out of their mouths. I remember hearing, not long ago, in Paris, of a young Radical diplomatist who, with the good taste which characterizes the school now dominant in French politics, took occasion to mention to a well-known ecclesiastical statesman that he was an Atheist. "O de l"atheisme a votre age," said the Nuncio, with a benign smile: "pourquoi, quand l"impiete suffit et ne vous engage a rien?" But with the new signification imposed upon the word, a profession of Atheism would pledge one in quite another sense: it would be equivalent to a profession of insanity; for where, except among the wearers of strait-waistcoats or the occupants of padded rooms, shall we find a man who does not believe in some regularity in the universe to which he must conform himself under penalties? But let us follow the author of "Natural Religion" a step further in his inquiry. "In what relation does this religion stand to our Christianity, to our churches, and religious denominations?" (p. 139). Certainly, we may safely agree with him that "it has a difficulty in identifying itself with any of the organized systems," and as safely that the "conception of a spiritual city," of an "organ of civilization," of an "interpreter of human society," is "precisely what is now needed" (p. 223). "The tide of thought, scepticism, and discovery, which has set in ... must be warded off the inst.i.tutions which it attacks as recklessly as if its own existence did not depend upon them. It introduces everywhere a sceptical condition of mind, which it recommends as the only way to real knowledge; and yet if such scepticism became practical, if large communities came to regard every question in politics and law as absolutely open, their inst.i.tutions would dissolve, and science, among other things, would be buried in the ruin. Modern thought brings into vogue a speculative Nihilism ... but unintentionally it creates at the same time a practical Nihilism.... There is a mine under modern society which, if we consider it, has been the necessary result of the abeyance in recent times of the idea of the Church" (p. 208). In fact, as our author discerns, the existence of civilization is at stake. "It can live only by religion"
(p. 262). "On religion depends the whole fabric of civilization, all the future of mankind" (p. 218). The remedy which he suggests is that the Natural Religion which we have been considering, the new "universal religion," should "be concentrated in a doctrine," should "embody itself in a Church" (p. 207). "This Church," we are told, "exists already, a vast communion of all who are inspired by the culture and civilization of the age. But it is unconscious, and perhaps, if it could attain to consciousness, it might organize itself more deliberately and effectively" (p. 212). The precise mode of such organization is not indicated, but its main function it appears would be to diffuse an "adequate doctrine of civilization," and especially to teach "science,"
in "itself a main part of religion, as the grand revelation of G.o.d in these later times," and also the theory "of the gradual development of human society, which alone can explain to us the past state of affairs, give us the clue to history, save us from political aberrations, and point the direction of progress" (p. 209). Of the _clerus_ of the new Natural Church we read as follows:--
"If we really believe that a case can be made out for civilization, this case must be presented by popular teachers, and their most indispensable qualification will be independence. They perhaps will be able to show, that happiness or even universal comfort is not, and never has been, within quite so easy reach, that it cannot be taken by storm, and that as for the inst.i.tutions left us from the past they are no more diabolical than they are divine, being the fruit of necessary development far more than of free-will or calculation. Such teachers would be the free clergy of modern civilization. It would be their business to investigate and to teach the true relation of man to the universe and to society, the true Ideal he should worship, the true vocation of particular nations, the course which the history of mankind has taken hitherto, in order that upon a full view of what is possible and desirable men may live and organize themselves for the future. In short, the modern Church is to do what Hebrew prophecy did in its fashion for the Jews, and what bishops and Popes did according to their lights for the Roman world when it laboured in the tempest, and for barbaric tribes first submitting themselves to be taught.
Another grand object of the modern Church would be to teach and organize the outlying world, which for the first time in history now lies prostrate at the feet of Christian civilization. Here are the ends to be gained. These once recognized, the means are to be determined by their fitness alone" (p. 221).
IV.
So much must suffice to indicate the essential features of the religion which would be left us after the elimination of the supernatural. And now we are to consider whether this religion will suffice for the wants of the world; whether it is a religion "which shall appeal to the sense of duty as forcibly, preach righteousness and truth, justice and mercy, as solemnly and as exclusively as Christianity itself does" (p. 157).
Surely to state the question is enough. In fact the author of "Natural Religion" quite recognizes that "to many, if not most, of those who feel the need of religion, all that has been offered in this book will perhaps at first seem offered in derision" (p. 260), and frankly owns that "whether it deserves to be called a faith at all, whether it justifies men in living, and in calling others into life, may be doubted" (p. 66). He tells us that "the thought of a G.o.d revealed in Nature," which he has suggested, does not seem to him "by any means satisfactory, or worthy to replace the Christian view, or even as a commencement from which we must rise by logical necessity to the Christian view" (p. 25) and it must be hard not to agree with him. It is difficult to suppose that any one who considers the facts o life, who contemplates not the _individua vaga_ of theories, but the men and women of this working-day world can think otherwise. Surely no one who really surveys mankind as they are, as they have been in the past, and, so far as we are able to judge, will be in the future, can suppose that this Natural Religion, even if embodied in a Natural Church, and equipped with "a free clergy," will meet their wants, or win their affections, or satisfy those "strange yearnings" of which we read in Plato, and which, in one form or another, stir every human soul; which we may trace in the chatterings of the poor Neapolitan crone to her Crucifix, or in the hallelujahs of "Happy Sal" at a Salvationist "Holiness Meeting," as surely as in the profoundest speculations of the Angelic Doctor, or in the loftiest periods of Bossuet. Can any one, in this age of all others, when, as the revelations of the physical world bring home to us so overwhelmingly what Pascal calls "the abyss of the boundless immensity of which I know nothing, and you know nothing," man sinks to an insignificance which, the apt word of the author of "Natural Religion"
"petrifies" him, can--can any one believe that the compound of Pantheistic Positivism and Christian sentiment--if we may so account of it--set forth in these brilliant pages, will avail to redeem men from animalism and secularity? But, indeed, we need not here rest in the domain of mere speculation. The experiment has been tried. Not quite a century ago, when Chaumette"s "G.o.ddess of Reason," and Robespierre"s "Supreme Being," had disappeared from the altars of France, La Reveillere-Lepeaux essayed to introduce a Natural Religion under the name of Theophilanthropy[37] to satisfy the spiritual needs of the country over which he ruled as a member of the Directory, Chernin Dupontes, Dupont de Nemours and Bernardin de St. Pierre const.i.tuting with himself the four Evangelists of the new cult. The first mentioned of these must, indeed, be regarded as its inventor, and his "Manuel des Theophilanthrophiles" supplies the fullest exposition of it. But it was La Reveillere-Lepeaux whose influence gave form and actuality to the speculations of Chemin, and whose credit obtained for the new sect the use of some dozen of the princ.i.p.al churches of Paris, and of the choir and organ of Notre Dame. The formal _debut_ of the new religion may, perhaps, be dated from the 1st of May, 1797, when La Reveillere read to the Inst.i.tute a memoir in which he justified its introduction upon grounds very similar to those urged in our own day against "the theological view of the universe." Moreover, he insisted that Catholicism was opposed to sound morality, that its worship was antisocial, and that its clergy--whom he contemptuously denominated _la pretraille_, and whom he did his best to exterminate--were the enemies of the human race. In its leading features the new Church resembled very closely the system which we have just been considering, offered to the world by the author of "Ecce h.o.m.o." It identified the Deity with Nature:[38] religion, considered subjectively, with sentiment, and objectively, with civilization; and it regarded Atheists and the adherents of all forms of faith--with the sole exception of Catholics --as eligible for its communion. Its dogmas, if one may so speak, were a hotchpotch of fine phrases about beauty, truth, right, and the like, culled from writers of all creeds and of no creed. Its chief public function consisted in the singing of a hymn to "the Father of the Universe," to a tune composed by one Gossee, a musician much in vogue at that time, and in lections chosen from Confucius, Vyasa, Zoroaster, Theognis, Cleanthes, Aristotle, Plato, La Bruyere, Fenelon, Voltaire, Rousseau, Young, and Franklin, the Sacred Scriptures of Christianity being carefully excluded on account, as may be supposed, of their alleged opposition to "sound morality." The priests of the "Natural Religion" were vested in sky-blue tunics, extending from the neck to the feet, and fastened at the waist by a red girdle, over which was a white robe open before. Such was the costume in which La Reveillere-Lepeaux exhibited himself to his astonished countrymen, and having the misfortune to be--as we are told--"pet.i.t, bossu, et puant," the exhibition obtained no great success. It must be owned, however, that the Natural Church did its best to fill the void caused by the disappearance of the Christian religion. It even went so far as to provide subst.i.tutes for the Sacraments of Catholicism. At the rite which took the place of baptism, the father himself officiated, and, in lieu of the questions prescribed in the Roman Ritual, asked the G.o.dfather, "Do you promise before G.o.d and men to teach N. or M. from the dawn of his reason to adore G.o.d, to cherish (_cherir_) his fellows, and to make himself useful to his country?" And the G.o.dfather, holding the child towards heaven, replied, "I promise." Then followed the inevitable "discourse," and a hymn of which the concluding lines were:
"Puisse un jour cet enfant honorer sa patrie, Et s"applaudir d"avoir vecu."
So much must suffice as to the Natural Church during the time that it existed among men as a fact, or, in the words of the author of "Ecce h.o.m.o," as "an attempt to treat the subject of religion in a practical manner." But, backed as it was by the influence of a despotic government, and _felix opportunitate_ as it must be deemed to have been in the period of its establishment, very few were added to it.
Whereupon, as the author of "Ecce h.o.m.o" relates, not without a touch of gentle irony, La Reveillere confided to Talleyrand[39] his disappointment at his ill-success. ""His propaganda made no way," he said, "What was he to do?" he asked. The ex-bishop politely condoled with him, feared indeed it was a difficult task to found a new religion--more difficult than could be imagined, so difficult that he hardly knew what to advise! "Still"--he went on, after a moment"s reflection--"there is one plan which you might at least try: I should recommend you to be crucified, and to rise again the third day"" (p.
181). Is the author of "Ecce h.o.m.o" laughing in his sleeve at us? Surely his keen perception must have suggested to him, as he wrote this pa.s.sage, "mutato nomine, deme." It may be confidently predicted that, unless he is prepared to carry out Talleyrand"s suggestion, the Natural Religion which he exhibits "to meet the wants of a sceptical age" will prove even a more melancholy failure than it proved when originally introduced a century ago by La Reveillere-Lepeaux.
V.
Are we then thrown back on Pessimism--"the besetting difficulty of Natural Religion" (p. 104), as the author of "Ecce h.o.m.o" confesses? Is that after all the key to the enigma of life? And is the prospect before the world that "universal darkness" which is to supervene, when, in the n.o.ble verse of the great moral poet of the last century--the n.o.blest he ever wrote--
"Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires, And unawares morality expires; Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine, Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine."
I venture to think otherwise. And as with regard to the subject of which I am writing, it may be said that "egotism is true modesty," I shall venture to say why I think so, even at the risk of wearying by a twice-told tale, for I shall have to go over well-worn ground, and I must of necessity tread more or less in the footprints of others. The reasons which satisfy me have satisfied, and do satisfy, intellects far more subtle, acute, and penetrating than mine. All I can do is to state them in the way in which they present themselves to my own mind. I shall be genuine, if not original, although indeed I might here shelter myself under a dictum--profoundly true it is--of Mr. Ruskin: "That virtue of originality that men so strive after is not newness, as they vainly think (there is nothing new) it is only genuineness."
Cardinal Newman, in writing to me a few weeks ago, suggests the pregnant inquiry, "Which is the greater a.s.sumption? that we can do without religion, or that we can find a subst.i.tute for Christianity?" I have hitherto been surveying the subst.i.tute for Christianity which the author of "Ecce h.o.m.o" has exhibited to the world in his new book. I shall now briefly consider the question whether the need for such a subst.i.tute does in truth exist. The book, as I have already more than once noted, a.s.sumes that it does. It takes "the scientific view frankly at its worst"[40] as throwing discredit upon the belief "that a Personal Will is the cause of the Universe, that that Will is perfectly benevolent, that that Will has sometimes interfered by miracles with the order of the Universe," which three propositions are considered by its author to sum up the theological view of the universe. "If," he writes, "these propositions exhaust [that view] and science throws discredit upon all of them, evidently theology and science are irreconcilable, and the contest between them must end in the destruction of one or the other"
(p. 13). I remark in pa.s.sing, first, that no theologian--certainly no Catholic theologian--would accept these three propositions as exhausting the theological view of the universe; and secondly, that if we were obliged to admit that physical science throws discredit upon that view, it would by no means necessarily follow that physical science and theology are irreconcilable, for ampler knowledge might remove the discredit.
"What do we see? Each man a s.p.a.ce, Of some few yards before his face.
Can that the whole wide plan explain?
Ah no! Consider it again."
But is it true, as a matter of fact, that physical science throws discredit upon these three propositions? Let us examine this question a little. I must of necessity be brief in the limits to which I am here confined, and I must use the plainest language, for I am writing not for the school but for the general reader. Brevity and plainness of speech do not, however, necessarily imply superficiality, which, in truth, is not unfrequently veiled by a prolix parade of pompous technicalities.
First, then, as to causation. The shepherd in the play, when asked by Touchstone, "Hast any philosophy in thee?" replies, "No more but that I know that the property of rain is to wet, and fire to burn; that good pasture makes fat sheep: and that a great cause of the night is lack of the sun," and upon the strength of this knowledge is p.r.o.nounced by the clown to be "a natural philosopher." Well, is not in truth the "science"
of the mere physicist, however accomplished, _in pari materia_ with that of honest Corin? He observes certain sequences of facts, certain antecedents and consequents, but of the _nexus_ between them he knows no more than the most ignorant and foolish of peasants. He talks, indeed, of the laws of Nature, but the expression, convenient as it is in some respects, and true as it is in a sense--and that the highest--is extremely likely to mislead, as he uses it ordinarily. What he calls a law of Nature is only an induction from observed phenomena, a formula which serves compendiously to express them. As Dr. Mozley has well observed in his Bampton Lectures, "we only know of law in Nature, in the sense of recurrences in Nature, cla.s.ses of facts, _like_ facts in Nature:"[41]
"In vain the sage with retrospective eye Would from the apparent what conclude the why;"
physical "science has itself proclaimed the truth that we see no causes in nature"[42]--that is to say, in the phenomena of the external world, taken by themselves. We read in Bacci"s "Life of St. Philip Neri" that the Saint drew men to the service of G.o.d by such a subtle irresistible influence as caused those who watched him to cry out in amazement, "Father Philip draws souls, as the magnet draws iron." The most accomplished master of natural science is as little competent to explain the physical attraction as he is to explain the spiritual. He cannot get behind the _fact_, and if you press him for the reason of it--if you ask him why the magnet draws iron--the only reason he has to give you is, "Because it does." It is just as true now as it was when Bishop Butler wrote in the last century that "the only distinct meaning of the word [natural] is, stated, fixed, or settled," and it is hard to see how he can be refuted when, travelling beyond the boundaries of physics, he goes on to add, "What is natural as much requires and presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so--_i.e._, to effect it continually, or at stated times--as what is supernatural or miraculous does to effect it for once."[43] Then, again, the indications of design in the universe may well speak to us of a Designer, as they spoke three thousand years ago to the Hebrew poet who wrote the Psalm "_C[oe]li enarrant_," as they spoke but yesterday to the severely disciplined intellect of John Stuart Mill, who, brushing aside the prepossessions and prejudices of a lifetime, has recorded his deliberate judgment that "there is a large balance in favour of the probability of creation by intelligence."[44]
Sir William Thomson, no mean authority upon a question of physical science, goes further, and speaks not of "a large balance of probability," but of "overpowering proofs." "Overpowering proofs," he told the British a.s.sociation, "of intelligence and benevolent design, lie all around us; and if ever perplexities, whether metaphysical or scientific, turn us away from them for a time, they come back upon us with irresistible force, showing to us through Nature the influence of a free will, and teaching us that all living beings depend upon one ever-acting Creator and Ruler."[45] And, once more, it is indubitable that matter is inert until acted upon by force, and that we have no knowledge of any other primary[46] cause of force than will. Whence, as Mr. Wallace argues in his well-known work, "it does not seem improbable that all force may be will-force, and that the whole universe is not merely dependent upon, but actually is, the will of higher intelligences or of one Supreme Intelligence."[47]
If then things are so--as who can disprove?--we may reasonably demur to the a.s.sertion that physical science throws discredit upon the position that a Personal Will is the cause of the universe. Let us now glance at the last of the propositions supposed to be condemned by the researches of the physicists--namely, that this Personal Will has sometimes interfered by miracles with the order of the universe. Now, here, as I intimated in an earlier portion of this article, I find myself at variance with the author of "Natural Religion" upon a question, and a very important question, of terminology. I do not regard the supernatural as an interference with, or violation of, the order of the universe. I adopt, unreservedly, the doctrine that "nothing is that errs from law." The phenomena which we call supernatural and those which we call natural, I view as alike the expression of the Divine Will: a Will which acts not capriciously, nor, as the phrase is, arbitrarily, but by law, "attingens a fine usque ad finem, fort.i.ter suaviterque disponens omnia." And so the theologians identify the Divine Will with the Divine Reason. Thus St. Augustine, "Lex aeterna est ratio divina vel voluntas Dei,"[48] and St. Thomas Aquinas, "Lex aeterna summa ratio in Deo existens."[49] It is by virtue of this law that the sick are healed, whether by the prayer of faith or the prescription of a physician, by the touch of a relic or by a shock from a galvanic battery; that the Saint draws souls and that the magnet draws iron. The most ordinary so-called "operations of Nature" may be truly described in the words of St. Gregory as G.o.d"s daily miracles;[50] and those events, commonly denominated miraculous, of which we read in the Sacred Scriptures, in the Lives of the Saints, and elsewhere, may as truly be called natural, using the word in what, as I just now observed, Bishop Butler notes as its only distinct meaning--namely, stated, fixed, or settled;[51] for they are the normal manifestations of the order of Grace--an order external to us, invisible, inaccessible to our senses and reasonings, but truly existing and governed by laws, which, like the laws of the physical and the intellectual order, are ordained by the Supreme Lawgiver. Once purge the mind of anthropomorphic conceptions as to the Divine Government, and the notion of any essential opposition between the natural and the supernatural disappears. Sanct.i.ty, which means likeness to G.o.d, a partaking of the Divine nature, is as truly a force as light or heat, and enters as truly into the great order of the universe. There is a pa.s.sage in M. Renan"s "Vie de Jesus" worth citing in this connection. "La nature lui obeit," he writes; "mais elle obeit aussi a quiconque croit et prie; la foi peut tout. Il faut se rappeler que nulle idee des lois de la nature ne venait, dans son esprit ni dans celui de ses auditeurs, marquer la limite de l"impossible.... Ces mots de "surhumain" et de "surnaturel," empruntes a notre theologie mesquine, n"avaient pas de sens dans la haute conscience religieuse de Jesus. Pour lui, la nature et le developpement de l"humanite n"etaient pas des regnes limites hors de Dieu, de chetives realites a.s.sujetties aux lois d"un empirisme desesperant. Il n"y avait pas pour lui de surnaturel, car il n"y avait pas pour lui de nature. Ivre de l"amour infini, il oubliait la lourde chaine qui tient l"esprit captif; il franchissait d"un bond l"abime, infranchissable pour la plupart, que la mediocrite des facultes humaines trace entre l"homme et Dieu."[52] These words seem to me to express a great truth. The religious mind conceives of the natural, not as opposed to the supernatural, but as an outlying province of it; of the economy of the physical world as the complement of the economy of Grace. And to those who thus think, the great objection urged by so many philosophers, from Spinoza downwards--not to go further back--that miracles, as the violation of an unchangeable order, make G.o.d contradict himself, and so are unworthy of being attributed to the All-Wise, is without meaning. The most stupendous incident in the "Acta Sanctorum"
is, as I deem, not less the manifestation of law than is the fall of a sparrow.[53] The budding of a rose and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ are equally the effect of the One Motive Force, which is the cause of all phenomena, of the Volition of the Maker, Nourisher, Guardian, Governor, Worker, Perfecter of all. Once admit what is involved in the very idea of G.o.d as it exists in Catholic theology--as it is set forth, for example, in the treatise of St. Thomas Aquinas "De Deo"--and the notion of miracles as abnormal, as infractions of order, as violations of law, will be seen to be utterly erroneous.
And now one word as to the bearing of physical science upon the doctrine of the Divine goodness[54]--the second of the theological positions which, as we have seen, the author of "Natural Religion" a.s.sumes to be discredited by physical science. No doubt he had in his mind what has been so strongly stated by the late Mr. Mill: "Not even on the most distorted and contracted theory of good, which ever was framed by religious or philosophical fanaticism, can the government of Nature be made to resemble the work of a being at once good and omnipotent."[55]
Now there can be no question that physical nature gives the lie to that shallow optimism, which prates of the best of all conceivable worlds, and hardly consents to recognize evil, save as "a lower form of good;"
unquestionably recent researches of physicists have brought out with quite startling clearness what St. Paul calls the subjection of the creature to vanity. Ruin, waste, decay are written upon every feature of the natural order. All that is joyful in it is based on suffering; all that lives, on death; every thrill of pleasure which we receive from the outward world is the outcome of inconceivable agonies during incalculable periods of time. But how does this discredit the teaching of theology as to G.o.d"s goodness? Theology recognizes, and recognizes far more fully than the mere physicist, the abounding misery that is in the world, the terribleness of that "unutterable curse which hangs upon mankind," for it sees not only what he sees, but what is infinitely sadder and more appalling, the vision of moral evil presented by the heart and conscience of man, by every page in the history of the individual and of the race. It was not reserved for professors of physical science in the nineteenth century to bring to light the fact that "the world is out of joint," and thereby to discredit the theological view of the universe. Theology knows only too well that life is "a dread machinery of sin and sorrow." It is the very existence of the vast aboriginal calamity, whatever it may have been, in which the human race, the whole creation, is involved, that forms the ground for the need of the revelation which Christianity professes to bring. If there were no evil, there would be no need of a deliverance from evil.
Of course, why evil has been suffered to arise, why it is suffered to exist, by the Perfect Being, of whom it is truly said that He is G.o.d, because he is the highest Good, we know not, and no search will make us know. All we know is that it is not from Him, of whom, and for whom, and by whom, are all things; "because it has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance." The existence of evil is a mystery--one of the countless mysteries surrounding human life--which, after the best use of reason, must be put aside as beyond reason. But it is also a fact, and a fact which is so far from discrediting the theological view of the universe, that it is a primary and necessary element of that view.
VI.
Thus much as to physical science and the propositions in which the author of "Natural Religion" supposes the theological view of the universe to be summed up. But, as he notes, the case urged in the present day against Christianity does not rest merely upon physical science, properly so called; but upon the extension of its methods to the whole domain of knowledge (p. 7), the practical effect being the reduction of religion to superst.i.tion, of anthropology to physiology, of metaphysics to physics, of ethics to the result of temperament or the promptings of self-interest, of man"s personality to the summation of a series of dynamic conditions of particles of matter. I shall proceed to state the case, as I often hear it stated, and I shall put it in the strongest way I can, and to indicate the answer which, at all events, has satisfied one mind, after long and patient consideration, and in spite of strong contrary prepossessions. And this evidently has the most direct bearing on my theme. If Christianity be irrational, its claims to the world"s future may at once be dismissed. But if, as I very strongly hold, the achievements of the modern mind, whether in the physical sciences, in psychology, in history, in exegetical criticism, have not in the least discredited Christianity, as rightly understood, here is a fact which is a most important factor in determining our judgment as to the religious prospect of mankind. What I have to say on this grave question I must reserve for the Second Part of this article. I end the First Part with one observation. It seems to me that the issue before the world is between Christianity and a more or less sublimated form of Materialism--not necessarily Atheistic, nay, sometimes approximating to "faint possible Theism"--which is most aptly termed Naturalism; a system which rejects as antiquated the ideas of final causes, of Providence, of the soul and its immortality; which allows of no other realities than those of the physical order, and makes of Nature man"s highest ideal: and this issue is not in the least affected by decking out Naturalism in some borrowed garments of Spiritualism, and calling it "Natural Christianity."
W. S. LILLY.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] "La Genie des Religions," l. i. c. i.
[27] _Ibid._, c. iv.
[28] The author of "Natural Religion" thinks it mistaken in so declaring itself. "Its invectives against G.o.d and against Religion do not prove that it is atheistic, but only that it thinks itself so. And why does it think itself so? Because G.o.d and Religion are identified in its view with the Catholic Church; and the Catholic Church is a thing so very redoubtable that we need scarcely inquire why it is pa.s.sionately hated and feared" (p. 37). But this is an error. G.o.d and Religion are not identified, in the view of the Revolution, with the Catholic Church. It will be evident to anyone who will read its accredited organs that it is as implacably hostile to religious Protestantism as to Catholicism.
Perhaps I may be allowed to refer, on this subject, to some remarks of my own in an article ent.i.tled "Free Thought--French and English,"
published in this REVIEW, in February last, p. 241.
[29] See his Preface to the Second Edition.