Chapter IV: Beliefs of Reason (1)

In the last section, we have examined a number of intellectual perplexities, running closely parallel to certain _primâ-facie_ objections commonly alleged against Natural Theism. We have seen that they are, in reality, difficulties arising from the impotence of the Human Mind, whenever it is directed to the contemplation of first or supreme, Principles. In all reason therefore, they cease to be objections. We are, in fact, constantly finding ourselves obliged to accept as an undeniable truth, or a real existence, what when placed objectively before our mental vision, appears inexplicable, self-contradictory, or absolutely unthinkable.

The power which compels us to many an admission of this kind is the _mind itself_, asserting a strength of insight, in-born and inalienable, notwithstanding the symptoms of weakness, which (psychologically speaking) may have seemed threatening to overcloud and disable it.[ac]

Hence, we are led to suspect that some at least of those symptomatic weaknesses, are mistakes in diagnosis. This suspicion will be shared by most persons tolerably acquainted with the present state of psychology, and particularly with the manner in which foregone theories are supported by over-refined analysis. At all events, the reactionary strength of the mind is best shown in the concrete beliefs resulting from its own simplest activities.

Our simplest mental activities are naturally our earliest. Amongst them, none are more distinctly marked than our impulses to believe and act upon certain definite pre-suppositions. These differ from the vague and purposeless dreams of childhood, by gradually becoming clear, practical, and expansive. One of the most vigorous, permanent, and prevailing, amongst them all, is our human belief in the existence of supernatural power. Upon another presupposition (not originally the clearest), seems to rest, in the first degree, that principle which gives validity to all the inductive sciences. We will carefully examine this latter belief, with the object of drawing from the process certain aids for an examination of the former.[ad]

Induction is defined as the legitimate inference of the more general, from the less general;--the general from the particular;--and (with more startling distinctness) of the Unknown from the Known. It is at once evident that, whatever may be the logical form into which this mode of inferring is thrown, there must in the nature of things be some ulterior principle to give it legitimacy. This principle, when raised to the rank and dignity of a philosophic postulate, is commonly known as the Law of Natural Uniformity. A law claiming such extensive dominion that one cannot help asking in what code, human or Divine, of reason or of experience, it was originally found written.

Let us have recourse to the code of reason first. Euclid gives admirable instances of things true by necessity of reason. The moment we understand what right lines are, we see at once and for all time that two straight lines, infinitely prolonged, can never inclose a space. No one ever did see a mathematical line of any kind ("length without thickness"),--no one ever saw or conceived any real or ideal thing of infinite extent, neither can we think infinity at all. Yet the terms of the geometrical proposition carry their own evidence. We may sum the case, as Euler the mathematician put it. He finished a demonstration upon _Arches_ by saying, "All experience is contrary to this, but that is no reason for doubting its truth."

Now, there appears nothing in the least resembling this case, in the conception of Natural Uniformity. No thinker can predicate substantial impossibility of the idea that Nature should ever be otherwise than Uniform.

Suppose, then, we consider the code of Experience. Where shall we find the experience required? Ours is far short of universal, either in an absolute or an approximate sense. We are the children of to-day--yet the law wanted must be to all intents universal. It has been answered to this obvious requirement, that we enjoy the results of an experience constant and uniform, "coextensive not with the life of the single individual who employs them, but with the entire history of the human race."[154] But in what history is any such experience written? History in its _letter_, is full of events which contradict Nature's uniformity, of interruptions, marvels, miracles. For cattle to speak, is quite a common occurrence in Livy. An ordinary Roman would have been perplexed by the absence of signs and wonders; he would have felt it something to be accounted for. History tells us on every written page to believe in what seems impossible; and some writers on historical evidence, claim for it a greater amount of credibility whenever it testifies to the greater number of improbable incidents. For, do not writers of fiction deal in probabilities?[155]

Another method of giving force to the principle of natural Uniformity, is based on our alleged sense of personal subjection to the chain of events;--the outer world is said to penetrate the inner by an impression of its unvarying sequence, its laws of unbroken continuity. But does the lesson of life really go this way? Most men, when meditating over their own lives, think rather of the causation they have themselves exercised, or might have exercised, than of any iron links of causality in nature. So strongly do they feel their causal power, that, whereas one man boasts of being the architect of his own fortunes, another blames himself because he has been foolish enough to let things take their chance. What people chiefly realize and act upon, is the relation between Man and Nature--or, else between Man and Man;--relations prolific in consequences which we shall have to consider by-and-bye.

A more summary mode of explaining our human impression of natural Uniformity, is by resolving it into certain laws of Association. We see antecedent and consequent every day, and get to consider them as indissolubly associated. If we see a present antecedent, we expect a coming consequent. The event and its futurity, are thus fused in a common solvent. Yet, one palpable objection lies against this theory, and it is fatal. Fatal against it, and against all theories which rest our belief upon experience, or upon any process of reasoning, inductive or demonstrated. The objection consists in the plain fact, that this belief resembles animal instinct[156] in _one_ definite particular--it exists previously to all observation or exercise of intelligence on the subject.

We see it in all young creatures. The instinct of children is to act upon a supposition that the thing they have enjoyed or suffered shall recur regularly and without interruption. The darling brought down to dessert every day for a week, feels injured by a breach of the custom, just as the cat or dog fed from their masters' table expects the same hand to continue always kind. Child, kitten, and puppy, need no second scalding to look askance at the tea-kettle. Grown people's confidence in the stability of Empires often reposes on no much stronger foundation. Most men rest satisfied with an indefinite and unreasoning presumption all their lives long. They desire no further explanation--a happy circumstance, perhaps, considering the theories they might have to investigate.

Mr. James Mill in his "Analysis of the Human Mind" made great and continual use of the laws of Association. He applied them (amongst other ways) to our belief in the uniform futurities of Nature. "There can" he writes "be no idea of the Future; because strictly speaking the Future is a non-entity--of nothing there can be no idea.... Our whole lives are but a series of changes, that is, of antecedents and consequents. The conjunction, therefore, is incessant; and, of course, the union of the ideas perfectly inseparable." (Vol. I. pp. 362-3.) And again, (p. 367,) "But I am told, that we have not only the idea of to-morrow, but the belief of to-morrow; and I am asked what that belief is. I answer, that you have not only the idea of to-morrow, but have it _inseparably_. It will also appear, that wherever the name belief is applied, there is a case of the indissoluble association of ideas. It will further appear, that, in instances without number, the name belief is applied to a mere case of indissoluble association; and no instance can be adduced in which anything besides an indissoluble association can be shewn in belief. It would seem to follow from this, with abundant evidence, that the whole of my notion of to-morrow, belief included, is nothing but a case of the inevitable sequence of ideas."--This theory Mr. Bain (no hostile critic) annotates as follows. "The case that is most thoroughly opposed to the theory of indissoluble association is our belief in the Uniformity of Nature. Our overweening tendency to anticipate the future from the past is shown prior to all association; the first effect of experience is to abridge and modify a strong primitive urgency. There is, no doubt, a certain stage when association co-operates to justify the believing state. After our headlong instinct has, by a series of reverses, been humbled and toned down, and after we have discovered that the Uniformity, at first imposed by the mind upon everything, applies to some things and not to others, we are confirmed by our experience in the cases where the uniformity prevails; and the intellectual growth of association counts for a small part of the believing impetus. Still, the efficacy of experience is perhaps negative rather than positive; it saves, in certain cases, the primitive force of anticipation from the attacks made upon it in the other cases where it is contradicted by the facts. It does not make belief, it conserves a pre-existing belief." In Mr. Bain's comment it is worthy of particular remark that he considers experience less as a foundation, than a _test_ always,--a _limit_ sometimes,--of that law which gives life to all the experimental sciences. "The uniformity imposed by the mind," he observes, "applies to some things but not to others." His view, therefore, places the principle itself in the light of a generality given by the mind and apprehended as a leading maxim. Its field is sometimes reasserted,--sometimes contracted,--by experience; but in both cases the effect is a process of discrimination.

In support of this view, it may be fairly urged that a child calculates on the uniformity of human character and conduct, to an extent not justified in after life. Any child correctly expects a stone to fall when thrown into the air, without the least idea of that special reason for its fall, which can be mathematically extended to the stars. In like manner, our very earliest belief in the reality of men and objects outside us, confuses persons and things as resisting antagonists which ought to be punished and overcome. Experience, therefore, brings discrimination. Thus, too, the natural apprehension of a power above nature, occupies a more defined sphere in our own old age than the first radiant glimpses of our wondering upward-springing childhood. And the same may be said of the world's several eras of religious thinking. Yet, if some eminent writers are correct in contending that the belief in a Supreme "_Heaven-Father_," (so strong in the Aryan[157] family,) was of extreme antiquity, we must admit that our race's infancy cherished a more truly Theistic faith, than many intervening ages of moral degeneracy retained.[158] But, side by side with this admission, we ought to place _two_ notable facts,--_first_ that our sense of the supernatural has really educated the great heart of Man; teaching him from the love of God to love his neighbour likewise.--_Next_,--that the awful impression has, on the whole, grown with his growth, and strengthened with his strength; acquiring fresh light and beauty with every fresh access to his noblest illumination. Exactly in proportion, as man increasingly learns to love and live for his neighbour, he has always increased the depth and earnestness with which he lives for and loves his God. In these two facts is bound up the secret of our Western civilization.

We must return, however, for a few paragraphs to the general consideration of what may be called our pre-rational beliefs.[ae] That they are pre-rational (account for them as we will), is evident since from them spring our first tendencies to reason in special directions, and our first ability to receive and assimilate such mental food as may be afforded us. "The primary facts of intelligence,"--says Sir W. Hamilton, "the facts which precede, as they afford the conditions of, all knowledge,--would not be original were they revealed to us under any other form than that of natural or necessary beliefs."[159] A central point this; and one most essential for the Psychologist! Indeed, every one who explains such beliefs into laws of association, commits the oversight of refining away the chief fact involved in those laws themselves. For, the very idea of association presupposes a guiding impulse. How can we classify without a standard of classification, arrange or connect without threads of connection or arrangement? Laws of association must cluster round an associating principle, just as translucent halos encircle the Sun. Laws of association do not make principles; but an operative principle evokes associations, and manifests itself in their law.

Oversights like this, and the one before noted by Mr. Bain, are examples of the paralogism incident to all attempts at explaining the inexplicable. In his eagerness, the metaphysical refiner subtilizes away the truth under analysis. Even so, in days of old, Alchemists used to sublimate the gold intended for transmuting inferior metals, till it flew off in elastic vapour, and all that _had been_ precious, vanished from the eager speculative man. A frequent issue this, to searchers after our true philosopher's stone.

The catalogue of pre-rational beliefs or impulses to believe, is considerable, and might easily be enlarged. But there is much to hinder a full enumeration. In the first place, they emerge from a border-land between the brute and the man; and border territories are proverbially fertile in disputes. Next, they have to be sought out and examined in the birthplace of intelligence; and the beginnings of knowledge like the beginnings of history are overshadowed by a twilight haze. Then, too, amongst the painters of human nature, (who after all are but men,) there prevails a disinclination to confess how largely our human life is cradled under the rule of unreason and impulsiveness. Most of us hardly know why we act, yet, every one likes to believe himself reasoning and reasonable. Finally, some religious minds shrink back from realizing the idea of an _instinctive_ belief in the moral antithesis of Right and Wrong, or in a Supreme First Cause and Judge of all men. They feel as if to admit it were almost degrading to Faith,--forgetful that the philosophic Apostle took this view and expressed it with the utmost boldness.[160] Forgetful, also, that from whatever source Man's reason sprang, from the same welled forth every bright stream of practical activity,--impelling him to work in spheres as yet unconquered by the force of his own understanding.

The hindrances now described are, after all, grounded on an inadequate conception of the true distinction between the Animal and the Man. Apart from the fact that ultimate objects of instinct differ as widely as the idea of a future life differs from the poorest enjoyments of the brute world,--quite apart from all consideration of aims and ends,--the impulses themselves are in their own activities very far indeed from occupying the same level. There are instincts of the utmost importance to all self support and self protection, and to the sustenance and care of others, which appear in their own nature simple and unalterable;--unerring within their direct line, but beyond it helpless and narrow in their field of operation. Other instincts again,--such, for example, as impel animals to construction, and human beings to art,--are evidently influenced and enlarged by intelligence. Beavers adapt their dams, birds their nests, and the bee her comb, to all kinds of circumstances, so far as they can command the means of adaptation. Their intelligence also delights itself in different kinds of adornment.[161] But the power of meeting exigencies, is manifestly limited throughout the lower creation. The bee has, for ages, worked upon marvellously accurate principles, unintelligible to mathematicians before the calculus was invented, and only fully explained of late years. She always erects one effectual and skilful kind of barricade[162] against hostile swarms, as well as that dreaded assailant, the Death's head moth. Furthermore, she evinces readiness in fitting all her material structures to place, occasion, and circumstance. Yet, observe the same bee exhausting herself by vain struggles against the sloping roof of a greenhouse, of which every window is thrown wide open. She perseveres, hour after hour, in unavailing endeavours to escape by her one accustomed upward track of flight, unable to conceive the possibility of transparent but impenetrable glass; and incapable of learning the fact by her repeated disappointments. In this way, hundreds of bees, butterflies, and other winged insects, perish miserably every summer. So, too, the highly educated and intelligent dog, will try to scratch holes in hard flag stones, and, after trials innumerable, still scratches on without seeming to discover that he never succeeds in making a single hole. Thus, also, birds in captivity keep up the perpetual motion of their heads--(useful to the poor prisoner no longer!) and generations after generations of captives maintain the instinctive practice. Numberless instances might easily be adduced to the same effect. But _no_ similar observation holds good of man. The child soon discontinues its efforts to thrust an arm through a glass window; and every day learns some new lesson in the properties of material objects. The engineer builds dams as well as the beaver;--but, beside dams, what marvels innumerable does he achieve with his earthworks, his timbers, and his stones! Speaking generally, we perceive that man has an instinctive tendency to lay hold of a practical fact, idea, and law of action, as a concrete whole;[163]--seizing it, at first, as the animal does without being able to analyze, recompound, or extend it. But reason holds the candle to instinct.[af] The impulse deepens and widens,--becomes distinguished by boldness and comprehensive breadth;--and it is difficult, if not impossible, to fix boundaries to its ultimate expansion. An expansion coextensive with the completed destinies of mankind.

We say thus much of our lower instincts, transformed and made glorious by reason shining through them; just as the setting sun transforms and glorifies the clouds floating high overhead, or the half-translucent foliage of the grove in which we walk. But there belong exclusively to Man, instinctive beliefs, impulses, and ideas, which possess a glory of their own;--raise him, _first_ above the brutes,--_next_ above himself as he now exists,--and make him know that he may aspire to become the denizen of a brighter world than this. Among them, is the feeling that Nature herself is (like the tree or cloud illumined by the sun), everywhere penetrated by a beauty and a power streaming through her;--compared with the reality of which she is but a filmy veil,--or it may be an illusive image. The sun himself, the light and life of the lower world, symbolizes an existence more truly kindling and ensouling, which animates and makes brilliant the blue arch of sky. Such thoughts as these haunted the first utterances of our race,--and it needed but another step to make us feel that this living light shines within ourselves,--and that, go where we will, a strength and Majesty go with us, which are not of the earth, earthy. Thus, the consciousness grew upon Man that his inner being glows with a radiance more sparkling than the stars, to which he lifts his bodily eyes. By-and-bye, he learned to think of the heaven within him, as symbolic also;--and to cherish a trembling trust that, when he dies, its brightness will grow pale, and vanish away only by reason of a glory which excelleth.

The Apostle beloved of his Master, told us of a true Light that lighteth every man. Yet, we might have been slow to realize the purer splendours over-arching our human soul, if they had not autotyped themselves on the language we commonly speak. Perhaps, a more convincing proof still to some of us, is what every now and then becomes incidentally known;--the God-ward impulses of a happily developed childhood, under circumstances favourable to the growth of "natural piety." In the heart of a child, feelings like those we have described, dwell untutored, as in their native and and appropriate home. An awe and dread accompany them amongst the world of men, but to the child they are never overpowering or oppressive. His finely-strung imagination works painlessly. The voices he hears when no human voice speaks, cause him no fear;--they call to him from a region towards which his young soul springs up. They soothe him with sensations of hope and peace and love unutterable. This yearning affection for things unseen, makes the deepest joy of a happy childhood; it is a reason why Christ said, "Of such is the kingdom of Heaven."

A beautiful childhood is a very beautiful reality. Partly because of the exquisite simplicity which tones down and harmonizes all its impulses. But, very often, its beauty is only known in its loss;--and we mourn in after years over hope, love, and peace, broken down by life's attrition;--yet fair to look upon, even in their ruins.[ag]

No one is likely to doubt that the belief we have been describing, is peculiar to and characteristic of Man. A more subtle question would be this;--Suppose it could be taken away, how nearly would Man and brute approach each other?[164] A question deserving the attention of every one, who lives

"In self-adoring pride securely mailed."

Probably, the proudest of mankind little think how deeply their culture, art, and refinement, are indebted to a faith shared by the lowliest. One point, at least, seems clear,--if Morality did not perish in the wreck, a true and independent moral sense would bring us back to a belief in our own souls, their immortality, and their God.

Another question more essential to our purpose has been buried under heaps of fallacy and misconception. Theists are often told that the ideas of a Deity,--a future life,--and generally all that is conceived as supernatural, have no absolute trustworthiness;--they are not self-evident axioms, and they cannot be demonstrated. One answer to these alleged difficulties has been implicitly given in the last Chapter. If such objections are valid at all, they are valid against every practical first-truth therein considered. They are valid against _all_ primary practical truths, looked at from the theoretical side, and tested by the rules proper to what is called pure Reason;--Reason, that is to say, not applied, but speculative. But, then, it is from this very employment of tests upon truth not _in pari materia_, that the first stage of fallacy begins. The _second_ step in error follows naturally from the first. Compared with the clearness and definition of mathematics, all other axioms and proofs appear dim and dubious. The consequence is, that our minds fall into trains of false comparison on the all-important subject of certitude. Errors of that kind are always growing mischiefs; our tongues follow the lead of our thoughts, and hazy thinking becomes hazy speaking. Not only so, but words develope themselves into the leaders of thought; and hazy speaking engenders a hazier thinking still. People take mathematical certainty to be the sole type of all true and valuable certainties. Practical maxims are spoken of, as merely probable, Right and Wrong as the efflux of moral sentiments.[165] Few seem to be aware _how_ the philosophical arrangements of first-truths ought to be applied. They should be applied to discriminate the _processes_, by which various kinds of truths are discoverable;--they stamp a character upon them, when discovered; but they do _not_ determine the intrinsic worth and validity of the discoveries.

Why, let us ask, does Mathematical truth occupy so lofty a position? Because, _first_, the constitution of our nature obliges us to accept its axioms, and by consequence each successive step in its impregnable demonstrations. _Next_, because we can verify so many of its theorems objectively. We apply them to remote planetary and stellar spheres beyond our own reach; where our own minds can neither alter nor colour anything. What then ought to be the fair and legitimate inference from an issue magnificently tried throughout the celestial universe? Surely this, and no other. It confirms, in the very highest possible degree, the truth-telling power of our own human nature. Whatsoever our mental constitution clearly compels us to accept, that same we ought to hold true, and maintain unswervingly.

Henceforth, therefore, we ought to look upon our Reason as having been put upon its conclusive trial. Every year that passes renders the verdict if possible more triumphant. We ought, henceforth, to make our assent absolute and unhesitating in the case of those other truths, which, while things continue as they now are, can never be tried and confirmed by an appeal of the same description.

It is not difficult to see how opposite would have been the issue from an employment of improper tests;--the test, for instance, of the _Unthinkable_. The universe, we should then have said, must be thought of as finite or as infinite. Either way it is inconceivable;--therefore the Universe cannot exist objectively at all.

Vicious as such a process would be, it is not so faulty as that of confounding the proper methods and attestations of speculative and practical truth.[166] Our human consciousness must in _both_ cases give our data. We have to ask and obtain its answers,--but, in the two different spheres of knowledge, we must frame our interrogatories differently, and expect assurances differing not in _degree_ of certainty, but in _kind_;--in _value_ to human action;--and in the _mode_ of their deliverance. We inquire into Speculative truth by _analysing_ it, until we arrive at undemonstrable axioms which assert their own validity. We assure ourselves that Practical principles are true by following them in their _synthetic_ growth. Do they spring from a maxim we find ourselves urged by our own nature to accept,--and the opposite of which we cannot but broadly reject;--and do they really _work_ in the world,--exert an ennobling influence within their own domain, and intertwine themselves with the other truths and activities of our human life? If so, we may be assured of their vitality and their certitude. We know them, in short, by their stringency,--and by a happy experience of their power. Consequently, our knowledge ought to grow and strengthen, as our human age and the world's age both roll on. Practical truth, thus tried and acknowledged, is indeed the silver thread which leads us always. Some shrink from trusting it when stretched across the grave; yet, without it, all beyond is lost in haze, and our present life becomes enigmatical and self-contradictory.

Let us then apply the tests (found valid in their own practical sphere) to the case of our belief in a Supernatural and supreme Power. But, that we may do so with more evident effect, it will be well to place in juxtaposition with it _another_ powerful belief, and our progress will be rendered easier if we fix upon one which has already been, in part at least, under discussion. Nothing seems better fitted for this purpose, than what Professor Masson calls "the paramount fact," resulting alike to Hamilton and to Mill,--the universal persuasion in men of their own existence, as beings distinct from, but related to, an external world around them. It will be observed that, thus described, the fact is of a most concrete sort,--our inner reality in relation to an outer reality,--just as believing in a Supreme Being we believe in a Power that holds solemn relations to our individual selves and to our common Humanity.

We have therefore to observe the impression made upon our human endowment of practical Reason, when looking face to face at these two fact-beliefs, which for brevity's sake we shall call the _Natural_ and the _Supernatural_.

Did the uninstructed and stammering childhood of our race, separate, in thought, the _Supernatural_ from surrounding nature? Can we absolutely say either yes or no to this inquiry? The "Heaven-Father" of pre-historic[ah] day would seem if fully considered to make the separation clear. The type-idea, thus outlined, is drawn, not from symbolizing and personified Nature, but from an actual, living, fatherly, Man. And the tendency of primitive Man might rather be to raise natural objects into living beings, than to lower persons into things.

It is so, we are sure, with our children's apprehension of the _Natural_. They know a world of persons and things antagonistic to their own wills and efforts, but they begin by making the things into _persons_. A thwarted baby-boy beats the table, his kitten, and his nurse indifferently. So far as observation has been extended to the religious apprehensions of the very young, they would seem to spiritualize the material universe;--to behold unseen powers in the changing clouds, and hear them in the sighing of the wind. Wordsworth's "Ode on Immortality" is a picture as full of childlike human truth, as it is of unearthly beauty.

But, as regards _both_ principles, the human train of thought is nearly similar in its first rise, and grows in definiteness and expansion by a nearly similar process. A true Man sets each principle to work, and from its working gathers its real value and verification.

If the world outside him were a phantastic shadow, the practical conclusion fairly inferred would be _quietism_. Bolingbroke said to King Richard--

"The shadow of your sorrow hath destroyed
The shadow of your face."

But, suppose both face and sorrow were themselves only shadows? What worth in Man's body then,--what worth in his soaring mind? The natural issue would be to drift down the shadowy[167] stream into a darker abyss of Nothingness.

Speculation[168] must lay down its arms, as powerless against such a supposition. The evidence of our senses[169] themselves is resolvable into shadows.

It was not by speculation that our strong Western will encountered the ideal enigmas of every day life. Act upon externalities, and they will _re_act upon you. As a matter of fact, it is necessary to commence by admitting that the souls of others are as _impenetrable_ to us, as the material things into which we cannot force our way. But, things and persons react upon us _differently_; and we act upon them in widely _different_ ways. By an exertion of our will, we can change or stop a _natural_ tide of inorganic antecedents and consequents and direct it to our own purposes. _Beings_ like ourselves, we must allure, manage, inform, and persuade. Soon we find, by experience, that other human beings are very like ourselves; and the higher animals nearer to us than stocks and stones. We find this through the exercise of our own causal activities upon them.

The idea of the _Supernatural_ marches along no very dissimilar route. The strong man subjects Nature, but the Supernatural is above both it, and him. He cannot even _possess_ the thought of the Supreme. Whether he will or no, it _possesses him_. To his reason, Nature cannot subsist, as the true and independent ground of anything;--her laws are the servants of his volition;--and her chain of antecedent and consequent hangs between a First and a Last, without giving any sufficient account of either. If the Universe began in a shining Nebula, the question remains unsolved,--what first brought the thin cloud into being? The practical Reason, confirmed by experience, distinctly perceives that productive nature transforms all things,--but originates nothing;--that, contrariwise, when human nature wills to commit a wrong,--it really _originates_ the crime. A disputant may assert that Man's will originates no act;--the criminal is never guilty,--and the judge and jury who try him are not answerable for their own decision. The same disputant may add that the Court in which, they sit is unreal, and their bodily persons only shadows. The one set of suppositions is as tenable as the other, and precisely as unpractical.

In the common course of Nature, then, Mankind has learned to maintain, as a truth of reason, that the Supernatural Power is a Will,--that is a Personality. In other words Man becomes a Theist.

As in Natural Realism, so in realistic Theism, we try how our principles will _work_. Realists in thought, we treat men and things as natural realities; diverse when compared together, but alike in outsideness as they stand related to ourselves. Action and reaction then go on as are to be expected. Life seems to us one long verification of the truth we began by accepting.--And so, too, it is with our belief in a Being Supernatural and Divine. If we succeed in figuring to ourselves a world of adaptation, order, law, progress, unity, we have but to open our eyes, and it appears spread out before us. If we think that the world's creation would blend all _physical_ needs into pleasurable pursuits and satisfactions, we may look and see the union accomplished. If we frame a scheme of trial and _moral_ discipline, to raise the feeble and confirm the strong, its realization is not wanting amongst us. From our own feelings, we can imagine how a Father's eye would look pityingly down upon fear and sorrow, and all the strains incidental to moving laws; the attrition of other wills, the tumults, failures, ill doings, and perversities of our sensitive and social existence. How a Father's hand would bind up all that is weak, wild, and wilful in his children, with threads of rainbow coloured hope and joyful anticipation; bidding them believe that ere long the uncertain dimness, which is as morning spread upon the mountains, shall brighten into steady splendour, shining on to a perfect and unclouded day.

We find as a matter of fact that this hope is no stranger to the human breast; that numbers live in it; numbers have died for it; and pre-eminently those of whom the world was not worthy.

The growth of thought from a bare idea of the Supernatural to a belief in a pure and sublime Theism,--and the sufficient account it renders of the world, ourselves, and our destinies, must be looked upon as matters of fact in the work-day history of mankind. Practical human reason has really travelled by this track, and, from day to day, perceives new truths to verify the old conclusion. Every attempt to adapt other theories to the working facts become, by their unfitness for the purpose, indirect evidence for Theism. How short a time has passed since Campbell lamented over--

"The hopeless dark Idolater of Chance;"

and since the authors of "Rejected Addresses" ridiculed a system which made the universe an accident.[170]--_Now_, chance sounds as strangely in scientific ears as Fate did to our strong-willed forefathers. Next, came that unintelligible contradictory phrase, a "_blind intelligence_;" a thing called a _mind_, that goes it knows not whither, and moves it knows not why. From this thing, immersed in the darkest ignorance, and unconscious even of its own existence, we were asked to believe that arrangement, harmony, excellence, beauty, were the productions. No wonder if men soon concluded that a moving force,--material and soulless,--would equally fulfil the same exalted functions. And, surely, one _thing_ is an account of the Universe as reasonable and as sufficient as the other.

If we place a non-theistic theory in relation to our human inner nature, there ensues the same monstrous incongruity. The plenitude of loveliness, which overflows creation, as it were with multitudinous waves of light, we are asked to think of as the work of blind non-being. But, there is a greater plenitude of loveliness, in the good and noble acts, words, and thoughts of one bright soul of heaven-aspiring Man. Must we, then, believe that truth, sincerity, justice, rightness, goodness, purity, are all the offspring of a something infinitely lower than our weakest human will?[171]--Is that unknown something to be also the beacon of our hopes, the refuge of each forlorn and shipwrecked brother, the happiness giving itself to satisfy the unsatisfied aspirations of our long-enduring hearts?

Surely, the mockery of madness could go no further. What can the morally impotent or the morally imperfect do for us? Even to the careless eye of common sense, it is clear at a glance, that with the _Impersonal_ our distinctive spiritual life can have no possible relations. If this be so, the very first idea of Supernatural Power is not advanced.--Contrariwise, it is distorted, frustrated, nullified. And with it is destroyed our trust in our own conscious nature. The instinct of immortality lives and moves within us only to betray.--Man,--whose being is the highest reason for the world's whole being,--is henceforth a palpable inconsistency. There cannot in the dreams of fiction be found a stranger tissue of more startling,--or one might venture to say,--more revolting moral absurdities. And a moral absurdity contradicts the constitution of Man's mind, quite as thoroughly as an absurdity purely intellectual. It is, in reality, the most self-condemned of all conceivable contradictions.

Let us place side by side with this issue, _first_, the commonly conceived relation between a Personal supreme Being and his creation;--_secondly_, the apprehension of Theistic truth within the soul, as it comes to us substantiated by religious men. We shall, at all events, gain the advantage of a strong contrast between Theism and non-Theism;--and strong contrast with shadows is often a strong enlightenment.

First, then, to consider the idea of Creation as the work not of a blind thing, but a supremely wise and powerful Being. It is plain that (to say the very least) this idea is encompassed with slighter and fewer difficulties. If a doubter is not convinced by the ordinary argument from Design, he cannot avoid admitting the fact of its possibility;--that it is applicable, and has been applied, argued, and reargued, without any overwhelming rejoinder or refutation. And there are _two_ obvious reasons why it has never been successfully refuted. One--the evident truth that, whatever rival theories[172] might or might not be expected to do, this theory explains the world. Next--that no other attempted explanations have ever found a First ground for any existing thing. In the theory of Design it continues an open question how far we may conceive the Creator's first act as a grand finality,--the launch of a vast assemblage of worlds formed,--or, being formed;--so built upon law and guided by far-stretching wisdom, that the Universe sails gloriously through the Ocean of Space like a thing of Life; each breath of Force, each wave of Time wafting it securely on. But, let any idea of a true creation be admitted, and no belief in existing laws of any kind, will ever banish the great and good God from the world which He has created and made. His presence adds glory to its fabric, and, when we walk in its garden of delights, we feel that He walks and speaks there too.[173]

The argument from Creation to Creator forms the subject of the next Chapters. Therefore, we press it no farther here.

The point to be remembered now, is that this line of reasoning has alone offered a tenable explanation of the world's existence. And a like remark holds good of Natural Realism as opposed to Speculative Idealism. It is impossible (as we have seen), to prove or disprove either by bare argumentative abstractions. But, as a question of practical reason, the Natural Realist explains the outer world of individual existences, and his explanation tallies both with its phenomena and our own relations to them. Our material progress (that antithesis of oriental quietism), depends upon activities we should never have exerted had we not fully believed in a world of working energy within ourselves, and an outside world of reacting forces for us to work upon.

From mere material progress, let us turn our eyes to the nobler civilization of Mankind. A respect for human life because it _is_ human,--honour paid to all men, inasmuch as manhood possesses an intrinsic title to honour,--the desire to do justice and love mercy,--sympathy with privation, suffering, and aberration, both moral and intellectual,--these are the true elements that soften and improve our race. And they are pre-eminently the dowry of nations believing in Theism. Theism is to these spiritual powers what Realism has been to material powers. Human beings are, by these two agencies, brought into contact with both the outer and the inner work of life. And as regards life's central work, the lesson of history is now what it always has been. To move man from a lower to a higher sphere, his soul must first be deeply stirred. And a spiritual stir and movement is the applied strength of a spiritual power.[ai]

We propose, then, to see by example, what Theism may be to mankind. Many examples will not be needed, provided those selected are typical. We shall therefore choose some two or three distinctive types.

The task of selection reminds us to protest, once for all, against the weak and cynical way of illustrating human nature which threatens to become prevalent. If we want to see what a true man is, we must not seek his fossil effigies, by delving into the scanty and disputable records of primæval savagery,[aj] and unearthing the crumbled seeds of better things, which died before coming to perfection. It is like estimating the Oak from a mouldy Acorn. It is worse!--Barbarism tends to distortion and degeneracy. We might as wisely pronounce a maimed dwarf with carefully flattened forehead, the beau ideal of human strength and beauty, as seek to know the mind of man amid its wrecks and perversities. We must rather look at our race in its strongest and noblest development. The healthy acorn grows into a spreading oak;--the truly human child becomes, not a crooked dwarf, but an upright intellectual giant. The investigation of maimed deformities may have its interest for comparative purposes, but no ancient Greek nor Hebrew, no modern European nor American, ought to be painted with lineaments which are revolting to his higher nature. Let us help the savage by every means we can, _except_ by asking him to sit for a _model of Humanity_. When we do this, we have assuredly lost our very best reason for helping him at all.

The examples following, no one will doubt to be types of true and highly developed men. The first, is intended to shew how Theism stands out before the apprehension of a Man engaged in searching out _abstract_ truth.

The Philosophy of Sir W. Hamilton has become familiar to most people, so far as his theory of "the Conditioned" is concerned. They are aware that his mind dwelt on the speculative difficulties surrounding a knowledge of the Absolute, the self-subsisting First Cause, and true Ground of all things. Yet, to the veracity of God he appeals for the veraciousness of our primary beliefs. Over against a whole school of Idealists, he places, as the one fatal objection, this same veracity--"Either maintaining the veracity of God, they must surrender their hypothesis;--or, maintaining their hypothesis, they must surrender the veracity of God."[174] And, if the existence of a Deity is known, there can be no doubt that His truth is amongst the highest and clearest _to us_, of all His essential attributes. We cannot (as Sir William says) "suppose that we are created capable of intelligence, in order to be made the victims of delusion; that God is a deceiver, and the root of our nature a lie."[175] Therefore, he drew a wide distinction between, on the one hand, knowing the Absolute and the Supreme so as to examine and explain His nature, and, on the other hand, believing that He truly is, so as to affirm the fact of His being, and the necessary consequences of His existence. "When I deny," he writes, "that the Infinite can by us be _known_, I am far from denying that by us it is, must, and ought to be, _believed_!"[176]--In this belief, Sir William saw a sufficient reason for accepting, as Mr. Mill advises all to accept, "the inexplicable fact." And indeed the problem of truth perpetually does come, (evade the conclusion as we will), in one shape or another, to this same necessity of final acceptance. Mr. Coleridge's _Friend_ is one long investigation into this necessity, and he fairly closes his argument by saying that always,--start from whatever point we may,--"reason will find a chasm, which the moral being only, which the spirit and religion of man alone can fill up."[177]

3 For Sir W. Hamilton, Theism bridged the vast abyss! No one could more strongly estimate its vastness, and the poverty of our visual powers when we stand beside it;--the dim feeling which makes us shrink back from its awful verge. But Theism became to him the strength of a noble life;--a life of much self-sacrifice, and meagre earthly recompense.[ak]

The next typical thinker we shall quote is one pre-eminent for his careful study of the constitution of _Man_, the course, the aims, and aptitudes of his _moral_ existence. It seems hardly necessary to add the name of Bishop Butler. The reader will find pleasure and instruction, if he peruses Butler's two sermons on the Love of God, from the second of which the following passages are cited:--

"Nothing is more certain, than that an infinite Being may himself be, if he pleases, the supply to all the capacities of our nature. All the common enjoyments of life are from the faculties he hath endued us with, and the objects he hath made suitable to them. He may himself be to us infinitely more than all these: he may be to us all that we want. As our understanding can contemplate itself, and our affections be exercised upon themselves by reflection, so may each be employed in the same manner upon any other mind; and since the supreme Mind, the Author and Cause of all things, is the highest possible object to himself, he may be an adequate supply to all the faculties of our souls; a subject to our understanding, and an object to our affections.

"Consider then: when we shall have put off this mortal body, when we shall be divested of sensual appetites, and those possessions which are now the means of gratification shall be of no avail; when this restless scene of business and vain pleasures, which now diverts us from ourselves, shall be all over; we, our proper self, shall still remain; we shall still continue the same creatures we are, with wants to be supplied, and capacities of happiness. We must have faculties of perception, though not sensitive ones; and pleasure or uneasiness from our perceptions, as now we have.

"There are certain ideas, which we express by the words, order, harmony, proportion, beauty, the furthest removed from anything sensual. Now, what is there in those intellectual images, forms, or ideas, which begets that approbation, love, delight, and even rapture, which is seen in some persons' faces upon having those objects present to their minds?--'Mere enthusiasm!'--Be it what it will: there are objects, works of nature and of art, which all mankind have delight from, quite distinct from their affording gratification to sensual appetites; and from quite another view of them, than as being for their interest and further advantage. The faculties from which we are capable of these pleasures, and the pleasures themselves, are as natural, and as much to be accounted for, as any sensual appetite whatever, and the pleasure from its gratification. Words to be sure are wanting upon this subject: to say, that everything of grace and beauty throughout the whole of nature, everything excellent and amiable shared in differently lower degrees by the whole creation, meet in the Author and Cause of all things; this is an inadequate and perhaps improper way of speaking of the divine nature; but it is manifest that absolute rectitude, the perfection of being, must be in all senses, and in every respect, the highest object to the mind....

".... Now, as our capacities of perception improve, we shall have, perhaps by some faculty entirely new, a perception of God's presence with us in a nearer and stricter way; since it is certain he is more intimately present with us than anything else can be. Proof of the existence and presence of any being is quite different from the immediate perception, the consciousness of it. What then will be the joy of heart, which his presence, and _the light of his countenance_, who is the life of the universe, will inspire good men with, when they shall have a sensation, that he is the sustainer of their being, that they exist in him; when they shall feel his influence to cheer and enliven and support their frame, in a manner of which we have now no conception? He will be in a literal sense _their strength and their portion for ever_."[178]

Of the last writer here adduced, it is needless to say more than that amongst living authors, he is rarely equalled in his subtle analysis of the _tender and emotional side of humanity_.

"The personal relation sought, is discerned and felt. The Soul understands and knows that God is _her_ God; dwelling with her more closely than any creature can; yea, neither Stars, nor Sea, nor smiling Nature hold God so intimately as the bosom of the Soul. What is He to it? what, but the Soul of the soul? It no longer seems profane to say, 'God is my bosom friend: God is for me, and I am for Him.' So Joy bursts out into Praise, and all things look brilliant; and hardship seems easy, and duty becomes delight, and contempt is not felt, and every morsel of bread is sweet....

".... But Oh philosopher, is all this a contemptible dream? thou canst explain it all? or thou scornest it all? Whatever _theory_ thou may'st form concerning it, it is not the less a fact of human nature: one of some age too: for David thirsted after God and exceedingly rejoiced in Him, and so did Paul; and the feelings which they describe are reproduced in the present day. To despise wide-spread enduring facts is _not_ philosophic; and when they conduce to power of goodness and inward happiness, it might be wise to learn the phenomena by personal experience, _before_ theorizing about them. It was not a proud thing of Paul to say, but a simple truth, that the spiritual cannot be judged by the unspiritual.

"The single thought, 'God is for my soul, and my soul is for Him,' suffices to fill a universe of feeling, and gives rise to a hundred metaphors. Spiritual persons have exhausted human relationships in the vain attempt to express their full feeling of what God (or Christ) is to them. Father, Brother, Friend, King, Master, Shepherd, Guide, are common titles. In other figures, God is their Tower, their Glory, their Rock, their Shield, their Sun, their Star, their Joy, their Portion, their Hope, their Trust, their Life."[179]

Such is Theism, penetrating the head and heart of Man; appealing to his intellect, his conscience, and his affections. Such is Theism; sending upwards, out of Man's spirit, aspirations which "dumb driven cattle" cannot breathe--often the sole sweet incense from Earth to Heaven. It is possible that, to some readers, the passages extracted will sound like the accents of a foreign tongue. Of such it may properly be asked, whether any man has a right _so_ to call in question another sane man's honest consciousness, _as_ to deny its reality, worth, and excellence? There are ears on which the music of Shakespeare's words, or Mozart's notes, fall tuneless and unmeaning. Yet, who on that account would deny the true sense and delight of poetry, rhythm, and melody? We cannot, in reason, forget that even from ordinary men a small amount of affirmation, if conscientious, unselfish, and collected, outweighs and annihilates a host of perplexing doubts. But, every great Man's thought is at least a grand fact; every expression of it a benefaction to his fellow-men. And, as respects the mighty power with which Theism stirs and impels the soul, we may rest absolutely assured that, where one human being is found to give it utterance, thousands have felt the movement, and have silently governed their life's work by it. Happily, the brightest gifts of our existence are also the commonest;--the sunshine of the world, and the sunshine of the Soul.

Countless numbers have, indeed, professed to discern by an inward sense the reflected reality of a Supreme Being. They who feel it most deeply, do not attempt to explain the Substance of which an imperfect copy exists within themselves, acknowledged, yet inexplicable; at once the greatest enigma, and the noblest fact of their essential being. They are content to look upwards to the Supreme Mind they have found;--to treasure such knowledge as they have; and adore its object. Many of those who have thus believed and acted are amongst the most excellent and perfect of our race.

Has any theory of the Universe which ignores the original of an image discovered within ourselves, accounted for what we perceive through our senses, our consciousness, and our moral insight,--so well as _that_ theory which acknowledges and reverences a God?

FOOTNOTES:

[ac] "In vain," says Hume's Cleanthes, "In vain would the sceptic make a distinction between science and common life, or between one science and another. The arguments, employed in all, if just, are of a similar nature, and contain the same force and evidence. Or if there be any difference among them, the advantage lies entirely on the side of theology and natural religion."--_Dialogues, etc._, Part I. sub. fin.