He tells us elsewhere [35] that, "when analyzed by science, spiritualism leads straight to materialism;" free-will "can be annihilated by the simple mechanical expedient of looking at a black wafer stuck on a white wall;" that if "Smith falls into a trance and believes himself to be Jones, he really is Jones, and Smith has become a stranger to him while the trance lasts…. I often ask myself the question, If he died during one of these trances, which would he be, Smith or Jones? and I confess it takes some one wiser than I am to answer it." Without pretending to be wiser than Mr. Laing, we hope it will not be too presumptuous for us to suggest that if Smith dies in a trancebelievinghimself to be Jones, he is under a delusion, and that he really is Smith. Else it would be very awkward for poor Jones, who in nowise believes himself to be Smith. Mr. Laing would have to break it gently to Jones, that, "in fact, my dear sir, Smith borrowed your personality, and unfortunately died before returning it; and as to whether you are yourself or Smith, as to whether you are alive or dead, 'I confess it takes some one wiser than I am to decide.'" That a man's own name, own surroundings, own antecedents, are all objects of his thought, and distinguished from theself, ego,orsubjectwhich contemplates them, has never suggested itself to Mr. Laing. That though Smith may mistake every one of these, yet the term "I" necessarily and invariably means the same for him, the one central, constant unity to which everynon-egois opposed. And this from a man who elsewhere claims an easy familiarity with Kant. "Again what can be said of love and hate if under given circumstances they can be transformed into one another by a magnet?" What indeed? And how is it that the gold-fish make no difference in the weight of the globe of water?
His conclusion to these inquiries is: "When Shakespeare said, 'We are such stuff as dreams are made of,' he enumerates what has become a scientific fact. The 'stuff' is in all cases the same—vibratory motions of nerve particles." [36] Thus knowledge, self-consciousness, free-choice, is as much a function of matter as fermentation, or crystallisation—a mode of motion, not dissimilar from heat, perhaps transformable therewith.
Recapitulating this farrago of nonsense on p. 188, he adds a new difficulty which ought to make him pause in his wild career. "What is the value of the evidence of the senses if a suggestion can make us see the hat, but not the man who wears it; or dance half the night with an imaginary partner? Am I 'I myself, I,' or am I a barrel-organ playing 'God save the Queen,' if the stops are set in the normal fashion, but the 'Marseillaise' if some cunning hand has altered them without my knowledge? These are questions which I cannot answer." He cannot answer a question on which the value of his whole system of physical philosophy depends; uncertain about his own identity, about the evidence of his senses, he would make the latter the sole rule and measure of certitude, and deny to man any higher faculty by which alone he can justify his trust in his cognitive faculties. Another instance of his absolute ignorance of common philosophic terminology is when he asserts that according to theology we know the dogmas of religion by "intuition." [37]
This doctrine rests on Cardinal Newman's celebrated theory of the "Illative Sense." Surely a moment's reflection on the meaning of words, not to speak of a slight acquaintance with the book referred to, would have saved him from confounding two notions so sharply distinguished as "intuition" and "inference." Again, "There can be no doubt there are men often of great piety and excellence who have, or fancy they have, a sort of sixth sense, or, as Cardinal Newman calls it, an 'illative sense,' by which they see by intuition … things unprovable or disprovable by ordinary reason." [38] Can a man who makes such reckless travesties of a view which he manifestly has never studied, be credited with intellectual honesty?
Doubtless, the semi-scientific millions will be much impressed by the wideness of Mr. Laing's reading and his profound grasp of all that he has read, when they are told casually that "space and time are, … to use the phraseology of Kant, 'imperative categories;'" [39] but perhaps to other readers it may convey nothing more than that he has heard a dim something somewhere about Kant, about the categories, about space and time being schemata of sense, and about thecategorical imperative.It is only one instance of the unscrupulous recklessness which shows itself everywhere. Akin to this is his absolute misapprehension of the Christian religion which he labours to refute. He never for a moment questions his perfect understanding of it, and of all it has got to say for itself. Brought up apparently among Protestants, who hold to a verbal inspiration [40] and literal interpretation of the Scriptures, who have no traditional or authoritative interpretation of it, he concludes at once that his own crude, boyish conception of Christianity is the genuine one, and that every deviation therefrom is a "climbing down," or a minimizing. He has no suspicion that the wider views of interpretation are as old as Christianity itself, and have always co-existed with the narrower.
He regards the Christian idea of God as essentially anthropomorphic. Indeed, whether in good faith or for the sake of effect, he brings forward the old difficulties which have been answeredad nauseamwith an air of freshness, as though unearthed for the first time, and therefore as setting religion in new and unheard-of straits. So, at all events, it will seem to the millions of his young readers and to the working classes.
Let us follow him in some of his destructive criticism, or rather denunciations, in order to observe his mode of procedure. "The discoveries of science … make it impossible forsinceremen to retain the faith," &c., [41] therefore all who differ from Mr. Laing are insincere. "It isabsolutely certainthat portions of the Bible are not true; and those, important portions." [42] This is based on two premisses which are therefore absolutely certain, (i) Mr. Laing's conclusions about the antiquity of man—of which more anon; (43) his baldly literal interpretation of the Bible as delivered to him in his early "infancy. On p. 253, we have the ancient difficulty from the New Testament prophecy of the proximate end of the world, without the faintest indication that it was felt 1800 years ago, and has been dealt with over and over again. Papias [44] is lionized [45] in order to upset the antiquity of the four Gospels—which upsetting, however, depends on a dogmatic interpretation of an ambiguous phrase, and the absence of positive testimony. Here again there is no evidence that Mr. Laing has read any elementary text-book on the authenticity of the Gospels. He is "perfectly clear" as to the fourth Gospel being a forgery; again for reasons which he alone has discovered. [46] Paul is the first inventor of Christian dogma, without any doubt or hesitation. But the undoubted results of modern science … shatter to pieces the whole fabric.It is as certain as that2 + 2 = 4 that the world was not created in the manner described in Genesis."
As regards harmonistic difficulties of the Old and New Testaments, he assumes the same confident tone of bold assertion without feeling any obligation to notice the solutions that have been suggested. It makes for his purpose to represent the orthodox as suddenly struck dumb and confounded by these amazing discoveries of his. He sees discrepancies everywhere in the Gospel narrative, e.g.: [47]
"Judas' death isdifferentlydescribed." "Herod is introduced by Luke and not mentioned by the others." "Jesus carried His own Cross in one account, while Simon of Cyrene bore it in another. Jesus gave no answer to Pilate, says Matthew; He explains that His Kingdom was not of the world, says John. Mary His Mother sat(sic)at the foot of the Cross, according to St. John; it was not His Mother, but Mary the mother of Salome(sic)'who beheld Him from afar,' according to Mark and Matthew. There was a guard set to watch the tomb, says Matthew; there is no mention of one by the others."
At first we thought Mr. Laing must have meantdifferencesand not discrepancies; but the following paragraph forbade so lenient an interpretation. "The only other mention of Mary by St. John, who describes her as sitting(sic)by the foot of the Cross, is apocryphal, being directly contradicted by the very precise statement [48] in the three other Gospels, that the Mary who was present on that occasion was a different woman, the mother of Salome." Even his youngest readers ought to open their eyes at this. Similarly he thinks the omission of the Lord's Prayer by St. Mark tells strongly against its authenticity. [49]
We must now say something about the great facts of evolutionary philosophy which have shattered dogmatic Christianity to pieces, and have made it impossible for any sincere man to remain a Christian. To say that Mr. Laing is absolutely certain of the all-sufficiency of evolutionism to explain everything that is knowable to the human mind, that he does not hint for a moment that this philosophy is found by the "bell-wethers" of science to be every day less satisfactory as a completerationaleof the physical cosmos; is really to understate the case for sheer lack of words to express the intensity of his conviction. His fundamental fact is that, however theologians may shuffle out of the first chapter of Genesis by converting days into periods, when we come to the story of the Noachean Deluge, we are confronted with such a glaring absurdity that we must at once allow that the Bible is full of myths. For history and science show that man existed probably two hundred thousand years ago, at all events not less than twenty thousand; also that five thousand B.C., a highly organized civilization existed in Egypt, whose monuments of that date give evidence to the full development of racial and linguistic differences as now existing among men; that this plants the common stem from which these have branched off, in an indefinitely remote pre-historic period; that to suppose that the present races and tongues are all derived from one man (Noe), who lived only two thousand B.C., is a monstrous impossibility; still more so, to believe that the countless thousands of species of animals which populate the world were collected from the four quarters of the globe, were housed and fed in the Ark, landed on Mount Ararat, and thence spread themselves out over the world again regardless of interjacent seas. Hence the Bible story of human origins is a mere myth; man has not fallen, but has risen by slow evolution from some ancestor common to him and apes, at a remote period, long sons prior even to the miocene period, which shows man to have been then as obstinately differentiated from the apes as ever. Therefore "all did not die in Adam," and seeing this is the foundation of the dogmatic Christianity invented by Paul, the whole thing collapses like a house of cards. [45]
And indeed, given that the Bible means what Mr. Laing says it means, and that science has proved what he says it has proved, that the two results are incompatible, few would care to deny. As regards the latter condition, let us see some of his reasonings. We are told that "modern science shows that uninterrupted historical records, confirmed by contemporary monuments, carry history back at least one thousand years before the supposed creation of man … and show then no trace of a commencement, but populous cities, celebrated temples, great engineering works, and a high state of the arts and of civilization already existing." [46] Strange to say, Mr. Laing developes a sudden reverence for the testimony ofpriestsat the outset of his historical inquiries, and finds that history begins with "priestly organizations;" [47] that the royal records are "made and preserved by special castes of priestly colleges and learned scribes, and that they are to a great extent precise in date and accurate in fact." Of course this does not include Christian priests, but the priests of barbarous cults of many thousand years ago, who, as well as their royal masters, are at once credited with all the delicacy of the accurate criticism which we boast of in these days—how vainly, God knows. We are told one moment that Herodotus "was credulous, and not very critical in distinguishing between fact and fable," that his "sources of information were often not much better than vague popular traditions, or the tales told by guides;" [48] and yet we are to lay great stress on his assertion that the Egyptian priests told him "that during the long succession of ages of the three hundred and forty-five high priests of Heliopolis, whose statues they showed him in the Temple of the Sun, there had been no change in the length of human life or the course of nature." [49] A valuable piece of evidenceifHerodotus reports rightly, andifthe priest was not like the average guide, andifthe statues answered to real existences, andifeach of the three hundred and forty-five high priests made a truthful assertion of the above to his successor for the benefit of posterity.
Manetho's History is, however, the chief source of our information as to the antiquity of Egyptian civilization. He was commissioned to compile this History by Ptolemy Philadelphus, "from the most authentic temple records and other sources of information," [50] whose infallibility is taken for granted. He was "eminently qualified for such a task, being," as Mr. Laing will vouch, [51] "a learned and judicious man, and a priest of Sebbenytus, one of the oldest and most famous temples." Let us by all means read Manetho's History; but where is it? It is "unfortunately lost, … but fragments of it have been preserved in the works of Josephus, Eusebius, Julius Africanus, and Syncellus…. With the curious want of critical faculty of almost all the Christian Fathers" [52] (so different from the learned, judicious, upright priests of the sun), "these extracts, though professing to be quotations from the same book, contain many inconsistencies and in several instances they have been obviously tampered with, especially by Eusebius, in order to bring their chronology more in accordance with that of the Old Testament, … but there can beno doubtthat his original work assigned an antiquity to Menes of over 5500 B.C." [53] "On the whole, we have to fall back on Manetho as the only authority for anything like precise dates and connected history."
Manetho, however, needed confirmation against the aspersions of the orthodox, who thought he might be deficient in critical delicacy, and prone to exaggerate as even later historians had done. Their casuistic minds also suggested that his list comprised Kings who had ruled different provinces simultaneously. But this "effugium" was cut off by the witness of contemporary monuments and manuscripts. "This has now been done to such an extent that it may be fairly said that Manetho is confirmed, and it is fully established, as a fact acquired by science, that nearly all his Kings and dynasties are proved by monuments to have existed, and that, successively." [54]
What is needed for the validity of this argument is a concurrence, which could not possibly be fortuitous, between the clear and undoubted testimony of Manetho and of the monuments. But first of all, what sort of probability is there left of our possessing anything approximately like the results of Manetho: and if we had them, of their historical accuracy? Secondly, is it at all credible that so fragmentary and fortuitous a record as survives in monuments (allowing again their very dubious historical worth) should just happen to coincide with the surviving fragments of our patch-work Manetho, king for king and dynasty for dynasty, as Mr. Laing would have us believe? On the contrary, nothing would throw more suspicion on the interpretation of these monuments than the assertion of such an improbable coincidence. What, then, is the force of this argument from Egyptology?Ifthe records from which Manetho compiled were historically accurate;ifhe was perfectly competent to understand them;ifhe was scrupulously honest and critical;iffrom the tampered-with fragments in the Christian Fathers we can arrive at a reliable and accurate knowledge of his results; andifthe Bible in the original text—whatever that may be—undoubtedly asserts that man was not created till 4000 B.C., then according to certain Egyptologists (Boeck), Menes reigned fifteen hundred years previously, and according to others (Wilkinson), one thousand years subsequently. Similarly as to the argument from coincidence:if, as before, we possess Manetho's genuine list intact, andifwe have the clear testimony of the monuments giving a precisely similar record, this coincidence, apart from all independent value to be given to Manetho or to the monuments, is an effect demanding a cause, for which the most probable is the objective truth from which both these veracious records have been copied. But the monuments are not written in plain English, and need a key; and we must be first assured that Manetho's list has not been used for this purpose. We are told; for example, [55] that the name "Snefura," deciphered on a tablet found at the copper-mines of Wady Magerah, is the name of a King of the third dynasty, who reigned about 4000 B.C. Nowifthere were no doubt about the reading of this name on the tablet, andifhis date and dynasty were as plainly there recorded, andifall this tallies exactly with equally precise particulars in Manetho's list, it would indeed be a remarkable coincidence and would imply some common source, whether record or fact. But if having credited Manetho with the record of such a name and date, one tortures a hieroglyph into a faintly similar name, and concludes at once that the same name must be the same person, and that therefore this is the oldest record in the world, the confirmation is not so striking. That it is so in this instance we do not affirm; but we should need the assertion of a man of more intellectual sobriety than Mr. Laing to make it worth the trouble of investigating.
Passing over the confirmation which he draws from the "known rate of the deposit of Nile mud of about three inches a century," which would give a mild antiquity of twenty-six thousand years to pottery fished up from borings in the mud, since he admits that "borings are notveryconclusive," we may notice how he deals with evidence from Chaldea on much the same principles. Here, again, the source had been till lately only "fragments quoted by later writers from the lost work of Berosus. Berosus was alearned priestof Babylon, who … wrote in Greek a history of the country from the most ancient times, compiled from the annals preserved in the temples and from the oldest traditions." [56] Still this "learned priest," though antecedently as competent a critic as Manetho, is so portentously mythical in his accounts, that "no historical value can be attached to them," which must be regretted, since he pushes history back a quarter of a million years prior to the Deluge, and the Deluge itself to about half a million years ago. Here, therefore, we are thrown solely upon the independent value of the monumental evidence, and must drop the argument from coincidence. This evidence, we are told, "is not so conclusive as in the case of Egypt, where the lists of Manetho, &c…. The date of Sargon I. [57] (3800 B.C.) rests mainly on the authority of Nabonidus, who lived more than three thousand years later, and may have been mistaken." "The probability of such a remote date is enhancedby the certaintythat a high civilization existed in Egypt as long ago as 5000 B.C." If the evidence for the antiquity of Chaldee civilization is "less conclusive" than that for Egyptian, and rests on it for an argumentà pari, it cannot be said in any way to strengthen Mr. Laing's position.
These strictures are directed chiefly to showing Mr. Laing's incapacity for anything like coherent reasoning in historical matters. Subsequently he uses these most lame and impotent conclusions as demonstrated certainties, without the faintest qualification, and builds up on them his refutation of dogmatic Christianity.
However, it is only in his more recent work onHuman Originsthat he thus comes forward as an historian, in preparation for which he seems to have devoted himself to the study of cuneiform and hieroglyphs and mastered the subject thoroughly and exhaustively, before bursting forth from behind the clouds to flood the world with new-born light.
It is deep down in the bowels of the earth, at the bottom of a geological well, that he has found not only truth but, also man—among the monsters,
Dragons of the primeWho tare each other in their slime,
and has hauled him up for our inspection. Mr. Laing is before all else an evolutionist, with an unshaken belief in spontaneous generation. He is quite confident that force and atoms will explain everything. He seems to mean force, pure and simple, without any intelligent direction; atoms, ultimate, homogeneous, undifferentiated. No doubt, if the subsequent evolution depends on thekindanddirectionof force, or on thenatureof the atoms; then there is a remoter question for physics to determine; but if, as he implies, force and atoms are simple and ultimate, then evolution is as fortuitous as a sand-storm, or more so. All prior to force and atoms is "behind the veil." "The material universe is composed of ether, matter, and energy." [58] Ether is a billion times more elastic than air, "almost infinitely rare," [59] its oscillations must be at least seven hundred billions per second, "it exerts no gravitating or retarding force;" in short, Mr. Laing has to confess some uncertainty about his original dogma as to the triple constituents of the universe, and say "that it may bealmost doubtedwhether such an ether has any real material existence, and is anything more than a sort of mathematical [why 'mathematical'?] entity." [60] "It is clear that matter really does consist of minute particles which do not touch," and even these we must conceive of as "corks as it were floating in an ocean of ether, causing waves in it by their own proper movement," [61]—an explanation which loses some of its helpfulness when we remember that the ethereal ocean is only a mathematical entity. "A cubic centimetre contains 21,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules," "the number of impacts received by each molecule of air during one second will be 4,700 millions. The distance traversed between each impact averages 95/1000000 of a millimetre," and so on with lines of ciphers to overawe the gaping millions with Mr. Laing's minute certainty as to the ultimate constitution of matter. [62]
As tohowatoms came into existence, he can only reply, "Behind the veil, behind the veil;" for it is at this point at last that he becomes agnostic.[63] The notion of creation is rejected (after Spencer) as inconceivable, because unimaginable, as though the origination of every change in the phenomenal world were not just as unimaginable; we see movementin process, and we see its results, but its inception is unimaginable, and its efficient cause still more so.
The evolution of man is practically taken for granted, the only question being thewhen.
We have the old argument from embryonic transformism brought forward without any hint that later investigation tends to show differentiation further and further back, prior to segmentation and, according to some, in the very protoplasm itself. Nothing could be more inaccurate than to say "every human being passes through the stage of fish and reptile before arriving at that of a mammal and finally of man." [64] All that can be truly said is that the embryonic man is at certain stages not superficially distinguishable from the embryonic fish—quite a different thing, and no more significant than that the adult man possesses organs and functions in common with other species of the animal genus.
Mr. Laing's own conclusions from skulls and human remains which he takes to be those of tertiary man, show man to be as obstinately unlike the "dryopithecus" as ever, in fact, the reputedly oldest skulls [65] are a decided improvement on the Carnstadt and Neanderthal type. Even then man seems to have been the same flint-chipping, tool-making, speaking animal as now. So convinced is he of this essential and ineradicable difference in his heart, that seeing traces of design in palaeolithic flint flakes, and so forth, he has "not the remotest doubt as to their being the work of human hands,"—"as impossible to doubt as it would be if we had found clasp-knives and carpenters adzes." [66] Perhaps Professor Boyd-Dawkins, who credits the "dryopithecus" with these productions, is a more consistent evolutionist; but at present Mr. Laing is defending a thesis as toman'santiquity. Yet he has just said that these flint instruments are "only one stepin advance of the rude, natural stone which anintelligentorang or chimpanzee might pick up to crack a cocoa-nut with." Truly a very significant step, though it be only one. How hard this is to reconcile with what Mr. Laing ascribes to dogs and ants elsewhere, or with what he says on page 173, "These higher apes remain creatures of very considerable intelligence…. There is a chimpanzee now in the Zoological Gardens … which can doall butspeak" [either it speaks, or it does not. It is precisely a case of the "only one step" quoted above. Here if anywhere a "miss is as good as a mile"], "which understands almost every word the keeper says to it, and when told to sing will purse out its lips and try to utter connected notes." [How on earth do we know what it is trying to do?] "In their native state they (apes) form societies and obey a chief." [The old fallacy of metaphors adverted to in relation to ants and dogs.] Yet "no animal has ever learned to speak," "no chimpanzee or gorilla has ever been known to fashion any implement." [67] Their nearest approach to invention is in the building of huts or nests, in which they "are very inferior to most species of birds, to say nothing of insects." On the other hand, "as regards tool-making, no human race is known which has not shown some faculty in this direction." [68] "The difference is a very fundamental one," and "may be summed up in the words 'arrested development.'" Words, indeed! but what do they mean? They mean that these animals have not developed the faculties of speech and tool-making, which would have been most useful to them in the struggle for existence, the reason beingthat they did not; and this reason is exalted into a cause or law of "arrested development." Who or what arrested it? The advantage of the term is that it implies that they were on the point of developing, that they could "all but speak," were "trying to utter connected notes," were "but one step" behind flint axes, when some cosmic power said, "Hitherto shalt thou come and no further."
If the dog had organs of speech or an instrument like the hand by which to place himself in closer relation to the outer world, he would doubtless be on a footing of mental equality with man, according to Mr. Laing. [69] The elephant's trunk accounts for his superior sagacity, and the horse suffers by his hoof-enclosed forefoot. [70] "Given a being with man's brain, man's hand, and erect stature,it is easy to seehow intelligencemusthave been gradually evolved." [71] Now honestly it seems to us that many animals are as well provided as man is with a variety of flexible organs of communication with the outward world (for example, the antennae of insects, the prehensile tails of some monkeys, whose hands are as lithe as man's and articulated bone for bone and joint for joint). But letting this pass, we thought evolutionists allowed that structure is determined by function, rather than the converse; and so the confession that "it is not so easy to see how this difference of the structure arose," [72] surprises us, coming from Mr. Laing; though why this difference should exist at all, on evolution principles, is a far greater difficulty. Yet he confesses that "the difference in structure between the lowest existing race of man and the highest existing ape, [73] is too great to admit of one being possibly the direct descendant of the other." The ape, then, is not a man whose development is arrested. "The negro in some respects makes a slight approximation, … still he is essentially a man, and separated by a wide gulf from the chimpanzee or gorilla. Even the idiot is … an arrested man and, not an ape." [74]
Nearly all these (higher intellectual and moral) faculties appear in a rudimentary state in animals…. Still there is this wide distinction that even in the highest animals these faculties remain rudimentary and seem incapable of progress, while even in the lowest races of man they have reached a much higher level [75] and seem capable of almost unlimited development. [76] Why does he not seek out the reason of this, or is he satisfied with thewords"arrested development"? If I find a child who can repeat a poem of Tennyson's, am I to be puzzled because it cannot originate one as good, or go on even to something better? Am I to ascribe to it a rudimentary but arrested poetic faculty? Surely the same poem proceeding from the lips of the poet and of the child he has taught, are essentially different effects, though outwardly the same. If there were a true living germ, it would most certainly develope. If the savage developes through contact with the civilized man after centuries of degradation, why have not domesticated dogs, who are, according to Laing, their intellectual and moral equals, developed long ago?
However, as "evolution has become the axiom of science and is admitted by every one who has the slightest pretensions to be considered a competent authority," [77] it is preposterous to suppose man an exception, whatever be the difficulties. [78] And so Mr. Laing, assuming axiomatically that man and the ape have a common ancestor, is interested to make the differences between them deeply marked, and that, as far back as he can, for thereby "Human Origins" are pushed back by hundreds of thousands of years. If miocene man is as distinct from the ape as recent man, the inference is that we are then as far from the source as ever. Hence it is to geology he looks for the strongest basis of his position. One thought till lately that geology was a tentative science, hardly credited with the name of science, but Mr. Laing wisely and boldly classes it among the "exact sciences," whose subject-matter is "flint instruments, incised bones, and a few rare specimens of human skulls and skeletons, the meaning of which has to be deciphered by skilled experts." [79] "The conclusions of geology," up to the Silurian period, "are approximate facts, not theories." [80]
If he means that the only legitimate data of geologists are facts of observation, classified and recorded, well and good; but to deny that they deal largely in hypotheses, and use them constantly as the premisses for inferences which are equally hypothetical, is palpably absurd. First of all we are to "assume the principle of uniformity" which Lyell is said to have established on an unassailable basis and to have made the fundamental axiom of geological science. He "has shown conclusively that while causes identical with … existing causes will,if given sufficient time, account for all the facts hitherto observed, there is not a single fact whichprovesthe occurrence of a totally different order of causes." [81] This, however, is (1) limited to the period of geology which gives record of organic life, and not to the earlier astronomical period; nor (2) does it exclude changes in temperature, climate, distribution of seas and lands; nor (3) does it "affirm positivelythat there may not have been in past ages explosions more violent than that of Krakatoa; lava-streams more extensive than that of Skaptar-Jokul, and earthquakes more powerful than that which uplifted five or six hundred miles of the Pacific coast of South America six or seven feet." [82] Now, seeing that all these cataclysms have occurred within the brief limits of most recent time, compared with which the period of pretended uniformity is almost an eternity, what sort of presumption or probability is there that such occurrences should have been confined to historical times; and is not the presumption all the other way? Again, it is largely on the supposition of this antecedently unlikely uniformity, that Mr. Laing argues to the antiquity of life on earth; whereas Lyell's conclusion warrants nothing of the kind, being simply: that present causes, "given sufficient time," would produce the observed effects. [83]
Our tests of geologic time are denudation and deposition. We are told "the present rate of denudation of a continent is known withconsiderable accuracyfrom careful measurements of the quantity of solid matter carried down by rivers." [84] Now it is a considerable tax on our faith in science to believe that thedébrisof the Mississippi can be so accurately gauged as to give anything like approximate value to the result of one foot of continental denudation in 6,000 years. We cannot of course suppose this to be the result of 6,000 years registered observations, but an inference from the observations of some comparatively insignificant period; and we have also to suppose that the very few rivers which have been observed form a sufficient basis for a conclusion as to all rivers. In fact, a more feebly supported generalization from more insufficient data it is hard to conceive. To speak of it as "anapproximationbased on our knowledge of the time in which similar results on a smaller scale have been produced by existing natural laws within the historical period," [85] is a very inadequate qualification, especially when we have just been told that "here, at any rate, we are on comparatively certain ground, … these are measurable facts which have been ascertained by competent observers." [86]
Assuming this rate of denudation as certain, and also the estimate of the known sedimentary strata as 177,000 feet in depth, we are to conclude that the formation took 56,000,000 years. A mountain mass which ought to answer to certain fault 15,000 high, and therefore is presumed to have vanished by denudation, points to a term of 90,000,000 years as required for the process. [87]
"Reasoning from thesefacts, assuming the rate of change in the forms of life to have been the same formerly, Lyell concludes that geological phenomena postulate 200,000,000 years at least," [88] "to account for the undoubted facts of geology since life began." [89] On the other hand, mathematical astronomy, [90] on theories which Mr. Laing complains of as wanting the solidity of geological calculations (yet which do not involve more, but fewer assumptions), cannot allow the sun a past existence of more than 15,000,000 years. [91] "It is evident that there must be some fundamental error on one side or the other," [92] "for the laws of nature are uniform, and there cannot be one code for astronomers, and one for geologists." But while modestly relegating this slight divergency among the "bell-wethers of science" (bell-wethers, I presume, because the crowd follow them like sheep), to the "problems of the future," Mr. Laing is quite confident that we should "distrust these mathematical calculations," and rely on conclusions based onascertained factsand undoubted deductions from them, rather than on abstract and doubtful theories, "which would so reduce geological time as to negative the idea of uniformity of law and evolution, and introduce once more the chaos of catastrophes and supernatural interferences."[93] As regards the ice-age, Mr. Laing is professedly interested in putting it as far back as possible, since "a short date for that period shortens that for which we have positive proof of the existence of man, and … a very short date … brings us back to the old theories of repeated and recent acts of supernatural interference." [94] Strange, that in the same page he should refer to Sir J. Dawson as an "extreme instance" of one who approaches the question with "theological prepossessions;" and of course in complete ignorance of Mr. Laing's indubitable conclusions about the antiquity of Egyptian civilization. Unfortunately, even the best scientists have not that perfect freedom from bias, which gives Mr. Laing such a towering advantage over them all. "An authority like Prestwich," who "cannot be accused of theological bias," influenced, however, by a servile astronomical bias, "reduces to 20,000 years a period to which Lyell and modern geologists assign a duration of more than 200,000 years;" [95] which "shows in what a state of uncertainty we are as to this vitally important problem;" for this time assigned by Prestwich "would be clearly insufficient to allow for the development of Egyptian civilization, as it existed 5,000 years ago, from savage and semi-animal ancestors; as isprovedto be the case with the horse, stag, elephant, ape," and so on. [96] Now Prestwich, we are told elsewhere, is "the first living authority on the tertiary and quaternary strata." [97] If, then, astronomical prepossession can reduce 200,000 to 20,000 years, the sin of theology, which reduces 20,000 to 7,000 is comparatively venial. Prestwich's two objections are (1) the data of astronomy, and (2) "the difficulty of conceiving that man could have existed for 80,000 or 100,000 years without change and without progress." The former is "only one degree less mischievous than the theological prepossession." However, Prestwich has some "facts" as well as prepossessions, such as "the rapid advance of the glaciers of Greenland,"[98] which does not accord with the generalization from the Swiss glaciers;[99] and the quicker erosion of river valleys, due to a greater rainfall; facts which, however, are met by "aminute descriptionof the successive changes by which in post-glacial time the Mersey valley and estuary were brought into their present condition, with an estimate of the time they may have required;" which is "in round numbers 60,000 years," as opposed to Prestwich's 10,000 or 8,000. [100] The 200,000 years for the ice-age depends chiefly on Croll's theory of secular variation of the earth's orbitular eccentricity; but we are told it is open to the "objection that it requires us to assume a periodical succession of glacial epochs" of which two or three "must have occurred during each of the great geological epochs. [101] This is opposed to geological evidence." "'Not proven' is the verdict which most geologists would return." "The confidence with which Croll's theory was first received has been a good deal shaken." "We have to fall back, therefore, on the geological evidence of deposition and denudation … in any attempt to decide between the 200,000 years of Lyell and the 20,000 years of Prestwich." [102]
As to his arguments based on ancient human remains, their value depends first on the accuracy of his geological conclusions, and then on preclusion of all possibility of the conveyance of the remains from upper strata to lower; on the certainty, moreover, of traces of design in many of the would-be miocene or tertiary flint instruments (which Prestwich is doubtful about).[103] He takes care not to tell us that the Carstadt skull which gives name to a race, is a very doubtfully genuine relic of one hundred and thirty years old, whose history is most dubious. His evidence for the absence of the slightest approximation to the simian type even in the oldest relics is cheering to the theologian, though it loses its value when we know it is in the interests of his foregone conclusions as to the unspeakable antiquity of man. The Nampe image, the oldest relic yet discovered, "revolutionizes our conception of this early palaeolithic age," being a "more artistic and better representation of the human form than the little idols of many comparatively modern and civilized people," very like those in Mexico, "believed to be not much older than the date of the Spanish conquest"—"and in truth, I believe, contemporaneous." [104]
As to his treatment of the Bible, it evinces everywhere the crudest anthropomorphic method of interpretation such as we should expect to find in a child or very ignorant person. In truth, Mr. Laing is in a perfectly childish state of mind both as regards the Christian religion and as regards philosophy, sciences, and all the subjects he dabbles with.
For our own part we have at most a general idea as to what exactly the Church does teach or may teach with regard to the interpretation of the Scripture. That she has so far acquiesced in the larger interpretation of Genesiacal cosmogony, that now the literal six-day theory would be very unsafe, forbids us to judge any present interpretation of other parts by the number, noise, or notoriety of its adherents. The universality of the Deluge is by no means the only tolerable interpretation now; though the doctrine of a partial deluge would have been most unsafe a century ago. All this does not mean giving up the inspiration of the record, but determining gradually what is meant by inspiration and the record. What could be less important to Christian dogma than the date of the Deluge or of Adam's creation? If it were proved that the original textin this pointhad been hopelessly corrupted, as the discrepancies between the LXX. numbers and the Hebrew hint to be true to some extent, it would not touch the guaranteed integrity of Christian dogma. If Christ is the "son" of David, and Zachæus is "son" of Abraham, what period may not an apparent single generation stand for, especially in regard to the earlier Patriarchs? As far as the prophetic import of the Deluge is concerned, a very small local affair might be mystically large with foreshadowings, as we see with regard to the enacted prophecies of the later prophets. For the rest, we are quite weary of Mr. Laing, and are content to have shown that everywhere he is the same biassed, inconsequent, untrustworthy writer. His only power is a certain superficial clearness of diction and brilliancy of style, and this is brought to bear on a mass of information drawn confessedly from the labours of others, and selected in the interest of a foregone conclusion, without a single attempt at a fair presentment of the other side.
Here, then, we have a very fair specimen of the pseudo-philosophy which is so admirably adapted to captivate the half-informed, wholly unformed minds of the undiscriminating multitudes who have been taught little or nothing well except to believe in their right, duty, and ability to judge for themselves in matters for which a life-time of specialization were barely sufficient. A congeries of dogmatic assertions and negations raked together from the chief writers of a decadent school, discredited twenty years ago by all men of thought, Christian or otherwise; a show of logical order and reasoning which evades our grasp the instant we try to lay critical hands on it; a profuse expression of disinterested devotion to abstract truth, an occasional bow to conventional morality, a racy, irreverent style, an elaborate display of miscellaneous information; good paper, large type, cheap wood-cuts, and the work is done.
Oct. Nov.1895.
[Footnote 1: M.S. 319.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid. 319.]
[Footnote 3: M.S. 229, 230.]
[Footnote 4: P.F. 279.]
[Footnote 5: P.F. 280]
[Footnote 6: Ibid.]
[Footnote 7: P.F. 281, 282.]
[Footnote 8: Ibid.]
[Footnote 9: Ibid. 210.]
[Footnote: 10 M.S. Preface]
[Footnote 11: "These subjects … have been to me the solace of a long life, the delight ofmany quiet days, and the soother of many troubled ones … a source of enjoyment.
"'The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,The guardian of my heart, and soulOf all my moral being.'" (H.O. 3.)]
[Footnote: 12 M.S. 319.]
[Footnote: 13 Ibid. 320.]
[Footnote: 14 Cf. Ibid. 104, 282.]
[Footnote 15: This expression seems inconsistent with his here and elsewhere explicit maintenance of the hereditary transmission of gathered moral experiences. He means here to exclude innate ideas of morality as explained by Kant and by other intuitionists.]
[Footnote 16: M.S. 180.]
[Footnote 17: M.S. 285.]
[Footnote 18: M.S. 216.]
[Footnote 19: M.S. 294.]
[Footnote 20: M.S. 298, 299.]
[Footnote 21: P.F. 297. "The truth is that morals are built on a far surer foundation than that of creeds, which are here to-day and gone to-morrow. They are built on the solid rock of experiences, and of the 'survival of the fittest,' which in the long evolution of the human race from primeval savages, have by 'natural selection' and 'heredity' become almost instinctive." (How careless is this terminology. In the previous page he denies morality to be a matter of hereditary instinct.)]
[Footnote 22: P.F. 206.]
[Footnote 23: Ibid. 207.]
[Footnote 24: P.P. 204.]
[Footnote 25: M.S. Preface.]
[Footnote 26: H.O. 3.]
[Footnote 27: P.P. 3.]
[Footnote 28: "The simple undoubting faith which for ages has been the support and consolation of a large portion of mankind, especially of the weak, the humble, the unlearned, who form an immense majority, cannot disappear without a painful wrench, and leaving for a time a great blank behind." (M.S. 284.)]
[Footnote 29: xxxiii.]
[Footnote 30: M.S. 261.]
[Footnote 31: P.F. 176.]
[Footnote 32: P. 177.]
[Footnote 33: P.F. 192.]
[Footnote 34: P. 245.]
[Footnote 35: P.F. 222.]
[Footnote 36: Thus he assumes Mr. Spurgeon's definition of inspiration as the basis of operations (See H.O. 189), and says, "It is perfectly obvious that for those who accept these confessions of faith … all the discoveries of modern science, from Galileo and Newton down to Lyall and Darwin, are simple delusions."]
[Footnote 37: M.S. 215.]
[Footnote 38: Ibid. 251.]
[Footnote 39: "Thesimplest straightforward evidenceof theearliestChristian writer who gives any account of their origin, viz., Papias." (P.F. 236.) "What does Papias say? Practically this: that he preferred oral tradition to written documents…. This is aperfectly clearandintelligiblestatement made apparently in good faith without any dogmatic or other prepossession…. It has always seemed to me that all theories … were comparatively worthless which did not take into accountthe fundamental factof this statement of Papias." (238.) "Theclearandexplicitstatement of Papias." (250.)]
[Footnote 40: PP. 258—260.]
[Footnote 41: P. 262.]
[Footnote 42: P.F. 266.]
[Footnote 43: With regard to this "very precise statement," it is noticeable that Matthew speaks of "Mary the mother of James and Joses;" Mark, of "Mary the mother of James the less and of Joseph and Salome," but not "of Salome." If Mr. Laing's precise mind had looked for a moment at the text he was criticizing he would have seen that Salome is a common name in the nominative case. St. Luke does not give the names of the women at all. These points are trifling in themselves, but important as evidencing Mr. Laing's standard of intellectual conscientiousness.]
[Footnote 44: P.F. 235]
[Footnote 45: M.S. 332 ff.]
[Footnote 46: H.O. 2.]
[Footnote 47: H.O. 8.]
[Footnote 48: H.O. II]
[Footnote 49: H.O. 9 and 199.]
[Footnote 50: H.O. 10.]
[Footnote 51: This seems, later, to be an inference, not an assertion. "Manetho was a learned priest of a celebrated temple, whomust have hadaccess to all the temples and royal records and other literature of Egypt, and whomust have beenalso conversant with foreign literature to have been selected as the best man to write a complete history of his native country." (H.O. 22.)]
[Footnote 52: He seems to think that Josephus was a Christian, and Syncellus a "Father." We might mention that from the fragments of Africanus'Pentabiblion Chronicon, preserved in Eusebius, the author places the Creation at 5499 B.C., which is certainly hardly compatible with his giving such fragments of Manetho as would place Menes one year before that date. If we know nothing of Manetho's results except through these "orthodox" sources, it is inconceivable that Mr. Laing's version of them should have any historical basis whatever. It comes in fine to this, that because their report of Manetho does not give Mr. Laing what he wants, they have been tampered with.]
[Footnote 53: H.O. 11.]
[Footnote 54: H.O. 22.]
[Footnote 55: H.O. 17.]
[Footnote 56: H.O. 42.]
[Footnote 57: "There can be no doubt, moreover, that this Sargon I. is a perfectly historical personage.A statue of him has been found at Agade."(H.O. 55.)]
[Footnote 58: M.S. 50.]
[Footnote 59: Ibid.]
[Footnote 60: P.F. 28.]
[Footnote 61: M.S. 61.]
[Footnote 62: "Matter is made of molecules; molecules are made of atoms; atoms are little magnets which link themselves together and form all the complex creations of an ordered cosmos [an ordered order] by virtue of the attractive and repulsive forces which are the result of polarity." (P.F, 223.)]
[Footnote 63: We suppose he has a right to call himselfagnosticas being a disciple of Professor Huxley, who, we believe, started or revived the term in our own times. Of course he is also a dogmatic materialist, and by no means an "agnostic" in the wider sense of general scepticism.]
[Footnote 64: M.S. 171.]
[Footnote 65: "Not only have no missing links been discovered, but the oldest known human skulls and skeletons, which date from the glacial period and are probably at least one hundred thousand years old, show no very decided approximation towards any such pre-human type. On the contrary," &c. (M.S. 181.) He replies (H.O. 373) that "five hundred thousand years prior to these men of Spy and Neanderthal, the human race has existed in higher physical perfection, nearer to the existing type of modern man," (Cf. P.F. 158.)]
[Footnote 66: M.S. 112, 114.]
[Footnote 67: P.F. 154.]
[Footnote 68: P.F. 154.]
[Footnote 69: M.S. 175.]
[Footnote 70: The horse "may be taken as the typical instance of descent by progressive specialization. What is a horse? It is essentially an animal specialized for … the rapid progression of a bulky body over plains or deserts" [a definition which applies equally to the camel, &c.]. It commenced existence as a "pentadactyle plantigrade bunodont." For some indefined reason "the first step was to walking on the toes instead of on the flat of the foot, … which became general in most lines of their descendants. For galloping on hard groundit is evidentthat one strong and long toe, protected by a solid hoof, was more serviceable than four short and weak toes." [But why should it gallop more than other animals; or why on thehardground in the deserts and plains; or would notfourstrong and long toes have been better than one?] "The coalescence of the toes is the fundamental fact in the progress … by which the primitive bunodont was converted into the modern horse." But we thought evolution was a change from the homogeneous, incoherent to the heterogeneous and coherent: surely the change from five toes to one must have been a misfortune on the whole, if the flexibility of the human hand accounts for man's intellect. The advantages of a convenient gallop over occasional oases of hard ground in the desert would hardly balance that of being able to climb trees. (P.F. 143.)]
[Footnote 71: Cf. P.F. 151.]
[Footnote 72: M.S. 180.]
[Footnote 73: "A wide gap which has never been bridged over." (Huxley,P.F. 150.)]
[Footnote 74: But cf. M.S. 181. "Attempt after attempt has been made to find some fundamental characters in the human brain, on which to base a generic distinction between man and the brute creation." (P.F. 149.)]
[Footnote 75: Cf. "It is probable, therefore, that this (drill-friction) was the original mode of obtaining fire, but if so it must have required a good deal of intelligence and observation, for the discovery is by no means an obvious one." (M.S. 204.)]
[Footnote 76: P.F. 153.]
[Footnote 77: P.F. 135.]
[Footnote 78: "The inference, therefore, to be drawn alike from the physical development of the individual man and from the origin and growth" [as though he had explained their origin] "of all the faculties which specially distinguish him from the brute creation, … all point to the conclusion that he is the product of evolution." (M.S. 210.) "Man … whose higher faculties of intelligence and morality areso clearly… the products of evolution and education." (M.S. 182.)]
[Footnote 79: H.O. 260.]
[Footnote 80: M.S. 48.]
[Footnote 81: P.F. 17.]
[Footnote 82: P.F. 17, 18. "The conclusion is therefore certain that the land at this particular spot must have sunk twenty feet, and again risen as much so as to bring the floor of the temple to its present position, &c. Similar proofs may be multiplied to any extent…. In fact the more we study geology the more we are impressed with the fact that the normal states of the earth is and always has been one of incessant changes." (M.S. 35—9.)]
[Footnote 83: i.e., Lyell says: Present causes could give these effects, given the time. Laing says: Therefore, since they have given these effects, we must suppose the time.]
[Footnote 84: P.F. 18]
[Footnote 85: P.F. 74.]
[Footnote 86: Ibid.]
[Footnote 87: P.F. 20.]
[Footnote 88: M.S. 34, 41.]
[Footnote 89: P.F. 6.]
[Footnote 90: P.F. 23.]
[Footnote 91: M.S. 46.]
[Footnote 92: P.F. 24.]
[Footnote 93: P.F. 32.]
[Footnote 94: P.F. 66.]
[Footnote 95: "Thus giving to palæolithic man no greater antiquity than perhaps about 20,000 to 30,000 years, while, should he be restricted to the so-called post-glacial period, the antiquity need not go back further than from 10,000 to 15,000 years before the time of neolithic man." (57.)]
[Footnote 96: P.F. 67.]
[Footnote 97: M.S. 109.]
[Footnote 98: Prestwich evinces the same recalcitrance according to theNineteenth Century, December 4, 1894, p. 961, being one of the geologists of high standing "who have lately come to believe in some sudden and extensive submergence of continental dimensions in very recent times."]
[Footnote 99: 74.]
[Footnote 100: P.F. 84.]
[Footnote 101: P.F. 69, 70.]
[Footnote 102: P.F. 70.]
[Footnote 103: H.O. 364.]
[Footnote 104: H.O. 388.]
Some twelve years since we read Mr. Tylor's well-known and able work onPrimitive Culture, and were much impressed with the evident fair-mindedness and courageous impartiality which distinguished the author so notably from the Clodds, the Allens, the Laings, and other popularizers of the uncertain results of evolution-philosophy. For this very reason we made a careful analysis of the whole work, and more particularly of his "animistic" hypothesis, and laid it aside, waiting, according to our wont, for further light bearing upon a difficulty wherewith we felt ourselves then incompetent to deal. This further light has been to some extent supplied to us by Mr. Andrew Lang'sMaking of Religion, which deals mainly with that theory of animism which is propounded by Mr. Tylor, and unhesitatingly accepted, dogmatically preached, and universally assumed, by the crowd of sciolists who follow like jackals in the lion's wake. Without denying the value of our conceptions of God and of the human soul, Mr. Tylor believes that these conceptions, however true in themselves, originated on the part of primitive man in fallacious reasoning from the data of dreams and of like states of illusory vision. He assumes, perhaps with some truth, that the distinction between dream and reality is more faintly marked in the less developed mind; in the child than in the adult, in the savage than in the civilized man. Hence a belief arises in a filmy phantasmal self that wanders abroad in sleep and leaves the body untenanted, and meets and converses with other phantasmal selves. Nor is it hard to see how death, being viewed as a permanent sleep, should be ascribed to the final abandonment of the body by its "dream-stuff" occupant. Whether as dreaded or loved or both, this ever-gathering crowd of disembodied spirits wins for itself a certaincultusof praise and propitiation, and reverence, and is humoured with food-offerings and similar sacrifices. Nor is it long before the form of an earthly polity is transferred to that unearthly city of the dead, till for one reason or another some jealous ghost gains a monarchic supremacy over his brethren, and thus polytheism gives place to monotheism. It need not be that this supreme deity is always conceived as a defunct ancestor, once embodied, but no longer in the body. Rather it would seem that the primitive savage, having once arrived at the conception of a ghost, passes by generalization to that of incorporeal beings unborn and undying, of spirits whose presence and power is revealed in stocks and stones, or in idols shaped humanwise—spirits who preside over trees, rivers, and elements, over species and classes and departments of Nature, over tribes and peoples and nations; until, as before, the struggle for existence or some other cause gives supremacy to some one god fittest to survive either through being more conceivable, or more powerful, or in some other way more popular than the rest of the pantheon.
Again, it is assumed that the gods of primitive man are non-ethical, that they do not "make for righteousness;" that they are at most jealous powers to be feared and propitiated. When the savage speaks of a god as good, he only means "favourable to me," "on my side;" he does not mean "good to me if I am good." God is conceived first as power and force; then as non-moral wisdom, or cunning, and only in the very latest developments as holy and just and loving.
Starting with the assumptions of evolutionists, the theory is plausible enough. Nor is it inconceivable that God, without using error and evil directly as a means to truth and good, should passively permit error for the sake of the truth that He foresees will come out of it. Astrology was not incipient astronomy; nor was alchemy primitive chemistry; the end and aim in each case was wholly different. Yet the pseudo-science gave birth to the true; as false premisses often lead by bad logic to sound conclusions. Totemism, "a perfectly crazy and degrading belief," says Mr. Lang, "rendered possible—nay, inevitable—the union of hostile groups into large and relatively peaceful tribal societies…. We should never have educated the world thus; and we do not see why it should have been thus done. But we are very anthropomorphic, and totally ignorant of the conditions of the problem." In like manner it might have been, that God willed to let men wander through the slums and backways of animism into the open road of theism.
But our concern is not with what might have been, but with what was.
Mr. Lang contends, first, that belief in spirits and in a circumambient spiritual world, more probably originated in certain real or imaginary experiences of supernormal phenomena, than in a fallacious explanation of dreams; then, that belief in a supreme god is most probably not derived from or dependent upon belief in ghosts.
Consistently with the whole trend of his thought in his recent work connected with psychical research, inMyth, Ritual, and Religion, inCock-Lane and Common-Sense, Mr. Lang begins by entering a protest against the attitude observed towards the subject by contemporary science, especially by anthropology, which, as having been so lately "in the same condemnation," might be expected to show itself superior to that injustice which it had itself so much reason to complain of. Yet anthropology, abandoning the first principles of modern science, still refuses to listen to the facts alleged by psychical research, and justifies its refusal on Hume's oft-exploded fallacy, namely, on anà prioriconviction of their impossibility and therefore of their non-occurrence.
However wide the range of experience upon which physical generalizations are based, it can never be so wide as on this score alone to prove the inherent possibility of exceptions; more especially when we consider the confinement of the human race to what is relatively a momentary existence on a whirling particle of dust in a sandstorm. There may indeed be abundant evidence of a certain impetus or tendency enduring from a comparatively distant and indefinite past and making for an equally indefinite future; but there is not, cannot be evidence against the possibility of interference from other laws whose paths, at points unknown and incalculable, intersect those followed by the (to us) ordinary course of events.
And in this wholesome agnosticism we are confirmed when we see that while some animals are deprived of certain senses which we possess, and all of them of the gift of reason, others are apparently endowed with senses unknown to us, and are taught by seeming instincts which surpass what reason could effect; whence we may infer that the likelihood of our beingen rapportwith the greater part of thepossiblephenomena amidst which we live, or of our possessing all possible senses or the best of those possible, is infinitely small. What a magician a man with eyes would be among a race of sightless men; or a man with ears among a deaf population! How studiously would the scientists explain the effects of sight as produced by subtilty of hearing; and those of hearing as due to abnormal sensitiveness in some other respect!
But though there be noà prioriimpossibility in deviations from the beaten track, yet there is a certainà prioriimprobability which may seem to justify those who refuse to go into alleged instances of the supernormal. There is a story against Thomas Aquinas, that on being invited by a frisky brother-monk to come and see a cow flying, or some such marvel, he gravely came and saw not, but expressed himself far more astounded at the miracle that a religious man should say "the thing which was not." This is certainly a glorious antithesis to Hume's position. Whether we take it to illustrate the Saint's extreme lack of humour, or a subtler depth of humour veiled under stolidity, or his rigorous veracity, or his guileless confidence in the veracity of others, we certainly cannot approve it as an example of the attitude we ought to observe with regard to every newly recounted marvel. Truly there might be more liberality, more enlightenment, more imagination in such a ready credulity, than in the wall-eyed, ear-stopping scepticism of popular science; but the mere inner possibility of a recounted marvel does not oblige us to search into the matter unless the evidence offered bear some reasonable proportion to the burden it has to support. That this is the case as regards crystal-gazing, telepathy, possession, and kindred manifestation, is what Mr. Lang contends; nor would he have any quarrel with the anthropologists were they not fully impressed with the importance of similar or even weaker cumulative evidence for conclusions which happen to be in harmony with their preconceived hypotheses. Where such evidence exists it must be faced, and at least its existence must be explained.
True criticism should either account for the seeming breach of uniformity, by reducing it to law; or else should show how the assertion if false ever gained credence; but in no case is it scientific to put aside, on anà prioriassumption, evidence that is offered from all sides in great abundance. Psychic research is daily applying to that tangled mass of world-wide evidence ancient and modern for the existence of an X-region of experience, those same critical and historical principles which created modern science. Men who, as often as not, have no religion or no superstition themselves, see that both religion and superstition are universal phenomena, and cannot be neglected by those who would study humanity historically and scientifically. Even if there be nothing in hallucinations, apparitions, scrying, second-sight, poltergeists, and the rest, there is a great deal in the fact that belief in these things is as wide and as old as the world; it is a fact to be explained. "Each man," says Meister, "commonly defends himself as long as possible from casting out the idols which he worships in his soul; from acknowledging a master-error, and admitting any truth that brings him to despair;" and indeed a system as complete and compact as that of Mr. Spencer or Mr. Tylor is apt to become an intellectual idol forbidding under pain of infidelity all inquiries that might cause it to totter on its throne, or which might unravel in an instant what has been woven by years of hard and honest thought. Few of us are in a position to cast stones on this score; still, recognizing the weakness more clearly in others than in ourselves, we are justified in reckoning with it, and in discounting for the unwillingness of men of science to listen to facts inconsistent with long-cherished theories, and for their tendency to accumulate and magnify evidence on the other side. "If the facts not fitting their theories are little observed by authorities so popular as Mr. Huxley and Mr. Spencer; ifinstantiae contradictoriaeare ignored by them, or left vague; if these things are done in the green tree, we may easily imagine what shall be done in the dry. But we need not war with hastyvulgarisateursand headlong theorists."
We cannot for a moment question the sincerity of purpose and honesty of intention of many of the leaders of modern scientific enlightenment, whatever we may think of the said crowd ofvulgarisateurs—those camp-followers who bring disgrace on every respectable cause. But beside wilful bias and unfairness, there is unconscious bias from which none of us are free, but from which we need to be delivered by mutual criticism; for, however much a man can see of himself, he can never get behind his own back. Of such unwitting dishonesty men of thought are abundantly guilty, when deeming themselves to be governed only by reason, they are in fact slaves to some intellectual fashion of the day. Not one of them in a thousand would dare to appear in public with the clothes of last century, or to face the laughter of a crowd of his compeers. Hence a certain indocility and rigidness of mind which they only escape who live out of the fashion or have strength to lead it or to live above it. Simple, whether from greatness or littleness, they escape the narrowing influence inseparable from being identified, even in their own mind, with a school or coterie; and can afford to say things as they see them.
Contemporary fashion says at present that there are to be no miracles, nothing supernormal; whatever cannot be reduced in any way to known laws and causes can be flatly denied, for the supposition of unknown causes and laws is rank heresy. Until more recent years, it was not permitted to listen to or show any disposition to investigate the narratives of phenomena which have since been "explained" and reduced to such legalized causes as hysteria or hypnotism, and even (of late) to thought-transference. But since this happy reconciliation has been effected, such stories are allowed to be believed on ordinary evidence, although the accounts of other "unclassed" supernormal marvels coming from the same lips with the same attestation are still brushed aside as traveller's tales, or as the puerilities of hagiography—not worth a thought. One would think that some kind of apology or reparation were due to ecclesiastical tradition, which was credited with wholesale lying so long as its recorded wonders were classed among impossibilities by the intellectual fashion-mongers, but it seems we have only partly escaped the reproach of knavery to incur that of wholesale folly for not having seen that these apparent miracles were but forms of hysteria or hypnotism.
Yet what is hysteria and what does it really explain? [1] Surely the etymology throws no light on the subject! Is it then merely a name for the unknown cause of phenomena every whit as strange as those which were held incredible till their like had been actually witnessed and forced upon the unwilling eyes of science beyond all possibility of denial? Is it that science blindly refused even to weigh the evidence for abnormal facts till the same or similar had become matters of personal observation? Is it that every reported breach of her assumed uniformities is incredible, because impossible, until the possibility has been proved by some fact which is then named, erected into a class, a cause, a law, and used to explain away similar facts formerly denied, and is thus taken into that bundle of generalizations called the "laws of nature"? The ancients assumed all heavenly motion to be circular of necessity, and where facts gave against them, they patched the matter up with an epicycle or two. Are not hysteria, hypnotism, and thought-transference of the nature of epicycles? It is now confessed that the mind can so affect and dominate the body as to produce blisters and wounds by mere force of suggestion and expectancy; that a like "faith" can cure, not only such ailments as are clearly connected with the nerves, but others where such connection is not yet traceable. And this is supposed to tell in some way against like marvels reported by hagiology, as though they were explained by being observed and named. Yet what did that supposed marvellousness consist in, except in a seeming revelation of the power and superiority of mind over matter, and of things unseen over things seen and palpable; and in proving that there were more wonders in heaven and earth than were dreamt of by a crude and self-satisfied materialism? They were taken as evidence of a circumambient X-region where the laws of mechanics were set at defiance and where the fetters of time and place were loosened or cast aside. Such an X-region being supposed by every supernatural religion and denied by most of those who deny religion, and on the same grounds, its establishment by any kind of experiment is rightly considered in some sort to make for religion. Indeed, it is just on this account that the evidence for it is so opposed by those who are pre-occupied by the anti-religious bias of contemporary science. But unless hysterical effects can be shown to be ultimately due, not to mind, but to matter acting on matter, according to methods approved by materialism, hysteria remains a word-cause and no more, like the meat-cooking quality of the roasting-jack.
Hypnotism is a kindred cause in every way. It means sleep-ism; yet manifestly it deals with characteristics which are utterly unlike those of sleep; and it is precisely these that need to be explained away in conformity with received laws, unless we are to find in these phenomena evidence of such modes of being and operation as every kind of religion postulates. "Possession" is of course a fable; the superabundant world-wide, world-old evidence for the phenomenon was thrust aside without a glance, till hypnotic experiments brought to light what is called "alternating personality." As though this name had explained everything in accordance with materialism, forthwith it was permitted to believe the aforesaid evidence, provided one laughed loudly enough at the theory of "possession." It is allowed that the hypnotic patient may in some sense be said to be "possessed" by the hypnotiser for the time being; nay, even a certain chronic possession of this kind is observable. But an invisible hypnotiser and possession by a disembodied spirit is still out of fashion, notwithstanding all Mrs. Piper's efforts and Dr. Hodgson's audacious declaration of his not very willing belief that those who speak through her "are veritably the personalities they claim to be, and that they have survived the change we call death."