THE SPIRIT OF CONTROVERSY
The Atlas.][January 31, 1830.
The Spirit of Controversy has often been arraigned as the source of much bitterness and vexation, as productive of ‘envy, malice, and all uncharitableness’: and the charge, no doubt, is too well founded. But it is said to bean ill wind that blows nobody good; and there are few evils in life that have not some qualifying circumstance attending them. It is one of the worst consequences of this very spirit of controversy that it has led men to regard things too much in a single and exaggerated point of view. Truth is not one thing, but has many aspects and many shades of difference; it is neither all black nor all white; sees something wrong on its own side, something right in others; makes concessions to an adversary, allowances for human frailty, and is nearer akin to charity than the dealers in controversy or the declaimers against it are apt to imagine. The bigot and partisan (influenced by the very spirit he finds fault with) sees nothing in the endless disputes which have tormented and occupied men’s thoughts but an abuse of learning and a waste of time: the philosopher may still find an excuse for so bad and idle a practice. One frequent objection made to the incessant wrangling and collision of sects and parties is,What does it all come to?And the answer is,What would they have done without it?The pleasure of the chase, or the benefitderived from it, is not to be estimated by the value of the game after it is caught, so much as by the difficulty of starting it and the exercise afforded to the body and the excitement of the animal spirits in hunting it down: and so it is in the exercises of the mind and the pursuit of truth, which are chiefly valuable (perhaps) less for their results when discovered, than for their affording continual scope and employment to the mind in its endeavours to reach the fancied goal, without its being ever (or but seldom) able to attain it.Regard the end, is an ancient saying, and a good one, if it does not mean that we are to forget thebeginningand themiddle. By insisting on the ultimate value of things when all is over, we may acquire the character ofgravemen, but not of wise ones.Passe pour cela.If we would set up such a sort of fixed and final standard of moral truth and worth, we had better try to construct life over again, so as to make it apunctum stans, and not a thing in progress; for as it is, every end, before it can be realised, implies a previous imagination, a warm interest in, and an active pursuit of, itself, all which are integral and vital parts of human existence, and it is a begging of the question to say that an end is only of value in itself, and not as it draws out the living resources, and satisfies the original capacities of human nature. When the play is over, the curtain drops, and we see nothing but a green cloth; but before this, there have been five acts of brilliant scenery and high-wrought declamation, which, if we come to plain matter-of-fact and history, are still something. According to the contrary theory, nothing is real but a blank. This flatters the paradoxical pride of man, whose motto is,all or none. Look at that pile of school divinity! Behold where the demon of controversy lies buried! The huge tomes are mouldy and worm-eaten:—did their contents the less eat into the brain, or corrode the heart, or stir the thoughts, or fill up the void of lassitude andennuiin the minds of those who wrote them? Though now laid aside and forgotten, if they had not once had a host of readers, they would never have been written; and their hard and solid bulk asked the eager tooth of curiosity and zeal to pierce through it. We laugh to see their ponderous dulness weighed in scales, and sold for waste paper. We should not laugh too soon. On the smallest difference of faith or practice discussed in them, the fate of kingdoms hung suspended; and not merely so (which was a trifle) but Heaven and Hell trembled in the balance, according to the full persuasion of our pious forefathers. Many a drop of blood flowed in the field or on the scaffold, from these tangled briars and thorns of controversy; many a man marched to a stake to bear testimony to the most frivolous and incomprehensible of their dogmas. This was an untoward consequence; but if it was anevil to be burnt at a stake, it was well and becoming to have an opinion (whether right or wrong) for which a man was willing to be burnt at a stake. Read Baxter’sControversial Works: consider the flames of zeal, the tongues of fire, the heights of faith, the depths of subtlety, which they unfold, as in a darkly illuminated scroll; and then ask how much we are gainers by an utter contempt and indifference to all this? We wonder at the numberless volumes of sermons that have been written, preached, and printed on the Arian and Socinian controversies, on Calvinism and Arminianism, on surplices and stoles, on infant or adult baptism, on image-worship and the defacing of images; and we forget that it employed the preacher all the week to prepare his sermon (be the subject what it would) for the next Lord’s day, with infinite collating of texts, authorities, and arguments; that his flock were no less edified by listening to it on the following Sunday; and how manyDavid Deans’scame away convinced that they had been listening to the ‘root of the matter’! See that group collected after service-time and pouring over the gravestones in the churchyard, from whence, to the eye of faith, a light issues that points to the skies! See them disperse; and as they take different paths homeward while the evening closes in, still discoursing of the true doctrine and the glad tidings they have heard, how ‘their hearts burn within them by the way’! Then again, we should set down, among other items in the account, how the schoolboy is put to it to remember the text, and how the lazy servant-wench starts up to find herself asleep in church-time! Such is the business of human life; and we, who fancy ourselves above it, are only so much the more taken up with follies of our own. We look down in this age of reason on those controverted points and nominal distinctions which formerly kept up such ‘a coil and pudder’ in the world, as idle and ridiculous, because we are not parties to them; but if it was theegotismof our predecessors that magnified them beyond all rational bounds, it is no less egotism in us who undervalue their opinions and pursuits because they are not ours; and, indeed, to leave egotism out of human nature, is ‘to leave the part ofHamletout of the play ofHamlet.’ Or what are we the better with ourUtilitarian Controversies, Mr. Taylor’s discourses (delivered in canonicals) against the evidence of the Christian religion, or the changes of ministry and disagreements between the Duke of Wellington and the Duke of Newcastle?
‘Strange! that such difference should be’Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee!’
‘Strange! that such difference should be’Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee!’
‘Strange! that such difference should be’Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee!’
‘Strange! that such difference should be
’Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee!’
But the prevalence of religious controversy is reproached withfomenting spiritual pride and intolerance, and sowing heart-burnings, jealousies, and fears, ‘like a thick scurf o’er life;’ yet, had it not been for this, we should have been tearing one another to pieces like savages for fragments of raw flesh, or quarrelling with a herd of swine for a windfall of acorns under an oak-tree. The world has never yet done, and will never be able to do, without some apple of discord—some bone of contention—any more than courts of law can do without pleadings, or hospitals without the sick. When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest. Why need we regret the various hardships and persecutions for conscience-sake, when men only clung closer to their opinions in consequence? They loved their religion in proportion as they paid dear for it. Nothing could keep the Dissenters from going to a conventicle while it was declared an unlawful assembly, and was the highroad to a prison or the plantations—take away tests and fines, and make the road open and easy, and the sect dwindles gradually into insignificance. A thing is supposed to be worth nothing that costs nothing. Besides, there is always pretty nearly the same quantity of malice afloat in the world; though with the change of time and manners it may become a finer poison, and kill by more unseen ways. When the sword has done its worst, slander, ‘whose edge is sharper than the sword,’ steps in to keep the blood from stagnating. Instead of slow fires and paper caps fastened round the heads of the victims, we arrive at the same end by a politer way of nicknames and anonymous criticism.Blackwood’s Magazineis the modern version of Fox’sBook of Martyrs. Discard religion and politics (the two grand topics of controversy), and people would hate each other as cordially, and torment each other as effectually about the preference to be given to Mozart or Rossini, to Malibran or Pasta. We indeed fix upon the most excellent things, as God, our country, and our King, to account for the excess of our zeal; but this depends much less upon the goodness of our cause than on the strength of our passions, and our overflowing gall and rooted antipathy to whatever stands in the way of our conceit and obstinacy. We set up an idol (as we set up a mark to shoot at) for others to bow down to, on peril of our utmost displeasure, let the value of it be what it may——
‘Of whatsoe’er descent his Godhead be,Stock, stone, or other homely pedigree,In his defence his servants are as boldAs if he had been born of beaten gold.’
‘Of whatsoe’er descent his Godhead be,Stock, stone, or other homely pedigree,In his defence his servants are as boldAs if he had been born of beaten gold.’
‘Of whatsoe’er descent his Godhead be,Stock, stone, or other homely pedigree,In his defence his servants are as boldAs if he had been born of beaten gold.’
‘Of whatsoe’er descent his Godhead be,
Stock, stone, or other homely pedigree,
In his defence his servants are as bold
As if he had been born of beaten gold.’
It is, however, but fair to add, in extenuation of the evils of controversy, that if the points at issue had been quite clear, or theadvantage all on one side, they would not have been so liable to be contested about. We condemn controversy, because we would have matters all our own way, and think that ours is the only side that has a title to be heard. We imagine that there is but one view of a subject that is right; and that all the rest being plainly and wilfully wrong, it is a shocking waste of speech, and a dreadful proof of prejudice and party spirit, to have a word to say in their defence. But this is a want of liberality and comprehension of mind. For in general we dispute either about things respecting which we are a good deal in the dark, and where both parties are very possibly in the wrong, and may be left to find out their mutual error; or about those points, where there is an opposition of interests and passions, and where it would be by no means safe to cut short the debate by making one party judges for the other. They must, therefore, be left to fight it out as well as they can; and, between the extremes of folly and violence, to strike a balance of common sense and even-handed justice. Every sect or party will, of course, run into extravagance and partiality; but the probability is, that there is some ground of argument, some appearance of right, to justify the grossest bigotry and intolerance. The fury of the combatants is excited because there is something to be said on the other side of the question. If men were as infallible as they suppose themselves, they would not dispute. If every novelty were well founded, truth might be discovered by a receipt; but as antiquity does not always turn out an old woman, this accounts for thevis inertiæof the mind in so often pausing and setting its face against innovation. Authority has some advantages to recommend it as well as reason, or it would long ago have been scouted. Aristocracy and democracy, monarchy and republicanism, are not all pure good or pure evil, though the abettors or antagonists of each think so, and that all the mischief arises from others entertaining any doubt about the question, and insisting on carrying their absurd theories into practice. The French and English are grossly prejudiced against each other; but still the interests of each are better taken care of under this exaggerated notion than if that vast mass of rights and pretensions, which each is struggling for, were left to the tender mercies and ruthless candour of the other side. ‘Every man for himself and God for us all’ is a rule that will apply here. Controversy, therefore, is a necessary evil or good (call it which you will) till all differences of opinion or interest are reconciled, and absolute certainty or perfect indifference alike takes away the possibility or the temptation to litigation and quarrels. We need be under no immediate alarm of coming to such a conclusion. There is always room for doubt, food for contention. While we areengrossed with one controversy, indeed, we think every thing else is clear; but as soon as one point is settled, we begin to cavil and start objections to that which has before been taken for gospel. The Reformers thought only of opposing the Church of Rome, and never once anticipated the schisms and animosities which arose among Protestants: the Dissenters, in carrying their point against the Church of England, did not dream of that crop of infidelity and scepticism which, to their great horror and scandal, sprung up in the following age, from their claim of free inquiry and private judgment. Thenon-essentialsof religion first came into dispute; then the essentials. Our own opinion, we fancy, is founded on a rock; the rest we regard as stubble. But no sooner is one out-work of established faith or practice demolished, than another is left a defenceless mark for the enemy, and the engines of wit and sophistry immediately begin to batter it. Thus we proceed step by step, till, passing through the several gradations of vanity and paradox, we came to doubt whether we stand on our head or our heels, alternately deny the existence of spirit and matter, maintain that black is white, call evil good and good evil, and defy any one to prove the contrary. As faith is the prop and cement that upholds society by opposing fixed principles as a barrier against the inroads of passion, so reason is themenstruumwhich dissolves it by leaving nothing sufficiently firm or unquestioned in our opinions to withstand the current and bias of inclination. Hence the decay and ruin of states—then barbarism, sloth, and ignorance—and so we commence the circle again of building up all that it is possible to conceive out of a rude chaos, and the obscure shadowings of things, and then pulling down all that we have built up, till not a trace of it is left. Such is the effect of the ebb and flow and restless agitation of the human mind.