MORAL ARGUMENT—TESTIMONY OF CONSCIENCE AND HISTORY.
I.
Wehave seen how the power manifest in the universe leads up to God as the First Cause, the all-originating Will. We have seen also how the order manifest in the universe leads up to Him as the Supreme Intelligence. But there is more in the universe than force and order; there is force which works for good, and a just and benevolent order; there are moral laws and moral actions, moral perceptions and moral feelings. Can anything be thence inferred as to whether God is, and what He is? I think we shall find that they clearly testify both as to His existence and character.
The moral law which reveals itself to conscience has seemed to certain authors so decisive a witness for God, that all other witnesses may be dispensed with. Kant, who exerted his great logical abilityto prove that the speculative reason in searching after God inevitably loses itself in sophisms and self-contradictions, believed himself to have found in the practical reason or moral faculty an assurance for the Divine existence and government capable of defying the utmost efforts of scepticism. Sir William Hamilton has also affirmed that "the only valid arguments for the existence of God, and for the immortality of the human soul, rest on the ground of man's moral nature." Dr John Newman has insisted that conscience is the creative principle of religion, and has endeavoured to show how the whole doctrine of natural religion should be worked out from this central principle. A well-known living theologian of Germany, Dr Schenkel, has attempted to build up a complete theology on conscience as a basis, starting from the position that conscience is "the religious organ of the soul"—the faculty through which alone we have an immediate knowledge of God. These thinkers may have erred in relying thus exclusively on the moral argument—I believe that they have—but the error, if error there be, shows only the more clearly how convincing that argument has seemed to certain minds, and these assuredly not feeble minds.
There is, besides, valuable truth underlying any exaggerations into which they may have fallen on the subject. There is probably no living practicalbelief in God which does not begin with the conscience. It is not reasoning on a first cause, nor even admiration of the wisdom displayed in the universe, which makes the thought of God habitually and efficaciously present to the mind. It is not any kind of thinking nor any kind of feeling excited by the physical universe or by the contemplation of society, which gives us an abiding and operative sense of God's presence, and of His relationship to us. It is only in and through an awakened and active conscience that we realise our nearness to God—His interest in us, and our interest in Him. Without a moral nature of our own, we could not recognise the moral character and moral government manifested by Him. We might tremble before His power, or we might admire His skill, but His righteousness would be hidden from us, His moral laws would be meaningless to us, and their sanctions would be merely a series of physical advantages or physical disasters. But a God without righteousness is no true God, and the worship which has no moral element in it is no true worship. As, then, it is only through the glass of conscience that the righteousness of God can be discerned, and as that attribute alone can call forth, in addition to the fear, wonder, and admiration evoked by power and intelligence, the love, the sense of spiritual weakness and want, and the adoring reverence, which are indispensable intrue worship—such worship as God ought to receive and man ought to render—the significance of the moral principle in the theistic argumentation is vast indeed.
It follows, however, from the entire course of the reasoning in which we have been engaged, that the moral argument is not to be exclusively relied on. It is but a part of a whole from which it ought not to be severed. It cannot be stated in any valid form which does not imply the legitimacy of the arguments from efficiency and order. If other facts do not refer us back to a primary case, neither will moral facts lead us to the primary moral agent. If order is no evidence of intelligent purpose, moral order can be no evidence of moral purpose. The moral argument proves more, but also less, than the arguments which have been already expounded. It shows us that God is endowed with the highest moral excellence, and is the source of moral law and of moral government, but it does not prove Him to be the Creator of the universe or the Author of all order in the universe. It contributes to the idea of God an essential element, without which that idea would be lamentably defective, but it supposes other elements also essential to be given by other arguments. The office of bearing witness to the existence and character of God can be safely devolved on no one principle alone, even although that principle be conscience. It is awork in which all the principles of human nature are privileged to concur. Either all bear true testimony, or all have conspired to deceive us. The self-manifestation of God is addressed to the entire man, and can only be rightly apprehended by the concurrent action of all the energies and capacities of the soul.[35]
It is, perhaps, especially important in conducting the moral argument to ask ourselves distinctly, Whence ought we to begin? Is there any point, any fact or principle, which we are in reason bound to start from? Inattention to this preliminary inquiry has caused many to try to look at moral factsen masse, as it were, and to endeavour to draw an inference from them in virtue of something common to them all. This can only lead to confusion and error. Moral facts are of two radically distinct classes, and cannot be comprehended under any higher generalisation, which can be taken as the foundation of a theistic inference. The facts need to be distributed and interpreted—to have their characters discriminated; and we must begin with the principle by which this is done—that is, with conscience itself. We need no more attempt to judge of moral qualities without reference to our moral perceptions and feelings—to the information given us through conscience—than to pass a judgment on colours before seeing them, orirrespective of how they appeared to us when we saw them. If we look at the moral facts of the universe from any outside point of view—not from that of conscience—how can we escape ascribing the evil as well as the good to God, and trying His character either from both or from the preponderance of the one over the other? But if we do so,—if we seek to rise to God through an induction from all moral facts—we shall form a miserable notion of God, and we shall, besides, ride rough-shod, as it were, over conscience. For what is it that conscience declares most clearly about moral good and evil, right and wrong? Is it not that they are radically antagonistic—irreconcilable and contradictory,—that they cannot have the same ultimate author—that if the one be the expression of God's will, the other must be the expression of His aversion? If conscience have any testimony to give about God at all, it is that, as the author of good, He must be the enemy of evil. The contemplation of the moral world may perplex us, but conscience is an assurance that evil, however perplexing, is not to be referred to the same source as good.
The testimony of conscience on behalf of God has been presented in various ways, and it need not surprise us to find some of them unsatisfactory. I regard as unwarranted the view that conscience is "the religious organ of the soul," the sole faculty through which the human mind is in contact andcommunion with God. There is no one specific power or organ of the mind in virtue of which exclusively man is a religious being. It is by the whole make and constitution of his nature, not by a particular faculty, that he is framed for religion. I more than question if we have a right even to ascribe to conscience an immediate intuition of God. It brings us, some have affirmed, in a strict and positive sense into the real presence of God, with nothing intervening between us and Him—He as the absolute personality standing sharply and distinctly over against our personality. This doctrine has, however, one obvious and serious difficulty before it. Conscience—that is a word which has got in ordinary use a very clear and definite meaning. We all know what conscience is as well as we know what the eye or the ear is, and we all know what an act of conscience is as well as we know what seeing or hearing is. It is not more certain that by the eye we see colours, and that by the ear we hear sounds, than that by conscience we discern good and evil. When, therefore, any man comes and assures us that through conscience we have an immediate apprehension of God, it is natural that we should answer at once, You may as well assure us that through sight we immediately hear sounds or smell odours. What we immediately apprehend through conscience is the right or wrong in actions, and therefore notGod. Morality is the direct object of conscience; God can therefore only be the presupposition or postulate of conscience,—can only be given in conscience as implied in morality. This, I say, is an obvious objection to the assertion that God is immediately known in conscience. It is an objection which has not been got over, and which, I believe, cannot be got over.[36]
The argument from conscience, like all the other theistic arguments, is extremely simple. It is the obvious inference from the most obvious facts of our moral consciousness. It demands of us no subtle analysis of conscience. It is not dependent on the truth of some one particular theory as to the origin of conscience. It is based directly on what cannot be denied or disputed,—the existence of conscience, the existence of certain moral judgments and feelings common to the experience of all men. Conscience exists. It exists as a consciousness of moral law; as an assertion of a rule of duty; as a sense of responsibility. When it pronounces an action right, it does so because it recognises it to be conformed to law; when it pronounces an action wrong, it does so because it recognises it to fall short of or to transgress law. It acts as the judge of all that we do, and as such it accuses or excuses, condemns or approves, punishes or rewards us, with a voice of authority,which we may so far disregard, but the legitimacy of which we cannot dispute. It claims to rule over body and soul, heart and mind, all our appetites, affections, and faculties; and the claim is implicitly admitted even by those who have most interest in denying it. But it does not rule, nor pretend to rule, as an autocratic authority; it does not give us, nor pretend to give us, a law of its own: on the contrary, it claims to rule in us only in virtue of recognising a law which is over us; its authority is derived wholly from a law which it interprets and applies, but does not create. It thus speaks not of itself but as the deputy of another. It unequivocally declares itself a delegated authority. Some may say that the law of conscience is set by man's own will, and that the will is a law unto itself; but this assertion cannot bear examination. The will apart from reason and conscience is a mere force, not a true will. It has a rational law only through its connection with reason, a moral law only through its connection with conscience. Whoever affirms that the will is its own law must grossly abuse language, and signify by the term will what others mean by reason and will, conscience and will. He must do worse than this, bad as it is. He must contradict the plain dictates of his own consciousness. The will and its law are distinctly felt to be not one but two. The will is clearly realised in our moral experience as not legislative, as notgiving itself a law but as being under a law, the law which conscience apprehends. To identify the will and its law is to confound entirely distinct things. For the will to rule the will, it would need at once to command and to obey, to be bond and free, dependent and independent. To be its own rule were for it to be without rule. Conscience claims to rule my will in virtue of a law which cannot be the expression of my will, and which cannot be anything else than the expression of another will; one often in antagonism to mine—one always better than mine—one which demands from me an unvarying and complete obedience. It comes to me and speaks to me in defiance of my will; when my will is set against hearing it, and still more against obeying it; when my will is bent on stifling and drowning its voice. It warns, threatens, condemns, and punishes me, against my will, and with a voice of authority as the delegate or deputy of a perfectly good and holy will which has an absolute right to rule over me, to control and sway all my faculties; which searches me and knows me; which besets me behind and before. Whose is this perfect, authoritative, supreme will, to which all consciences, even the most erring, point back? Whose, if not God's? Those who object that this argument is a mere verbal inference, or that it rests on a double meaning of the word law, do not understand it, simple as it is. They maybe honest enough disputants, but their objection is strangely superficial. In the utterly irrelevant criticism of a word they lose sight of a great fact, and so necessarily fail to perceive its momentous significance. From no mere word, whether law or any other, but from that consciousness of moral dependence which no moral creature can shake off, which conscience implies in every exercise, which reveals itself in a thousand ways in the hearts and lives of men, do we conclude that there is One on whom we morally depend, that we have a holy Creator and Judge to deal with. Reason takes no mere name, but it takes the fact that man feels himself under a law of duty, that he is conscious of obligation and responsibility, that he has a conscience which does not counsel but which commands him to do what is right and to resist what is wrong; and it finds this fact inexplicable, this consciousness a delusion, this conscience a false witness—unless there be a holy God, a Moral Governor.
Conscience reveals a purpose as well as declares a law. Its very existence is a proof of purpose. The eye is not more certainly given us in order that we may see, than conscience is given us in order that we may use all our powers in a righteous and beneficent manner. Is it conceivable that any other than a righteous God would have bestowed on us such a gift, such a faculty? Would an intelligent but unrighteous God have made usto hate and despise what is characteristic of his own nature? Would he have made us better than himself? The purpose which conscience reveals is certainly not our own purpose, just as the law which it declares is not the law of our own will. The purpose which finds its expression in conscience, and our own purpose, are often felt by us to be in direct antagonism. Our souls may be tortured by the conflict between them. But in all phases of the conflict we are sensible that it is our purpose which ought to be abandoned; that the purpose which we dislike is that which we are bound to accept and to obey. In this way, also, conscience speaks to us of a righteous God by speaking in His name. If the inference from effect to cause, from manifestation of purpose to intelligence, is good anywhere, it is good here; and it warrants us to believe that the First Cause of conscience is a righteous Being.[37]
All the feelings, emotions, and affections which gather around the apprehension of right and wrong, which accompany the sense of duty or conviction of obligation, point to the same conclusion. The consciousness of good or ill desert, remorse and self-approval, moral hopes and fears, concur in referring to a holy God. They imply that man is a person related not merely to things and laws, but to another person who is his rightful and righteousJudge. The atheist himself, when he grieves even for secret and private sins, or enjoys the inner peace which only his own heart knoweth, mourns and rejoices as if in the presence of a higher personal Being—the God whom he denies. Neither his sorrow nor his satisfaction is fully intelligible if his soul have before it only an impersonal law or the abstract nature of things; both presuppose that he has some kind of consciousness of being under the cognisance of a Person possessed of moral attributes. If men felt that they were responsible for their evil thoughts and words and deeds to no one higher than themselves or their fellows, is it conceivable that the consciousness of guilt and the fear of retribution would have been what experience and history testify them to have been? Would prayers and penances and sacrifices have prevailed so widely, if the law of right and wrong when broken had been merely felt to be broken—if there were no underlying sense of the existence of One behind the law whose righteousness must be satisfied, and whose wrath must be turned away by the breaker of the law? Would there have been in that case any moral conflicts in the human heart akin to those which a Sophocles or a Shakespeare has delineated? Were there no God, there ought to be no fear of God awakened even by crime; but atheism itself cannot protect a criminal when alive to his guilt from being haunted and appalled byfears of a judgment and a justice more terrible than those of man. When we are perfectly willing to bear any pain which the mere laws of nature attach to our sins, and when our reason assures us that we have nothing to fear on account of them from the law or even the opinion of society, why, if our moral natures are not seared and deadened, do we yet fear, and fear most when most alone? "Inanimate things," says Dr Newman, "cannot stir our affections; these are correlative with persons. If, as is the case, we feel responsibility, are ashamed, are frightened, at transgressing the voice of conscience, this implies that there is One to whom we are responsible, before whom we are ashamed, whose claims upon us we fear. If, on doing wrong, we feel the same tearful, broken-hearted sorrow which overwhelms us on hurting a mother; if, on doing right, we enjoy the same seeming serenity of mind, the same soothing, satisfactory delight which follows on one receiving praise from a father,—we certainly have within us the image of some person to whom our love and veneration look, in whose smile we find our happiness, for whom we yearn, towards whom we direct our pleadings, in whose anger we are troubled and waste away. These feelings in us are such as require for their exciting cause an intelligent being; we are not affectionate towards a stone, nor do we feel shame before a horse or a dog; we have no remorse or compunctionin breaking mere human law: yet, so it is, conscience excites all these painful emotions, confusion, foreboding, self-condemnation; and, on the other hand, it sheds upon us a deep peace, a sense of security, a resignation, and a hope, which there is no sensible, no earthly object to elicit. 'The wicked flees, when no one pursueth;' then why does he flee? Whence his terror? Who is it that he sees in solitude, in darkness, in the hidden chambers of his heart? If the cause of these emotions does not belong to this visible world, the Object to which his perception is directed must be Supernatural and Divine; and thus the phenomena of conscience, as a dictate, avail to impress the imagination with the picture of a Supreme Governor, a Judge, holy, just, powerful, all-seeing, retributive."[38]
It will, I need scarcely say, be objected to the arguments which have now been presented, that conscience is a product of association or a consequence of evolution; that it has been developed either in the experience of individuals or in the course of ages, out of sensations of pleasure and pain, out of benefits and injuries; and that the convictions and feelings implicated in it are due to the circumstances under which it has grown up and the causes which have combined to generate it. But to this it may be answered either thatconscience has not been shown to have grown up by association and development out of sensuous experiences, or that even if this were proved the argument would continue good; in other words, either the truth or the relevancy of the objection may be denied. All associationist and evolutionist theories of conscience seem to many of the most competent psychologists to have failed as regards their main object, although they may admit them to contain important elements of truth. This view I share. It does not seem to me that even Mr J. S. Mill, Prof. Bain, Mr Spencer, and Mr Darwin, have been able to show that conscience contains in it nothing original. But, of course, I am aware that the vindication of my dissent would require an adequate examination of associationism and evolutionism as explanations of the origin of conscience. No such examination is here possible. Nor is it required; on the contrary, a discussion of the kind ought, I believe, to be avoided in an inquiry like the present. No psychological investigation of a difficult and delicate nature is, so far as I can judge, essentially involved in the theistic argumentation at any stage. It is certainly unnecessary in conducting the moral argument to engage in any scientific disquisition as to the origin of conscience.[39]For our second or alternative answer will suffice. It does not matter, so faras our present purpose is concerned, whether conscience be primary or derivative. It exists; it bears a certain testimony; it gives rise necessarily to the thoughts and feelings which I have mentioned. Are these thoughts and feelings true? If not, conscience is a delusion; it utters lies; the completest moral scepticism is justified. If they are, the argument stands. The mode in which they have been acquired is in this reference a matter of indifference.
The argument from conscience, I may add, rests on the general and distinctive characteristics of our moral nature; not on the truth of particular moral judgments or the purity of particular moral affections. It cannot, therefore, be affected by the fact that moral perceptions and emotions admit of variation and development, and are sometimes false and depraved. However important in other respects may be the circumstance that men's thoughts and sentiments as to right and wrong are not always identical or even accordant, it is plainly irrelevant as an objection to any of the forms in which the argument for the Divine existence from the constitution of our moral nature has just been stated. It cannot be necessary to do more than merely indicate this, although some who maintain the wholly derivative nature of conscience appear to believe that the moral differences to be traced among men disprove all inferences from the moral faculty which they feel disinclined to accept.
II.
Is the testimony which conscience gives to the existence and character of God confirmed when we look out into the moral world? No one will say that all is clear and unambiguous in that world—that it is nowhere shrouded in unpenetrated, if not impenetrable, darkness—that it contains no perplexing anomalies. There is an enormous mass of sin on earth, and the mere existence of sin is a mystery under the government of an omnipotent God who hates sin. There is a vast amount of apparently prosperous sin, and a vast amount of temporarily suffering virtue, and these are often severe trials of faith in the justice and holiness of God. Pessimism may exaggerate the emptiness and the sadness of life, but it has done service by exposing and discrediting the optimism which ignores the dark features and tragic elements of existence. Can an unprejudiced mind, however, even with all the sins and sufferings of the world before its view, and although consciously unable to resolve the difficulties which they suggest, refuse to acknowledge that the general testimony rendered by the moral world to the being and righteousness of its Author is ample and unmistakable? I think not. The conclusion which we have drawn from thecharacter of the sentiments inevitably excited by the contemplation of virtue and vice, is also that which follows from the natural tendencies and issues of good and evil affections and actions. Virtue does not always meet with its due reward, nor vice with its due punishment, in any obvious outward shape; if they did, earth would cease to be a scene of moral discipline; but internal moral laws of an essentially retributive nature are in incessant operation, and show not obscurely or doubtfully what is the judgment of God both on character and conduct. Virtue is self-rewarding and vice is self-punishing. Virtue tends of its very nature to honour and life, vice to dishonour and death. There are outward bonds between virtue and happiness, vice and misery, which may be severed; but there are also inward bonds which cannot be broken—relations of cause and effect as inflexible as any in the physical world. Virtue may be followed by no external advantages, or may even involve the possessor of it in suffering; but infallibly it ennobles and enriches, elevates and purifies the soul itself, and thus gradually and increasingly imparts "a peace above all earthly dignities." Vice may outwardly prosper and meet only with honour from men, but it cannot be said to be passing wholly unpunished so long as it weakens, poisons, and corrupts the spiritual constitution. Now this it always does, and never more actively than whenthe individual who is guilty has silenced the voice of his conscience, and when a depraved society encourages him in his wickedness. The law—"he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption"—is never even for an instant suspended, although the growth and ripening of the seed into its fruit may be unobserved. In the very commission of sin the soul violates the conditions of its own welfare, destroys its own best feelings, impoverishes and ruins itself.
"He that has light within his own clear breast,May sit in the centre, and enjoy bright day;But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts,Benighted walks under the mid-day sun—Himself is his own dungeon."[40]
"He that has light within his own clear breast,May sit in the centre, and enjoy bright day;But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts,Benighted walks under the mid-day sun—Himself is his own dungeon."[40]
When we look from individuals to societies, we perceive the same truth confirmed on a more comprehensive and conspicuous scale. It is true that in the social world there are bad triumphs and impious successes—that the victory of good over evil is often reached only after a long series of defeats. But it is equally true that the welfare of society is dependent on a practical recognition of moral principles—that the laws of morality are conditions of the progress, and even of the existence, of society. A cynical moralist of the eighteenth century maintained that private vices were public benefits; but, of course, his sophismswere easily exposed: he failed to convince any one of the correctness of his paradox. No inductive truth can be easier to establish, or better established, than that righteousness exalteth a nation, while sin lowers and destroys it. The vicious affections which torment and debase isolated men, equally disturb and degrade a tribe or nation. The virtuous affections which diffuse peace and happiness in a single heart, equally spread harmony and prosperity through the largest community. Thus the general conditions of social life testify that God loves virtue and hates vice. Then, if we examine history as a whole, we cannot but recognise that it has been in the main a process of moral progress, of moral growth. The children of the present day may be born with no better dispositions than those of five thousand years ago, and men may be now as guilty, as wilful sinners against what they know to be right, as ever they were; in that sense there may be no moral progress; but of this there can be, I think, no reasonable doubt in the mind of any impartial student of history, that the thoughts of men have been surely, if slowly, widened as to liberty, chastity, justice, benevolence, piety—and that their feelings have been correspondingly modified, their manners refined, and their laws and institutions improved. There may be no such thing as the inheritance or transmission of virtue, and everystep of moral advance may have to be gained by the free exertion of each individual, people, and generation in succession; but, as a matter of fact, our race does on the whole advance, and not recede, in the path towards good. Just as reason, although it may be feebler than the passions in a short struggle, can always conquer them if it get time to collect its energies—so virtue gains and vice loses advantages with the lapse of years; for, while the prejudices which opposed the former subside and its excellences become ever increasingly apparent, as history flows onward, those who leagued themselves in support of the latter quarrel among themselves, its fascinations decay, and its deformities become more manifest and repulsive. Age is linked to age, and in the struggle of good and evil which pervades all the ages, victory is seen slowly but steadily declaring itself for the good. The vices die—the virtues never die. Some great evils which once afflicted our race have passed away. What great good has ever been lost? Justice carries it over injustice in the end. Now, whatever be the means by which moral progress is brought about, the testimony which it involves as to the moral character of God is none the less certain. The successful application of Darwinian principles, for example, to the explanation of human progress, would be no disproof of design in social evolution. If a natural selection,based on force, were shown to have prepared the way for a natural selection based on craft, which in its turn gave place to justice, and that again to love, God must none the less be credited with having contemplated the final result, and that result must none the less be held to be an indication of His character. When what is called the struggle for existence has been proved to lead, not to the deterioration but to the improvement of life—to the greatest abundance of the highest kinds of life possible in the circumstances—it will have been vindicated and shown to have been a means to secure such ends as a wise and benevolent Being would entertain. When it has been proved to have constrained men gradually to recognise that the virtues are the conditions of the most desirable existence, and that the vices are so many obstacles to the attainment of such an existence, it will have been still further vindicated by having been thus shown to be the mode in which righteousness is realised in the world. It matters little, so far as the religious inference is concerned, after what natural process and by what natural laws moral progress has been brought about; for whatever the process and laws may be discovered to be, they will be those which God has chosen, and will be fitted to show forth the glory of His wisdom, love, and justice.[41]
CONSIDERATION OF OBJECTIONS TO THE DIVINE WISDOM, BENEVOLENCE, AND JUSTICE.
I.
Conscience testifies that there is a God who is good and just; and society and history, on the whole, confirm its testimony. But there are a multitude of moral evils in the world, and these may seem to warrant an opposite inference, or at least so to counterbalance what has been adduced as evidence for the goodness and justice of God as to leave us logically unable to draw any inference regarding His moral character. We must consider, therefore, whether these evils really warrant an anti-theistic conclusion; and as they are analogous to, and closely connected with, those facts which have been argued to be defects in the physical constitution of the universe inconsistent with wisdom, or at least with perfect wisdom, in the Creator, it seems desirable to ask ourselves distinctly thisgeneral question, Are there such defects in the constitution and course of nature that it is impossible for us to believe that it is the work of a wise and holy God?
Epicurus and Lucretius imagined that the world was formed by a happy combination of atoms, acting of themselves blindly, and necessarily after innumerable futile conjunctions had taken place. Lange, the most recent historian of materialism, has revived the hypothesis, and represented the world as an instance of success which had been preceded by milliards of entire or partial failures. This is the theory of natural selection applied to account for the origin of worlds; and no one, I believe, who combines the hypotheses of natural selection and atheism can consistently entertain any other conception of the origin of worlds. But where are the milliards of mishaps which are said to have occurred? Where are the monstrous worlds which preceded those which constitute the cosmos? We must, of course, have good evidence for their existence before we can be entitled to hold Nature responsible for them; we must not charge upon her the mere dreams of her accusers. Not a trace, however, of such worlds as, according to the hypothesis, were profusely scattered through space, has been pointed out. It would be a waste of time for us to argue with men who invent worlds in order to find fault with them. We turn,therefore, to those who censure not imaginary worlds but the actual world.
Comte, following Laplace, has argued that there is no evidence of intelligence or design in the solar system, because its elements and members are not disposed in the most advantageous manner. The moon, in particular, we are assured, should have been so placed that it would revolve round the earth in the same time that the earth revolved round the sun. In that case she would appear every night, and always at the full. Storms, volcanoes, earthquakes, and deserts have been often argued to be defects which mar both the beauty and utility of creation. Changes in the polar regions, in the physical character of Africa, in the position of the Asiatic continent, and in the Pacific Ocean, have been suggested as improvements on the constitution of the world. The actual climates of various countries have been maintained to be not the most favourable to life which are possible under the existing laws of nature.[42]
A little reflection will enable us to assign its just value to such criticism of creation. Remark, then, in the first place, that there may be abundant evidence of intelligence where there is not evidence of perfect intelligence. Although very considerable defects were clearly shown to exist in the constitution and arrangements of the physicalworld, there might yet be ample and unmistakable proof of the vast wisdom of its Author. Were it even true that science could show that the mechanism of the heavens, and the distribution of land and sea, heat and cold, on earth, were not in every respect the best, that would not prove that there was no intelligence, no design whatever, involved therein. The question, Did the earth and the solar system originate with intelligence? is distinct from the question, Was the intelligence in which they originated perfect? It is conceivable that the one question might have to be answered in the affirmative and the other in the negative. It is obvious that the former question ought to be considered apart from and before the latter. The theist proposes, of course, to prove in the end that there is a perfect intelligence, but he is content to establish at first that there is an intelligence. Aware that whoever admits intelligence to be the first cause of the universe may be forced also to admit that the creative intelligence is perfect, he is under no temptation himself to confound two entirely distinct questions, and he is obviously entitled to protest against so illogical a procedure in others.
Remark, in the second place, that we are plainly very incompetent critics of a system so vast as the universe. We are only able to survey a small portion of it, and the little that we perceive we imperfectlycomprehend. We see but an exceedingly short way before us into the future, and can form only the vaguest and most general conception of the final goal to which creation, as a whole, is tending. This need not, and ought not, to prevent us from recognising the evident indications of intelligence which fall within our range of apprehension; but it may well cause us to hesitate before pronouncing that this or that peculiarity, which appears to us a defect, is an absolute error or evil. There is no one who would not feel it very unwise to pronounce an apparent defect, even in an elaborate human mechanism with which he was only imperfectly acquainted, an unmistakable blunder, and surely far more caution is required in a critic of the constitution of the universe; for, as Bishop Butler truly observes, "The most slight and superficial view of any human contrivance comes abundantly nearer to a thorough knowledge of it than that part which we know of the government of the world does to the general scheme and system of it." All Nature is one great whole, and each thing in it has, as I have previously had to insist, a multitude of uses and relations, with reference to all of which it must be viewed, in order that a complete and definitive judgment regarding it may be formed. Has this fact been adequately realised by those who have criticised, in the manner which has been indicated, the wisdom displayed in the system ofNature? I think not. In regard to the moon, it would seem that, even if that luminary were intended to serve no other purpose than to give light on earth, it is not the Maker of it who has blundered, but Comte and Laplace. The real consequences of their pretended improvement have been shown to be that the moon would give sixteen times less light than it does, and be in constant danger of extinction. In other words, what they have demonstrated is, that their own mathematical and mechanical knowledge was so inferior to that of the intelligence which placed the moon where it is, that they could not appreciate the correctness of its procedure in the solution of a comparatively simple astronomical problem. But even if the change which they suggested would really have rendered the moon a better lamp to the inhabitants of the earth, they were not entitled to infer that it was an error to have placed it elsewhere, unless they were warranted to assume that the moon was meant merely to be a lamp to the inhabitants of the earth. But that they were clearly not entitled to assume. To give light on earth is a use of the moon, but it is foolish to imagine that this is its sole use. It serves other known ends, such as raising the tides, and may serve many ends wholly unknown to us. So in regard to volcanoes, earthquakes, &c. Any single generation of men and beasts might well dispense,perhaps, with their existence, and yet they may be most appropriate instrumentalities for securing order and welfare in the economy of the universe as a whole. It is not by their relations to the present and local only, but by their relations to all the past and future of the entire system of things, that they are to be judged of. If Greenland were submerged, and the Asiatic and North American continents so altered that no large rivers should flow into the polar ocean, the climate of Iceland and Canada might be greatly improved. Would the world thereby, however, be made better as a whole, and throughout all its future history? He must be either a very wise man or a very foolish one who answers this question by a decided affirmation; and yet he who cannot so answer it has obviously no right to hold that the changes mentioned would really be improvements.
Could we survey the whole universe, and mark how all its several parts were related to each other and to the whole, we might intelligently determine whether or not an apparent defect in it was real; but we cannot do this with our present powers. We can readily imagine that any one thing in the world, looked at by itself or in relation to only a few other objects, might be much better than it is, but we cannot show that the general system of things would not be deranged and deteriorated thereby. Considered merely in reference to man,the relative imperfections of the world may be real advantages. A world so perfect that man could not improve it, would probably be, paradoxical as the statement may sound, one of the most imperfect worlds men could be placed in. An imperfect world, or in other words, a world which can be improved, can alone be a fitting habitation for progressive beings. Scripture does not represent nature even before the Fall as perfect and incapable of improvement, but only as "very good;" and still less does it require us to believe that the actual course of nature is perfect. The true relation of man to nature can only be realised when the latter is perceived to be imperfect,—a thing to be ruled, not to be obeyed—improved, not imitated—and yet a thing which is essentially good relatively to the wants and powers of its inhabitants. No created system, it must further be remembered, can beperfectin the sense of beingthe best possible. None can be so good but that a better may be imagined. What is created must be finite in its perfections, and whatever is finite can be imagined to be increased and improved. The Creator Himself—the absolutely perfect God—the Highest Good—is, as Plato and Anselm so profoundly taught, the only best possible Being. In Him alone the actual is coincident and identical with the possible, the real with the ideal. Whoever receives this truth as it ought to be received, cannot fail to see that all speculationsas to a best possible world, and all judgments of the actual world based on such speculations, are vain and idle imaginations.[43]
I may add, that when a man argues, as Comte does, that we can know nothing of final causes, nothing of the purposes which things are meant to accomplish, and yet that they might have realised their final causes, fulfilled their purposes, better than they do, he obviously takes up a very untenable and self-contradictory position. If we can have no notion of the purpose of a thing, we cannot judge whether it is fulfilling its purpose or not, whether it is fulfilling it well or ill. The denial of the possibility of knowing the ends of things is inconsistent with the assertion that things might have been constituted and arranged in a happier and more advantageous manner.
Organic nature has been still more severely criticised than the inorganic world. There have been pointed out a few fully developed organs, as, for example, the spleen, of which the uses are unknown, and a multitude of organs so imperfectly developed as to be incapable of performing any serviceable functions. Even the most elaborate organisms have been maintained to have essential defects; thus the eye has been argued by Helmholtz to be not a perfect optical instrument, and on the strength of the proof one writer at least hasdeclared that if a human optician were to blunder as badly as the supposed author of eyes must have done, he would be hissed out of his trade. Stress has been laid on the fact that abortions and monsters are not rare. Many seemingly intelligent contrivances, we are reminded, serve mainly to inflict pain and destruction. And the inference has been drawn that the first cause of organic existences was not Divine Wisdom but mere matter and blind force.
The considerations which have already been brought forward should enable us to answer all reasonings of this kind. An organ is not to be pronounced useless because its uses have not yet been discovered. To the extent that evolutionism is true, rudimentary and obsolete organs are accounted for, and the wisdom displayed in them amply vindicated; and if evolutionism be not true, they can still be explained on the theory of types. They are stages in the realisation of the Divine conception; indications of an order which comprehends and conditions the law of use and contrivance for use; keys to the understanding of the Divine plan. Theism cannot have much to fear from the fact that all human eyes are limited in their range and finite in their perfections, or even from the fact that a great many persons have very bad eyesight. Whatever may be its imperfections, the eye, if viewed with a comprehensive regard toits manifold uses and possibilities, must be admitted by every unprejudiced judge to be incomparably superior to every other optical instrument: indeed it is the only real optical instrument; all so-called optical instruments are merely aids and supplements to it. If the eye had been absolutely perfect, its modification or evolution could only have been deterioration, artificial optical instruments would not have been needed, and all man's relations to creation must have been essentially different from what they are. Who can rationally assure us that this was to be desired? Abortions and monsters are at least exceptions. If mind were not what is ultimate in the universe—if nature worked blindly—if there were any truth in what Lange and Huxley have said of her procedure, that it is "like shooting a million or more loaded guns in a field to kill one hare,"—this could not be the case; the bullets which miss would then be incalculably more numerous than those which hit, and the evidence of her failures ought to be strewn far more thickly around us than the remains of her successes; there would be, as it were, no course of nature because of the multitude of deviations, no rule in nature because of the multitude of exceptions. But what are the facts? These: the lowest organisms are as perfectly adapted to their circumstances as the highest, the earliest as the latest; there is a vast amount ofdeath and a vast amount of life in the world, but, whatever some men may thoughtlessly assert, no man can show that there is too much of either, any real waste, if the wants of creation as a whole are to be provided for; abortions and monsters, which are the only things in nature which can be plausibly characterised as "failures," as "bullets which have fallen wide of the mark," are comparatively few and far between; and the monsters, even, are not really exceptions to law and order, are not strictly monsters. The labours of teratologists have scientifically established the grand general result that there are no monsters in nature in the sense which Empedocles imagined; none except in the sense in which a man who gets his leg broken is a monster. A monster is simply a being to whom an accident not fatal has happened in the womb. Why should an accident not occur there as well as elsewhere? Why should God not act by general laws there as well as elsewhere? Who is entitled to say that any result of His general laws is a failure; that any so-called accident was not included in His plan; that a world in which a child could not be born deformed nor a grown man have a leg broken, would be, were all things taken into account, as good as the world in which we actually live? Huxley, Lange, and those whom they represent, have failed to show us any of nature's "bullets which have missed the mark," andhave not sufficiently, I think, realised how imperfect might be their own perception of nature's target. The contrivances for the infliction of pain and death displayed in the structure of animals of prey are none the less evidences of intelligence because they are not also, at least immediately or directly, evidences of beneficence. Intelligence is one thing, benevolence is another, and what conclusively disproved benevolence might conclusively prove intelligence.[44]
II.
Let us pass on to the contemplation of greater difficulties; to suffering, which seems to conflict with the benevolence of God—and to sin, which seems irreconcilable with His righteousness.
I cannot agree with those who think that there is no mystery in mere pain; that it is sufficiently accounted for by moral evil, and involves no separate problem. The history of suffering began on our planet long before that of sin; ages prior to the appearance of man, earth was a scene of war and mutual destruction; hunger and fear, violence and agony, disease and death, have prevailed throughout the air, the land, and ocean, ever since they were tenanted. And what connection in reason can there be between the sin of men or thesin of angels and the suffering endured or inflicted by primeval saurians? The suffering of the animals is, in fact, more mysterious than the suffering of man, just because so little of the former and so much of the latter can be traced, directly or indirectly, to sin. But every animal is made subject to suffering; every animal appetite springs out of a want; every sense and every faculty of every animal are so constituted as to be in certain circumstances sources of pain; hosts of animals are so constructed that they can only live by rending and devouring other animals; no large animal can move without crushing and killing numbers of minute yet sentient creatures. How can all this be under the government of Infinite Goodness?
The human mind may very probably be unable fully to answer this question. It can only hope truthfully to answer it even in a measure by studying the relevant facts, the actual effects and natural tendencies of suffering; general speculations are not likely to profit it much. Now, among the relevant facts, one of the most manifest is that pain serves to warn animals against what would injure or destroy them. It has a preservative use. Were animals unsusceptible of pain, they would be in continual peril. Bayle has ingeniously devised some hypotheses with a view to show that pain might have safely been dispensed with in the animal constitution, but they are obviously insufficient.It would be rash to affirm that pain is indispensable as a warning against danger, but certainly no one has shown how it could be dispensed with, or even plausibly imagined how it might be dispensed with. For anything we can see or even conceive, animal organisms could only be preserved in a world like ours by being endowed with a susceptibility to pain. For anything we know or can even imagine, the demand that there should be no pain is implicitly a demand that there should be no animal life and no world like the earth;—a most foolish and presumptuous demand. But however this may be, pain has, as a fact, plain reference to the prevention of physical injury. "Painful sensations," says Professor Le Conte, "are only watchful vedettes upon the outposts of our organism to warn us of approaching danger. Without these, the citadel of our life would be quickly surprised and taken." Now, to the whole extent that what has just been said is true, pain is not evil but good, and justifies both itself and its author. It is not an end in itself, but a means to an end, and its end is a benevolent one. The character of pain itself is such as to indicate that its author must be a benevolent being,—one who does not afflict for his own pleasure, but for his creatures' profit.
Another fact makes this still more evident. Pain is a stimulus to exertion, and it is only through exertion that the faculties are disciplinedand developed. Every appetite originates in the experience of a want, and the experience of a want is a pain; but what would the animals be without their appetites and the activities to which these give rise? Would they be the magnificent and beautiful creatures so many of them are? If the hare had no fear, would it be as swift as it is? If the lion had no hunger, would it be as strong as it is? If man had nothing to struggle with, would he be as enterprising, as ingenious, as variously skilled and educated as he is? Pain tends to the perfection of the animals. It has, that is to say, a good end; an end which justifies its use; one which would do so even if perfection should not be conducive to happiness. Perfection, it seems to me, is a worthy aim in itself, and the pain which naturally tends to it is no real evil, and needs no apology. I fail to see that the nearest approximation to the ideal of animal life is the existence of a well-fed hog, which does not need to exert itself, and is not designed for the slaughter. Whatever pain is needed to make the animals so exercise their faculties as to improve and develop their natures, has been wisely and rightly allotted to them. We assign a low aim to Providence when we affirm that it looks merely to the happiness even of the animals. It would be no disproof of benevolence in the Creator if pain in the creatures tended simply to perfection and not to happiness;while it must be regarded as a proof of His benevolence if the means which lead to perfection lead also to happiness. And this they do. The pain which gives rise to exertion and the pain which is involved in exertion are, as a rule, amply rewarded even with pleasure. Perhaps susceptibility to pain is a necessary condition of susceptibility to pleasure; perhaps the bodily organism could not be capable of pleasure and insensible to pain; but whether this be the case or not, it is a plain and certain matter of fact that the activities which pain originates are the chief sources of enjoyment throughout the animal creation. This fact entitles us to hold that pain itself is an evidence of the benevolence of God. The perfecting power of suffering is seen in its highest form not in the brute, but in man; not in its effects on the body, but in its influence on the mind. It is of incalculable use in correcting and disciplining the spirit. It serves to soften the hard of heart, to subdue the proud, to produce fortitude and patience, to expand the sympathies, to exercise the religious affections, to refine, strengthen, and elevate the entire disposition. To come out pure gold, the character must pass through the furnace of affliction. And no one who has borne suffering aright has ever complained that he had been called on to endure too much of it. On the contrary, all the noblest of our race have learned from experienceto count suffering not an evil but a privilege, and to rejoice in it as working out in them, through its purifying and perfecting power, an eternal weight of glory.
In the measure that the theory of evolution can be established, the wisdom and benevolence displayed in pain would seem to receive confirmation. So far as that theory can be proved, want, the struggle for existence, the sufferings which flow from it, and death itself, must, it would appear, be regarded as means to the formation, improvement, and adornment of species and races. The afflictions which befall individuals will in this case be scientifically demonstrated to have a reference not merely to their own good, but to the welfare of their kind in all future time. The truth that nothing lives or dies to itself would thus receive remarkable verification. But although it should never receive this verification, although a strictly scientific proof of it shall never be forthcoming, there is already sufficient evidence for it of an obvious and unambiguous kind. Every being, and the animated certainly not less than the inanimate, is adjusted, as I have previously had occasion to show, to every other. "All are but parts of one stupendous whole." This is a truth which throws a kindly and cheering light on many an otherwise dark and depressing fact. Turn it even towards death. Can death itself, when seenin the light of it, be denied to be an evidence of benevolence? I think not. The law of animal generation makes necessary the law of animal death, if the largest amount of animal happiness is to be secured. If there had been less death there must have been also less life, and what life there was must have been poorer and meaner. Death is a condition of the prolificness of nature, the multiplicity of species, the succession of generations, the coexistence of the young and the old; and these things, it cannot reasonably be doubted, add immensely to the sum of animal happiness.
Such considerations as have now been indicated are sufficient to show that suffering is a means to ends which only a benevolent Being can be conceived of as designing. They show that pain and death are not what they would have been if a malevolent Being had contrived them; that they are characterised by peculiarities which only love and mercy can explain. We do not need for any practical spiritual purpose to know more than this. An objector may still ask, Could not God have attained all good ends without employing any painful means? He may still confront us with the Epicurean dilemma: "The Deity is either willing to take away all evil, but is not able to do so, in which case He is not omnipotent; or He is able to remove the evil, but is not willing, in which case He is not benevolent; or He is neither willingnor able, which is a denial of the Divine perfections; or He is both able and willing to do away with the evil, and yet it exists." But only superficial and immature minds will attach much weight to questionings and reasonings of this kind. A slight tincture of inductive science will suffice to make any man aware that speculations as to what God can or can not do, as to what the universe might or might not have been, belong to a very different region from investigations into the tendencies of real facts and processes. It would seem as if, with our present faculties, these speculations could lead us to no reliable conclusions. We clearly perceive that pain and death serve many good ends; but we should require a knowledge of God and of the universe far beyond that which we possess, to be able to state, even as an intelligent conjecture, that these evils could be wisely dispensed with, or that there is anything in them in the least inconsistent either with the power or the benevolence of God.[45]
A large amount of human suffering is accounted for by its connection with human sin. Whatever so-called physical evil is needed to prevent moral evil, or to punish it, or to cure it, or to discipline in moral good, is not really evil. Any earthly suffering which saves us from sin is to be classed among benefits. There is nothing to perplex either mind or heart in the circumstance that sin causes aprofound and widespread unhappiness. It is strange that it should sometimes apparently produce so little misery; only a dull conscience, I think, will be surprised that it produces so much. It is merely in so far as physical evil is dissociated from moral evil that its existence is a problem and a perplexity. But the very existence of moral evil is a most painful mystery. The absence of physical evil while moral evil was present would be inconsistent with a moral government of the world; whereas if moral evil were removed no real difficulty would be left. Physical evil may be a relative good, which God can easily be conceived of as causing and approving; moral evil is an unconditional evil, and cannot be the work of any morally perfect being.
Have we any reason, however, to suppose that sin is willed by God in the sense either of being caused or approved by Him? All the sin we know of on earth is willed by man, and all the sin which Scripture tells us of as existing elsewhere is said to be willed by evil spirits; neither nature nor Scripture informs us that there is any moral evil willed by God. In other words, there are no facts which refer us to God as the author of evil. In the absence of facts, we can, it is true, form conjectures, and give expression to them in such questions as, How could God make beings capable of sinning? Why did He not prevent them sinning? Wherefore has He permitted sin to endure so longand spread so widely? But thoughtful searchers for truth, at least after a certain age, cannot feel much interested in, or much perplexed by, questions like these. They will be quite willing to leave the discussion of them to debating societies. They will resolutely refuse to assign the same value to conjectures as to facts.
Sin is not God's work. Moral order may exist without moral disorder, but moral disorder can only exist as rebellion against moral order. The very notion of moral evil implies a moral good which it contravenes, and a moral law by which it is condemned. It can never be thought of as other than a something grafted on nature, by which nature is perverted and depraved. It is not natural, but unnatural; not primary and original, but secondary and derivative; not the law, but the violation of the law.