Chapter I: Introductory (1)

No subjects of thought have ever been proposed more essential to the culture and happiness of mankind than the two following inquiries.

Upon the first, human minds dwell unweariedly through every change of circumstance from childhood to advanced age. It is this:--What reason have we to look for a future life after that hour of dissolution which inevitably awaits us all?

The second question unites itself closely, as by indissoluble links, to the first. We always proceed to ask, Is there sufficient ground for believing in the existence of a Supreme Moral Being, to whose righteous care and kindness we can calmly commit ourselves when we come to die?

Suppose any man to maintain that the universe we inhabit,--and we who are a portion of its occupants--came into existence by chance, he renounces at once every right and title to expect a life succeeding his bodily death. Chance--if the word means anything--means absolute uncertainty; and from that which is in its own nature uncertain, what continuing effects, what conclusive expectation, can be drawn?

Neither is the prospect improved by Materialists[a], in whose opinion the being of man comprehends no element differing essentially, and in kind, from the natural world he rules over. We see actually consequent upon every death-bed the decay of our material frame; if, therefore, that frame be not the casket of a brighter jewel, we can assuredly affirm no hope higher or happier than corruption.

The feelings of most human beings revolt from a destiny so ignoble. And many persons are satisfied that this revolt of feeling is in itself a sufficient ground for some belief in Immortality. Why, they ask, should so powerful an instinct dwell in the breast of our race with only a misleading issue? The higher instincts of creatures below us do not mislead them regarding that which is to come. Insects innumerable make provision for the certain sustenance of a progeny they never can live to behold. They also anticipate for themselves a futurity of life and development. The caterpillar invests himself with the web he has spun, and sinks into a chrysalid-sepulchre, to emerge from it in sun-lighted beauty. Can any valid reason be assigned why the intuitive aspirations of man should be more fallacious than such practical foresights of the merely animal world below him?

So far as the writer of these pages is aware, no one has ever alleged a reason why mankind should be thus deluded. And without going further than our own country, it seems probable that this instinctive persuasion is seldom wanting amongst the greater part of our people. Although the moral consequences of such a persuasion, sometimes merely passive, may be far less than good men could desire, yet they are frequently strong enough to assist the weak and wavering when exposed to sudden temptations. In the "short and simple annals of the poor," may be read countless instances of the fact. Neglected men and women, the scorned outcasts of society, have been often held back by it from greater criminality. They have found themselves unable to acquiesce in the belief of _their_ world's opinion--the opinion of their evil friends and companions--that death must be to all creatures the certain end of all things.

If, on the other hand, absolute knowledge of a future state were the natural gift of each person's understanding, there are thousands amongst our educated classes to whom the trial and terror of their own hearts would be incalculably mitigated. Numbers feel that speculative doubts concerning the Being of a God, and life after death, are sources of a continual perplexity and distress, under which they find little or no sympathy. In every fresh affliction or anxiety, such a mind has to sustain a double burden of sorrow, and concerning such it seems emphatically true, that "the heart knoweth his own bitterness." There may, however, be suggested one alleviation for every similar instance of despondency. The same rule holds in this respect as in all human pursuits,--labour is, and will always continue, the appointed path by which we must attain. The more noble the object sought, the more arduous the task and toil,--and what can be nobler than a well-grounded belief in God and Immortality?

Another very large class of educated persons bear their doubts with stoical composure, account them an inevitable burden, and consider it lost time to ask questions concerning "the Unknowable." This class is sustained in its attitude by the prevalence[b] of really sceptical writings;--writings (that is) which deny the possibility of knowledge beyond the circle of positive phenomena. Maxims to this effect are not uncommonly disseminated through the periodical press, books of fiction, and other kinds of light literature. The rapidity of modern life leads men to take opinions upon trust, and keeps them back from serious investigation. An ephemeral satirist becomes in their eyes as valuable an authority as the most deeply-thinking reasoner. Much work is saved by this valuation, to say nothing of the great gain in self-complacency. And, no doubt, many persons feel particularly complacent in taking their tone from minds which are evidently no better informed, and no more finely strung than their own[c].

The class of sceptics just described, cannot be reckoned in figures. They make up multitudes never enumerated apart in any religious census. They live and die and make no sign,--and how can quiet unavowed disbelief obtain a separate place in the columns of the Registrar-General? Among the audible tones of respectable people it finds no utterance, and therefore occupies no position. Every one experienced in the world knows that this species of Indifferentism is usually regular at public worship, and reticent where sceptical phrases pass current. The only sure test is a moral one--of very slow application, since it takes time for a decent sceptic to balance the pleasures against the risks of immorality. Meantime, there remains some possible hope for a happier choice during the period of indecision.

Far fewer, because far more strongly declared, are the literary lodestars of that harbourless sea, where all beyond the horizon of cloud and billow seems veiled and uncertain. Some amongst them may, after all, be but wandering lights themselves[d], floating and drifting like meteors which glimmer at nightfall across shadowy waters. Others appear really fixed in a dim and joyless firmament where the Present only is true, the remote Past a conjecture, and the Future altogether inscrutable. According to them this bounded prospect is the true goal and real aim of our transitory life,--within it the trials and griefs of humanity assume their proper dimensions and pale their ineffectual terrors, while peace, like a river of Eden, flows out over the once martyred but now ransomed race of man. Even in our own imperfect struggling day, the human creature may be happy who certainly knows that this mixed existence is his All--that outside it he can live no life except in the memory of his fellow-men--that there is no God, no futurity of individual progress or perfection; but that one thing happens equally to the good and the bad--the wise and the unwise. This knowledge brings happiness, because it chases from the breast self-centred hope and fear: the man who accepts this blank beholds himself, as he really is, an atom of the Universal Whole--borne now by the irresistible tide of force into sunlight--borne soon by the same irresistible tide into a darkness of the shadow of death.

Compared with this creed, the martyrs of Monotheism were self-loving--for did not they hope? Compared with this simple creed, all who have stopped short on the threshold of frightful crimes, and hesitated to stain their souls, were also self-loving--for did they not fear?

A great variety of remonstrances have been addressed to writers of this latter type[e]. Social consequences have been eloquently urged against hypotheses which, if realised, would weaken, or perhaps destroy, self-control, foresight, and self-improvement. In reply we are told that these objects of pursuit still appear good and useful to benevolent eyes. But it should be remembered that our age is one of transition--half-developed as it were in Doubt. Our benevolent men have not yet been fully disciplined in the coming school. Who, therefore, shall safely predict for us the effects of its proposed discipline? Add that, looking at the civilised world in general, certain ideas (illusions, as they are sometimes called) respecting a Futurity influenced by our present right and wrong-doing, are ingrained in cultured man, and may perhaps be described as connate with his nineteenth-century existence[f]. Is it possible, then, for any one to say beforehand what may or may not be the consequence of uprooting cherished principles fitted in their own nature to exercise so practical an influence?

Remonstrances of this kind, however truthful and valuable in themselves, would be out of place in the ensuing pages. A contribution to the constructive science of Natural Theology must rest its arguments upon the reason of the case, to the exclusion of many interesting and persuasive considerations. All questions of Sociology, have, however, a special fascination for numerous thinkers who are unlikely to overlook negative conclusions lying close upon the confines of their own science, and to them the treatment of such questions must be remitted.

That these phases of thought have not, in fact, escaped the consideration of benevolent observers, may be inferred from the special circumstances under which this Essay is composed. Into every condition (each being required by the exigencies of the subject) the present writer enters with honest cordiality. His wish and aim is to place before those who, while they doubt, still debate, certain reasonable considerations which have appeared convincing to other speculative minds. And he may defend himself from any possible charge of causeless intermeddling with other men's concerns, in the words of one amongst our most genuinely English poets:--

"'Twere well, says one sage, erudite, profound,
Terribly arch'd and aquiline his nose,
And overbuilt with most impending brows,
'Twere well could you permit the World to live
As the World pleases: what's the World to you?
Much. I was born of woman, and drew milk
As sweet as charity from human breasts.
I think, articulate, I laugh and weep,
And exercise all functions of a man.
How then should I and any man that lives
Be strangers to each other?"[3]

There are, however, doubters whom the writer can scarcely desire to address--human beings in whose hearts to deny God kindles a vivid delight, because belief in Him would compel the renunciation of some darling wickedness. The true spring of their Materialism, Pantheism,--or whatever else happens to be the adopted form of Negation--lies within the will[g] itself. And, therefore, the wish to be better must precede the wish to hear any one who reasons of righteousness, temperance, or judgment to come.

To those who doubt, yet desire that Truth--whichever way Truth may incline--shall distinctly prevail, the ensuing pages are dedicated. And one main endeavour to be kept in view by both writer and reader is, that, laying aside passion and prejudice, these questions may be discussed under the _siccum lumen_--the purified ray--of Right Reason. To argue for victory may be allowed an advocate who pleads subject to the intervention of a judge. But here we have no arbiter to say what is or is not allowable; here, too, the matter is in itself something graver than corporeal life, or death, or all else beneath the sky; here, finally, the case is personal, since each reasoner first settles an account with his own heart; next, tries and decides a conclusive issue, and by his own sentence, accepts more than any human foresight can declare. Here, then, special pleading[4] is altogether out of place on either side, and we must, if we aim at what is best, argue for nothing more or less than the plain and simple truth.

There must, of course, be difficulties in keeping this straight and honest road. Few men like making admissions apparently at variance with their own conclusions; fewer still like to forego pleas which, though in their own judgment unsound, are certainly specious, and to many minds persuasive. Such, however, is the wish and aim of the present essayist. And, that he may bind himself the more firmly to his own resolution, he requests his readers to believe that any over-statement or other error of which he may fairly be found guilty, is occasioned by the unpleasantly common cause of ignorance,--a cause which Dr. Johnson confessed was his reason for defining "_pastern_" as a "horse's knee." "Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance," he replied, to the surprise of his fair critic, who expected an elaborate defence. _Per contra_, the essayist may equitably claim that he shall not be convicted by a too summary and inconsiderate process. At the first blush, there will certainly appear in the eyes of many readers numerous seeming mistakes, which, if carefully scrutinized, may afterwards be held the reverse. At all events, plain dealing and honest purpose demand that, when Truth is the issue truly sought, those who approach it from opposite sides must (if they desire to do right) sift their objections and difficulties as well as their favourite arguments.

Reasoning on Natural Theology falls necessarily into two divisions. The _first_ is made up of arguments drawn from the world without us. The _second_, of arguments drawn from the world within[h]. Each path of reasoning is subject to a cross division. We may argue affirmatively to a definite conclusion. We may also argue negatively with the same end in view;--we may show how much more difficult and less tenable is the contradictory hypothesis.

It would be an awkward and almost impracticable task to keep these kinds of reasoning far apart. The natural procedure of thought, is to combine, rather than to dissever, when we marshal facts for the purpose of a full and wide generalization. Yet it does seem practicable to mark every transition of thought distinctly; and, if clearly marked, the distinction may easily be kept in mind.

With this precaution, it may appear allowable to treat Natural Theology in a more discursive manner than could otherwise be permitted. The object of so doing will be to divest discussion as much as possible of a dry, logical stiffness; and, by ranging round each topic[i] to look at it in various lights; a process which generally discovers both the weakness and the strength of reasoning. Any one who has read Plato will understand the advantage of Dialogue in this respect. A more familiar book, Coleridge's "Friend," is another apt illustration. Each of its series of essays takes a sweep of the kind; and each "landing-place" affords a rest to the reader, and a fresh beginning to the intellectual tour. Without venturing to copy the quaint invention of landing-places, the present writer intends making every Chapter the occasion of a fresh _start_. The separate trains of thought will thus proceed from distinct points, and travel by separate routes, so as to admit of full inspection in their progress. Each argument allowed by the reader to be valid, will finally link itself to its neighbours; and all thoughtful persons know how to estimate the strength of convergent conclusions.

The writer trusts, also, that he may be allowed to escape the two alternatives,--either circumlocution, or the use of an objectionable pronoun _singular_, by employing the plural "_we_." This word may perhaps have a further good effect; it may remind both reader and writer that they are engaged as pilgrim-companions on a journey of joint exploration.

At the head of all their reasonings, Natural Theologians usually place the celebrated argument from Design. It would be impossible, in discussing it, to reproduce here the many illustrative examples of Design which have been collected. It would likewise be useless; partly, because they are all easily accessible and mostly well known; partly, because their appositeness as _illustrations_ is now fully admitted; and the controversy turns upon questions of another and more abstract kind. It is asked whether the analogy founded on these instances is relevant?--whether it proves too little, or too much?--and, how far the inferences drawn from such examples really go? Our plan will, therefore, be to devote our second Chapter to the examination of such objections; to the review and elucidation of the argument from Design. But if the reader wishes really to study the various questions closely connected with this celebrated line of thought, and to view the reasoning in a shape so complete as to be at once relevant and satisfactory, he may be pleased to bestow a leisure hour on the consecutive perusal of Chapters II., V., and VI., with their appended notes and illustrations.

The _third_ Chapter is intended as a critical propædeutic or foundation for the constructive science of Natural Theology. So far as our experience of men in great cities teaches anything with respect to the speculative difficulties which keep them from God, it seems to teach one undoubted fact. There is grounded in their minds a persuasion (underlying all further objections), that, whatever else we can know, little or nothing is to be learned concerning God. The idea of Theism is thus isolated from every other idea; and there is a presumption against all reasoning which in any way leads up to a determinate thought of the Divine Being or the Divine attributes.

Some such doubters allege the necessary limitation of human knowledge in general:--

"Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man."

But, is not one chief object in knowing man, to acquaint ourselves with God? In this spirit Quarles says:--

"Man is man's A B C; there's none that can
Read God aright, unless he first spell man."

We may be perfectly sure that every human being, who (as Pope continues) hangs between the sceptic and the stoic,--

"In doubt to deem himself a god or beast,"

will never arrive at any knowledge of God whatsoever.

Others, again, who suppose mankind to know a great deal, conceive all special thought which transcends the every-day human circle, to be encompassed by a number of difficulties exceptionally its own. If, it is said, there are angelic natures, they must needs pity our poor attempts to survey _super_-human or _extra_-human spheres of existence:--

"Superior beings, when of late they saw
A mortal man unfold all nature's law,
Admir'd such wisdom in an earthly shape,
And show'd a Newton as we show an ape."[5]

Pope's cynicism has been lately re-echoed in various comparisons. A death-watch has been supposed to speculate on the final end of a clock; a timepiece on the nature of its makers. Writers who use similitudes may be asked to remember that if Man really possesses reason (to say nothing of an immortal spirit), he cannot be ranged in analogy with apes, death-watches, and timepieces. The moment brute organisms, or inorganic constructions, are represented as _reasoning_, they cease to be what they are--a Thing suddenly becomes a Person. If this were all, the speech and faculties of Man would be represented as intact, though veiled beneath some shape worthy of the invention of a Babrias or an Æsop. But this is not all. The monstrous shape is at once both Thing and Person, and its thinkings in this double character are supposed to show by their grotesque failures the absurdity of our human endeavour to reason concerning God or Immortality.

To this whole kind of preoccupation the third Chapter is addressed. There are really no special difficulties in the way of Theism. It argues from the known to the unknown; so do all the inductive sciences. It accepts more than it can explain; so do we, each and all, in accepting the truth of our own individuality and personal identity, of the world outside us, and the mind within, which scrutinizes that changing world. The more thoroughly questions relating to our first sources of knowledge are debated, the more surely shall we perceive how safe is the starting-point of Natural Theology.

Against Materialism, on the other hand, there may be urged a series of difficulties properly its own, and this may be most easily seen by placing it in contrast with pure Idealism. The Materialistic starting-point is from an unauthorized postulate--in common parlance, an unfounded assumption; each step it takes is attended with a fresh need of postulation, amounting at last to the gravest burden of improbability. And when the materializing goal is reached we gain nothing--no treasure is discovered--no vista opened into new realms of intellectual or moral empire. We are only told that our supposed insight was but a dream. We are only warned to dream no more. Materialism has murdered insight.

With the argument of this Chapter there arises a very important question, which the reader is entreated to put to himself more than once, and bestow upon it from time to time a pause of serious thought. In a negative form the question runs thus: Since the difficulties supposed to bar the _first_ march of Natural Theology are in no wise peculiar to it, but attach themselves equally to a multitude of our daily grounds of thinking and acting, must we not, _if_, on account of such difficulties, we deny Natural Theism, also deny those persuasions of ordinary life? How else can we maintain our critical consistency? Let no man henceforward be confident that there exists an outward world of either men or things--let him not carelessly suppose that he has even an individual mind to speak of as his own--let all that concerns _other_ness--all that concerns _self_ness be relegated along with the Divine Being to the region of the Unknown and the Unknowable.

But we may imagine that, instead of denying these truths of common life, many men will be hardy enough to affirm them. If so, in accepting these they clearly accept a great deal more. To be consistent they must accept also the reasonable beliefs and first principles upon which reposes Theism.

The question thus put is therefore a dilemma or choice between two alternatives. And there may seem to remain no great doubt as to which alternative most practical reasoners will accept. This kind of dilemma will recur at many several steps of our inquiry, but having been illustrated in one instance at considerable length, its examination on other occasions may be safely left to the intelligence of the thoughtful reader.

The _four_ following chapters argue for the truth of Theism on four several and independent grounds. These arguments are purely constructive; and each is so far apart from the other three as to stand or fall upon its own merits. But, when each of these four arguments has been separately examined, if admitted either wholly or in a modified shape, their consilient and conjoint effect must be taken into consideration[j].

To minimize impediments in the way of true knowledge; and to rise into clearness;--_these_ should be the hopes and aims of us all. Life is full of foiled endeavours; but let us onward now with the hopeful!

ADDITIONAL NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER I.

A.--THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE AND OTHERS ON MODERN SCEPTICISM.

_Extract from Mr. Gladstone's Address delivered at the Liverpool Collegiate Institution, December 21st, 1872._

"It is not now only the Christian Church, or only the Holy Scripture, or only Christianity, which is attacked. The disposition is boldly proclaimed to deal alike with root and branch, and to snap utterly the ties which, under the still venerable name of Religion, unite man with the unseen world, and lighten the struggles and the woes of life by the hope of a better land.

"These things are done as the professed results and the newest triumphs of Modern Thought and Modern Science; but I believe that neither Science nor Thought is responsible, any more than Liberty is responsible, for the misdeeds committed in their names. Upon the ground of what is termed evolution, God is relieved of the labour of creation; in the name of unchangeable laws, He is discharged from governing the world; and His function of judgment is also dispensed with, as justice and benevolence are held to forbid that men should hereafter be called to strict account for actions, which under these unchangeable laws they may have committed. But these are only the initial stages of the process. Next we are introduced to the doctrine of the Absolute and the Unconditioned; and under the authority of these phrases (to which, and many other phrases, in their proper places, I have no objection) we are instructed that we can know nothing about God, and therefore can have no practical relations with Him. One writer--or, as it is now termed, thinker--announces with pleasure that he has found the means of reconciling Religion and Science. The mode is in principle most equitable. He divides the field of thought between them. To Science he awards all that of which we know, or may know, something; to Religion he leaves a far wider domain,--that of which we know, and can know, nothing. This sounds like jest, but it is melancholy earnest; and I doubt whether any such noxious crop has been gathered in such rank abundance from the press of England in any former year of our literary history as in this present year of our redemption, eighteen hundred and seventy-two." (pp. 22-3.)

The writer, or thinker, mentioned by Mr. Gladstone is thus described at the end of the address, p. 33:--"My reference is to Mr. Herbert Spencer. See his 'First Principles,' and especially the chapter on the 'Reconciliation of Science and Religion.' It is needless to cite particular passages. It would be difficult to mistake its meaning, for it is written with great ability and clearness, as well as with every indication of sincerity. Still it vividly recalls to mind an old story of the man who, wishing to be rid of one who was in his house, said, 'Sir, there are two sides to my house, and we will divide them; you shall take the outside.'

"I believe Mr. Spencer has been described in one of our daily journals as the first thinker of the age."

To some people the Premier will appear more than reasonably disturbed by the journal's description. There is (as we have remarked) a very advanced type of the genus journalist in England, and its anonymous zealots are liberal in distributing titles of honour--that is, among their friends. _Per contra_, upon authors of Mr. Gladstone's calibre and lofty mode of thought they bestow epithets very much the reverse of complimentary. They seem, in fact, somewhat to resemble those critics of whom Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote, that "though excellent fellows in their way, there are no gentlemen in the world less sensible of any sanctity in a book, or less likely to recognize an author's heart in it." So far, however, as Mr. Herbert Spencer is concerned, the journal censured might observe in justification of its approval that his system seems a good deal read by the students of more than one school in our Premier's own University--a proud distinction shared by Mr. Spencer with several other eminent thinkers of the same speculative tendencies as himself.

The eloquent speaker next passes under brief review two other typical books,--one by a German, the second by an Englishman. Respecting the opinions of the former author (Strauss[6]) Mr. Gladstone writes thus (Authentic Report, p. 24):--"In his first chapter he puts the question, 'Are we still Christians?' and, after a detailed examination, he concludes, always speaking on behalf of Modern Thought, that if we wish our yea to be yea, and our nay nay, if we are to think and speak our thoughts as honourable, upright men, we must reply that we are Christians no longer. This question and answer, however, he observes, are insufficient. The essential and fundamental inquiry is, whether we are or are not still to have a Religion?

"To this inquiry he devotes his second chapter. In this second chapter he finds that there is no personal God; there is no future state; the dead live in the recollection of survivors--this is enough for them. After this he has little difficulty in answering the question he has put. All religious worship ought to be abolished. The very name of 'Divine Service' is an indignity to man. Therefore, in the sense in which religion has been heretofore understood, his answer is that we ought to have no religion any more. But proceeding, as he always does, with commendable frankness, he admits that he ought to fill with something the void which he has made. This he accordingly proceeds to do. Instead of God, he offers to us the All, or Universum. This All, or Universum, possesses, he tells us, neither consciousness nor reason. But it presents to us order and law. He thinks it fitted, therefore, to be the object of a new and true piety, which he claims for his Universum, as the devout of the old style did for their God. If any one repudiates this doctrine, to Dr. Strauss's reason the repudiation is absurdity, and to his feelings blasphemy."[7]

Many readers will agree with the Premier in calling these "astonishing assertions." Many will also speak of Strauss's positions as something worse than astonishing when they read in the Illustrative Passages (Address, p. 34) a declaration which he holds it his duty as well as his right to make without any kind of reserve.[8]

Most persons will likewise agree with the Premier's further observation (p. 38):--"I have made a statement that these ideas are not a mere German brood, though I fear that we owe much of their seed to Germany, as France owed to England the seed of her great Voltairian movement, so far as it was a movement grounded in the region of thought."

In illustration of the statement that "there are many writers of kindred sympathies in England, and some of as outspoken courage" (Address, p. 26), Mr. Gladstone quotes four passages from Mr. Winwood Reade's "Martyrdom of Man." The three first cited possess a painful interest for the Natural Theologian. They are as follows:--(1.) "When the faith in a personal God is extinguished; when prayer and praise are no longer to be heard; when the belief is universal that with the body dies the soul; then the false morals of theology will no longer lead the human mind astray." (2.) "We teach that the soul is immortal; we teach that there is a future life; we teach that there is a Heaven in the ages far away: but not for us single corpuscles, not for us dots of animated jelly, but for the One of whom we are the elements, and who, though we perish, never dies." (3.) "God is so great that He does not deign to have personal relations with us human atoms that are called men. Those who desire to worship their Creator must worship Him through mankind. Such, it is plain, is the scheme of Nature." (pp. 38-9.)

On account of his Address and _pièces justificatives_, Mr. Gladstone has been already (like a prophet of old) "wounded in the house of his friends." It may therefore be well to support his judgment by some additional testimony. Now the _Pall Mall Gazette_, whatever faults may be imputed to it by its adversaries, cannot be justly charged with harshness or discourtesy towards materializing writers. And it so happens that both Dr. Strauss and Mr. Reade have lately been criticised in its columns. From these notices, therefore, I shall venture on making some extracts.

Strauss's "Der Alte und der Neue Glaube" was reviewed at considerable length in the number for November 27, 1872. I quote two passages only.

After an interesting introduction the reviewer proceeds thus:--

"As the title of the book indicates, the work to be effected divides itself into two main parts. First, it is necessary to settle the relations to be adopted towards the old Church faith, or Christianity. That accomplished, the outlines at least of the new views that take its place must be sketched out. Of course, before that can be done it must be settled whether or not there is anything to put in place of Christianity. It is logically correct to ask, first, whether 'we'--meaning 'the thinking minority,' who have grown dissatisfied with 'the old faith'--'are still Christians' in any sense. Having answered that question in the negative, it is in order to ask next 'whether we have any religion,'--which cannot be answered by a simple negative or affirmative, or without further explanations as to the nature of religion. We must see 'how we regard the world,' or the system of existing things; what results we are led to by modern researches as to its origin, purpose, and destiny. Although in the light that flows from these, Strauss maintains that the old idea of a personal God must disappear, he finds a Divinity in the All or totality of nature, whose forces and course exhibit purpose or design--subjectively speaking--and order, and to which we are bound, recognizing the wisdom that regulates them, piously to resign ourselves, seeking to fulfil that order of which we ourselves are a part." The following extract concludes the notice:--"We have seen that Strauss refuses to acknowledge Christianity because on examination its assertions appear to him incredible, and its claims therefore inadmissible. That is the result of an examination of the nature of Christianity, in which we have nothing new, as it is substantially a synopsis of the fuller process of reasoning contained in 'The Life of Jesus.' But it is not Christianity alone that must be dispensed with. In accordance with the old declaration that miracles are impossible, the supernatural also disappears. It is not merely relegated, as by Herbert Spencer and Comte, to the sphere of the Unknowable; it is not recognized in any manner whatsoever. In place of creation, we have in these pages a process of continuous development through immense periods of time; instead of God, as the source of law and authority and order, nature proceeding harmoniously in an unending process; instead of individual immortality, the conclusion that every individual fulfils his destiny in this world. The divinities and the after life of man are, as with Feuerbach, declared to be simply his own desires. 'What man might be but is not, he makes his god; what he might possess but cannot win for himself, that shall his god bestow upon him.' In reference to the argument that man must somewhere realize all the possibilities that are in him, and as he does not do so in this life there must be a future one, Strauss asks whether all seeds in nature come to maturity. Having dispensed, then, with the supernatural, are we necessarily without any religion? We have seen that Strauss answers in the negative, though not very confidently. The fundamental views on human life, the existence of the world, and so forth, are without doubt a religion, or the theoretical side of one. If in order to a religion it be necessary to believe that the universe fulfils a rational purpose through a rational order, we have that presented to us. There is constant process and continuous development. There is an ascent, as it were, of the forces of nature which perform their mighty cycles through the ages, and a consequent descent and vanishing away. The All remains ever the same, is at no moment more complete than in the preceding, nor _vice versâ_, but there is a process of becoming and disappearing which goes on, or may go on _ad infinitum_. The design or purpose of every part is being fulfilled at every moment, for at every moment there is the richest possible unfolding of life in the total system of things. The highest idea to which we can attain is that of the universe.

"Many people were scandalized when a few years ago Mr. Mill maintained that the idea of a God was not indispensable to a religion. Comte's 'Religion of Humanity' was then in view. Strauss's religion, though equally without a God, is deformed by no such crudities of thought and feeling as Comte's. Rather is his book a representation in brief compass of the views to which, whether we regret it or not, the majority of educated and thinking men are in our day more and more attracted."

One remarkable circumstance dwelt upon in this notice, as well as in Mr. Gladstone's Address, is that Strauss, like Comte, finds a substitute for the worship of a Deity--a something which both are pleased to call a Religion. Strauss takes the theoretical, Comte the sentimental view. According to the Frenchman, men are to worship "Humanity" with a leaning to the female side. The un-deformed religion of the German centres upon an Optimistic theory of the All or Universum.[9] Both would seem practically to confess the real necessity of some Religion to mankind, and the question naturally occurs whether these _succedanea_ are more wholesome and elevating than Theism, or whether (it may be added) they are as likely to be true after all.

Mr. Winwood Reade's "Martyrdom of Man" had been criticised four days earlier (_Pall Mall Gazette_, Nov. 23). As he is an English writer, I take the liberty of making more copious extracts, but would recommend such of my readers as have not perused the article to bestow half an hour's steady thought upon it.

"Mr. Reade," writes the critic, "puts forth his book as a sort of review, or survey, or abridgement of the general history of the human race, and he has given to it the strange title it bears because he is of opinion that 'the supreme and mysterious Power by whom the universe has been created, and by whom it has been appointed to run its course under fixed and invariable law; that awful One to whom it is profanity to pray, of whom it is idle and irreverent to argue and debate, of whom we should never presume to think save with humility and awe; that Unknown God has ordained that mankind should be elevated by misfortune, and that happiness should grow out of misery and pain.' But, although the work is in the main historical, it is also partly cosmological, partly physiological, and partly polemical. It deals with the past, the present, and the future of the world as well as of humanity....

"In what he has to say on the present occasion Mr. Reade lays no claim to originality. On the contrary, he warns us that he has borrowed, 'not only facts and ideas, but phrases and even paragraphs from other writers.' The purpose he has in view is to illustrate the investigations and enforce the conclusions within a moderate compass of higher and more voluminous authorities. But still there is quite enough of his own handiwork in the volume to entitle him to be regarded as far more than a mere compiler; and we venture to think that many readers will find those portions of it which are the fruits of Mr. Reade's personal experience as an African explorer, and his reflections upon that which he has himself seen, among the most interesting and instructive of all.

"In the writings of Mr. Darwin, Mr. Mill, Dr. Draper, and Mr. Herbert Spencer, the authors to whom Mr. Reade seems to be chiefly indebted, the assumed antagonism between the conclusions of modern science and the premisses of popular theology is latent rather than manifest. With them it is left as a matter of inference, and is nowhere forced upon the attention as a matter of fact. Mr. Reade endeavours to supply this deficiency, and he does so distinctly and abruptly enough.... In order to build we must destroy. Not only the Syrian superstition must be attacked, but the belief in a 'personal God,' which engenders a slavish and oriental condition of the mind, and the belief in a posthumous reward which engenders a selfish and solitary condition of the heart.... What Mr. Reade is pleased to designate 'the Syrian superstition' is still the direct or indirect source of all the really practical sympathy existing both between the higher and lower classes of society and the higher and lower races of mankind. As to the belief in a personal God, the passage we have quoted above from Mr. Reade seems to show that he shares it, or the language he uses is mere nonsense. It would be absurd to talk about anything except a personal God creating the universe, appointing fixed and invariable laws, and ordaining the destiny of mankind. And if Mr. Reade is referring merely to force collectively or in the abstract, we cannot perceive why it 'should be idle and irreverent to argue and debate about' it, or why 'we should never presume to think, save with humility and awe' about it, more than about its particular and concrete manifestations; for instance, light, heat, or electricity. Moreover, if we admit that the universe is in any sense the work of a supreme and mysterious Power who has in any sense predestined an unalterable course for it to run, we cannot understand how such a belief is fitted to remove the 'slavish and oriental condition of mind' of which Mr. Reade complains. We should have thought rather that the unmitigated fatalism it implies would be far likelier to generate such an intellectual state than reliance on providential superintendence and interposition carried to no matter what extravagant lengths. Mr. Reade's proposition that the belief in a posthumous reward engenders a selfish and solitary condition of the heart appears to us likewise wide of the mark. As long as we continue to be individual beings, our conduct will continue to be the result of our individual feelings, present or anticipated. Practically, at all events, the Stoic, the Sadducee, and the Christian equally will fulfil instead of neglecting their duty--first, because they are conscious that it is their duty, and secondly, because they know that fulfilling it will bring them satisfaction, and that to neglect it will bring them remorse. The only difference is that the Christian trusts that his satisfaction in the one case, and fears that his remorse in the other case, will be infinitely prolonged."

Mr. Reade's reviewer concludes his critique with a piece of wit from Voltaire, which he views as enunciating a pretty fair summary of the moral contained in the "Martyrdom of Man." Voltaire compares the Creator of the world to the builder of a great house, and men to the mice who inhabit its chinks and crannies. The Divine builder has not enlightened us mice. This comparison has often since been repeated in new and improved shapes by sceptical moderns, who treat a considerate Death-watch as a typical thinker on problems of reason, such as Design and Final Causation.

As author of a Lecture on Positivism in 1871, I cannot but be gratified to perceive that Mr. Gladstone's views of Comte's character and system are coincident with my own. (Authentic Report, pp. 25 and 36.)

This note began with extracts furnished by one Premier--it may not inaptly close with quotations from the writings of another.

Mr. Disraeli, in his preface to the new edition of "Lothair," expresses himself as follows (p. xv., seq.):--

"It cannot be denied that the aspect of the world and this country, to those who have faith in the spiritual nature of man, is at this time dark and distressful. They listen to doubts, and even denials, of an active Providence; what is styled Materialism is in the ascendant. To those who believe that an atheistical society, though it may be polished and amiable, involves the seeds of anarchy, the prospect is full of gloom.

"This disturbance in the mind of nations has been occasioned by two causes: firstly, by the powerful assault on the divinity of the Semitic literature by the Germans; and, secondly, by recent discoveries of science, which are hastily supposed to be inconsistent with our long-received convictions as to the relations between the Creator and the created."

On the first cause of disturbance, Mr. Disraeli continues:--"Man brings to the study of the oracles more learning and more criticism than of yore: and it is well that it should be so. The documents will yet bear a greater amount both of erudition and examination than they have received; but the word of God is eternal, and will survive the spheres."

On the second, he observes:--"Scientific, like spiritual truth, has ever from the beginning been descending from Heaven to man. He is a being who organically demands direct relations with his Creator, and he would not have been so organised if his requirements could not be satisfied. We may analyse the sun and penetrate the stars, but man is conscious that he is made in God's own image, and in his perplexity he will ever appeal to 'our Father which art in Heaven.'"

Both these sources of doubt and denial have been exemplified in the preceding note. I might indeed have hesitated to exemplify them so fully were it not for the considerations mentioned in my preface to this essay.

B.--ON CORRUPTION OF THE JUDGMENT BY MISDIRECTED MORAL SENTIMENTS.

Talfourd--then Mr. Serjeant Talfourd--thus describes what passed in his own mind when viewing the site of Gibbon's abode at Lausanne:--"That garden in which the Historian took his evening walk, after writing the last lines of the work to which many years had been devoted;--a walk which alone would have hallowed the spot, if, alas! there had not been those intimations in the work itself of a purpose which, tending to desecrate the world, must deprive all associations attendant on its accomplishment of a claim to be dwelt on as holy! How melancholy is it to feel that intellectual congratulation which attends the serene triumph of a life of studious toil chilled by the consciousness that the labour, the research, the Asiatic splendour of illustration, have been devoted, in part at least, to obtain a wicked end--not in the headlong wantonness of youth, or the wild sportiveness of animal spirits, but urged by the deliberate, hearted purpose of crushing the light of human hope--all that is worth living for, and all that is worth dying for--and substituting for them nothing but a rayless scepticism. That evening walk is an awful thing to meditate on; the walk of a man of rare capacities, tending to his own physical decline, among the serenities of loveliest nature, enjoying the thought that, in the chief work of his life, just accomplished, he had embodied a hatred to the doctrines which teach men to love one another, to forgive injuries, and to hope for a diviner life beyond the grave; and exulting in the conviction that this work would survive to teach its deadly lesson to young ingenuous students, when he should be dust. One may derive consolation from reflecting that the style is too meretricious, and the attempt too elaborate and too subtle, to achieve the proposed evil; and in hoping that there were some passages in the secret history of the author's heart, which may extenuate its melancholy error; but our personal veneration for successful toil is destroyed in the sense of the strange malignity which blended with its impulses, and we feel no desire to linger over the spot where so painful a contradiction is presented as a charm."--_Vacation Rambles._ Ed. 2, p. 238.

We may gladly give Gibbon the benefit of the doubt with which the great judge closes. But surely most attempts to address the mental state depicted must needs be found impotent. There is great force in a dictum of Schelling's ("Idealismus der Wissenschaftslehre") to the following effect--"The medium by which spirits understand each other is not the ambient air, but the deep-stirred sympathetic vibrations propagated by a community of spiritual freedom. When a soul is not pervaded by this atmosphere of conscious freedom, all inward communion with self or with another is broken,--what wonder, then, if such a one remain unintelligible to himself and to others, and in his fearful wilderness of spirit wearies himself by idle words, to which no friendly echo responds, either from his own or from another's breast?

"To remain unintelligible to such an one is glory and honour before God and man. _Barbarus huic ego sim, nec tali intelligar ulli._ This," concludes Schelling, "is a wish and prayer from which no man can keep himself."--_Sämmtliche Werke_, I. 443.

C.--ON SPECIAL PLEADING IN HISTORY AND MORALS.

A few emphatic sentences from Lord Macaulay's strictures on historical special pleading will repay perusal:--"This species of misrepresentation abounds in the most valuable works of modern historians. Herodotus tells his story like a slovenly witness, who, heated by partialities and prejudices, unacquainted with the established rules of evidence, and uninstructed as to the obligations of his oath, confounds what he imagines with what he has seen and heard, and brings out facts, reports, conjectures, and fancies in one mass. Hume is an accomplished advocate. Without positively asserting much more than he can prove, he gives prominence to all the circumstances which support his case; he glides lightly over those which are unfavourable to it; his own witnesses are applauded and encouraged; the statements which seem to throw discredit on them are controverted; the contradictions into which they fall are explained away; a clear and connected abstract of their evidence is given. Everything that is offered on the other side is scrutinised with the utmost severity; every suspicious circumstance is a ground for comment and invective; what cannot be denied is extenuated, or passed by without notice; concessions even are sometimes made; but this insidious candour only increases the effect of the vast mass of sophistry.

"We have mentioned Hume as the ablest and most popular writer of his class; but the charge which we have brought against him is one to which all our most distinguished historians are in some degree obnoxious. Gibbon, in particular, deserves very severe censure."--_Macaulay's Miscellaneous Writings--History._

The reader may very advantageously carry along with him the above quoted just remarks, if he has occasion to travel into Hume's sceptical writings. Respecting these, where every feature of the author's character appears with intensified distinctness of expression, it is not too much to say that their influence, which had suffered suspended animation,[10] is now felt in almost every cultivated circle in Europe. Checked for a time under the empire of Kant and his successors, it has been revived by the German Darwinists (so-called), who are bent on evolving all that can be got from the theory of Evolution. Comte speaks of Hume as his own master--an intellectual debt all the more readily acknowledged, because Hume's treatment of most subjects leans towards the French, rather than the Teutonic, side of English speculation. The master's influence over numbers who, without being Comte's disciples, are addicted to thinking Positively upon questions connected with Mind and Morality, was never greater than at present.

Here, therefore, the disciplined inquirer will obtain a prolific field of discovery, if he wishes to convince himself how little originality pervades the set of opinions just now in fashion.

But the student of Hume ought surely to be a disciplined inquirer. Many senior residents at our Universities will, therefore, join me in regretting that his sceptical treatises should be so commonly found in the hands of very young men. So far as such readers are concerned, it does not much signify whether Hume's fallacies are due to onesidedness of intellect or (as has been said by a critic, once himself a doubter) whether he was influenced "by vanity, appetite, and the ambition of forming a sect of _arguescents_." An opinion scarcely libellous, considering what Hume has said respecting the validity of his own paradoxes. However this may appear, the fallacies remain fallacies, and are less easy of detection than they would have been were their author a systematic thinker, instead of a philosophical _dilletante_. Under any circumstances, it is not every aspirant to the "Round Table" for whom the quest after secret spells is fitted. The youthful knight has his own ward to keep, and needs help--not hindrance, much less betrayal--inasmuch as:--

"Tis his to struggle with that perilous age
Which claims for manhood's vice the privilege
Of boyhood;--when young Dionysus seems
All glorious as he burst upon the east,
A jocund and a welcome conqueror;
And Aphrodite, sweet as from the sea
She rose and floated in her pearly shell,
A laughing girl;--when lawless will erects
Honour's gay temple on the mount of God,
And meek obedience bears the coward's brand;
While Satan, in celestial panoply,
With Sin, his lady, smiling by his side,
Defies all heaven to arms!"

_Hartley Coleridge's Poems_, Vol. II., p. 202.

D.--ON THE METHOD EMPLOYED IN THIS ESSAY.