Mr. Darwin, like every really truth-loving controversialist, far from desiring to shroud, invites special attention to any seeming weaknesses in his position; and, therefore,when contending that all the faculties commonly classed as instincts, are exclusively due to natural selection, of course takes care to particularise the cellmaking faculty of the hive bee. And here, again, I gladly bear my humble testimony to the partial success he has achieved. Although bound to protest against the claim set up by him, on behalf of natural selection, to the entire credit of producing the hive bee's most remarkable characteristic, I cannot but think he has succeeded in removing all the apparent difficulties of believing that natural selection's share may have been not less important in that than in any other productive operation in which it takes part.
In popular estimation the hive bee is a heaven-born mathematician which, having been set the problem how to fill a given space with waxen cells with the least loss of room and expenditure of material, arrives by intuition and instantaneously at a solution which Newton himself was ignorant of, and to which, but for his discovery of the fluxional calculus, it would have been impossible for his follower, Maclaurin, to attain. And, doubtless, it may excusably be deemed supernatural that the insect should adopt off-hand precisely that six-sided figure, and precisely that inclination of the angles of the same figure's pyramidal roof or floor, which, only by very refined and recondite investigation, can be scientifically shown to be those best fitted for the purpose. Mr. Darwin has, however, adduced strong grounds for supposing the amazing architectural skill thus displayed to have been acquired, not suddenly, but by the same slow degrees as those which are so clearly traceable throughout organic progress in general. At the lower end of a short apiary series, he observed humble bees using their old cocoonsfor honey pots, sometimes adding to them short tubes of wax, and likewise making separate and very irregular cells entirely of wax. At the higher end of the series, he saw hive bees making double layers of cells, each cell an hexagonal prism with the basal ends of its six sides bevelled so as to fit on to a pyramid formed of three rhombs, and each of the three rhombs which compose the pyramidal base of a single cell on one side of the comb entering into the composition of one of the three adjoining cells on the opposite side. Intermediately, he found the Mexicanmeliponæ domesticædepositing their honey in cells nearly spherical, and of nearly equal sizes. 'These cells, although aggregated into a mass otherwise irregular, are always at such a degree of nearness to each other that they would have intersected or broken into each other if the spheres had been completed. But this is never permitted, the bees building perfectly flat walls of wax between the spheres which thus tend to intersect. Hence, each cell consists of an outer spherical portion, and of two, three, or more, perfectly flat surfaces, according as the cell adjoins two, three, or more cells; and when one cell rests on three others, as from the spheres being nearly of the same size is very frequently and necessarily the case, the three flat surfaces are united into a pyramid rudely resembling the three-sided pyramidal base of the hive bee's cell, and necessarily enter, like the three rhombs of the latter, into the construction of three adjoining cells.' Reflecting on these remarkable gradations, it occurred to Mr. Darwin that if the melipona were to make its spheres of precisely equal sizes, and to arrange them symmetrically in double layers, and were further so to dispose them as that the centre of each should be at the distance ofradius × √2 or radius × 1.41421 from the centres of the six surrounding spheres in the same layer, and at the same distance from the centres of the adjoining spheres in the other and parallel layer—then 'if planes of intersection between the several spheres on both layers were formed, there would result a double layer of hexagonal prisms united together by pyramidal bases formed of three rhombs; and the rhombs and the sides of the hexagonal prisms would have every angle identically the same with the best measurements that have been made of the cells of the hive bee.' Then, submitting this view to Professor Miller of Cambridge, he had the gratification of being assured by that distinguished geometer that it was strictly correct. Certainly a very happy example of an ingenious conjecture verified by a species of demonstration hardly inferior to the experimental. Certainly a very valuable testimony to the soundness of all the main and really essential principles of Darwinism. Good cause, certainly, is hereby shown for believing that the cell-making faculty of the hive bee may be nothing more than the aggregate of many minute and successive improvements upon that of the melipona, and this, again, than a similar aggregate of improvements on that of the humble bee; and for believing further that hive bee and melipona may both be either descendants from the humble bee, or joint-descendants with it from some still earlier common progenitor. In order to believe this it suffices to believe that a bee which at one period made, like the humble bee, cells very unequally sized and irregularly rounded, came gradually, in the course of time, to make them as nearly equal in size and as nearly spherical as those of the melipona; and subsequently, during a further lapse of time, came to arrange themat the same distances from each other, and in double layers like those of the humble bee. To assume thus much requires no inordinate stretch of faith; and thus much being assumed, it is seen at once that the hive bee, requiring for its cells only about half as much wax as the humble bee does, and consequently only about half as much honey for the secretion of the requisite wax, would, in a struggle for existence, leave the humble bee so little chance that in all probability the two species would nowhere coexist, were it not for the special resource derived by the humble bee from possession of a trunk long enough to enter the nectaries of certain flowers, which the shorter trunk of the hive bee is unable to tap. But though there be no difficulty in assuming the improvements in question to have gradually taken place, and to have become aggregated in the manner supposed, there is, to my mind, an insuperable objection to supposing that successive generations of bees should have successively adopted the improvements without either having the sense to know what they were doing, or being prompted by some superior intelligence that did know. I will not be so superfluous as to exaggerate the difficulty. Passing over the earlier stages of the process, and confining myself to one or two of the later, I will content myself with showing how infinitesimally small, when magnified to the utmost, are the chances in favour of these having been passed through blindly. I will admit it to be possible that in a society of purely meliponish habits, there might, in virtue of one or other of those inscrutable causes classed under the general name of spontaneous variation, arise some two or three individuals with an innate propensity to make accurately spherical and equally sized cells; that theseindividuals, if either males or fertile females, and not sterile neuters, might help to generate others with the same propensity, these again generating others, and so on, until the greater part or the whole of the community became possessed of the same constructive aptitude. I will admit further that, in virtue of the same inscrutable causes, individuals, at first few, but gradually increasing in number, might similarly be born with the additional tendency to make cells at the same, and that the most appropriate, distance from all adjoining cells; and will freely acknowledge that the bees, modifying their previous mode of construction, as meliponæ necessarily would do under these altered circumstances, would construct a layer of cells similar in all respects to those on one side of the hive bee's comb, except that their bases would be flat instead of pyramidal. Further, I admit that the bases would become pyramidal in case the bees should set about constructing double instead of single layers of cells on the same principle. Not a little liberality is required for these admissions. For, in the first place, the fact of the bees having acquired the habit of making perfect and equally sized spheres would not of itself be of any obvious benefit either to individual bees or to the society at large: in order that it should enable material and labour to be saved it would have to be accompanied by the habit of making the cells at special distances from each other. And, in the second place, though some few individuals should present themselves with an innate tendency to choose these special distances, whatever advantage might result therefrom, whatever saving of material or labour, would be shared in equally by the whole community, the particular individuals to whom it was due benefitingby it no more than any of the rest, and not being, in consequence, more likely than they to survive in any struggle for existence, or to leave behind them offspring inheriting their special characteristics. No help, therefore, can be derived from Mr. Darwin's principles towards conjecturing why a small minority of such specially endowed bees should be gradually converted into a majority, and should eventually constitute the whole community, thereupon becoming in fact converted into a new species. Let us, however, liberally waive this and all similar objections, and assume a community of hive bees to have been, in the utterly unaccountable manner indicated by the term spontaneous variation, developed from a meliponish stock. Unfortunately, all our liberality will be found to have been thrown away without perceptibly simplifying the problem to be solved. For, whatever be among meliponæ the distribution of the generative capacities, among hive bees, at any rate, all workers are sterile neuters, which never have any offspring to whom to bequeath their cellmaking skill, while the queen bee and drones, which alone can become parents, have no such skill to bequeath. Clearly the formula of 'descent with modification by natural selection,' is, in its literal sense, utterly inapplicable here. In whatever manner the cell-making faculty might have been acquired by the first homogeneous swarm of hive bees, it must inevitably have terminated with the generation with which it commenced, if transmission by direct descent had been necessary for its continuance. The only resource open to Mr. Darwin is to suppose, not merely (what is, indeed, obviously the fact) that queen bee after queen bee, besides generating each in turn a progeny of workers endowed with instincts which theirparents did not possess and could not therefore impart, generated also princess bees destined in due season to generate a working progeny similarly endowed with instincts underived from their parents; but to suppose further that all this has happened in the total absence of aim, object, intention, or design. Now that all this should have so happened, although not absolutely inconceivable, nor, therefore, absolutely impossible, is surely too incredible to be believed except in despair of some other hypothesis a trifle less preposterous. It is surely not worth while to set the doctrine of probabilities so completely at naught, for the sake of an explanation which avowedly leaves every difficulty unexplained, referring them all to causes not simply unknown but unconjecturable. What excuse, then, have philosophers, of all people, for doing this in preference to the simple expedient of supposing that, although the parturient bee, queen or other, cannot intend that any of her progeny should be more bounteously endowed than herself, there is an independent intelligence that does so intend? To content oneself with pronouncing such preference to be eminently unscientific is tenderness of language nearly akin, I fear, to literary bathos.
I have said that the form of unbelief to which, on the principle of calling a spade a spade, I have taken the liberty of giving the name of Scientific Atheism, manifests itself now-a-days rather by ignoration than by formal denial of God. This, however, is not a new feature in any atheism really worthy of being styled scientific. Even as Mr. Darwin verbally recognises a Creator, althoughwithout assigning to Him any share in creation, even so Kant, when more than a century ago undertaking, in his 'General Natural History and Theory of the Celestial Bodies,'[42]to account for the constitution and mechanical origin of the universe on Newtonian principles, spoke of the elements as deriving their essential qualities from the 'eternal thought of the Divine Intelligence,' without, however, crediting the said Intelligence with having interposed in order to carry out His thoughts. 'Give me matter,' he says, 'and I will build the world;' and without other data than diffused atoms of matter endowed with simple attractive and repulsive forces, he proceeds to expound a complete cosmogony.
He pictures to himself the universe as originally an infinite expansion of minutely subdivided matter, and supposing a single centre of attraction to be somewhere therein set up, he endeavours to show that the result must be a prodigious central body surrounded by systems of solar and planetary worlds in all stages of development. 'In vivid language,' says Professor Huxley,[43]'he describes the great world-maelstrom widening the margin of its prodigious eddy in the slow progress of millions of ages, gradually reclaiming more and more of the molecular waste, and converting chaos into cosmos.' Then, fixing his attention more particularly on our own system, he accounts for the relation between the masses and densities of the planets and their distances from the sun, for the eccentricity of their orbits, for their rotation, for their satellites, for the general agreement in the direction of rotation among the celestial bodies, for Saturn's ring, and for the zodiacal light. All this he does, according to Professor Huxley, by 'strict deduction from admitted dynamical principles,' and I, well aware of my own inability to form an independent judgment on the point, gladly take so high an authority's word for it. For aught that I know, Kant's attractive and repulsive forces being admitted, the establishment of centres of attraction, and of circle within circle of revolutions round them, and all his other details, would follow naturally and of course. I limit myself to asking, Whence these simple forces?—and when Kant replies, 'From the Eternal Thought of the Divine Understanding,' I should be the last to criticise if his answer stopped there. Unfortunately, he adds that the forces were 'evolved without purpose'; in other words, that the Intelligence which thought them into existence failed to think of any purpose for them. 'Matter,' he proceeds, 'is purelypassive, yet, nevertheless, has in its simplest state adeterminationtowards the assumption of a more perfect constitution in the way of natural development, whereby itbreaks uprest,stirsup nature, gives to chaos shape.' For the elements whereof this passively stirring up matter is composed 'have native powers of setting each other in motion, and are to themselves a spring of life;' and when, having of course being previously dead, they have given themselves life, they forthwith begin to attract each other with a strength varying with their varying degrees of specific gravity. The scattered elements of the denser sort collect by attraction all particles of less specific gravity out of their immediate neighbourhood, and are themselves similarly collected by particles of still densersort, these again by others denser yet, and so on, until, as results of this particular action, several masses are formed which in like manner would converge towards and be united with the largest and densest of their number, were it not that the counter principle of repulsion now comes into play. This principle—familiarly exemplified in the elasticity of vapours, the emanations from strong smelling substances, and the expansion of all spirituous substances—causes the vertical movements of the converging masses to be deflected laterally, so as ultimately to enclose the central mass within circles which, at first intersecting each other in all directions, are at length, by dint of mutual collision, made all to revolve in the same direction, and nearly the same plane.
Now I most earnestly protest against being suspected of what in me would be the intolerable impertinence of desiring to cast ridicule on these magnificent speculations, the grandeur of which I thoroughly appreciate so far as my scant mathematics enable me to follow them. I take exception to them only because the language in which they are couched seems to imply that operations, of whose nature one of the most powerful of human intellects could, at its utmost stretch, catch only a faint hazy inkling, may yet have been initiated and perfected without the intervention of any intellect at all. This is a falsism against which my respect for philosophy and philosophers makes me only all the more indignant when I find any of the latter falling into it, as those of them inevitably must who, busying themselves, early or late,
With a mighty debate,A profound speculation about the creationAnd organical life, and chaotical strife,With various notions of heavenly motions,And rivers and oceans, and valleys and mountains,And sources of fountains, and meteors on high,And stars in the sky,—propose by and bye,
like John Hookham Frere's Aristophanic Birds,
If we'll listen and hear,To make perfectly clear
how creation took place without a conscious Creator. All their fancied solutions of this hopeless puzzle have one feature in common—a family likeness which the wickedest wit finds it difficult to caricature. There is a note to Frere and Canning's 'Loves of the Triangles' which the reader will be grateful to me for transcribing here, the more frequently he may have laughed at it already, laughing now all the more, and laughing heartily at it now though he may never have before.
It begins by tracing the genesis or original formation ofSpaceto a single point, in the same manner as the elder Darwin had, in his 'Zoonomia,' traced the whole organized universe to his six Filaments. It represents this primeval Point orPinctum saliensof the universe, after 'evolving itself by its own energies, to have moved forwards in a right linead infinitumtill it grew tired.' Whereupon, 'the right line which it had generated would begin to put itself in motion in a lateral direction, describing an area of infinite extent. This area, as soon as it became conscious of its own existence, would begin to ascend or descend, according as its specific weight might determine, forming an immense solid space filled with vacuum, and capable of containing the present existing universe.'
Thus slow progressive points protract the line,As pendant spiders spin the filmy twine:Thus lengthened lines impetuous sweeping round,Spread the wide plane, and mark its circling bound;Thus planes, their substance with their motion grown,Form the huge cube, the cylinder, the cone.
It then proceeds as follows:—
'Spacebeing thus obtained, and presenting a suitablenidusor receptacle for thegenerationofchaotic matter, an immense deposit of it would gradually be accumulated; after which the filament of fire being produced in the chaotic mass by anidiosyncrasyorself-formed habitanalogous to fermentation, explosion would take place, suns would be shot from the central chaos, planets from suns, and satellites from planets. In this state of things, the filament of organization would begin to exert itself in those independent masses which, in proportion to their bulk, exposed the greatest surface to the action of light and heat. This filament, after an infinite series of ages, would begin to ramify, and its viviparous offspring would diversify their forms and habits so as to accommodate themselves to the variousincunabulawhich nature had prepared for them. Upon this view of things, it seems highly probable that the first effort of Nature terminated in the production of vegetables, and that these being abandoned to their own energies, by degrees detached themselves from the surface of the earth, and supplied themselves with wings and feet, according as their different propensities determined them in favour of aerial or terrestrial existence. Others, by an inherent disposition to society and civilisation, and by a stronger effort of volition, would become men. These in time would restrict themselves to the use of their hind feet; their tails would gradually rub off by sitting in their caves or huts as soon as they arrived at a domesticated state; they would invent language and the use of fire, with our present and hitherto imperfect system of society. In the meantime, theFuciandAlgæ, with the Corallines and Madrepores, would transform themselvesinto fish, and gradually populate all the submarine portions of the globe.'[44]
Although the writers of this delicious drollery seem to have had Dr. Erasmus Darwin only in view, they could not, we thus see, parody his peculiar crotchets without hitting off not less neatly some of the corresponding extravagances of both earlier and later expounders of Nature. Nature is a phrase which, greatly to the confusion of those who so employ it, is habitually used simultaneously in two quite opposite senses, so as to denote at the same time both the agency in virtue of whose action the universe exists, and likewise the universe itself which results from that action. Nature, in either signification, becomes to a great extent interpretable when the agency so designated is credited with sufficient sense to foresee and to intend the results of its own action. On that condition, although among the many unsolved problems she may continue to present there will be some evidently lying beyond the limits of human comprehension, there will be none running counter to human reason. Except on that condition, the universe is not simply uninterpretable, it is a bewildering assemblage of irreconcilable certainties. Philosophy's choice lies between such patent truisms as that there can be no force but living force, novisbutvis vivida, novis inertiæotherwise than metaphorically, and such blatant falsisms as that inertness and exertion may coincide, unintelligence generate intelligence, agency of whatsoever sort produce, merely by its own act, and merely out of its own essence, other agency capable of higher action than its own. Philosophy, when with these sets of alternatives before her she deliberately chooses the latter, becomesScientific Atheism, all the varieties of which have one point in common, resembling each other in their proneness to rush upon and embrace demonstrable impossibilities for the sake of avoiding a few things hard to be understood. One variety, however, the Comtist, far exceeds all the rest in the lengths to which it is carried by this propensity.
If, in speaking as I am about to do of Comtism, I commit—heedless of Mr. Lewes' solemn warning—the grave offence of speaking confidently about a writer whom I have never read, I may at least plead in extenuation of my fault, that, although my knowledge of that writer be confessedly merely an echo of what others have said of him, those others, at any rate, far from being his antagonists, are two of the most ardent of his not undiscriminating admirers. It is from Mr. Mill[45]and from Mr. Lewes[46]himself that I have derived the notions of Comtist philosophy that suggest to me the following notes.
I lay no stress on certain flaws in the fundamental propositions that 'we have no knowledge of anything but phenomena, and that our knowledge of phenomena is only relative, not absolute; that we know not the essence nor the real mode of production of any fact, but only its relations to other facts in the way of succession or similitude; that the constant resemblances which link phenomena together, and the constant sequences which unite them as antecedent and consequent, are all we know about them, and that their causes, whether efficient or final, are unknown and inscrutable.' I will only suggest that our mere consciousness of possessing some knowledge of phenomena is itself a knowledge distinct from the knowledge which constitutes its subject—distinct, that is, from the knowledge of phenomena; that if it were possible for us to be aware of only one single fact, we should know something about that fact, notwithstanding that there were no other facts which it could be perceived to have preceded or followed, or to which it could be likened, even as a polype with a stomach-ache would know something about a stomach-ache, although ignorant that it had a stomach, and oblivious of any former sensation, whether painful or pleasurable; and that if the causes of phenomena be utterly unknown, our ignorance of them ought not to be so signified as to sound like knowledge, as it does when resemblances are said to link, and sequences to unite, phenomena together, thereby warranting the inference that one phenomenon succeeds anotherbecausethe two are so linked and united.
These, however, are trifles—mere spots on the sun one might say, were but the surface on which they appear altogether sunlike—and I leave them without additional remark except that, although it may perhaps have been hypercritical to point them out, still the language of a new philosophy, claiming to supersede all old ones, ought to be proof even against hypercriticism. I pass on to a generalisation, termed by Mr. Mill 'the key to Comte's other generalisations: one on which all the others are dependent, and which forms the back-bone, so to speak, of his philosophy,' insomuch that 'unless it be true he has accomplished little.' This is the so much vaunted discovery that all human thought passes necessarily throughthree stages, beginning with the theological, and proceeding through the metaphysical to the positive. These three terms, however, in the novel sense in which they are used by Comte, stand very urgently in need of definition. By the theological is to be understood that stage of the mind in which the facts of the universe are regarded as governed by single and direct volitions of a being or beings possessed of life and intelligence. It is the stage in which winds are supposed to blow, seas to rage, trees to grow, and mountains to tower aloft, either because winds, seas, trees, and mountains are themselves alive and so act of their own accord; or because there is a spirit dwelling in each of them which desires that it shall so act; or because each separate class of objects is superintended by an out-dwelling divinity, which similarly desires; or, finally, because one single divinity, supreme over all things, initiates and maintains all the apparently spontaneous movements of inanimate bodies. In the metaphysical stage, phenomena are ascribed not to volitions, either sublunary or celestial, but to realised abstractions—to properties, qualities, propensities, tendencies, forces, regarded as real existences, inherent in but distinct from the concrete bodies in which they reside; while the characteristic of the positive stage is the universal recognition that all phenomena without exception are governed by invariable laws, with which no volitions, natural or supernatural, interfere. These being the three stages, the discovery of which as a series necessarily passed through by human thought in its progress towards maturity, constitutes one of Comte's chief glories, I almost tremble at my own audacity, shrinking from the sound myself am making, when by inexorable sense of duty constrained to declare that the grand discovery is after all merely that of a distinction without a difference.
What Comte chiefly condemned in the metaphysical mode of thought, are the conception of mental abstractions as real entities which exert power and produce phenomena, and the enunciation of these entities as explanations of the phenomena; and certainly 'it is,' as Mr. Mill says, or rather was, previously to his own ingenious solution of it, 'one of the puzzles of philosophy, how mankind, after inventing a set of mere names to keep together certain combinations of ideas and images, could have so far forgotten their own act as to invest these creations of their will with objective reality, and mistake the name of a phenomenon for its efficient cause.' Those natural laws, however, on which Positivism relies—are not they as purely mental abstractions as the essences, virtues, properties, forces, and what not, for which it is proposed to substitute them? Yet since Positivism regards these laws as 'governing' phenomena, and having phenomena 'subject' to them, must it not necessarily regard them likewise as realised abstractions, as real entities? Plainly, if its language be taken literally, its professors must acknowledge that it does, unless they prefer to stultify themselves by propounding such unmitigated nonsense as that power may be exercised, and phenomena produced, bynon-entities. But if so, what else is Positivism than another form of that very metaphysicism which it condemns? and a form, too, peculiarly obnoxious to Mr. Mill's caustic remark that 'as in religion, so in philosophy, men marvel at the absurdity of other people's tenets, while exactly parallel absurdities remain in their own, and the same man is unaffectedly astonished that words can be mistaken for things, who is treating other words as if they were things every time he opens his mouth.'
Possibly, however, it may be replied that 'government by natural laws' is a phrase which Positivists never use except metaphorically, and by which they never mean more than certain successions of events.[47]Very well. Either, then, they acknowledge no real government of phenomena at all, in which case to speak of phenomena as governed by law is, if not a purely gratuitous mystification, as glaring an instance as can well be conceived of a 'bare enunciation of facts, put forward as a theory or explanation of them:' or, if they do recognise real government, then they must suppose that, behind those mere mental abstractions, laws or order of Nature, there must be some lawgiver or other being that originally issued the laws, or ordained the order, and still enforces them, or maintains it. But if this be the positivist faith, then, that we may discover its other self, we have only to go still further back; as far back, however, as to the theological stage, supposed to have been so early left behind, yes, even unto the deities or deity that the metaphysical entities had displaced. Positivism, in short, is in this dilemma: either the mode of thought claimed by it as peculiarly its own is simply that process so justly ridiculed by Comte himself as the 'naïf reproduction of phenomena as the reason for themselves,' and by Mr. Lewes as 'a restatement' (by way of explanation) 'of the facts to be explained;' or it is at any rate nothing more than a return, either to the metaphysical or to the theological mode of thought, according as one or the other is adopted of the only two interpretations that can possibly be placed on its own nomenclature. A new modeit certainly is not. It is either no mode of thought at all, but merely an empty form of words; or it is at best only a new name for one or other of two old-fashioned modes, both of which its author denounces as false from the beginning, and now worn out and obsolete into the bargain.
Of other features of Comtist philosophy it would be out of place to speak here,[48]where, indeed, that philosophy wouldnot have been mentioned at all but for its having been transformed by its author into a religion, and that, too, anatheistical religion—the 'Religion of Humanity.' To myself, as to most people, a religion without a God is a contradiction in terms. To constitute what is almost universally understood by religion it does not suffice that there be a 'creed or conviction claiming authority over the whole of human life: a belief or set of beliefs deliberately adopted respecting human destiny and duty, to which the believer inwardly acknowledges that all his actions ought to be subordinate:' nor that there be in addition 'a sentiment connected with this creed or capable of being invoked by it, sufficiently powerful to give it, in fact, the authority over human conduct to which it lays claim in theory:' nor yet that there be, moreover, 'an ideal object, the believer's attachment and sense of duty towards which are able to control and discipline all his other sentiments and propensities, and prescribe to him a rule of life.'[49]That such an object is fully capable of gathering round it feelings sufficiently strong to enforce the most rigid rule of life, will certainly not be denied by me, privileged as I am to count among my friends more than one whose whole life is little else than a life of devotion to an object, 'the generalinterest of the human race,' plainly incapable of affording them in exchange that 'eternity of personal enjoyment' to which ordinary devotees look forward as their reward, and whose virtue I honour as approaching the sublime, on account of its independence of all the props and stimulants which ordinary virtue finds indispensable. But the sublimest virtue does not of itself constitute religion. For, besides the 'creed,' 'conviction,' and 'sentiment' indicated above, there is needed some suitable object of worship to which the soul may alternately bow down in humble reverence, and look up in fervent love—some being to whom its prayer, praise, and thanksgiving may be fittingly addressed. This want, recognised—as one of the few who do not recognise it admits—by nine out of every ten persons, was distinctly recognised by Comte, who, however, attempted to supply it by pointing, not to God, but to Man. His reason for this was not a conviction that there is no God. On the contrary, he habitually disclaimed, not without acrimony, dogmatic atheism; and once even condescended so far as to declare that 'the hypothesis of design has much greater verisimilitude than that of a blind mechanism.' But in the 'mature state of intelligence' at which his mind had arrived, 'conjecture founded on analogy did not seem to him a basis to rest a theory upon.' He preferred a religious theory without a basis, and therefore adopted one as destitute of support as the tortoise on which stands the earth-upholding elephant of Hindoo mythology; selecting, as the 'Grand Être' to be worshipped, 'the entire Human Race, conceived as a continuous whole, past, present, and future.' For this great collectivenon-existence, this compound of that which is, that which has been but has ceased to be, and that whichis not yet, he elaborated a minute ritual of devotional observances, and would, if he had had the chance, have consecrated a complete sacerdotal hierarchy, subordinated to himself as supreme pontiff. Having, for fear of recognising what possibly might not be, begun by, wilfully and with his eyes open, recognising what could not possibly be, he proceeded to invest this sanctified non-existence with precisely those attributes best calculated to render it unfit to receive the admiration he prescribed for it. That feeble Humanity—the actually living portion thereof, that is—may need and be the better for our services, which Divine Omnipotence of course cannot be, was distinctly urged by him as a reason whyprayers, or at least those outpourings of feeling which he so designated, should be addressed to the former and not to the latter. That Humanity is in a constant state of progress, so that both the collective mass and choice specimens of each successive generation of men must always be superior to the corresponding masses and specimens of all previous generations, is a prime article of the Comtist creed; but not the less is it an imperative injunction of the Comtist rubrick that religious homage shall be paid, not only to the collective 'Grand Être' of Humanity, but also to individual worthies of past ages—that superiors shall consequently fall down before, and worship, and take as models, their intellectual and moral inferiors. The fact of a religion made up of tenets like these having been thought out by one of the profoundest of reasoners does not prevent its being the very perfection of unreason. Even though on the one side there were nothing more than some doubt whether Deity might not exist, still with complete certainty on the other of the non-existence of 'Humanity,' Deity ought in fairness to have at least thebenefit of the doubt. In selection for adoration, that which only perhaps may be, at any rate deserves to be, preferred to that which positively is not. The excess of superstition with which St. Paul reproached the Athenians, for raising an altar to the 'Unknown God,' looks like excessive circumspection, beside the solemn dedication of temples to a chimera known not to be. Nay, even Isaiah's maker of graven images is at length outdone. Even he who, having hewn down a tree, 'burneth part thereof in the fire, with part thereof eateth flesh, roasteth roast, and is satisfied, warmeth himself, and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire; and with the residue maketh a god, yea, his graven image, and falleth down unto it and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me, for thou art my god'—even he has at last found more than his match in irrationality. For he has at least before him a visible tangible block of wood, not the mere memory of one that has long ago rotted, nor the dream of one that is yet to grow, whereas that mental figment, Consecrated Humanity, is not even a real shadow, but only a fancied one, a shadow cast by no substance. And it is to Comtists of all people—intellectual salt of the earth as they are—that this figment is recommended for adoration—yes, to those who, pharisaically standing aloof from the common herd, thank their imaginary substitute for God, or whatever else it is they deem thankworthy, that they are not blind as other men are, and least of all as those dazed metaphysicians who actually personify their own mental abstractions. No wonder that such extreme provocation should try the patience of all but the stanchest disciples. No wonder that Mr. Lewes himself should seem half inclined to apostrophise his quondam master in wordsresembling those once addressed to Robespierre, 'Avec ton Grand Être, tu commences à m'embêter.'
Here make we one more pause. This chapter's theme is, as was betimes premised, not the strength of theism, but the weakness of atheism. I have in it attempted to execute a design which, according to Boswell, was conceived by Lord Hailes, and approved by Dr. Johnson, that of writing an essay,Sur la crédulité des incrédules, and I think I have succeeded so far as to show that, if any one who can swallow atheism affects to strain at theism, it cannot, at any rate, be for want of a sufficiently capacious gullet.
Thought without Reverence is barren. The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and worship), were he president of innumerable Royal Societies, and carried the wholeMécanique Célesteand Hegel'sPhilosophy, and the epitome of all laboratories and observatories with their results, in his single head, is but a pair of spectacles, behind which there is no eye. Let those who have eyes look through him; then he may be useful.—Sartor Resartus.
Thought without Reverence is barren. The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and worship), were he president of innumerable Royal Societies, and carried the wholeMécanique Célesteand Hegel'sPhilosophy, and the epitome of all laboratories and observatories with their results, in his single head, is but a pair of spectacles, behind which there is no eye. Let those who have eyes look through him; then he may be useful.—Sartor Resartus.
'I wouldn't mind,' said once a representative of extreme heterodoxy, in debate with a champion of its diametrical opposite—'I wouldn't mind conceding the Deity you contend for, were it not for the use commonly made of him after he is conceded.' And no doubt that use is such as might well provoke a saint, provided the saint were likewise a philosopher. To whatever extent it be true that man was created in the image of God, it is certain that in all ages and countries God has been created in the image of man, invested with all human propensities, appetites, and passions, and expected to demean himself on all occasions as men would do in like circumstances. As popularly conceived, so long as sensual gratification was esteemed to be thesummum bonum, he wallowed in all manner of sensual lust; when some of his more fervent worshippers turned ascetics out of disgust with fleshly surfeit, he became ascetism personified: at every stage his great delight has been flattery, and his still greater, revenge; in the exercise of power he has always been capricious and often wanton—ruthlessly vindictive against impugners of hishonour and dignity, unspeakably barbarous to unbelievers in his reality. Now, as knowledge advanced, unbelief in a God so much below the level of ordinarily virtuous men advanced equally, quickening its pace, too, as the particular branch of knowledge styled 'physics' spread, and, spreading, exposed the utter impossibility of many of the fables in which theological views had been expressed. Wherefore, theological oracles have in every age and country been apt to confound scientific inquisitiveness with unbelief, and to denouncephysicalscience especially as a delusion and a snare, and its cultivators as impostors none the less mischievous for being at the same time dupes. Of course, the latter have not been slow to return the compliment. Hearing the truths discovered by them stigmatised as falsehoods, they naturally enough retorted the charge of falsity against the divine authorities in whose name it was made. Finding war waged against them by every religion with which they were acquainted, they naturally enough in turn declared war against all religion, even with that form thereof which underlies every other except when sufficing to itself for superstructure as well as base. Natural enough this, forhumanum est errare; but very humanly erroneous withal, for to include Deity itself in the same denial with pseudo-divine attributes is about as sagacious a proceeding as to refuse to recognise the sun at midday on account of his not appearing in Phœbus's chariot and four.
When religion on the defensive declares herself opposed to reason, so much the worse for religion. She is thereby virtually surrendering at discretion, since to appeal to her only other resource—revelation—is to beg the whole subject in dispute. Similarly, the worse and still less excusable is it for science to declare herself irreconcileable with religion, for she, too, is thereby slighting reason. It isonly by forsaking the single guide in whom she professes to trust, and blindly giving herself up to angry prejudice, that she can fail to discover the rational solidity of so much of every religion as consists of theism.
For this, as we have seen, the argument from design abundantly suffices, although the only absolute certainty thence deducible be that the universe must have an author or authors fully equal to its original construction, its subsequent development, and its continued maintenance. Even if it be not inconceivable, notwithstanding that the chances to the contrary be many times infinity to one, that the mere restlessness of some utterly unintelligent force may have fabricated all material structures, and imparted to all their movements certain orderly successions, it is still manifestly impossible for unintelligence to have brought forth intelligence—for the speculative, critical, carping spirit of man to have been generated by that which has no speculation in its eyes, nor any eyes, to have speculation in; impossible, in short, for the creature to be more richly endowed than its creator. Since numerous embodied intelligences actually exist, they must have been preceded by intelligence capable of creating them and all other existing intelligences that have not eternally existed; and it is simply impossible that creative intelligence, whose creatures owe to it whatever intelligence they possess, should on any occasion have exhibited a want of intelligence which they are competent to detect.
But although it be thus demonstrably certain that an author of the universe exists, it does not follow that there is only one. As to this no proof positive, only probabilities, can be adduced; but the probabilities are of an amount all but equivalent to certainty. They are forcibly urgedby Mr. Mill. Many exactly uniform occurrences, he observes, are more naturally referred to 'a single, than to a number of wills precisely accordant.' But the classes of uniform occurrences being exceedingly numerous, if there were a separate will for each class, there would be equally numerous wills, and 'unless all these wills were in complete harmony (which would itself be the most difficult to credit of all cases of invariability, and would require beyond anything else the ascendancy of a supreme Deity),' it would be 'impossible that the course of phenomena under their government should be invariable.' Every fresh appearance of resemblance extending through all nature 'affords fresh presumption that the whole is the work, not of many, but of the same hand, and renders it vastly more probable that there should be one indefinitely foreseeing Intelligence and immoveable Will than that there should be hundreds and thousands of such.'[50]I will not run the risk of weakening this reasoning by expansion. Its obvious inference that, there being a God, there cannot be more than one, could not be set forth more irresistibly.
That the wisdom of the Creator cannot be less than the amount thereof manifested in His works is a self-evident proposition, which none will be hardy enough directly to dispute. There is, however, one critic, of great ability and yet greater daring, who appears to doubt whether the wisdom manifested in the universe is anything to speak of. Mr. Lewes' faculty of veneration is, I suspect, but imperfectly developed, since 'the succession of phases which each (animal) embryo is forced to pass through,' is sufficient to give its action pause. 'None of these phases,' he remarks, 'haveany adaptation to the future state of the animal, but are in positive contradiction to it, or are simply purposeless;manyof them have no adaptation even to its embryonic state; whereasallshow stamped on them the unmistakable characters ofancestraladaptations and the progressions of organic evolution.' 'What,' he asks, 'does this fact imply?' 'There is not,' he continues, 'a single known example of an organism which is not developed out of simpler forms. Before it can attain the complex structure which distinguishes it, there must be an evolution of forms which distinguish the structures of organisms lower in the series.... On the hypothesis of a plan that pre-arranged the organic world' (by no means, however, necessarily in types that could not change, but rather in types adapted and calculated to change), 'nothing,' he considers, 'could be more unworthy of a supreme intelligence than thisinabilityto construct an organism at once without making severaltentativeefforts, undoing to-day what was so carefully done yesterday, and repeating for centuries the sametentativesand the samecorrectionsin the same succession.' 'Anthropomorphists,' he says, 'talk of "The Great Architect," emphasising the name with capitals,' but 'what should we say to an architect who was unable, or, being able, was obstinately unwilling, to erect a palace except by first using his materials in the shape of a hut, then pulling it down and rebuilding them as a cottage, then adding storey to storey and room to room, not with any reference to the ultimate purposes of the palace, but wholly with reference to the way in which houses were constructed in ancient times? What should we say to the architect who could not form a museum out of bricks and mortar, butwas forced to begin as if going to build a mansion, and, after proceeding some way in this direction, altered his plan into a palace, and that again into a museum? Would there be a chorus of applause from the Institute of Architects, and favourable notices in the newspapers of this profound wisdom?'[51]
Notwithstanding the exulting tone in which these questions are put, and which seems to imply that in their proposer's opinion they are unanswerable, they may, I think, be very summarily disposed of. Whatever other comments might be made on the conduct of an architect who should build in the complex manner suggested, surely the very last thing said would be that he did not know how to build in simpler wise. His having actually built a palace would be decisive proof of his knowing how to build a palace; and of all queer reasons for questioning his possession of that much architectural knowledge, about the queerest would be the fact of his having built, not a palace only, but a hut and cottage in addition. And if, adopting a still more complicated style, he should begin by so constructing a hut that, if left to itself, it would draw up brick and mortar from the earth, and grow into a cottage, and then go on growing and adding storey to storey till it became a palace, this surely would be a proof not of less, but of infinitely more, architectural knowledge than if he had commenced and completed the palace with his own hands. Not unwarrantably, perhaps, may Mr. Lewes, reflecting that his own and every other human organism's genesis has consisted of at least three stages, oval, fœtal, and infantine, wonder why he was not formed all at once, 'as Eve was mythically affirmed to betaken from Adam's rib, and Minerva from Jupiter's head,' and why he was not brought forth full dressed in an indefinitely expansible suit of clothes. Not quite inexcusably, perhaps, might he conceive the reason to be some mere whim or humour of his Maker, though there might be more gratitude in conjecturing that the triple process was adopted for the purpose of assisting biological enquirers like himself in their special researches. From so practised a logician, however, about the very last thing to have been here expected was that he should suggest creative 'ignorance and incompetence' as the only apparent alternative to denying a Creator altogether, as if incapacity for a comparatively easy process were a likely reason for choosing one greatly more difficult. It might have occurred to Mr. Lewes that, if there were any absurdity in the choice, the Being who made him and bestowed on him the faculty of perceiving the absurdity, could not have failed himself likewise to perceive it and consequently to avoid it.
Of divine power, the measure or measurelessness is obviously identical with that of divine wisdom. Both attributes must be at least co-extensive with the universe; both consequently illimitable. Divine goodness, moreover, inasmuch as the creature's moral ideal cannot be superior to his Creator's, must be at least as vast as human imagination: God must be at least as good as man can conceive Him. But how, by goodness so transcending, conjoined with immeasurable might, can the co-existence of evil be tolerated? To this last, and perhaps greatest, among the many great questions brought forward for renewed discussion in these pages, I have long had by me an attempt at a reply, which, finding myself unable either to strengthen or shorten it by turning it into prose, I venture to submit in its original rhythmical form.