The sun has no sooner risen than his house is thronged by clients (manè salutantes). This is a hastylevée. Then the patron, surrounded by his followers, goes down to the forum; if he likes, he is carried in a litter by his slaves. There the serious business of the day is conducted—causes, money payments, and arrangements; "all is activity, chatter, noise." But, at noon, all ceases; the audience breaks up, the shops are deserted, the streets are soon silent, and during the artificial night of thesiestano one is to be seen but stragglers returning to their houses, or lovers, who come, as if it were really night, to sigh beneath thebalcony of their ladies. Business to-morrow. For the rest of the day Rome was free; Rome was asleep. The poor man lay down to sleep in the portico; the rich on the ground-floor of his house, in the silence and darkness of a room without windows, and to the sound of the fountains in thecavædium, slept, mused, or dreamed. Later than four o'clock, no business might be proposed in the Senate, and there were Romans who after that hour would not open a letter.'About two the streets began to fill again. The crowd flowed towards the Campus Martius. There was a vast meadow, where the young men practised athletics, ran, and threw the javelin. The elders sat, talked, and looked on. Sometimes they had exercises of their own; often they walked in the sun. The exposure of the naked body to its life-giving action served them instead of the gymnasium. The women had their walks under the porticoes. This, too, was an hour of activity, but of merry, gay, satisfied activity.'At three a bell sounded, and the baths were opened. The bath combined business, medical treatment, and pleasure. The poor enjoyed them in the public baths, the voluptuous rich, in their palaces.... The bath was a place of assembly, with a degree of boyish freedom. There was laughing, talk, gaming, even dancing.... There, too, the great affair of the day was arranged—the supper—almost the only social meal of a Roman. As evening came on, the party stretched themselves, leaning on their elbows, round the hospitable table, and had before them for the meal and for society all the hours till night. It commonly consisted of six or seven (never more than the Muses, said the proverb, or less than the Graces), stretched on couches of purple and gold, round a table of precious wood. A large band of servants was employed in the service of the feast; themaître d'hôtelprovided it, thestructorplaced the dishes in symmetrical order, thescissorcarved. Young slaves, in short tunics, placed on the table the huge silver salver, changed for each course, upon which the dishes were tastefully arranged. Children kept, what Indians in our day call punkahs, in motion over the heads of the company, to drive away the flies, and to cool them. Young and beautiful cup-bearers, with long robes and flowing hair, filled the cups with wine, others sprinkled on the floor an infusion of vervain and Venus-hair, which was supposed to promote cheerfulness. Round the table are songs, dances, and symphonies, tricks of buffoons, or discussions of philosophers. In the midst of all this merry-making the king of the feast gives the toasts, counts the cups, and crowns the guests with short-lived flowers. "Let us lose no time to live," he said, "for death is drawing near; let us crown our heads before we go down to Pluto." In fact, the dominant thought of ancient society was to live, to enjoy, to shut out from life as much as possible everything of suffering, care, toil, and duty.'—('Les Césars,' vol. ii. p. 388.)[4]
The sun has no sooner risen than his house is thronged by clients (manè salutantes). This is a hastylevée. Then the patron, surrounded by his followers, goes down to the forum; if he likes, he is carried in a litter by his slaves. There the serious business of the day is conducted—causes, money payments, and arrangements; "all is activity, chatter, noise." But, at noon, all ceases; the audience breaks up, the shops are deserted, the streets are soon silent, and during the artificial night of thesiestano one is to be seen but stragglers returning to their houses, or lovers, who come, as if it were really night, to sigh beneath thebalcony of their ladies. Business to-morrow. For the rest of the day Rome was free; Rome was asleep. The poor man lay down to sleep in the portico; the rich on the ground-floor of his house, in the silence and darkness of a room without windows, and to the sound of the fountains in thecavædium, slept, mused, or dreamed. Later than four o'clock, no business might be proposed in the Senate, and there were Romans who after that hour would not open a letter.
'About two the streets began to fill again. The crowd flowed towards the Campus Martius. There was a vast meadow, where the young men practised athletics, ran, and threw the javelin. The elders sat, talked, and looked on. Sometimes they had exercises of their own; often they walked in the sun. The exposure of the naked body to its life-giving action served them instead of the gymnasium. The women had their walks under the porticoes. This, too, was an hour of activity, but of merry, gay, satisfied activity.
'At three a bell sounded, and the baths were opened. The bath combined business, medical treatment, and pleasure. The poor enjoyed them in the public baths, the voluptuous rich, in their palaces.... The bath was a place of assembly, with a degree of boyish freedom. There was laughing, talk, gaming, even dancing.... There, too, the great affair of the day was arranged—the supper—almost the only social meal of a Roman. As evening came on, the party stretched themselves, leaning on their elbows, round the hospitable table, and had before them for the meal and for society all the hours till night. It commonly consisted of six or seven (never more than the Muses, said the proverb, or less than the Graces), stretched on couches of purple and gold, round a table of precious wood. A large band of servants was employed in the service of the feast; themaître d'hôtelprovided it, thestructorplaced the dishes in symmetrical order, thescissorcarved. Young slaves, in short tunics, placed on the table the huge silver salver, changed for each course, upon which the dishes were tastefully arranged. Children kept, what Indians in our day call punkahs, in motion over the heads of the company, to drive away the flies, and to cool them. Young and beautiful cup-bearers, with long robes and flowing hair, filled the cups with wine, others sprinkled on the floor an infusion of vervain and Venus-hair, which was supposed to promote cheerfulness. Round the table are songs, dances, and symphonies, tricks of buffoons, or discussions of philosophers. In the midst of all this merry-making the king of the feast gives the toasts, counts the cups, and crowns the guests with short-lived flowers. "Let us lose no time to live," he said, "for death is drawing near; let us crown our heads before we go down to Pluto." In fact, the dominant thought of ancient society was to live, to enjoy, to shut out from life as much as possible everything of suffering, care, toil, and duty.'—('Les Césars,' vol. ii. p. 388.)[4]
One essential feature of the Roman world, as compared with ours, judging alike by the remains which still exist, and by the hints of ancient authors, was the far greater extent and magnificence of the public buildings of all kinds, and the comparatively confined size of ordinary private houses. This our author especially points out at Pompeii, a country town of the third or fourth class, the public buildings of which, as far as they have hitherto been uncovered, astonish modern visitors by their extent and magnificence. Such was the natural tendency of a society in which men spent little time in their own houses, and mixed much with their fellows. Many a Roman in easy circumstances seems to have used his house chiefly for sleeping and meals. It mattered little, with such habits, how contracted might be the other parts, if the public banqueting room was spacious and highly ornamented; and such was the character of the houses at Pompeii. The extreme magnificence of the baths, porticoes, theatres, &c., at Rome, all the world knows. Our author enlarges on this part of the subject. But we will quote a few words upon it from a living English writer:—
'What was the life that Rome bestowed upon her inhabitants? Judge of it by the gift of an emperor to his people; of such gifts there were many in Rome. A vast square, of more than a thousand feet, comprehended within its various courts three great divisions. One contained libraries, picture and sculpture galleries, music halls, and every need for the cultivation of the mind. A second, courts for gymnastics, riding, wrestling, and every bodily exercise. A third, the baths; but how little the word, associated with modern poverty conveys a notion of the thing! There were tepid, vapour, and swimming baths, accompanied with perfumes and frictions, giving to the body an elastic suppleness. [We believe the author has omitted the chief thing conveyed to a Roman by the term, viz., what we now call the Turkish bath, dry heat, producing perspiration.] Then, as to their material: alabaster vied with marble; mosaic pavements, with ceilings painted in fresco; walls were encrusted with ivory, and a softened daylight reflected from mirrors; while on all sides a host of servants were engaged in the various offices of the bath. The afternoonsiestais over; a bell sounds, thethermæopen. There all Rome assembles, to chat, to criticise, to declaim. There is the coffee-house, theatre, exchange, palace, school, museum, parliament, and drawing-room, in one. There is food for the mind, exercise and refreshment for the body. There, if anywhere, the eye can be satisfied with seeing, and the ear with hearing; and every sense and every taste find but a too ready gratification. This feast of intellect, thispalace of ancient power and art is open daily, without cost, or for the smallest sum, to every Roman citizen. Private wealth in modern times bestows a few of these gifts on a select number; but poor as well as rich could revel in them, without fear of exhaustion, in this treasure-house of material civilization.'
We have enlarged on the material blessings enjoyed under the Roman Empire, because, as we began by saying, we are convinced that the mass, even of those who have received a classical education, have never sufficiently estimated them. But it is curious, on the other hand, to observe how much the judgment even of the most learned and thoughtful men, whose standard of excellence was merely earthly, has been dazzled when they have allowed themselves seriously to consider them. Gibbon goes so far as to say, 'If a man were called upon to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would without hesitation name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.'
The great poet of the last generation mourns over the fall of Rome—
'Alas! the golden city, and alas!The trebly kindred triumphs.'
'Alas! the golden city, and alas!
The trebly kindred triumphs.'
He laments over fallen earthly greatness:
'Dost thou flow,Old Tiber, through a marble wilderness?Rise with thy yellow waves and mantle her distress.'
'Dost thou flow,
Old Tiber, through a marble wilderness?
Rise with thy yellow waves and mantle her distress.'
So laments the world over fallen worldly greatness and glory. Our own estimate of the matter is the very opposite. We know, indeed, that the time was coming, and coming apace, in which not only the great city and its empire, but all the greatness and glory of the old heathen world was to be so utterly swept away, that for weeks together the very spot where Rome had once stood remained untrodden by any human foot, and abandoned to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. But in all this we see nothing over which any man need lament, unless, indeed, he esteems mere material prosperity above all that is truly noble and exalted in man. Rather are we disposed to cry out with exultation—
'Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, and is become the habitation of devils, and hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.—The kings of the earth shall bewail over her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas! that great city Babylon, that mighty city,... which was clothed in fine linen and purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls.—Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets, for God hath avenged you on her!'
For, in truth, all this splendour and luxury was not merely associated, but inseparably one with a moral system, by far the most execrable, the most indescribable, the most inconceivable, under which God's earth ever groaned. The morals of the accursed race were far too foul to be described here. They became the wonder and loathing, the byword of contempt even of the heathen barbarians by whom they were surrounded.[5]Lust, not merely unbridled, but wearing out and jading itself to invent new ways of pollution; and cruelty, shedding man's blood like water—these were the very foundations of the gorgeous fabric. Any cure for these evils, except in the total sweeping away of the whole order of society, was, as we shall soon see, utterly hopeless.
First of all, the prosperity which we have described was only the privilege of a favoured class. The mass of the population derived from it no benefit. The whole social system was founded on slavery. The whole domestic service, nay, the manufacturing, and what is to modern ideas far more marvellous, even the intellectual labour, was performed by slaves. It is calculated that in Rome itself the slave population was twice or three times as numerous as the free. These slaves were drawn from races fully equal to their masters in natural gifts, they were often their equals even in culture; and every one of these slaves was by Roman law not a person, but a thing. The male slave was not a man, the female slave not a woman. 'The slave is without rights, without a family, without a God.'[6]The hideous moral pollution which this state of law not merely rendered possible, but consecrated, is defended from exposure in the language of a Christian country by its unutterable, inconceivable foulness; and of the moral system of heathen Rome, as a whole, the same must be said. It is like the beast of the American prairies, which no hunter dare touch because it emits a stench which none can endure. We are well aware that this of necessity prevents our exhibiting this side of the question with anything like justice. Let us thank God that, far as our age has fallen beneath the standard of Christianity, it is still so much pervaded by Christian instincts that no writer, not even the most utterly abandoned in his personal character, would dare to publishto the world what was practised without shame or concealment by men who were esteemed free from reproach and models of virtue. 'It is a shame even to speak of the things that are done of them in secret.' Thus much, however, we may say, that the men whom the heathen Romans honoured, not merely for greatness, but especially for virtue, lived without shame in all the horrors described by St. Paul in that terrible first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans; and poets, as deeply pervaded as man ever was with a sense of the beautiful, nay, who undertook to be the moral reformers of their age, introduced into the midst of their most delicious strains not mention merely, but praises of things which the moral standard of our age forbids us to mention—even for execration; for these are they of whom the Apostles testifies that 'they not only do such things, but have pleasure in them that do them.'
Neither must we look upon slavery, and the indescribable system of pollution which it sprang from, as an evil accidentally attached to heathen society. It was intimately and essentially mixed with its very life. It is important to observe that, so far as we know, there has never existed upon earth any purely heathen civilized society of which slavery has not been the basis. There is no reason to suppose that if the Roman Empire had continued in all its greatness to the present day, and had continued heathen, slavery would at this hour have been a less essential part of its social and moral system than it was in the days of Nero. Before it could have been abandoned, the whole habits of life of all the free population of the Empire, and especially of Rome, must have been fundamentally changed; and the change must have been such that we can hardly imagine any nation to have been reconciled to it except by some superhuman power; for it would have implied the sacrifice of all the habits of self-indulgence and luxury upon which Roman society was built. It is impossible to suppose that such a change could have been effected, especially because, as far as experience teaches, there never has been any instance of a heathen nation which has begun to fall into decay and has been raised in any degree to a new life. Such a national resurrection is one of the miracles which nothing except Christianity has ever worked.
As to the barbarity of which the slave at Rome was the victim, we might speak with less reserve if our space allowed. But we can devote only a few words to a subject which would fill volumes. We will, then, confine ourselves to suggesting two subjects for the consideration of our readers,—first, the wholesale slaughter, merely for amusement, which was one of the most cherished and universally diffused institutions of Roman society, and was the delight of women as well as men; next the state of the law with regard to slaves, and the manner in which it was administered. The life of a Roman was of course always held subject to the despair of his slaves, and hence it was the law, that if a master was killed by his slave, under whatever circumstances, or for whatever cause, every one of his slaves, male and female, old and young, however manifestly innocent of all complicity in the murder, however without power to have prevented it, was to die upon the cross.[7]Tacitus tells how, in the reign of Nero, even the populace of Rome was horrified at the execution of this law in the case of the 'family,' as it was called, of a man of consular dignity murdered by one of his slaves, it was reported, in consequence of rivalry in a matter of infamous passion, or because the master had received the price of his slave's freedom and then refused to fulfil his engagement by giving him his liberty. His slaves were four hundred in number; among them were not only men and women, but little children, and the matter was brought before the Senate by some who wished to temper in this instance the severity of the law. But the proposal was indignantly rejected by Cassius, a Roman of noble family, and whom the philosophic historian Tacitus expressly praises for his knowledge of the laws of Rome. He argued that although in this case the innocent would perish with the guilty, this must happen even when a legion was punished by decimation, and that if some injustice was committed, it would be outweighed by the public benefit. But his chief argument was the authority of ancestral law:
'Our ancestors were wiser than we. I have often abstained from resisting proposals to dispense with their laws, when I felt that the change would be for the worse, lest I should seem to be carried away by love of my profession. To-day I cannot abstain. They suspected the disposition of their slaves, even when they had been born in the same lands and houses, and bred up in affection for their lords. But since we have begun to have in our families whole nations who have different customs, different religious rites, or none at all, this confused sediment of all peoples can be mastered only by terror.'
His arguments prevailed, and the whole four hundred, men, women, and children, were sent to execution. The indignation of thepopulace was overawed by soldiers supplied by the Emperor.
We have only indicated, not described the hideous state of Roman society; what is really important is to observe, that man being what he is, this monstrous system of blood and pollution must not be regarded as any accidental evil; it was the natural, we do not hesitate to say, the certain consequence of a high state of wealth, civilization, and refinement in a heathen society. So far as we are aware, there is no record of any heathen nation which has ever attained to such a condition, in which moral corruption has not overflowed all bounds, and in the end destroyed the nation itself. Wealth, leisure, luxury, are of necessity temptations to an easy, indulgent life. To this the experience of Christian nations forbids us to shut our eyes. But in them, however far they may have fallen below the practical standard of Christianity, unless all faith in the supernatural, in the unseen world, in God, and in Christ is wholly extinct, there are always fixed recognised principles upon which to fall back; and there is a part at least of every nation resolved to act on these principles, at all cost and all sacrifice. These are they to whom our blessed Lord said, 'Ye are the salt of the earth.' In a heathen society, on the contrary, when corruption once breaks loose, where is the salt? There may be men like Cato the censor, who believe that the fall of states is usually to be traced, not so much to political as to moral and social causes, and foresee in the decay of morals the ruin of their country. But what are they to do? They may remonstrate, they may argue; but the evil they have to encounter is not in the intellect, but in the will; and the will is exactly that which they have no means of affecting. At Rome, for instance, the danger and evil was not that men denied or doubted that it was only by the stern and self-denying virtues that a State could be preserved, it was that each man for himself preferred indulgence and ease, and despaired of doing anything effectual for the public good, for he felt, very truly, that even if he were, in his own person, to revive all the simplicity and hardness of life of Cincinnatus or Fabricius, he would not be able to change the national habits, or restore to the standard of times gone by. Each, therefore, preferred to praise the rigid virtues of former ages, and to practise the laxity of his own. No man wrote more strongly or more eloquently in praise of ancient manners and in condemnation of modern corruption than Sallust, the historian. Yet no Roman palace equalled in luxury the gardens of Sallust, the man. Nor was any Roman less scrupulous either in getting money or in spending it. What, then, was to be done? The power of passion was real and overpowering; virtue could only oppose to it common-places and fine words, without being able to appeal to any fixed principles or practical sanctions. It was a lamentable state of things, but, as the ancients themselves believed, one which, in the heathen world, followed by a necessary law, whenever any brave, hardy, self-denying, and virtuous race of men, by the natural operation of these virtues, rose to empire, and attained wealth, and the means of luxury. The later Romans held up their own ancestors of early days as the brightest example of virtue. Among them the gods were honoured and worshipped, and the rules which had come down from their fathers were strictly observed. Men were frugal, laborious, content with little, valuing right and honour far above wealth and pleasure, and ever ready to suffer or die for their country; women were chaste, modest, retiring, preferring their honour to their life. That the men and women of their own day were in all respects the opposite, was self-evident; but it is to be observed, that they were so far from considering this to be any special fault or misery of Rome, that even those who most bitterly complained of the change were wont to boast that no other nation had so long resisted the universal law, by which wealth generated luxury, and luxury the desire of increased gain; and this again made money, not honour and virtue, the national standard of right and wrong, until at last, things getting ever worse and worse, society itself was dissolved, and the national life perished. This they considered to be the natural, nay inevitable course of things.[8]
This was a melancholy view of human affairs, but it seems certain that with regard to a heathen state (and they knew of no other) it was true. For to take the case of Rome itself, what sanction was there even in the purest times of the Republic for those rules of right and wrong—those great moral principles, which to a very considerableextent were actually preserved; although, no doubt, men in later times dreamed of a golden age which had never really existed. The only religion they knew was silent about moral virtues. It taught men to honour and worship the gods of their fathers, and to ask and hope from them such worldly blessings as long life, health, &c. But that a man of moral purity, justice, and mercy was a more acceptable worshipper than one who was impure, unjust, and cruel, they never imagined, and indeed, as long as they in any degree believed the traditions which they had received as to the character of the gods they worshipped, it was simply impossible that they should imagine it. There was nothing contrary to the national religion, however men's consciences might tell them that there was something immoral, in the prayer which Horace attributes to one of his contemporaries—'Grant that I may succeed in wearing a mask, that I may be supposed to be just and good. Throw a cloud and darkness over my cheats and frauds.'
Religion, then, gave no moral rule, or at least none to individuals. M. de Champagny ('Les Césars,' iii. p. 4) remarks, with great truth, that so far as it had a moral code at all, that code and its sanctions touched, not the individual man, but the State. Its morality was that of the family, and through the family that of the city. Its object was the prosperity, the glory, the aggrandisement of the public welfare. The Roman virtues—courage in war, moderation in peace, economy in private life, fidelity in marriage, these were patriotic virtues, taught and practised as such.' What, then, was the moral code of the early Romans? It was, as this passage suggests, the fundamental and original law of the Roman people. Arnold well points out[9]that this and this alone was the real moral law of the heathen nations in general. In this sense their only standard of right and wrong was human law; but not exactly what we mean when we speak of human law, because we live in a state of society in which new laws are continually passed; and to imagine that the 'statutes at large' could be the real rule and measure of right and wrong, would go beyond the possible limits of human credulity. But among the ancient nations new laws were comparatively very rare. The Romans themselves had a great system of what Jeremy Bentham used to call 'judge-made law.' This grew to its perfection at rather a late period of the Empire, and still forms the foundation of most of the systems of law existing in Europe. It is not of this, however, that we are speaking. Of what we should call statutes, there were passed in the whole of their history very few. Only 207 in all are recorded as having been enacted in the whole period of the Republic, and of these no less than 133 were passed just at the latest period of its decay.[10]Their greater frequency at this period was considered one of the signs of national degeneracy, for it was a proverb,corruptissimâ republicâ plurimæ leges. In fact, at Rome in its best days there can hardly be said to have existed any machinery for making new statutes. There was, as we understand the word, no legislative assembly. The judicial system out of which grew the code of law to which we have referred already existed; and when it was necessary, one of those grave changes which are known among our kindred on the other side of the Atlantic as 'amendments of the constitution,' could be made by a vote of the whole Roman people. To get one of these passed was often, during the best periods of the Republic, a matter requiring years of furious struggle.
It is not, then, of statutes such as are passed year by year in our Parliament that we are speaking, when we say that the law of the land was the chief code of morals existing in heathen States. Quite distinct from anything of this kind, and more answering to our 'common law,' there were certain great principles of the constitution which had come down to the Romans of the historical period by an immemorial tradition, and which all men believed to have in them something sacred. To touch them was to touch the very life of the Roman people. Such principles there were in all the ancient heathen States, and their sacredness was in each State a fundamental principle as long as it retained any fundamental principles at all. This was, in fact, a necessary part of heathenism itself; for the very essence of polytheism is the belief that each people has its own gods, and, therefore, springing from them, its own traditions of right and wrong. From its own gods each people hoped for blessings and prosperity in its national and corporate capacity. To offend or alienate them was to risk the existence of the civil community, and what was the will of the gods of any particular nation was to be learned from the primitive original tradition of that nation.
Thus, the great principles of the ancient Roman morality, such for instance as the sanctity of marriage, parental authority, and the like, were, in the earlier days of the Republic,so mingled in the notions of a Roman with patriotism, that it was impossible to separate them. Adultery in a Roman matron, incontinence in a vestal virgin, was an act of high treason against the common weal of the Roman people. As such, it was monstrous and terrible to the whole people. Every man, every woman, every child, felt it as much a personal injury, as each would have felt the violation of the temples of their country's gods, or the taking away of the palladium or the ancilia. The instance we have selected was that upon which the Romans themselves felt that the whole stability of their country rested. The sanctity of marriage was the principle of the life of the Roman State. In the worst times a poet, himself licentious, recognised corruption on that point as the main cause of the ruin of the country—
'Fecunda culpæ sæcula nuptiasPrimùm inquinavere, et genus, et domosHoc fonte derivata cladesIn patriam populumque fluxit.'
'Fecunda culpæ sæcula nuptias
Primùm inquinavere, et genus, et domos
Hoc fonte derivata clades
In patriam populumque fluxit.'
But it would have been easy to mention other moral offences which in their judgment directly threatened the safety of the common country. Such, for instance, was the breach of a treaty, any outrage offered to the sacred person of an ambassador, or even the removal of ancient landmarks.
Thus it was that, in the earlier state of Roman society, the most important moral principles—not to add that, from their nature, conscience confirmed and enforced the national law and feeling—really had an authority as strong as any human sanction can give. To violate them involved loss of caste, and a great deal more. The offenders were regarded as traitors against their country; the very mention of their names would be the most deadly insult to those who had the misfortune to be allied to them by blood or marriage. They became a proverb of reproach. So terrible was this punishment that the law which gave to a husband power of life or death over a guilty wife, and the feeling of the nation which not only justified him in executing it, but required it of him, hardly added to its severity. The virtues which tends to success in war were also enforced by the circumstances of Rome. A State contained within the walls of a single city and surrounded by cities, many of which were as powerful as itself, and with each of which it was liable to be at war, depended for its very existence upon the courage, bodily strength, and military training of all its citizens; and if the city was overcome in war, each of them was likely enough to be sold as a slave, or at the very best to be reduced to a position something like that of a serf. No wonder that under such circumstances consuls and dictators were content to hold the plough, and esteemed the success and victory of their country far more important to each of them than their possessions or their life.
But when Rome became the head of a widespread empire, the preservation of her early traditions became simply impossible. The contemporaries of Augustus well knew that from war (except, indeed, civil war) they had nothing to fear. The men of a generation earlier were no doubt vexed and provoked by the disastrous defeat of Crassus and the destruction of his army; but their personal comfort, nay, their very pride of superiority to all the world, was no way affected by it. How was it possible that they should really feel like their forefathers,
'When Romans in Rome's quarrelSpared neither land nor gold,Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,In the brave days of old?'
'When Romans in Rome's quarrel
Spared neither land nor gold,
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,
In the brave days of old?'
And, as for the more strictly moral traditions of the early Republicans, they were, from their nature, from the very first, of very limited application. Men who had never learned those glorious truths,
'Which sages would have died to learn,Now taught by cottage dames,'
'Which sages would have died to learn,
Now taught by cottage dames,'
that 'God hath made of one blood all nations of men on the face of the whole earth,' and (as the corollary from this) that 'God is no respecter of persons, but that in every nation, he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him,' were by no means offended at the supposition that there was a different rule of morality for men of different nations. Why not, as they had different gods? The virtues, then, on which they insisted, were duties, not of man as man to his Creator, but of Romans to Rome. They prized, not the virtue of chastity, but the honour of the Roman matron; not truth and good faith, but the oath to which the gods of Rome were invoked as witnesses. The chastity of a slave or a freedwoman or even a foreigner, was of no value. Men, to whom the Roman was not bound by an oath taken before the gods of his country, had no rights. It was an essential part of this system that men could not, if they would, transplant themselves at will from the allegiance of the gods and of the moral traditions of their fathers to those of another nation. It was on this principle that in the earliest times marriages between citizens of different cities were forbidden, and for the same reasoneven those between a patrician of Rome and a plebeian.
Now, when many nations were welded together into a single empire, the whole of this tradition broke down. Arnold remarks it as one great political benefit of Christianity, that by 'providing a fixed moral standard independent of human law, it allows human law to be altered, as circumstances may require, without destroying thereby the greatest sanction of human conduct.' What, then, was the situation of a Roman, when the mingling together of all nations had effectually destroyed all idea of the sanctity of the original traditions of any—his own included—and yet he had found no 'moral standard independent' of them. It is not too much to say that he was left without moral standard at all. Patriotism and the tradition of their fathers had become a name to men who could hardly be said to have any 'fatherland,' and whose country was the civilized world, and they had no higher principle to supply their place.
In this utter break-down of all fixed principles which, in a heathen age, necessarily resulted from the substitution of one great empire for a multitude of minute republics; and in the complete isolation in which it left every individual, when he lost the idea of that duty to his country and his country's traditions which had been the moral law of his ancestors, M. de Champagny sees the explanation of the fact, so hard to account for, that men whose fathers had been proud nobles of free and lordly Rome should have submitted as they did to such a tyranny as that of Tiberius. For his was not one of those which are supported by the sword. In Italy he had only about 9,000 men under arms, and even they were scattered in the neighbourhood of the city. Yet the Senate allowed itself to be decimated, its chief members cut off day by day. It seems as if each man thought only of himself, and calculated that although, of course, none could be safe, he was safer by remaining quiet, and taking his chance, than he would be by boldly appealing to the Senate and people to put an end to the protracted massacre, by depriving the tyrant of his power.
The circumstance which, perhaps, is most revolting to our feelings as Englishmen in the tyranny of the bad Emperor is, that it was hardly possible to draw a line between an execution and an assassination. A great man, untried, nay, so far as he knew, unaccused, was suddenly roused from his sleep by the arrival of half a dozen soldiers, who came to put him to death on the spot, or, perhaps, as a great favour, to bring him the commands of the Emperor that he should kill himself. How does this differ from an assassination, except in the assured impunity of the murderers? Yet, so common was it, that when the Emperor Pertinax was suddenly awakened on the night in which Commodus had been slain, by those who brought him the offer of the purple, he took for granted that he was to die. The feelings with which we regard such proceedings have been formed by the immemorial law of our country (which not even Henry VIII., in his wildest excess of tyranny, ever dared to violate, except in a few cases, in which he obtained an Act of Parliament, to authorize its violation)—that no man can be condemned without trial. The Roman law, during the best days of the Republic, carried the notion of 'strong government' farther than even our neighbours in France would like. Within the walls of Rome there was an appeal to the people from the sentence of any magistrate; everywhere else, a consul or other officer holding the 'imperium' might order whom he pleased to be beheaded by his lictors, without trial. This, no doubt, was because, outside the city, the office of a Roman consul was purely military. But this 'martial law' prepared men's minds for the abuse of the same discretion within the city itself by the Cæsars, whose position, as everybody knows, was, legally, only that they were servants of the Republic, privileged to hold a number of offices at the same time, and for years together. They, therefore, naturally inherited and abused the discretion of the old magistrates.
When such power fell into the hands of a Caligula or a Commodus, who would not take the trouble of governing, it was really little more than an entire exemption of the Cæsars from all law and all restraints. The government seems to have gone on throughout the Roman Empire much as usual. But there was in Rome itself one miserable youth, mad with absolute licence, who could with impunity order the murder of any one whom it struck his fancy to destroy, for any cause, or for no cause, or because he was in want of money, and might take the property of any one he was pleased to murder.
It was but for a time comparatively short that this state of things lasted. Still, under the best reigns, one can hardly doubt, that there must have been an uneasy feeling in the mind of the Emperor, as well as of his subjects, that his successor might renew the times of Caligula or Nero. Under the Antonines, perhaps, when there was a long succession of good governors for more than eighty years without interruption, men may have learned to look back on such things as belonging exclusively to a by-gone age. Butthey were too soon undeceived, after the death of Marcus Aurelius had left the succession open to his unworthy son. Yet the crimes even of the worst of the Cæsars affected Rome, not the world, and, indeed, in Rome itself, almost exclusively a single class—the senators and the rich. They seem, therefore, hardly to have been considered as an interruption of the general felicity of the Pax Romana; any more than an epidemic of cholera in our own days, which for a moment strikes terror upon the city which it attacks, but is forgotten almost as soon as it passes away.
Nothing so effectually blinds even the naturally clearest sight as moral perversion. Over the very soul of Gibbon, strange to say, this Egyptian darkness brooded so thick, that after intelligently studying this vast, pathetic, and most instructive history, the only practical lesson he drew from it was, that the great corruptor of human society is—Peace. He says, 'It was scarcely possible that the eyes of contemporaries should discover in the public felicity the latent causes of decay and corruption. This long peace, and the uniform government of the Romans, introduced a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the Empire,' and the effects of this poison he traces in the 'decline of courage and genius, and in general degeneracy.' Strange that he could imagine that war and bloodshed are the only conceivable prophylactics against self-indulgence, luxury, and unmanly sloth. Within the last few months we have had a remarkable proof of the contrary. For fifty years after Waterloo, Prussia enjoyed profound peace. France, to mention no other wars, had a continual school of war in Algeria. Yet, though the French are as brave as the Germans, they have been unable to stand against them for an hour in the present war; because the tone of the governing class and of the army had been undermined by the moral corruption of the Second Empire. Even if war was indispensable, no man knew better than Gibbon that the Roman frontiers were always in a chronic state of war. The lessons really taught by the history of the Roman Empire during the first century and a half, are so plain that one would hardly have thought they could be missed. Here was a great Empire upon which all the best gifts of God, in the purely natural order, had been poured with a lavish hand. It occupied all the fairest, most fruitful, and most illustrious regions of the globe, to which the climate and situation can never fail to attract intelligent travellers from all less favoured countries. The presiding races of that Empire, which gave their character to all the rest, were those whom God had made His instruments to convey to all nations the best gifts of Nature—the Greek, in whom were stored and preserved the richest powers of genius, art, eloquence and philosophy; the Roman, who has been the example and teacher of all nations, in the great principles of stability, law, and order. For the use and enjoyment of this Empire were stored all the accumulated wealth of literature, poetry, learning, philosophy and art, which all ages of the world had produced and treasured up. To complete the whole, it was exempted for generations together from the scourge of war. In one word, it had everything that God could give to man, except the supernatural gifts of Faith, Hope, and Charity. And the result showed, that, without these, all gifts of the natural order, however precious, were unavailing to preserve human society from utter decay and dissolution. It was not broken in pieces by the blows of foreign enemies, but died of its own inherent corruption. The most prominent visible effect of this corruption, which struck the eyes even of heathens, was that man's vices made void the primeval blessing, 'Be fruitful and multiply.' Plutarch, a Greek of the age of Trajan, lamented that all Greece in his day could not supply as many men as one of its smaller cities sent out to war four hundred years earlier. The decline of population in Rome itself was no less rapid and steady. And men died out, not because they were wasted by war, by pestilence, by famine, or by grinding tyranny, but because unrestrained self-indulgence dried up the very sources of increase. If there had been no barbarians to rush in and fill up the void, the Empire would have fallen in pieces for want of life enough to hold it together. Its history proved that the real causes of the ruin of States are not political, but moral and social, and that in nations, as in individuals, the words of the poet are most strictly fulfilled:—
'Thou art the source and centre of all minds,Their only point of rest, Eternal Word.From Thee departing they are lost, and roveAt random, without honour, hope, or peace;From Thee is all that soothes the life of man—His high endeavour, and his glad success,His strength to suffer, and his will to serve.But oh! Thou bounteous Giver of all good,Thou art of all Thy gifts Thyself the crown;Give what Thou canst, without Thee we are poor,And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.'
'Thou art the source and centre of all minds,
Their only point of rest, Eternal Word.
From Thee departing they are lost, and rove
At random, without honour, hope, or peace;
From Thee is all that soothes the life of man—
His high endeavour, and his glad success,
His strength to suffer, and his will to serve.
But oh! Thou bounteous Giver of all good,
Thou art of all Thy gifts Thyself the crown;
Give what Thou canst, without Thee we are poor,
And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.'
Art. II.—Theism—Desiderata in the Theistic Argument.
It is a philosophical commonplace that all human questioning leads back to ultimate truths which cannot be further analysed, and of which no other explanation can be given than thatthey exist. Every explanation of the universe rests and must rest on the inexplicable. The borders of the known and the knowable are fringed with mystery, and all the data of knowledge recede into it by longer or shorter pathways. Thus, while it is the very mystery of the universe that has given rise to human knowledge, by quickening the curiosity of man, it is the same mystery which prescribes a limit to his insight, which continues to overshadow him in his researches, and to girdle him, in his latest discoveries, with its veil. In wonder all philosophy is born; in wonder it always ends: and, to adopt a well-known illustration, our human knowledge is a stream of which the source is hid, and the destination unknown, although we may surmise regarding both.
But the mystery which thus envelopes the origin and the destination of the universe is not absolutely overpowering; nor does it lay an arrest on the human faculties in their efforts to understand that universe as a whole. Man strives to penetrate farther and farther into the shrine of nature, and records in the several sciences the stages of his progress. These sciences are of necessity inter-related and dependent. Each section of human knowledge has a doorway leading into these on either side, and one which opens behind into the region of first principles. Separate inquirers may content themselves with their special region of phenomena and its laws, which they seek to understand more perfectly and to interpret more clearly, and never so beyond their own domain. It is by such division of labour and concentration of aim that the achievements of modern science have been won. But it is only by forsaking the narrow region, and, without entering the borderland of some new science, receding behind it, and contemplating it from a distance, that its value as a contribution to our knowledge of the universe can be discerned. Each of the sciences has its own ideal, but the goal of universal science is the discovery of one ultimate principle which will be explanatory of all observed phenomenon.
And the speculative thinker has a similar aim. The perennial question of philosophy is the discovery of the central principle of Existence, its haunting problem is the ultimate explanation of the universe of being. The universe—what is it? whence is it? whither is it tending? can we know anything beyond the fleeting phenomena of its ever unfolding and ever varying history? Is its source, and therefore its central principle, accessible to our faculties of knowledge?
And this is the distinctive problem of rational theology. Philosophy and science both lead up to theology as the apex of human knowledge. The latter may be fitly called thescientia scientiarum. Questions as to the nature and origin of Life upon our planet, the nature of Force or energy, the problems of Substance and of Cause, the questions of the Absolute and Infinite, all centre in this, are all the several ways of expressing it from the point of view which the questioner occupies, 'What is the ultimate principle of the universe, theἀρχὴof all existence?' Speculative philosophy and science deal proximately, it is true, with the problems of finite existence, existence as presented to us in the surrounding universe, and the laws which regulate it; but they covertly imply and remotely lead up to the question we have stated. They are the several approaches to that science which sits enthroned on the very summit of human knowledge.
Nevertheless, the science of speculative theology is as yet lamentably incomplete. We have scores of treatises devoted to the subject, and numerous professed solutions of the problem. But we have not, in the English language, a single treatise which even contemplates a philosophical arrangement and classification of the various theories, actual and possible, upon the subject. It is otherwise with the great questions of intellectual and ethical philosophy. We have elaborate and almost exhaustive schemes of theories on the nature of perception, or our knowledge of the external world, the laws of association, the problem of causality, and the nature of conscience. But we look in vain for any similar attempt to classify the several lines of argument, or possible modes of theistic proof, so as to present a tabular view of the various doctrines on this subject. We are limited to the well-known but precarious scheme of proofsà prioriandà posteriori,[11]and to the more accurate classification of Kant, the ontological, the cosmological, and the physico-theological proofs, with his own argument from the moral faculty or practical reason. In addition, we are not aware of any English treatise specially devoted to the history of thisbranch of philosophical literature, with the exception of a brief essay by Dr. Waterland, in which he traverses a small section of the whole area; and that not as the historian of philosophical opinion, but in the interest of a special theory.[12]
The present condition of 'natural theology' in England is scarcely creditable to the critical insight of the British mind. There has been little earnest grappling with the problem in the light of the past history of opinions; and traditionary stock-proofs have been relied upon with a perilous complacency. The majority of theologians trust to an utterly futile and treacherous argument, from what has long been termed 'final causes,' and when beaten from that field, at once by the rigour of speculative thought and the march of the inductive sciences, the refuge that is taken in the region of our moral nature is scarcely less secure, while the character of the theistic argument from conscience is suffered to remain in the obscurity which still shrouds it.
In the following pages we propose to show the invalidity of some of the popular modes of proof, and to suggest a few desiderata in the future working out of the problem.
It may be useful to preface our criticism by a classification of the various theistic theories, rather as a provisional chart of opinion, than as an exhaustive summary of all the arguments which have been advanced, or of all possible varieties in the mode of proof. Many thinkers, perhaps the majority, and notably the mediæval schoolmen, have combined several distinct lines of evidence; and have occasionally borrowed from a doctrine which they explicitly reject some of the very elements of their argument. They have often forsaken their own theory at a crisis, and not observed their departure from the data on which they profess exclusively to build.
The first class of theories are strictlyontologicalorontotheological. They attempt to prove the objective existence of Deity from the subjective notion of necessary existence in the human mind, or from the assumed objectivity of space and time which they interpret as the attributes of a necessary substance.
The second are thecosmologicalorcosmo-theologicalproofs. They essay to prove the existence of a supreme self-existent cause from the mere fact of the existence of the world, by the application of the principle of causality. Starting with the postulate of any single existence whatsoever, the world or anything in the world, and proceeding to argue backwards or upwards, the existence of one supreme cause is held to be 'a regressive inference' from the existence of these effects. As there cannot be, it is alleged, an infinite series of derived or dependent effects, we at length reach the infinite or uncaused cause. This has been termed the proof from contingency, as it rises from the contingent to the necessary, from the relative to the absolute. But the cosmological proof may have a threefold character, according as it is argued: 1. That the necessary is the antithesis of the contingent; or, 2. That because some being now exists, some being must have always existed; or, 3. That because we now exist and have not caused ourselves, some cause adequate to produce us, must also now exist.
A third class of proofs are somewhat inaccurately termedphysico-theological, a phrase equally descriptive of them and of those last mentioned. They are ratherteleologicalorteleotheological. The former proof started from any finite existence. It did not scrutinise its character, but rose from it to an absolute cause, by a direct mental leap or inference. This scrutinises the effect, and finds traces of intelligence within it. It detects the presence or the vestiges of mind in the particular effect it examines, viz., the phenomena of the world, and from them it infers the existence of Deity. One branch of it is the popular argument from design, or adaptation in nature, the fitness of means to ends implying, it is said, an architect or designer. It may be calledtechno-theology, and is variously treated according as the technologist (α) starts from human contrivance and reasons to nature, or (β) starts from nature's products and reasons toward man. Another branch is the argument from the order of the universe, from the types or laws of nature, indicating, it is said, an orderer or law-giver, whose intelligence we thus discern. It is not, in this case, that the adjustment of means to ends proves the presence of a mind that has adjusted these. But the law itself, in its regularity and continuity, implies a mind behind it, an intelligence animating the otherwise soulless universe. It might be termednomo-theologyortypo-theology. Under the same general category may be placed the argument from animal instinct, which is distinct at once from the evidence of designand that of law or typical order. To take one instance: The bee forms its cells, following unconsciously, and by what we term 'instinct,' the most intricate, mathematical, laws. There is mind, there is thought in the process; but whose mind, whose thought? Not the animal's, because it is not guided by experience. The result arrived at is a result which could be attained by man only through the exercise of reason of the very highest order. And the question arises, are we not warranted in supposing that a hidden pilot guides the bee, concealed behind what we call its instinct. We do not, meanwhile, discuss the merit of this argument; but merely indicate the difference between it and the argument from design, and that from law and order. It is not a question of the adjustment of phenomena. It is the demand of the intellect for a cause adequate to account for a unique phenomenon. It approaches the cosmo-theological argument as closely as it approaches the techno-theological one; yet it is different from both. The cosmo-theological rises from any particular effect, and by a backward mental bound reaches an infinite first cause. The techno-theological attempts to rise from the adjustment of means to ends, to an adjuster or contriver. This simply asks, whence comes the mind that is here in operation, perceived by its effects?
The next class of arguments are based upon the moral nature of man. They may be termed in generalethico-theological; and there are, at least, two main branches in this line of proof. The former is the argument from conscience as a moral law, pointing to Another above it; the law that is 'in us, yet not of us'—not the 'autonomy' of Kant, but atheonomy—bearing witness to a legislator above. It is the moral echo within the soul of a Voice louder and vaster without. And, as evidence, it is direct and intuitive, not inferential. The latter is the argument of Kant, (in which he was anticipated by several, notably by Raimund of Sabunde.) It is indirect and inferential, based upon the present phenomena of our moral nature. The moral law declares that evil is punishable and to be punished, that virtue is rewardable and to be rewarded; but in this life they are not so: therefore, said Kant, there must be a futurity in which the rectification will take place, and a moral arbiter by whom it will be effected.
Finally, there is the argument, which, when philosophically unfolded, is the only unassailable stronghold of theism, its impregnable fortress, that ofintuition. As it is simply the utterance or attestation of the soul in the presence of the Object which it does not so much discover by searching, asapprehend in the art of revealing itself, it may be called (keeping to the analogy of our former terms)eso-theologicaloresoterico-theological. It is not an argument, an inference, a conclusion. It is an attestation, the glimpse of a reality which is apprehended by the instinct of the worshipper, and through the poet's vision, as much as by the gaze of the speculative reason. It is not the verdict of one part of human nature, of reason, or the conscience, the feelings, or the affections; but of the whole being, when thrown into the poise or attitude of recognition, before the presence of the self-revealing object. There are several phases of this, which we term the eso-theological proof. We see its most rudimental traces in the polytheism of the savage mind, and its unconsciouspersonificationof nature's forces. When this crude conception of diverse powers in partial antagonism gives place to the notion of one central power, the instinct asserts itself in the common verdict of the common mind as to One above, yet kindred to it. It is attested by the feeling of dependence, and by the instinct of worship, which witnesses to some outward object corresponding to the inward impulse, in analogy with all the other instincts of our nature. It is farther attested by the poet's interpretation of nature, the verdict of the great seers, that the universe is pervaded by a supreme Spirit, 'haunted for ever by the eternal mind.' We find its highest attestation in that consciousness of the Infinite itself which is man's highest prerogative as a rational creature. We have thus the following chart of theistic theories.
In addition, we might mention several subsidiary or sporadic proofs which have little or no philosophical relevancy, butwhich have some theological suggestiveness, viz., 1. The historical consensus. 2. The felicity of the theist. 3. The testimony of revelation.
It is unnecessary to discuss all these alleged proofs at length; but the powerlessness of the most of them to establish the transcendent fact they profess to reach, demands much more serious thought than it has yet received.
The ontological proof has always possessed a singular fascination for the speculative mind. It promises, and would accomplish so much, if only it were valid. It would be so powerful, if only it were conclusive. But had demonstration been possible, the theistic argument, like the proofs of mathematics, would have carried conviction to the majority of thinkers long ago. The historical failure is signal. Whether in the form in which it was originally cast by Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas, or in the more elaborate theory of Descartes, or as presented by the ponderous English minds of Cudworth, Henry More, and Dr. Samuel Clarke, it is altogether apetitio principii. Under all its modifications, it reasons from the necessary notion of God, to his necessary existence; or from the necessary existence of space and time, which are assumed to be the properties or attributes of a substance, to the necessary existence of that substance. A purely subjective necessity of the reason is carried from within, and held conclusive in the realm of objective reality. But the very essence of the problem is the discovery of a valid pathway by which to pass from the notions of the intellect to the realities of the universe beyond it; we may not, therefore, summarily identify the two, and at the outset take the existence of the one as demonstrative of the other. In the affirmation of real existence we pass from the notion that has entered the mind (or is innate), to the realm of objective being, which exists independently of us who affirm it; and how to pass warrantably from the ideal world within to the real world without is the very problem to be solved. To be valid at its starting-point, the ontological argument ought to prove that the notion of God is so fixed in the very root of our intelligent nature that it cannot be dislodged from the mind; and this some thinkers, such as Clark, have had the hardihood to affirm. To be valid as it proceeds, it ought to prove that the notion thus necessary in thought, has a real counterpart in the realm of things, in order to vindicate the step it so quietly takes from the ideal notion to the world of real existence. It passes from thought to things, as it passes from logical premiss to conclusion. But to be logical, it must rest contented with an ideal conclusion deduced from its ideal premises. And thus, the only valid issue of the ontological argument is a system of absolute idealism, of which the theological corollary is pantheism. But as this is not the Deity the argument essays to reach, it must be pronounced illogical throughout.
Thus the ontological argument identifies the logical and the real. But the illicit procedure in which it indulges would be more apparent than it is toà prioritheorists, if the object they imagine they have reached were visible in nature, and apprehensible by the senses. To pass from the ideal to the real sphere by a transcendant act of thought is seen at once to be unwarrantable in the case of sense-perception. In this case, it is the presence of the object that alone warrants the transition, else we should have as much right to believe in the real existence of the hippogriff as in the reality of the horse. But when the object is invisible, and is at the same time the supreme being in the universe, the speculative thinker is more easily deceived. We must, therefore, in every instance ask him, where is the bridge from the notion to the reality? What is the plank thrown across the chasm which separates these two regions, (to use an old philosophical phrase) 'by the whole diameter of being?' We can never, by any vault of logic pass from the one to the other. We are imprisoned within the region of mere subjectivity in allà prioridemonstration, and how to escape from it, is (as we said before) the very problem to be solved.
Anselm, who was the first to formulate the ontological proof, argued that our idea of God is the idea of a being than whom we can conceive nothing greater. But inasmuch as real existence is greater than mere thought, the existence of God is guaranteed in the very idea of the most perfect being; otherwise the contradiction of one still more perfect would emerge. The error of Anselm was the error of his age, the main blot in the whole mediæval philosophy. It first seemed to him that reason and instinctive faith were separated by a wide interval. He then wished to have a reason for his faith, cast in the form of a syllogism. And he failed to see, or adequately to understand, that all demonstrative reasoning hangs upon axiomatic truths which cannot be demonstrated, not because they are inferior to reason, but because they are superior to reasoning—the pillars upon which all ratiocination rests. This was his first mistake. Dissatisfied with the data upon which all reasoning hangs, he preferred the stream to the fountain-head, while he thought (contradictory as it is) thatby going down the streamhe could reach the fountain! But his second mistake was the greater of the two. He confounded the necessities of thought with the necessities of the universe. He passedwithout a warrantfrom his own subjective thought to the region of objective reality. And it has been the same with all who have since followed him in this ambitious path. But after witnessing the elaborate tortures to which the mediæval theologians subjected their intellects in the process, we see their powers fail, and the chasm still yawning between the abstract notions of the mind and the concrete facts of the universe. It is remarkable that any of them were satisfied with the accuracy of their reasonings. We can explain it only by the intellectual habit of the age, and the (misread) traditions of the Stagyrite. They made use, unconsciously, of that intuition which carries us across the gulf, and they misread the process by which they reached the other side. They set down to the credit of their intellect what was due to the necessities of the moral nature, and the voice of the heart.
Descartes was the most illustrious thinker, who, at the dawn of modern philosophy, developed the scholastic theism. While inaugurating a new method of experimental research, he nevertheless retained the most characteristic doctrine of mediæval ontology. He argues that necessary existence is as essential to the idea of an all-perfect being, as the equality of its three angles to two right angles is essential to the idea of a triangle. But though he admits that his 'thought imposes no necessity on things,' he contradicts his own admission by adding, 'I cannot conceive God except as existing, and hence it follows that existence is inseparable from him.' In his 'Principles of Philosophy' we find the following argument:—
'As the equality of its three angles to two right angles is necessarily comprised in the idea of the triangle, the mind is firmly persuaded that the three angles of a triangleareequal to two right angles;sofrom its perceiving necessary and external existence to be comprised in the idea which it has of an all-perfect being, it ought manifestly to conclude that this all-perfect being exists.'—(Pt. i. sec. 14.)
This argument is more formally expounded in his 'Reply to Objections to the Meditations,' thus:—
'Proposition I. The existence of God is known from the consideration of His nature alone. Demonstration: To say that an attribute is contained in the nature or in the concept of a thing, is the same as to say that this attribute is true of this thing, and that it may be affirmed to be in it. But necessary existence is contained in the nature or the concept of God. Hence, it may be with truth affirmed that necessary existence is in God, or that God exists.'
A slight amount of thought will suffice to show that in this elaborate array of argumentation, Descartes is the victim of a subtle fallacy. Our conception of necessary existence cannot include the fact of necessary existence, for (to repeat what we have already said) the one is an ideal concept of the mind, the other is a fact of real existence. The one demands an object beyond the mind conceiving it, the other does not. All that the Cartesian argument could prove would be that the mental concept was necessary, not that the concept had a counterpart in the outer universe. It is, indeed, a necessary judgment that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, because this isan identical proposition; the subject and the predicate are the same, the one being only an expansion of the other. We cannot, therefore, destroy the predicate and leave the subject intact. But it is otherwise when we affirm that any triangular objectexists, we may then destroy the predicate 'existence,' and yet leave the subject (the notion of the triangle) intact in the mind.
It is true that Descartes has not limited himself to this futileà prioridemonstration. He has buttressed his formal ontology by a much more suggestive though logically as inconclusive an argument. He again reasons thus in his 'Principles:' We have the idea of an all-perfect being in the mind, but whence do we derive it? It is impossible that we can have an idea of anything, unless there be an original somewhere in the universe whence we derive it, as the shadow is the sign of a substance that casts it. But it is manifest that the more perfect cannot arise from the less perfect, and that which knows something more perfect than itself is not the cause of its own being. Since, therefore, we ourselves are not so perfect as the idea of perfection which we find within us, we are forced to believe that this idea in us is derived from a more perfect being above us, and consequently that such a being exists.
It will be observed that this second argument of Descartes is partly cosmological,—though ultimately it merges in the ontological, and falls back upon it for support. Hence, Descartes himself called it anà posterioriargument. And it may therefore serve as a link of connection and transition to the second class of arguments.
But before passing to these, we may observe that all theà prioritheorists, professingto conduct us to the desired conclusion on the level road of demonstration (while they all contradict their own principles, and furtively introduce the contingent facts of experience), have but a faint conception of the magnitude of the question at issue. To work out a demonstration as with algebraic formulæ, to contemplate the problem as one of mathematical science, under the light and guidance of the reason alone, and unaided by the moral intuitions, betokens a lack of insight into the very problem in question. The object of which we are in search is not a blank colourless abstraction, or necessary entity. Suppose that a supreme existence were demonstrable, that bare entity is not the God of theism, the infinite Intelligence and Personality, of whose existence the human spirit desires some assurance, if it can be had. And a formal demonstration of a primitive source of existence (more geometrico) is of no theological value. It is an absolute zero, inaccessible alike to the reason and to the heart, before which the human spirit freezes; and as a mereultimatumits existence is conceded by every philosophic school.
The germs of the cosmological argument (as of the ontological) are found in the scholastic philosophy, though its elaboration was left to the first and second periods of the modern era. Diodorus of Tarsus, John Damascenus, Hugo of St. Victor, and Peter of Poitiers, have each contributed to the development of this mode of proof. It is the argumentà contingentia mundi, orex rerum mutabilitate; and may be briefly stated thus: If the contingent exists, the necessary also exists. I myself, the world, the objects of sense, are contingent existences, and there must be a cause of these, which cause must be also an effect. Go back, therefore, to the cause of that cause, and to its cause again, and you must at length pause in the regress; and by rising to a First Clause, you escape from the contingent and reach the necessary. From the observation of the manifold sequences of nature you rise to the causal fountain-head, as you cannot travel backwards for ever along an infinite line of dependent sequences.
But this argument is as illusory as the ontological one, from which, indeed, it borrows its strength, and of which it shares the weakness. For why should we ever pause in the regressive study of the phenomena of the universe, of which we only observe the slow evolution through immeasurable time? How do we reach a fountain-head at all? We are not warranted in saying that because we cannot think out an endless regress of infinite antecedents,thereforewe must assume a first cause. For that assumption of theἀρχὴ, of an uncaused cause, when we have wearied ourselves in mounting the steps of the ladder of finite agency, is to the speculative reason equally illicit as is its assumption while we are standing on the first round of the ladder. Why should we not assume it, step over to it at the first, if we may do so, or are compelled to do so, at the last? The argument starts from the concrete and works its way backward along the channel of the concrete, till it turns round, bolts up, takes wing, and 'suddenly scales the height.' The speculative reason at length essays to cross over the chasm between the long series of dependent sequences, and the original or uncreated cause; but it does so furtively. It crosses over by an unknown path to an unknown source, supposed to be necessary.
But again, what light is cast by this ambitious regress on the nature of the fountain-head. How is the being we are supposed to have reached at length, the source of that series of effects which are supposed to have sprung from his creative fiat? If we experienced a difficulty in our regress in connecting the last link of the chain with thecausa causans, we experience the same or a counter-difficulty in our descent, in connecting the first link of the chain with the creative energy. And how, it may be asked, do we connect that supreme cause with intelligence, or with personality? We have called the assumption of thisἀρχὴa leap in the dark, and we ask how can we ever escape from the phenomenal series of effects which we perceive in nature, to the noumenal source of which we are in search? By the observation of what is or what has been, we merely ascend backwards in time, through the ever-changing forms of phenomenal energy (our effects being but developed causes, and our causes potential effects), but we never reach a noumenal source. That is reserved for the flight of the speculative reason vainly soaring into the empyrean, beyond the very atmosphere of thought.
The admission thatsome kindof being or substance must have always existed in the universe, is the common property of all the systems of philosophy. Materialist and idealist, theist and atheist, alike admit it, but its admission istheologically worthless. 'The notion of a God,' says Sir William Hamilton, in his admirable manner, 'is not contained in the notion of a mere first cause; for, in the admission of a first cause, atheist and theist are as one.' The being that is assumed to exist is, therefore, a mere blank essence, a zero, an 'everything = nothing,' so far as this argument can carry us. Nature remainsa fathomless abyss, telling us nothing of its whence and whither. It is still the fountain-head of inscrutable mystery, which overshadows and overmasters us. Thenatura naturatacasts no light on thenatura naturans. The systole and diastole of the universe goes on; the flux and reflux of its phenomena are endless. That something always was, every one admits. The question between the rival philosophic schools is as to what that something was and is. We may choose to call it 'the first cause,' (an explanation which implies that our notion of endless regression has broken down) and we may say that we have reached the notion of an uncaused cause. But is that a notion at all? Is it intelligible, conceivable? Do we not, in the very assumption, bid farewell to reason, and fall back on some form of faith?
Finally, the moment that supposed cause is reached, does not the principle that was supposed to bring us to it break down? And by thus destroying the bridge behind us, the very principle of casuality which was valid in our progress and ascent, valid in the limited area of experience—now emptied of all philosophical meaning when we desert experience and rise to the transcendental—invalidates the whole series of effects which are supposed to have sprung from it? We need not rise above any single event, contingent and finite, to any other event as the proximate cause of it; if, when we have essayed to carry out the regress, we stop short, and, cryingεὕρηκα, congratulate ourselves that we have at length reached an uncaused cause.
Thus when the cosmological theorist asks: Does the universe contain its own cause within itself? and answering in the negative, asserts that it must therefore have sprung from a supra-mundane source, we may validly reply, may it not have been eternal? May not its history be but the ceaseless evolution, the endless transformation of unknown primeval forces? So far as this argument conducts us, we affirm that it may. And to pass from the present contingent state of the universe to its originating source, the theorist must make use of the ontological inference, of which we have already indicated the double flaw. There is one point of affinity between all forms of the cosmological and ontological arguments. They all profess to reach a necessary conclusion. They are not satisfied with the contingent or the probable. But the notion of necessity is a logical notion of the intellect. It exists in thought alone. Whoever, therefore, would escape from that ideal sphere must forego the evidence of necessity. Real existence is not and never can be synonymous with necessary existence. For necessary existence is always ideal. It is reached by a formal process. It is the product of pure thought.