Chapter XXXIX: Conclusion (6)

[1846] On reading Lamb's severe rejoinder, Southey, in distress, apologized, and Lamb at once relented (Life and Letters of John Rickman, by Orlo Williams, 1912, p. 225). Hence the curtailment of Lamb's letter in the ordinary editions of his works.

[1847] William Allingham: A Diary, 1907, p. 253. Cp. p. 268.

[1848] Id. p. 232.

[1849] Allingham, as cited, p. 254.

[1850] Id. p. 211. Carlyle said the same thing to Moncure Conway.

[1851] Cp. Prof. Bain's J. S. Mill, pp. 157, 191; Froude's London Life of Carlyle, i, 458.

[1852] Bain, p. 128.

[1853] See Brougham's letters in the Correspondence of Macvey Napier, 1879, pp. 333-37. Brougham is deeply indignant, not at the fact, but at the indiscreet revelation of it--as also at the similar revelation concerning Pitt (p. 334).

[1854] My Relations with Carlyle, 1903, p. 2.

[1855] Morning Post, March 9, 1849.

[1856] Germany, by Bisset Hawkins, M.D., F.R.S., F.R.C.P., Inspector of Prisons, late Professor at King's College, etc., 1838, p. 171.

[1857] History, ch. xix. Student's ed. ii, 411.

[1858] Sometimes he gives a clue; and we find Brougham privately denouncing him for his remark (Essay on Ranke's History of the Popes, 6th par.) that to try "without the help of revelation to prove the immortality of man" is vain. "It is next thing to preaching atheism," shouts Brougham (Letter of October 20, 1840, in Correspondence of Macvey Napier, p. 333), who at the same time hotly insisted that Cuvier had made an advance in Natural Theology by proving that there must have been one divine interposition after the creation of the world--to create species. (Id. p. 337.)

[1859] In 1830, for instance, we find a Scottish episcopal D.D. writing that "Infidelity has had its day; it, depend upon it, will never be revived--NO MAN OF GENIUS WILL EVER WRITE ANOTHER WORD IN ITS SUPPORT." Morehead, Dialogues on Natural and Revealed Religion, p. 266.

[1860] Cp. the author's Modern Humanists, pp. 189-94.

[1861] Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System (1797), 8th ed. p. 368. Wilberforce points with chagrin to the superiority of Mohammedan writers in these matters.

[1862] "In point of tendency I should class her books among the most irreligious I ever read," delineating good characters in every aspect, "and all this without the remotest allusion to Christianity, the only true religion." Cited in O. Gregory's Brief Memoir of Robert Hall, 1833, p. 242. The context tells how Miss Edgeworth avowed that she had not thought religion necessary in books meant for the upper classes.

[1863] Art. "The Faith of Richard Jefferies," by H. S. Salt, in Westminster Review, August, 1905, rep. as pamphlet by the R. P. A., 1906.

[1864] The writer of these scurrilities is Mr. Bramwell Booth, War Cry, May 27, 1905.

[1865] Cp. Mrs. Sutherland Orr's article on "The Religious Opinions of Robert Browning" in the Contemporary Review, December, 1891, p. 878; and the present writer's Tennyson and Browning as Teachers, 1903.

[1866] Apropos of his Theatrocrat, which he pronounced "the most profound and original of English books." Mr. Davidson in a newspaper article proclaimed himself on socio-political grounds an anti-Christian. "I take the first resolute step out of Christendom," was his claim (Daily Chronicle, December 20, 1905).

[1867] See Talks with Emerson, by C. J. Woodbury, 1890, pp. 93-94.

[1868] It was in his old age that Whitman tended most to "theize" Nature. In conversation with Dr. Moncure Conway, he once used the expression that "the spectacle of a mouse is enough to stagger a sextillion of infidels." Dr. Conway replied: "And the sight of the cat playing with the mouse is enough to set them on their feet again"; whereat Whitman tolerantly smiled.

[1869] Kahnis, Internal Hist. of Ger. Protestantism, Eng. tr. 1856, p. 78.

[1870] Geständnisse, end (Werke, ed. 1876, iv, 59).

[1871] Zur Gesch. der Relig. und Philos. in Werke, ed. cited, iii, 80.

[1872] See Ernest Newman's Study of Wagner, 1899, p. 390, note, as to the vagueness of Wagnerians on the subject.

[1873] Tikhomirov, La Russie, 2e édit. p. 343.

[1874] See Comte de Voguë's Le roman russe, p. 218, as to his propaganda of atheism.

[1875] Arnaudo, Le Nihilisme et les Nihilistes, French tr. 50.

[1876] Tikhomirov, p. 344.

[1877] "Il [Tourguénief] était libre-penseur, et détestât l'apparat religieux d'une manière toute particulière." I. Pavlovsky, Souvenirs sur Tourguénief, 1887, p. 242.

[1878] See the article "Un Précurseur d'Henrik Ibsen, Soeren Kierkegaard," in the Revue de Paris, July 1, 1901.

[1879] Prof. A. D. White, Hist. of the Warfare of Science with Theology, 1896, i, 17, 22.

[1880] The phrase is used by a French Protestant pastor. La vérité chrétienne et la doute moderne (Conférences), 1879, pp. 24-25.

[1881] Antiquities of the Jews, by William Brown, D.D., Edinburgh, 1826, i, 121-22. Brown quotes "from a friend" a demonstration of the monstrous consequences of a stoppage of the earth's rotation.

[1882] Theopneustia: The Plenary Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, Eng. trans. Edinburgh, 1850, pp. 246-49. Gaussen elaborately argues that if eighteen minutes were allowed for the stoppage of the earth's rotation, no shock would occur. Finally, however, he argues that there may have been a mere refraction of the sun's rays--an old theory, already set forth by Brown.

[1883] Dr. C. R. Edmonds, Introd. to rep. of Leland's View of the Deistical Writers, Tegg's ed. 1837, p. xxiii.

[1884] The work consists of twelve "Mémoires" or treatises, six of which were read in 1796-1797 at the Institute. They appeared in book form in 1802.

[1885] Rapports, Ier Mémoire, § ii, near end. (Éd. 1843, p. 73.) Cp. Préf. (pp. 46-47).

[1886] Ed. cited, p. 54. Cp. p. 207, note.

[1887] Not published till 1824.

[1888] Ueberweg, ii, 339.

[1889] Cp. Luchaire, as cited, p. 36.

[1890] Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, ii, 134.

[1891] "Since Cabanis, the referring back of mental functions to the nervous system has remained dominant in physiology, whatever individual physiologists may have thought about final causes" (Lange, ii, 70). Compare the tribute of Cabanis's orthodox editor Cerise (ed. 1843, Introd. pp. xlii-iii).

[1892] Rapports, IIe Mémoire, near end. (Ed. cited, p. 122.)

[1893] See the already cited introduction of Cerise, who solved the problem religiously by positing "a force which executes the plans of God without our knowledge or intervention" (p. xix). He goes on to lament the pantheism of Dr. Dubois (whose Examen des doctrines de Cabanis, Gall, et Broussais (1842) was put forward as a vindication of the "spiritual" principle), and of the German school of physiology represented by Oken and Burdach.

[1894] Lawrence's Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Man, 8th ed. 1840, pp. 1-3. The aspersion of Abernethy is typical of the orthodox malignity of the time. Cabanis in his preface had expressly contended for the all-importance of morals. The orthodox Dr. Cerise, who edited his book in 1843, while acknowledging the high character of Cabanis, thought fit to speak of "the materialists" as "interested in abasing man" (introd. p. xxi). On the score of fear of demoralization, the champions of "spirit" themselves exhibited the maximum of baseness.

[1895] Lawrence's Lectures, p. 9, note.

[1896] Id. pp. 168-69.

[1897] Yet Lawrence was created a baronet two months before his death. So much progress had been made in half a century.

[1898] Work cited, pp. 355 sq., 375 sq. The tone is at times expressive of a similar attitude towards historical religion--e.g.: "Human testimony is of so little value ... that it cannot be received with sufficient caution. To doubt is the beginning of wisdom." Id. p. 269.

[1899] Cp. Whewell, Hist. of the Inductive Sciences, 3rd ed. iii, 505.

[1900] White, as cited, i, 222-23, gives a selection of the language in general use among theologians on the subject.

[1901] The early policy of the Geological Society of London (1807), which professed to seek for facts and to disclaim theories as premature (cp. Whewell, iii, 428; Buckle, iii, 392), was at least as much socially as scientifically prudential.

[1902] See the excellent monograph of W. M. Mackenzie, Hugh Miller: A Critical Study, 1905, ch. vi; and cp. Spencer's essay on Illogical Geology--Essays, vol. i; and Baden Powell's Christianity without Judaism, 1857, p. 254 sq. Miller's friend Dick, the Thurso naturalist, being a freethinker, escaped such error. (Mackenzie, pp. 161-64.)

[1903] Cp. the details given by Whewell, iii, 406-408, 411-13, 506-507, as to early theories of a sound order, all of which came to nothing. Steno, a Dane resident in Italy in the seventeenth century, had reached non-Scriptural and just views on several points. Cp. White, Hist. of the Warfare of Science with Theology, i, 215. Leonardo da Vinci and Frascatorio had reached them still earlier. Above, vol. i, p. 371.

[1904] Metamorphoses, lib. xv.

[1905] He had just completed a work on the subject at his death. Cp. Mackenzie, Hugh Miller, as cited, pp. 134-35, 146-47.

[1906] Christianity and Judaism, pp. 256-57.

[1907] See Charles Darwin's Historical Sketch prefixed to the Origin of Species.

[1908] Meding, as cited by Darwin, 6th ed. i, p. xv. Goethe seems to have had his general impulse from Kielmeyer, who also taught Cuvier. Virchow, Göthe als Naturforscher, 1861, Beilage x.

[1909] Memoirs of Newton, i, 131. Cp. More Worlds than One, 1854, pp. vi, 226.

[1910] See Darwin's Sketch, as cited.

[1911] Letter of March 16, 1845, in Life of Whewell, by Mrs. Stair Douglas, 2nd ed. 1882, pp. 318-19. If this statement be true as to Owen, he shuffled badly in his correspondence with the author of the Vestiges. See the Life of Sir Richard Owen, 1894, i, 251.

[1912] Mackenzie, Hugh Miller, p. 185.

[1913] Foot-Prints of the Creator, end.

[1914] Oxford Essays, 1856, p. 5.

[1915] Hist. of the Inductive Sciences, 3rd ed. iii, 479-83; Life, as above cited. Whewell is said to have refused to allow a copy of the Origin of Species to be placed in the Trinity College Library. White, i, 84.

[1916] White, i, 70 sq.

[1917] Edward Clodd, Thomas Henry Huxley, 1902, pp. 19-20.

[1918] Luthardt, Fundamental Truths of Christianity, Eng. tr. 1865, p. 74.

[1919] See the many examples cited by White. As late as 1885 the Scottish clergyman Dr. Lee is quoted as calling the Darwinians "gospellers of the gutter," and charging on their doctrine "utter blasphemy against the divine and human character of our incarnate Lord" (White, i, 83). Carlyle is quoted as calling Darwin "an apostle of dirt-worship." His admirers appear to regard him as having made amends by admitting that Darwin was personally charming.

[1920] E.g. the Education, small ed. pp. 41, 155.

[1921] I am informed on good authority that in later life Huxley changed his views on the subject. He had abundant cause. As early as 1879 he is found complaining (pref. to Eng. tr. of Haeckel's Freedom in Science and Teaching, p. xvii) of the mass of "falsities at present foisted upon the young in the name of the Church."

[1922] See a choice collection in the pamphlet What Men of Science say about God and Religion, by A. E. Proctor; Catholic Truth Society.

[1923] Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. 1888, iii, 179.

[1924] It is doubtful whether C. A. Walckenaer should be so described. His Essai sur l'histoire de l'espèce humaine (1798) has real scientific value.

[1925] See the author's Buckle and his Critics, 1895.

[1926] Europe during the Middle Ages, 11th ed. i, 377.

[1927] Cp. his Decline of the Roman Republic, 1864, i, 345-47; and note on p. 447 of his translation of Plutarch's Brutus, Bohn ed. of Lives, vol. iv.

[1928] See The Dynamics of Religion, pp. 227-33.

[1929] It is difficult to understand the claim made for Hegel by his translator, the Rev. E. B. Speirs, that any student of his lectures on the Philosophy of Religion "will be constrained to admit that in them we have the true 'sources' of the evolution principle as applied to the study of religion" (edit. pref. to trans. of work cited, i, p. viii). To say nothing of Fontenelle and De Brosses, Constant had laid out the whole subject before Hegel.

[1930] Primitive Culture, i. 2.

[1931] Life and Letters, i, 151.

[1932] Principles of Sociology, 3 vols. 1876-96.

[1933] Cp. Saintes, Hist. crit. du rationalisme en Allemagne, p. 323.

[1934] Id. pp. 322-24.

[1935] As to Hegel's mental development cp. Dr. Beard on "Strauss, Hegel, and their Opinions," in Voices of the Church in Reply to Strauss, 1845, pp. 3-4.

[1936] E. Caird, Hegel, 1883, p. 94.

[1937] E.g. Philos. of Religion, introd. Eng. tr. i, 38-40.

[1938] Id. p. 41. Cp. pp. 216-17.

[1939] Id. p. 219.

[1940] Cp. Morell, as cited, and pp. 195-96; and Feuerbach, as summarized by Baur, Kirchengeschichte des 19ten Jahrh. p. 390.

[1941] Cp. Michelet as cited by Morell, ii, 192-93.

[1942] As to Strauss cp. Beard, as above cited, pp. 21-22, 30; and Zeller, David Friedrich Strauss, Eng. tr. pp. 35, 47-48, 71-72, etc.

[1943] As to Vatke see Pfleiderer, as cited, p. 252 sq.; Cheyne, Founders of O. T. Criticism, 1893, p. 135.

[1944] E.g. Dr. Hutchison Stirling. See his trans. of Schwegler's Handbook of the History of Philosophy, 6th ed. p. 438 sq.

[1945] Baur, last cit. p. 389.

[1946] Geständnisse, Werke, iv, 33. Cp. iii, 110.

[1947] Cp. Hagenbach, pp. 369-72; Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Freethought, pp. 387-88. On Bauer's critical development and academic career see Baur, Kirchengesch. des 19ten Jahrh. pp. 386-89.

[1948] Die Selbstzersetzung des Christenthums und die Religion der Zukunft, 2te Aufl. 1874 trans. in Eng. as The Religion of the Future, 1886.

[1949] See Schopenhauer's dialogues on Religion and Immortality, and his essay on The Christian System (Eng. tr. by T. B. Samplers), and Nietzsche's Antichrist. The latter work is discussed by the writer in Essays in Sociology, vol. ii.

[1950] Prof. Seth Pringle-Pattison, who passes many just criticisms on their work (Philos. of Relig. in Kant and Hegel, rep. with The Philosophical Radicals), does not seem to suspect this determination.

[1951] Baur gives a good summary, Kirchengeschichte, pp. 390-94.

[1952] "M. Feuerbach et la nouvelle école hégélienne," in Études d'histoire religieuse.

[1953] A. Kohut, Ludwig Feuerbach, sein Leben und seine Werke, 1909, p. 48.

[1954] Die Halben und die Ganzen, p. 50. "Feuerbach a ruiné le système de Hegel et fondé la positivisme." A. Lévy, La philosophie de Feuerbach et son influence sur la litt. allemande, 1904, introd. p. xxii.

[1955] E.g. "All knowledge, all conviction, all piety ... is based on the principle that in the spirit, as such, the consciousness of God exists immediately with the consciousness of itself." Philos. of Relig. Eng. tr. introd. i. 42-43.

[1956] Essence of Christianity, Eng. tr. 1854, p. 12.

[1957] Kirchengeschichte des 19ten Jahrhunderts, pp. 393-94.

[1958] Cp. A. Lévy, as cited, ch. iv.

[1959] Id. ch. ii.

[1960] Reden über Religion, ihr Entstehen und Vergehen, an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verehrern--a parody of the title of the famous work of Schleiermacher.

[1961] Work cited, p. 119.

[1962] Büchner expressly rejected the term "materialism" because of its misleading implications or connotations. Cp. in Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner's Charles Bradlaugh the discussion in Pt. ii, ch. i, § 3 (by J. M. R.).

[1963] While the cognate works of Carl Vogt and Moleschott have gone out of print, Büchner's, recast again and again, continues to be republished.

[1964] Cp. Paul Deschanel, Figures Littéraires, 1889, pp. 130-32, 171-73; Lévy-Bruhl, The Philosophy of Auguste Comte, Eng. tr. 1903, p. 190; and Ch. Adam, La Philosophie en France, 1894. p. 228.

[1965] Adam, as cited, pp. 227-30.

[1966] In his Mélanges philosophiques (1833), Eng. trans. (incomplete) by George Ripley, Philos. Essays of Th. Jouffroy, Edinburgh, 1839, ii, 32. Ripley, who was one of the American transcendentalist group and a member of the Brook Farm Colony, indicates his own semi-rationalism in his Introductory Note, p. xxv.

[1967] Mélanges philosophiques, trans. as cited, ii, 95.

[1968] Essai, cited, i, 232, 237.

[1969] Id. pp. 241-43.

[1970] Id. p. 221.

[1971] Correspondance, 1858-86, letter of May 26, 1833.

[1972] Letters of August 1 and November 25.

[1973] Cp. Ch. Adam, La Philosophie en France, 1894, p. 105.

[1974] Id. p. 84.

[1975] Littré, Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive, pp. 123, 125-26.

[1976] Article in 1844, rep. in Essais sur la philosophie et la religion, 1845, p. 1.

[1977] See M. Lévy-Bruhl's Philosophy of Auguste Comte, Eng. tr. pp. 10-15. M. Lévy-Bruhl really does not attempt to meet Littre's argument, which he puts aside.

[1978] Cp. Prof. Botta's chapter in Ueberweg's Hist. of Philos. ii, 513-16.

[1979] Veitch's Memoir of Sir William Hamilton, 1869, p. 54. Cp. Hamilton's own Discussions, 1852, p. 187 (rep. of article of 1839).

[1980] Veitch, p. 214.

[1981] In his Church of Englandism and its Catechism Examined (1818), and Not Paul but Jesus (1823), by "Gamaliel Smith."

[1982] Under the pseudonym of Philip Beauchamp. See The Minor Works of George Grote, edited by Professor Bain, 1873, p. 18; Athenæum, May 31, 1873; J. S. Mill's Autobiography, p. 69; and Three Essays on Religion, p. 76.

[1983] Cp. Morell, Spec. Philos. of Europe in the Nineteenth Century, ii, 620; and Life and Corr. of Whately, by E. Jane Whately, abridged ed. p. 159.

[1984] Articles in the Edinburgh Review (1829-30); and professorial lectures at Edinburgh (1839-56).

[1985] Cp. Veitch's Memoir, pp. 195-97.

[1986] Bampton Lectures on The Limits of Religious Thought, 4th ed. pref. p. xxxvi, note. After thus declaring all metaphysics to be profoundly delusive, Mansel shows at his worst (Philosophy of the Conditioned, 1866, p. 188) by disparaging Mill as an incompetent metaphysician.

[1987] Id. p. xxxviii.

[1988] Spencer has avowed in his Autobiography (ii, 75) what might be surmized by critical readers, that he wrote the First Part of First Principles in order to guard against the charge of "materialism." This motive led him to misrepresent "atheism," and there was a touch of retribution in the general disregard of his disavowal of materialism, at which he expresses surprise. The broad fact remains that for prudential reasons he set forth at the very outset of his system a set of conclusions which could properly be reached only at the end, if at all.

[1989] As to his fluctuations, which lasted till his death, cp. the author's New Essays towards a Critical Method, 1897, pp. 144-47, 149-54, 168-69.

[1990] Baur, Die christliche Lehre der Versöhnung, 1838, pp. 54-63, 124-31.

[1991] Benrath, Bernardino Ochino, Eng. tr. pp. 248-87.

[1992] Field's Memoirs of Parr, 1828, ii, 363, 374-79.

[1993] See Pearson's Infidelity, its Aspects, Causes, and Agencies, 1853, p. 215 sq. The position of Maurice and Parr (associated with other and later names) is there treated as one of the prevailing forms of "infidelity," and called spiritualism. In Germany the orthodox made the same dangerous answer to the theistic criticism. See the Memoirs of F. Perthes, Eng. tr. 2nd. ed. ii, 242-43.

[1994] Ed. cited, pp. 158-59.

[1995] Pearson, as cited, pp. 560-62, 568-79, 584-84.

[1996] Letter in W. L. Courtney's J. S. Mill, 1889, p. 142.

[1997] Cp. Schechter, Studies in Judaism, 1896, pp. 59, 71. Schechter writes with a marked Judaic prejudice.

[1998] Id. pp. 117-18.

[1999] This title imitates that of the famous More Nebuchim of Maimonides.

[2000] Zunz, cited by Schechter, p. 79.

[2001] Whence Krochmal is termed the Father of Jewish Science. Id. p. 81.

[2002] A Life of Mr. Yukichi Fukuzawa, by Asatarô Miyamori, revised by Prof. E. H. Vickers, Tokyo, 1902, pp. 9-10.

[2003] Pamphlet cited, p. 16.

[2004] A curious example of sporadic freethought occurs in a pamphlet published towards the end of the eighteenth century. In 1771 a writer named Motoori began a propaganda in favour of Shintôism with the publication of a tract entitled Spirit of Straightening. This tract emphatically asserted the divinity of the Mikado, and elicited a reply from another writer named Ichikawa, who wrote: "The Japanese word kami (God) was simply a title of honour; but in consequence of its having been used to translate the Chinese character shin (shên) a meaning has come to be attached to it which it did not originally possess. The ancestors of the Mikados were not Gods, but men, and were no doubt worthy to be reverenced for their virtues; but their acts were not miraculous nor supernatural. If the ancestors of living men were not human beings, they are more likely to have been birds or beasts than Gods." Art.: "The Revival of Pure Shinto," by Sir E. N. Satow, in Trans. Asiatic Society of Japan.

[2005] Lafcadio Hearn, Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation, 1904, p. 313; cp. p. 46.

[2006] Thus the third emperor of the Ming dynasty in China (1425-1435), referring to the belief in a future life, makes the avowal: "I am fain to sigh with despair when I see that in our own day men are just as superstitious as ever" (Prof. E. H. Parker, China and Religion, 1905, p. 99).

[2007] See Hearn, as cited, passim.

[2008] Cp. Sir F. S. P. Lely, Suggestions for the Better Governing of India, 1906, p. 59.

[2009] See article on "The Future of Turkey" in the Contemporary Review, April, 1899, by "A Turkish Official."

[2010] Yet, as early as the date of the Crimean War, it was noted by an observer that "young Turkey makes profession of atheism." Ubicini, La Turquie actuelle, 1855, p. 361. Cp. Sir G. Campbell, A Very Recent View of Turkey, 2nd ed. 1878, p. 65. Vambéry makes somewhat light of such tendencies (Der Islam im 19ten Jahrhundert, 1875, pp. 185,187); but admits cases of atheism even among mollahs, as a result of European culture (p. 101).

[2011] Ubicini (p. 344), with Vambéry and most other observers, pronounces the Turks the most religious people in Europe.

[2012] H. M. Baird, Modern Greece, New York, 1856, pp. 123-24.

[2013] Id., p. 320.

[2014] Id., p. 339.

[2015] Id., p. 86.

[2016] Id., p. 340.

[2017] Prof. Neocles Karasis, Greeks and Bulgarians in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, London, 1907, pp. 15-17, citing a Bulgarian journal.

[2018] In the Edinburgh Mirror of 1779 (No. 30) Henry Mackenzie speaks of women freethinkers as a new phenomenon.

[2019] "She bought 2,000 acres in Tennessee, and peopled them with slave families she purchased and redeemed" (Wheeler, Biog. Dict.).

[2020] See Lord Morley's Life of Gladstone, 1903, ii, 110-11, as to the embarrassment felt in English official circles at the time of Garibaldi's visit.

[2021] On the whole case see The Life, Trial, and Death of Francisco Ferrer, by William Archer: Chapman & Hall, 1911; and The Martyrdom of Ferrer, by Joseph McCabe: R. P. A., 1910.