Directivity has hitherto been insisted upon by Theists. It would not conform with our ideas of God that He should remain a passive observer so soon as He had invented a machine that would never stop, and had started it going. Yet interference with the machinery is inconceivable, the universe being ruled by eternal, immutable, and irrefragable laws. “The only possible conception of telic [purposeful] action on a cosmic scale is that, from the start, the matter-force reality was of such a nature that it would infallibly evolve into the cosmos we form part of to-day. Any other conception of ‘guidance’ and ‘control’ is totally unthinkable. And, as a fact, Theists are settling down to formulate their position in that way. The interference, as Ward says, took place before the process began.”9 A Law Maker can be postulated, but there is not a particle of evidence that He is also a Law Breaker.

Attempts are still made, however, by clerical scientists to prove that there is directivity. The Rev. Professor George Henslow, in his book, Present-Day Rationalism Critically Examined, argues that the tendency which living organisms show to develop in one direction rather than another, and their capacity to respond to environment, betoken a directing Mind. Granting, for the moment, that the doctrine of Natural Selection is false or inadequate, it seems to me that the acknowledged facts of the “struggle for existence” and “survival of the fittest” sufficiently dispose of this new apology. Organisms do not all adapt themselves to environment, and their fate, in consequence, is first one of increasing misery, and finally of extinction. Only those that do adapt themselves survive. It appears that a scientist when he turns apologist is conveniently able to forget all but the more fortunate organisms.

If the evidence for a directing Mind has to be given up, the difficulties of a Theist are certainly increased. There would be difficulties, for instance, regarding the utility of prayer. Still, he could think with Father Waggett that “the interaction of forces inherent in the whole produces the infinite variety of living beauty which we see.”10 And he can still join with Dr. Flint in exclaiming: “Every atom, every molecule, must, even in what is ultimate in it, bear the impress of a Supernatural Power and Wisdom; must reflect the glory of God, and proclaim its dependence upon Him.”11 To remain a Theist, however, one must have not only evidence of design, but of the benevolent intention of the Designer. Before considering the latter question, I venture to offer a few further remarks about the former. Is there consistent evidence of design?

Beauty.—As a proof of design we are asked by the Theist to contemplate the beauty and sublimity which the universe exhibits. Let us contemplate, then, the beauty of the Bay of Naples. Is it not purely accidental, purely the outcome of natural agencies, of effects produced by position, distance, etc.? Again, “the beauty of the diatoms that are brought from the lowest depths of the ocean, the beauty of the radiolaria that swarm about the coast, and the beauty of a thousand minute animal structures, are obviously not designed and purposed beauties. They were unknown until the microscope was invented; the polariscope reveals yet further beauties; the telescope yet more. The idea of these being designed for our, or for God’s, entertainment belongs, as Mr. Mallock says, ‘to a pre-scientific age.’”12 It is sometimes urged that the tendency of evolution is towards greater beauty. Is it? That all depends upon what your idea of beauty may be—whether you will consider the structure best suited to its environment beautiful or otherwise. We are told that there are signs that the human race will one day be toothless. At present we admire pretty teeth; perhaps our descendants will go into raptures over a toothless gum. That their sense of beauty may not be outraged, let us hope it may be so. The hideous pigmies of Central Africa probably think themselves beautiful, and in the distant future, when the conditions of existence on this globe have radically changed, and when its inhabitants have adapted themselves to those conditions, the new “beauties” may possibly be quite as ugly as “missing links.” After all, beauty is a matter of taste. The sufficient objection to the “beauty” argument is, to my mind, contained in a very few words: “Look at the ugliness! Who designed that?”

Harmony.—But, it will be urged, if beauty is a poor argument, at least you must grant that the general harmony in Nature still remains to be accounted for. Beauty is only one of its countless harmonies. The objection to this argument is a very simple one. Nature is full of discords. Ugliness is by no means the only discord. It is because this is so little realised that M. Elie Metchnikoff has devoted nearly the whole of his book, The Nature of Man, to the discussion of the disharmonies in man’s nature alone. There are disharmonies in the organisation of the digestive system, in the organisation and activities of the reproductive apparatus, in the family and social instincts, and in the instinct of self-preservation, etc. For instance, in the human body there are disharmonies of the wisdom teeth, the bÊte-noire of dentistry; of the useless vermiform appendage, the seat of the disease appendicitis; of the large intestine, which could very well be dispensed with, and is the seat of many grave diseases, such as dysentery, and so on. The perversions of instinct among human beings (another disharmony) are likely to be attributed by the conservative Theist to the Devil, and by the liberal to Dr. Gore’s “Fall from Without,” so it will be better to take an example from the animal world. Darwin informs us that the “female of one of the emus (Dromoeus irroratus), as soon as she catches sight of her progeny, becomes violently agitated, and, notwithstanding the resistance of the father, appears to use her utmost endeavours to destroy them” (Descent of Man, vol. ii., chap, xvi., pp. 204–205). To those who still hold by this argument I can only recommend a perusal of Professor Metchnikoff’s book of disharmonies, and would beg them to remember that it has been written by a man whose profession and attainments entitle his opinions on such a subject to the highest consideration. The cruelty attending the process by which harmony is attained has already been commented upon by me in § 2 of the previous chapter.

I have finally to call attention to the fact that even among the apologists themselves there is considerable difference of opinion as to the value of these arguments for Theism. Dr. Flint exclaims: “Strange as it may seem, there are many Theists at the present day who represent it [revelation of God in the whole of nature external to us] as insufficient, or even worthless, and who join the Atheists in denying that God’s existence can be proved, and in affirming that all the arguments for His existence are inconclusive and sophistical. Such Theists seem to me not only the best allies of Atheists, but even more effective labourers in the cause of unbelief than Atheists themselves.”13 Since Dr. Flint wrote these words the number of “such Theists” has vastly increased. It is owned on all sides by the advanced school of apologists that God’s existence cannot be proved by an appeal to the reasoning faculties; and, among other arguments, that from design is gradually being discarded.

Father Waggett offers us interesting information regarding this argument in his little book, Religion and Science.14 He considers that Paley and others of the old teleologists were wrong in leaning upon a narrow argument from design. “It need not here be repeated,” he says, “that the evidence of such workmanship cannot prove God in the true sense of an infinite and all-wise Cause; but only a cause possessed of immense wisdom and immense though limited power, a Demiurgus of the greatest force and the most minute care, but not a Creator in the sense of theology.”15 Father Waggett, who is a biologist, and, therefore, necessarily an Evolutionist, would not be disconcerted if living things were manufactured in the laboratory to-morrow. In his opinion, “If anywhere we catch nature in the making, if we surprise the sequence by which even man himself gained his difference from other things, we shall not by this find reverence lowered.... It is a theological readjustment which is required, and not one in ‘natural science.’”16 The position here taken up is wise, and one that all who remain Theists will eventually have to adopt. But for most of us these theological readjustments are no easy matter. We reason that Paley’s Evidences have in their time assisted men to be Theists, and now his arguments are condemned by the better informed. How do we know that the same fate may not await the new arguments of the Christian evolutionist? How is it that God allowed earnest and learned divines to commit themselves to arguments in proof of His existence, the subsequent overthrow of which has been a potent cause for unbelief?

The Church’s great philosopher to-day, the Rev. J. R. Illingworth, D.D., argues18 that “Divine Immanence in Nature” excludes Pantheism—the belief that God is merely immanent in nature—as well as Deism and Monism, while it harmonises with Trinitarianism. We are to “conceive of God as at once transcending and immanent in nature.”19 He admits that “this relationship may be incomprehensible,”20 but states that “we know it in our own case to be a fact.”21 Afterwards he puts the question, “Is the universe His body or His work?”22 and proceeds to explain that the Trinitarian conception of God furnishes, or helps to furnish, an answer to this question. “It is,” he maintains, “intellectually the most satisfactory.”23 It apparently is so to certain subtle and biassed intellects; but the question is, Is it so, will it ever be so, to the average mortal?

In another place,24 when speaking again of the doctrine of the Trinity, he says: “Men forget that it supports and is supported by the whole weight of a fact in history, with which nothing else in the wide world can even for a moment be compared. That fact is the age-long empire of Jesus Christ over the hearts of men.” This, then, is the final argument in support of the Christian dogmas, including this the most incomprehensible of them all. Why should not the Buddhist claim the same authority for the dogmas of his faith? The evidential value is precisely the same. Turn to any well-known work bearing on this phase of the question. Read, we will say, Edwin Arnold’s poem, The Light of Asia; or, better still, read Mr. Fielding’s books, The Soul of a People and The Hearts of Men, and hear the words of one who has lived for years among Buddhists and studied their hearts.

That an ideal should reign over the hearts of men is no new thing; much less is this a cause for marvel when “One has come, claiming to be God made manifest—manifest in order to attract our love.”25 Christian apologists urge that He has not only attracted the hearts of men in the past, but still retains His hold upon their affections, and that therein lies an essential difference between Christianity and all other religions. Christianity, say they, in this respect at least, stands pre-eminently alone. Is not Buddhism, then, one of the great living religions of the present day? Has it not existed during twenty-four centuries? Does it not at the present time surpass, in the number of its followers and the area of its prevalence, any other form of creed? Is not Gautama Buddha worthy of men’s love, if we are to credit the best authenticated records of his life? “Discordant in frequent particulars,” writes26 Sir Edwin Arnold, “and sorely overlaid by corruptions, inventions, and misconceptions, the Buddhistical books yet agree in the one point of recording nothing—no single act or word—which mars the perfect purity and tenderness of this Indian teacher, who united the truest princely qualities with the intellect of a sage and the passionate devotion of a martyr.” Loving disciples, living in an age of ignorance and superstition, piously ascribed to him divine powers, and, disobeying his mandate, gave him fervent worship. That worship, that adoration, still persists. So likewise the adoration of Jesus Christ still persists. This is certainly a fact in history; but can we safely build upon it the metaphysical theories of the Christian Faith?

In my comments upon Dr. Illingworth’s views regarding “Divine Immanence” I fear I have digressed somewhat from the subject at present under consideration—the Theistic argument from a Beneficent Intelligence. “The ethical argument held a very subordinate place in the estimation of writers on natural theology until Kant rested on it almost the whole weight of Theism. It has ever since been prominent, and has been the argument most relied upon to produce practical conviction.”27 What was once the weakest argument has now become the strongest. Why? Not, I take it, because anything has occurred to make the weaker any stronger, but because what was thought to be the strongest is now found to be weaker than the weakest! How can the ethical argument be maintained in face of objections which continue to become ever graver as our knowledge increases? Theists contend28 that there must be a future life if only because the glaring wrongs of this world have to be righted. What is this but a naÏve admission that the proofs of the Deity’s benevolence are sadly wanting?

The problem of pain, and of evil generally, has been partially discussed in the chapter on “Evolution.” The importance of this problem is very great, for, by the universal consent of Christendom (not of mankind, as we shall see later on), the very name of God carries with it the sense of goodness, the highest and best that we know of or can imagine. For this reason it is customary for the pious to regard every calamity reverently as a punishment from God, or as serving some good purpose. Thus the German Emperor, imbued from childhood with this pious theory, warned his people that the Japanese had been sent as a scourge from God, and Father Bernard Vaughan (preaching at Lancaster on August 26th, 1906) declared that God had uttered warnings to England by the eruption of Vesuvius and the San Franciscan and Chilian earthquakes. Can this supposition be maintained when the catastrophe occurs in the wrong place, when tornadoes and earthquakes destroy God’s own temples, and when the innocent suffer for the guilty? With the opinion of the scientist we are, or ought to be by now, familiar. “The fundamental axiom of scientific thought is that there is not, never has been, and never will be, any disorder in Nature. The admission of the occurrence of any event which was not the logical consequence of the immediately antecedent events, according to those definite, ascertained, or unascertained rules which we call the ‘laws of Nature,’ would be an act of self-destruction on the part of science” (Huxley on Catastrophes, p. 247 of his Essays on Controverted Questions).

I remember, at the time of the terrible catastrophe in Martinique, due to the eruption of Mont PelÉe, asking a lady: “Do you think this wholesale slaughter and awful suffering has any connection with the wickedness of the afflicted people?” “Certainly,” she replied; “they must have been very wicked people.” It just so happened that the only man who escaped scatheless was a murderer who had been imprisoned in a cell below ground. So the theory she and I had been brought up to believe in would not work, whichever way you looked at it. The apologist has usually a number of strings to his bow; and, as the Old Testament teaching concerning bad men descending “quick into the pit” would not suit, he might argue that the criminal was given an opportunity for repentance. In that case, we must suppose that all the others who perished had no need of repentance. Again, with regard to the terrible tortures that many endured, it could be argued that those “whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth”; but what possible object could there be in this chastening during the last moments of their life upon earth? The agony of the death-struggle, suffered by the good and the bad alike, has yet to be shown to be in accord with the theory of a benevolent Deity.

The old-fashioned idea that catastrophes, plagues, famines, etc., were sent as punishments for our misdoings is gradually being modified. Dr. Flint says distinctly: “I cannot agree with those who think there is no mystery in mere pain—that it is sufficiently accounted for by moral evil.”29 It seems a pity that his advocacy for benevolence in the Deity should lead him afterwards to qualify this sensible statement by an amazing assertion which begs the whole question. “The character of pain itself,” he says, “is such as to indicate that its author must be a benevolent being—one who does not afflict for his own pleasure, but for his creatures’ profit.”30 The profit consists, we are told, in the fact that we are prevented through fear of pain from running into danger. How peculiarly appropriate and consolatory such a view of pain must be to, let us say, a person crippled with rheumatoid arthritis! Man’s highly sensitive and delicate organisation inevitably entails pain when no useful purpose of this kind can possibly be served; yet we are to suppose that an Omnipotent Being devised this crude and cruel method for teaching us to avoid the perils with which He Himself has surrounded us! One of our greatest living surgeons, Sir Frederick Treves, assures us31 that “the symptoms of disease are marked by purpose, and the purpose is beneficent.” “The processes of disease,” he goes on to explain, “aim not at the destruction of life, but at the saving of it.” Here, indeed, is more grist for the mill of the apologist. But what does this special pleading amount to? To this: Because through suffering we may survive a dangerous disease, we should be grateful to the Supreme Intelligence who created the preservative as well as the destructive microbes; we should be grateful to the Almighty who has fashioned friend and foe, and who, much to our discomfort, has selected our interior economy for the battlefield! Surely, if the surmise of benevolence is to be entertained at all, it must be at the sacrifice of the surmise of omnipotence. The Supreme Intelligence cannot be an “Almighty God” if He be the “Father of all mercies.”

There are Theists who candidly admit the perplexities of the situation. On the horns of a dilemma they have no option but to fall back upon the primitive theory: All unaccountable evil is the work of a hostile and evil power which seeks continually to frustrate the benevolent intentions of the Creator. “Speaking for myself,” says the author of Pro Fide,32 “I am unable to believe that hideous and excruciating diseases, such as cancer, which affect both men and animals, and which cannot, in the case of animals at least, be explained as a moral discipline, are the work of a good and benevolent God. I endorse absolutely the words of Dr. E. A. Abbott. ‘I cannot think,’ he says, ‘of diseases and pain, and the conflict in the animal world for life and death, as being, so to speak, part of God’s first intention.’” Disease, suffering, the struggle for existence, and the law of prey are then, after all, the Devil’s handiwork, and so is also, presumably, the law of the survival of the fittest. (Christian evolutionists, take note! In exonerating and extolling the evolutionary processes, you are exonerating and extolling the works of the Devil!) “The Zoroastrian view,” he continues, “must be rejected because it postulates two first principles, which is a plain metaphysical impossibility.” The view which is not open to this or any other objection, and which he calls the Theistic view, “supposes that a large share of the government of the material universe was committed, at the creation, to a personal spirit, of great, but not unlimited, power and intelligence, who, having been originally created good, subsequently fell, and introduced evil and disorder into the world.... This hypothesis of a personal devil has many advantages. It explains the whole of the facts; it avoids the postulation of two first causes; it vindicates the moral perfection of the Deity; and it allows the optimistic hope to be entertained that in the end good will triumph over evil.” All this is highly instructive. For it means that, in the opinion of an erudite apologist of the Church of England, flourishing a.d. 1906, the moral perfection of the Deity can only be vindicated on the hypothesis of a personal devil! Doubtless this hypothesis—and, remember, it is nothing more than a hypothesis, and one that is now generally discredited—fits in admirably; but the question is, Are we to accept it, however imaginary and opposed to the facts of science, just because it is so suitable?

There remains the usual retort of the religionist when closely cornered: “The finite mind cannot expect to understand the Infinite.” He appears to forget entirely that when he advances proofs of the God of his heart he himself is using his finite mind, and that his opponents therefore have an equal right to use theirs when criticising his “proofs.” This by the way. The particular point we have to notice is that the appeal to this negative argument amounts to an admission that the proofs do indeed appear all the other way. Thus in the question now before us, “Is the First Cause a beneficent intelligence?” we find that a statement confidently proclaimed by the pious is not only unsupported by evidence, but in spite of it—a mere assertion suggested by the emotions. With more modesty and (may I add?) with more common sense, the agnostic disclaims any knowledge of God, holding that human knowledge is limited to experience, and that, since the absolute and unconditioned, if it exists at all, cannot fall within experience, we have no right to assert anything whatever with regard to it.

The very existence of the God of our hearts depends upon the proof of His morality. The argument from moral order seems at first sight a strong one. Morality, even adopting the naturalist’s explanation that it is only a social instinct, can be regarded as the result of a divine spark. Its beneficial influence on the happiness of the individual and the well-being of the race cannot be too strongly insisted upon as a well-ascertained fact. “Virtue is self-rewarding, and vice is self-punishing.”33 But the Rationalist asks: “Why design man’s nature so that he is more likely to go wrong, when he gets the chance, than to go right; and this in despite of the moral or social instinct?” The usual answer of the religionist is that, if we could not do wrong, we should be mere machines. “No doubt,” says the author of Pro Fide, “if God had made us what Mr. Huxley says we are, conscious automata, we should have been incapable of sin; but it is better to be men, with all the glorious possibilities of freedom and virtue, than to be machines, however excellent.” Now, do we allow our children to choose for themselves when we know they will choose wrongly? Do we not guard them against the inglorious possibilities—the slavery of vice? If we fail in our duty to them and they fall, should we add to our guilt by perpetrating on them unimaginable cruelties? Again, do we not prefer the fellowship of the good-natured? Yet these, according to the religionist, are the veriest automata compared with those who have inherited vicious or disagreeable characteristics, and do their best to fight against them. Be this as it may, the fact remains that the less fortunately endowed are seldom able to raise themselves up to the level of the more fortunately endowed—environment may, of course, elevate the one, as it may also degrade the other—and there is no doubt whose society we prefer. Why should it be better for men to be capable of—or, rather, may we not say prone to—sin? Why should their Maker grant them “glorious possibilities” which He has denied to Himself? Why should He alone be a machine that cannot go wrong? Surely there is something amiss in an argument that furnishes such inadequate excuses in order to explain why the Designer gave us natures infinitely inferior to His own.

Some of Nature’s plans would appear to be specially designed to bring out the worst side of the diverse nature implanted in man. The plan of the struggle for existence is a palpable instance. Take another—take the plan for the reproduction of life. Could any Omnipotent Being be proud of it? Let alone the unfair division of pain, which the discredited Eden story can now no longer account for, is it helpful to man in his struggle to improve his nature? The plan being God’s plan, it is enjoined upon us that the procreation of children is a sacred duty; but it is also plainly intimated that to abstain from marriage altogether is yet more meritorious. Similarly in Mithraism, Buddhism, the religions of ancient America and other pre-Christian cults, the sanctity of the celibate life is upheld. If man is not doing his best in obeying the behests of his Maker, how can he do right? Has he been given a fair chance when an instinct so hurtful is implanted in him that even its natural gratification in the divinely appointed manner is likely to hinder him in the cultivation of his spiritual nature; this although matrimony was ordained—so our prayer-book tells us—for a remedy against sin? The truth is that this necessary instinct, quite apart from its responsibility for much sorrow and strife and quite apart from its terrible tendency to perversion, is innately prejudicial to our moral elevation, and, in order to preserve a healthy, happy mind, the less we allow our thoughts to dwell upon its fulfilment the better.

Again, “a very little disorder in the organisation of the brain suffices to cause hallucinations of the senses, to shake the intellect from its throne, to paralyse the will, and to corrupt the sentiments and affections.”34 “How precise and skilful,” remarks Dr. Flint, lost in admiration of the Designer, “must be the adjustment between the sound brain and the sane mind!” “How fiend-like,” says the horrified Rationalist, “would be the Intellect which could have exercised its ingenuity to devise a mechanism inherently liable to get out of order, and thereby to transform its unhappy possessor into a fool or villain.” In the event of the latter result, moreover, man, according to Christ’s teaching (if honestly interpreted), is to suffer eternal torment!

Regarding theories of the origin of conscience such as those of J. S. Mill, Bain, Darwin, and Spencer, Dr. Flint remarks: “It does not matter whether conscience be primary or derivative; it exists.”35 That it does matter is shown by the fact that the bulk of the apologists still stoutly maintain that conscience is a special attribute of man—a divine instinct—and is not derived from the lower animals. We have, I think, gone into this sufficiently in the previous chapter, and I shall confine my remarks to another aspect of the question—the fallibility of the moral consciousness.

“The existence,” it is urged, “of a moral principle within us, of a conscience which witnesses against sin and on behalf of holiness, is of itself evidence that God must be a moral being, one who hates sin and loves holiness.”36 Given the existence of a personal God, this argument is plausible enough till we examine it more closely. The liability of conscience to err is, or should be, a platitude. Its two components—the reason and the emotions—both being fallible, it necessarily follows that conscience must have the same quality. We have only to think for a moment to discover innumerable examples in proof of this. An illustration which occurs to me, and which will hurt no one’s susceptibilities, is that of the Wa Daruma. This is an East African tribe practising a strict morality which is all the more remarkable on account of the gross immorality of the neighbouring tribes. Nevertheless, the conscience of the Wa Daruma bids them kill their twin offspring. If conscience, then, be fallible, how is it a Theistic proof? Because, though it may make a mistake through an untutored reason, or through a reason clouded by deceptive emotions, the consciousness that there is a right or wrong at all is sufficient proof of a moral intelligence? So be it; but it is passing strange that God should allow conscience to deceive us. John Locke well said, many years ago: “Children are travellers newly arrived in a strange country: we should therefore make conscience not to deceive them.” Are we not children of God in a strange country? We would not deceive our children. The acquittal of conscience gives pleasure, as the condemnation gives pain—remorse—and every man must obey his conscience if he would be happy. What a thousand pities it seems that it should ever lead him into error! Should it not be a divine intuition of the right both in our religious beliefs and in our conduct?

It is an intuition of the right, the believer will say, when it tells you to believe in Christ and God. I would gladly think so; but every believer of every creed on the face of the earth says the same about his belief, and hence the amazing persistence of erroneous beliefs. When the voice of conscience is composed of a blind reliance on intuition (i.e., on the emotions) and a distrust of reason, how can the result be otherwise? The whole question of the truth of beliefs hinges upon whether intuition can or cannot be relied upon. We know that mistakes do occur through trusting to intuition, especially in the matter of beliefs; how, then, can we assume that it is infallible? Strange as the freaks of faith among cultured persons may appear, they are perfectly intelligible. They are the result of reliance on intuition rather than on reason. I will give an example. Who more logical, apparently, than John Henry Newman, the coadjutor of Whately in his popular work on logic? His illogical conduct is, therefore, particularly instructive. In 1832, after a visit to Rome, he wrote describing the Roman Catholic religion as polytheistic, degrading, and idolatrous,37 and then, after all, entered the Roman Catholic Church in 1845. He did so because he found that the difficulties of the creed and of the canon of Scripture were insurmountable unless over-ridden by the authority of the Church. To escape becoming an agnostic he elected to join a Church calling herself infallible. He was able to come to this decision although, to his own knowledge, her infallibility was belied by her conduct! Further, so eloquent was his reasoning on the subject, so apparently logical, that some hundreds of clergymen joined him in making their submission to the Church of Rome. Underlying all this apparent inconsistency is the assertion, so eloquently pleaded by Cardinal Newman, of the supremacy of conscience and the correctness of intuition. So also have asserted the followers of every religion from all time, and to what have their consciences and intuitions led them—to truth, or to a pot-pourri of absurd and conflicting beliefs? We have the testimony of all history to prove the extreme fallibility of conscience. Conscience possesses no divine spark to keep a man from acting wrongly through ignorance. Even when knowledge is present we see, as in Cardinal Newman’s case, that the voice of conscience may still speak incorrectly; for reason is swamped when emotion’s flood-gate is left ajar.

Cardinal Newman’s opinions have a special interest for us at the present time. He held that, “apart from an interior and unreasoned conviction, there is no cogent proof of the existence of God”; that “the man who has not this interior conviction has no choice but to remain an agnostic, while the man who has it is bound sooner or later to become a Roman Catholic.”38

So inexplicable did his motives appear that Charles Kingsley accused him of saying that “truth for its own sake need not be, and, on the whole, ought not to be, a virtue of the Roman clergy.” Newman’s Apologia pro Vita Sua, however, leaves no doubt of the author’s own personal rectitude. His premises—the infallibility of conscience and intuition—were false. But that is not an unusual feature of Christian apologetics. The keen intellects of the two pious brothers, John Henry and Francis William, were really buried beneath a mass of preconceptions. That of the latter, however, being less submissive, proceeded to a slow and sure upheaval, and finally Francis Newman rejected Christianity altogether.39 In the Apologia pro Vita Sua we find, I think, the key to Cardinal Newman’s convictions. He was intensely superstitious, and inclined also to be timid. On the opening page, where he gives the recollections of his boyhood, we read: “I used to wish the Arabian tales were true.” And again: “I was very superstitious, and for some time previous to my conversion (when I was fifteen) used constantly to cross myself on going into the dark.”

In my remarks on the “evil for which man is held responsible,” I have alluded to the Rationalist’s contention that man cannot be justly blamed for his actions, and that, if there be a God, He alone is to blame. This opens up the question of Freewill v. Determinism—a thorny question, which I should prefer, if only for considerations of space and my readers’ patience, to leave severely alone. A whole volume would be necessary to present the case for Determinism adequately, and I am fully aware that a few brief words will fail to convince; but, if I can remove a single iota of the misconceptions on this subject, I shall feel rewarded.

Kant defines an act of volition as an act which is determined by the anticipatory idea of the result of the act. Although he maintains that there must be a moral God, he fully admits that the forecast or anticipatory idea is the inevitable effect of precedent conditions, such as temperament (heredity), education (environment), and the like; and in a well-known passage he says that, if the whole history of the subject could be known, the voluntary acts of a man might be predicted with the same certainty as an eclipse. The tendency of modern psychology is in the same direction. All voluntary acts, we are told, depend on the memory of involuntary acts of the same sort previously performed. It is true that a few Christian psychologists leave room for a “sheer heave” of the will by means of which an idea naturally feeble is fortified and held in place; but when they speak in this wise they speak as metaphysicians. No metaphysical argument, it seems to me, can reconcile this inflexible causality with true freedom of will. How can the will be at one and the same time fettered and free? There is, I grant, every appearance of freewill; but it belongs to the category of appearances which deceive.

If we accept the Christian contention, we have to believe that a benevolent God gives us a free will, the power to choose between Him and the Devil, knowing, as in His omniscience He must, that the vast majority will make a sad use of their gift! The modern Christian admits that heredity and environment have their say also. Thus there are, in all, four forces struggling for the mastery—God, the Devil, heredity and environment; and it is the duty of the divinely-implanted free will to choose between them. Rather, is it not that there are two forces, and two forces only—heredity and environment—acting upon our brain, and our choice is the resultant of them? Undoubtedly man, as a self-conscious and reflecting animal, has what may be called the power of choice; but the way this power will be used would be a foregone conclusion did we know the sum-total of the effect of heredity and environment up to the moment of its use. “But,” it may be objected, “surely there is such a thing as will-power. We can overcome our heredity and environment by the exercise of our will. Temptations to which the weak-willed succumb do not affect the strong-willed. Here, at least, we have a distinct instance in which heredity and environment are overcome.” Yes, it is true, of course, that heredity and environment are continually being overcome by the happy possessor of sufficient will-power; but what we have to bear in mind is that it is not a portion, but the whole, of a man’s heredity and environment which must be taken into consideration. In the case of the man with the strong will, it is still his heredity and environment which have in the first instance settled the line of conduct to which, once resolved upon, he adheres so tenaciously. And, again, this particular quality of the mind which enables him to keep to his resolution is, like all other qualities of the mind, itself the product of heredity and environment.

The Determinism of science and the Freewill of metaphysics are essentially antagonistic. Determinism is completely subversive of Christian teaching. It is directly opposed to the Thirty-nine Articles of religion. Not only does it imply that man is not to blame for his actions, but that, if there be a God, He, and He alone, is to blame. Christian theologists are therefore its strenuous opponents. In their apologetic efforts one finds the strangest misconceptions of what is meant in a broad sense by heredity and environment. The best apology I have seen so far is by the Rev. P. N. Waggett, in a tractate called Science and Conduct.40 Father Waggett seems to realise better than most of his fellow-clerics the enormous influence of heredity and environment. Still he comes to the conclusion that “when, under given circumstances,” a man “does what, under those circumstances, and with his given constitution, he usually does not do,” he is exercising “some inward spring.” The fallacy in this argument is the common one. The effect of environment up to the moment of action has not been considered. The obscurity of the expression “given constitution” is doubtless unintentional, but it is none the less misleading. Father Waggett would be the first to admit that something must have occurred meanwhile to account for the new frame of mind. It is for him to show that an alteration in environment is not all that has occurred, and that there is room for this “inward spring.”

Will not the acceptance of this doctrine have a paralysing effect upon us? On the contrary. We shall be better able to discern where our salvation lies. We shall pay far more attention to the real forces which determine conduct. We shall devote our energies to combating bad heredity with good environment; and we shall do this with the knowledge that not only ourselves and our associates, but our descendants also, will reap the benefit. We shall fly from unhealthy thoughts, and avoid the surroundings likely to give rise to them. We shall welcome healthy thoughts and seek helpful surroundings.

The doctrine of determinism is thought likely to corrupt our moral character, but, in reality, it compares favourably with religious doctrines. The belief in God’s omniscience leads the Mohammedan to fatalism, and the Christian to the doctrine of predestination. If a Christian really believed as he professes, if he could honestly subscribe to the seventeenth article of his Creed—in which it is stated that “before the foundations of the world were laid God hath constantly decreed by His counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom He hath chosen [the italics are mine, of course] in Christ out of mankind”—God’s Predestination would indeed be “a dangerous downfall,” “thrusting men into desperation.” The doctrine of predestination, therefore, appears, without doubt, to be ethically mischievous. The doctrine of Determinism, on the other hand, teaches a man to fight pernicious hereditary instincts with the weapon of environment, and to keep a tender place in his heart for unfortunates who succumb.41 Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner.

I cannot too strongly insist that all this is extremely instructive. It explains so many things that still have to be explained, if religion be untrue. The new science of psychology has already accounted for many abnormal phenomena that were formerly considered miraculous—“faith cures,”45 for instance. Does it not account for the effects of prayer? We know nothing of the efficacy of prayer in securing material benefits—there is no proof either way; but we do know that it has often an ethical value, and is also a means of strengthening faith. Does it necessarily follow that a Supernatural Being hears and answers the suppliant’s prayers? I think not. Suggestion, it is now known, exercises an extraordinary influence over the subjective mind. In prayer auto-suggestion undoubtedly plays its subtle rÔle.

Let me give an example of the benign results that may be effected by suggestion without any appeal to the supernatural. Often a moral change for the worse in a most estimable person is distinctly traceable to causes over which he or she had no control, and the physician or surgeon, having diagnosed the case, proceeds to do his best to bring about a cure. Where it is some nervous malady, mental therapeutics or psychic healing is sometimes extremely efficacious.46 Vices and weaknesses are now looked upon by many in the light of diseases and ailments—curable, ameliorable, or incurable, as the case may be. Disease or Devil, the fact remains that medical treatment may effect a cure even where the patient’s disorder has been brought on by, as we say, his own fault. Dipsomania, morphinomania, kleptomania, nymphomania, satyriasis, and various moral perversions may yield to a purely natural treatment, whether it be the method of a Milne Bramwell (by suggestion) or of Keeley.

When denouncing Mariolatry (in his sermon at the opening of the Church Congress, October, 1905), the Bishop of London said: “It is not revealed that the cry to any saint or to the Virgin Mary ever reaches them at all.” Apparently, therefore, the Bishop admits that appeals to the supernatural may be wasted, and this in spite of the suppliant being very much in earnest. Yet who would be prepared to say that the Roman Catholic who prays to the Virgin Mary and to innumerable saints does not derive quite as much benefit from the process as the Protestant who directs his worship solely to the Holy Trinity, or the Shintoist who invokes the benign spirits of his ancestors?47 The effect of the suggestion is the same in each case, and has all the appearance of an answer to prayer.

Again, putting aside abnormal phases of the mind, is it not, as Ralph Waldo Trine puts it (in his little book, Character Building: Thought Power), a simple psychological law that any type of thought, if entertained for a sufficient length of time, will, by and by, reach the motor tracts of the brain, and finally burst forth into action? There seems no need for the introduction of a supernatural hypothesis to explain the moral effect of prayer. So, also, with regard to faith, it is only natural that the believer, racked with doubt, should find reassurance in prayer.

The Theist who lays store by the evidence from “religious experience” will do well to ponder over the following words of one of Professor James’s critics: “Instead of producing anything that would strengthen the belief in extra-human spirit agents influencing human destinies, psychology has made intelligible, conformably to the rest of our organised knowledge, most, if not all, of the striking phenomena which have been the empirical props of the popular faith in spiritism, whether Christian or not. We refer to anÆsthesias, analgesias, hallucinations, monitions, trances, the sense of illumination in ecstasy, etc., including the facts considered in Professor James’ lectures. In making this statement, I do not forget the work of the Society for Psychical Research. Its achievements may be declared to have been so far, and without prejudice of the future, absolutely inconclusive with regard to spiritism.”48 In other words, psychical research, if conducted by the experimental method and without bias, may be pregnant with consequences hardly in accord with the hopes of either the spiritist or spiritualist (in its religious sense). For, should abnormal phenomena of all kinds admit of a natural explanation, their present obscurity will no longer furnish grounds for supernatural speculation.

According to Professor James’s theory, it is the person who chances to have a well-developed subliminal life who is predestined to be saved, for then God will be able to reach him. As Professor James informs us that “nitrous oxide and ether, especially nitrous oxide, when sufficiently diluted with air, stimulate the mystical consciousness in an extraordinary degree,” so that “depth beyond depth of truth seems revealed to the inhaler,” the unbelieving Philistine ought to be recommended to inhale this truth-revealing, and therefore faith-producing, gas. Like music, it must be meant as an aid to worship. The new beatitude will then be, as Mr. Leuba remarks, “Blessed are the intoxicated, for to them the kingdom of spirits is revealed!” I can quite understand the interest aroused by Professor James’s remarkable book; but that Theists and would-be Theists should take its chief conclusion seriously is beyond me—or, rather, I should say it is one more proof to me that the inherited capacity for superstition is still strong within us. We can understand why supernatural beliefs die hard.

Are our emotions reliable guides, or are they not? Though the motive-power in our nature, though they go to make up that heart upon which Mr. Fielding so eloquently discourses in his Hearts of Men, do they not need to be carefully controlled by reason? Are they not the very same emotions which, in all but religious matters, are admittedly a fruitful source of self-deception? Take the emotion excited by music. I know many good people who think they possess considerable religious feeling, and have had a religious experience, because they are peculiarly affected by music, and especially by fine sacred music.50 Similarly, Dr. Torrey’s “Glory Song” appeals to the untrained ear of his emotional audiences, and the Salvation band, all out of tune, elevates the soul of the Salvationist. Yet lower down the scale of musical culture we find a clash of discordant sounds exciting the religious emotions of the savage. Is it too much to say that these “experiences” differ only in degree from those of the dog who howls as certain notes affect him? Granted that music, suited to the taste of the worshipper, is an aid to worship, we have to remember that there are those whose temperaments are so constituted that they are more or less unaffected by music—good, bad, or indifferent—and, if the religious feeling evoked be from God, may we not ask in all reverence: “Why should the unmusical be debarred from this means of feeling His presence? Why should the man without a note of music in his composition have this much less chance of eternal salvation?” Surely we are not to take seriously and literally the words of our great philosopher-poet when he says: “Let no such man be trusted”?

Again, there is the religious feeling evoked by that strongest emotion of all—sexual love; the one excites the other, and the effect produced may be beneficial or may be mischievous. But sexual love appears to me a strange aid to the worship of God; and persons who really imagine they are nearer Him when in this state of emotion most certainly deceive themselves. The ascetic who is debarred from this particular “religious” experience should agree with me.

An examination of religious experiences, however brief, cannot well omit all mention of the question of revivalism. Has it an ethical value? Has it a spiritual meaning? To the latter question the answer of the Church is for the most part in the affirmative. In his Pentecostal message for Whitsuntide, 1905, the Archbishop of Canterbury refers, without directly naming them, to the extraordinary movement of which the young Evan Roberts has been the leader, and to the preaching of Messrs. Torrey and Alexander in London. “To whatever cause or combination of causes we may attribute it,” he says, “the fact appears to be certain that expression has this year been given in an unusual degree to a desire for increased spiritual earnestness in the Christian life.” I shall not embark upon the question of the spiritual signification of revivalism. My remarks on other religious experiences may be taken to apply here also. Regarding its ethical value, I fancy most thoughtful onlookers will be with me when I say that it is unadvisable to stir up hysteria in hysterical people just for the sake of effects, the usefulness of which is extremely problematical—effects which, if they benefit a few, are harmful to the majority, and, in any case, are unlikely to be of a permanent nature. We have it on excellent authority that “emotional appeals and revivals do not destroy carnal sin in schools, and it is well known how often they seem to stimulate, to increase, immorality.”51

An examination of the development of philosophy leads to conclusions of considerable import. Our present inquiry can be only an exceedingly rapid one; but anyone wishing to study the subject a little more fully will find it concisely treated in a book called Science and Faith, by Dr. Paul Topinard, late General Secretary of the Anthropological Society of Paris. From Chapter VIII. I cull the following:—

“Animals, in the presence of phenomena which they do not understand, retire confounded. Savage man does the same. But he, at least, hazards the attempt of an explanation by investing the objects or phenomena in question with life and sentiments similar to his own. Later this same savage, discovering or believing to discover in himself a double being, the one corporeal and the other spiritual, transfers the new notions regarding himself to objects without himself, to stones, plants, animals, or stars.... Religions, at first more or less elementary, with their founders and priests, do not appear until later.... For a long time the sorcerer—that is to say, a man less credulous than the rest, and adroit in the sense of knowing how to reap personal advantage from the beliefs of his fellows—stood alone in his class. Sorcerer and medicine man at once, he distributed amulets, drove out spirits from the bodies of the deceased, and caused the rains to fall.... The sacerdotal caste arose, at times recruiting itself from the outside and at times hereditary. More intelligent than the others, more disposed to reflect, the priests were naturally inclined to seek more satisfactory explanations from the phenomena of nature, to distinguish general causes from particular causes, to reduce the number of the spirits, to champion the most important of these, and even to symbolise many of them. The cult of heroes, of personages in the tribe who had rendered it valuable services, and of ancestors, was mingled with the preceding beliefs. Having to speak to simple people, for whom it was necessary to materialise things, they were obliged to recast their ideas and to expound them by the help of fables and myths, which soon essayed to explain in a tangible form the origin of things, the existing phenomena of nature, and often to guide the conduct of men. These were the first attempts of philosophy, already as utilitarian as they were mystical.”

“Religions consecrated a multitude of usages and ceremonies from which the sacerdotal class lived, and which greatly augmented its power; and they also exerted a strong political influence. Again, they led up to genuine moral codes, such as those of Brahma and Buddha in India, and Confucius in China.... The utilitarian idea appears to have dominated among the Phoenician and Canaanite peoples. It gave rise to the doctrine of a personal national God, who had created man and the people whom he had chosen and whose destinies he directed. He exacted from them blind and exclusive worship and obedience to the laws which he promulgated. In return he protected them, reserving his right of terrestrial punishment.... The Egyptians are related to the Hindus by their belief in metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls from animal to animal.... The conception of a judgment after death passed through these peoples [the Egyptians] to the polytheism of Greece and Rome.... Greek philosophy rose audaciously to the loftiest and boldest conceptions, not conceptions crowning an intellectual edifice, but conceptions which dominate it in imaginary realms of space. Aristotle belongs apart. He is at once scientist and philosopher. He observes nature. He is the founder of natural history, of anthropology, of political science, and of political economy. According to Graef, he is also the founder of political philosophy, because he was the first to introduce positive facts into philosophy.... In the general run, they [the Greek philosophers] were dialecticians, sophists, and intellectual gymnasts only. But, such as they were, they founded free inquiry, disintegrated the national polytheistic beliefs, and prepared the way for the revolution which was on the verge of accomplishment.”

“In an unknown [?] corner of JudÆa, on the banks of a lake, the glad tidings burst forth of a coming regeneration, and a voice was heard pleading the cause of the feeble, the humble, and the oppressed, and saying: ‘Love ye one another!’ The doctrine, at first local and inculcated by a small number of apostles, soon extended with St. Paul to the Gentiles, and thenceforward its progress was rapid [?]. Philosophy was not indifferent to it.... Christianity, in effect, instead of conquering the pagan world, was conquered by it, as Huxley has remarked.... During the Middle Ages science had disappeared from the West. Philosophy, hemmed in between metaphysics and theology, became scholasticism, which sought to reconcile Plato, Plotinus, and Aristotle with the needs of orthodoxy, and split hairs over subtle essences and entities.... Then a concourse of circumstances occurred which, as fifteen centuries before, was to transform the Western world, although differently, and which inaugurated modern times, to wit: The return to the West of the knowledge that had taken refuge among the Arabs; the discovery of printing, which spread everywhere trustworthy texts; the discovery of the New World, which quadrupled the surface of the earth to be observed and studied; the awakening of science, with Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Rondelet, Vesalius, Harvey; and, finally, the Reformation.”

“On the downfall of scholasticism the first care of philosophy was not the renouncing of what had been its essence, the search for the absolute by intuition [italics are mine] and reason, but the overhauling of its methods, which it sought to render more precise.... The subsequent divergencies were rooted less in the varying intellectual and logical make-up of each philosopher and in their method of applying their faculties than in their individual ways of feeling and conceiving. Philosophy in effect is simply a struggle between these elements.... Nevertheless, the conquests of science began to make themselves felt. There was now less insistence on God and more on the world, man, morals, and the conditions of social life. The over-hanging metaphysical cloud is still more or less heavy, but at spots it suffers the light to pass through. There are two streams: the one continues Descartes—in France with Pascal, Bossuet, FÉnÉlon, and Malebranche, in Germany with Spinoza and Leibnitz; the other, in England, is represented by Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke.... Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke are the inaugurators of a school which is characterised by its practical spirit, its observation and analysis of psychological facts, and by its disposition to refer the conduct of man to the advantages which he draws therefrom. It led to Adam Smith, who discovers the sanction of morality in the public approbation of what is right; to Bentham, who sees it in interest rationally understood; to Hume and the Scottish school; and finally to the existing school of John Stuart Mill, Darwin, and Herbert Spencer. Locke, on the other hand, is also the starting-point of the French school of the eighteenth century, which is characterised by a tendency at once anti-clerical, altruistic, and sentimental.”

“We shall say nothing of the philosophy of the nineteenth century of the German school, which represents speculative philosophy, and the English, which is physiological in bent, and of which we have the highest opinion. In France the most notable achievement is the attempt which was made by Auguste Comte. For Comte metaphysics must be entirely eliminated. The day of intuitions, À priori conceptions, entities, innate ideas, is past. If a problem cannot be solved, it is to be let alone. Psychology is only a branch of physiology, and the latter a division of biology. Morals rest not upon any imperative obligation, but upon the altruism which education developes. There are no rights besides those which society confers. Human knowledge has passed through three stages: one of faith or theology, one of conceptions or metaphysics, and one of observation or science. These, in turn, are the basal principles of science, and would be perfect if the positivist school were faithful to them. But in its own bosom even there are refractory spirits who suffer themselves unconsciously to be ruled by their sentiments rather than by observation, and who are constantly lapsing back into the old methods.... For me there is but one method of knowing what is, and of inducing therefrom what has been and what will be—and that is observation; all suggestions which transgress this method are void.”

From his examination of the evolution of philosophy Dr. Topinard draws, by way of rÉsumÉ, the following conclusions:—

a. Philosophy, like religion, is the outcome of the belief in the supernatural held by man in his more or less primitive state.

b. The philosophic spirit and the spirit which created the arts and letters have as common characters their subjectivity, their need of imagining and of constructing, and their firm belief in the reality of their conceptions.

c. Philosophy is opposed to science. It answers to the impatient need of man to explain at once things which elude his comprehension.

d. At the present day philosophy still lives, but is losing its initial character and sees itself obliged more and more to reckon with science and practice.

e. We are obliged to admit that the group of human faculties which has given birth to philosophy has a less prolonged future than the group which has given rise to science.

f. Philosophy, although on the wane, and apparently in disaccord with the end of the nineteenth century, has nevertheless a beautiful domain to exploit.

These conclusions concerning the past and present of philosophy cannot be disseminated too widely. So many refuse point-blank to inquire into their belief, because they have been led to think that this will entail their wading through a mass of philosophical writings, and because they expect to find these either incomprehensible or unconvincing. Properly speaking, Christians should be the first to admit that apologists who attempt to defend their Faith by abstruse arguments are sadly inconsistent. For it is written, Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Let the humble truth-seeker take heart. Whatever the value or present tendency of philosophy may or may not be, the truth about the Christian religion can be ascertained without a knowledge of metaphysics.

Metaphysics does not, and never will, appeal to the average man. He agrees with the scoffer, who says: “When the man who is speaking no longer knows what he is talking about, and the man who is listening never knew what he was talking about, that is metaphysics!” The obscurity inherent in profound and abstract philosophy may well be objected to, not only as painful and fatiguing, but as the inevitable source of uncertainty and error. “Here, indeed,” exclaims Hume, in his essay on The Different Species of Philosophy, “lies the justest and most plausible objection against a considerable part of metaphysics, that they are not properly a science, but arise either from the fruitless efforts of human vanity, which would penetrate into subjects utterly inaccessible to the understanding, or from the craft of popular superstitions, which, being unable to defend themselves on fair ground, raise these intangling brambles to cover and protect their weakness.” It is accurate and just reasoning like that of Hume, in his Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, which, to quote his words again, “is the only catholic remedy, fitted for all persons and all dispositions; and is alone able to subvert that abstruse philosophy and metaphysical jargon which, being mixed up with popular superstition, renders it in a manner impenetrable to careless reasoners, and gives it the air of science and wisdom.”

It may be urged that the famous Scottish philosopher and historian has been unduly severe in his sceptical views concerning speculative philosophy, or that he would have been less severe upon the later metaphysical thinking which was affected by his criticisms. There still remains, in any case, one feature common to all philosophies: their difficulty. Philosophy is only studied, and, indeed, can only be thoroughly understood, by the few. Take, for example, that intellectual phenomenon, Hegelianism, the spirit and method of which have leavened the whole mass of philosophical thought in Germany. It is confessedly one of the most difficult of all philosophies. One has heard what Hegel himself is supposed to have said: “Only one man ever understood me, and even he couldn’t.” This difficulty of comprehension has an important bearing on the argument for Agnosticism. Granting that there is such a God as Hegel would have us accept, how can anyone suppose for a moment that a Deity wrapping Himself up in such obscurity would be unreasonable enough to expect all mankind to believe in Him? He must not only pardon, but approve of, Agnosticism. A God, whose existence can only be proved, if it can be proved at all, by the abstruse arguments of a Hegel, is not a God anxious to reveal Himself to His creatures.