"Man's higher Instinct leads to lofty aspiration,To generous sentiment, and boundless desire,Till he seeks and finds the Author of his Soul.In seeking for him he perfects his virtue,By finding him he is made strong within,And being strong he strengthens his brethren."
"Man's higher Instinct leads to lofty aspiration,To generous sentiment, and boundless desire,Till he seeks and finds the Author of his Soul.In seeking for him he perfects his virtue,By finding him he is made strong within,And being strong he strengthens his brethren."
"Man's higher Instinct leads to lofty aspiration,To generous sentiment, and boundless desire,Till he seeks and finds the Author of his Soul.In seeking for him he perfects his virtue,By finding him he is made strong within,And being strong he strengthens his brethren."
"Man's higher Instinct leads to lofty aspiration,
To generous sentiment, and boundless desire,
Till he seeks and finds the Author of his Soul.
In seeking for him he perfects his virtue,
By finding him he is made strong within,
And being strong he strengthens his brethren."
"Light is natural to the Eye, and the Eye improves under Light,So Truth is natural to the Mind, and the Mind improves under Truth.But the student of Goodness must himself become good,So far at least as to choose Goodness for his best portion.If base passion or worldliness is allowed to domineer,No man can gaze steadily at Purity and at God.And then perhaps he despairs of religious truth,And moralizes on Man's feebleness and limited faculties,So unfitted to fathom the Divine and to know the Eternal!"F. Newman.Theism, pp. 2 and 12.
"Light is natural to the Eye, and the Eye improves under Light,So Truth is natural to the Mind, and the Mind improves under Truth.But the student of Goodness must himself become good,So far at least as to choose Goodness for his best portion.If base passion or worldliness is allowed to domineer,No man can gaze steadily at Purity and at God.And then perhaps he despairs of religious truth,And moralizes on Man's feebleness and limited faculties,So unfitted to fathom the Divine and to know the Eternal!"F. Newman.Theism, pp. 2 and 12.
"Light is natural to the Eye, and the Eye improves under Light,So Truth is natural to the Mind, and the Mind improves under Truth.But the student of Goodness must himself become good,So far at least as to choose Goodness for his best portion.If base passion or worldliness is allowed to domineer,No man can gaze steadily at Purity and at God.And then perhaps he despairs of religious truth,And moralizes on Man's feebleness and limited faculties,So unfitted to fathom the Divine and to know the Eternal!"F. Newman.Theism, pp. 2 and 12.
"Light is natural to the Eye, and the Eye improves under Light,
So Truth is natural to the Mind, and the Mind improves under Truth.
But the student of Goodness must himself become good,
So far at least as to choose Goodness for his best portion.
If base passion or worldliness is allowed to domineer,
No man can gaze steadily at Purity and at God.
And then perhaps he despairs of religious truth,
And moralizes on Man's feebleness and limited faculties,
So unfitted to fathom the Divine and to know the Eternal!"
F. Newman.Theism, pp. 2 and 12.
"The world offers just now the spectacle, humiliating to us in many ways, of millions of people clinging to their old idolatrous religions, and refusing to change them even for a higher form; whilst in Christian Europe thousands of the most cultivated class are beginning to consider atheism a permissible, or even a desirable thing. The very instincts of the savage rebuke us. But just when we seem in danger of losing all, may come the moment of awakening to the dangers of our loss. A world where thought is a secretion of the brain-gland, where free-will is the dream of a madman that thinks he is an emperor though naked and in chains, where God is not, or at least not knowable, such is not the world as we learnt it, on which great lives have been lived out, great self-sacrifices dared, great piety and devotion have been bent to soften the sin, the ignorance, and the misery. It is a world from which the sun is withdrawn, and with it all light and life. But this is not our world as it was, not the world of our fathers. To live is to think and to will. To think is to see the chain of facts in creation, and passing along its golden links, to find the hand of God at its beginning, as we saw Hishandiwork in its course. And to will is to be able to know good and evil; and to will aright is to submit the will entirely to a will higher than ours. So that with God alone can we find true knowledge and true rest, the vaunted fruits of philosophy."—Limits of Philosophical Inquiry. By the Archbishop of York, p. 24.
"The mind of man becomesA thousand times more beautiful than the earthOn which he dwells, above this frame of thingsIn beauty exalted, as it is itselfOf quality and fabric more divine."Wordsworth.The Prelude, sub. fin.
"The mind of man becomesA thousand times more beautiful than the earthOn which he dwells, above this frame of thingsIn beauty exalted, as it is itselfOf quality and fabric more divine."Wordsworth.The Prelude, sub. fin.
"The mind of man becomesA thousand times more beautiful than the earthOn which he dwells, above this frame of thingsIn beauty exalted, as it is itselfOf quality and fabric more divine."Wordsworth.The Prelude, sub. fin.
"The mind of man becomes
A thousand times more beautiful than the earth
On which he dwells, above this frame of things
In beauty exalted, as it is itself
Of quality and fabric more divine."
Wordsworth.The Prelude, sub. fin.
"Religion, Poetry is not dead; it will never die. Its dwelling and birth place is in the soul of man, and it is eternal as the being of man. In any point of space, in any section of Time, let there be a living Man; and there is an Infinitude above him and beneath him, and an Eternity encompasses him on this hand and on that; and tones of Sphere-music, and tidings from loftier worlds, will flit round him, if he can but listen, and visit him with holy influences, even in the thickest press of trivialities, or the din of busiest life. Happy the man, happy the nation, that can hear these tidings; that has them written in fit characters, legible to every eye, and the solemn import of them present at all moments to every heart! That there is, in these days, no nation so happy, is too clear; but that all nations, and ourselves in the van, are, with more or less discernment of its nature, struggling towards this happiness, is the hope and the glory of our time. To us, as to others, success, at a distant or a nearer day, cannot be uncertain. Meanwhile, the first condition of success is, that, in striving honestly ourselves, we honestly acknowledge the striving of our neighbour; that with a will unwearied in seeking Truth, we have a sense open for it wheresoever and howsoever it may arise."—Carlyle.Miscellanies, p. 99, Last Edition.
SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTER IV.
With the last Chapter closes what may be termed the more critical part of this Essay. The remainder is occupied with a series of affirmative arguments.
The preparation for these arguments having been minutely made, explanatory additions become less necessary.
The main object of the present chapter is to establish a tenable Theory respecting those Human Beliefs among which is included our primary Belief in Theism. Their nature and validity not having as yet been sufficiently investigated (see footnote (b) p. 256post), some extent of discussion attends the inquiry. To many readers the territory opened out will appear new. It ought however to be traversed by all careful students of Psychology.
Analysis:—Tendencies of the Human Mind resulting in certain concrete Beliefs. The Inductive Principle, or Law of Uniformity, investigated. Various explanations of its origin examined and rejected; particularly the hypothesis which resolves it into Laws of Association. Shewn to be a primary Belief; at first pre-rational, afterwards limited and established by Reason. The latter process separates by a strong line of demarcation the realm of Humanity from that of the lower creation.
Animal instincts, some improvable, some "survivals." Human instincts transformed by Reason. Certain primary Beliefs peculiar to Man. Hence his special culture.
Theism. Fallacies from confusion between Tests of Speculative and of Practical Truth. Lesson of Mathematics. Speculative truths tested by analytic process; Practical by synthetic; their work becomes their ever-growing verification. Application of this test to two practical beliefs; our natural belief in externalities, and our belief in the Supernatural. Speculative difficulties intruded into the practical sphere become apparently insuperable. Both spheres essentially Human. Natural Realism compared with Realistic Theism.
Formation and growth of Belief in the Supernatural as a Belief of Reason. Absurdities attaching to its rejection. Ennobling influences of its acceptance explained and exemplified. Ideal of Humanity, crowned by the Ideal of God, to Whom both the Natural and the Moral world bear witness.
CHAPTER IV.
BELIEFS OF REASON.
In the last section, we have examined a number of intellectual perplexities, running closely parallel to certainprimâ-facieobjections commonly alleged against Natural Theism. We have seen that they are, in reality, difficulties arising from the impotence of the Human Mind, whenever it is directed to the contemplation of first or supreme, Principles. In all reason therefore, they cease to be objections. We are, in fact, constantly finding ourselves obliged to accept as an undeniable truth, or a real existence, what when placed objectively before our mental vision, appears inexplicable, self-contradictory, or absolutely unthinkable.
The power which compels us to many an admission of this kind is themind itself, asserting a strength of insight, in-born and inalienable, notwithstanding the symptoms of weakness, which (psychologically speaking) may have seemed threatening to overcloud and disable it.[ac]
Hence, we are led to suspect that some at least of those symptomatic weaknesses, are mistakes in diagnosis. This suspicion will be shared by most persons tolerably acquainted with the present state of psychology, and particularly with the manner in which foregone theories are supported by over-refined analysis. At all events, the reactionary strength of the mind is best shown in the concrete beliefs resulting from its own simplest activities.
Our simplest mental activities are naturally our earliest. Amongst them, none are more distinctly marked than our impulses to believe and act upon certain definite pre-suppositions. These differ from the vague and purposeless dreams of childhood, by gradually becoming clear, practical, and expansive. One of the most vigorous, permanent, and prevailing, amongst them all, is our human belief in the existence of supernatural power. Upon another presupposition (not originally the clearest), seems to rest, in the first degree, that principle which gives validity to all the inductive sciences. We will carefully examine this latter belief, with the object of drawing from the process certain aids for an examination of the former.[ad]
Induction is defined as the legitimate inference of the more general, from the less general;—the general from the particular;—and (with more startling distinctness) of the Unknown from the Known. It is at once evident that, whatever may be the logical form into which this mode of inferring is thrown, there must in the nature of things be some ulterior principle to give it legitimacy. This principle, when raised to the rank and dignity of a philosophic postulate, is commonly known as the Law of Natural Uniformity. A law claiming such extensive dominion that one cannot help asking in what code, human or Divine, of reason or of experience, it was originally found written.
Let us have recourse to the code of reason first. Euclid gives admirable instances of things true by necessity of reason. The moment we understand what right lines are, we see at once and for all time that two straight lines, infinitely prolonged, can never inclose a space. No one ever did see a mathematical line of any kind ("length without thickness"),—no one ever saw or conceived any real or ideal thing of infinite extent, neither can we think infinity at all. Yet the terms of the geometrical proposition carry their own evidence. We may sum the case, as Euler the mathematician put it. Hefinished a demonstration uponArchesby saying, "All experience is contrary to this, but that is no reason for doubting its truth."
Now, there appears nothing in the least resembling this case, in the conception of Natural Uniformity. No thinker can predicate substantial impossibility of the idea that Nature should ever be otherwise than Uniform.
Suppose, then, we consider the code of Experience. Where shall we find the experience required? Ours is far short of universal, either in an absolute or an approximate sense. We are the children of to-day—yet the law wanted must be to all intents universal. It has been answered to this obvious requirement, that we enjoy the results of an experience constant and uniform, "coextensive not with the life of the single individual who employs them, but with the entire history of the human race."[154]But in what history is any such experience written? History in itsletter, is full of events which contradict Nature's uniformity, of interruptions, marvels, miracles. For cattle to speak, is quite a common occurrence in Livy. An ordinary Roman would have been perplexed by the absence of signs and wonders; he would have felt it something to be accounted for. History tells us on every written page to believe in what seems impossible; and some writers on historical evidence, claim for it a greater amount of credibility whenever it testifies to the greater number of improbable incidents. For, do not writers of fiction deal in probabilities?[155]
Another method of giving force to the principle of natural Uniformity, is based on our alleged sense of personal subjection to the chain of events;—the outer world is said to penetrate the inner by an impression of its unvarying sequence, its laws of unbroken continuity. But does the lesson of life really gothis way? Most men, when meditating over their own lives, think rather of the causation they have themselves exercised, or might have exercised, than of any iron links of causality in nature. So strongly do they feel their causal power, that, whereas one man boasts of being the architect of his own fortunes, another blames himself because he has been foolish enough to let things take their chance. What people chiefly realize and act upon, is the relation between Man and Nature—or, else between Man and Man;—relations prolific in consequences which we shall have to consider by-and-bye.
A more summary mode of explaining our human impression of natural Uniformity, is by resolving it into certain laws of Association. We see antecedent and consequent every day, and get to consider them as indissolubly associated. If we see a present antecedent, we expect a coming consequent. The event and its futurity, are thus fused in a common solvent. Yet, one palpable objection lies against this theory, and it is fatal. Fatal against it, and against all theories which rest our belief upon experience, or upon any process of reasoning, inductive or demonstrated. The objection consists in the plain fact, that this belief resembles animal instinct[156]inonedefinite particular—it exists previously to all observation or exercise of intelligence on the subject.
We see it in all young creatures. The instinct of children is to act upon a supposition that the thing they have enjoyed or suffered shall recur regularly and without interruption. The darling brought down to dessert every day for a week, feels injured by a breach of the custom, just as the cat or dog fed from their masters' table expects the same hand to continue always kind. Child, kitten, and puppy, need no second scalding to look askance at the tea-kettle. Grown people's confidence in the stability of Empires often reposes on no much stronger foundation. Most men rest satisfied with an indefinite and unreasoning presumption all their lives long. They desire no further explanation—a happy circumstance, perhaps, considering the theories they might have to investigate.
Mr. James Mill in his "Analysis of the Human Mind" made great and continual use of the laws of Association. He applied them (amongst other ways) to our belief in the uniform futurities of Nature. "There can" he writes "be no idea of the Future; because strictly speaking the Future is a non-entity—of nothing there can be no idea.... Our whole lives are but a series of changes, that is, of antecedents and consequents. The conjunction, therefore, is incessant; and, of course, the union of the ideas perfectly inseparable." (Vol. I. pp. 362-3.) And again, (p. 367,) "But I am told, that we have not only the idea of to-morrow, but the belief of to-morrow; and I am asked what that belief is. I answer, that you have not only the idea of to-morrow, but have itinseparably. It will also appear, that wherever the namebelief is applied, there is a case of the indissoluble association of ideas. It will further appear, that, in instances without number, the name belief is applied to a mere case of indissoluble association; and no instance can be adduced in which anything besides an indissoluble association can be shewn in belief. It would seem to follow from this, with abundant evidence, that the whole of my notion of to-morrow, belief included, is nothing but a case of the inevitable sequence of ideas."—This theory Mr. Bain (no hostile critic) annotates as follows. "The case that is most thoroughly opposed to the theory of indissoluble association is our belief in the Uniformity of Nature. Our overweening tendency to anticipate the future from the past is shown prior to all association; the first effect of experience is to abridge and modify a strong primitive urgency. There is, no doubt, a certain stage when association co-operates to justify the believing state. After our headlong instinct has, by a series of reverses, been humbled and toned down, and after we have discovered that the Uniformity, at first imposed by the mind upon everything, applies to some things and not to others, we are confirmed by our experience in the cases where the uniformity prevails; and the intellectual growth of association counts for a small part of the believing impetus. Still, the efficacy of experience is perhaps negative rather than positive; it saves, in certain cases, the primitive force of anticipation from the attacks made upon it in the other cases where it is contradicted by the facts. It does not make belief, it conserves a pre-existing belief." In Mr. Bain's comment it is worthy of particular remark that he considers experience less as a foundation, than atestalways,—alimitsometimes,—of that law which gives life to all the experimental sciences. "The uniformity imposed by the mind," he observes, "applies to some things but not to others." His view, therefore, places the principle itself in the light of a generality given by the mind and apprehended as a leading maxim. Its field is sometimes reasserted,—sometimes contracted,—by experience; but in both cases the effect is a process of discrimination.
In support of this view, it may be fairly urged that a child calculates on the uniformity of human character and conduct, to an extent not justified in after life. Any child correctlyexpects a stone to fall when thrown into the air, without the least idea of that special reason for its fall, which can be mathematically extended to the stars. In like manner, our very earliest belief in the reality of men and objects outside us, confuses persons and things as resisting antagonists which ought to be punished and overcome. Experience, therefore, brings discrimination. Thus, too, the natural apprehension of a power above nature, occupies a more defined sphere in our own old age than the first radiant glimpses of our wondering upward-springing childhood. And the same may be said of the world's several eras of religious thinking. Yet, if some eminent writers are correct in contending that the belief in a Supreme "Heaven-Father," (so strong in the Aryan[157]family,) was of extreme antiquity, we must admit that our race's infancy cherished a more truly Theistic faith, than many intervening ages of moral degeneracy retained.[158]But, side by side with this admission, we ought to placetwonotable facts,—firstthat our sense of the supernatural has really educated the great heart of Man; teaching him from the love of God to love his neighbour likewise.—Next,—that the awful impression has, on the whole, grown with his growth, and strengthened with his strength; acquiring fresh light and beauty with every fresh access to his noblest illumination. Exactly in proportion, as man increasingly learns to love and live for his neighbour, he has always increased the depth and earnestness with which he lives for and loves his God. In these two facts is bound up the secret of our Western civilization.
We must return, however, for a few paragraphs to thegeneral consideration of what may be called our pre-rational beliefs.[ae]That they are pre-rational (account for them as we will), is evident since from them spring our first tendencies to reason in special directions, and our first ability to receive and assimilate such mental food as may be afforded us. "The primary facts of intelligence,"—says Sir W. Hamilton, "the facts which precede, as they afford the conditions of, all knowledge,—would not be original were they revealed to us under any other form than that of natural or necessary beliefs."[159]A central point this; and one most essential for the Psychologist! Indeed, every one who explains such beliefs into laws of association, commits the oversight of refining away the chieffact involved in those laws themselves. For, the very idea of association presupposes a guiding impulse. How can we classify without a standard of classification, arrange or connect without threads of connection or arrangement? Laws of association must cluster round an associating principle, just as translucent halos encircle the Sun. Laws of association do not make principles; but an operative principle evokes associations, and manifests itself in their law.
Oversights like this, and the one before noted by Mr. Bain, are examples of the paralogism incident to all attempts at explaining the inexplicable. In his eagerness, the metaphysical refiner subtilizes away the truth under analysis. Even so, in days of old, Alchemists used to sublimate the gold intended for transmuting inferior metals, till it flew off in elastic vapour, and all thathad beenprecious, vanished from the eager speculative man. A frequent issue this, to searchers after our true philosopher's stone.
The catalogue of pre-rational beliefs or impulses to believe, is considerable, and might easily be enlarged. But there is much to hinder a full enumeration. In the first place, they emerge from a border-land between the brute and the man; and border territories are proverbially fertile in disputes. Next, they have to be sought out and examined in the birthplace of intelligence; and the beginnings of knowledge like the beginnings of history are overshadowed by a twilight haze. Then, too, amongst the painters of human nature, (who after all are but men,) there prevails a disinclination to confess how largely our human life is cradled under the rule of unreason and impulsiveness. Most of us hardly know why we act, yet, every one likes to believe himself reasoning and reasonable. Finally, some religious minds shrink back from realizing the idea of aninstinctivebelief in the moral antithesis of Right and Wrong, or in a Supreme First Cause and Judge of all men. They feel as if to admit it were almost degrading to Faith,—forgetful that the philosophic Apostle took this view and expressed it with the utmost boldness.[160]Forgetful, also, that from whatever source Man's reason sprang, from the samewelled forth every bright stream of practical activity,—impelling him to work in spheres as yet unconquered by the force of his own understanding.
The hindrances now described are, after all, grounded on an inadequate conception of the true distinction between the Animal and the Man. Apart from the fact that ultimate objects of instinct differ as widely as the idea of a future life differs from the poorest enjoyments of the brute world,—quite apart from all consideration of aims and ends,—the impulses themselves are in their own activities very far indeed from occupying the same level. There are instincts of the utmost importance to all self support and self protection, and to the sustenance and care of others, which appear in their own nature simple and unalterable;—unerring within their direct line, but beyond it helpless and narrow in their field of operation. Other instincts again,—such, for example, as impel animals to construction, and human beings to art,—are evidently influenced and enlarged by intelligence. Beavers adapt their dams, birds their nests, and the bee her comb, to all kinds of circumstances, so far as they can command the means of adaptation. Their intelligence also delights itself in different kinds of adornment.[161]But the power of meetingexigencies, is manifestly limited throughout the lower creation. The bee has, for ages, worked upon marvellously accurate principles, unintelligible to mathematicians before the calculus was invented, and only fully explained of late years. She always erects one effectual and skilful kind of barricade[162]against hostile swarms, as well as that dreaded assailant, theDeath's head moth. Furthermore, she evinces readiness in fitting all her material structures to place, occasion, and circumstance. Yet, observe the same bee exhausting herself by vain struggles against the sloping roof of a greenhouse, of which every window is thrown wide open. She perseveres, hour after hour, in unavailing endeavours to escape by her one accustomed upward track of flight, unable to conceive the possibility of transparent but impenetrable glass; and incapable of learning the fact by her repeated disappointments. In this way, hundreds of bees, butterflies, and other winged insects, perish miserably every summer. So, too, the highly educated and intelligent dog, will try to scratch holes in hard flag stones, and, after trials innumerable, still scratches on without seeming to discover that he never succeeds in making a single hole. Thus, also, birds in captivity keep up the perpetual motion of their heads—(useful to the poor prisoner no longer!) and generations after generations of captives maintain the instinctive practice. Numberless instances might easily be adduced to the same effect. Butnosimilar observation holds good of man. The child soon discontinues its efforts to thrust an arm through a glass window; and every day learns some new lesson in the properties of material objects. The engineer builds dams as well as the beaver;—but, beside dams, what marvels innumerable does he achieve with his earthworks, his timbers, and his stones! Speaking generally, we perceive that man has an instinctive tendency to lay hold of a practical fact, idea, and law of action, as a concrete whole;[163]—seizing it, at first, as the animal does without being able to analyze, recompound, or extend it. But reason holds the candle to instinct.[af]The impulse deepens and widens,—becomes distinguished by boldness and comprehensive breadth;—and it is difficult, if not impossible, to fix boundaries to its ultimate expansion. An expansion coextensive with the completed destinies of mankind.
We say thus much of our lower instincts, transformed and made glorious by reason shining through them; just as the setting sun transforms and glorifies the clouds floating high overhead, or the half-translucent foliage of the grove in whichwe walk. But there belong exclusively to Man, instinctive beliefs, impulses, and ideas, which possess a glory of their own;—raise him,firstabove the brutes,—nextabove himself as he now exists,—and make him know that he may aspire to become the denizen of a brighter world than this. Among them, is the feeling that Nature herself is (like the tree or cloud illumined by the sun), everywhere penetrated by a beauty and a power streaming through her;—compared with the reality of which she is but a filmy veil,—or it may be an illusive image. The sun himself, the light and life of the lower world, symbolizes an existence more truly kindling and ensouling, which animates and makes brilliant the blue arch of sky. Such thoughts as these haunted the first utterances of our race,—and it needed but another step to make us feel that this living light shines within ourselves,—and that, go where we will, a strength and Majesty go with us, which are not of the earth, earthy. Thus, the consciousness grew upon Man that his inner being glows with a radiance more sparkling than the stars, to which he lifts his bodily eyes. By-and-bye, he learned to think of the heaven within him, as symbolic also;—and to cherish a trembling trust that, when he dies, its brightness will grow pale, and vanish away only by reason of a glory which excelleth.
The Apostle beloved of his Master, told us of a true Light that lighteth every man. Yet, we might have been slow to realize the purer splendours over-arching our human soul, if they had not autotyped themselves on the language we commonly speak. Perhaps, a more convincing proof still to some of us, is what every now and then becomes incidentally known;—the God-ward impulses of a happily developed childhood, under circumstances favourable to the growth of "natural piety." In the heart of a child, feelings like those we have described, dwell untutored, as in their native and and appropriate home. An awe and dread accompany them amongst the world of men, but to the child they are never overpowering or oppressive. His finely-strung imagination works painlessly. The voices he hears when no human voice speaks, cause him no fear;—they call to him from a region towards which his young soul springs up. They soothe himwith sensations of hope and peace and love unutterable. This yearning affection for things unseen, makes the deepest joy of a happy childhood; it is a reason why Christ said, "Of such is the kingdom of Heaven."
A beautiful childhood is a very beautiful reality. Partly because of the exquisite simplicity which tones down and harmonizes all its impulses. But, very often, its beauty is only known in its loss;—and we mourn in after years over hope, love, and peace, broken down by life's attrition;—yet fair to look upon, even in their ruins.[ag]
No one is likely to doubt that the belief we have been describing, is peculiar to and characteristic of Man. A more subtle question would be this;—Suppose it could be taken away, how nearly would Man and brute approach each other?[164]A question deserving the attention of every one, who lives
"In self-adoring pride securely mailed."
"In self-adoring pride securely mailed."
"In self-adoring pride securely mailed."
Probably, the proudest of mankind little think how deeply their culture, art, and refinement, are indebted to a faithshared by the lowliest. One point, at least, seems clear,—if Morality did not perish in the wreck, a true and independent moral sense would bring us back to a belief in our own souls, their immortality, and their God.
Another question more essential to our purpose has been buried under heaps of fallacy and misconception. Theists are often told that the ideas of a Deity,—a future life,—and generally all that is conceived as supernatural, have no absolute trustworthiness;—they are not self-evident axioms, and they cannot be demonstrated. One answer to these alleged difficulties has been implicitly given in the last Chapter. If such objections are valid at all, they are valid against every practical first-truth therein considered. They are valid againstallprimary practical truths, looked at from the theoretical side, and tested by the rules proper to what is called pure Reason;—Reason, that is to say, not applied, but speculative. But, then, it is from this very employment of tests upon truth notin pari materia, that the first stage of fallacy begins. Thesecondstep in error follows naturally from the first. Compared with the clearness and definition of mathematics, all other axioms and proofs appear dim and dubious. The consequence is, that our minds fall into trains of false comparison on the all-important subject of certitude. Errors of that kind are always growing mischiefs; our tongues follow the lead of our thoughts, and hazy thinking becomes hazy speaking. Not only so, but words develope themselves into the leaders of thought; and hazy speaking engenders a hazier thinking still. People take mathematical certainty to be the sole type of all true and valuable certainties. Practical maxims are spoken of, as merely probable, Right and Wrong as the efflux of moral sentiments.[165]Few seem to be awarehowthe philosophical arrangements of first-truths ought to be applied. They should be applied to discriminate theprocesses, by which various kinds of truths are discoverable;—they stamp a character upon them, when discovered; but they donotdetermine the intrinsic worth and validity of the discoveries.
Why, let us ask, does Mathematical truth occupy so lofty aposition? Because,first, the constitution of our nature obliges us to accept its axioms, and by consequence each successive step in its impregnable demonstrations.Next, because we can verify so many of its theorems objectively. We apply them to remote planetary and stellar spheres beyond our own reach; where our own minds can neither alter nor colour anything. What then ought to be the fair and legitimate inference from an issue magnificently tried throughout the celestial universe? Surely this, and no other. It confirms, in the very highest possible degree, the truth-telling power of our own human nature. Whatsoever our mental constitution clearly compels us to accept, that same we ought to hold true, and maintain unswervingly.
Henceforth, therefore, we ought to look upon our Reason as having been put upon its conclusive trial. Every year that passes renders the verdict if possible more triumphant. We ought, henceforth, to make our assent absolute and unhesitating in the case of those other truths, which, while things continue as they now are, can never be tried and confirmed by an appeal of the same description.
It is not difficult to see how opposite would have been the issue from an employment of improper tests;—the test, for instance, of theUnthinkable. The universe, we should then have said, must be thought of as finite or as infinite. Either way it is inconceivable;—therefore the Universe cannot exist objectively at all.
Vicious as such a process would be, it is not so faulty as that of confounding the proper methods and attestations of speculative and practical truth.[166]Our human consciousness mustinbothcases give our data. We have to ask and obtain its answers,—but, in the two different spheres of knowledge, we must frame our interrogatories differently, and expect assurances differing not indegreeof certainty, but inkind;—invalueto human action;—and in themodeof their deliverance. We inquire into Speculative truth byanalysingit, until we arrive at undemonstrable axioms which assert their own validity. We assure ourselves that Practical principles are true by following them in theirsyntheticgrowth. Do they spring from a maxim we find ourselves urged by our own nature to accept,—and the opposite of which we cannot but broadly reject;—and do they reallyworkin the world,—exert an ennobling influence within their own domain, and intertwine themselves with the other truths and activities of our human life? If so, we may be assured of their vitality and their certitude. We know them, in short, by their stringency,—and by a happy experience of their power. Consequently, our knowledge ought to grow and strengthen, as our human age and the world's age both roll on. Practical truth, thus tried and acknowledged, is indeed the silver thread which leads us always. Some shrink from trusting it when stretched across the grave; yet, without it, all beyond is lost in haze, and our present life becomes enigmatical and self-contradictory.
Let us then apply the tests (found valid in their own practical sphere) to the case of our belief in a Supernatural and supreme Power. But, that we may do so with more evident effect, it will be well to place in juxtaposition with itanotherpowerful belief, and our progress will be rendered easier if we fix upon one which has already been, in part at least, under discussion. Nothing seems better fitted for this purpose, than what Professor Masson calls "the paramount fact," resulting alike to Hamilton and to Mill,—the universal persuasion in men of their own existence, as beings distinct from, but related to, an external world around them. It will be observed that, thus described, the fact is of a most concrete sort,—our inner reality in relation to an outer reality,—just as believing in a Supreme Being we believe in a Power that holds solemn relations to our individual selves and to our common Humanity.
We have therefore to observe the impression made upon our human endowment of practical Reason, when looking face to face at these two fact-beliefs, which for brevity's sake we shall call theNaturaland theSupernatural.
Did the uninstructed and stammering childhood of our race, separate, in thought, theSupernaturalfrom surrounding nature? Can we absolutely say either yes or no to this inquiry? The "Heaven-Father" of pre-historic[ah]day wouldseem if fully considered to make the separation clear. The type-idea, thus outlined, is drawn, not from symbolizing and personified Nature, but from an actual, living, fatherly, Man. And the tendency of primitive Man might rather be to raise natural objects into living beings, than to lower persons into things.
It is so, we are sure, with our children's apprehension of theNatural. They know a world of persons and things antagonistic to their own wills and efforts, but they begin by making the things intopersons. A thwarted baby-boy beats the table, his kitten, and his nurse indifferently. So far as observation has been extended to the religious apprehensions of the very young, they would seem to spiritualize the material universe;—to behold unseen powers in the changing clouds, and hear them in the sighing of the wind. Wordsworth's "Ode on Immortality" is a picture as full of childlike human truth, as it is of unearthly beauty.
But, as regardsbothprinciples, the human train of thought is nearly similar in its first rise, and grows in definiteness and expansion by a nearly similar process. A true Man sets each principle to work, and from its working gathers its real value and verification.
If the world outside him were a phantastic shadow, the practical conclusion fairly inferred would bequietism. Bolingbroke said to King Richard—
"The shadow of your sorrow hath destroyedThe shadow of your face."
"The shadow of your sorrow hath destroyedThe shadow of your face."
"The shadow of your sorrow hath destroyed
The shadow of your face."
But, suppose both face and sorrow were themselves only shadows? What worth in Man's body then,—what worth in his soaring mind? The natural issue would be to drift down the shadowy[167]stream into a darker abyss of Nothingness.
Speculation[168]must lay down its arms, as powerless against such a supposition. The evidence of our senses[169]themselves is resolvable into shadows.
It was not by speculation that our strong Western will encountered the ideal enigmas of every day life. Act upon externalities, and they willreact upon you. As a matter of fact, it is necessary to commence by admitting that the souls of others are asimpenetrableto us, as the material things into which we cannot force our way. But, things and persons react upon usdifferently; and we act upon them in widelydifferentways. By an exertion of our will, we can change or stop anaturaltide of inorganic antecedents and consequents and direct it to our own purposes.Beingslike ourselves, we must allure, manage, inform, and persuade. Soon we find, by experience, that other human beings are very like ourselves; and the higher animals nearer to us than stocks and stones.We find this through the exercise of our own causal activities upon them.
The idea of theSupernaturalmarches along no very dissimilar route. The strong man subjects Nature, but the Supernatural is above both it, and him. He cannot evenpossessthe thought of the Supreme. Whether he will or no, itpossesses him. To his reason, Nature cannot subsist, as the true and independent ground of anything;—her laws are the servants of his volition;—and her chain of antecedent and consequent hangs between a First and a Last, without giving any sufficient account of either. If the Universe began in a shining Nebula, the question remains unsolved,—what first brought the thin cloud into being? The practical Reason, confirmed by experience, distinctly perceives that productive nature transforms all things,—but originates nothing;—that, contrariwise, when human nature wills to commit a wrong,—it reallyoriginatesthe crime. A disputant may assert that Man's will originates no act;—the criminal is never guilty,—and the judge and jury who try him are not answerable for their own decision. The same disputant may add that the Court in which, they sit is unreal, and their bodily persons only shadows. The one set of suppositions is as tenable as the other, and precisely as unpractical.
In the common course of Nature, then, Mankind has learned to maintain, as a truth of reason, that the Supernatural Power is a Will,—that is a Personality. In other words Man becomes a Theist.
As in Natural Realism, so in realistic Theism, we try how our principles willwork. Realists in thought, we treat men and things as natural realities; diverse when compared together, but alike in outsideness as they stand related to ourselves. Action and reaction then go on as are to be expected. Life seems to us one long verification of the truth we began by accepting.—And so, too, it is with our belief in a Being Supernatural and Divine. If we succeed in figuring to ourselves a world of adaptation, order, law, progress, unity, we have but to open our eyes, and it appears spread out before us. If we think that the world's creation would blend allphysicalneeds into pleasurable pursuits and satisfactions, wemay look and see the union accomplished. If we frame a scheme of trial andmoraldiscipline, to raise the feeble and confirm the strong, its realization is not wanting amongst us. From our own feelings, we can imagine how a Father's eye would look pityingly down upon fear and sorrow, and all the strains incidental to moving laws; the attrition of other wills, the tumults, failures, ill doings, and perversities of our sensitive and social existence. How a Father's hand would bind up all that is weak, wild, and wilful in his children, with threads of rainbow coloured hope and joyful anticipation; bidding them believe that ere long the uncertain dimness, which is as morning spread upon the mountains, shall brighten into steady splendour, shining on to a perfect and unclouded day.
We find as a matter of fact that this hope is no stranger to the human breast; that numbers live in it; numbers have died for it; and pre-eminently those of whom the world was not worthy.
The growth of thought from a bare idea of the Supernatural to a belief in a pure and sublime Theism,—and the sufficient account it renders of the world, ourselves, and our destinies, must be looked upon as matters of fact in the work-day history of mankind. Practical human reason has really travelled by this track, and, from day to day, perceives new truths to verify the old conclusion. Every attempt to adapt other theories to the working facts become, by their unfitness for the purpose, indirect evidence for Theism. How short a time has passed since Campbell lamented over—